VII. A Cultural-Linguistic View

Where we finally make some progress

        For more on theological method, my self-imposed exile from the discipline, and the few small changes I hope to make within it, listen to me talk with

Chris EW Green

here.

No one when following Jesus can remain unchanged. But the process is less like a hammer on an iron and more like a light going on, an invitation to begin again anew. Early Christian thinkers often spoke about an “iron in the fire”; the Christian who encountered Christ did not become something else, but remained what they were. What changed was the energy or life that was attributed to them. Like an iron slowly heated in the fire, they were set alight from within. They become bendable, moldable to the will of the craftsmen. Though they remained who they were, they also were entirely changed by the flame.

         In the book of Luke, Jesus encounters two travelers on the road to Emmaus. They are talking about the events that had just occurred in their community- a man had offered signs and wonders and spoken of the Kingdom of God. He had defied some of the religious authorities and also the political powers of his day, and for this defiance he was put to death. Everyone was talking about these events, to the point that one of the men remarks, “Are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?” (Lk 18:35)

         The travelers do not know who they are speaking to. They recount to him the events as they happened:

“About Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied. “He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. ²⁰ The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him; ²¹ but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place. ²² In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning ²³ but didn’t find his body. They came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels, who said he was alive. ²⁴ Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but they did not see Jesus.”

This is a thorough and accurate account. The men on the way know everything that occurred in the life of Christ. They even know the significance of these events in light of Israel’s history.  But they don’t know what any of it means. They have not been lit from within.

         Catechesis most certainly does require recounting the events of Israel’s history and interpreting them in life of the story of Jesus. But many attempts at discipleship act as if the task was largely accomplished in the mind. No, as catechists we must instead lead as followers of Christ, following him as the people that we are. But what does this require?

         Here, a story may help. Imagine that you were trying to understand a community of people you had never met. They live in a completely separate part of the world, and their behavior is entirely different from yours.

You might begin by studying them. Indeed, this is often the first step, and your acquiring books and watching video of their annual feasts and celebrations would be a good initial attempt. You might gather information about what colors they favor, about their foodways, and about the intonation of their language. You would note how parents treat children and how elders in the villages are honored (or not). You might see when gifts are given and how they are packaged.

Much good could be gained by this form of study. You would remain yourself, an observer of these people, if you only attempt to study them. But what if you wanted to join them? What if you become so enamored by their sensibilities, by the way they treat their young and their old, the way they grieve and celebrate and the joy with which they live their lives, that you want to become one of them?

In this case, learning about them would not be enough.

Theologian George Lindbeck argues that there are three main “versions” of religion. The first he calls the “cognitive propositionalist”. This is the form I have described in earlier posts-of a student who seeks to learn about a people group. This form of education also possesses its own theory of religion. People who hold to it imagine that “becoming religious” is like becoming educated. Indeed, they treat the two as if they were the same. This version of a religious person views Christian doctrine as similar to philosophy or a science. “Becoming religious” is like becoming acquainted with the philosophical tradition or the scientific method. It assumes that Christianity’s claims are “out there” and verifiable.

In this view, the church largely serves as a weigh-station. It maintains and verifies doctrinal concepts and supports them through its preaching, sacraments and communal life- but the church does not do much beyond this. In fact, doctrine is largely a private and personal matter, and the church is nothing much beyond a group of people who have consented to the same categories, like people waiting in line at the DMV. This view seeks to move from the outside in- it sees religious truth as “out there” in the world and wants to put it “inside” by agreeing to this truth.

The second form of religion (“experiential-expressivist”) trains people to treat Christianity as if it were a means to their own private religious experience. The teachings, ritual, church service and community serve to provide a sense of fulfillment, a therapeutic or meaningful connection. Religion is thought to be the external validation of something that is primarily a private, internal matter- a means of externalizing what is primarily an internal matter. It wants to take what is “inside”- a longing for connection, a fear about the state of the world, a deep anxiety- and find something on the outside to assuage it.

Christian formation has often appealed to either the first or second versions offered here. Traditional catechisms with their question and answer format and focus on repetition and memorization appeal to church cultures that focus on the cognitive (though they were not necessarily intended to be used for such purposes). “Discipleship” or “spiritual formation” programs often lean toward the second, seeking to address matters of the soul like worry, anxiety, guilt or shame as they introduce the tenets of the gospel.

Let’s go back to our imaginary traveler who is seeking not to learn about a remote community, but to join them. We’ve said that learning about them, as much as it is a part of this process, will not get him what he desires. If he really wants to become part of this community in order to enjoy their benefits, he needs to become one of them. He needs to watch what they do and how they do it by participating in their rituals, celebrations, and daily life. Even before he understands why they behave, he needs to know how they behave.

By joining up with a family and following them around, he will gradually come to understand this group from within. After he has watched a few times, he may light the fire for the tea kettle when a mother’s labor begins. When an elder is nearing the end of their life, he may go to the yard to gather the sticks and flowers that will anoint the body after death. When the family bows for prayer at the end of the day, he will reflexively close his eyes and quiet his mind, offering in his body an instinctive recognition that the day is not only his to spend. He might not know why they do any of these things, but he will know that this is what they do, and that doing these things makes them who they are- kind, charitable, gentle, loving. By practicing as these people do, he has come to think like them. His imagination has been changed.

What happens in many forms of catechesis is that we treat Christianity as if it were a foreign community that we long to join-but we attempt to join merely by study. We may not mean to do this, but in our understanding of what discipleship is, we treat Christianity as if it were something we might learn and agree to, but nothing more.

Catechesis should be more like putting on a pair of reading glasses than reading a dictionary. It ought to contain within it a recognition, the “aha!” of someone who is seeing something new for the first time.

This must start with you, the catechist.

         We have been, I hope, rightfully persuaded that people aren’t things.  But do we know that the Gospel is not a thing, either? Our technological world is determined to make people into things, and indeed our catechesis often treats people as if they were things. We give someone a book, or invite them to a talk, and expect it to change their life. But people are not computers, into whom we can download a file and patch a virus or bad behavior. It is often in our weakness, our persistent failings and our blindness that we come to see ourselves as we are. And it is often in these failings, as others walk with us, that we understand that Christ is not a principle but a person.

         The goal of a catechism should be not simply but to instruct, but to console, nourish, and depict for Christians what it is they are about to begin. It should tell a better story about the world than the one they have heard before- about a world that is populated by devils and angels, that is deeply broken and full of terrible dreadful things, and of a God who in his severe mercy is making all things new-right this minute, if we only had eyes to see it.

Catechesis must not be separated from living with those who practice this faith. It must be bound tightly up with marrying and burying and baptizing, with feeding and grieving and sitting quietly with those who suffer. It is only in such moments that we can understand what is our only comfort in life and death.

The men on the road to Emmaus knew all that there was to know about Christ, but they did not recognize him, even when he was in their midst. What they needed was the company of Christ, who pointed to himself and corrected their error. Once he left them, they needed each other to remember the one who broke bread in their midst., “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” (Luke 24:32).

This goal of my own writing is to help you to know him when you see him, and to provoke your hearts to burn anew with the memory of his presence in your midst.