February 15, 2026

Interpreting the Word

Let me describe this scene for you, and see if it sounds familiar.  You’re caught in a conversation you’d actually rather not be in, but you can’t find a graceful exit, so . . . there you are.  The point of discussion is – let’s say – abortion, or gay rights, or birth control.  And it is clearly a topic that your partner in conversation feels very strongly about.  At some point this other person – let’s call her Martha – says, “Well, that’s not just my opinion, it’s God’s word.  It says right there in Matthew twenty umptieth that those who disagree will be sent straight to H, E, double hockey sticks.”  And before you can stop yourself, you say, “Well, that’s your interpretation.”  Whereupon, Martha gets on her high horse and says, “Oh, I don’t interpret scripture.  I just read the plain truth from the word of God.  It’s not subject to interpretation, it’s right there in black and white in the Bible.”  At this point you realize you’ve stumbled into a land where no growing thing can survive, so you beat a hasty retreat by either changing the subject, or looking at your watch and saying, “Oh, look at the time!”  If you’ve never found yourself in such a predicament, consider yourself lucky.  As for me? . . . Been there, done that.

 

But what about that claim – that scripture is not subject to interpretation, that it can and should be read literally, at face value, that its meanings are plainly obvious to all?  What are we to say to people who hold such a position?  Well, first of all, the best advice is: say nothing.  Trust me, you’re not going to win.

 

But, beyond that, I think it is important for us know something about this process of biblical interpretation.  Is there such a thing as “the plain literal meaning” of a passage of scripture?  My years of experience in theological environments and church settings tell me, no; there’s rarely such a thing.  There are groups of people who have come together in agreement on a certain interpretation, and therefore agree among themselves that theirs is the “plain, literal meaning,” but you will always find others who will dispute that interpretation.  So who’s right, and how do we decide?

 

Unfortunately, for all too many people the decision is to be made by fiat: “I’m right, because I know God’s Word and so you have to be wrong.”  The only problem with that approach is that it is idolatry.  It puts one’s own self on a par with the Almighty, the inferred assumption being that one person is actually capable of knowing the mind of the Lord.  That assumption means one of two things: your God is too small, or your head is too big.

 

At first blush, Peter seems to be saying much the same thing in this passage you heard this morning.  Today is the Sunday that the transfiguration of Jesus is recalled by churches around the globe, and in this reading from 1 Peter, that transfiguration experience – witnessing Jesus drawn up into the air from the mountaintop – is offered by Peter as the proof positive for his theological argument about the second coming of Christ.  He says, in essence, that since he was an eyewitness to this event, his perception of its meaning in the light of prophecy is unquestionable.  I can relate to that.  I had a very powerful and dramatic experience of calling into the ministry when I was a police officer over fifty years ago.  I went off to seminary with the firm conviction that this dramatic experience is what gave my calling (and therefore my views) authenticity.  I was quite the obnoxious know-it-all.  I had to be knocked down a few pegs before I came to realize that my experience was only one of a thousand kinds, and my views were just as subject to error as anyone’s.  So I’m sure you understand if I take the apostle’s argument here with a little grain of salt.  At any rate, Peter follows all this with the amazing pronouncement, “. . . no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation . . . .”

 

One might think that Peter was taking the side of the biblical literalists.  It sounds uncomfortably close to the kind of conversation I’d rather walk away from.  But listen more closely: “no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by human will, but men and women moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.”  There is a tremendously subtle and terribly important nuance between saying that a prophetic utterance is inspired by God, and assuming that one person speaks for the mind of God.  Peter is saying that when people speak a truly prophetic word (such as speaking truth to power as the old testament prophets did), it is the Lord Almighty who inspires them to do so.  When Moses mustered the courage to stand before Pharaoh and demand that he let his people go, he was inspired by God.  When Isaiah warned that corruption and idolatry would lead to the downfall of the kingdom, he was inspired by God.  When Martin Luther King, Jr. led a march on Washington and proclaimed to the nation a vision of freedom and equality, he was inspired by God.  When Nelson Mandela hammered out the agreement that established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, and Archbishop Tutu shed tears of pain and words of forgiveness, they were inspired by God.  We know these things because we look back on them and see divine fingerprints all over them.

 

But where is the Lord of Life at work now?  That we will only discern with any sense of confidence as we look back on this time from the vantage point of tomorrow.  And so the most we can hope to do is learn what we can about where that Lord has been, and  keep our eyes open for hints and signs of the Spirit’s leading.  And that, my friends, requires an open mind and heart – the kind of openness that only comes from humility.  The one who believes he already has the mind of God figured out is far more likely to be blinded to the real work of the Spirit.

 

All of this is a long way around the barn of saying that not only must scripture be interpreted, processed, sifted, and reinterpreted, but we have a solemn responsibility to do so in the context of the living of our days.  Our constant and humble prayer is that our interpretation will be guided and inspired by the Spirit and blessed by the prayers and reflections of tomorrow.

 

Finally, let me offer what I believe is the “nail in the coffin” of biblical literalism.  To those who claim such a position, you only have to ask them if they believe the world is round and that space is vast.  Because once you accept that the globe is a sphere set in orbit around the sun, you are already interpreting scripture.  It’s true.  In the Genesis creation story, we are told that “In the beginning the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.  And the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters.”  The picture is of a watery chaos – everywhere you look, nothing but water.  Then, we are told, God put a “firmament in the heavens to separate the waters that were above from the waters that were below.”  Have you ever wondered what that meant?  Well, let’s take a cue from the biblical literalists, and just read it at face value.  The Hebrew word that is translated “firmament” is raqiah.  I don’t know where the translators ever came up with the word “firmament” because raqiah is a Hebrew word that means simply “a hammered out bowl.”  You got it.  There’s water everywhere, and God put an upside down bowl in the sky to separate the waters above from the waters below.  That’s what allowed the dry land to appear.  Thus is completed the picture of ancient near eastern cosmology.  The earth is like a pancake.  Sitting on top of it is a kind of translucent bowl to protect us, and all around, below the earth and above the bowl, is water.  You know that’s the case because your senses tell you so.  You can see the blue water shining through the upside-down bowl above, and sometimes, God opens doors in that bowl (what the Bible calls the “vaults of heaven”) and lets some of the water fall down on us.  I mean, water couldn’t fall down from the sky if it wasn’t up there to begin with.  And if you poke a stick in the ground in some places, water bubbles up from there too, in springs.  It all made perfect sense to those folks a few thousand years ago.  And it’s all quite clearly their perception based on a literal reading of the scripture.  The only problem with it is that it’s simply not the way the world is actually put together.

 

So, what are we to do with the creation story, dismiss it as irrelevant folk lore?  No.  This story in Genesis is theology, not history.  It is telling us truth about creation, which is far more important than telling us facts about creation.  It is telling us that Almighty Lord of this Universe is at the heart of all that is, and that it is all very, very good.  To get there from the story about a raqiah separating the waters requires an interpretive process.  The only way to read and accept the creation story as literal fact is to believe that the universe is filled with water instead of space and that the observations of astronomers and evidence from spacecraft are all a grand hoax.

 

So, as soon as you admit that the world is round and space is vast, you are interpreting scripture.  What then are we to do as thinking people with rational, twenty-first century minds, and a modern, scientific world-view?  What are we to do with this ancient book?  The interpretive task we face is formidable.  It’s no wonder that some folks would rather run away from it into a supposed biblical literalism.  We face a very large problem, because once you begin to interpret scripture you are on quite a slippery slope indeed.  It’s a fast bobsled run from “the world is round” to “all this stuff in here can mean whatever I want it to.”

Hence, Peter’s caution.  It is somehow, in some way we don’t understand, the Holy Spirit that discloses eternal truth to us through scripture.  So we have a responsibility to be careful – and prayerful.  We approach scripture with humility and reverence, or we approach it as fools.

 

So, the next time you find yourself in a conversation and someone begins to tell you what “the Bible says about that” with the certainty of someone who can read the mind of the Almighty, you might try asking them if they think the world is round.  Or, you might just thank them for their opinion and then glance at your watch.  But then, go home and get out your Bible, and while you’re at it, pray.