Christ Church Cathedral

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Judges 4:1-7
1Thessalonians 5:1-11
Matthew 25:14-30

I have noticed of late in my secular, as opposed to my theological reading, and in both books and newspapers, that the word myth is being used more and more.

For me the word has two very different meanings. There is an every day usage, where it signifies something that is not true. With this I am not here concerned. I am more interested in a technical meaning, used in literary and biblical criticism, as well as in anthropology and increasingly in wider general writing. In these contexts it basically refers to a story, usually set in past or future, round which meaning can coalesce for an individual or more probably for a community. Often the past or future is far distant, in which case we can refer to it as mythical time. In other instances it may be nearer the present and may contain verifiable historical fact. Myth-making is often seen as something belonging to the ancient world, but, as we shall see later, that may be a too narrow understanding. Myth may be also a modern creation.

In our Biblical readings today we have two examples of myth-making. The two extant letters to the church in Thessalonica are some of the very earliest in the truly Pauline corpus. In these writings Paul draws on a future-myth about the end of the world, which scholars believe was part of a common stock of story in Paul's world, in Jewish and maybe also in Greek culture. We can see similar myths, in fact, in many cultures: the theme of the once and future king is found in many places. In using the myth, Paul struggles to understand and communicate meaning for himself and for his hearers round the basic story of Jesus' death and resurrection. You see at the end of our passage that the mythical language has a very practical intention:

Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing. ^[1]

If you doubt the way in which a pre-existing myth can be used to allow meaning to coalesce round a recent event, look at a recent Aislin cartoon ^[2] in the Gazette newspaper, depicting three men on camels crossing the desert towards a sign marked Obama.

The passage we read from the Hebrew Scripture also presents us with myth, in this case around what was, for the writer, relatively recent history. However, unlike a modern historian, the editor of the book of Judges, who was gathering together stories from oral tradition, using perhaps also some earlier written material, would have had neither the means to critically evaluate and validate his sources, nor the tradition of doing so.

The story or myth we read in this passage is part of a whole story presented in the historical books of the Bible, beginning with the conquest under Joshua and taking us through national history up to the time of the exile. The myth has many themes - chosen people, conquest, new land, expansion and growth, but the particular mythical element we see today is the idea that when the chosen people were good and did what their God required, then things went well, they had peace and prospered. When they failed to do what was required, then things went badly, their armies were defeated and they had to serve foreign masters. This process of myth-making and myth gathering had a long history, but was particularly prevalent at the time of the Babylonian exile, where it served to offer meaning and hope to a defeated and discouraged people. As more texts of what we now know as the bible were gathered edited and written, the historic works found themselves as part of a wider mythical framework which ran from the mythical past time which we see in Genesis, to the mythical future time which we find both in the prophets and other Hebrew writers, as well as in the Gospels, letters and above all the apocalypse of the Greek writers in the Christian texts.

Let us at this point remind ourselves that the word myth refers to a story round which meaning can coalesce for an individual or for a community. The use of the word myth makes no judgment whatsoever about the historical or scientific factuality of the contents of the story. It must be noted that the very idea of historical and scientific factuality is a completely modern concept, arising only out of the intellectual framework and scientific method which developed from the time of Descartes onward. That having been said, I also have to mention that Karen Armstrong makes the point that the ancients were very well aware of the difference between mythical and logical thinking.^[3] They knew both the advantages and limitations of both intellectual activities. Their logical thinking however had somewhat different uses from that of modern scientific and historical method.

Let me now jump for a moment, from ancient thought to modern, to see how myth is faring today. First a glimpse at Sigmund Freud. Freud used the myths of the ancient Greek world to describe and communicate what he discovered about the inner workings of the human psyche. Thus we have the modern concept of the Oedipus complex. Even more, Carl Jung drew on myths from much wider cultural origins. This should serve to warn us that we cannot simply oppose myth and science as incompatible human intellectual activities.

In a book I have recently read, What is America?^[4], Canadian author Ronald Wright discusses the post-contact history of the American continents, and shows how historical facts, which, unlike for ancient authors, can be validated and verified by reference to original documents, very quickly became spun into myths which have guided and informed social culture and political decisions right down to the present day.  At the same tine, however, these myths, he says, sanitized and moralized the original history, which was far from as romantic as the myths which were told. Another author I read many years ago, Martin Marty, showed in his book Pilgrims in their own land^[5] how the myths which drove both the original settlement and then the westward expansion of the United States were actually retellings of the Biblical myths of the chosen people and the promised land.

One of the major problems we face today in dealing, especially with ancient myths, is confusion about their nature. On one side the militant atheists such as Hitchens and Dawkins see them as untrue, unhealthy for society and immoral. In some, maybe many cases, I have to agree with them. On the other side, conservative Christians insist that they are not myths at all, but scientific and historical fact dictated by God as part of the production of the Bible and therefore true and valid as facts for all time, all people and all places. Working from this proposition, which flies in the face of modern understanding of the origin and nature of scientific and historical fact as well as in the face of modern understanding of myth, they have come to horrendous conclusions about God's way, and his expectation about our way, of dealing with other (non-chosen) people, black, Indian, and particularly at the present time women and homosexual persons.

A couple of weeks ago, when preaching on the All Saints festival, Dr Roger Balk spoke about the mythical stories surrounding the cult of the saints. Then he commented, " For us the myth is in tatters."

I believe he is right. Certainly the biblical myths are in tatters if we try to treat them like the conservatives do, as scientific , and historical truth. But even if we treat them more properly, as I believe, as stories of meaning for individuals  and communities, many of them still raise huge difficulties of a moral and political nature, as Dawkins and Hitchens point out. This was particularly brought home to me in encountering Ronald Wright's ^[6] thoughts about myth-making in America, and the political and moral outflows from that.

So how should we read and understand the Bible? I believe the parable in today's gospel may give us some clues. First I have to say that I do not think this parable is a prescription for a capitalist economy. That would be to interpret it out of context and out of time. But I do read it as a parable about how we should use the gifts that we are given, and for me the most important of those gifts is independent and critical thought, together with the knowledge base that such thought has provided for us. We should bring that thought and knowledge to bear both on how we understand the Bible and on the task of discerning what is good and wholesome for us and for world society and what should be left aside at any time. We should also bring these gifts to bear on the task of more broadly discerning what is good politically for world society, especially for the poor, oppressed and marginalized. And finally we should bring those gifts to bear on the task, if it be still possible, of rescuing our planet from the ecological disaster that a different kind of religion and politics has brought on us.

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[1] 1 Thessalonoans 5:11
[2] http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/aislin/index.html?pubdate=11%2f7%2f2008
[3] Karen Armstrong A Short History of Myth Alfred A Knopf Canada, 2005
[4] Ronald Wright ,What is America? A short history of the new world order, , Alfred A Knopf Canada, 2008
[5] Martin E. Marty Pilgrims in Their Own Land. 500 Years of Religion in America. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1984
[6] Op. cit. note iv