September 13, 2021
On the practice of Midrash
I have been reading a book called The Burning Word: A Christian Encounter with Jewish Midrash. Before my August trip to Seattle for my MFA residency, I didn’t know much about Midrash. During the residency, I learned a lot more from two writers whose work reflects the practice of Midrash: author Mary Potter Engel and poet Jessica Jacobs.
Jessica explained that Midrash has, as its root meaning, the notion of searching out, seeking, and inquiring. As the rabbinic tradition of puzzling over the Jewish Scripture, she said Midrash doesn’t seek to definitely “explain” the text but to provide “missing texture.” In this way, Midrash is a participatory kind of reading, one that gives the reader a role in the drama. Midrash is a means for asking questions, sometimes even lodging complaint.
I might say it this way: At the heart of Midrash is agitated curiosity.
I don’t know about you—but this is absolutely not the way that I learned to read the Bible growing up. We learned to read the Scriptures with quiet acquiescence. You did not raise questions, at least not the kind without obvious answers, and you certainly never raised objections. This would characterize a profoundly irreverent reading of the text. It would signal your stiff-neck, which is to say your unwillingness to submit to the Bible—and God’s—unqualified authority. (I write more on this in my third book, Surprised by Paradox.)
Now let me be clear: I believe in God’s unqualified authority over all of creation. The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. Let me also say that I believe in the authority of the Scripture over the lives of God’s people. But let me also say that there is a way in which an acquiescent reading of the Bible—the kind that nods its head and groans um-hum—might be, at best, boredom, and at worst, hypocrisy.
We can act as if the Bible is making sense, all the while remaining indifferent to its demands.
Personally, I’m drawn to another way of reading Scripture. A paradoxical way, I suppose. A way that doesn’t pretend away confusion and discomfort, even while it says (though sometimes unwillingly), Let me hear what God the LORD will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, to his saints. Perhaps we could say this way of reading the Bible is closer to the way of Job. Job, of course, never took anything lying down. I’m unjustly accused! I’m unfairly punished! Let me have a word with you, God! Incidentally, I just finished reading the Book of Job and couldn’t help but think, “What a book! What book to have in the canon. And thank God!”
I think Midrash is one means for engaging the practice of honest Bible reading. It invites us to pay attention when Scripture snags. It allows us to brood a bit, to hover over something hard or at least something not immediately obvious. It asks us to articulate why we come with such resistance.
And here’s the point: this is far more fruitful reading than the quick 5-minute devotional that is meant for easy, feel-good inspiration.
In Kunst’s book, The Burning Word, she explains that Jews often refer to a piece of Scripture not as “passage” but as a “portion.” Viewed in this light, Midrash is a practice for chewing, for savoring, for lingering with the satisfying (and sometimes foreign tastes) of God’s meal of words. And as parents will know, there is an “education” involved even in the task of eating. Children must be introduced—and reintroduced—to broccoli, brussel sprouts, and the tang of summer berries. Their impulse is to spit it out—and we coach them by saying, “Try again. It’s good.”
All Scripture is good, even the hard parts. But I wonder if we won’t know just how good it is without giving ourselves permission first to say, “Too salty! Too spicy! Too bland!” Just this morning, my Bible reading led me to the thunderous opening of Isaiah, this prophet speaking judgment over the people of Judah. Twice, mention of the “terror of the Lord and the glory of God’s majesty” was repeated. Over and over again, it was made plain that God has no stomach for human pride, that he will level “every tall cedar of Lebanon and every mighty oak of Bashan.”
This wasn’t quite the feel-good Bible reading a lot of us go looking for.
Having been recently drawn to the image of trees in Scripture—as a vision of the faithful, fruitful life—I was struck, in reading slowly, that here were two other kinds of trees: tall and lofty trees, proud and imperiled trees. Trees that stood in direct contrast to the kind of tree mentioned in Psalm 1.
What was this burning word?
I thought of a recent personal slight I suffered—small and stinging and also merciful. In my Midrashic journal (as I’m now calling it), I let myself sit, hover, brood over this word: “I can rejoice every time I am cut down by someone, cut down like the tall cedar of Lebanon and a mighty oak of Bashan. I can rejoice over that felling because it may spare me the great reckoning of God, the leveling he will do at the end of the ages.”
This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.