From the Archives: The Consoling Message That Disturbs
Each month, our blog features articles from the archives of Liturgy. Our goal is to share the wisdom from decades past so that we might celebrate the work and insights of these excellent ministers and scholars.
Fr. Gerard Sloyan
In 1987, Liturgy published an article by Gerard Sloyan, entitled “The Consoling Message the Disturbs.” In this article, Sloyan critiques the practice among too many preachers of reading the Bible not as addressed to communities of faith but to individuals whose private lives and hearts need transformation. With insight into the history of how scripture was treated from the time of Jesus to today, he makes the case that the Bible’s message must be seen as a profound message of love for justice and peace among all people rather than words that can be used to promote the preacher’s current political or interpersonal concern. He has noticed with dismay those who look to the church to help them feel good about their lives. “The bible is indeed a book meant to console, but it first cauterizes the wounds of sin before it pours in the oils of comfort.” He calls preachers to let the full impact of the Bible’s message more profoundly impact how the faithful live.
Selected Quotes from
“The Consoling Message the disturbs”
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“Great numbers of people for whom the bible was a book they always meant to read find themselves turning to it in times of crisis, amazed to find all that is there. Why did they never consult it regularly before, they ask? Because they were in good health and could move about as they pleased. Because they were busy raising families or earning a livelihood. Because church work and business and sports and a thousand other things got in the way. But immobility, illness, the loss of a spouse or a child or a job, can make a great difference. They make a person ask what life is all about.”
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“It is not easy to remind people week in and week out not that their faith ”has a social dimension,” but that it means nothing if it is not social, that they are a community summoned by God to accuse the world of sin and justice and judgment. This kind of preaching can drive them straight into the arms of those who tell them they are “doing a good job” and that their church membership is God’s seal of approval on their godly lives.”
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“Jesus put a weapon in no one’s hand. Many people, however, at certain stages in their lives
need a weapon. They must use the bible defensively against threats to their security or aggressively against imagined foes. The mood may pass. It may last a lifetime. In any case, it bespeaks a need to be infallible with the infallibility of God.”
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Gerard S. Sloyan, a priest of the diocese of Trenton, New Iersey, was a professor of religion at Temple University in Philadelphia from 1957 until his retirement took him to Catholic University of America in Washington DC to teach theology. He published in the areas of scripture studies, liturgy, christology, religious education, and Christian-Jewish relations.
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