January 28, Epiphany 4B (Mark 1:21–28)

A billboard on my commute seeks to draw drivers to a big downtown church by promoting three apparently prominent biblical teaching authorities. I recognize only one of them, from his interventions in national politics, but the others look pretty similar: male, graying, in conservative suits. The names and faces are, I imagine, intended to inspire confidence in the seriousness and sobriety of the teaching available at this church. But I confess that when I drive by, my reaction is unfair and uncharitable. None of them, I think to myself, would recognize God if God bit him on the butt.

I have no grounds for this reaction, of course. The same could just as easily be said of me, though my confidence game gear looks different (sober chasubles over an alb that has usually been laundered in the last quarter). For all I know, it would be true. My job is different from theirs, but it’s a job all the same, and it is subject to its own Spirit-stifling routinization.

This is why I have come to take a rather gentler view of the scribes than the gospel accounts give us. Try as I might, I can’t imagine them as a nefarious, consciously self-seeking cohort of bad-faith actors. To the extent that they are analogous to lawyers or Christian clergy, I obviously can’t deny the possibility of true venality—I live in Dallas, after all, America’s longtime capital of religious hucksterism. But I always imagine someone diligently plugging away at a set of texts and duties that he (presumably they were all “he”) had been handed and making the best of it.