The Importance of Communities I

March 7, 2006 Posted by Roger Overton

Last week I had the great pleasure of attending two lectures
by one of my most favorite people in the world, Dr. Jerry Root. These lectures
comprised the annual Saucy Lectures at Talbot School of Theology. As usual,
Jerry hit on something that I’ve been dealing with recently: the importance of
community. In the first two posts I’ll mostly be summarizing Jerry’s lectures
and in the third I’ll mark out some of my personal thoughts on community.

The series was entitled “Developing Dialectically Safe
Communities” with the first lecture being “Bullets, Guns and Targets.” From
Jerry’s introduction: “In an era of culture wars and a day when many tend to
vilify those they disagree with, and easily disagree with whatever they don’t understand,
it is necessary to develop dialectically safe communities. Such communities
make it possible to learn and grow without fear.”

In some of his classes, Jerry would give his students a
bullet and tell the students to describe it. They would speak of its shape,
weight, color, size, etc. But Jerry would respond asking about its target and
who would be using this bullet. The point of the metaphor is that exegesis of
the text is valuable, but it’s enhanced when done within a community. “Exegetes
would do well to know their audiences; to become acquainted with the people in
the pew and in the world in which they live if they would contribute well to a
dialectically safe community.”

Quoting from Anne Lamott, Jerry talked about the old
question, “What is the sound of rain?” The Japanese would ask, “What is the
sound of the rain? Which is to say, Silence, until the drops hit something, an
umbrella, or a roof, or the sea.” What is the sound of grace? What is the sound
of exegesis? Jerry answered nothing, until it hits the people in the pews.
Quoting Frederick Buechner, Jerry illustrated how high the stakes are for those
who would teach the Word of God. “Perhaps it is through our own participation
with the daily struggles of the person in the pew that we begin to offer our
own study of Scriptures and shape a dialectically safe community.”

We must understand the text and the people in the pews, but
we must also understand ourselves. “There is much about ourselves we do not
know. Much we can discover in communion with God; and much we can discover in
communion with the people of God in dialectically safe communities.” We need
others to tell us about what we can’t of ourselves since we are all broken and
inevitably self-referential. Jerry closed this lecture with several quotes from
Terry Eagleton’s After Theory, which he had been quoting throughout the
message.

“Trying to be objective is an arduous, fatiguing business,
which in the end only the virtuous can attain. Only those with patience,
honesty, courage and persistence can delve through the dense layers of
self-deception which prevent us from seeing the situation as it really is. This
is especially difficult for those wield power—for power tends to breed fantasy,
reducing the self to a state of querulous narcissism… Nobody who was not open
to dialogue with others, willing to listen, argue honestly and admit when he or
she is wrong could make real headway in investigating the world.” (After
Theory, 132-133)