October 10, 2024 • 51 mins
Discover the transformative power of the Psalms with our special guest, Dr. Ellen Davis from Duke University Divinity School. Through her profound insights, Dr. Davis illuminates how Psalm 145, an "alphabet of adoration," serves as a timeless bridge connecting spirituality and community across generations. As she opens up about personal experiences, particularly during times of mourning, you’ll find inspiration in the Psalms' ability to foster a candid and emotive dialogue with God, allowing for an authentic expression of praise and lament.
Travel with us into the heart of sacred places and environmental theology, sparked by Wendell Berry’s compelling notion that every place holds sacred potential. We explore how, amidst the chaos of modern mobility, spiritual stability can be achieved by grounding ourselves in the sanctity of familiar places. Delve into personal stories that highlight the importance of maintaining our connection to roots and the spiritual grounding offered by the communities and locations that have shaped us. This discussion encourages a deeper appreciation for the metaphorical "place to stand" in our spiritual journeys, even in moments of physical displacement.
As we navigate hope in the realm of faith communities, discover how it is more than just a fleeting feeling—it's a steadfast commitment. With stories of beauty, like the creation of the St. John's Illuminated Bible, we underscore the role of storytelling and art in nurturing hope and faith. The episode concludes with a thoughtful reflection on the evolving nature of the modern church, guided by the wisdom of Stanley Hauerwas. Join us in celebrating acts of beauty and kindness as heavenly treasures that contribute to healing a divided world, offering a renewed vision for the church's role in promoting justice and compassion.
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Episode Transcript
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Pastor Chris Nafis (00:00):
Hi and welcome back to the Current.
My name is Pastor Chris Nafis,pastor of Living Water Church,
and today I am excited andhumbled and honored to have Dr
Ellen Davis join us on the show.
She is the Amos Reagan KearnsDistinguished Professor of Bible
and Practical Theology at DukeUniversity Divinity School,
(00:20):
where I was extremely fortunateto have her as a teacher.
Dr Davis has writtena lot ofbooks.
They're all great.
I tell people if they'reworking on something in the Old
Testament and Ellen Davis haswritten on it, they should read
whatever she wrote first.
I mean read the text first, butthen read Dr Davis next.
My favorites of hers have beenGetting Involved with God,
rediscovering the Old Testament,which I've assigned in my Old
(00:42):
Testament class, scripture,culture and Agriculture an
Agrarian Reading of the Bible.
Her commentary on Proverbs,ecclesiastes and Song of Songs
is amazing.
She has a book on Ruth calledwho Are you, my Daughter?
Her most recent book is calledOpening Israel's Scriptures.
Read it all.
Read any of it.
It's great.
In our conversation we talkabout the theology of place.
(01:03):
We talk about ecology, poetry,despair and hope.
I hope that you find itinspiring and hope-filled here.
It is Well, dr Davis, you'vebeen a huge inspiration in my
(01:32):
life.
It's hard to overstate theimpact you've had on the
direction of my life andventures into farming and just
the way that I've understoodmyself and my ministry.
So thank you so much.
It's like an honor to have youhere.
Thank you for joining me onthis.
It's a real pleasure.
Thank you, chris.
I wanted to start with thePsalms and I guess I was just
(01:53):
wondering first, do you have afavorite Psalm?
Do you have one that's yourfavorite?
Dr. Ellen Davis (01:57):
Well, I have a lot of favorites, but I would
say that one that I gravitatetoward is Psalm 145, which is
kind of the.
The Psalter ends with a bigcrescendo of praise in Psalm 145
.
It's an alphabetic Psalm, soeach verse begins with a
(02:20):
different letter of the Hebrewalphabet.
So it's A to Z, aleph to Tav inHebrew and it's I sometimes
(02:42):
call it an alphabet of adoration.
And I think what moves me aboutit is that in Jewish tradition
it is said that if you say Psalm145 three times a day, you earn
a place in the world to come.
World in the world to come, noquestions asked, um, and you
(03:09):
know, of course that's a sort ofsimplistic from one perspective
, but I think the point is thatif you're orienting your life in
such a way that you werepraising god extravagantly three
times a day, there's probablygoing to be a lot that follows
from that organization of yourlife.
And I'm saying that prayer Ithink I've told you my husband
(03:32):
died 18 months ago and so it'spart of the prayer service, the
morning prayer service, and I'vebeen welcomed into the
synagogue in my neighborhood tosay the prayers that mourners
say, which has been really awonderful experience over 18
(03:55):
months.
It's almost entirely.
The whole service is a serviceof praise of God and that Psalm
service of praise of God andthat psalm of course appears
multiple times.
And to think about peoplehaving prayed that psalm when
they're grieving, when they'rein persecution, in the death
(04:16):
camps.
You know in Europe in themiddle of the 20th century that
whatever thing was happening,people were still digging deep
to find 22 different ways togive praise to God.
You know one for each letter ofthe alphabet.
I find that just as a piece ofhistorical theology, in a sense
(04:42):
of the presence of the text incommunity over centuries and
millennia, that that's deeplymoving to me yeah, and I mean
what?
Pastor Chris Nafis (04:51):
what are you talking about is how kind of a
couple a lot of things, ofcourse but, um, how the psalms
and that psalm in particular,but how the psalms shape us,
like how praying them andspeaking them kind of changes us
, and also how it connects us toall these people in all these
places throughout history whohave prayed them before, and how
(05:13):
it's kind of shaped uscollectively.
And you know, I find it reallycool that you're not just like a
Bible scholar, you also are apractical theologian is kind of
how you're described in yourposition and I feel like the
Psalms and the Proverbs whereyou spent a lot of your time at
least, really kind of theyreally kind of exhibit that like
they are meant to shape usright, absolutely.
Dr. Ellen Davis (05:36):
So I'm an Episcopalian my whole life and
there is not a prayer service inAnglican Episcopal tradition.
There's not a single service inwhich at least a part of a psalm
does not appear, and sometimeswhole sections of the service
(05:59):
are structured by just sort ofexchanging lines from the psalms
.
So it becomes a kind of languageand it's the language that
(06:20):
shapes the prayer book withwhich I grew up, that I still
use, the Book of Common Prayer,and so when Psalms Psalms of
lament, psalms of praise, buteither way intensely interacting
with God in a very direct way,the Psalms are the only.
Most of the Bible speaks aboutGod or speaks about human life
(06:51):
in the presence of God, tellsstories, but the Psalms are
direct interaction with God andof course they bespeak the
conviction, the very form ofthem implies, that God, as one
of the Psalms says, hears prayer, that God is listening and
(07:17):
cares about what we have to say.
And sometimes what we have tosay is expressing disappointment
in God or saying where are you?
I'm crying out, are youlistening?
And that kind of permission tobe real in what we have to say
(07:37):
to God or of God in the presenceof God, that I think without
the Psalms we would not be assure as we can be that we have
that permission.
Pastor Chris Nafis (07:49):
Right, yeah, yeah, you know I spent, we
spent a year.
I kind of committed myself topreaching a Psalm every week for
a year in our church.
Dr. Ellen Davis (07:57):
Wow.
Pastor Chris Nafis (07:58):
Such a if anyone's listening and thinking
of preaching out there like Iwas worried it would be tiresome
and get repetitive.
It did not feel that way at all.
In fact, it was one of the mostformative years of my life.
I feel like just digging inevery single week to the Psalms,
and one of the things that Ifound in myself was I don't even
know if teaching would be theright word, Like it wasn't, like
(08:18):
it was teaching me this, but Ifelt like I was kind of
discovering my place in theworld, both in terms of, like
the cosmic order of things,finding humility before God and
also finding some audacity tosay things that I didn't think I
was allowed to say, and alsosome responsibility towards
neighbor and land and gratitudefor, like, the abundance of life
(08:38):
, but also like my place in,like the geography of things you
know, noticing where I am andthe beauty around me, and you
know there's so much geographyin scripture.
I guess my question for you isyou know, how has the Hebrew
Bible maybe the Psalms inparticular, but just more
generally how has it taught youto think about place?
Dr. Ellen Davis (09:00):
Well, maybe the first thing I should say is
that I didn't learn Hebrew and Ididn't study, I didn't really
study Bible until I was astudent, my junior year in
college, living in Jerusalem,jerusalem, and so there's never
(09:31):
been a time in my, there's neverbeen a time when I really was
beginning to engage the Bibledeeply that I did not know the
land in which it was written, towhich it refers as you say
continually to which it refersand the language in which it was
written.
So, for me, the Biblealtogether, but the Psalms,
(09:55):
which many of them are orientedaround the temple or life in
that land in various ways, therewas never a time when I was
really paying attention to them,that I didn't have a pretty
lively imagination of the placein which they're based.
So I just think that'simportant to say, and maybe one
(10:20):
reason that I am susceptible tothe power of the Psalms is that
place has always been importantto me in my personal life.
I grew up in an extremelybeautiful place.
I grew up on an island in theSan Francisco Bay, san Francisco
(10:48):
Bay and so, and every afternoonafter school, my best friend
and I would just walk around theisland talking about the books
that we were reading.
So so I was outside very muchof the time, just being
conscious of.
I mean, maybe one of the bestthings I can say about myself as
a child is that I lived in abeautiful place and I knew it.
(11:09):
So I don't live there now, Icouldn't afford to live there
now, but you know, but at leastwhen I did live there I received
the grace of it and it made mefeel that I and I suppose, as I
(11:29):
got older, we as human beingscannot be fully who we are
without being sensitive to theplaces that we are, the places
that we are.
And and in terms of aparticular place, of course, the
(11:51):
psalmist speak most often ofJerusalem, which they see as a
place of consummate beauty andand a place that God has chosen
to in some way be present tohuman beings.
But Wendell Berry, farmer,writer, poet and certainly one
(12:15):
of the people who has sensitizedthis generation to the
importance of place and thefragility of place, he has a
wonderful statement.
I think it's in one of hisessays, I don't think it's in a
poem, but he says there are nounsacred places, there are
(12:36):
sacred places and there aredesecrated places.
And I think what I, and thatrings true for me, and I think
the first place I ever reallythought of as sacred is
Jerusalem, and for me it'spalpable.
It's a war-torn place, as weknow very well, but that doesn't
(13:03):
mean it isn't a sacred place.
It's never been a reallypeaceful place.
That's why the Psalms say prayfor the peace of Jerusalem,
because it's not a peacefulplace, but I think, really
feeling that in some way thatplace needed to be recognized as
(13:27):
holy, that disposed me to acertain way of looking at other
places and recognizing that ourbeloved places and probably
every place has been beloved tosomebody and probably every
place has been beloved tosomebody that are beloved places
(13:48):
are endangered and oftentreated very, very badly,
desecrated.
Pastor Chris Nafis (13:56):
Yeah, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you.
Yeah, through war and through,like the ecological crisis,
which you've written a lot aboutand spoken a lot about, and I
wonder you know you talk aboutgrowing up in a place where you
were very aware of the beauty ofthe place where you were and
you seem like you were verypresent in that place.
(14:17):
Like, physically walking aroundmore common for people to
almost intentionally stay, notrooted in a place, to have the
ability to transplant, to movearound, to not feel like they're
tied to any place, so that theycan go for a job over here or
so they can go and spend sixmonths over here.
(14:39):
And I wonder how that might bedisruptive of our theology and
our spirituality.
Um, like, do you think thatshapes our imagination?
This isn't necessarily a biblequestion, I guess, but do you
think that shapes ourimagination in a way that's
unhelpful or that's particular?
Dr. Ellen Davis (14:56):
I'm just making a note so that I don't forget.
I think, first of all, I shouldnot be taken as a model of the
spiritual virtue of stabilitasfor the Benedictine tradition.
Stabilitas, the three vows theytake poverty, chastity, not
(15:19):
obedience, but stability,stabilitas, staying, having and
it comes from the Latin to stand, having a place to stand.
And I have moved around a greatdeal in my teaching life.
I've been at Duke for 24 years,so I think I've finally
(15:40):
attained the grace of stability,but I moved a lot before that.
But I moved a lot before that,and I moved a lot for my studies
as well as my teaching.
So I just need to be honestabout that.
And those moves, none of themwas coerced, they were all moves
that I made voluntarily, movesthat I made voluntarily, and I
(16:11):
think each of them opened up anew sort of form of blessing in
my life, new experiences, that ablessing that wouldn't have
happened if I hadn't enteredinto that place.
So, having said that, yes, Ithink that place is important.
As I say, we need to have aplace to stand at, you know, if
(16:31):
not literally, nonetheless insome real sense in our formation
.
So I'll say two things.
I think that, for me, study ofthe Bible has provided a great
deal of the stability in my life.
I could say that the traditionof study has often been my place
(16:57):
to stand and it's real for me,and it's populated by people I
can name, some of whom diedcenturies before I was born.
But I'm deeply grateful forwhat they did that made it
possible for me to do what I do,and some of them, of course,
(17:21):
have been my teachers or thepeople with whom I've studied,
or my own students.
So it's a strong sense ofcommunity shaped in relation to
this text and tradition,traditions in the plural of
(17:42):
interpretation in which we allstand.
So that's metaphorical, butit's not abstract.
Pastor Chris Nafis (17:52):
Yeah.
Dr. Ellen Davis (17:53):
And it's not less real for being metaphorical
.
But I would also say that ifone is going to move around a
lot, as I have said, then it'simportant to pay attention to
where you are and value it andremember it when you leave it
(18:18):
and, as much as possible,maintain connections with it,
and for me that's throughpersonal relationships.
I'm the only member of myrather large extended family who
(18:39):
has made my life away from theWest Coast, and I've lived away
from my family of origin for 50years.
I still miss them, they miss me, my family of origin for 50
years.
I still miss them, they miss me, but I cannot be with them for
many of the important changesthat happen in our common life.
But I have made it.
(19:02):
I rarely take a vacation.
It's been years since I'vetaken a vacation that did not
take me to be with a member ofmy family, and it's not a
discipline.
I mean, I'm lucky.
My family lives in nice placesand they're wonderful people,
but it's a way of stayingconnected with the place that
formed me and the people of thatplace.
(19:25):
And, as one of my cousins saidto me, there's a death.
We're anticipating a death inour family.
A very kind of life I live,which is different from my other
family members.
Yeah, yeah.
Pastor Chris Nafis (20:05):
And I mean it's interesting to think about
place in relation to community,in relation to scripture.
I mean, if you read the storyof the Old Testament, I mean the
Jews are often not in the placethat they want to be right.
I mean Abraham is called out ofhis homeland to a new place.
We've got the you know thewilderness stuff.
(20:25):
We've got a huge chunk of theOld Testament is around the
exile and the Jews being removedfrom their place and it does
seem like the stories ofscripture, the tradition, the
prophetic word, the poetry, iswhat kind of binds them together
, even when they're scatteredand even when they're not in
their homeland.
(20:45):
And so it's that memory of theplace, right yeah.
Dr. Ellen Davis (20:47):
Absolutely memory of the place, right, yeah
, absolutely.
And of course, this is somethingthat Jewish communities are
even more aware of than we.
In fact, I don't think Christiancommunities on the whole are
very sensitive to matters ofexile and being bound to a
particular place, but atPassover but at Passover,
(21:08):
virtually every Jew says thisyear here, next year in
Jerusalem.
Well, it's a way of expressingthat sense of belonging to a
place that we are not, andChristians have understood that,
as this is no lasting city, youknow, there is another place to
(21:35):
which we belong, and I thinkthat's very important to me, and
I have a sense of a place towhich I am going, and that sense
strengthens as the peopleclosest to me age and die,
(21:57):
assist me, age and die, and Ithink it's really critical not
to devalue the place where weare.
This is how we live, here isour formation, for whatever life
will look like on the otherside of death and of course, I
have no idea, but I have noticedthat, through the centuries,
people have tended to imaginelife on the other side of death
(22:19):
as being characterized by thethings we value most on this
side of death.
So, then, we should be valuingthe places that we are.
Pastor Chris Nafis (22:31):
Yeah, even now, right, and I mean, I think
a lot of what has beeninspirational from your work has
been your focus on the land,right and care for the things
that are around us, for ourplaces, and that doesn't
necessarily need to be Jerusalem.
I mean, it is Jerusalem, butit's not only that, it's it's
(22:52):
where do we find ourselves andhow do we care for the land that
we are?
Um, that's been put in ourcharge and so I guess you know
maybe a bit of a transition.
But like, how has, how has yourstudy of scripture led you to
focus on ecology?
It's like the guy, but othersmay not, it's so.
Dr. Ellen Davis (23:13):
This goes back now 35 years, something like
that.
I made a trip to California andwent to an area that I had
remembered as a child, a veryrural area when I was a child in
Sonoma County, north of the BayArea, where I grew up, and I
(23:38):
noticed highways running throughacross areas that I remembered
farmhouses, and now they had ahighway running in front of them
and it was quite shaking to mefront of them, and it was quite
shaking to me, and so I wasteaching in a very urban area,
(24:03):
new Haven, connecticut at thetime, and I came back and I
decided that I was going toteach a class on a biblical
theology of land, as I called it.
I didn't even know what thatmeant, but I thought, somehow I
intuited that that was the onlyway I would be able to reckon
with what I was seeing and theway that it hurt me.
(24:26):
In a sense, even though theseplaces had never been my home
home, I could just see how muchthey had changed in, you know,
between my childhood and myyoung middle age, and I thought
this is not a sustainabletrajectory, um, with highways
running across you know, wherepeople had been grazing animals,
(24:50):
growing crops, and so I startedteaching this class, I was
again.
I was in a very urban area,very urban university, I think.
I wound up having everybody atYale Divinity School who'd ever
been on a farm in that class.
They just kind of came to seewhat was going on.
(25:14):
And when I started teaching theclass, I thought I was going to
have to be very careful to pickscripture texts that dealt with
land, with food, with care ofthese things.
And, of course, you know, I,within a couple of weeks, I
(25:36):
began to realize that everywhereI turned in the Bible, it was
there, because almost allIsraelites were farmers and even
those who lived in the citygrazed their sheep outside the
walls, you know.
So, um, so everybody wassensitive to where the food and
water came from and sensitive tothe fact that the land of
(26:00):
israel, um, is an ecologicallyfragile zone on the planet.
Well, now, in a sense, thewhole planet is an ecologically
fragile zone.
So it was one of those sort ofself-confirming experiences of
beginning to read the Biblethrough this lens and then
(26:24):
seeing that what in fact I wasdoing was not bringing a new
perspective to the Bible, butgetting just slightly closer to
the mindset of the biblicalwriters themselves, but one that
I had been really completelyinsensitive to, even though I
(26:47):
did as I said.
I've known the land of the Biblesince I was a teenager and but,
as I sometimes say to mystudents, you need to bear in
mind that no developed culturehas ever lived at such a
distance from the mindset, thesensibilities of the biblical
(27:11):
writers as we do.
And that's not just time,that's industrialization to
reduce it to a single wordurbanization, industrialization
on the scale that we know it.
So if we're going to understandthe way the biblical writers
(27:32):
understand a healthy formationof human life, we need to begin
poking some holes in ourironclad, industrialized mindset
in order to let something elsebegin to seep in.
And something that has beenenormously encouraging for me in
(27:54):
the last, I'll say, going on 20years is that I don't have to
make this case now to mystudents because they already
know it, and so now they don'tknow the Bible many of them as
well as I do and so they wanthelp reading the text in a way
(28:16):
that's sensitive to these issuesand can help them then bring it
to others through teaching andpreaching.
But I don't need to tell themthat our relationship to the
land is broken, that our foodsystem is broken, and a number
of the young people that I know,and some of the most talented
(28:38):
students that I have, areengaged, as you have been in,
directly in farming, in foodproduction, in addressing the
brokenness of the system.
That just wasn't happening.
When I started teaching, youknow, people would have said why
(28:59):
I have a theology degree, whyon earth would I do that?
Well, now the answer is exactlywhy on earth would I do it?
I know the answer because weare on earth.
That's just that to me is sortof the again speaking
metaphorically, that is thefruit of my labor and I don't
(29:23):
mean it's all because of me, butI just mean that it's.
It is rewarding when I see ithappening.
Pastor Chris Nafis (29:29):
Yeah.
So I mean there definitely isan increased awareness of the
ecological crisis, of the, Imean, and some of it is just
because it's undeniable.
I mean just this week we had aterrible hurricane go through
the entire area, including NorthCarolina.
We're not in Durham but inWestern North Carolina and you
know there's.
(29:50):
I guess I have mixed feelingsabout it because in some ways I
do feel like there's a muchgreater awareness in my
generation and below than therehas been in some of the
generations that are a littleolder than us.
But on the other hand, I feellike we're all sort of just on
the edge of despair, thinkingthat this is like an
irreversible thing, and I feellike the, I feel like the
(30:13):
scriptures are written largelyto people in that exact position
, who are like on the edge ofdespair.
You know how can they help usthrough it?
Like, yeah, where do we findhelp in that journey?
Dr. Ellen Davis (30:28):
in the Old Testament, I guess, yeah, yeah,
one of my students in a classthat I'm teaching right now, but
this is an earlier iteration ofit.
Um, I teach a class with mypreaching colleague, jerusha
neil, on preaching biblically inresponse to climate change, and
(30:51):
the class is called Hope forCreation An Exilic Perspective,
and a number of students havesaid exactly what you say, that
they're on the verge of despairor maybe already have crossed
that line, and and so a numberof them have said it's really
(31:15):
important to me that thequestion mark is there, hope for
creation question mark, becausethey don't want someone just
telling them it's going to befine, right, but one of my
students who is a professionalhe works in the area of, in fact
(31:38):
, his organization is calledCreation Justice Ministries, so
this is what he does for aliving and was doing that before
he came to divinity school andhe said, or probably wrote in a
paper, that when he startedtaking the class, he wasn't very
(32:01):
keen on the word hope, becausehe said, when I hear Christians
speaking about hope, I thinkthat means they've got their
heads buried in the sand.
They just don't, they don'twant to see the problem and the
depth of it.
And he said now, after, at theend of the class he said now I
(32:23):
understand my own roledifferently and I see that my
place in the church is to be anagent of realistic hope.
So you know, realistic hope isnot the same as optimism.
It's it's all going to be anagent of realistic hope.
So you know, realistic hope isnot the same as optimism.
It's all going to be fine.
And I don't know, because mywork is all within the context
(32:45):
of, in the broad sense, thechurch.
I do know that there arepractitioners of hope who do not
have faith that God is at work.
But the people I work with dohave faith in the reality of God
.
And hope is a practice.
(33:07):
It's certainly not apersonality characteristic, it's
not having a sunny disposition.
It's a practice and it's a job.
And I think it's a job that thebiblical writers instill in us,
the psalmists, when we startedthis conversation, and that's an
(34:00):
imperative and it's very muchdirectional hope.
By Romans it would read.
By ruling class Romans it wouldread differently than it does.
It's people who are on theunderside of empire and yet
believe, without denying all theevidence to the contrary, often
(34:21):
naming it and lamenting it,sometimes throwing it in God's
face and yet believe that God islistening and that God cares
and that history does not endwith this present, seemingly
(34:41):
irresolvable defeat, often as itfeels like Not knowing what the
history of life with God lookslike on the other side of that,
and different that's envisioneddifferent ways by, in different
parts of the Bible, by differentpeople.
I don't think they would allever come to agree with each
(35:04):
other.
And yet some a conviction thatit is worth telling the story
and naming all of the evidencethat can be marshaled against
hope, because somehow theybelieve that God has not given
(35:26):
up on us and we should not giveup on God.
I mean, I think of somebody Iknow have known a survivor of
the death camps of Auschwitz andhe said I don't know what it
means to believe in God afterwhat I've experienced, but I
know that people, you know thatall the people who stood stand
(35:49):
behind me didn't give up on God.
So who am I to give up on that?
You?
know I just just keep passing iton, and so that's one thing.
Hope looks like.
I think, and I was justpreaching this morning on the
(36:10):
first illuminatedhand-illuminated Bible.
It's called the St john'silluminated bible.
It's the first hand illuminatedbible to be created in
something like 700 years.
It's a remarkable project andthe question I asked is why
would it be created by amonastic community of
(36:32):
benedictines in collegeville,minnesota?
Pastor Chris Nafis (36:35):
what can I?
What is a hand illuminatedbible?
Could you um?
Dr. Ellen Davis (36:38):
I don't know what that is.
It has been written by hand onparchment on okay vellum, animal
skin and painted with 160gorgeous illuminations, done in
gold and pigments.
It's absolutely, absolutelyunbelievable.
(37:00):
And Duke Divinity School hasbeen given there's an original,
but then there is a printedversion of it that is still
illumined with gold by hand.
It's an amazing thing,illumined with gold by hand.
It's an amazing thing.
And so I posed the question,preaching in response to
(37:26):
receiving this gift this morning.
I asked when does beauty becomea matter of urgency?
You know, what does it mean forus to receive these seven, very
, these seven very, verybeautiful and, frankly, very
expensive volumes?
Why was it worth it to acommunity of monks to spend 15
years producing this, and isthis a good use of resources to
(37:46):
give to the school?
And my answer was that beautyis urgent, not when it's trying
to sell us something, but whenbeauty is summoned forth in the
service of hope.
And I often look at the biblicaltext.
(38:07):
Some of the texts that I knowfor sure came out of a situation
of exile, of people in adesperate condition the last
half of the book of Isaiah, manyof the Psalms, job.
One could go on a lot ofJeremiah, ezekiel.
Those are such beautifullywritten books.
(38:30):
I mean, jeremiah is one of thebest poets Isaiah ever to have
worked in the Hebrew language.
And they were in a desperatesituation.
Why was it worth it to write inwhat would have seemed to be a
doomed language when theBabylonian empire was coming in
(38:53):
and imposing their language,their control as far as the eye
could see, both geographicallyand forward into history?
Why was it important to becreating beautiful Hebrew poetry
that only survivors could read?
But that's nothing to mebecause in fact, 26, 2600 years
(39:15):
later, I'm reading it and I'mteaching it to my students, and
nobody is very, very few peopleare reading the texts of the
babylonian empire in thelanguage in which they were
written.
Right, it's somehow.
That's.
This is what Psalm 145 isspeaking about when it says your
(39:38):
sovereignty is sovereignty overall kingdoms, right.
Pastor Chris Nafis (39:44):
Reminds me, I was kind of flipping through
one of your more recent booksthat covers basically the entire
Bible and the chapter you wroteon Ezekiel kind of caught my
eye.
I was just thinking about thisconversation and I think you
said in there that probablyJudaism, christianity, the whole
tree of religions that comesfrom there, would not exist
(40:05):
without the book of Ezekiel.
Does that ring a bell?
Dr. Ellen Davis (40:09):
I'd forgotten.
I said that the first book Iever wrote was on Ezekiel.
I have something to say yeah,thank you, I think I know.
I mean, I don't know what Imeant when I wrote it, but I'll
tell you what it means to mehearing it now.
And so I'm going to go back toa conversation I had with a
nine-year-old child at a churchsome years ago now.
(40:33):
Child at a church some yearsago now.
She was a student in, I think, areally wonderful Sunday school
sort of program called GodlyPlay, and it's just a way of
telling the story of the Bible,not in a sort of souped up way,
just going to what'stheologically significant about
(40:57):
it and leaving children lots andlots of time to hear the story
and then just wonder about whatthat story could mean for them.
And so I was visiting at achurch that used this program
for the children and I hadalways wanted to see it, I'd
(41:20):
heard of it, so I went and satin and then a nine-year-old, at
a certain time when children dotheir work, the work she was
assigned was to host me, theirwork, the work she was assigned
was to host me.
(41:41):
And so I said to her I wonder,picking up sort of the language
of godly play.
I said I wonder what yourfavorite book, what your
favorite story is?
And immediately, withoutpausing for breath, she said
exile.
This is a nine-year-old.
And I said, oh, and I wonderwhat's important to you about
(42:03):
that story went in, or maybe shesaid the people I don't know
what she said they went intoexile and they thought they were
leaving God behind and whenthey got there they discovered
that God was already there aheadof them.
(42:23):
Well, that's the book ofEzekiel.
And I thought, well, if peoplelike you, chris, any of my
students who've been in myintroductory Old Testament class
, if they came out at the endand could sum that up, I would
be satisfied that we'd done ourwork.
And this was a nine-year-oldchild in a Sunday school class
(42:46):
in an Episcopal church not avery promising location to learn
a lot about biblical theologyin my experience.
Learn a lot about biblicaltheology in my experience.
Yes, and that's exactly rightthat Ezekiel is called to be a
prophet out beyond the, on thefar side of nowhere in Babylon.
(43:09):
He's been driven away fromJerusalem and heavens open and
he sees God, and he can hardly.
Ezekiel is almost inarticulatebecause he can't describe what
he's seen.
He's just stumbling over hisown tongue, palpably present in
(43:33):
some way that could barely bearticulated on the beyond the
end of history as anyone hadever known it.
Ezekiel was a priest in thetemple in Jerusalem.
He had seen the city fall, thethrone of David fall, the temple
(43:55):
destroyed, everything thatseemed to guarantee God's
commitment to the communitywashed away.
And he is given a vision of Godon the other side of all of
that, in not the land of promise, but the land of absolute
(44:15):
desolation and desperation.
And I think it's because theBible comes to us out of the
least promising situationimaginable, or multiple
situations, because the NewTestament comes to us after the
crucifixion, after Jerusalem isdestroyed by another empire, the
(44:39):
Romans.
But it's because our scripturecomes to us, you might say, out
of losing situations, that itcan be taken up by people who
feel themselves to be in losingsituations and look and see if
(45:00):
there's hope for us there.
Pastor Chris Nafis (45:03):
So biblical theology really speaks right to
the heart of despair in a lot ofways and calls hope kind of out
of those places, and I canthink of all sorts of ways that
people in the church or thechurch as a whole, or like
humanity, feels like we're in,like on the brink of destruction
.
You know, like I just feel likethat.
That is like the overwhelmingsense we get as we watch the
(45:25):
news, as we just kind of talk topeople, is that there are all
of these like existentialthreats to us and you know you
go to any churchy conference andthey're, you know the church is
dying and there's all theseother kinds of existential
threats and maybe part of thecalling of Scripture is to well,
(45:46):
you know, I think there is acalling to get to work and to do
the hard work of, you know,changing how we live and what we
do in this world that's leadingto some of this destruction,
but also to make beautifulthings.
I don, you know, changing howwe live and what we do in this
world that's leading to some ofthis destruction, but also to
make beautiful things, I don'tknow, is that what I'm kind of
hearing you say?
Dr. Ellen Davis (46:01):
No, absolutely.
In whatever way it is given tous to magnify the Lord by
putting our energies on the sideof beauty rather than
destruction, and that and ofcourse I mean, as you know, not
(46:21):
the most important forms ofbeauty very likely don't have a
material form.
It's saying something kind tosomebody, paying attention to
somebody.
You know those are acts ofbeauty and those are recognizing
, when you recognize value.
That is something other thanmonetary value.
Pastor Chris Nafis (46:42):
Right.
Dr. Ellen Davis (46:45):
When you see a situation, a person that is
fragile and honor that withrecognition is fragile and honor
that with recognition, andthat's that's magnifying the
beauty in the world and, throughthat, magnifying the Lord, who
is the maker of all.
Pastor Chris Nafis (47:05):
Yeah, Love that and yeah, it's connecting
to all kinds of things thatwe've talked about in this
podcast in recent days.
But I don't want to take up allof your time.
I'm really grateful that you'vecome on at all and joined me.
Dr Davis, I know it's been along day for you already.
Is there anything else?
Any closing thoughts that youwant to share before we kind?
Dr. Ellen Davis (47:26):
of.
Yeah, one thing that when youwere just speaking a few minutes
ago about people saying and Iknow they do that the church is
dying, I would say some forms ofchurch need to die.
And I'm not naming what theyare, I don't know what they are
but if the church is going tolive, then it's going to have to
(47:47):
keep emerging into new forms torealize new possibilities.
And I'm pretty deeplytraditional After all, I am an
Episcopalian but nonetheless Itry to be open to what is new.
But I think of someone who'sdoubtless been your teacher, my
(48:10):
now retired colleague, stanleyHowell Ross.
My now retired colleague,stanley Howell, was saying a few
years ago not a very promisingtime as we were beginning to
feel the deep division in thiscountry, and I'm sitting in my
office right now looking at thechair in which he sat when he
said well, at least now we knowwhat the church is for.
(48:35):
And that seemed to me to be avery simple way of expressing a
truth that the church is exactlyfor finding ways to live,
putting our energies on the sideof beauty and kindness and
justice in situations that donot seem to foster those things.
(48:59):
And if we are proclaiming thename or the symbols of Christ,
and doing it out of anger and incontempt for others, then we're
really standing on the wrongside of the cross.
Pastor Chris Nafis (49:19):
Yeah, yeah, I mean like the image of writing
poetry in the midst of, likedestruction and annihilation
really kind of rings forth fromthat what I hear you saying, and
not kind of getting caught upin the anger and the frenzy and
all of the stress and everythingof the division and the pain.
(49:42):
I mean, in some ways, at somepoint we have to kind of
recognize our own limitationsand to recognize that, like I'm
not the one that's going to saveus, right, and, uh, I'm not the
one that's going to makeeverything, make everything
better, but I can be part ofthis little work of beauty and
that, like you said, can looklike something, a literal work
of art, poetry, something likethat, or a shared meal, or an
(50:04):
extra 10 minutes of time thatyou didn't have to give to
somebody who doesn't necessarilydeserve it or doesn't seem like
they deserve it, or whateverthat might be, and, you know,
kind of committing ourselves tothings that we know are going to
fall short of the solution tothe world's ills but that are
(50:25):
going to carry a sort of alegacy of beauty.
It reminds me of, you know,jesus telling us to store up our
treasures in heaven because thethings of this earth are coming
down.
But that's kind of how we'vebeen going through the book of
Matthew in our church, that'skind of how I've been reading.
That is that you know, do theselittle things that will last
for eternity and let go of thethings that you think are
(50:45):
necessary for now and commityourself instead to these little
bits of beauty, these littletreasures that are heavenly and
not passing away.
Well, thank you so much for yourtime, dr Davis.
Uh, as I said, I'm grateful forjust your writing, your time,
your teaching.
Um, I was very fortunate tohave you as a student at Duke
(51:06):
and um you've just been ablessing to so many people over
the years and I'm glad that umget to share a little bit of
your thought and wisdom with afew extra people here.
Thank you so much for the time.
Dr. Ellen Davis (51:17):
Thank you for giving me a little bit of
insight into your ministry, godbless.
Pastor Chris Nafis (51:22):
God bless you, thank you.
Hi and welcome back to the Current.
My name is Pastor Chris Nafis,pastor of Living Water Church,
and today I am excited andhumbled and honored to have Dr
Ellen Davis join us on the show.
She is the Amos Reagan KearnsDistinguished Professor of Bible
and Practical Theology at DukeUniversity Divinity School,
(00:20):
where I was extremely fortunateto have her as a teacher.
Dr Davis has writtena lot ofbooks.
They're all great.
I tell people if they'reworking on something in the Old
Testament and Ellen Davis haswritten on it, they should read
whatever she wrote first.
I mean read the text first, butthen read Dr Davis next.
My favorites of hers have beenGetting Involved with God,
rediscovering the Old Testament,which I've assigned in my Old
(00:42):
Testament class, scripture,culture and Agriculture an
Agrarian Reading of the Bible.
Her commentary on Proverbs,ecclesiastes and Song of Songs
is amazing.
She has a book on Ruth calledwho Are you, my Daughter?
Her most recent book is calledOpening Israel's Scriptures.
Read it all.
Read any of it.
It's great.
In our conversation we talkabout the theology of place.
(01:03):
We talk about ecology, poetry,despair and hope.
I hope that you find itinspiring and hope-filled here.
It is Well, dr Davis, you'vebeen a huge inspiration in my
(01:32):
life.
It's hard to overstate theimpact you've had on the
direction of my life andventures into farming and just
the way that I've understoodmyself and my ministry.
So thank you so much.
It's like an honor to have youhere.
Thank you for joining me onthis.
It's a real pleasure.
Thank you, chris.
I wanted to start with thePsalms and I guess I was just
(01:53):
wondering first, do you have afavorite Psalm?
Do you have one that's yourfavorite?
Dr. Ellen Davis (01:57):
Well, I have a lot of favorites, but I would
say that one that I gravitatetoward is Psalm 145, which is
kind of the.
The Psalter ends with a bigcrescendo of praise in Psalm 145
.
It's an alphabetic Psalm, soeach verse begins with a
(02:20):
different letter of the Hebrewalphabet.
So it's A to Z, aleph to Tav inHebrew and it's I sometimes
(02:42):
call it an alphabet of adoration.
And I think what moves me aboutit is that in Jewish tradition
it is said that if you say Psalm145 three times a day, you earn
a place in the world to come.
World in the world to come, noquestions asked, um, and you
(03:09):
know, of course that's a sort ofsimplistic from one perspective
, but I think the point is thatif you're orienting your life in
such a way that you werepraising god extravagantly three
times a day, there's probablygoing to be a lot that follows
from that organization of yourlife.
And I'm saying that prayer Ithink I've told you my husband
(03:32):
died 18 months ago and so it'spart of the prayer service, the
morning prayer service, and I'vebeen welcomed into the
synagogue in my neighborhood tosay the prayers that mourners
say, which has been really awonderful experience over 18
(03:55):
months.
It's almost entirely.
The whole service is a serviceof praise of God and that Psalm
service of praise of God andthat psalm of course appears
multiple times.
And to think about peoplehaving prayed that psalm when
they're grieving, when they'rein persecution, in the death
(04:16):
camps.
You know in Europe in themiddle of the 20th century that
whatever thing was happening,people were still digging deep
to find 22 different ways togive praise to God.
You know one for each letter ofthe alphabet.
I find that just as a piece ofhistorical theology, in a sense
(04:42):
of the presence of the text incommunity over centuries and
millennia, that that's deeplymoving to me yeah, and I mean
what?
Pastor Chris Nafis (04:51):
what are you talking about is how kind of a
couple a lot of things, ofcourse but, um, how the psalms
and that psalm in particular,but how the psalms shape us,
like how praying them andspeaking them kind of changes us
, and also how it connects us toall these people in all these
places throughout history whohave prayed them before, and how
(05:13):
it's kind of shaped uscollectively.
And you know, I find it reallycool that you're not just like a
Bible scholar, you also are apractical theologian is kind of
how you're described in yourposition and I feel like the
Psalms and the Proverbs whereyou spent a lot of your time at
least, really kind of theyreally kind of exhibit that like
they are meant to shape usright, absolutely.
Dr. Ellen Davis (05:36):
So I'm an Episcopalian my whole life and
there is not a prayer service inAnglican Episcopal tradition.
There's not a single service inwhich at least a part of a psalm
does not appear, and sometimeswhole sections of the service
(05:59):
are structured by just sort ofexchanging lines from the psalms
.
So it becomes a kind of languageand it's the language that
(06:20):
shapes the prayer book withwhich I grew up, that I still
use, the Book of Common Prayer,and so when Psalms Psalms of
lament, psalms of praise, buteither way intensely interacting
with God in a very direct way,the Psalms are the only.
Most of the Bible speaks aboutGod or speaks about human life
(06:51):
in the presence of God, tellsstories, but the Psalms are
direct interaction with God andof course they bespeak the
conviction, the very form ofthem implies, that God, as one
of the Psalms says, hears prayer, that God is listening and
(07:17):
cares about what we have to say.
And sometimes what we have tosay is expressing disappointment
in God or saying where are you?
I'm crying out, are youlistening?
And that kind of permission tobe real in what we have to say
(07:37):
to God or of God in the presenceof God, that I think without
the Psalms we would not be assure as we can be that we have
that permission.
Pastor Chris Nafis (07:49):
Right, yeah, yeah, you know I spent, we
spent a year.
I kind of committed myself topreaching a Psalm every week for
a year in our church.
Dr. Ellen Davis (07:57):
Wow.
Pastor Chris Nafis (07:58):
Such a if anyone's listening and thinking
of preaching out there like Iwas worried it would be tiresome
and get repetitive.
It did not feel that way at all.
In fact, it was one of the mostformative years of my life.
I feel like just digging inevery single week to the Psalms,
and one of the things that Ifound in myself was I don't even
know if teaching would be theright word, Like it wasn't, like
(08:18):
it was teaching me this, but Ifelt like I was kind of
discovering my place in theworld, both in terms of, like
the cosmic order of things,finding humility before God and
also finding some audacity tosay things that I didn't think I
was allowed to say, and alsosome responsibility towards
neighbor and land and gratitudefor, like, the abundance of life
(08:38):
, but also like my place in,like the geography of things you
know, noticing where I am andthe beauty around me, and you
know there's so much geographyin scripture.
I guess my question for you isyou know, how has the Hebrew
Bible maybe the Psalms inparticular, but just more
generally how has it taught youto think about place?
Dr. Ellen Davis (09:00):
Well, maybe the first thing I should say is
that I didn't learn Hebrew and Ididn't study, I didn't really
study Bible until I was astudent, my junior year in
college, living in Jerusalem,jerusalem, and so there's never
(09:31):
been a time in my, there's neverbeen a time when I really was
beginning to engage the Bibledeeply that I did not know the
land in which it was written, towhich it refers as you say
continually to which it refersand the language in which it was
written.
So, for me, the Biblealtogether, but the Psalms,
(09:55):
which many of them are orientedaround the temple or life in
that land in various ways, therewas never a time when I was
really paying attention to them,that I didn't have a pretty
lively imagination of the placein which they're based.
So I just think that'simportant to say, and maybe one
(10:20):
reason that I am susceptible tothe power of the Psalms is that
place has always been importantto me in my personal life.
I grew up in an extremelybeautiful place.
I grew up on an island in theSan Francisco Bay, san Francisco
(10:48):
Bay and so, and every afternoonafter school, my best friend
and I would just walk around theisland talking about the books
that we were reading.
So so I was outside very muchof the time, just being
conscious of.
I mean, maybe one of the bestthings I can say about myself as
a child is that I lived in abeautiful place and I knew it.
(11:09):
So I don't live there now, Icouldn't afford to live there
now, but you know, but at leastwhen I did live there I received
the grace of it and it made mefeel that I and I suppose, as I
(11:29):
got older, we as human beingscannot be fully who we are
without being sensitive to theplaces that we are, the places
that we are.
And and in terms of aparticular place, of course, the
(11:51):
psalmist speak most often ofJerusalem, which they see as a
place of consummate beauty andand a place that God has chosen
to in some way be present tohuman beings.
But Wendell Berry, farmer,writer, poet and certainly one
(12:15):
of the people who has sensitizedthis generation to the
importance of place and thefragility of place, he has a
wonderful statement.
I think it's in one of hisessays, I don't think it's in a
poem, but he says there are nounsacred places, there are
(12:36):
sacred places and there aredesecrated places.
And I think what I, and thatrings true for me, and I think
the first place I ever reallythought of as sacred is
Jerusalem, and for me it'spalpable.
It's a war-torn place, as weknow very well, but that doesn't
(13:03):
mean it isn't a sacred place.
It's never been a reallypeaceful place.
That's why the Psalms say prayfor the peace of Jerusalem,
because it's not a peacefulplace, but I think, really
feeling that in some way thatplace needed to be recognized as
(13:27):
holy, that disposed me to acertain way of looking at other
places and recognizing that ourbeloved places and probably
every place has been beloved tosomebody and probably every
place has been beloved tosomebody that are beloved places
(13:48):
are endangered and oftentreated very, very badly,
desecrated.
Pastor Chris Nafis (13:56):
Yeah, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you.
Yeah, through war and through,like the ecological crisis,
which you've written a lot aboutand spoken a lot about, and I
wonder you know you talk aboutgrowing up in a place where you
were very aware of the beauty ofthe place where you were and
you seem like you were verypresent in that place.
(14:17):
Like, physically walking aroundmore common for people to
almost intentionally stay, notrooted in a place, to have the
ability to transplant, to movearound, to not feel like they're
tied to any place, so that theycan go for a job over here or
so they can go and spend sixmonths over here.
(14:39):
And I wonder how that might bedisruptive of our theology and
our spirituality.
Um, like, do you think thatshapes our imagination?
This isn't necessarily a biblequestion, I guess, but do you
think that shapes ourimagination in a way that's
unhelpful or that's particular?
Dr. Ellen Davis (14:56):
I'm just making a note so that I don't forget.
I think, first of all, I shouldnot be taken as a model of the
spiritual virtue of stabilitasfor the Benedictine tradition.
Stabilitas, the three vows theytake poverty, chastity, not
(15:19):
obedience, but stability,stabilitas, staying, having and
it comes from the Latin to stand, having a place to stand.
And I have moved around a greatdeal in my teaching life.
I've been at Duke for 24 years,so I think I've finally
(15:40):
attained the grace of stability,but I moved a lot before that.
But I moved a lot before that,and I moved a lot for my studies
as well as my teaching.
So I just need to be honestabout that.
And those moves, none of themwas coerced, they were all moves
that I made voluntarily, movesthat I made voluntarily, and I
(16:11):
think each of them opened up anew sort of form of blessing in
my life, new experiences, that ablessing that wouldn't have
happened if I hadn't enteredinto that place.
So, having said that, yes, Ithink that place is important.
As I say, we need to have aplace to stand at, you know, if
(16:31):
not literally, nonetheless insome real sense in our formation
.
So I'll say two things.
I think that, for me, study ofthe Bible has provided a great
deal of the stability in my life.
I could say that the traditionof study has often been my place
(16:57):
to stand and it's real for me,and it's populated by people I
can name, some of whom diedcenturies before I was born.
But I'm deeply grateful forwhat they did that made it
possible for me to do what I do,and some of them, of course,
(17:21):
have been my teachers or thepeople with whom I've studied,
or my own students.
So it's a strong sense ofcommunity shaped in relation to
this text and tradition,traditions in the plural of
(17:42):
interpretation in which we allstand.
So that's metaphorical, butit's not abstract.
Pastor Chris Nafis (17:52):
Yeah.
Dr. Ellen Davis (17:53):
And it's not less real for being metaphorical
.
But I would also say that ifone is going to move around a
lot, as I have said, then it'simportant to pay attention to
where you are and value it andremember it when you leave it
(18:18):
and, as much as possible,maintain connections with it,
and for me that's throughpersonal relationships.
I'm the only member of myrather large extended family who
(18:39):
has made my life away from theWest Coast, and I've lived away
from my family of origin for 50years.
I still miss them, they miss me, my family of origin for 50
years.
I still miss them, they miss me, but I cannot be with them for
many of the important changesthat happen in our common life.
But I have made it.
(19:02):
I rarely take a vacation.
It's been years since I'vetaken a vacation that did not
take me to be with a member ofmy family, and it's not a
discipline.
I mean, I'm lucky.
My family lives in nice placesand they're wonderful people,
but it's a way of stayingconnected with the place that
formed me and the people of thatplace.
(19:25):
And, as one of my cousins saidto me, there's a death.
We're anticipating a death inour family.
A very kind of life I live,which is different from my other
family members.
Yeah, yeah.
Pastor Chris Nafis (20:05):
And I mean it's interesting to think about
place in relation to community,in relation to scripture.
I mean, if you read the storyof the Old Testament, I mean the
Jews are often not in the placethat they want to be right.
I mean Abraham is called out ofhis homeland to a new place.
We've got the you know thewilderness stuff.
(20:25):
We've got a huge chunk of theOld Testament is around the
exile and the Jews being removedfrom their place and it does
seem like the stories ofscripture, the tradition, the
prophetic word, the poetry, iswhat kind of binds them together
, even when they're scatteredand even when they're not in
their homeland.
(20:45):
And so it's that memory of theplace, right yeah.
Dr. Ellen Davis (20:47):
Absolutely memory of the place, right, yeah
, absolutely.
And of course, this is somethingthat Jewish communities are
even more aware of than we.
In fact, I don't think Christiancommunities on the whole are
very sensitive to matters ofexile and being bound to a
particular place, but atPassover but at Passover,
(21:08):
virtually every Jew says thisyear here, next year in
Jerusalem.
Well, it's a way of expressingthat sense of belonging to a
place that we are not, andChristians have understood that,
as this is no lasting city, youknow, there is another place to
(21:35):
which we belong, and I thinkthat's very important to me, and
I have a sense of a place towhich I am going, and that sense
strengthens as the peopleclosest to me age and die,
(21:57):
assist me, age and die, and Ithink it's really critical not
to devalue the place where weare.
This is how we live, here isour formation, for whatever life
will look like on the otherside of death and of course, I
have no idea, but I have noticedthat, through the centuries,
people have tended to imaginelife on the other side of death
(22:19):
as being characterized by thethings we value most on this
side of death.
So, then, we should be valuingthe places that we are.
Pastor Chris Nafis (22:31):
Yeah, even now, right, and I mean, I think
a lot of what has beeninspirational from your work has
been your focus on the land,right and care for the things
that are around us, for ourplaces, and that doesn't
necessarily need to be Jerusalem.
I mean, it is Jerusalem, butit's not only that, it's it's
(22:52):
where do we find ourselves andhow do we care for the land that
we are?
Um, that's been put in ourcharge and so I guess you know
maybe a bit of a transition.
But like, how has, how has yourstudy of scripture led you to
focus on ecology?
It's like the guy, but othersmay not, it's so.
Dr. Ellen Davis (23:13):
This goes back now 35 years, something like
that.
I made a trip to California andwent to an area that I had
remembered as a child, a veryrural area when I was a child in
Sonoma County, north of the BayArea, where I grew up, and I
(23:38):
noticed highways running throughacross areas that I remembered
farmhouses, and now they had ahighway running in front of them
and it was quite shaking to mefront of them, and it was quite
shaking to me, and so I wasteaching in a very urban area,
(24:03):
new Haven, connecticut at thetime, and I came back and I
decided that I was going toteach a class on a biblical
theology of land, as I called it.
I didn't even know what thatmeant, but I thought, somehow I
intuited that that was the onlyway I would be able to reckon
with what I was seeing and theway that it hurt me.
(24:26):
In a sense, even though theseplaces had never been my home
home, I could just see how muchthey had changed in, you know,
between my childhood and myyoung middle age, and I thought
this is not a sustainabletrajectory, um, with highways
running across you know, wherepeople had been grazing animals,
(24:50):
growing crops, and so I startedteaching this class, I was
again.
I was in a very urban area,very urban university, I think.
I wound up having everybody atYale Divinity School who'd ever
been on a farm in that class.
They just kind of came to seewhat was going on.
(25:14):
And when I started teaching theclass, I thought I was going to
have to be very careful to pickscripture texts that dealt with
land, with food, with care ofthese things.
And, of course, you know, I,within a couple of weeks, I
(25:36):
began to realize that everywhereI turned in the Bible, it was
there, because almost allIsraelites were farmers and even
those who lived in the citygrazed their sheep outside the
walls, you know.
So, um, so everybody wassensitive to where the food and
water came from and sensitive tothe fact that the land of
(26:00):
israel, um, is an ecologicallyfragile zone on the planet.
Well, now, in a sense, thewhole planet is an ecologically
fragile zone.
So it was one of those sort ofself-confirming experiences of
beginning to read the Biblethrough this lens and then
(26:24):
seeing that what in fact I wasdoing was not bringing a new
perspective to the Bible, butgetting just slightly closer to
the mindset of the biblicalwriters themselves, but one that
I had been really completelyinsensitive to, even though I
(26:47):
did as I said.
I've known the land of the Biblesince I was a teenager and but,
as I sometimes say to mystudents, you need to bear in
mind that no developed culturehas ever lived at such a
distance from the mindset, thesensibilities of the biblical
(27:11):
writers as we do.
And that's not just time,that's industrialization to
reduce it to a single wordurbanization, industrialization
on the scale that we know it.
So if we're going to understandthe way the biblical writers
(27:32):
understand a healthy formationof human life, we need to begin
poking some holes in ourironclad, industrialized mindset
in order to let something elsebegin to seep in.
And something that has beenenormously encouraging for me in
(27:54):
the last, I'll say, going on 20years is that I don't have to
make this case now to mystudents because they already
know it, and so now they don'tknow the Bible many of them as
well as I do and so they wanthelp reading the text in a way
(28:16):
that's sensitive to these issuesand can help them then bring it
to others through teaching andpreaching.
But I don't need to tell themthat our relationship to the
land is broken, that our foodsystem is broken, and a number
of the young people that I know,and some of the most talented
(28:38):
students that I have, areengaged, as you have been in,
directly in farming, in foodproduction, in addressing the
brokenness of the system.
That just wasn't happening.
When I started teaching, youknow, people would have said why
(28:59):
I have a theology degree, whyon earth would I do that?
Well, now the answer is exactlywhy on earth would I do it?
I know the answer because weare on earth.
That's just that to me is sortof the again speaking
metaphorically, that is thefruit of my labor and I don't
(29:23):
mean it's all because of me, butI just mean that it's.
It is rewarding when I see ithappening.
Pastor Chris Nafis (29:29):
Yeah.
So I mean there definitely isan increased awareness of the
ecological crisis, of the, Imean, and some of it is just
because it's undeniable.
I mean just this week we had aterrible hurricane go through
the entire area, including NorthCarolina.
We're not in Durham but inWestern North Carolina and you
know there's.
(29:50):
I guess I have mixed feelingsabout it because in some ways I
do feel like there's a muchgreater awareness in my
generation and below than therehas been in some of the
generations that are a littleolder than us.
But on the other hand, I feellike we're all sort of just on
the edge of despair, thinkingthat this is like an
irreversible thing, and I feellike the, I feel like the
(30:13):
scriptures are written largelyto people in that exact position
, who are like on the edge ofdespair.
You know how can they help usthrough it?
Like, yeah, where do we findhelp in that journey?
Dr. Ellen Davis (30:28):
in the Old Testament, I guess, yeah, yeah,
one of my students in a classthat I'm teaching right now, but
this is an earlier iteration ofit.
Um, I teach a class with mypreaching colleague, jerusha
neil, on preaching biblically inresponse to climate change, and
(30:51):
the class is called Hope forCreation An Exilic Perspective,
and a number of students havesaid exactly what you say, that
they're on the verge of despairor maybe already have crossed
that line, and and so a numberof them have said it's really
(31:15):
important to me that thequestion mark is there, hope for
creation question mark, becausethey don't want someone just
telling them it's going to befine, right, but one of my
students who is a professionalhe works in the area of, in fact
(31:38):
, his organization is calledCreation Justice Ministries, so
this is what he does for aliving and was doing that before
he came to divinity school andhe said, or probably wrote in a
paper, that when he startedtaking the class, he wasn't very
(32:01):
keen on the word hope, becausehe said, when I hear Christians
speaking about hope, I thinkthat means they've got their
heads buried in the sand.
They just don't, they don'twant to see the problem and the
depth of it.
And he said now, after, at theend of the class he said now I
(32:23):
understand my own roledifferently and I see that my
place in the church is to be anagent of realistic hope.
So you know, realistic hope isnot the same as optimism.
It's it's all going to be anagent of realistic hope.
So you know, realistic hope isnot the same as optimism.
It's all going to be fine.
And I don't know, because mywork is all within the context
(32:45):
of, in the broad sense, thechurch.
I do know that there arepractitioners of hope who do not
have faith that God is at work.
But the people I work with dohave faith in the reality of God
.
And hope is a practice.
(33:07):
It's certainly not apersonality characteristic, it's
not having a sunny disposition.
It's a practice and it's a job.
And I think it's a job that thebiblical writers instill in us,
the psalmists, when we startedthis conversation, and that's an
(34:00):
imperative and it's very muchdirectional hope.
By Romans it would read.
By ruling class Romans it wouldread differently than it does.
It's people who are on theunderside of empire and yet
believe, without denying all theevidence to the contrary, often
(34:21):
naming it and lamenting it,sometimes throwing it in God's
face and yet believe that God islistening and that God cares
and that history does not endwith this present, seemingly
(34:41):
irresolvable defeat, often as itfeels like Not knowing what the
history of life with God lookslike on the other side of that,
and different that's envisioneddifferent ways by, in different
parts of the Bible, by differentpeople.
I don't think they would allever come to agree with each
(35:04):
other.
And yet some a conviction thatit is worth telling the story
and naming all of the evidencethat can be marshaled against
hope, because somehow theybelieve that God has not given
(35:26):
up on us and we should not giveup on God.
I mean, I think of somebody Iknow have known a survivor of
the death camps of Auschwitz andhe said I don't know what it
means to believe in God afterwhat I've experienced, but I
know that people, you know thatall the people who stood stand
(35:49):
behind me didn't give up on God.
So who am I to give up on that?
You?
know I just just keep passing iton, and so that's one thing.
Hope looks like.
I think, and I was justpreaching this morning on the
(36:10):
first illuminatedhand-illuminated Bible.
It's called the St john'silluminated bible.
It's the first hand illuminatedbible to be created in
something like 700 years.
It's a remarkable project andthe question I asked is why
would it be created by amonastic community of
(36:32):
benedictines in collegeville,minnesota?
Pastor Chris Nafis (36:35):
what can I?
What is a hand illuminatedbible?
Could you um?
Dr. Ellen Davis (36:38):
I don't know what that is.
It has been written by hand onparchment on okay vellum, animal
skin and painted with 160gorgeous illuminations, done in
gold and pigments.
It's absolutely, absolutelyunbelievable.
(37:00):
And Duke Divinity School hasbeen given there's an original,
but then there is a printedversion of it that is still
illumined with gold by hand.
It's an amazing thing,illumined with gold by hand.
It's an amazing thing.
And so I posed the question,preaching in response to
(37:26):
receiving this gift this morning.
I asked when does beauty becomea matter of urgency?
You know, what does it mean forus to receive these seven, very
, these seven very, verybeautiful and, frankly, very
expensive volumes?
Why was it worth it to acommunity of monks to spend 15
years producing this, and isthis a good use of resources to
(37:46):
give to the school?
And my answer was that beautyis urgent, not when it's trying
to sell us something, but whenbeauty is summoned forth in the
service of hope.
And I often look at the biblicaltext.
(38:07):
Some of the texts that I knowfor sure came out of a situation
of exile, of people in adesperate condition the last
half of the book of Isaiah, manyof the Psalms, job.
One could go on a lot ofJeremiah, ezekiel.
Those are such beautifullywritten books.
(38:30):
I mean, jeremiah is one of thebest poets Isaiah ever to have
worked in the Hebrew language.
And they were in a desperatesituation.
Why was it worth it to write inwhat would have seemed to be a
doomed language when theBabylonian empire was coming in
(38:53):
and imposing their language,their control as far as the eye
could see, both geographicallyand forward into history?
Why was it important to becreating beautiful Hebrew poetry
that only survivors could read?
But that's nothing to mebecause in fact, 26, 2600 years
(39:15):
later, I'm reading it and I'mteaching it to my students, and
nobody is very, very few peopleare reading the texts of the
babylonian empire in thelanguage in which they were
written.
Right, it's somehow.
That's.
This is what Psalm 145 isspeaking about when it says your
(39:38):
sovereignty is sovereignty overall kingdoms, right.
Pastor Chris Nafis (39:44):
Reminds me, I was kind of flipping through
one of your more recent booksthat covers basically the entire
Bible and the chapter you wroteon Ezekiel kind of caught my
eye.
I was just thinking about thisconversation and I think you
said in there that probablyJudaism, christianity, the whole
tree of religions that comesfrom there, would not exist
(40:05):
without the book of Ezekiel.
Does that ring a bell?
Dr. Ellen Davis (40:09):
I'd forgotten.
I said that the first book Iever wrote was on Ezekiel.
I have something to say yeah,thank you, I think I know.
I mean, I don't know what Imeant when I wrote it, but I'll
tell you what it means to mehearing it now.
And so I'm going to go back toa conversation I had with a
nine-year-old child at a churchsome years ago now.
(40:33):
Child at a church some yearsago now.
She was a student in, I think, areally wonderful Sunday school
sort of program called GodlyPlay, and it's just a way of
telling the story of the Bible,not in a sort of souped up way,
just going to what'stheologically significant about
(40:57):
it and leaving children lots andlots of time to hear the story
and then just wonder about whatthat story could mean for them.
And so I was visiting at achurch that used this program
for the children and I hadalways wanted to see it, I'd
(41:20):
heard of it, so I went and satin and then a nine-year-old, at
a certain time when children dotheir work, the work she was
assigned was to host me, theirwork, the work she was assigned
was to host me.
(41:41):
And so I said to her I wonder,picking up sort of the language
of godly play.
I said I wonder what yourfavorite book, what your
favorite story is?
And immediately, withoutpausing for breath, she said
exile.
This is a nine-year-old.
And I said, oh, and I wonderwhat's important to you about
(42:03):
that story went in, or maybe shesaid the people I don't know
what she said they went intoexile and they thought they were
leaving God behind and whenthey got there they discovered
that God was already there aheadof them.
(42:23):
Well, that's the book ofEzekiel.
And I thought, well, if peoplelike you, chris, any of my
students who've been in myintroductory Old Testament class
, if they came out at the endand could sum that up, I would
be satisfied that we'd done ourwork.
And this was a nine-year-oldchild in a Sunday school class
(42:46):
in an Episcopal church not avery promising location to learn
a lot about biblical theologyin my experience.
Learn a lot about biblicaltheology in my experience.
Yes, and that's exactly rightthat Ezekiel is called to be a
prophet out beyond the, on thefar side of nowhere in Babylon.
(43:09):
He's been driven away fromJerusalem and heavens open and
he sees God, and he can hardly.
Ezekiel is almost inarticulatebecause he can't describe what
he's seen.
He's just stumbling over hisown tongue, palpably present in
(43:33):
some way that could barely bearticulated on the beyond the
end of history as anyone hadever known it.
Ezekiel was a priest in thetemple in Jerusalem.
He had seen the city fall, thethrone of David fall, the temple
(43:55):
destroyed, everything thatseemed to guarantee God's
commitment to the communitywashed away.
And he is given a vision of Godon the other side of all of
that, in not the land of promise, but the land of absolute
(44:15):
desolation and desperation.
And I think it's because theBible comes to us out of the
least promising situationimaginable, or multiple
situations, because the NewTestament comes to us after the
crucifixion, after Jerusalem isdestroyed by another empire, the
(44:39):
Romans.
But it's because our scripturecomes to us, you might say, out
of losing situations, that itcan be taken up by people who
feel themselves to be in losingsituations and look and see if
(45:00):
there's hope for us there.
Pastor Chris Nafis (45:03):
So biblical theology really speaks right to
the heart of despair in a lot ofways and calls hope kind of out
of those places, and I canthink of all sorts of ways that
people in the church or thechurch as a whole, or like
humanity, feels like we're in,like on the brink of destruction
.
You know, like I just feel likethat.
That is like the overwhelmingsense we get as we watch the
(45:25):
news, as we just kind of talk topeople, is that there are all
of these like existentialthreats to us and you know you
go to any churchy conference andthey're, you know the church is
dying and there's all theseother kinds of existential
threats and maybe part of thecalling of Scripture is to well,
(45:46):
you know, I think there is acalling to get to work and to do
the hard work of, you know,changing how we live and what we
do in this world that's leadingto some of this destruction,
but also to make beautifulthings.
I don, you know, changing howwe live and what we do in this
world that's leading to some ofthis destruction, but also to
make beautiful things, I don'tknow, is that what I'm kind of
hearing you say?
Dr. Ellen Davis (46:01):
No, absolutely.
In whatever way it is given tous to magnify the Lord by
putting our energies on the sideof beauty rather than
destruction, and that and ofcourse I mean, as you know, not
(46:21):
the most important forms ofbeauty very likely don't have a
material form.
It's saying something kind tosomebody, paying attention to
somebody.
You know those are acts ofbeauty and those are recognizing
, when you recognize value.
That is something other thanmonetary value.
Pastor Chris Nafis (46:42):
Right.
Dr. Ellen Davis (46:45):
When you see a situation, a person that is
fragile and honor that withrecognition is fragile and honor
that with recognition, andthat's that's magnifying the
beauty in the world and, throughthat, magnifying the Lord, who
is the maker of all.
Pastor Chris Nafis (47:05):
Yeah, Love that and yeah, it's connecting
to all kinds of things thatwe've talked about in this
podcast in recent days.
But I don't want to take up allof your time.
I'm really grateful that you'vecome on at all and joined me.
Dr Davis, I know it's been along day for you already.
Is there anything else?
Any closing thoughts that youwant to share before we kind?
Dr. Ellen Davis (47:26):
of.
Yeah, one thing that when youwere just speaking a few minutes
ago about people saying and Iknow they do that the church is
dying, I would say some forms ofchurch need to die.
And I'm not naming what theyare, I don't know what they are
but if the church is going tolive, then it's going to have to
(47:47):
keep emerging into new forms torealize new possibilities.
And I'm pretty deeplytraditional After all, I am an
Episcopalian but nonetheless Itry to be open to what is new.
But I think of someone who'sdoubtless been your teacher, my
(48:10):
now retired colleague, stanleyHowell Ross.
My now retired colleague,stanley Howell, was saying a few
years ago not a very promisingtime as we were beginning to
feel the deep division in thiscountry, and I'm sitting in my
office right now looking at thechair in which he sat when he
said well, at least now we knowwhat the church is for.
(48:35):
And that seemed to me to be avery simple way of expressing a
truth that the church is exactlyfor finding ways to live,
putting our energies on the sideof beauty and kindness and
justice in situations that donot seem to foster those things.
(48:59):
And if we are proclaiming thename or the symbols of Christ,
and doing it out of anger and incontempt for others, then we're
really standing on the wrongside of the cross.
Pastor Chris Nafis (49:19):
Yeah, yeah, I mean like the image of writing
poetry in the midst of, likedestruction and annihilation
really kind of rings forth fromthat what I hear you saying, and
not kind of getting caught upin the anger and the frenzy and
all of the stress and everythingof the division and the pain.
(49:42):
I mean, in some ways, at somepoint we have to kind of
recognize our own limitationsand to recognize that, like I'm
not the one that's going to saveus, right, and, uh, I'm not the
one that's going to makeeverything, make everything
better, but I can be part ofthis little work of beauty and
that, like you said, can looklike something, a literal work
of art, poetry, something likethat, or a shared meal, or an
(50:04):
extra 10 minutes of time thatyou didn't have to give to
somebody who doesn't necessarilydeserve it or doesn't seem like
they deserve it, or whateverthat might be, and, you know,
kind of committing ourselves tothings that we know are going to
fall short of the solution tothe world's ills but that are
(50:25):
going to carry a sort of alegacy of beauty.
It reminds me of, you know,jesus telling us to store up our
treasures in heaven because thethings of this earth are coming
down.
But that's kind of how we'vebeen going through the book of
Matthew in our church, that'skind of how I've been reading.
That is that you know, do theselittle things that will last
for eternity and let go of thethings that you think are
(50:45):
necessary for now and commityourself instead to these little
bits of beauty, these littletreasures that are heavenly and
not passing away.
Well, thank you so much for yourtime, dr Davis.
Uh, as I said, I'm grateful forjust your writing, your time,
your teaching.
Um, I was very fortunate tohave you as a student at Duke
(51:06):
and um you've just been ablessing to so many people over
the years and I'm glad that umget to share a little bit of
your thought and wisdom with afew extra people here.
Thank you so much for the time.
Dr. Ellen Davis (51:17):
Thank you for giving me a little bit of
insight into your ministry, godbless.
Pastor Chris Nafis (51:22):
God bless you, thank you.
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