Faithfulness springs forth from the earth, and righteousness looks down from heaven. – Psalm 85:11

Today’s Scripture Reading (May 21, 2016): Psalm 85

In 1994, McDonald’s Restaurants were sued because their coffee was too hot. Stella Liebeck spilled some of the coffee on her lap and was badly burned by the liquid. Liebeck was hospitalized for eight days and had to go through skin grafting procedures in order to repair the damage. Essentially, the lawsuit was intended to cover her medical costs. But the bigger reality of Stella Liebeck v. McDonalds Restaurants is the furor that was caused by the lawsuit. The lawsuit has been seen as both legitimate and as a frivolous waste of time, depending on who it is that is analyzing the case. In this instance, McDonald’s lost the case and Stella Liebeck was awarded a settlement by the jury for the sum of $2.86 million. The trial judged reduced the settlement to $640,000 and then the two parties settled out of court for an undisclosed amount prior to the pending appeal of the court’s decision.

Maybe not surprisingly, the court case did not result in McDonalds lowering the temperature of their coffee. Instead, the only visible result of Stella Liebeck v. McDonalds Restaurants is that McDonalds along with many other food and drink suppliers simply began placing very obvious labels on their products warning the consumer to be careful because the “contents might be hot.” It is hard to miss the meaning. A plain reading of the labels tells you all you need to know. Contents might be hot, and hot food and drinks have the ability to burn badly if they are not handled properly.  

A “plain reading of the text” works well when we are talking about coffee labels, but I have never been a big believer in a “plain reading of the text” when it comes to the Bible. I know that it is easier to simply believe what we read, but the truth is that the words that we read in Scripture were written in a different language, to a different culture and existed in a different time period than the one that I live in now. And because of all that I can sometimes read the words and totally miss the meaning. To accept the easy answer just seems to be inadequate when we are talking about the Bible. Yet time after time I hear Christians asking for just a “plain reading of the text.” We just want to find the easy way to understand the Bible. This is the real logic behind “King James Only Churches,” just let me pretend that I am the original audience to whom the words were written.

To be honest, while I may not agree with everything he has said, I am challenged by biblical scholar Walter Wink’s approach to scripture. Wink wrote these words - “I for one do not abandon scripture, but neither do I acquiesce. I wrestle with it. I challenge it. I am broken and wounded by it, and then in defeat, I sometimes encounter the living God.” And I think that is exactly the outcome that the Psalmist is trying to describe. It is not that we are always supposed to be chasing after the easy answers. But when we are faithful, when we wrestle with words of the Bible and the truth of scripture, we really do encounter God. And it is in that moment that we also encounter the true righteousness of God that looks down from heaven on us and on the actions that we are taking.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Psalm 87 & 88