Much of scripture confirms what earlier scripture has said. We need that. Other scriptures introduce new ideas. We need that, too. The problem is that the new eventually becomes familiar, gets paraphrased, then gets confused with similar-sounding ideas. Soon a paragraph from the bible and an assertion from a latter-day catechism seem to have equal authority and equal utility. The revelatory, revolutionary character of scripture gets lost. It ceases to rouse our curiosity.
 

Holy Curiosity, Holy Writ

But we should be honestly curious about why novel ideas appeared in the Bible in the first place. If some novelty emerges in the Bible, it's first because a community faced new circumstances and had to innovate, and second because that innovation actually helped the people stay faithful, hopeful and charitable. It stood the test of time, and that's why it got recorded. Failed experiments were forgotten, and their stubborn adherents split off into unremembered sects.

When we grasp how early communities innovated to address their challenges, and recorded those efforts in scripture, we in modern communities can address our challenges in faithful ways. We'll discern analogous ways to innovate and cope.

And this is truly conservative! We're conserving the very things that distinguished our ancestors in the faith. We're conserving things even more fundamental than today's self-styled conservatives and fundamentalists want to conserve. Heck, I'm more conservative than Cardinal Burke, because the things I want to conserve in the life of the church are older than the things he conserves.

The Israelites innovated by separating themselves from their Egyptian slave drivers, and invented a justice-based monotheism that distinguished them from less humane, polytheistic tribes they met on their way to the promised land. Early Christians tried to bring the Judaism of their day back to its roots; but they met limited success and, astonishingly, found Gentiles knocking at their doors. They welcomed the Gentiles and, as Acts tells us today (read all of chapter 15, not just the lectionary's 10 verses), they innovated in order to make that work.

Revelation was innovative, a whole, book-length series of spiritual visions, seemingly less moored to the history surrounding it. But that appearance itself is part of the innovation!

John's gospel was innovative, much less a history than the synoptics, much more a series of profound speeches on the lips of Jesus, speeches both to his disciples and to his enemies. John innovated because his community had very different problems from those that had beset Mark, Matthew & Luke.

The Paraclete/Advocate in Sunday's gospel was an innovation, too, compared to the brief and impersonal appearances of the Holy Spirit in the synoptics. Scholar John Pilch (click here) wrote that this was the way John's community coped with the deaths of their living links to the historical Jesus, the Apostles and the Beloved Disciple. Pilch also reminded us that this comes as an innovation in a culture rife with secrecy and deception, where people hoarded the advantages that insider knowledge conferred. In that milieu, a Spirit sent by the Father, who "will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you," would be most welcome, and would indeed confer peace.

So do not fear to innovate, but do test your innovations against those passed on to us in Scripture.

There is a decidedly Unholy Writ these days that probably commands more attention than the Bible. It's called Facebook. But even there one sometimes finds a suggestion that could prove useful for a struggling community. Here's a potential gem that the Metaverse dropped in my path this week. (The author may have used a pseudonym; "Scripsi" is the Latin word for "I have written.") If your community is trying to climb out of the left column into the right one, I hope that what I have written, this week and in weeks past, proves helpful.