In Words of Delight: A Literary Introduction to the Bible, Leland Ryken talks a lot about the poetry in the bible. If you think the torturous lessons about imagery and symbolism of your high school English classes can be forgotten and dismissed now that (thank Jesus forever!) you are done with them, then…. well …. you have not properly read your bible. You have most unfortunately not understood that God Himself, the Almighty Author of all the literary forms that comprise scripture, is ….. wait for it now ….. a poet.
I wouldn’t recommend Ryken’s book to anyone other than literature nerds like myself, but I do, most highly, recommend the Bible for good reading. To read the bible ‘good’, you gotta understand ….. poetry.
Sorry, not sorry about that.
Johnny Beam, in his sermon this last Sunday, referenced many of the symbols, a key element of most poetry, of doors referenced in scripture. Yay, Johnny! But looking at just a few of Johnny’s examples:
- In John 10 Jesus refers to Himself as a door. He says he IS THE door. Ryken says when we encounter a symbol in scripture we are to “transfer the value or excellence of an object” to the thing (in this case, to the Person) it’s being compared to (Ryken 277). Obviously Jesus is a person and is God, and is not a hunk of wood on an hinge, like some useless idol, but the value of the wood on the hinge is that it protects us from what’s out there, and keeps us safe in here. Jesus does that for us: we are safe, protected from the ‘wolves’ (another symbol, whose value we are meant to view with suspicion and wariness) and safe inside His care.
- Lewis Carroll, in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, has the Door and Alice discussing the opportunity of entering through it to the Garden. The Door says, “Why it’s simply impassible,” and then later ” … [but] nothing’s impossible!” Acts 14 and 2 Corinthians 16 tells of Paul’s ‘open doors’ to preach the gospel to people who’ve never heard it.
A door is an opportunity! Johnny made sure we understood that we ourselves are the recipients of the value and excellence of that ‘door of opportunity’, which would have been impossible without Jesus being our Door to Salvation. There was no way for us to access the Father, but Jesus made the impassible, possible.
Humourously, Carroll, also shows in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, how the door, a symbol of great opportunity, is also just a hunk of wood with no volition or ability of its own:
“There’s a door,” he whispered.
“Where does it go?”
“It stays where it is, I think.”
Hahaha! Cracks me up. Poor door has no value in and of itself. Its value comes from the thing it’s being compared to: the opportunity to enter into a garden – the symbol of Eden, of paradise, of the place our spirits long to call home again. Though Carroll wasn’t necessarily thinking along those lines, but biblically, we are.
- John the Revelator, in Revelation 3, reveals Jesus standing at a door and knocking. What opportunity knocks here?? We can take the value and excellence of this door to mean all kinds of things. He’s addressing a church in Laodicea but we typically understand that He’s banging away on the doors we’ve kept closed in our lives. Jesus Himself tells John that He wants in.
Rabindranath Tagore, a Hindu poet, wrote in Gitanjali 47 (A gitanjali is like a Hindu version of a psalm, sort of, which is a form of poetry), “The night is nearly spent waiting for him in vain. I fear lest in the morning he suddenly come to my door when I have fallen asleep wearied out. Oh friends, leave the way open to him—forbid him not.” He says his sleep “…waits for his touch [to make it] vanish [to wake him up to the reality of spiritual truths, perhaps]. Ah, my closed eyes that would open their lids to the light of his smile when he stands before me like a dream emerging from darkness of sleep.”
He wasn’t writing about Jesus, but about his own god. I imagine the symbol of a door, of Jesus being The Door, is an idea that is embedded into the core of people everywhere, like a Jungian archetype – it’s part of being human, and being made in the image of God. We long for a door in our soul to open, and to find Him there, smiling, and wanting our company, inviting us to know Him as a good friend, over a cuppa and good conversation.
And He longs for this too, else why all the imagery about doors in scripture?
In Gitanjali 49 Tagore writes about longing for the same personal relationship:
“You came down from your throne and stood at my cottage door.
I was singing all alone in a corner, and the melody caught your ear. You came down and stood at my cottage door.“
He goes on to say that his god has many excellent voices singing his praise “at all hours“, but he’s in awe and wonder that his plaintive, little voice was enough to bring this master down from heaven to hear his paltry singing: “…with [nothing but] a flower for a prize you came down and stopped at my cottage door.“
How is it that this symbol of a door communicates such a deep longing in this man’s heart, when he isn’t the least familiar with, or interested in, Jesus Christ? I wonder if the Lord of all Poetry didn’t write right into our cores the symbols and ideas He wants to use to call us back to Himself? And then He opens those doors with opportunities: “Today, if you hear His voice, don’t harden your heart!” (Hebrews 3:7-8, & 15).
Open the door. Let Him in.
