Reading the Bible in Church

Today was All Saints Sunday in Church.  We did many things in church.  We sang, we prayed, I preached.  We opened our hands and received communion.  We even said, "Christ is risen!"  We lit candles to remember those in our lives who had been saints to us, who had reflected the light of Christ to us.

And, we read from the Bible.

We read from the Bible every Sunday at church.

But today it felt different.

I felt the weight of the appointed Gospel, from Jesus' Sermon on the Plain.  It is appointed for All Saints Sunday, but this year I didn't preach on the gospel.  I preached on being a saint, and I preached on being a witness, but I didn't preach on these particular words.

But I read them, because they were the words of the appointed gospel for today.

Two days before our National Election, I read the blessings and the woes.  Blessed are you who are poor.  Woe to you who are rich.  Blessed are you when you are reviled, and people speak ill of you.

And then, three little words:

Love your enemies

I don't know what my congregation heard when I said these words.  I felt time slow down while I said them.  "Love your enemies,  and do good to those who persecute you."

I felt like Jesus was speaking them directly to me.

They were words not just for the election, but for how to live afterwards.  I am not sure that it is possible, but I am certain that it is necessary.   Love your enemies.  I don't think that means, "Let your enemies walk all over you."  It also doesn't mean, "Let your enemies get away with evil."  It also doesn't mean "Show contempt for your enemies."

"Love your enemies."

I opened the Bible and the words of Jesus exploded in my face.

They made me consider again what it will mean, and what it might cost to be a follower of Jesus, in such a time as this.

Why Read the Bible

I am reading a book right now about faith practices, and it is making me think about my faith practices.  The book is about deepening faith commitment, and it makes the case for 'stepping up' with greater resolve in several areas of our lives, including, prayer, Bible reading, worship and witness.

But even though I believe in deepening our faith commitments, and even though I think it is positive to resolve to spend more time in the prayer, Bible reading, worship and witness, I do, on occasion, find myself talking back to this book.

Take, for example, reading the Bible.  I am all for reading the Bible more often, just as the the author of this book commends.  There is a wonderful opening story in this book about a successful mountain climber who happens to be blind.  He is successful because he has learn to listen.

So, listening.  Reading the Bible is listening to God.  So far, so good.

But, when we listen to the Bible, what do we hear?  What do we expect to hear?  That's my question.

The writer of the book sounds as if he believes that by reading the Bible, he will find wisdom to help him live a Better Life.  He will find commandments to obey, he will find Good Advice.  And it's true, he will find these things.  He can read the Ten Commandments and the Book of Proverbs and James, and find what he is looking for.

But I have to say:  that's not the main reason that I read the Bible.

Why read the Bible?  I mean, really:  it's a huge book with small print, and many kinds of writing.  There are stories and laws and advice and genealogies.  There is history and there is prophecy.  Some of it is exciting and some of it is puzzling and some of it is downright troubling, if you are honest.  Reading the Bible is all kinds of comforting sometimes, but it also opens you up to all kinds of questions.

I have heard the Bible in church since I was a little girl.  I also learned wonderful stories in Sunday School:  David and Goliath, Abraham and Sarah, Noah's ark.  I learned how Jesus fed 5,000 people, how Moses led the people out of slavery, how Jesus healed those who were blind or deaf or lame.  I heard the stories of the prodigal son and the good shepherd.

The first time I tried to read the Bible without help, I was in high school.  Church camp had made of me an enthusiastic believer, so I cracked open my Bible and resolved to read the whole thing, starting with Genesis.  By the middle of Leviticus I had given up, disappointed in myself.

Why read the Bible?  It's a huge book with small print, and if you are honest at all, it is going to raise as many questions as it answers.  You are going to find out about the Walls of Jericho, and how they came tumbling down, but you are also going to find out about how the armies went in and killed every single person after that.  You are going to learn about how Jesus fed 5,000 people, but somewhere along the line you might wonder about all of the people who are hungry now.  You are going to hear words like:  "For God so loved the world that he gave his only son," (John 3:16), and you are going to hear words like "Love your enemy, and do good to those who persecute you."

Why read the Bible?  Why listen to these words, these stories, even this advice?

It's not a self-improvement project, at least not for me.

The Bible is this great big book, and it's about God, and it's about us.   It's about a God so in love with us, God's people, that he is willing to do anything -- including, in the end, to come and be among us.

Inside the Word, this complicated, messy, confusing book -- is the Word, Jesus.  The heart of God.   The one who tells us who we are.

Sunday Morning Bible Study

One of the things that drew me to this congregation was that they had an active and lively Sunday morning Bible study.  Though attendance varied, I heard that it was not uncommon to have forty or fifty people stay after the first service for the study time.  My former congregation, a much larger one, had a hard time generating half that many.

I looked forward to leading the Sunday morning Bible study as well, although (I will admit it now), I started to find the schedule intimidating.  Every single week, there was worship at 9:00, Adult Bible Study at 10:00 and another worship service at 11:00.  I looked around for different kinds of Adult Studies we could do.  This church does NOT take a break in the summer, so I jumped right in with a study of worship, and began the year with a 10 week video and Bible study of Grace.  We also studied hymns for Advent and Faith Practices during Lent and Easter.

I'll tell you what, it was challenging to do the preparation every week and also to find good study resources.

And then summer came.  We decided to have one worship service during the summer.  We decided to have Bible study before worship, instead of after worship.  And someone suggested that instead of a series, as we had been doing, perhaps we could do something different every week.    That seemed like a good idea, but again, a lot of preparation.

I considered.

Someone ordered a couple of pamphlets:  one, on the life of Paul, and another one, on favorite Bible passages.  After a couple of false starts, I decided that we would use the Pamphlet on the life of Paul, and use selected portions of Acts, until we ran out of time.

There were no video supplements.  There were no workbooks.  There was no "Leader's Guide."  There was just this pamphlet with some of the exciting things that happened to Paul in it.  Every week, I looked at the pamphlet, chose a couple of Bible passages, and on Sunday morning, those of us who happened to be in attendance read the Bible, asked questions and had a conversation.

On Saturday night I spent a little time studying the Scripture passages I had chosen.  Not a LOT of time.  I wasn't trying to study so much that I would impress everyone with my superior Bible knowledge.  Just a review of the narrative, a little bit of commentary.  There were still times I ended up saying, "I don't know.  I'll check that out by next week."

There were no bells, no whistles.  It was just us, and the Bible, and our questions.

And you know what?  I had a good time.  I felt energized by our conversation together, by what we were discovering as we studied the Bible together.  We discovered that when we studied the book of Acts, all kinds of contemporary issues also arose:  persecution, immigration, evangelism, other religions, whatever was happening in the world.

As much as I enjoyed the ten week study of Grace, and the study of worship, and Faith Practices, this was the most fun I had had all year.  It is the thing I love to do the best:  reading the Bible with other people.  It is not Standing Up and Lecturing People About the Bible (which has its place, and I can do that, too, but it is not my favorite thing).

It is just this simple conversation, where I ask people:  what did you notice in this passage of Scripture?  What questions do you have?  What stuck out for you?  What do you think God is saying/doing here?  We all wrestle with the questions, and their meaning for our lives, together.

Together.  Deep down inside, I think this is how the Bible is meant to be read:  together.  Maybe it's just two, or maybe three or four, or maybe a whole congregation, listening together.  Somehow it happens though, when we read and ponder, wonder and wrestle together, that our lives are enriched and transformed, again and again.

Just us, the Bible, and our questions.  That's how God changes us.  That's how God is changing me.

Your Least Favorite Bible Verse

I was in a meeting with some pastor types and a consultant one evening.  We all looked down at the agenda and saw that the first item listed was "Scripture and prayer" and realized, possibly at the same time, that none of us had brought a Bible.

Before I considered that I could probably look up anything I wanted on my phone, I considered what scripture verse I might know by heart.  One of my colleagues offered to share his:  "For surely I know the plans I have for you, says, the Lord, plans for your welfare, and not for harm, to give you a future with hope."

As it turned out, it was a good scripture passage for a meeting where we would discuss efforts to collaborate in social ministry in and with our community.  My colleague is passionate about social justice, and it makes sense that this is a passage he has committed to memory.  But it's not the first scripture passage that comes to my mind, not the one that came to my mind when I suddenly thought I might be required to share something I knew by heart.

If it had been me, I would have recited, "If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation:  everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!"  It's one of my favorite Bible verses.

I like to think that our favorite Bible verses reveal something about us.  It makes a difference if the verse we have committed to memory is "Beloved, love one another," or "Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with God."  It makes a difference if our favorite story is the one about the water and the ark and the animals, or the one about the boy who defeated a giant with a sling shot, or the one about the man who fed 5,000 people with five barley loaves and two fish.  I like to think that our favorite Bible verses (if we have them) are mirrors that reflect back the mysterious ways God is working in each of our lives.

But what about our least favorite Bible verse?  What does that say about us?

Let's not pretend we don't have one:  a scripture reading we would just as soon pass over, a story we would like to forget is even in the Bible, a phrase that is like a pebble in our shoe, irritating us every time we walk.

Maybe it's the verse about women being silent in church, or some of the particularly violent and puzzling scenes in the book of Revelation.  Maybe it's the verse where the Psalmist blesses the one who   dashes the enemy's little ones against the rock.  Maybe it's the one about loving your enemies or that one about cutting off your hand if it causes you to sin.

Or maybe it is something even more basic than that.

One of my least favorite Bible verses is one I recite all the time.  I know this one by heart, too.  So many times I go to the cemetery after the funeral, and before I recite the words "In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life…." I say these words, "Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone.  But if it dies it bears much fruit."

And I love these words, and the images they conjure up, of life springing from the ground, of the fruit of the grain, given to be shared.

But I hate what comes afterward.  "The one who loves his life loses it, and the one who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life."

I know what the words are supposed to mean, but that is not what they sound like.  I know that 'in this world' means the sinful world that has rejected the Christ.  But when I am standing in the cemetery, surrounded by a grieving family, I hate this verse.  The person who died love his life, loved her family. The one who died loved her garden, loved playing the piano or dancing or baking cookies.  I have thought about just stopping and not saying the verses, but that doesn't seem right either.  So I just plow ahead through the whole reading, wishing I could stop and say, "That's what what it means!  You can love your life!  You can love the life God gave you, and still be ready to let go of it."

What does this say about me, I wonder?  Does my least favorite Bible verse say something about me (for good or ill) like the verses I have underlined and taken to heart?  And what does it say about me that I keep reciting it anyway, arguing silently while I speak?  Is it a sign of courage or cowardice?

What is your least favorite Bible verse?

Elijah without Exegesis

I learned the story of Elijah before I ever studied it from a Bible.

This is not because I grew up unchurched and never opened a Bible.  Indeed, I was very regular in worship and went to Sunday School every week, although I really don't remember ever getting to the prophets.  (I feel like our Old Testament study sort of stalled out over Solomon.)  I may have heard the story of Elijah on Mount Horeb in worship, but, if I did, it didn't make an impression on me.

I learned the story of Elijah in public school, when my high school choir sang Mendelssohn's oratorio, "Elijah."

My high school choir's tradition was to learn an oratorio every winter.  When I was in tenth grade, we sang great excerpts of Hayden's "The Creation."  (I used to love to walk into my English class right after lunch, turn on the light, and sing, "AND THERE WAS LIGHT!")  My junior year, we sang the "Messiah."  My senior year, we learned The Elijah.

We did not learn the whole oratorio, but we learned and performed a pretty impressive chunk of it, enough to get the gist of the story, enough to perform for our winter concert.  We also joined area high school for a mass performance later in the spring.

There we were, thousands of high school students, singing about the prophet Elijah and the prophets of Ba'al, wicked King Ahab and his even more wicked wife, Jezebel.  It boggles my mind even to think back on it.

What a way to learn the Bible, going over and over difficult musical interludes, listening to soloists practice soliloquies, going into section rehearsals.  I still remember that the first Chorus begins with the word, "Help Lord!  Wilt thou quite destroy us?", and that our choir director warned us to make sure we pronounced the 'p' on Help.  I remember that a wonderful baritone from our school sang Elijah's part (although we had professionals for the mass choir).  Elijah's solo, "It is enough" was so heart-rending.  The song "He watching over Israel" was one of my favorite pieces.

But the action between Elijah and the prophets of Ba'al was the highlight of the piece for me.  We played the prophets of Ba'al, with our increasingly frantic prayers, while Elijah taunted us between our outbursts.  The choir director let us in on the secret meaning of some of Elijah's Ba'al insulting taunts. The piece where Elijah meets God on Mount Horeb was also dramatic, the music matching the words in tension, the voices sounding like wind and chaos and -- eventually -- peace.

I went out and bought the three-album set of the whole oratorio.  Eventually I even bought my own copy of the music and looked up Bible references in my Bible concordance (I found out that they aren't all from 1st Kings; not even all from the Old Testament).

I know, it was geeky way to learn a Bible story.  I mean, how many teenagers that you know are interested in singing huge sections of scripture to tunes written in the 19th Century?

We did.  I didn't learn about Elijah first from a Bible story.  I didn't learn about Elijah first from a sermon.  I learned about Elijah without anyone telling me what it meant, or what it was supposed to mean, or where it fit in the great narrative of the Bible.  I didn't think about what it might mean that the Lord was not in the wind or the earthquake or the fire.

It was a good story, and I was in it.  We were inside the story.  We were playing the people of Israel, and the prophets of Ba'al, the bad guys and the good guys, the saints and the sinners, the doubters and the believers.  We were inside the story, not understanding it, just singing it.

But the thing is, later on, I got curious.  It made me want to study, even.

I know.  It's a geeky way to learn a Bible story.  But still, it makes me think:  being curious is more important, in some ways, than understanding.  And being inside the story, however you might manage it:  is the beginning of wisdom.

Anonymous

I've been reading the New Testament all this summer, reading a few chapters a day and writing about them.  I decided to use a version of the Bible I hadn't read before (just to mix it up a little), so chose the Common English Bible.

Of course, at some point, I also decided that if I'm going to read the whole New Testament this summer, I should get some sort of reading credit for it:  the New Testament is a Book, after all, so I posted in "Goodreads" that I was reading the New Testament, the "Common English Bible."  You know who the author of the New Testament (CEB) is, according to Goodreads'?

Anonymous.

It's not "God"; it's not even "various."  Nope, it's anonymous, which seems somehow an odd thing to say about our holy book.  We don't know who wrote it.  (Well, actually, anonymous is not quite right:  we do know that the apostle Paul wrote some of the letters in the New Testament.  But, what do we know about Paul, really?)

Though mostly, when I think about it, it's accurate:  we really don't know for sure who wrote most of the New Testament, or even the Bible.  Most scholars don't think that Matthew wrote "Matthew" or Mark wrote "Mark".  And part of me wonders if it isn't somehow embarrassing to trust the contents of a book written (for the most part) by anonymous.  No wonder people are skeptical (and more and more people are skeptical these days, if you haven't noticed.)

When I think about it harder, though, it's absolutely fitting that "anonymous" wrote the Bible, embarrassing though it may be.  It's fitting given what we say we believe:  that God is made manifest not in the proud and the mighty, but in the humble and the ordinary, the anonymous.  Bread, wine, water are holy.  Ordinary people are holy.  Ordinary words are holy.

There's this odd divide in Christianty right now between traditional Christians who believe that the Bible is a divine book, and more progressive Christians who believe that the Bible is a human book.  But it seems to me that actually the right answer to the question, "Is the Bible a divine book or a human book?" is "Yes."  The Bible is a human book written by anonymous, ordinary people but which somehow reveals God.   The Bible is a holy humble book about a God who came to inhabit flesh and blood in Jesus, and who still inhabits flesh and blood today, humble, anonymous, stumbling flesh and blood.

There's something embarrassing about this.

And there's something wonderful, too.

Gentle Blog Readers

I will still be posting here during the summer.  But I have been doing some intense Biblical ruminating  over here.

If you get bored because there aren't enough "faith in community" posts, you can always go over and take a look.

I've made sort of an insane commitment to blog the New Testament, to support a community Bible reading project.  The community includes both members of my church, and people I know on-line.

Children of the Bible

When I was 9 or 10 years old, my grandma Gummeson gave me a book called "Children of the Bible."  I didn't have a lot of books that weren't from the library, so this one was pretty fascinating to me.

It featured art pictures of children from the Bible (who knew there were children in the Bible?) and the stories about their lives.  The book featured pictures of all of the children you would expect:  Isaac, the baby Moses, David (well before he was a king), Jesus at 12, the little boy with the loaves and fishes.   As well, there were a few children whose stories surprised me:  not just Moses, but his sister Miriam, who saved him.  The little maid who served Naaman the general, and told him who could cure his leprosy.  Rhoda, the servant girl who met Peter at the door when the angel sprang him out of prison, but was so excited she forgot to let him in!  I loved those stories.

Children of the Bible:  it was a great secret, and it must mean that God loved the children, not just in a sentimental way, but that God loved children enough to entrust his message to them, even them.  I was not just a learner, but I could be a teacher, too.  Children were part of the story.

This Sunday we have the story of Samuel.  It is one of my favorite Bible stories, which is why I always pause before I decide whether I am going to preach on Samuel's call.  Am I just leaning this way because I like this story so much?  Or is this the message my congregation really needs to hear?  Now that I am an adult, I like this story not just because it's a story about a child receiving God's message, but for so many other reasons.  The humor of Samuel hearing God and thinking that it is Eli.  The old priest with dim eyes who, nonetheless, perceives the truth.  The sadness of the message that Samuel must give to Eli, and his humility and grace in receiving it.  The good news of the new thing that God will be doing among the people, beginning with Samuel.   

As I told a few people who gathered this morning, we know this is a true story not just because it is in the Bible, but also because it has sad parts and happy parts, and every good and true story has both happy parts and sad parts. 

"Speak, Lord, your servant is listening," Samuel finally says.  May we learn to say the same. 

"Speak Lord, your servants are listening.  Tell us a story, a good story, a story with sad parts and happy parts, with tears and with laughter, where we have adventures together, but where there is a happy ending.  But most of all, Lord, tell us a story where we have a part, no matter how big we are, or how small, no matter how young or how old, no matter how wise or how foolish."

It's a true story, this story about God and about Jesus and about us:  and we know it's true because there are sad parts and there are happy parts, and because we are in it, too.

How to Read The Bible in 90 Days

Some of you might think that this post should be titled, "Why Read the Bible in 90 Days"? for that, too, is a good question.  There are programs to help you to read the whole Bible in a year, which seems challenging enough.  Why read the Bible in 90 Days?  In fact, to go even further, why read the whole Bible at all?  Why not stay with the 'snippets'? 

David Plotz wrote a book called, aptly enough, Good Book, in which he re-counts the things he learned when he read the whole Old Testament.  (Plotz is Jewish.)  It's funny, and enlightening, and sobering, too; in the end,  he did not feel that his faith was strengthened by his project.  He ended with more questions than answers.   If you read the whole Bible, whether in a year of 90 days, there will be plenty of things to make you go, 'hmmmm.'   There will be things that make you say, "the Bible is a very strange book."  And there will also be plenty of wonderful surprises too.  I'm telling you this, and I'm only in Leviticus.

There are plenty of reasons to read slowly, and carefully, smaller segments of the Bible.  There are plenty of reasons to take short passages of the Bible and read them in a small group, and discuss what they mean, and what they mean in our lives.  But that's not how to read the Bible in 90 Days. 

If you are going to read the Bible in 90 Days, you're going to have to read a chunk a day.  Most of us have other things to do during the day (working, making supper, sleeping, for example), so I'm going to make a huge generalization and say that when you read the Bible in 90 days (or so), you're going to read quickly, you're going to skim a bit, and I'm telling you now that it's ok.  I give you permission to do that.  We're going for the big picture here.  If there are things you don't understand, that's okay too.  Nobody understands everything in the Bible.

I am reading from Eugene Peterson's paraphrase The Message.  Some people might consider this cheating.  I do not.  I am reading the Bible in 90 days (I hope), not studying the Bible for 90 Days.  I know that this is not a study Bible.

As you're reading, though, notice a couple of things that picque your interest.  Don't try to think about everything.  Notice the things that catch your eye, and take some time to think about those things.  If you're a writer, you might want to keep a diary of what you've read, and the things that make you go, 'hmmm.' 

Of course, there are pitfalls with this method.  I, for example, more often than not notice myself focusing on the women in scripture.  (I can't figure out why that might be.)  In other words, sometimes we gravitate to certain themes or stories in the Bible, the ones that we like or that intrigue us.  There are other themes that are annoying or disturbing to us.  We might like to sweep those under the carpet.  What you ignore in the Bible tells you as much about yourself as what you gravitate toward.   In fact, you might take a little time somewhere along the time to consider:  are there parts of the Bible that I am consistently ignoring?  Are there people I am more interested in and others I am not interested in?   Who are you favorites?

As for me, I already know that I have warm feelings toward the people in the Bible who, when they are called by God to some impossible thing or another, say, "Who?  Me?  You must be mistaken, Lord."  And there are several people like that, by the way.  (See, for example, Moses and Gideon.)

Best wishes on your continued reading.  We're in this together!

Consumers or Producers

My husband, a musician, likes to talk about different ways people love music.  Most people love music of some sort or another, but they love it mostly as consumers.  In other words, they are listeners.  They turn on a radio, or pop in a CD or love sorting the tunes on their ipods by genre, or creating a nice "mix" of music to listen to. 

There's another way to love music, though, and that is as someone who makes music.  You can write songs, or you can play music, but in either case you are choosing not just to consume but to produce.  You can use your voice or piano keys or a rhythm instrument, you can play a flute or a kazoo, you can be a professional or a rank amateur, but if you play, you are producing something rather than just consuming it.

Both consuming and producing are normal activities.  We do both of them in our lives, although it seems to me that we are beginning to skew more and more toward the consuming side.  If you buy, cook and eat your supper, you're both a producer and a consumer -- producing a nice meal and then eating it.  If you put something in the microwave or go out to eat (and we do this more often than I care to admit) you're just a consumer. 

My mom sewed a lot of our clothes.  Now I mostly go shopping, reserving my limited sewing skills and patience for hems and mending.  I do find a strange attraction to knitting, partly because, I think, I can produce something for someone else (or me!) to wear.    We used to get most of our books out of the public library, reading the book being the most important thing at the time.  I wrote reams and reams of short stories and poems and one acts plays on lined notebook paper.  A friend and I would read our work to one another.  Now for some reason it seems important to own the book, whether I get around to actually reading it or not. 

Then I turn to worship.  It seems to me that the idea has developed that the clergy and other professionals are the producers of worship, and that the congregation are consumers of worship.  Some people critique congregation members for this, but I think that clergy and other worship leaders can be as much to blame.  If it is true that we are all worshipping, with our voices, with our hearts, with our lips, we are all producers of worship, and we're all consumers as well.  If we "get a lot out of worship," it may be just because we put our hearts, souls and minds into worship.

It's true that we consume the Word which is given to us, something we did not produce ourselves.  But as we chew and swallow and ponder what we freely receive, we do go out to produce, to create, to produce fruit, to create community, to do justice and to love kindness.  We are not simply collectors or appreciators of fine Bible verses, putting them in order by genre. 

Rank amateurs we may be, but somehow we start playing those verses with ours lives, producing melodies and harmonies based on "Love one another as I haved loved you," or "The Lord is my shepherd", or "The Lord has risen."

Tomorrow the bread is broken, the songs are sung, the word comes into our ears, into our hearts.  We take and eat.  We go and live.

Uncommon Conversation

I remember not too long ago listening with interest to a radio program about -- of all things -- plane crashes.  What fascinated me most about the program was that the studies were dealing with crashes caused (at least in part) by pilot error, and how communication patterns between the pilot and copilot might have contributed to the crash.  Sometimes, the pilot found, the copilot found it difficult to speak directly to the pilot when he found a problem or an error that he had to speak up about.  He either didn't speak about it at all, or spoke in an oblique, roundabout way, trying not to offend the pilot.   Even in a situation of an emergency, sometimes it seemed like it was impossible for the subordinate to speak up.

That was fascinating to me. 

It sometimes seems impossible for the subordinate to speak up. 

I thought of this when I read the story of Naaman from 2 Kings again.  Naaman is a great general but he has a problem -- he has leprosy.  Though he is not an Israelite, the prophet Elisha is called to come to him, so that he can be healed.  The problem is, Naaman is not wild about Elisha's directions:  go wash in the river Jordan.  "Aren't there many fine (actually, better) rivers in my own country?  Get real!" 

We often focus on Naaman, the general who finally sucked it up and went and washed in the river Jordan.  It didn't make sense, but he did it, and he was healed.  But lately, when I've read this story, I've noticed someone else:  Naaman's servants.

Do you know what they did?

They spoke up.

Sometimes it seems impossible for a subordinate to speak up.

You have to wonder about a servant who dares to talk back to his Master.  "Come on, what's the problem?  This isn't so hard.  You just don't want to do it!  What's your problem with the river Jordan, anyway?"  You might even call it an "uncommon conversation", when a servant talks back to his master.

But this was a serious matter, a matter of life and death.  Naaman had leprosy. 

You have to wonder about a servant who dares to talk back to his Master.

Maybe they knew it was a matter of life and death, and that somehow, Naaman's fate and their own was linked.  You have to wonder.  Because, sometimes it seems impossible for a subordinate to speak up.  It's an "uncommon conversation."   Maybe they think, "What do I know?  The experts have it all figured out."  or maybe they think, "No one will listen to me anyway."  Or maybe they think, "It won't make any difference anyway.  People go wash in the river Jordan all the time, and no one is ever healed.  It's just a dirty little river."

In our faith community, we're having some uncommon conversations this fall.  They are conversations about the future of our state and the future of our communities, and even (dare I say) the future of our faith community.  And they are also conversations about race, and about the racial disparities in our state, and I think that they are a matter of life and death.  Our futures are linked, and our hopes are linked.

But we need to speak up, to believe that we can make a difference.  We need to speak up, and we also need to listen:  and to go down to the river Jordan, where God can heal us, where God will give us courage, where God is waiting, waiting for us, to raise us from the dead.

Clutching Their Bibles

Today is one of my favorite Sundays of the entire church year.

It was the day we gave Bibles t0 all of the Third Graders.

This year we had fourteen third graders come to receive their Bibles. Most of them also attended, with their parents, two classes designed to help them get acquainted with the Bible. They play games, learn songs to help them to memorize the books of the Bible, and spend some time looking up Bible verse with their parents.

I like that part too.

I love how they sing their Bible songs for the whole congregation. I love knowing that we have the parents secretly inscribe the Bibles with a personal message to their child. I love giving the Bibles to the parents to give to the children. I love watching the children clutch their Bibles as if they were diamonds.

This morning I had all of the Bibles on a cart with wheels, the kind we use in our kitchen. I transferred them all to a table in the chancel and was wheeling the cart back up the center aisle. One of the ushers asked, "What are you serving?"

"We're serving the Word," I answered.

I love today.

We give the CEV (Contemporary English Version). Sometimes the translation seems unfamiliar to the parents. The Golden Rule, for example, reads, "Treat others as you want to be treated." On the other hand, it is easier to understand, especially the stories.

I got my first Bible from my grandparents when I was in the third grade. We didn't get Bibles from the church until I was in confirmation. In my opinion, that's much too late. I hear some churches give "Toddler Bibles" now when children are entering Sunday School. If I had my way, my church would give the ABS/Scholastic Read and Learn Bible to all our Kindergarteners.

I heard a few parents having their children look up some familiar Psalms during our cake reception this morning. I heard a few children telling their parents what they were going to read when they got home in the afternoon. And I saw a few children who didn't want to put their Bible down, even to eat cake.

Here's a prayer for today from The Divine Hours:

Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant me to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that I may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

So Many Bibles, So Little Time

I used to make just a little fun of the Life Application Bible. "You know," I would say, "it's not like those other Bibles, which don't apply to your life." Then someone from my church got one of them, and I decided to be a little less satirical about it.

You can't help noticing these days, if you're Christian at all, how many Bibles there are. First there are all of the differant translations and paraphrases: there's the venerable King James Bible and the New American Standard, newer scholarly translations like the New International and New Revised Standard Version, simpler and more modern translations like the Contemporary English Version and The Message. There is the New English Version and the New Living Translation, and the New Jerusalem Bible. ("New" seems to be a big thing, doesn't it?) I'm sure I left out somebody's favorite translation here, but I can't forget the translations which, for some reason or another, have been allowed to go out of print: The Revised Standard Version (the one I grew up with) and the Good News Bible (at least I haven't seen it around lately.) The Good News Bible started out as a New Testament called "Good News for Modern Man". The title prompted one elderly widow to wonder, "What does this have to do with me?"

Of course these days, it's not just the translations that multiply. There are also many kinds of Bibles: not just the Life Application Bible mentioned above, but also the Women's Devotional Bible, the Men's Devotional Bible, and the Sports Devotional Bible (do you know how many sports metaphors there are in the Bible?) There's also the the Adventure Bible for Kids and the Celebrate Recovery Bible for people in recovery.

A couple of days ago I was at my local evangelical bookstore and noticed The Reese Chronological Bible, which does exactly what is says. Today I was at the seminry bookstore and caught sight of The Peoples' Bible, which includes the Apocraphya and must be the Bible for Barack Obama, since it sounds suspiciously socialist to me. (On the other hand, I'm glad progressive Christians are learning a little bit about marketing.) I've also noticed The Green Bible recently. Instead of the words of Jesus printed in red, this one includes God's words about creation printed in green.

They say that the Bible is still the best-selling book in the world. We know how to sell the Bible, but do we know how to read the Bible? That's what I want to know.

In my tradition, we always come at the problem of Bible reading from the angle of competence. We want to give people the tools to correct interpretation, and then assume that they will begin to read the Bible on their own.

But I wonder: how do we teach people to love the Bible, to love to read the stories and the poems and the wisdom in that impossible and wonderful book?

Almost all children learn how to read. But some children learn to devour words, to eat up stories, to hunger for poetry, to mine the secrets hidden in all kinds of books.

I'm not sure that even the Life Application Bible can do that.

One of my Pet Peeves

.... is pastors who say (sometimes in the middle of sermons) "You know, I'm not much of a Bible scholar."

My short, sassy comeback (at least in my head) is, "If not you, who?"

Is there any other profession in which people who often have 4 years of college AND graduate degrees can get away with claiming such lack of knowledge? What could possibly be the point of it? How would you like it if you had a teacher who confessed a rather spotty command of her subject? Or just before you were going in for an operation, your doctor confessed, "You know, I'm not really much of a surgeon"?

That being said, I will confess to being far more familiar with some portions of the Bible than others. For example, I'm much better prepared right now to give a lecture on one of the four gospels than, say, 1st and 2nd Chronicles. But when people call me up and ask me where something is in the Bible, or what it means, I expect I ought to know.

Exception: In the Psalms, I do not know what the word Selah means. Actually, nobody really knows what the word Selah means, for sure.

I think I know where "I'm not much of a Bible scholar" comes from, but I'm not sure. I suspect that we don't want to seem too intellectual; we don't want to separate ourselves too much from our people or seem intimidating. And we don't want to give people the impression: "I understand the Bible and you don't."

I absolutely agree. We don't want to give the impression that only clergy are equipped to read the Bible. And one of our jobs (one of our callings, I think) is to help equip people to read and interpret the Bible. It's right up there with leading worship in a way that is both reverent and celebratory.

If we aren't, in some sense, "Bible scholars", or "Bible experts," of some kind, how can we equip people to read it themselves?

When I go to the bookstore (and not just the Christian ones, either), I do see a lot of Bibles. I also see a LOT of books in the "religion and spirituality" section. My suspicion is that almost everyone HAS a Bible or Bibles, but that many people read the Bible just a little, and other books about religion a lot more.

In other words, I suspect that a lot of people don't feel equipped, or empowered, to read the Bible.

Any other insights, comments, disagreements, or even other totally different pet peeves are welcome.

Clarification: "The liturgical instruction Selah in the Book of Psalms is described by the Jewish Publication Society Version of the Tanakh as 'a liturgical direction of uncertain meaning,'" from Whose Bible Is it?, by Jaroslav Pelikan, p 230)

Images of the Prodigal Son

I don't know why, but it seems that I am into art this fall. First, it was the St. John's Bible, art that is being created right in front of us. Now, it's "Images of the Prodigal Son", a collection by a man named Jerry Evenrud. The collection is now on display at the museum of Biblical Art in New York (which I didn't even know existed.) There is also available a book of images and essays by former Luther Seminary Pastor Robert Brusic.

This Sunday Pastor Brusic will be coming to our adult forum to share some of the images and his thoughts with us.

I hope that it is yet another way for us to "get into" the Bible, and discover all the facets of this great parable.

(Image above is from the collection)