| Rector’s
Meditation
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| Last Sunday, Jeanne in her sermon and I in my Annual Address suggested it might be a good thing for us to read the Bible. Anecdotally and personally many of you agreed. Jeanne suggested that we “take a look.” I suggested we take a year to do it and read the whole thing. In any event, we’re doing some research to see what that might look like programmatically starting next fall. It occurs to me that our response to this invitation could well be colored by our upbringing. Those of us who were raised as Baptists or Methodists or in any number of evangelical churches were brought up with the concept of the centrality of the Word. Those churches are not especially liturgical and follow the Reformation emphasis upon Scripture, knowledge of the Bible as a fundamental tenant of faith. If that has been your background, then Bible study and a personal rule of life that includes one’s own discipline of reading the Bible, ideally every day, is something of a second nature in your Christian identity. Those of us who were raised in liturgical churches—Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, Lutherans, or Orthodox—were not as apt to have Bible study as a norm but instead had the experience of hearing Scripture read on Sunday mornings that always included an Old Testament lesson, a psalm, the Epistle, and the Gospel. Also, many of the words of our hymns refer to events in the Bible. Bible study per se is not the strongest part of these churches’ traditions, although a rule of life or daily personal discipline might include Bible reading in addition to prayer or meditation. Our Forum this morning will plumb the depths of that tradition. However, what I find to be true is that the vast majority of us wish we had a better knowledge of Scripture and are secretly, and sometimes not so secretly, embarrassed either by what we’ve forgotten or by what we never learned in the first place. I also contend that if we’ve been at all faithful about coming to church that you’ve heard and probably remember more of the story than you might give yourself credit for. So Jeanne and I, and Missy and Richard, are excited about taking a year, providing a level playing field, and reading the Bible story from start to finish. In any event, we have a few months to screw up our courage and develop a plan and then see what happens. This morning’s reading from Luke’s gospel is a story about how dangerous it can be to take the Bible seriously. It’s the second week of Luke’s account describing how Jesus went to the synagogue in Nazareth where he had grown up and read from the book of the prophet Isaiah. Now Jesus’ Bible was the Old Testament because the New Testament, obviously, had not yet been invented. Worship in the synagogue for Jesus was very much the same as worship for us in church today, at least the first half of the service. They sang hymns, read Scripture, had a sermon on the Scripture, and then said their prayers. On the Sabbath day in question, Jesus opened the scroll—they had scrolls, not books—and read this from Isaiah: The initial response of the congregation was a bit like the first time George Smith came back to Christ Church as an ordained person and preached his first sermon. Like Jesus at Nazareth, George was brought up at Christ Church as a boy, and when he came back as a priest on our staff and preached his first sermon everyone was pleased as punch just like they were when Jesus preached at the synagogue in Nazareth. What does Luke say? “All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.” Of course, maybe for Jesus—and for George—they were just being polite, but George was in fact a good preacher as was Jesus. But in Jesus’ case, they turned on him. His interpretation of Isaiah “[filled] them with rage.” Like I said, sometimes reading the Bible can be a dangerous thing. Why would that be true for us as well? We might think of the Bible as a source of inspiration, as a source of comfort, but not usually as a source of danger. Jeanne’s “take a look” has a certain invitational charm that somewhat belies the fact that it has changed her life as it does anyone who thinks God’s word can shape you for an eternity. I’ll never forget Annie Dillard’s meditation on Jeremiah 10 when she says, Sounds dangerous to me. Sounds like I need to pay attention. Sounds like in addition to inspiration and comfort and assurance that God’s word might also jerk me out of my comfort zones, at least from time to time, or at least when I really need that to happen, because if God would say nothing else, God would tell us the truth. And so I would pray for God’s blessing on every effort of ours to reach beyond the limits of our knowledge, beyond what we think of as our certainties, and to take a plunge in faith whatever the opportunities we have for God to become real for us. There are times when I need comfort and assurance and inspiration. But there are also most assuredly times when I need to take the risk of radical trust especially when anything less than that is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Might I give the whole of my life for God’s purposes? Might I practice generosity beyond any reasonable measure? Might I expect miracles when all appears lost? |
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