Typically, in sermons about the
Bible itself, the preacher acknowledges that it is not easy reading and that it
takes some commitment and energy to stay with it. For example, the late
Ellsworth Kalas, a noted preacher of recent times, wrote:
"... our Bible is not what one would
expect a book of religious instruction should be. If you and I were preparing a
book to bless and guide people's lives, we wouldn't include large portions of
Numbers, Chronicles or Ezekiel. And we'd organize it differently. We have to
acknowledge that this book has a style and a purpose of its own; and we confess
that in a sense, it has succeeded in spite of itself. On the surface, it isn't
the sort of book which looks like a bestseller. It's long, and there are many
dull and difficult portions. And while there is a plot, you have to pay
attention if you're to find it."
Of course, it should not surprise us
that Kalas insisted that the plot was worth discovering. I agree. Some have
said the Bible is the story of a love affair between God and the human race. I
like that. Yet, I do not think that goes far enough. Without God revealing who
God is in a specific time and place, we might have hints, clues, intuitions and
some logic to speculate about God. Yet, we would never know. Thus, in that
regard, the poorly educated person who sounds out the words of the Bible to
read it but tries to live by what it says is actually closer to the spirit that
animates the Bible than the intellectual who reads it simply for its historical,
theological, or philosophical value.
Yes, a spirit animates the Bible. Those
who are longtime Bible readers have no doubt noticed that you can be reading
along in a passage you have read many times before. Suddenly, something jumps
out at you, some word of encouragement, hope, guidance, or conviction. You hear
something you needed to hear at that particular juncture of your life. The
Bible seems to possess that uncanny capacity. Author Elie Wiesel has suggested
that like the paintings of the great masters, the Scriptures "soak
up" something from the lives of all those readers who have interacted with
them over the ages.
If you get past the skepticism and
suspicion many of us have of ancient texts, you might find a challenging Word
from God.
Admitting all of this, our modern
skepticism and suspicion may well become blocks to truly hearing a challenging
Word from God.
Let us be honest about this. In
some places, we understand the Bible all too well.
The Bible is very easy to understand.
But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to
understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are
obliged to act accordingly. --Søren Kierkegaard, Provocations: SpiritualWritings of Kierkegaard.
Robert Farrar Capon, The Romance of the Word (Eerdmans,
1996), 214-5, shares the following. He reminds us that the Bible is a library.
Yes, we can go to a library and find the history section (Joshua, Judges,
Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, and Acts). We can also go the poetry section
(Psalms, Ecclesiastes). We can go to the literature section (Ruth, Jonah,
Joseph in Genesis). You can find plays (Job). The modern fascination with
“post-apocalyptic” movies and stories finds a counter-part in Revelation and
the last part of Daniel.
Whenever we leave on a long
journey, we want to take certain things with us. Before leaving on the trip, we
have to pack. We haul the suitcase down from the attic (or up from the
basement), open it on the bed and ponder the age-old question: What to bring?
How you answer that question has
everything to do with what kind of trip you are going to have. Leave out
something important, such as an umbrella or an extra sweater, and you will be
miserable if the weather turns raw. Pack something unnecessary, such as a pair
of snowshoes for a trip to Hawaii, and you will do nothing but complain about
how heavy your bags are. Some items that go into the suitcase are necessary
equipment. Others are merely baggage — dead weight that impedes progress.
When the author of II Timothy
writes that the purpose of studying the Scriptures is that his readers may be “equipped for every good work,” he means
something very similar. The Bible is an eminently practical document. It is
like a traveler’s guidebook for the strange land that is the human soul: It
teaches us things about God and ourselves that we could never discover in any
other way.
Here are four metaphors that each
suggests a way of viewing the Bible. I acknowledge some indebtedness to Marcus
Borg for the first three.
First, the Bible is a finger
pointing to God. Nothing that points to God is asking us to believe in it but
in that to which it points. Being a Christian does not mean primarily believing
in the finger, but believing in the God to which the finger points. In a
similar way, as Mary Lathbury's well-known hymn, "Break Thou the Bread of
Life," puts it, "Beyond the sacred page, I seek thee, Lord."
Second, the Bible is a lens through
which we view God. For me as a follower of Jesus, what clarifies my vision is
the Bible is the original witness to the revelation of God. This revelation
occurred first to a family, then to a people, and eventually to a nation called
Israel. I know this because God has offered a final and definitive revelation
in Jesus. We see here the love and grace of God. We see here that we are
sinners in need of that grace and clarifying vision. Granting the difficulty we
have in reading the Bible, it remains the clearest view of God we have.
Third, the Bible is a sacrament or
means of grace, something like communion, to enhance our experience of the
presence of God. Communion does not ask us to believe in the bread and wine,
but to let them act as a kind of go-between to deepen our experience of God.
The Bible is a go-between in the same sense.
Fourth, the Bible is, as Peter
dubbed it in one of his letters, "a lamp shining in a dark place" (II
Peter 1:19). A lamp does not eliminate all darkness, but it enables us to find
our way through it.
If we let it, the Bible will slowly (sometimes
suddenly) alter the way we view our lives and our world, and therefore lead to
a change in our lives.
No comments:
Post a Comment