Growing up I learned a song somewhere along the line. It may have been in Sunday School at the Hawley United Methodist Church. Or in Vacation Bible School at the same place. Or it might have been taught to me by my grandmother who was a member of Cole Memorial Baptist Church. I can sing it to this day, but this is a family blog so let me leave the singing to someone else. (Feel free to sing along!)
As an adult, however, I find the theology problematic. The B*I*B*L*E part - "that's the book for me" - I'm ok with that. It's the "I stand alone" part that (even with much respect for Martin Luther) I find more challenging. I have learned over many decades since first singing that song that I don't read the Bible alone; not ever. I read it in community. Jews have historically understood this better than Christians, but my own awareness that this was the only way to come to Scripture was heightened sometime in the 1980s when I first encountered The Gospel in Solentiname. The book was created from recordings of faithful (poor) people in Nicaragua who gathered in base community meetings to reflect on the Gospel Reading for the week. Basically it's simply transcripts of the profound conversations. But it also heightens the idea that WE stand on the Word of God. Together. We are never alone but part of a great cloud of witnesses and those gathered in Solentiname have a word to offer - even forty years later - to a first-world Church that has too often lost it's way.
I once preached a sermon, many years ago, where I reminded the congregation that the Word of God is not the Bible, however. The Word of God is Jesus Christ - the Word-made-flesh. We do not follow a book; we follow a crucified and risen Lord. When I preached that sermon I did not think I was saying anything new or controversial. But I got a lot of feedback - from some who loved this idea and found it helpful and from some who were not sure I was right. But in both cases the sermon generated conversation and I hope the possibility for new meaning. I do stand by that sermon. The Bible - that collection of ancient documents - point us toward the risen Christ. We don't follow (or worship!) the bible; we follow the incarnate Word.
This Sunday, the penultimate Sunday of the long season after The Feast of Pentecost, the collect for the day goes like this:
Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we 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.
This remains one of my very favorite collects in The Book of Common Prayer, and it's very densely packed theology. (And to my more "conservative" friends, it's not progressive theology - it just happens to be right!) Whatever we may believe about divine inspiration of Holy Scripture, I think that a wide spectrum of Christians can affirm that the One to whom our prayers are addressed has given them "for our learning." Moreover, they are not immediately accessible. The gospel reading for this Sunday is the parable of the talents. There will be many sermons preached this Sunday on trying to get underneath meaning - to get there preachers (and some small groups) will be reading, marking, learning, and "inwardly digesting" the parable in order to find hope - in order to find Jesus.
The collect challenges the theology of my youth and offers a theology I can embrace as an adult: the B*I*B*L*E is still the book for me but it is that precisely because it creates a community around it, giving us a language to speak of our faith, and pointing us always to the living Christ.
