Newspapers deliver news, and at
least the hard news stories give us the facts that will become the stuff of
history. Magazines tell us something about a subject we want to explore in more
depth. Stories open our imagination to an alternate world. Poetry helps us
engage all our senses. Nonfiction, like biographies and Wikis, teach us who
people were and how things came to be, and what makes them work, answering the
questions of “Who?”, “Why?” and “How?” that lay behind what we see happening in
the world around us. The written word in its many different genres and forms
shapes our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
But, when we talk about reading
the Bible, suddenly the written Word becomes more intimidating. We imagine that
there is a “right” way, and consequently, a “Wrong” way, to read the Bible
because its text is, after all, the Holy Scripture of Christianity. It stares
at us weightily from our bookshelf, like Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Shakespeare’s Collected Works, or Carl
Sandburg’s Abraham Lincoln’s War Years
(which is actually 4 tomes). Challenging and intellectual and unfamiliar. And,
there’s so much of it – 66 books, in fact! Or perhaps, someone has given us
their version and their interpretation does nothing to recommend it to us. But suppose
we do open it, or download and open a Bible app, depending on where is falls
open or which translation we read, the language sounds awkward, repetitive and
formal. And if we stay in the text, we run headlong into stories of deception,
like the king killing the husband of the woman he lusted for, or violence, like
the rape of the king’s daughter. With the number of heartbreaking and
terrorizing stories in our neighborhoods and cities, why would you invite more?
Why read the Bible?
The Bible tells us who God is. If you are curious about a culture
or a language or a people, you go to Fodor’s or Lonely Planet and you read
about it. So engage your curiosity, learn the language of God as it’s expressed
in the Bible, discover the less known God than the one that you may have heard
shouted through a bullhorn, and meet God. God is a creator, an active, vibrant,
attentive God who gets angry, who grieves, and who rejoices. God’s character is
expressed in many names for God that identify particular aspects, or point us
to specific promises that God has made. In the same way that a biography might
give you glimpses into a person, the stories of the Bible reveal God’s
character.
The Bible describes the covenant or relationship that God made and what
promises are part of that. God designs us to be in relationship with each
other and with God’s own self. This relationship is the ground for our
understanding of who we are as community and what it means to be called into
life together. Learning the promises of God helps us know how we can live into
the hope of those promises and how one faithful response to those promises is
to be in relationship with our neighbors and the world around us.
The Bible tells us how ancient Israel - the ancestors of Christian
faith - understood God and what was important to shaping their tradition. Jesus
was born in Israel and practiced Judaism. The stories he was taught and the
instruction or Torah he was given are the foundation for his own teaching and
ministry in the world where he lived. Reading the Bible opens his world to us
and connects us to a story that is thousands of years old.
The Bible shows us what a follower of Jesus looks like. It doesn’t prescribe what Jesus’ followers
look like, and it doesn’t issue a secret handshake, or uniforms or nametags,
but it talks about the people who traveled with Jesus during his ministry and
those who witnessed his teaching and his miracles, his death and his
resurrection. While we don’t always resemble followers of Jesus too closely,
these stories provide us with a plumb line, so we know what true discipleship
looks like.
The Bible is not an archival
document that serves us better by kept under glass or locked away in pristine
condition; neither is it written to sit unopened and gathering dust. It is a
Living Word that invites us into its stories, asks us to listen to the stories
of the arrogant little brother whose siblings trade him in, the man who
wrestles God in the desert, the stories of betrayal and injustice righted. It
invites us to walk alongside the Psalm writer who cries out in pain and
provides us for a place to go when we are worn out, too. It invites us into the
anticipation in the air at Elizabeth’s house when Mary, mother of Jesus, comes
to see her during her pregnancy. It invites us into the courtyard where the
disciple Peter lives out the struggle to tell people about Jesus and filled
with fear and shame, denies him three times. It invites us to see how God uses
unexpected people in unexpected places and in unexpected ways to share the Word
of God’s love and forgiveness with the world.
When we read or listen to the
stories we can begin to recognize God’s activity in each one, and we can begin
to imagine how those stories from thousands of years ago are played out in our
lives, and then, we can begin to see how our lives and stories connect and
intersect with the biblical narrative, the story told through the texts of the
books of the Bible. Like any good story, whether it’s your favorite movie or
t.v. show, every new hearing, or reading, opens your eyes to see new details
and prompts you to ask new questions.
As you read, or listen to it, the
stories become more familiar until you can begin to complete the narrative from
memory and the language seeps into your own vocabulary. And you learn how the
books were written and why some were chosen to be held together in one
collection as the canon; what is factual and what is allegorical; what is
narrative and what is poetry; how a temple would have been constructed and what
a Passover Seder meal may have looked like; you discover who the kings were,
and what role the judges played, and you meet the men and women who were leaders
in the early Christian church. And through all these different genres and
forms, the Bible shapes our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
So perhaps it doesn’t need to be so unfamiliar or challenging, but instead
inviting.
Pick one up and read!
