At the beginning of the service the center table will include (as it usually does not) an open Bible. At the time for the sermon, that table will be cleared of everything except the Bible, the table will be turned and placed in the position approximately where the podium would usually be, and someone will walk to the table, sit down, leaf through the Bible, find what he/she wants to read and begin reading out loud beginning at Luke 4:16. The reading continues for a time and then that person’s voice dies down and the person continues reading, but silently…
*****
Jim Bundy—Well, this is something you don’t see too often, isn’t it? This woman looks like she’s just reading the Bible all on her own. I wonder why she would be doing such a thing. Maybe she’s practicing because someone asked her to read for the church service next Sunday. Maybe it’s her turn to do the devotions at council next week. There must be some reason. I guess I could ask her…
Jim Gibson—Wait! Don’t disturb her. I think she’s really involved. Or at least maybe she is…I don’t know. But let’s leave her alone for a moment. I have a question for you. I think I detect a note of…something…in your voice that I’m not sure I know how to take. It may be cynicism…or maybe even sarcasm. I mean why do you assume that she wouldn’t be doing this unless it was an assignment, like the only time anyone would read the Bible would be if it was some form of homework?
JB—Well, come on. It is sort of…quaint…wouldn’t you say. I mean I know people used to do this sort of thing a looong time ago. People don’t just sit down and read the Bible nowadays. Besides, I’m beginning to see now that she’s in a time warp. This must be from sometime in the past. Look at her. There’s not a computer anywhere in sight. If this was nowadays, she would have at least pulled the Bible up on the computer screen, so she could read it in several different versions with access to the Greek and Hebrew, and a bunch of other languages, all just a click of the mouse away.
JG–I don’t think computers are really the issue here. Besides I think I detect that note of cynicism again. Anyway, I think you should be careful of who you’re talking about. Maybe the people you hang around with don’t read the Bible, but I bet there are lots of Bibles around with fingerprints all over them, on the inside, I mean. I bet there are a lot of people who do read the Bible just for themselves. Actually…I do.
JB—No!! You don’t say.
JG—I do say. In fact, I have to tell you that the Bible—I mean reading the Bible faithfully, if you will—has been a pretty important part of my life. Unlike many people, I didn’t grow up hearing Bible stories. The only time they were offered in my home was when they were the object of ridicule. I remember one scatological version of the Noah’s ark story that had my siblings and I rolling on the floor because elephant poop was just so darn funny. So while other kids were in Sunday School being taught to revere the Bible, I mostly learned nothing at all about it. I was almost 30 before I decided to see what this church thing was all about, and it was several years after that that I was given a “pop” Bible quiz in an adult Sunday School class–first five books of the Bible, who led the Hebrews out of Egypt, that sort of thing. I knew none of the answers and realized that if I was going to continue going to church I had to really have a look at this very peculiar book. Luckily for me, right about that time Pam and I were invited to join a Bible study in the home of some friends. That’s how I got into it. We don’t have time for me to tell you the whole story of what happened next, but I will say that I started a relationship with this book back then that continues to this day. And like all worthwhile relationships it’s sometimes been easy, sometimes irritating, at times confusing and at other times crystal clear. But through all that it has never seemed like a choice to me to just end the relationship. Now come clean yourself, enough commenting on other people. Let’s hear something about yourself. What kind of relationship do you have with the Bible?
JB—Funny you should put it in terms of relationship. If you want me to be serious, I think I do feel like the Bible is a friend in a way, but it wasn’t an instant friendship. Like you, I didn’t grow up reading the Bible or learning about it. In fact I think I had pretty negative feelings because a number of people I knew used the Bible to let me and most of my friends know that we were headed to hell, in my case because I was not a professing Christian and in the case of my friends because they were Jewish. So I didn’t get off to a good start with the Bible, but somewhere along the line I got curious—started reading on my own, took a course in college, found myself, as I learned more, moving from curiosity to fascination. Then somewhere further down the line, I realized that this book had gotten inside of me—maybe not all of it, but lots of it. And then still further down the line—and I don’t claim to understand how all of this happened—I realized that it was not only inside me, but that it had some kind of authority for me, not authority over me, but authority for me. Does it have authority for you?
JG—That would be one way to put it. I might also say it makes claims on me that I can’t ignore. That’s where authority comes in, isn’t it? I’m not sure I understand the distinction you’re making between authority “over” and authority “for”. When I follow both of those back they seem to add up to the same thing. But this brings up a very important point for me. The Bible is not one monolithic thing. It is a lumpy amalgamation of different kinds of material: histories, love poems, parables and morality tales, books of rules and laws, instructional stories meant to encourage particular behaviors by a particular people at a particular time. With this kind of a mix it is ripe for being misunderstood, and even riper for being misused. It was years after I began to read this book that I realized that not every part of it makes the same kind of claim on me. In particular, what began to emerge for me was a “story” behind the stories that had its own character, its own power, and contained a deeper kind of truth than many of the individual parts. I would then hear people state interpretations of particular passages, and my reaction would be something like “Yes, but….” As in, yes, that is what that passage literally says, but when you look at it from the vantage of the whole book its meaning takes on quite a different shape. In a sense that story behind the stories–which I have come to think of as my still meager but growing awareness of the nature of God the Creator–began to argue with and inform interpretations of each individual part of the Bible. That emerging “voice” if you will, is something I find very authoritative. In a way, the more it has emerged for me the less of the Bible I have had to hold a cautious arm’s length away. Does any of this match up with your experience?
JB–Yes, I think so. We may be using slightly different language, but coming out pretty much at the same place…I think. What I mean by authority for me but not over me is that I don’t see the Bible as some kind of outside power, telling me what I am supposed to think or do, where it’s my job to do nothing more than read and understand, salute, and obey. That would be authority over me. But authority for me is more like its being my companion as I try to deepen my understandings of God and as I seek out those beliefs that are going to govern my life. I resonate with you saying it has a claim on you. It has a claim on me too that doesn’t allow me to just walk away from it, no matter how much I might want to sometimes. There’s a story about a Jewish congregation just after WWII where the experience of the holocaust was very fresh, and the people in the congregation decided to put God on trial. And for three days, everyone brought every charge they had inside them against God and at the end of this process the rabbi got up and announced the verdict: that God was guilty of everything as charged. And then he said, “Now let us go and pray.” Sometimes I feel like that with the Bible. I can find it to be puzzling or outdated or boring. I can find it to be much worse than that. I can find its apparent meaning to be offensive and harmful. But I can’t just discard it. I say to myself, “Yes, yes, all that’s true. Now let me go read some more.”
Jim, can I ask you a sort of personal question? I know that for months at a time you have spent a significant time every day reading the Bible, studying and thinking about it, and writing down your thoughts or reactions. Do you mind saying what form your writing usually took. Did you actually write down your thoughts about the nature of God, or did you find yourself sort of carrying on a continuing conversation (or debate?) with what you were reading, or were you more introspective, exploring your own responses and asking why you reacted the way you did, or were you asking yourself as you were reading: “What does the Lord require?” Or…what. And also, how was your life different during those times you were engaged with the Bible every day, vs. those times when you were not?
JG—Glad to talk about it. Early on I discovered that, for me, reading a passage and then sitting down to think about it was way too unstructured. It is part of my personality to like—maybe even crave—structure, but this wasn’t just a matter of comfort. I found that I just didn’t get much out of it. It was too easy to treat it all rather superficially, or worse yet, to fall into some secondhand interpretation I had heard.
The solution for me came in the form of a study bible that has the margins filled with questions and cross references. Answering the questions forces me to slow down and spend some serious time with each passage. Sometimes I can tell that the authors of the questions have an agenda, and I will occasionally find myself “arguing” with them. But that doesn’t seem to cramp the process much. Because this bible is meant for study groups, the questions are divided into three groups for each passage: openers that are sometimes fairly quirky “conversation starters”, what they call “dig” questions that get into the meat of the passage, and then “reflect” questions that turn the passage back around to cast an often probing light on the reader’s personal life. It’s a structure that seems to work for me, keeping my study from being either too personal or too dry and academic.
It’s very hard to make broad statements about the nature of this interaction. For one thing it changes from day to day. Some days I’m feeling vulnerable and needy, others I’m pretty confident. Sometimes I get completely stuck and just have to admit that I don’t have a clue. Occasionally I feel the urge to dramatize whole scenes for myself in the process of answering these questions. Sometimes it’s all about “back then” and other times the real energy in the process is on what’s happening in my life right now. I find myself at a loss to characterize the whole process, except to say that it seems quite varied to me.
By the way, I have a couple of big, fat notebooks here containing studies from March through July of last year. If you would like to dip into them and see some of the places this process takes me you are welcome to do so. Just let me know if you are interested.
I do feel like I can answer that last question with some clarity. I am not a naturally optimistic and upbeat guy. Actually I carry out of my troubled childhood a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder and a strong tendency toward depression. In my almost 5 decades, I’ve had whole years when I was borderline suicidal. There has been a lot in my life that has testified to quite the opposite of what I read in the bible. And yet increasingly it is the bible that rings true for me. The more I read and study and understand, the more solid, rooted, optimistic, calm, and joyful I become. During the times when I stop reading and studying I can feel these traits (and many more besides) slipping away from me. That, perhaps, sounds a little too desperate. It really doesn’t have that edge these days. It’s just that I can feel myself subtly drifting away from the person I want to be. It seems to create a new hunger in me that draws me back.
JB—(a brief pause) I have to say I admire you. I admire anyone who can be that disciplined about anything, much less be so committed to interacting with the Bible that way on your own. But more than that I’m moved by your testimony about how the Bible calls you back to yourself, or what you feel to be your best self, the self you want to be. To me that’s a compelling statement, a lot more compelling than seeing the Bible as some kind of instructional book, you know…”THE BIBLE: A MANUAL FOR LIVING” or even worse, “A MANUAL FOR SALVATION”.
I guess I feel the need—since there seem to be a whole bunch of people listening to us talk up here—I feel the need to say that I don’t hear you saying that the Bible is the only pathway to find your true self, any more than it’s the only pathway to salvation. There can be true and real spiritual journeys that don’t include the Bible. If we were to say, “You must read the Bible. It’s good for you. You won’t be a good person until you do,” it would be using the Bible once again to beat up on people. But for some people it really is important—that word sounds so weak. For some people it’s crucial, life-changing. It has been for you.
It has been for me too. You know somewhere in Sojourners literature is a statement that says basically that we try here, with God’s help, to talk about things that matter. Well, of course, I suppose all churches would say that. And most people would say that. But, as you say, it’s really easy to get distracted. And the Bible is one of the things that calls me back when I get distracted. For me, I can be led to thinking about things that matter by a good movie, for sure by a good novel, and by lots of things, but the Bible is one of the places I keep going back to. I just have this “faith” that it’s necessary for me to keep going back, that somehow out of my encounters with the Bible, if I keep at it, the truths that claim me will emerge. What is true for me comes out of my encounter with this book—though of course it can come from elsewhere too.
JG—But I have to say one more thing, because what you and I have both said so far sounds pretty safe. I wholeheartedly agree that truth can be found in many different places. My formal schooling has all been in literature which I have found to be a very productive source of truth. And I want to add that my study is only sometimes that disciplined. I hit times when I find it impossible to go on studying and I just give it a rest; let it lie fallow if you will. When that first happened I felt a sense of loss and some fear that I might never return to it. But I do, and the on-again, off-again nature of my study has come to be a pattern that I now expect.
I want to talk about one other thing before we close. What I read in the Bible, and the effects it can have when anyone takes it seriously, have proven to me that it is not just the comforting, reassuring, socially calming force that many people believe it to be. As I sang “Amazing Grace” recently I was reminded that its author, John Newton, was a drunkard and a slave trader. Through this book he came to despise the life he had chosen for himself. In a matter of years he had quit the slave trade, become a minister, and eventually his powerful testimony before the king of England led directly to the outlawing of slavery throughout the British Empire. In San Salvador it was this book that gave Oscar Romero the courage to stand up for people suffering under a corrupt and murderous government. He was assassinated for his efforts. If you listen to any speech by Martin Luther King Jr. you will immediately know that this book lies at the foundation of his thinking and is the impetus for his courageous actions. And he was assassinated for it too.
But look at the passage that was being read when we first got started. Jesus has returned to his hometown and has been given the honor of reading the scripture in the synagogue. Little did the folks of Nazareth know that Jesus rarely found the easy, accepted interpretations when it came to the holy books. Within minutes, Jesus’ reading turned the scene from a celebration of the hometown-boy-made-good into a lynching. It’s clear that there is both great power and great risk in honestly encountering this particular book.
JB—Yes. Someone once said that what can be most troubling about reading the Bible is not the parts you don’t understand, but the parts you do understand. But even when that’s true, even when the Bible is leading me in my own small way out of my comfort zone, I know that these are voices I need to hear, even long to hear. So for me those voices that keep pointing me to the dreams of God, or that keep asking me to return to my own best self, are what keep me coming back to the Bible. I know there are lots of reasons not to read it. But in spite of everything, I can’t seem to put it aside. I keep hearing voices in this book that do claim me, voices that I know in my heart I need to hear…
The person sitting at the table at this point will stand slowly and read loudly:
“God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. God has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.”
The speakers will have left the “stage”, and when the reader is done, she’ll close the book and walk away.
Jim Bundy
Jim Gibson
March 17, 2002