2 Timothy 3:16-17
All scripture is God breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness. It teaches us what is right.
Romans 15:4
Everything that was written in the past was written to teach us so that we might have hope.
Last month I attended our region’s 2024 Annual Gathering. It was two and a half days of greeting old friends I don’t get to see very often any more as well as quite a few folks I’d never met before. I came home pretty excited by what I saw and heard there.
I was excited because all I had seen and heard, both in formal presentations and in personal conversations, showed me a gathering of people – young and older and everything in-between -- all dedicated to following the way Jesus had modeled for us 2000 years ago and equally dedicated to doing so right in the here and now, in this 21st century, in a world still battling poverty and racism and all the other -isms that keep us from living as one family of God.
The most exciting part for me was hearing all the new ways that churches are finding to BE church, to live in the way of Jesus. So many different ways, all of them based in love.
Two Sundays ago, I told you that I was getting frustrated with reading the same old scripture readings in the same old words over and over. and feeling like we weren’t really hearing the story of Jesus coming through anymore. Then I read some random readings from modern writers that I thought conveyed the same messages but in ways we could really hear.
Then last week we read the story of Pentecost Day as retold in a modern writer’s own words to show how much more REAL it became – not different, just more like something that actually could and did happen instead of a story someone told once upon a time.
All of which is to say that I’ve been thinking a lot lately about ways to study the bible without losing what is there for us to learn. I don’t believe it’s there for us to change at whim, but I do believe we are meant to interpret it freshly according to the places and times in which we live. This isn’t some new-fangled concept. Much of what is in the bible was interpreted and re-interpreted while the various books were still being written. Years later, ordinary humans determined which books they felt should be included and which excluded as not truly God’s word. It’s been going on for thousands of years!
It’s not a book of hard and fast rules for all time. It’s an on-going conversation between a living God and God’s people.
And all that re-interpretation is OK.
Author Rob Bell tells a wonderful story about an act of interpretation that occurred largely in his own imaginings. It’s too long to read here, so I’ll try for a shorter synopsis.
While cleaning out his basement he came upon a painting he had purchased years before. Not that it was great work of art, but simply because it was a perfect example of roadside kitsch – a painting of Elvis done on black velvet.
It appears the main reason he bought it was the sheer unconscious arrogance of the artist’s signature – a single large capital letter painted in the corner. To Bell, the artist seemed to be saying, “I don’t need to put my whole name here – this painting is so great that everyone should know my name!”
Letting his imagination carry his thoughts even further, Bell imagined the painter announcing to the world that that he or she had painted the world’s greatest painting and therefor there was no need for anyone ever to paint another – this one was perfect, and nothing could ever surpass it.
Bell likened this wild idea to those who insist that the bible was completed in its perfection 2000 years ago and that nothing of any value could ever be added to it. Not only that, but no new interpretations could ever add or subtract from those 2000-year-old understandings.
In Bell’s book (titled, obviously, Velvet Elvis) he tells his story and expands on it much more than I could in my drive-by discussion here. The point being, as I stated earlier, the Bible is an on-going conversation between a living God and God’s people.
It is not a dead document for us to obey, slavishly – with all its 2000 year old cultural references and beliefs – many of which we don’t “get” at all because what they refer to is no longer part of our everyday thinking. The Bible is a living thing from which we derive history and answers and hope to guide us in our own relationships with God.
I was excited because all I had seen and heard, both in formal presentations and in personal conversations, showed me a gathering of people – young and older and everything in-between -- all dedicated to following the way Jesus had modeled for us 2000 years ago and equally dedicated to doing so right in the here and now, in this 21st century, in a world still battling poverty and racism and all the other -isms that keep us from living as one family of God.
The most exciting part for me was hearing all the new ways that churches are finding to BE church, to live in the way of Jesus. So many different ways, all of them based in love.
Two Sundays ago, I told you that I was getting frustrated with reading the same old scripture readings in the same old words over and over. and feeling like we weren’t really hearing the story of Jesus coming through anymore. Then I read some random readings from modern writers that I thought conveyed the same messages but in ways we could really hear.
Then last week we read the story of Pentecost Day as retold in a modern writer’s own words to show how much more REAL it became – not different, just more like something that actually could and did happen instead of a story someone told once upon a time.
All of which is to say that I’ve been thinking a lot lately about ways to study the bible without losing what is there for us to learn. I don’t believe it’s there for us to change at whim, but I do believe we are meant to interpret it freshly according to the places and times in which we live. This isn’t some new-fangled concept. Much of what is in the bible was interpreted and re-interpreted while the various books were still being written. Years later, ordinary humans determined which books they felt should be included and which excluded as not truly God’s word. It’s been going on for thousands of years!
It’s not a book of hard and fast rules for all time. It’s an on-going conversation between a living God and God’s people.
And all that re-interpretation is OK.
Author Rob Bell tells a wonderful story about an act of interpretation that occurred largely in his own imaginings. It’s too long to read here, so I’ll try for a shorter synopsis.
While cleaning out his basement he came upon a painting he had purchased years before. Not that it was great work of art, but simply because it was a perfect example of roadside kitsch – a painting of Elvis done on black velvet.
It appears the main reason he bought it was the sheer unconscious arrogance of the artist’s signature – a single large capital letter painted in the corner. To Bell, the artist seemed to be saying, “I don’t need to put my whole name here – this painting is so great that everyone should know my name!”
Letting his imagination carry his thoughts even further, Bell imagined the painter announcing to the world that that he or she had painted the world’s greatest painting and therefor there was no need for anyone ever to paint another – this one was perfect, and nothing could ever surpass it.
Bell likened this wild idea to those who insist that the bible was completed in its perfection 2000 years ago and that nothing of any value could ever be added to it. Not only that, but no new interpretations could ever add or subtract from those 2000-year-old understandings.
In Bell’s book (titled, obviously, Velvet Elvis) he tells his story and expands on it much more than I could in my drive-by discussion here. The point being, as I stated earlier, the Bible is an on-going conversation between a living God and God’s people.
It is not a dead document for us to obey, slavishly – with all its 2000 year old cultural references and beliefs – many of which we don’t “get” at all because what they refer to is no longer part of our everyday thinking. The Bible is a living thing from which we derive history and answers and hope to guide us in our own relationships with God.
RSS Feed