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St. Luke’s United Methodist Church
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Now you have observed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my
faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, my persecutions and
suffering the things that happened to me in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra.
What persecutions I endured! Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them.
Indeed, all who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be
persecuted. But wicked people and impostors will go from bad to worse,
deceiving others and being deceived. But as for you, continue in what
you have learned and firmly believed, knowing that who you learned it,
and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able
to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All
scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof,
for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who
belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work. (II
Timothy 3: 10-17).
In 1996, the General Conference of the United Methodist Church apologizes to the Southern Cheyenne and Southern Arapahoe nations for the Sand Creek Massacre. The Sand Creek event occurs on November 29, 1864 near Cheyenne Wells, Colorado. Two hundred men, women, and children are slaughtered while in the act of surrender. John Chivington, a former Methodist minister, is in command. The Oprah Winfrey producers pick up the story and invite representatives of the church and the tribal councils to be a part of the “I’m sorry” show. One man whose ancestors owned slaves apologizes for slavery to the descendants of those who were owned. A father says “I’m sorry” to a daughter for abandoning her. The United Methodist Church apologizes for the Sand Creek Massacre. I represent the church. When I arrive in Chicago for the taping, the Oprah Show puts me in a hotel on the Miracle Mile, an incredible cityscape of shops, eateries, parks, and urban living. I spend most of the afternoon people-watching from a coffee shop window. When I buy my coffee, the wait person greets me. “Shalom.” “Shalom to you”, I respond. “I love your ring, Janet. You are a daughter of the covenant?” She is admiring my ring. My name is spelled in Hebrew. The ring is crafted by an artist on one of my visits to Israel. Before answering, I wonder, “She thinks I’m Jewish. What is my response? Am I a daughter of the covenant? Of course, I am. She and I, we share stories that reveal for us who God is and how God relates to God’s people. It is called covenant.” “Yes, I am a daughter of the covenant.”, I smile, as if we share a secret that no one else knows. We are sisters. It is a fact of my biblical autobiography. Each of us has a biblical autobiography. We have a relationship to the Bible that changes over time as the text shapes us. Whether we are new to faith or have a life-long journey, this is our story. Faith development theory tells us that, as children, we appropriate faith through story. The evening ritual in my house growing up is the selection of two stories, a story from the Bible and a story from a Golden book. My brother and I alternate choosing. I know the Bible stories because I spend hours leaning on my mother while she reads. I remember the first day of Sunday School in the fall of my third grade year. We are scattered on the floor around the teacher. She begins to talk about a book that is a collection of different kinds of stories. There are battles and war; there are legends and folk tales; there are break-your-heart love stories; there are jokes, puns, riddles, and poems; there are directions for getting along with your brothers and sisters; there is information about what you might want to be when you grow up. I think, “How exciting! This year is going to be great! We aren’t doing any of those kid things anymore. We’re going to get the real thing.” When she holds up her Bible, I feel gullible. I am, admittedly, disappointed. I scoff, “There are no jokes in the Bible. I know those stories!” My teacher overhears me. “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” I never think that anything in the Bible can be funny! “Well,” I counter. “I know that are no romances. It’s a book about God.” And she says, “Yes, it is a book about people and their encounter with God. But it is also a book about people trying to understand each other.” “See me after class, “ she winks. “I’ll show you the love story.” After class, she reads to me from the Song of Songs. “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth!” I feel like she has taken the Bible out of its plain brown wrapper. “Upon my bed at night, I sought him whom my soul loves.” Surely, this is not the version of the Bible that sits on our coffee table at home! This cannot be the edition in the sanctuary upstairs. I hear none of the worship service that day. I am ticked when we have to stand for singing or close our eyes for prayer. The Song of Songs is compelling, scandalous reading! I cannot believe that our minister knows about this stuff! Why would my mother keep this part of the Bible a secret? What else is in this book? I miss the next stage of faith formation. Adolescent years are about belonging to a community with shared beliefs and commitments. My family moves to the other side of the Capitol Beltway in northern Virginia. I attend a different high school from the other youth at church. I am shy and feel more and more left out. Going to church is painful. So I strike a bargain with my parents. I will stay home on most Sunday mornings and practice the piano. I will attend church with the family on holidays, the days when lots of other strangers attend as well. My journey with the Bible stops in favor of Beethoven, Chopin, and Bach. I miss the stage of conforming. I remain a sideliner during college. Upon graduation from East Carolina, the new piano teacher, Janet, marries the new band director, Mike. We move to a small town, join a church, and sing in the choir. We are very intentional about learning together, about getting things right. We want to understand what the church believes and what the Bible says. We want to build our marriage on a foundation of faith. The theory of faith development says that you cannot skip a stage in your formation. So I am ready to pick up the stage of learning about and conforming to my church’s beliefs. But I am at the age of individuation, where people have to determine what part of their childhood faith are they going to take into the future. Everything is scrutinized. Much is left behind. So I begin to reject my liberal Methodist upbringing, thinking it soft and uneducated. I decide to embrace the Bible wholeheartedly. As an act of will, I believe it, every bit of it. My husband and I join with other young couples in a Bible Study group that is literal in its methodology. I am learning what it means to be a biblical wife and mother, a true helpmate, submissive and supportive. Since a piano teacher works in the evenings, I spend my mornings with television Bible teachers. When difficulties begin to arise, I do not have a flexibility of categories with which to understand myself in relationship to God or to the Bible. When I cannot conceive, I fear for my salvation, since I Timothy teaches that “women will be saved through child-bearing.” I cannot fathom a place for me at the table of faith when my husband begins to struggle with his orientation. Submission is no longer a viable choice. In that small town, the end of our marriage is scandalous. A few of the saints in the congregation say cruel things about divorcees. And I turn my back on the whole lot. Mike and I go our separate ways to graduate school. I leave God, the church, and the Bible behind me when I drive out of town. Or so I think! Do I not understand that while attending a graduate school of religion, I will have to study the Bible? Well, yes. But graduate school is simply a holding pattern until I can heal and determine what in the world I’m going to do with my life! So, I leave behind my naivete. I am so angry with God that my “Cinderella-Prince Charming-Song of Songs” life is a sham that I begin my studies with a thrown gauntlet. “OK, ‘Word of God’, I dare you to have anything to do with me.” I am now truly individuating. I am determining what I am going to carry into the future. Then I read Genesis in Hebrew and discover a whole new world. Each day’s vocabulary list opens new windows. Adam gets his name from adamah, the dust of the earth. At least one of the words for God, elohim, is plural. The word for eye also means “fountain of water,” and the word for rib can also be interpreted “side room,” which tells me that Eve is created from one whole side of Adam’s nature. After that, I am hooked. I can not read the simplest passage in the Old or New Testaments without wondering what the words really mean. I find acrostic psalms that read like crossword puzzles in Hebrew and puns that are audible only in Greek. For the first time I begin to pay attention to the dissimilarities between the four gospels, wondering why each of them tells Jesus’ story in a different way. Why do Mark and John skip the birth stories? Why does Matthew leave out the shepherds? And why does Luke leave out the wise men from the East? Why are the last words that John and Luke put on Jesus’ lips different from Matthew’s and Mark’s? The more I discover what is there, the more I discover what is not. Adam and Eve eat “forbidden fruit” in Eden, but nowhere in the Bible is an apple mentioned. Jacob makes a long-sleeved robe for his favorite son, Joseph, not a coat of many colors. Matthew describes travelers from the East who bear gifts to Bethlehem, but “We Three Kings” is pure invention. All of this excites me, because there is clearly much more to the Bible than I have ever expected, and exploring it demands more of me as well. I do not have to settle for memorizing the books of the Old Testament in order or reciting passages from John. I can take the text apart and put it back together again without being struck by lightning. The word of God turns out to be plenty strong enough to withstand my curiosity or my anger. Every time I poke it, it pokes me back. Every time I wrench it around so I can see inside, it springs back into shape the moment I am through. In short, the Bible turns out NOT to be either a fossil under glass or a unquestioned book of dos and don’ts, but a thousand different things – a mirror, a scythe, a hammock, a lantern, a pair of binoculars, a high diving board, a bridge, a goad – all of them offering themselves to me to be touched and handled and used. I fall in love with my story all over again. I discover grace and forgiveness. I am a daughter of the covenant, after all. At St. Luke’s, I plan to welcome all biblical pilgrims, all sons and daughters of Zion, to the table. If you were raised in a more fundamental tradition, you will have a significantly different pathway from me. But I will learn from your journey and be enriched. As a congregation, our relationship with the Bible will not be rule book or romance. It will be marriage, and one that we are willing to work on in all the usual ways: *by living with the text day in and day out, *by listening to it and talking back to it, by making sure we know what is behind the words it speaks and being certain that we have heard it properly, *by refusing to distance ourselves from the parts we do not like or understand, *by letting our love for it show in the everyday acts of life. The Bible is not an object; it is a partner, whose presence blesses us, challenges us, and affects everything we do. I encourage you to consider in-depth Bible study this year. If you are new to Christianity and do not know the stories, sign up for Disciple 1. You will read about 80% of the text itself in a community of fellow pilgrims. If you want to know what the church believes…if you want to know what you believe, sign up for Christian Believer, an exciting new course that traces the development of Christian thought. It only takes the investment of one year to make this book your own.
Will this be your year? |