Words of faith
17/05/14 05:06
I’m not sure when I first was aware of the significance of the Bible in my life. My father read the Christmas story from the Bible that belonged to my grandfather as we sat around the piano and sang Christmas carols on Christmas Eve each year. My younger brother was born on Christmas Eve and I suspect that the tradition may have been related to making a kind of transition from the celebration of my brother’s birthday to the celebration of Christmas.
“And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.”
When I read or recite those words these days, I hear them in my father’s voice in my mind. I don’t know how many years of my life that tradition played out, but is is implanted deeply in my memory and identity.
I have mental pictures of the parade of ministers who served our church in my childhood. Rev. E. Brentwood Barker wore a black robe and read from the big pulpit bible. Rev. Ben Knopff had a smaller bible with a burgundy cover that he held in his hands. Rev. Joe LaDu read from several different translations of the bible and often had his text typed into his sermon manuscript. Rev. Steve Rolhoff was a return to reading from the pulpit bible.
I remember bible stories from Sunday school and Vacation Bible School. David defeated the giant Goliath with his slingshot. Moses carried the giant tablets of stone and he also parted the water of the red sea. Joshua played his trumpet and the walls fell down. Walls fell down again when Paul and Silas sang hymns in jail.
I remember the excitement and joy of discovering the academic study of the Bible as a college student. Dr. Dicken could present an entire lecture while filling and tamping his pipe. He’d light the lighter and hold it to his pipe and then at the last minute stop and make an important point. I don’t remember him smoking much in class, but he used the pipe as a way to draw our attention to what he was saying. I was a student of philosophy and enjoyed seeing how biblical themes informed great thinkers throughout history.
In seminary, Dr. Andre LaCocque ignited a passion for the words of the bible, their translation, their patterns, their sometimes hidden meanings. We spent a semester immersed in a word by word study of the first chapter of Genesis. The class was to be about the first two chapters, but we went for depth instead of breadth and didn’t make it that far. Every word received our full attention. We would be talking about how a word might be translated from Hebrew to English and Dr. LaCocque would start lecturing in French or Flemish. We had to remind him we did not speak those languages.
It was a heady and exciting time.
I graduated from seminar at about the same time as legionary preaching was experiencing a revival in mainline Protestant congregations. The Revised Common Lectionary was a tool for worship planners, cycling through the texts in a three-year pattern. I undertook the lectionary as a discipline for my preaching. The pattern stuck. I’m on my 13th trip through that cycle of texts and the readings seem as fresh and exciting to me as they did when I first began.
But there is a sense in which those ancient texts are coming alive for me in new ways as I experience this chapter of my life. I have officiated at funerals and sat at the bedsides of ill people for all of my career, but these days I notice that it is more common for the patient to be my age or younger. In recent months, I have been walking the journey of grief with two widowers who are about my age - one a little younger, the other a bit older. During that time there have been two life-changing accident injuries among the members of our church.
I went to bed last night thinking about a friend who will have surgery today to address injuries received when she literally had her feet knocked from under her. She has a concussion and a serious neck injury. I woke up this morning with 2 Corinthians 4 in my head:
“But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For while we live we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.”
I’ve been reading those words over and over for years, but somehow they have fresh meaning as life is teaching me much more about my own mortality. Illness, injury and death are not somehow things that happen to others to which I am immune. They are part of my human nature. But these words are deeper than that. In them are the seeds of the answer to our “Why?” questions. Why do the ones we love have to die? Why do bad injuries occur to good people? Why?
Of course, there are no easy answers to our “Why?” questions and sometimes we have to learn to live with the question rather than the answer.But part of the answer comes in the contrast between immortality and resurrection.Death is not some enemy to be escaped in the hopes of just going on forever. It is a deep transformation - a glorious change - an entrance into an entirely different realm that we are not able to imagine.
Knowing that we are mortal increases the value of the time that we do have in this life. Knowing that we are frail and easily broken heightens our joy in the things that we can do. Just thinking about death makes us more appreciative of life.
“Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.”
Even when the afflictions don’t seem to us to be slight or momentary, they are an invitation to look beyond for the things that are unseen and eternal.
“And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.”
When I read or recite those words these days, I hear them in my father’s voice in my mind. I don’t know how many years of my life that tradition played out, but is is implanted deeply in my memory and identity.
I have mental pictures of the parade of ministers who served our church in my childhood. Rev. E. Brentwood Barker wore a black robe and read from the big pulpit bible. Rev. Ben Knopff had a smaller bible with a burgundy cover that he held in his hands. Rev. Joe LaDu read from several different translations of the bible and often had his text typed into his sermon manuscript. Rev. Steve Rolhoff was a return to reading from the pulpit bible.
I remember bible stories from Sunday school and Vacation Bible School. David defeated the giant Goliath with his slingshot. Moses carried the giant tablets of stone and he also parted the water of the red sea. Joshua played his trumpet and the walls fell down. Walls fell down again when Paul and Silas sang hymns in jail.
I remember the excitement and joy of discovering the academic study of the Bible as a college student. Dr. Dicken could present an entire lecture while filling and tamping his pipe. He’d light the lighter and hold it to his pipe and then at the last minute stop and make an important point. I don’t remember him smoking much in class, but he used the pipe as a way to draw our attention to what he was saying. I was a student of philosophy and enjoyed seeing how biblical themes informed great thinkers throughout history.
In seminary, Dr. Andre LaCocque ignited a passion for the words of the bible, their translation, their patterns, their sometimes hidden meanings. We spent a semester immersed in a word by word study of the first chapter of Genesis. The class was to be about the first two chapters, but we went for depth instead of breadth and didn’t make it that far. Every word received our full attention. We would be talking about how a word might be translated from Hebrew to English and Dr. LaCocque would start lecturing in French or Flemish. We had to remind him we did not speak those languages.
It was a heady and exciting time.
I graduated from seminar at about the same time as legionary preaching was experiencing a revival in mainline Protestant congregations. The Revised Common Lectionary was a tool for worship planners, cycling through the texts in a three-year pattern. I undertook the lectionary as a discipline for my preaching. The pattern stuck. I’m on my 13th trip through that cycle of texts and the readings seem as fresh and exciting to me as they did when I first began.
But there is a sense in which those ancient texts are coming alive for me in new ways as I experience this chapter of my life. I have officiated at funerals and sat at the bedsides of ill people for all of my career, but these days I notice that it is more common for the patient to be my age or younger. In recent months, I have been walking the journey of grief with two widowers who are about my age - one a little younger, the other a bit older. During that time there have been two life-changing accident injuries among the members of our church.
I went to bed last night thinking about a friend who will have surgery today to address injuries received when she literally had her feet knocked from under her. She has a concussion and a serious neck injury. I woke up this morning with 2 Corinthians 4 in my head:
“But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For while we live we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.”
I’ve been reading those words over and over for years, but somehow they have fresh meaning as life is teaching me much more about my own mortality. Illness, injury and death are not somehow things that happen to others to which I am immune. They are part of my human nature. But these words are deeper than that. In them are the seeds of the answer to our “Why?” questions. Why do the ones we love have to die? Why do bad injuries occur to good people? Why?
Of course, there are no easy answers to our “Why?” questions and sometimes we have to learn to live with the question rather than the answer.But part of the answer comes in the contrast between immortality and resurrection.Death is not some enemy to be escaped in the hopes of just going on forever. It is a deep transformation - a glorious change - an entrance into an entirely different realm that we are not able to imagine.
Knowing that we are mortal increases the value of the time that we do have in this life. Knowing that we are frail and easily broken heightens our joy in the things that we can do. Just thinking about death makes us more appreciative of life.
“Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.”
Even when the afflictions don’t seem to us to be slight or momentary, they are an invitation to look beyond for the things that are unseen and eternal.