Proper 16

In The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America, travel writer Bill Bryson tells of visiting Hannibal, Missouri, Mark Twain’s hometown.The house where the great writer grew up is still there. It’s a modest white clapboard house, tucked into the middle of Hannibal’s downtown. Next to it is the famous whitewashed picket fence from the novel, Tom Sawyer.

While he was visiting this historic home, Bryson fell into conversation with a fellow tourist. “What do you think of the place?” he asked.

“Oh, I think it’s great,” replied the man. “I always come here when I’m in Hannibal — two or three times a year. Sometimes I go out of my way to come here.”

“Really?” asked Bryson.

“Oh yes,” the man said. “I must have been here 20 or 30 times by now. This is a real shrine, you know.”

Bryson replied, “You must be a real fan and follower of Mark Twain. Would you say the house is just like he described it in his books?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said the tourist. “I wouldn’t have the foggiest notion. I’ve never read any of his books!”

Well, how does that happen, do you suppose? How does a man become a fan of a writer — enough to visit his home 20 or 30 times — without reading a single one of his books?

Maybe the guy saw a few movie adaptations — Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Or maybe he had the chance to watch the late Hal Holbrook impersonate the great raconteur in his one-man show, Mark Twain Tonight. Back in the day, Twain’s lecture tours were the closest thing 19th-century America had to stand-up comedy.

Even if the man did encounter Twain’s stories secondhand, it still doesn’t explain his enthusiasm. It seems very strange, indeed. No stranger, though, than the legions of Christians — even passionate, enthusiastic Christians — who only rarely pick up a Bible and read it!

Once upon a time, there was a good excuse for not reading the Bible. Back before Herr Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press that made mass-produced books possible, Bibles were as rare as hens’ teeth. They had to be laboriously copied out by hand. What most people knew of Bible stories — in medieval times, or even earlier — was based on sermons they’d heard in church, or maybe images they’d seen in stained glass.

That’s hardly true today. Stop by a bookstore or do an Amazon search, and you’ll see dozens of Bibles to choose from — different translations and all manner of special editions. Why, the Bible’s probably more accessible today, to a greater number of people on this planet, than it has ever been in human history.

So, why is it that we still live in a culture that reveres the very idea of the Bible, but knows so little about what’s in it?

In case you doubt that suggestion, consider this familiar quotation: “God helps those who help themselves.” Does the quotation come from the Bible?

If you answered, “yes,” you’re wrong. “God helps those who help themselves” occurs nowhere in the Bible. It was written by Benjamin Franklin and published in his Poor Richard’s Almanac.

Biblical illiteracy is everywhere!

In today’s Gospel, Jesus says: “It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life” (John 6:63).

Jesus is introducing a way to read the Scriptures that’s different from the fundamentalism of today. Rather than focusing on static, unchanging, uninterpreted words on a page, Jesus describes his own words as alive, inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Notice how he says, “the words that I have spoken to you.” Jesus isn’t talking about the written word. He’s talking about his own spoken word — and that word his church continues to receive, by the grace of God, as we faithfully and prayerfully read the Scriptures, pondering what the Lord may be saying to us through them.

So, how do we do that? How do we open ourselves to the inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spirit?

The first thing you must do is know where to begin reading.

“Well, that’s easy,” you may say to yourself. The only place to begin is at the beginning: Genesis, Chapter 1: “When God began to create the heavens and the earth …”

Those early chapters of Genesis do make pretty good reading. Stories like Adam and Eve in the garden, the Tower of Babel, Noah and the ark. Here you’ll find the lives of the patriarchs: Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah and Rachel. Right after that comes the thrilling set of stories known as the Joseph cycle: Joseph and his coat of many colors, sold into slavery, given up for dead, rising to the highest level of authority short of the Pharaoh — but deciding to use his powers for grace and forgiveness, rather than revenge.

You don’t get too far, though, in those first books of the Bible, before you come upon chapter after chapter of dreary, ancient laws. Then you come upon historical accounts of wars and conquests. Those stories fairly drip with blood. Some of them meet the contemporary definition of genocide — and it’s God’s people doing the killing! The Hebrew Scriptures not only mention such horrors, at times they even revel in them, claiming that such slaughter was carried out with the expert technical assistance of none other than God.

No doubt there’s something to be gained from every part of the Bible, but it takes an awful lot of interpretation to boil certain biblical stories down into food that nourishes our spirits today.

If you’re looking for a place to begin a daily Bible-reading discipline, choose a simple book like the Gospel of Mark. It shares the essential message of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection in simple fashion. Better to start there than in the Gospel of John. That book’s laden with some pretty heavy-duty theology, served up in the form of long discourses that can seem tedious and repetitious.

If you’re looking to delve into Paul’s letters, don’t start with the long ones like Romans and Corinthians, with their complex, sometimes ponderous, sentences. Try, instead, the beautiful little letter to the Philippians, which explores the subject of Christian love in some truly engaging ways.

And remember that the Bible is not a book. It’s a library.

That may sound obvious to anyone who’s ever tried — perhaps in Sunday school — to memorize the order of the books of the Bible. Most of us know, on some level, that the Bible’s a collection of individual books, written over the course of many centuries. Some of those books are history, some poetry, some philosophy, some letters sent by apostles like Paul to various churches. Then there are the strange, apocalyptic books like Daniel and Revelation. Those are something else altogether! Yet, because all those books are gathered together, encased in an elegant leather cover, we tend to forget this blazingly obvious fact. Unconsciously, we fall back into treating the Bible as a single book — which is not at all helpful.

That single-book approach wreaks havoc with our understanding of what we’re reading. Why? Because we simply have to know what sort of literature we’re dealing with, as we open any biblical book.

If you go down to your local public library looking for an automotive book to tell you how to change the oil in your car, but you end up in the poetry section instead, you’re not going to find what you’re looking for. By the same token, if you’re looking for a good biography and end up in the biology section by mistake, the only title that looks at all promising is one called, The Lives of a Cell. But when you open that one up, you’ll find it’s like no biography you’ve ever read!

The essential first step in letting a book of the Bible speak to you is determining what category the book belongs to. If you have the good fortune of owning a study Bible — offering a short introduction to each book, written by scholars who’ve translated the ancient Hebrew or Greek into English — you’ll go a long way towards finding God’s word to you in its pages.

If you’re the sort of person who likes to underline or highlight passages from books, there’s absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t do so with a Bible you’re using for study. And, if you happen to accidentally drop your Bible or lay another book on top of it, don’t give it a second thought. It’s no sacrilege! Bibles aren’t meant to be adored. They’re meant to be read, re-read, bookmarked, underlined — whatever you need to do to get deeply into the message.

Silent meditation and prayer are critical when reading the Bible. Don’t bite off huge chunks of the Scriptures. Focus instead on small, manageable pieces — a paragraph or two is about right. Pray for the Holy Spirit to guide your understanding, then read a passage, pause for reflection and read it again. Maybe even pause again, emptying your mind of stray thoughts, then read it a third time, concentrating on insights different from those you picked up earlier.

Think of yourself as being in conversation with the Lord as you read. “Lord, what do you want me to know or feel today?”

But far more important than getting any methodology just right is to go home, set aside a block of time, turn off your phone and open your Bible. A certain sportswear company has the motto, “Just do it!” When it come to the Bible, the best motto is, “Just read it!”