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Have you ever cried when scripture was read? I
have….and on more than one occasion. I remember as a pastor going through some
deep struggles with family and congregation. The strain was taking its toll on
my spirit. A friend had come to my
congregation to preach. Revelation 21 was read. The text spoke of a coming day
when every tear would be dried. That caused my eyes to flow! I was deeply moved
by the promise of Scripture.
When Ezra read the words from the law, the
people wept. But, then again, they also wept when they saw the foundation of
the second temple laid. Maybe they were just a bunch of crybabies! No. They
were deeply moved by these events. Anyway, this is how the story goes. After
Judah had returned home from exile in Babylon following a decree from Persian Emperor
Cyrus, they set out to rebuild the temple and to restore the community around
the Law of Moses. Ezra brought back from
Babylon a copy of the Torah or Law of Moses. As a priest and scribe of the Law
Ezra was intent on forming the identity of God’s people around the Torah.
It was the month of the autumn festival, known
as the Feast of Tabernacles or Booths, also known as Sukkot. Its origin was as
an agricultural festival. During Sukkot the people would live in booths made of
palm branches to remember their temporary dwelling places after their
liberation from Egypt. The people gathered at the Water Gate of Jerusalem to
listen to Ezra’s reading from the Torah. Now, when we read scripture it usually takes a minute or two at most. Ezra
came to a specially constructed wooden pulpit and read from the Torah from early
morning to midday. Even for such a long period, the people remained attentive. And the people wept at the reading. Not
because Ezra read scripture and interpreted it for around 5-6 hours! They didn’t weep because they had to stand
the whole time. The people of Judah wept because they understood the Law and
realized they had neglected it. They encountered God in the reading of the holy
Word.
Scripture is a primary medium through which we encounter God. Scripture plays many roles in the life of a
congregation; as sacred writings which shape the identity of the believing
community, as the church’s common language, as an ethical guidebook, as a history
of our spiritual ancestors, and as a standard for our beliefs. But, one of its
central roles in the church’s worship life is as a channel through which we meet
God.
Last Sunday we emphasized in God-centered
worship that encountering God is of primary importance. In this same vein, one
of the principal roles of scripture in the church’s worship life is as a medium
through which we encounter God. Encountering God through scripture is
reflected in the description of the Bible as “the Word of God.” The Bible
becomes a vehicle through which we listen for and hear the voice of God.
At the same time, to conflate or equate “the
Bible” with “the Word of God” is a bit misleading. “The Word of God” is far more than the
written text of the Bible. Some early Anabaptists made a clear and important
distinction between the Inner Word and the Outer Word, that is, between the
Word of God in scripture and the Word of God within the human heart. This distinction is expressed by Anabaptist
Hans Denck when he said, “I value the Holy Scripture above all human treasures,
but not as high as the Word of God.” More broadly speaking, the “Word of God” is
God’s self-communication in whatever form that may come. That occurs through the channels of the incarnate
Word, Jesus Christ, the written Word, the Bible, the proclaimed Word in
preaching, the witness of the Word in human testimony, the inner Word of the
heart and spirit, and creation’s Word, God’s voice in nature. God’s voice
speaks in many and diverse ways, says the author of Hebrews, but in these last
days has spoken through a Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus is God’s primary Word to the
world. In worship Scripture witnesses to
Jesus Christ, God among us, and is primarily a means through which we encounter
God. And if we take the view of some early Anabaptists seriously, we will seek
to encounter the Word of God not simply as words read from a page, but as God’s
Word encountered within our hearts and spirits. The Bible is not to be an
object of worship, but a channel through which we encounter God, who alone is
worthy of our worship.
Bread and Bible are two primary places where the church encounters
God in worship. The story of the two disciples who encounter
Jesus while walking on the Emmaus road is a story reflecting Bread and Bible,
Communion and Scripture in worship. New Testament scholars have noted how
Luke’s story of the Emmaus Road is more than a simple historical account of two
disciples’ post-resurrection encounter with the risen Jesus. The story is
shaped by Luke to reflect two arenas in the early church’s worship life where
they encountered the risen Christ: in Bread and Bible or Communion and
Scripture .
Two disciples, one identified as Cleopas, met
Jesus in cognito on the road to
Emmaus. Their eyes were kept from recognizing him. When
are our eyes kept from recognizing the risen Christ in our midst when we go
about our life journeys or worship together? They talked with the stranger
about what happened to Jesus, how he was a prophet, was condemned to be
crucified, was expected to be the one to redeem Israel. A group of women went
to his tomb, saw the body was missing, and had a vision of angels. And besides….. (a dramatic pause should be
inserted here)….besides, it is now the third day since these things took place!
The third day, the day of resurrection, Sunday, the Lord’s Day, the day when the church gathers for worship.
Basically, the two disciples are the church retelling the Jesus story. Isn’t
this a significant part of what the church does at worship….retell the story of
Jesus? And notice Jesus response….how foolish not to see all of this within
the Hebrew Scriptures. And beginning with Moses and the prophets, Jesus interpreted
how he is related to the Torah and the Prophets. Isn’t this the church at worship proclaiming and interpreting the
Scriptures? And didn’t the two disciples say later, when their eyes were
opened to the presence of Christ, “Were not our hearts burning within us…while
he was opening the scriptures to us?” Here
is the church encountering the living Christ in the reading and proclamation of
the Word. The scriptures were not dead history or dry recitation to the
early church, but rather a living testimony to the risen Christ that burned in
their hearts.
For Mennonites and Protestants in general the
Word plays a central role in worship. Catholics and the Reformed Tradition also
include Sacrament, Eucharist, Communion, or the Lord’s Table as an equally
important element of worship. The centrality of Communion and Scripture is
reflected in the Emmaus story. The
sun began to set behind the purple hills. The two disciples invite Jesus to
their home, the place where the early church would meet for
worship. Together they sat at table. Is this a common meal? Who is the host
of their table? You would think it was Cleopas or his friend. No. Jesus is the
host at this table, as he is at the
church’s communion table. Note Luke’s wording of Jesus actions at the table
meal. It sounds like a liturgical script. He
took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Isn’t this the same
wording used of Jesus’ Last Supper and in Paul’s description of the early
church’s communion (1 Corinthians 11)? And when the bread was broken and
shared….their eyes were opened and they recognized him? Isn’t this a description of the early church’s recognition of Jesus’
presence at Communion? Bread and Bible, Communion and Scripture, the
primary places the church encounters the living Christ in worship.
Scripture-shaped worship can enhance the potential for
encountering God and Christ in worship. Since scripture is a medium for encountering
God, shaping our liturgy around the scripture is essential for worship. Let’s survey some ways in which we shape our
worship through Scripture.
·
The
Christian year and the Lectionary cycle. I grew up
in a church tradition that did not celebrate the entire Christian year or
utilize a lectionary of scripture readings in its worship planning. We
celebrated Easter and Christmas, as did the society around us, and the preacher
chose his own favorite texts throughout the year.
Over my years as a pastor I have come to truly appreciate the
Christian Year that begins with Advent and culminates with the season after
Pentecost and the Reign of Christ Sunday. It serves not only as an alternative
to the secular calendar, but is a profound practice for shaping the worship
life of a congregation. The Christian
Year sets our lives within liturgical time, the seasons of the life of Christ.
I didn’t notice how much the Christian Year had shaped my life
until I was no longer in a pastorate.
Working for our denomination for 7 years I travelled a lot and missed
out on participating in the liturgical cycle of the Christian Year. There were times when I would come upon
Easter and feel unprepared or Pentecost would come and go and I had done
nothing to celebrate it. And I felt a bit disoriented, out of time, off beat,
missing an important rhythm of my life. The Christian Year can shape our lives
around scripture.
The Christian Year fits into the wider framework of a three year
liturgical cycle of scripture readings, known as the lectionary. Years A, B, and C include readings from the
four gospels, the Old Testament, the Psalms, and the Epistles. By following the three year cycle and reading
each of the assigned scripture texts a congregation will have heard a good
portion of the Bible. The lectionary has
its limitations though. The combination of texts on any given Sunday is
supposed to fit a common theme, but often the choices are arbitrary and the
texts don’t fit together. The Old Testament is not appreciated for its own
light, but serves primarily as illumination of the New Testament. Much of the
OT is ignored and good portions of the NT left out. But, abandoning the lectionary and relying on
the preacher’s arbitrary choice of favorite texts is far less helpful. The
lectionary is a significant liturgical tool for shaping the church’s worship
life around scripture.
·
The
Liturgy. Scripture can become used in the diverse elements
of worship; prayer, praise, preaching, and blessing. Appropriate biblical texts
can be used to call the people to worship, introduce the offering, or as a
benediction. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you.
The various elements of the Sunday order of worship itself can be shaped by
scriptural language. As we share these
first fruits of our offerings, Lord, we seek to be cheerful givers. Prayers
can reflect biblical language or allude to specific scriptures.
In a post-Christendom culture that is becoming more and more
biblically illiterate, the need to share in the stories, language, and images
of the Bible becomes even greater. An important part of being a Christian is to
know and understand the language of our Christian faith, which is drawn from
the Bible. The world around us speaks a different language. We spend most of
our time bombarded in the magazines, on TV, on the internet by the world’s
language of success, power, happiness, self-help, individual rights, cyberspace,
networking, and bootstrap philosophy. If the church doesn’t practice speaking its
own language, it can lose or fail to understand its rhetoric of creation,
redemption, sin, salvation, forgiveness, reconciliation, faith, the body of
Christ, and judgment. The church needs to immerse itself in its own language
not only to understand its own faith, but to understand the world around it.
Various religious and ethnic groups have their own “holy
language.” For Muslims it’s Arabic, the true language of the Koran. For
Catholics it used to be Latin as heard in the mass. At one time German Mennonites feared that
losing their language was tantamount to losing their faith, which was not the
case. But, there is a real sense in
which if the church loses its language to
some degree it loses its faith. I say this knowing that we can to some
extent translate Christian language into the language of the world and knowing
that translation of biblical and Christian language is an important task of the
church, particularly in mission and evangelism. But, as anyone who speaks
another language than English knows, many words lose a great deal of their
meaning in the translation. The liturgy of worship is one place where we can
hear, learn, speak, and practice our own language; the language of the church
shaped by scripture.
·
Scripture
reading. It
made me sigh when I recently read this statement: More time is spent in most congregational worship services making
announcements than in reading scripture. What does that say about the role
of scripture in worship? I’m afraid that within the Free Church or
non-liturgical traditions scripture reading has not played a significant role
in the church’s worship life. In the congregation I grew up in, I don’t
remember scripture ever being read aloud in the service. Oh, there were
references and allusions to scripture throughout the service and occasionally
read during the sermon, but the public reading of scripture on its own was not
a part of our worship practices. Was public reading of scripture part of
traditional Mennonite worship service?
Scripture reading is a most important liturgical practice. The
early church did not have printed Bibles or personal scrolls to read in
private. Christianity emerged in an oral culture. Sacred stories, texts and
traditions were passed down orally. Most Christians were illiterate. What we
have as books and epistles of the Bible were read aloud in the house churches
by the few literate members. Reading sacred texts in worship gatherings was a
most significant practice in forming the church’s identity within the world.
We
have come to approach the public reading of scripture with the casualness of a stroll
through the park on a sunny day. Some approach the public reading of scripture
like they were reading a newspaper ad…written in Chinese! On occasion, I have
heard scripture texts read in Sunday worship that made tears well up in my eyes….not
like the reading I mentioned when Revelation 21 was read, but from a fumbled,
weak voiced, apologetic, unpracticed, nonchalance in the reading the church’s
sacred texts! The public reading of scripture is a sacred task to be soaked in
prayer and practice. Remember, this is a major channel through which the church
encounters God.
·
Proclamation
of the Word. Preaching is an essential practice of
the church’s worship life, particularly among Protestants and Mennonites. If I
had time, I would love to have a conversation with you about why I am convinced
that since preaching is a ministry of the church and not just the pastor,
preaching needs to become more of a communal and conversational practice, a
subject about which I wrote my doctoral dissertation.
Preaching occupies a central place in our worship services. There
are different and legitimate approaches to preaching; topical, pastoral,
doctrinal, ethical, and biblical. I want to focus on biblical preaching, since
it clearly reflects one of the different roles of Scripture in worship.
Biblical preaching takes the ancient Word and makes it the Modern
Word. It translates then to now with a focus upon applying God’s
Word to our own context today. After
Ezra read for 5 or 6 hours from the Torah, there was interpretation. They explained the meaning of the words that were
read from the Torah “so that the people understood the reading.” Preaching is
an act of interpretation, so that we can understand the meaning of our sacred
texts. When the people of Judah heard
the words and their interpretation, “all the people wept.” There was an inner
experience, a touching of the heart, and encounter with God through the written
Word. Preaching strives to become that kind
of channel through which the people hear the voice of God speaking to them,
they encounter the Spirit of the risen Christ, and their hearts are touched.
Shaping our worship through scripture is not an end in itself. We
don’t do it simply so we can say “we
are a people of the Bible.” Rather, we shape worship by scripture because
scripture is a primary means of God’s self-revelation to us. When Ezra read the Torah and the people wept,
they were encountering God. When the two disciples on the road to Emmaus had
the Scriptures opened to them and they broke bread together, they encountered
the risen Christ. We seek to shape our worship through Scripture because it is
a most significant means for encountering God.
And
all the people answered, “Amen, Amen.”
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