Welcome to the Bible - Softcover

Black, Vicki K.; Wenner, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0819222364 ISBN 13: 9780819222367

Publisher: Morehouse Publishing, 2007

Synopsis

New Episcopalians may be nervous about opening the Bible; others simply don't know how to begin. An often-overlooked gift of the Episcopal Church is that the texts and doctrines of the Bible are embedded in its prayers, liturgies, and creeds. Making that knowledge explicit and placing it in context can open the way for further and more in-depth study.

About this title

About the Authors

Vicki K. Black is a writer, editor, and book designer. She is the author of Welcome to the Bible, Welcome to the Book of Common Prayer, and Welcome to the Church Year, three popular church titles all published by Morehouse. She and her family live in Maine.

Peter Wenner is an Episcopal priest in the Diocese of Massachusetts. He lives in Newton, Massachusetts.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Welcome to the Bible

By Vicki K. Black Peter W. Wenner

Church Publishing Incorporated

Copyright © 2007 Vicki K. Black and Peter W. Wenner
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8192-2236-7

Contents

Chapter One

The Bible as the Church's Book

You can tell a lot about the character of the church you are in simply by looking around you. In an Episcopal church you will see a variety of "accessories" to worship: a table or altar in prominent position at the front or center; a cross or crucifix; a pulpit from which sermons are preached; an organ or piano or other instruments to support the musical dimension of the worship, including the singing of hymns and anthems; a baptismal font. You may also see stained glass windows, often portraying stories from the Bible or church history, and perhaps a banner or painting or other kind of decoration.

You will also usually see something called a lectern: once called a reading desk, it is the usual place from which Bible passages are read aloud in the service. At one time it might have been one of the levels of an imposing "three-decker pulpit"; today lecterns vary from elaborately carved stone edifices, complete with microphone and reading lamp, to simple wooden stands. Lecterns are often molded in the shape of an eagle, the symbol of John the evangelist. No matter how grand or simple, the lectern is the place where something of great importance—something essential to the worship service—happens: the church community, gathered in worship, hears the words of its Holy Scriptures read aloud.

Encountering the Bible in an Episcopal Church

In some Episcopal churches you will find copies of the Bible available in the pews or chairs where worshipers sit, but more often there will be only the Book of Common Prayer, The Hymnal 1982, and perhaps other hymnbooks used for congregational singing. So it might seem that the Bible receives short shrift in Episcopal worship services, and is of lesser importance than might appear to be the case in other churches that provide copies of the Bible for use during the service. To the contrary, Episcopal services are permeated with the words, images, stories, and theologies of the Bible. Indeed, the Bible is far more central and foundational to Episcopal prayer and worship than even many Episcopalians themselves know. To see why, we need to look briefly at the prayer book that shapes the worship of the Episcopal Church, the Book of Common Prayer.

The first Book of Common Prayer was largely composed by Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and authorized for use in England in 1549. Although it was a new prayer book for a newly Protestant church, its prayers and liturgies were not written from scratch—far from it. Cranmer and his fellow revisers of the Book of Common Prayer drew from a large body of liturgical resources, both ancient and contemporary. Perhaps the most influential source was the Sarum rite in use at the cathedral in Salisbury and that spread throughout England. Some of the rites in the 1549 Prayer Book go back to the early church; others date from the early medieval period, during which the liturgies of the church were expanded and elaborated. By the mid-sixteenth century a number of prayers and services had already been translated into English from the Latin used by the Catholic Church, and Cranmer incorporated these into the new English Prayer Book as well.

The members of the English church who yearned for a prayer book in English were, of course, part of a much larger movement for reform sweeping the church. One of the fundamental tenets of this Reformation was the call for both the liturgies and the Holy Scriptures of the church to be available to the people in a language they understood, rather than the Latin known only to the clergy and the learned. After decades of fitful and individual efforts to translate various portions of the Bible in English—translations that were sometimes then forbidden, depending on the leanings of the monarchy at the time—in 1534 the English church petitioned King Henry VIII to commission the translation of the entire Bible into English. Such a royal warrant was not forthcoming, but in the following year Miles Coverdale published the first complete English Bible, nevertheless dedicated to the king, which incorporated the work of earlier translators such as William Tyndale. Although subsequent translations have long since replaced his version in Anglican worship, the beautiful Coverdale Psalter has remained in constant use and is the basis for the Psalter in our 1979 Book of Common Prayer.

Thomas Cranmer wrote the preface to one of the early revisions of the English Bible that followed in 1539/1540, known as the Great Bible, which was also largely the work of Miles Coverdale as well as other scholars of that time. These English translations were soon banned in 1546, as supporters of the classic Latin translation of the Bible, the Vulgate, regained a political foothold in those tumultuous times, but under Edward VI use of the English Bible was allowed once again.

We see this Reformation concern for the Bible to be available to the people in a language they understood in one of the prayers of Cranmer, composed for the 1549 Book of Common Prayer:

Blessed lord, which hast caused all holy Scriptures to bee written for our learnyng; graunte us that we maye in suche wise heare them, read, marke, learne, and inwardly digeste them; that by pacience, and coumfort of thy holy woorde, we may embrace, and ever holde fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast geven us in our saviour Jesus Christe.

In the 1979 Book of Common Prayer we read this collect (a prayer that "collects" the themes or images of the day or event) near the end of the Season after Pentecost, just before the beginning of Advent. But this collect was originally associated with the second Sunday in Advent, and foreshadows part of the reading from the epistle to the Romans that would also have been heard at worship services on that day: "Whatsoever thinges are written aforetime, they are written for our learning, that we through pacience, and comfort of the scriptures, might have hope" (Romans 15:4).

The collect not only highlights the value the reformers placed on the reading of Scripture, but also is a good example of the way in which the words and images of the Bible are seamlessly intertwined with prayers and liturgies in Anglican prayer books. One of the liturgical scholars responsible for our 1979 Prayer Book, Marion J. Hatchett, notes that the rather pointed use of the word "all" in the phrase "who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning" recalls Cranmer's criticism in the first Prayer Book's preface regarding the late medieval church's practice of keeping so many saints' days that the reading of the books of the Bible in course was constantly interrupted. Cranmer made sure that in the 1549 Prayer Book almost the entire Bible was read in an orderly arrangement during the course of each year in the Daily Office.

Cranmer likewise placed the "Table and Kalendar for Psalms and Lessons, with necessary rules pertaining to the same" at the very beginning of the Book of Common Prayer, just after the preface. He noted that during the services of Matins (Morning Prayer) and Evensong (Evening Prayer), the Old Testament "shall be read through every year once, except certain books and chapters, which be least edifying, and might best be spared" (such as chapters listing genealogies—Genesis 10, for example—and large parts of Leviticus). The New Testament, except for the book of Revelation, would be read three times each year. Thus from the time of the Reformation, Anglicans heard the stories and words of the Bible in the language they understood, as part and parcel of their prayer and worship.

Those of us who joined the Episcopal Church after 1979 may not be aware that in previous prayer books the texts of the Scripture readings for the Sunday liturgy were actually included in full. Today we have only the references to which readings occur on a certain Sunday or holy day, and instead the passages are read from a Bible or book of lectionary texts. When Cranmer first wrote the Book of Common Prayer, however, Bibles were not as abundantly available as they are now, and it was the custom in medieval prayer books and missals to print the Scripture lessons within the services themselves. Thus these earlier prayer books were more of a "combination book" of prayers and selections from the Bible, and perhaps this format made the scriptural foundations of Anglican worship more obvious. We can still recognize the words, images, and theology of the Bible in our prayers and services, and they become even more readily apparent when we come to know the Bible better. The words and images of the Bible are absolutely central to each liturgy in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer; indeed, we might go so far as to say that the services of the Prayer Book are simply a way of praying the Bible, day by day. Episcopalians who participate in the church's worship and prayer regularly will thus come to know the words and images of the Bible very well indeed, perhaps by heart.

We might enjoy hearing these distant echoes in our liturgies, yet if we do not know the Bible itself well enough to recognize their source, then we miss much of their depth and richness of meaning. As beautiful or haunting or compelling as these words may be, they may also seem to be simply the words of people from a different time and place. How do we who pray the words of Scripture in our liturgies come to speak those words as our words, come to know the biblical story as our story?

The Bible's Story, Our Story

At the heart of the Bible is the story of God's people and their ongoing relationship with the God who created them, invited them into relationship, saved them, and forgave them. Within this larger story are hundreds of stories of individuals, rulers, prophets, disciples, and philosophers. And for Christians, at its very core is the story of the Messiah (from Greek, Christ), who is Jesus, the Incarnation ("in the flesh") of God.

Many of the stories of the Bible are skillfully and beautifully told, with the power to arouse in us a yearning to know the God of whom they speak. But at the same time these stories are very old, and it might seem that we need stories from a more contemporary time to describe our vision of God and God's relationship with the human race. And, as it happens, we do tell those stories as well. In the church we are continually seeking to bring together the old stories of the Bible—the foundation of our faith—with our own encounters and perceptions of God in the world around us.

This dialogue between Scripture and our lives today takes many forms. It may happen in a formal way in the worship of the church, as preachers and listeners wrestle with the day's readings from the Bible and the wisdom they offer for contemporary life. It may come about in works of fiction, as in the stories of Flannery O'Conner or Frederick Buechner, as these authors create contemporary characters who embody the biblical encounter with God. The dialogue may develop in a Bible study or discussion group, as people tell their stories of an emerging faith and connect them with the stories told in the Bible. Or it may occur as a scientist or historian or theologian seeks to interpret the teachings of Scripture in a way that makes sense for us today. In all of these conversations between the stories of the Bible and the stories we live today, the Bible is a touchstone or compass that continually helps us to orient ourselves to the God who is revealed in the biblical stories, as well as to discover in the events of our lives the presence and activity of that God.

The Bible is a living book. While the written text of the Christian Scriptures was formally set during the first three centuries after Jesus lived and died, the interpretation of the texts and their connections to the particular concerns of each era of history continues. The Apostles' and Nicene Creeds, for example, were an attempt to render the teachings of Scripture in ways of thought that were very familiar to the Greek and Roman Christians who recited them. Each age, in some sense, tells the Bible's story over again; yet we retain the original and foundational stories because taken as a whole they have a certain kind of completeness.

Just as none of the books of the Bible tells the whole story (even the story of Jesus is told in four different ways) and just as it took many centuries for the whole story to be told, so each age of human history tells its own portion of the story. But each age must also have the rest of the story if it is to understand and embrace the truth about the God who is revealed in the Bible. Indeed, many people over the centuries have considered the finalization of the list of writings included in the canon of Scripture during the fourth and fifth centuries a tragic event, for such a closing of the canon implies that the revelation of God in human history ended with the era of the apostles. Ralph Waldo Emerson used the phrase "not spake but speaketh" to convey his belief that the revelation of God to human beings did not cease when the limits of the Bible were set. Does God no longer speak to and through the human race? What if we were told that the letters we write, the stories we tell, the sermons we preach, the histories we compile, the prayers we pray, the hymns we sing might one day become part of the canon of Christian Scripture describing the activity and presence of God among us now? How would we live our faith differently? How would our views of the stories of the Bible change?

There are, of course, passages in the Bible that are difficult for those of us living in the contemporary world to understand or embrace. The depiction of God in the early history of Israel as a warrior deity who destroys enemies and demands that entire cities and nations be utterly eliminated seems to challenge the Christian understanding of a loving God. The descriptions of relationships between husband and wife found in both the Old and New Testaments are radically different from our contemporary understanding of marriage. There are laws about eating and financial arrangements that are not part of our culture and economy—nor would we want them to be. The source of many of the ongoing struggles in the church today is this difficult issue of how Christians come to terms with the idea that Holy Scripture tells us the truth about God while offering us images and demands that are in conflict with the ways we live and relate to God today. We will look more closely at some of these difficult issues in chapters three and four, which focus on the interpretation of the Bible.

While our varying interpretations of the Bible can be a source of conflict among Christians, studying the Bible with other people can also offer the great reward of learning how God works in different and varied ways with God's different and varied people. Such study helps us to see that while the Bible tells stories about people and situations from long ago, it is also telling our story. We find in the Bible's stories of struggle, discovery, failure, joy, discouragement, and hope reflections of our own stories of similar experiences.

In fact, the Scriptures are quite explicit about this connection. As the stories of the ancient people of Israel are told, especially the story of the Exodus (the escape of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt and their journey to the promised land), the Bible declares that this is not just about "them": it is also about "us." Israelites of many generations have connected themselves to the Exodus experience by reciting a passage from Deuteronomy as applying to their own lives:

You shall make this response before the LORD your God: "A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the LORD, the God of our ancestors; the LORD heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey." (Deuteronomy 26:5–9)

In much the same way, for Christians the story of the Scriptures is also our story of salvation, and a way through which we are invited to share in the work of God in the world. The Israelites' story of freedom from slavery in Egypt becomes our Christian story, as we experience freedom from slavery to sin through our relationship with Christ. We gather as a community in worship and praise to tell and retell these stories in celebration and remembrance. The Jewish community knows this immediacy in their Passover celebrations. Likewise, for Christians, while the liturgy of the Holy Eucharist can seem to be merely describing events in the life of Jesus in Jerusalem long ago, it is actually a way of experiencing those events in the present, as we take upon ourselves the story of salvation today in the presence of Christ. As we make the connections between the biblical story and the events of our lives as people of faith in the twenty-first century, we come to understand in new ways that the story of the Bible is indeed our story.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Welcome to the Bibleby Vicki K. Black Peter W. Wenner Copyright © 2007 by Vicki K. Black and Peter W. Wenner. Excerpted by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Morehouse Publishing
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0819222364
• ISBN 13: 9780819222367
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 122