New Tricks for Old Dogs (Genesis 12:1-9; 15th Sunday after Pentecost; Presentation of Bibles; September 14, 2014)

New Tricks for Old Dogs

Genesis 12:1-9
15^th Sunday after Pentecost
Christian Education Sunday
September 14, 2014

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, IA

It’s a day of celebration today as we give our fourth graders their “official” Bibles.  I remember when I got mine.  I was in the third grade, not even able to read a newspaper article and I was handed a copy of the Revised Standard Version.  It was way over my head.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing.  It gave me something to grow into.

I got precious little help in learning how to use this difficult text, printed on paper thinner than any I had ever seen before and having very few syrupy pictures of a few selected scenes.  It looked like a book.  But there was no continuous story that I could see. 

I got a little help in Confirmation class.  At least I had to memorize the books in order.  I still mostly remember them, although I’m a little fuzzy on the minor prophets and some of Paul’s shorter letters. 

I got it into my head about that time that, if I read all the pastor’s preaching texts, maybe I could get a better grasp of the whole thing.  I had kept a year’s worth of bulletins and so I set out on my reading program. 

But this was the mid-sixties and preaching was different then.  It turned out that most of his preaching texts were only a verse or two.  I finished my reading program in a single morning without gaining the wider vision I was hoping for. It made me wonder if my pastor had any better idea than I had.

Later in my late teens, I read the Bible from cover to cover.  I don’t necessarily recommend that approach.  It was tough slogging through Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, I can tell you that.  But I was a voracious reader and I got through it.  I had to wait until I was in seminary in my late twenties to get a view of the whole, to be able to place each story, letter, poem, and law in some kind of proper context. 

This is one of the central tasks of Christian education.   In this my home congregation failed me.  I should not have had to go to seminary in order to have a grasp of the whole of the biblical story.  The crises that we are facing now and will face in the world in the next two or three decades require that the people of God be thoroughly grounded in this story, that it become for us a ready treasury of memories and dreams.  We will need every one of them.  Giving fourth graders a Bible and wishing them good luck simply will not do.

We do, in fact, do better than that.  We teach them how to find a passage by its book and reference numbers.  We teach something about what kind of things they might find in a Bible.  We teach them where to find the Jesus stories.  That is all to the good.

But you know how it is.  We were sent to Sunday School.  When we finished confirmation classes, that was pretty much the end of our formal Christian education.  Most confirmands never return, since there are other and more entertaining things to do than come to Sunday School or church.  Most of those who remain wouldn’t miss coffee and cookies and conversations with their friends for the world, but the idea of attending an adult study simply doesn’t appeal to them.

So here is the reality that we are dealing with.  Almost everyone admits that they should know our book better.  Most wish they did.  Hardly anyone can or wants to take the time to actually learn it.  The cultural at large is almost completely biblically illiterate and church-goers aren’t far behind. 

Without these stories, these memories, these dreams, and these visions, we are completely at the mercy of cultural forces that offer other stories, memories, dreams and visions. Without these stories, these memories, these dreams, and these visions, we will fail at our mission no matter how much we work and give.  Without these stories, memories, dreams and visions we cannot be the church no matter how hard we try.

How do we make these stories, these memories, these dreams, and these visions our own in the very little time that we have each week?  That’s always been a question, but we’ve answered it differently in different times in the Church’s history.  In our earliest history we attended daily prayers in which the Scriptures were read aloud in long sequences.  Imagine trying to get our teenagers—not to mention us ourselves—out of bed at 5:00 a.m. for morning prayer!

Much later we built our Christian education into our buildings in the form of intricate stained glass windows, statues and sculpted relief work that portrayed the key biblical stories.  Protestants protested this use of images—among other things (we are great hereditary complainers).  Instead we decided to build Christian education into our sermons that, on the average, were an hour and a half long.  I wonder why that didn’t last?

I’m certainly not the first pastor to worry about these things.  When Pope Paul VI called the Second Vatican Council among the instructions for reforming worship was this mandate: 

The treasures of the bible are to be opened up more lavishly, so that richer fare may be provided for the faithful at the table of God's word. In this way a more representative portion of the holy scriptures will be read to the people in the course of a prescribed number of years.[1]

This led to developing a three-year lectionary.  Catholics were making the Bible a central part of their worship.  Protestants who had always complained that Catholics didn’t make enough of the Bible were embarrassed to discover that Catholics were hearing twenty or thirty times as much Scripture every Sunday than they were.  The Common Lectionary was the result.

I’ve preached this lectionary pretty consistently since I first heard about it.  I’ve preached it in and out of season.  I’ve preached it when it made sense.  When it didn’t make any sense I’ve preached it until it did.  I’ve preached it long enough to appreciate what it does.  And, I’ve preached it long enough to appreciate what it fails to do.  Aside from a certain reluctance to take on difficult texts and a perspective that is thoroughly first-world (and white, and male, and middle class), it simply fails to leave even every-week attenders with a sense of the flow of the whole of the biblical story.

Recently, I’ve stumbled on to an alternative.  It was developed at Luther Seminary, but I not going to hold that against it.  It’s called a Narrative Lectionary because each year, from September through Pentecost, it covers the whole story arc of the Bible, from creation in Genesis to the new creation in Revelation.  A different Gospel is featured each year.  Only one main reading is provided each week, forcing preachers to deal with the text, even if they don’t like it. 

There are shortcomings to the Narrative Lectionary.  It’s short on the prophets, and poetry and the parables, but it also leaves summers open, so there is room for a series to make up what is lacking.  But all-in-all, it looks like it is worth a try.

I take courage from today’s lesson: the story of the call of Abram (who is later called Abraham).  He is called to leave all his connections to his kin, to leave them behind for the sake of a promise from a God whom he does not yet know.  He leaves his protection behind him; if he and his family are to be safe at all, it will be because God becomes their protection.  He will live his life on the outside, at the margins, a nomad moving through a world of settled peoples.  He will wait a long time to see even a hint that the promise will be kept.  But here is the kicker: “Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.”  God calls old dogs to learn new tricks.  True for Abram; true for me; true for all of us.

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[1] Constitution on the Sacred Liturty, Sancrostanctum Concilium, solemnly promulgated by his Holiness Pope Paul VI on December 4, 1963, 51.