Preparing for Lent

Posted on March 5, 2019 by awtraughber

Great LentThe season of Lent begins this week.  It’s also one of the craziest weeks of the school year for me, which is a way of saying that there’s a good chance my mind won’t be too much on Lent.  Beyond that, my recent readings in Boersma have me thinking in good ways about my own faith tradition and the broader Christian tradition, but that’s a tale for a later post or two.  Either way, this entry will post on Mardi Gras, which is an interesting concept in every way.  And then tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, when many Christians will attend a service to be reminded of their mortality through the imposition of ashes.  (Already I’ve seen people on Twitter asking people NOT to post #ashtag selfies from the day’s events.)

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At the beginning of this semester, we started a series the picks up in the Gospel of Luke where Jesus “resolutely set his face towards Jerusalem.”  I was first made aware of this “travel narrative” unique to Luke though the works of Eugene Peterson.  And so each week in chapel, a speaker focuses on at least one story from the next successive chapter in the book.  Already we’ve heard about the Good Samaritan, the woes to the Pharisees, the dangers of the yeast of the Pharisees, Jesus’s sorrow for Jerusalem, and the story of the prodigal son.  It’s been a good journey.  And it will end with Jesus in Jerusalem for the week of his passion and the morning of his resurrection.  But we’re not there yet.  It is good to be on the road with Jesus, though.

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In Great Lent, Orthodox priest and teacher Alexander Schmemann calls the season of Lent a journey, a kind of “being on the way” with Jesus on his way to Good Friday and Easter Sunday.   Schmemann asserts that “on Easter we celebrate Christ’s Resurrection as something that happened and still happens to us.”  Too often, though, we forget the significance of this “happening and happening to us still,” which is part of how Lent enters the picture.  “The liturgical traditions of the church,” Schmemann asserts, “exist first of all, in order to help us recover the vision and the taste of that new life which we so easily lose and betray, so that we may repent and turn to it.”  Whatever else it might be, Lent is an opportunity for “rediscovery” and “recovery.”

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I won’t be able to commemorate Ash Wednesday this year.  I’ll be out at camp with students learning about “the Way of the Cross.”  And I’m not sure what the season will look like beyond that.  I do hope to read W. H. Auden’s Age of Anxiety over the next few weeks (if nothing else, this is an attempt to mirror my reading of his For the Time Being during Advent).  If it’s not particularly clear yet, I hope to be more consistent with posting here during this season.  That will definitely be a discipline for me.  Like I mentioned previously, I hope to use this time to articulate some thoughts on tradition and Tradition, particularly with the assistance of Boersma (as mentioned yesterday).  Spring break is coming up in a couple of weeks, too, so I’m hoping to be extra-fruitful with reading and writing.

(image from amazon.com)

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Transfiguration

Posted on March 4, 2019 by awtraughber

Transfiguration-RubensWhile it wasn’t acknowledged much in my own church besides the children’s literature for the morning, yesterday was celebrated as “Transfiguration Sunday” in many churches across the world.  It’s a little like the “last breath before the plunge” that is the season of Lent.  The day is a remembrance of Jesus and his friends on a mountain for the appearance of Moses and Elijah and a theophany from heaven.  As we cover it in class, it’s one of the moments that turn Jesus towards Jerusalem for His passion.

I had not realized it until recently that the Transfiguration was at the heart of a number of “truths” in the early church.  In Seeing God, Hans Boersma surveys church history to get a better understanding of the “beatific vision,” the belief that Christians will see Jesus face-to-face and will know as we are known.  Boersma asserts:

In particular, the conviction that the transfiguration revealed God’s glory in Christ and his eschatological kingdom was important for the early church, and so Christology and eschatology played key roles in most theological reflections on the transfiguration.  The transfiguration appeared to render both Christ’s divinity and the eschaton present to the three disciples.  The event served not as a symbol pointing away from itself to the glory of God and to a future kingdom that he would bring about, but it was a sacrament that rendered God himself and his future kingdom really present to the disciples on Mount Tabor.  Thus, although in some respects the future kingdom may remain veiled, many have looked to the transfiguration narrative for an account in which God appeared in such a way as to reveal himself most fully and gloriously in Jesus Christ, and in so doing transformed or deified the disciples, drawing them into his beautifying light and thus into his eternal kingdom.  What is more, the theophanic character of the transfiguration rendered it transformative in character, not only for the three disciples at Mount Tabor but also for later Christians.  As a result, for centuries, the transfiguration was the subject of meditation, reflection, and debate throughout the Eastern and Western traditions.

Which is a fancy way of saying that maybe I’ve been underselling the significance of the Transfiguration for a long time (even though I render it with a capital T).

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I’ve been reading quite a bit of Boersma lately, mostly on a lark thanks to a blurb in Christianity Today.  I stepped away from Seeing God after just under 200 pages so I could read a short, earlier work: Heavenly Participation.  It’s been a good challenge for me that I hope to go into some over the Lenten season.  A lot of it has to do with his approach to a “sacramental ontology,” a sticky point close to the heart of my own faith experience.

It is enough for now, though, to hold in the mind’s eye that odd scene of Jesus shot through with holy light, his closest friends blessedly confused, and the Father affirming the Son as he prepares for all that is next.

(image of The Transfiguration of Christ by Peter Paul Rubens)

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Early Running with the Doctor

Posted on February 20, 2019 by awtraughber

2019 was supposed to be the year that I revisited some of my favorite British television.  Doctor Who.  Spaced.  Downton Abbey.  Sherlock.  The movies of Edgar Wright.  Simon Pegg movies not directed by Edgar Wright.  The claymation of Nick Park.   That kind of thing.  But January kind of got away from me, and February has been its own beast, too.  I did just start the first “new” series of the rebooted Doctor Who from 2005.  I wasn’t a big fan of the series when it first aired . . . on Sci-Fi, I believe.  It was hit or miss for me.  And it’s been a while since I’d seen any of the series one episodes, so I thought it would be a good place to start.

What a great series!  True, it’s no where near as “polished” as successive seasons.  And there are some small plot holes that I think of as evidence that they were still “making it up.”  But it’s really nice to see a Doctor not question every. single. move. he. makes. in any given episode.  Beyond that, it’s cool to see the show through the eyes of having been in England a few times since.  For instance, I had totally forgotten about this scene from “Rose.”

The show really does feel “stripped down.”  The sets and shots are simple.  The effects aren’t all that great (but maybe weren’t intended to be).  And the cast is appropriately small: pretty much the Doctor and Rose.  None of the bloat of some of the more recent stories.

I’m not sure how far I’ll get with my British “re-invasion” in 2019.  But it’s been a nice start.  (I watched the second episode last night, a very “Restaurant at the End of the Universe” episode.  Surprisingly touching, really.  Not sure how I’ll feel after revisiting the Charles Dickens episode, though.)

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Faring Well

Posted on January 29, 2019 by awtraughber

smith finaleNear the end of 2018, James K. A. Smith announced his departure from Comment Magazine as its editor. Each quarter, Smith would write about his perspective on some in-the-moment issues using his “World View” column, something he called “an annotated reading for your world.”

His final column, which came with the journal’s December issue, reflected on his time as an editor, tracing out some of the reasons why he took the position and relating some of the benefits of the task (which was beyond his role as teacher and writer).

That he would take an editorial position at a journal is cool in its own right.  But when he agreed to step into the role, he did so out of a passion for the genre (he describes himself as a “magazine junkie”), knowing the good work periodicals can do to create a kind of community. Smith says,

As someone who spends a lot of time on the road, I never tired of meeting Comment readers face to face. It has been humbling to have readers thank me in person for what our team does. Their faces and names provided a tangible sense that this “community” of Comment readers was an actual thing. And for many of them, Comment stemmed a certain loneliness they often felt in their contexts, giving them a sense of being hooked up to something bigger—that they had friends they’d never seen but who “got” them.

Beyond that, Smith acknowledges that the journal has been a kind of education, both for the readers and for the contributors, who often were tasked with working specific themes.  And as much as it was about education, it was also ultimately about friendship.

But it’s when Smith gets to the change that has happened to the public arena since he started with the journal that you get the sense of something deeper going on, something that Smith perceives as a step in the right direction.  From the end of the essay:

There were times when I couldn’t imagine not editing Comment. The work came naturally to me; I was energized by the range and variety of the work; and I believed in what we were doing (and still do). But over the past couple of years, I have found the space that Comment needs to speak into—the realm of politics and civil society—is more toxic than when I started. At some point over the past couple of years, I’ve realized I don’t have the stomach for being a pundit. Some might say it’s a lack of courage. Perhaps. In any case, it’s important work that has to continue. As for me, I feel my tour of duty in these trenches of public debate is up.

There is something prescient in this, I think.  Even the last two weeks of public discourse have revealed how quickly we are to jump to “precluded possibilities” that line up with our own narratives.  And that’s caused at least some reflection amongst those who “write about the moment in the moment.”  Which makes Smith’s next move all the more interesting:

In the new year I will assume a new role as editor in chief of Image journal, a quarterly devoted to art, mystery, and faith. Curating such a space resonates with the outcome of a period of discernment over the past year and my sense that God is calling me, in the next season of my career, to work at the intersection of the arts, imagination, and culture.

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I’ve written a few times about my “temporary vocational stretch.”  And while it’s gone on at least twice as long as I’d hoped or expected, what I have learned in the process continues to accumulate.  This about myself, sure.  But also things about a larger culture, a larger moment, an understanding of what it looks like for God to work and an understanding of what it looks and feels like when He seems silent.  It makes you wonder about what has become the common approach and if there are other and better ways of faithful engagement.

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Smith has already posted his first full article for Image.  I’ll get to it here soon.  For now, it is enough to remember that you can take a vocational stretch and that it can be used by God to change us and continue making us.  He can teach us and shape us through friendships.  And He can prepare us for other things.

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New King on the Block

Posted on January 27, 2019 by awtraughber

newkingontheblockI should start by going on record as saying that one of my favorite moments in Aquaman was at the end when someone says “Hail, King Arthur!” While the world of Middle Earth is key for me, the world of Arthur’s England isn’t too far behind.

Joe Cornish’s The Kid Who Would Be King really is one of the best movies you might see these days.  It is smart, simple, and practices a kind of restraint that you don’t often experience with contemporary fantasy cinema.  From the moment the movie begins with an animated retelling of the King Arthur legend to a closing moment that echoes it, the movie wastes no time in telling a medieval tale with an appropriately modern twist.

One of the best things the movie has going for it is that it’s the closest we’ve gotten to The Lord of the Rings in many a-year.  Some of that is a matter of cinematography: the movie’s beautiful vista shots are part of the reason why I love traveling to broad, green places.  This movie does that wonderfully.  Beyond that, there are some story moments that resemble some great LOTR moments. But those LOTR moments are great because they are almost-primal moments handled well (mostly moments of fear and being afraid in dark places, really).  This movie is also closer to LOTR in the handling of relationships, particularly with comradery and friendship.

Something else that sets the movie apart from much of the herd these days is that it does a great job earning its ending.  I don’t want to give anything away here, but it does its own kind of Never-ending Story ending (only moreso).  Things play out almost seamlessly in a way that doesn’t just feel like a “boss level” confrontation at the end has to play out. It’s actually a tricky move, one that requires the restraint that I mentioned earlier.

There is a political dimension to the movie that is almost part-and-parcel of any ideological undertaking these days.  You can’t talk King Arthur without talking about hope and loss and leadership.  This is another place where the movie’s restraint works well.  It tries to settle on something like a universal “truth” about leading well . . . and the things that leading well requires.  For young Alexander, the movie’s protagonist, leading well first and foremost involves living by the chivalric code.  And so even though Merlin might think that “his time is done,” that’s not quite true.  In fact, even the overly-used trope of “everything you need you already have” doesn’t quite ring true because of the book that Alexander keeps in his bag and holds in his hands.

Speaking of Merlin . . . or Merton . . . the cast is quite good.  It’s not easy casting young actors, I imagine.  But the key quartet of the show blend together nicely.  It’s good to watch a movie where character can actually develop (and without requiring a sequel).  Plus there’s one pleasant surprise in the casting . . . at least it was a surprise to me, as I hadn’t actually seen any trailers for the movie before going in.

The Kid Who Would Be King is the first movie in a good while that kind of makes me want to see it a second time in the theater, if only for the good handling of people traversing beautiful landscapes.  There are also a few gags that just work out really well.  I highly recommend the movie to people who enjoy children’s movies, and movies in general, done well.

(image from polygon.com)

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Writing Reflection

Posted on January 26, 2019 by awtraughber

This past Monday I made a commitment to try and post something each day this week using Kevin Vanhoozer’s “The Drama of Discipleship” essay as a prompt.  I’ve been way too sporadic with the site the last few months and have wanted to try and “get back in the saddle” for some time.  This was my week to give it a try.

One thing the week taught me is that it’s easy to start strong but difficult to finish well.  Part if that is having some weekend to help buffer things.  And then by the time I hit Wednesday, I’m often kind of wiped out.  I found myself doing most of my writing at night for the same night, not for the next morning.  So there is definitely a “lead time” issue for blogging.

I was also reminded that a series on one thing can be both a blessing and a curse: a blessing because you have something consistent to work with, a curse because things don’t always flow as well as you’d like . . . the downside of doing a little bit each day.  On some level, “one and done” posts are much easier: a tv preview here, some concert footage there, and wham-bam-you’re-done.

My hope for next week is to post three thoughtful pieces: one Monday, one Wednesday, and one Friday.  Preferably in the morning.  Maybe post some not-so-thoughtful things the rest of the week.  We’ll see how it goes.  I’ve also been considering a “WordPress Theme” change, but I can’t find one that fits what I’d like for the site (which is always intended to be text-heavy).  I’ve got some essays and articles that I’ve been sitting on for some time that I’d like to write about.

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A few concluding thoughts on Vanhoozer’s essay about the Greatest Commandment.  First, I liked the essay’s comprehensive nature.  A statement like the Greatest Commandment allows for that, of course: heart, soul, mind, and strength can account for a lot of things in the life of faith.  And so he used the framework wisely . . . and all while keeping it relatively short.

Second, I liked the concepts that Vanhoozer built into his thematic spiral.  Yes: vocation, formation, and culture.  But also: sapience and “canon-sense.”  You see these often in Vanhoozer’s longer pieces, so it was good to see him reference them in something shorter.

And speaking of “canon-sense,” the third thing I liked about the essay was how Vanhoozer always came back to Scripture.  I come from a period of time where the biblical text, while not everything, was something essential to understanding and living the Christian life.  I don’t get that sense from many all that much any more.  It is a curiosity at best and an annoyance at worst.  To see him come back around to the text was an affirming thing for me, both as a believer and a teacher.

Finally, it was cool to see Vanhoozer reference writers like James K. A. Smith and N. T. Wright.  They have definitely been “prior” in my experience when compared to Vanhoozer.  This was also an affirmation to me.  It is good to see something like a “web” of connections materialize with the threads I’ve had a chance to follow over these last few years.

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And so tomorrow: this Sunday’s best comic strip.  And then probably a quick review of a couple of movies and some thoughts on James K. A. Smith’s final editorial for Comment Magazine.

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Strength for Today, and Bright Hope

Posted on January 25, 2019 by awtraughber

How odd, writing about strength on a rainy Friday night at the end of a short but intense work week.  But that’s the way the essay-for-reflection falls.  And so the question of strength from Kevin Vanhoozer’s “The Drama of Discipleship.”

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For Vanhoozer, strength of “heart, soul, and mind” comes “by constantly practicing the presence (and activity) of Christ in the power of the Spirit.”  And things like vocation, formation, and culture are all connected to it.  “Everyday life affords plenty of opportunities to practice the way of Jesus Christ.”  And Scripture helps inform that.  I like how Vanhoozer brings back the triad of inform/form/transform throughout the piece.  He does it again when talking about the command to love God with all our strength, particularly as he completes the square with conforming:

The Latin conformare means “to make of the same form.”  This is precisely the vocation of the church: to make disciples, people who have the same “form” as Jesus Christ: that is, the form of a servant, the form of a son– not to mention the form of prophets, priests and kings, the offices that make up the holy nation.  In the final analysis, God is not shaping individuals only, but a people.

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What role, then, does Scripture play in the realm of strength?  Of the many things Scripture does, Vanhoozer adds that “Scripture’s role in the economy of revelation and redemption is that of finishing school.  It is the Spirit’s curriculum for imparting habits of right thinking and desiring, for cultivating the mind of Christ in his disciples.”  It is Scripture, then, that “communicates an extraordinary culture: a set of belief, values and practices that correspond to the new created order ‘in Christ.'”

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The section on strength feels a little slight when compared to the previous sections of the Great Commandment.  Perhaps strength is almost a picture of the other three (heart, soul, and mind) played out over a longer period of time.  And so strength is not just the lifting of a car to free someone trapped underneath.  It is the long haul, the spiritual stamina, that continues on past today.

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How the Mind Matters

Posted on January 24, 2019 by awtraughber

The third component of the Old Testament Great Commandment is loving God with all of your mind.  As a teacher, I’d like to think that I think about thinking a lot.  Hopefully I’ve gotten a little better at it over time.

As with the previous section of “The Drama of Discipleship,” Kevin Vanhoozer spirals various ideas through one another, revisiting and building on them in good, generative ways.  As he does this, he also brings in concepts that bring depth to what some might perceive as well-worn topics.

In the case of the mind, Vanhoozer introduces the idea of sapience, a human trait which indicates “not simply sensation and feeling but also deliberation and wisdom.”  Spiritual formation, he asserts, “involves . . . the renewal of the mind to imagine the world as Scripture imagines it.”  Vanhoozer sees our human nature, gifted with sapience, requires some kind of “radical remedial education” which comes from Scripture and the Spirit.  As such, the Word and the Spirit attune our minds to the world the way Jesus through Scripture sees it.  This reading of the world through the lens of Scripture creates something called “canon-sense,” which is “our ability to indwell the richly patterned story-world of the canon, to imagine the world that Scripture imagines  and to mirror in our lives the reality that Scripture mirrors.”

And so, it seems, Christian must practice a “vocation of wisdom.”  From the essay:

Wisdom is the ability to see how Christ is the center of both the created and the renewed order, and thus to see the place of disciples in the grand scheme of things.  Being wise unto Christ involves not merely assenting to but practicing what we know.  It is a matter of practicing the premise, presence, and promise of God.

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One thing I like about Vanhoozer’s work is that it brings a number of threads together and adds a particularly Vanhoozer-like twist.  His constant return to Scripture is reassuring, particularly in a culture where religious text is often demoted to a collection of inspirational quotes.  And when it’s not about inspiration, it’s about something like rules and regulations.  But the imaginative aspect is critical and too easily overlooked.

How do we live well in the Story that we are in?  We start be seeing . . . by imagining it . . . rightly.

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Virtue is the Signal

Posted on January 23, 2019 by awtraughber

vanhoozer picturesOne of the interesting things about Kevin Vanhoozer’s “The Drama of Discipleship” essay in his Pictures at a Theological Exhibition collection is in how well it spirals.  In this case, spiraling is a good thing: it’s a pedagogical method where you revisit key concepts at different points.  And so when he moves through the Great Commandment from heart to soul, Vanhoozer revisits concepts like vocation, formation, and culture in good, necessary ways.

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Having established that “loving God with all your heart” means “sharing the passions of Jesus,” Vanhoozer moves to “loving God with all our souls.”  Instead of spending time writing a mini-treatise on the nature of the soul, he jumps right in with the idea of cultivating the virtues.  These he calls “the habits of Jesus’ heart.”  Virtue talk can be tricky, of course, as many evangelicals might view such things as somehow masking a works-centered salvation.  Beyond that, virtue language goes all the way back to Aristotle and ancient Greek culture, which can be off-putting to some.  “A spiritual virtue,” Vanhoozer asserts, “is a habit of communicative activity that is conducive to right relatedness to other persons, especially God.”  Jesus, of course, exemplifies this.  Which brings to mind Chesterton’s comment on Jesus and the virtues from Orthodoxy:

The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered…, it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone.

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And so we are thrown back on knowing and becoming more like Jesus, which means we are thrown back on Scripture.  It is here, Vanhoozer asserts, that we learn “judgment” as a kind of practical decision-making skill.  “God gives us his Word and Spirit not simply to inform but to form and transform, to cultivate not only new thoughts but also habits of thought, a way of thinking in accordance with the gospel.”  And this adoption of virtuous habits ends up being a key part of the Christian vocation: “everything we say and do discloses the state of our soul.”  Vanhoozer concludes his section on cultivating virtue: “Christian character formation is a matter of becoming what one already is in Christ.”

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I’ve been doing more virtue talk these last few years (in various and sundry forms).  With underclassmen, we talk through the “Do Hard Things” ideas of the Harris brothers. With our school we talk about the “sensibilities” of humility, curiosity, love, and commitment.  With the seniors, we talk about the cardinal and theological virtues.  Something that I find odd is that virtue talk is relatively rare for them (at least from their perspective).  They understand hard work and getting-what-you-deserve.  And that’s mostly true for adults, too.  Which makes the question of creating a virtue-friendly culture paramount.  It’s something to lead with, not utilize as clean-up at the end.  But that’s a difficult skill and outlook to master, particularly under the “tyranny of the urgent” that so many of us face.

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We’ve started class the last two weeks with selections from the book of Proverbs, which is concerned with wisdom.  Wisdom, the fruit of a virtuous life, is a positive thing, something to be sought out and embraced.  It is good for you.  It brings health to the body and strength to the bones.  But even the quest for wisdom is diminished in our culture today.  We’d rather touch the hot stove and pay the price of experience than learn from someone or something beyond us.  What would it take, I wonder, to create a culture that thrives on a healthy cultivation if spiritually-grounded virtues?  How would it play out over the course of a year . . . or the course of a twelve-year education?  Scholars and theologians agree: the cultivation of any virtue takes years.  At what point, if any, is it too early to start?

(image from amazon.com)

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Love and the Story

Posted on January 22, 2019 by awtraughber

The big question that goes unasked but is answered all of the time in churches throughout history is this: what do we do with Jesus?  I say unasked because our practices have often been “locked in” for some time.  That means something drastic has to happen to an individual or a church to get them to reconsider their basic presuppositions.

What do we do with Jesus?  We may preach him or teach him.  We may remember him or consume him.  We may dress him up in fancy robes or dress him down like a regular Joe in We may be as likely to invite him into our community as we are likely to ignore him when he is in our midst.  We might make him the center of our commitments, but we also might relegate him to the outer reaches of  our conversations.  Whatever we do, we reveal something significant about who we say we worship.

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Of the many things he has to say about Jesus in “The Drama of Discipleship,” Kevin Vanhoozer asserts that Jesus has something of significance for our hearts.  “Spiritual formation,” he asserts, “involves, first, coming to desire the same things that Jesus desired: sharing his passions.”  For the believer, this can happen on a deep level at conversion, is something the Holy Spirit works with a kind of immediacy.  And then the long road happens, the questions get difficult, the road gets narrower and steeper, and we do our best to protect the change the Spirit has brought.  So when Jesus reiterates the Old Testament Great Commandment, to love God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and when he recasts what that love looks like through a willingly sacrificial love, we ought to take notice.  All the preaching and teaching, remembering or consuming, inviting him or ignoring him pale in comparison to the call to become like him.  But we don’t hear much about that these days with our obsession and mastery over Everything Else.

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In my last post, I mentioned three terms that Vanhoozer uses throughout “The Drama of Discipleship” as touch-points: vocation, formation, and culture.  “Coming to desire the same things that Jesus desired” means engaging with the Scripture that speaks of him.  Vanhoozer asserts: “Scripture is more than informative.  It is formative and transformative, not least when it is a means of reordering our desires.”  At this point, Augustine and James K. A. Smith enter the picture: Augustine with his belief in rightly ordered loves and Smith with his work with habits and the spiritual life.  Vanhoozer weds Scripture with the role of imagination (in a nod to C. S. Lewis) as “the imagination allows us to taste with the heart what reason only sees in the mind’s eye.”  Drawing from the Apostle Paul, Vanhoozer concludes that “to let the Word of Christ dwell in us richly (Colossians 3:15) is to have one’s heart habituated in the way of Jesus.”  Beyond that, “to share Christ’s passion is to share Christ’s love for the world,” which ties back into the significance of vocation for Vanhoozer.  But what about culture?

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I move about almost daily in a world shaped by Scripture.  I read it in my quiet time.  I walk through it with my students.  I share it in chapel.  I hear it read at church.  Scripture has always been a good thing for me.  True: God uses it to point out my sin.  Also true: God uses it to remind me of His mercy and forgiveness.  But too often a Scripture-infused “culture” leads to a kind of weariness, a kind of jadedness, that I don’t quite know how to handle.  A good bit of it has to do with being around many who read the text without any sense of God having authority through the the text.  Another factor is that we all too often think that if we’ve heard it once we know exactly what is being said.  And who wants to make people feel that the sacred text is far from an easily-maneuvered thing.  Because sometimes it is easy to understand and grasp.  And it does shape our imagination.

I was recently conversing with friends who have embraced the Anglican tradition.  One person mentioned the funny thing of taking a Bible to service.  It’s funny because the Anglican service is saturated with Scripture; you just don’t really read it from your own Bible– you hear it or sing it or chant it.  One of the great blessings of my years attending evensong services downtown was the opportunity to hear Scripture being read aloud well without commentary.  The Story simply gets to be the Story.  How good it is to be reminded of the Story that we are in!  But I feel that I was able to engage with the text on that level because it was a Story I’d known for some time, a Story that I had been reading  and rehearsing since childhood.

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One of the first things I noticed about being a teacher 16 years ago was how quickly I came to care about the things that concerned or intrigued my students.  I would hear them talking about it before class.  Then, when I was walking through the mall or a store and I saw something mentioned, I would think about that previous conversation.  As much as I have loved movies, a lot of that love comes from dear friends in Texas who shared an even greater love of the medium with me.  You really do become a little more like the people that you love, that you spend time around.  And while simply being around them is something, it’s the love part that does the good and proper formation.  We are all of us, in some way, missionaries to one another.  And that is true about Scripture and about the God we read and hear about in Scripture.  We would be wise to step back and consider how well we are shaping and being shaped by it.

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