A Forty Day Lenten Reading Plan

The season of Lent is a time of deepening our Christian discipleship.  If a Christian wishes to enhance the life of faith, one of the practices that we undertake must surely be reading our Bibles.  John Wesley called it "Searching the Scriptures."  We can crack our Bibles open randomly and read a couple of verses, to be sure.  But that hardly qualifies as "searching."  Searching implies intentionality.  It also strongly suggests an organized approach to the task.

For the season of Lent, our churches are offering a "Forty Day Lenten Reading Plan."  During this season, this resource directs us to daily readings from the Gospel of Matthew.  Over the course of these forty days, the Reading Plan will move us through the entire book in manageable increments.

Besides helping us read the entire gospel, as our congregations use this resource we will be entering into this discipline together.  There is power in understanding that, as we read a section of scripture on a given day, that our family, friends, neighbors and fellow church-members will be centering their thoughts on the same passage.

I hope that you will make use of this offering, and that it is a blessing for you.  The Reading Plan will be available in your worship bulletins on Ash Wednesday, on Sunday, February 26 and here.

I pray that this will be a blessing for us all.

The peace of the Lord be with you.

Searching the scriptures

I have, for a long, long time now, participated in a weekly Bible study with other ministers with an aim toward enhancing our work as preachers.  I have been in groups that have met in various towns and in a number of churches.  In recent years I have been the convener of such a group.  We initially met in person, but of necessity moved to the Zoom platform, and that method of gathering continues to this day.

 The format of the various incarnations of this study has not varied much through the years.  We use the Revised Common Lectionary as a rule.  While we are open to studying any of the four lections before us, we usually gravitate toward the Gospel Lesson for the day.  We work a week out from our meeting day, so when we gather, we do not consider the readings for the upcoming Sunday, but rather we examine the lessons for the Sunday following.

 The intent is that we approach our designated reading “cold.”  This is the first reading of the text as we prepare to preach.  It is what Fred Craddock called “the first naïve encounter with the text.”  We ask questions, make speculations, and bounce ideas off one another.  I have found this practice to be tremendously helpful in preparing for my weekly journey into the pulpit.  More often than not, my sermon introduction grows out of this give-and-take with other pulpiteers.

 Sometimes, though, one (or more) of our participants will say something like, “Well, I was looking at this study Bible or that commentary, and this resource says…”  This always amuses me.  And I think it is representative not only of ministers, but of students of the Bible who function at any level of sophistication.

 What I mean by that is that frequently we hurry to sources, to “authorities” or “experts” and entreat them to tell us what the bible means.  We are timid in making our own approach.  If we pass the task of interpretation off to someone else, we never fully answer the question, “What does this reading say to me?”

 Now, don’t hear me saying that commentaries and lexicons and study Bibles and Bible atlases don’t have their place.  I would be lost without my books!  But I believe that pulling a volume off the shelf has its place in our process of “Searching the Scriptures.”  Do it too early, and the personal element gets lost.  Do it too late, and we can fall in love with our own impressions, even if they are at odds with the intent of the scriptures.

 When we engage the Bible for our own benefit and spiritual growth, I encourage everyone to read the selection.  Read it out loud.  Read it from more than one translation (and let me emphasize “translation” here).  Ask questions.  Go through the process of what I call “Slamming the doors and kicking the tires.”  This is the Word of God; it can stand up to that.  And it is not irreverent to say, “I am not sure about that!  But, how about…?  So, does that really mean that…?”  The closer we draw to the text the more it lives in us.  Then, if we wish to consult someone who has spent much more time than we in the examination of the text, we do not slavishly bend ourselves to the words of some published author.  Instead, we use that person’s expertise as another tool in our toolbox. 

 Then, THEN, we appropriate scriptural truth as our own.

The Means of Grace: Searching the Scriptures

 In speaking of the Means of Grace – those gifts of God by which the Lord draws us closer to God’s Spirit – one that comes to mind quickly is reading the Bible.  It is through Bible study that we most clearly come to an understanding of the revelation of God.  I would make a few observations on that thought, however.

 Cracking the Bible open at random and scanning a few verses is not the most productive approach to this discipline.  Sometimes that approach can do more harm than good.  The church and its members have made huge errors by cherry-picking a handful of isolated Bible verses and then hanging their entire theology or practice on that small sampling. I have said it before, but when people ask me what the biblical position on a topic might be, I tell them to start with Genesis 1:1 -- “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…” -- and conclude with Revelation 22:20-21 -- Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!  The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints. Amen.”  The biblical position (if there is one) is between those verses.  A lesser sampling leaves some important stuff out.

 It is important that we study our Bible with a sense of intentionality and purpose.  It is also good to get some guidance from those who know the Bible better than we do.  When Josh Pastner was men’s basketball coach at The University of Memphis, he used to say, “Practice doesn’t make perfect.  Perfect practice makes perfect.”  His point was that a player can shoot a thousand free throws and do so with the wrong technique, the player’s skills don’t get any better.  But, if that player practices under the guidance and direction of a competent coach who analyzes and corrects the player’s form, that player stands a chance of becoming a pretty good free-throw shooter.

 You notice that the description of this Means of Grace above is “Searching the Scriptures.”  It is not merely, “read your Bible.”  This is again John Wesley’s term.  To search carries with it both a sense of intentionality and a suggestion of organization.  Jesus spoke in Luke 15 of a woman who had lost one of ten silver coins.  He observes, ‘Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it?’  His description carries with it a sense of the methodical.  She didn’t look on topo of the refrigerator and then behind the bedroom dresser before looking in the dog’s bed.  She moved carefully and systematically until she found her coin.  To speak of “searching” the scriptures carries with it a sense of preparation and studiousness that random thumbing through the volume cannot accomplish.  Wesley also uses the word scriptures.  “Scripture” is any groups collection of holy or revealed or definitive writings.  Most world religions have a set of scriptures.  Whether they go by the name The Sutras or the Vedas or the Quran or The Tanach or The Holy Bible, these various volumes contain the important ideas – and for some, the words of God – that these people value.  I think “Searching the (Christian) Scriptures has more gravity than a casual reference to “reading our Bibles.”

 Our Articles of Religion of The Methodist Church reads, “Article V — Of the Sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for Salvation:  The Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation;” 

 John Wesley described himself, saying, “as I want to know one thing, —the way to heaven; how to land safe on that happy shore. God himself has condescended to teach me the way. For this very end He came from heaven. He hath written it down in a book. O give me that book! At any price, give me the book of God! I have it: here is knowledge enough for me. Let me be homo unius libri! -- (a man of one book).

 By being people of this book, we come to know God.