"When Jesus went to the synagogue on the Sabbath, they handed him the book of the prophet Isaiah. He opened the book and found the place where it was written, 'The Spirit of the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and the recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed.' Then he closed the book, and sat down; and he said, 'Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing'" (Luke 4:16-21).
This drama is played out every Sunday morning, and if we dare to be confident about anything in worship, it is the reading of Scripture. Even at the Church's most embarrassing, least faithful moments, no matter how vapid the preaching, how offkey the music, how vicious the infighting, Scripture was read. Truth insisted on getting a hearing; beauty, if only for that moment, dawned on the room.
The Scripture reading is not the warmup band for the main act (the sermon); rather, the sermon hopes to put a frame around the text, and to hammer together some bridge between the text and our lives. The whole service, music, prayers - everything is constructed around the featured reading of the day, the way an entire symphony is fashioned around a simple melody.
Many churches say, "Turn in your Bible to..." - and facility at finding chapter and verse in Scripture is a life skill every Christian should master. But as much as I want people digging into their Bibles throughout the week, part of me wonders if worship is a time to put the Bible down, and with faces up, we simply listen to the reader, we hear a Word together. Think about the most poignant moments in your life: words are exchanged face to face. Scripture is God speaking to us. For most of the history of Christianity, Christians didn't own personal Bibles; nobody much knew how to read! The Word was read aloud, and people listened intently. Martin Luther suggested that "the organ of faith is the ear, not the eye" - for we "walk by faith, not by sight" (2 Corinthians 5:7). But then perhaps it would be even better if we all brought Bibles and dug in while the Word was read... Either way, we never forget that our zealous obsession is to become "doers of the Word, not just hearers" (James 1:22). The Bible is not some relic out of humanity's religious past, eliciting quizzical interest. The Bible is a script for your life. You hear it; then you go and do it, you mimic its pattern, you let it take on flesh when you've left worship.
How do we choose which passage(s) to read? Sometimes we think and pray, but more often we simply follow the lectionary, which is a sequence of readings from the entire Bible. Most Christians around the world follow the same recipe of readings, so we are all on the same page. Over hundreds of Sundays, we are exposed not to the preacher's favorites but to the broad scope of all God has shared with us in the Bible.
James
james@mpumc.org
Sunday's sermon on the Ten Commandments may be heard by clicking here.
Coming up:
eWorship14 - The Creed
eWorship15 - How to Listen to Sermons
eWorship16 - Praying for others
The complete eWorship series may be found on our web site.
