The theme of yesterday’s homily was “Scripture”. What follows below is an excerpt and an expansion of some of the concluding remarks.
When people ask us, “What is the Bible?” we can give them a lot of answers and cite a lot of self-referential passages wherein the Scriptures speak about the Scriptures (e.g. 2 Tim. 3:16). But often that question, “what is the Bible"?”, is asking for more than a simple description. Folks who ask “what is the Bible?” are often asking for more than a single-sentence definition. Without denying the artful simplicity of simple descriptions and definitions, here are some a few more expansive reflections on “what is the Bible?”
The Bible is triune dialogue: God speaks it to us, we speak it to him, and we speak it to one another. Speak the Bible back to God, speak it to one another.
The Bible is food. The scriptures feed us, they are the food of the kings and queens of God. Eat them, study them, feed them to one another in difficult times. Recite them at your tables when you eat; cook them into your daily speech; digest them, turning them over and over until the things that were once hard to digest ring with deliciousness and slow-broiled flavor.
The scriptures contain the songs of God, which he sings over us and in his. Let us learn to sing them. Let us also learn to feel the rhythms and music of them; to play them as the soundtrack in the background of our lives; to literally chant and sing them to one another. Sing this book. Men sing these words. Women sing these words. And also sing them to one another as brothers and sisters, let the sexes be unified in the songs of our common Lord. Fathers sing these words over your spouses and children. Mothers fill your houses with these words. Single folks, know also that when you sing these words, though you sing them by yourself you do not sing them alone, for you are singing with the Lord.
The scriptures are royal words. They are the words of the King of Kings which he gives to us to shape us into kings and queens in the realms of dominion he has called us to. Beloved, study these words. Make them your ruminations, set them as a necklace about your collar and a crown about your brow. Consider them, allow yourself to grow frustrated with them, ponder those places that seem confusing, give yourself to the long mastery of the law of God —by which I do not mean so much that you have mastered it but that it has mastered you. Kings and queens rule well when ruled by this Law.
The scriptures are God’s Story. Live in that story. Find resonances and themes that shape the story you live in. See the symbols and signs of this Story interpreting and making sense of the symbols and signs of your own. When you are bullied cry-out against the “bulls of Bashan”; when you hear trees swaying in the wind hear them “clapping their hands”; when you drink from a cup cry-out “what shall I return to the Lord for all his loving kindness to me?”; when you are sunk-down in shame and anxiety remind yourself “I am burned but lovely in his eyes”.
The scriptures give us the language of prayer. Pray this book.
The scriptures make us certain kinds of persons. God comes to us in these words and engraves on hearts of flesh, perfecting in us the form of Christ. By them God cuts us from the rock of dead imaginations and passions, and makes us alive in him. Be shaped by this book. Do not make a graven image, but allow Yahweh to grave his Image upon you.