Streams of Mercy

An interesting podcast was shared on the PC(USA) website this week: “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast”, with Dr. Anna Carter Florence speaking with hosts the Rev. Lee Catoe and Simon Doong over “engaging the biblical text.”

It was said that the Bible is the best-selling book in the world, and the least read. We live in a time when people take texts and use them out of context. For many folks, scripture is used to proof-text and close a conversation. That’s not the way scripture is meant to be read, for it’s the community’s book.

“When it’s the community’s book, it’s not meant to have one person say definitively over time, ‘This is it…this is how we’re going to read this, and this is what it means. If you disagree with me, that’s an example of your lack of faith or obedience, or of sin.’”

The ancient rabbis were reading scripture all the time, and they never read it alone. They loved interpreting new things, hearing new things, seeing new things, and seeing what it was saying in their own day. Many feel this is something some of our Christian traditions have lost along the way.

“We aren’t setting a big enough table for people to get around and read scripture together…. As soon as we set a bigger table and invite people to read scripture together, the more it’s going to be our book… I hope we can encourage people to look not for the meaning, but for what it is saying to you today. The text speaks so differently depending on where you’re sitting, what’s happing in your life, and who’s reading with you.”

Florence challenges ministers to step off the “lectionary” path and “open the table” and “break the rules.” We have “some backtracking to do and we have some listening to do,” she says, “to acknowledge the hurt scripture has caused and then to really covenant together to say, ‘How can we hear it as a book that speaks to us about human flourishing?’”

Things for us to think about as pastor and people! How freeing it would be to read scripture together, sharing what we hear and understand, rather than simply listening to a teacher/preacher tell us what it all means!

I’m not sure I understand this quote: “The Bible is being weaponized all over the place in ways that are pretty awful, having more to do with politics than scripture.” Now that would make for interesting conversation about the table!!!

Elizabeth