Bible-reading: a confession

Along with the daily Bible-reading that I’m doing along with members of my congregation, I had these grand visions of blogging about the texts we were reading. We’re now more than halfway through Exodus, and I haven’t written anything since Genesis. 

It’s not that I haven’t tried; in fact, I’ve been working on a post for days, which I just can’t seem to get right. Everything I try to say about the exodus–God’s deliverance of Israel from slavery in Egypt–seems to raise more questions than it answers.

I haven’t wanted to post any of these thoughts. Part of the reason is the temptation that says, “If you can’t say anything right, don’t say anything at all.”

The opposite of vocation

Two weeks ago, I was leading an informal discussion with the local interfaith clergy group on one of my favorite topics, vocation discernment. I’m rather averse to concise definitions of these terms, preferring “descriptions” instead, for example:

• “Vocation is bringing who you are to something you’re a part of.”
• “Vocation is who you are and the way you live, not ‘what you do.’ “
• “Vocation is more a verb than a noun.”

So, I didn’t have a ready definitional answer to a question early in the conversation: “What’s the opposite of vocation?” If you’re not living your vocation (if that’s even possible), then what are you doing instead? I’m reminded of this question again–and the possible answers that surfaced in conversation–after this morning’s gospel.

Getting “hooked”: dangerous or divine?

There’s a particular sermon-genre that, to me, is one of the most exhausting to prepare but often the most rewarding to preach. Let’s call it the “account of a struggle” genre–where the preacher isn’t ready to come to a conclusion all tied up neatly with a bow on top, but talks through a wrestling match with the Scripture text, God, life, the world, one’s self, or all of the above.

It’s also the kind of sermon that, on a Thursday night, seems like it will never, ever get born. So, on this Thursday evening, here is The State of the Struggle for this week’s sermon–a perfect storm of current events, concepts that have crossed my path this week, and the gospel assigned for this Sunday: Mark 1:14-20. It’s the story of Jesus announcing the good news of the kingdom of God, and then calling the first disciples to leave their nets and become “fishers of people.” My thoughts are swirling around people’s ability to “get caught up in” (or should we say, “hooked by”) a cause, a story, a community that’s bigger than themselves. Over the course of history, this human ability to be inspired for action has been a source of remarkable greatness and unimaginable destruction.

Obama’s ongoing vocation discernment

Not long ago I worked with college students on discerning vocation, and they struggled with the same thing I continue to face too: In living out our callings, there is no “arrival,” no destination, no end to the journey in this lifetime. Just when we think we’ve “made it,” something happens in our life or our family or the world to call us further on.

This is true even if you’ve just been inaugurated as President of the United States. Surely, it could be argued, this we could call an arrival. After all, it’s something you and thousands of people have been working on for a very, very long time, and you’ve won an arduous contest. It is a tremendous achievement.

Vocation, however, is not about winning or about titles. It’s not even about achievements. Vocation is about serving.

Coveting my neighbor’s blog

Max, my spiritual guru

I’m envious of all who seem to choose (and find) just the right photo with their posts. I’m not sure what the trick is for that connection, but I’ll post one of my favorite photos anyway: Max, my mentor in the spiritual life. Seriously, I had no regular, dependable daily prayer time until Max came to live with me six years ago on Epiphany

Jesus’ version of NHFOB

Today’s Bible reading covered Genesis 42-43 (Joseph’s brothers show up in Egypt to buy food from Joseph) and one of my favorite chapters in the gospel, Matthew 13. That chapter has those evocatively brief (or briefly evocative?) parables on what the kingdom is like (i.e. a mustard seed, yeast, etc.). It also gets about as close to the concept of “new houses from old bricks” as you can get in the Bible.

Matthew 13:52 says, “He [Jesus] said to them, ‘Therefore every teacher of the law who has been instructed about the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old.’ ” Could it be that Jesus is inviting each of us, like the householder, to be creative in the ways we understand the “treasures” of Scripture, adding our new interpretations to the old stories?

Who “built” Genesis?

I like Genesis. I’m glad it comes at the beginning of the Bible. The engaging stories there encourage the reader who has just begun, to keep going. Each time I read it, I discover new insights. And new issues. For the first time, I just realized that it, too, is a “new house from old bricks.” I love this metaphor, of course, and I use it liberally to describe just about any kind of theological creativity, but I’d never applied it to the Bible in those terms.

Many years ago, a college class entitled “Folklore and the Bible” taught me early on to view the Bible, not only as a book composed of many books (“biblia” meaning books, plural), but also of books composed of smaller units edited into a whole, many of which had been passed on as oral traditions for generations. Those old bricks became a Scriptural “house” of faith for the author/editor’s community to live in–and, sometimes, to take apart and rebuild again (as New Testament writers Paul and Matthew do, for example, with their creative use of Hebrew Scriptures).

Reading through the Bible

I’m rereading the Bible again in 2009. The only reason I can say “again” is because I read it through in 2008 using Daily Texts. Last January, I thought, now that I’m in my third call of ordained ministry, it was about time to make sure I had really read all of it. (Seminary classes just didn’t spend a whole lot of time on, for example, Nehemiah or Titus.) ”What gets you into it isn’t what keeps you in it,” they say about vocations, and that has been true of me and the Bible as well: what gets me to read it isn’t what keeps me reading it.

First a confession: Here’s what got me into it. In my profession, it’s way too easy to think I “should” know everything in and about the Bible–or at least know more than anyone in my congregation. So I started reading the Bible last year, I suspect, out of a desire for a kind of control–the “knowledge is power” effect. (To see where that desire usually gets me, see my Epiphany 2009 sermon.) So if that’s what got me into it, what keeps me in it…well, that’s harder to say.

My Facebook honeymoon

I finally joined Facebook a few months ago, and while I may still be in the honeymoon phase, it qualifies as one of the things that is “saving my life” right now. There’s been much discussion about whether it is a thin substitute for real relationships. For the most part, though, I’ve found the opposite: I’m loving the layers it adds to relationships that were a little thin before, or have become thinner with distance.

Time to get hungry

After starting this blog last week, it feels so good to be writing again. After more than two years of a weekly column, I hadn’t written much since mid-summer, for various reasons (except sermons, which is a different experience). I hadn’t realized how much I had missed it.

Once I started writing again, I realized I had never really stopped; during all those months I’d been formulating ideas and whole paragraphs in my head, but they never made it to the screen or page. Now that I’ve discovered the well again, ideas are flowing, and it feels great to be doing something I love.

As with many things people fall in love with, I probably took writing for granted. I didn’t really know how much I loved writing for its own sake. I think I needed that break in order to know that in a much deeper way–or, at least, to remember that.