Service on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/seeyouonsunday/videos/1958747377982052 and YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Keg3WUjQzIg
Several years ago I was talking with this woman. She was an artist creative, always moving and doing something different and she asked me what do you learn in seminary? Do you memorize Bible verses? And it took everything in my power not to laugh. No, memorizing scripture was never really part of my church life. It was part of my church camp life where we would have a verse or two for the week that we were supposed to memorize and all of these years later I can come up with one: Some will trust in chariots. Some will trust in something but I will trust in the Lord by God.
So that one has been really embedded into who I am as a person.
We were given the opportunity to show off that we had memorized some other verse over the course of the week. I remember one of the boys cabins having memorized that women should be subservient to men or women should be silent. I’m pretty sure my cabin came back with some other verse about boys to make it a verse battle. There we were, a bunch of high schoolers proof-texting verses to try and win.
And that can be really dangerous. Last spring we read Think again by Adam Grant and he would talk about people who know just enough of a subject to try and act like they’re experts. It happens on lots of subjects (just enough psychology to diagnose everyone you know). Some know just enough bible to tell you exactly the Bible says on particular subjects. They know just enough to declare exactly what God wants, from the bible, as if the Bible speaks with one voice or doesn’t have a social construct thousands of years ago.
Maybe it’s what my extended family worried about seminary that you spend your time there delving deeply into the academic, that I would learn a lot but not really know anything.
**(The following story is from Rev. Danny Nettleton’s Substack, a story told by his father, Rev. Bruce Nettleton)
Dr. Joseph Wang was a legendary Chinese professor who taught New Testament at Asbury Seminary for 34 years. Many generations of seminary students have their own ‘Dr. Wang’ stories. The following is one of my favorites.
Before class started some students were discussing the latest Bible translation. The NRSV had just been released, and my denomination had all but named it the definitive WORD of GOD. One student sat with their brand new copy they had found bookstore in the mall and was trying it out.
The next student sitting to looked at it and said, “I think I’ll stick the old RSV,” she commented after leafing through the pages for a minute.
Most seminary students own a stack of Bibles that they use for different purposes. I used this one in seminary and it the primary translation we use here. But sometimes it’s chosen “right” translation over comprehension. So, sometimes we’ll use this bible. And sometimes we want it really accessible. And sometimes I want to challenge what we assume.
We also each have our favorite. The Bible with the battered cover and tattered pages, loaded with makeshift bookmarks made from little scraps of old bulletin covers.
Another student piped up, “I fell in love with the NIV in college.”
Well, that did it. Everyone had an opinion and now there was a full-on debate, fully animated, with everyone correct.
Professor Dr. Joseph Wang entered the classroom in the midst of this. He was a small Chinese man of indeterminate age; he seemed an older man more from his mannerisms than his appearance. Dr. Wang was the picture of a traditional academic lecturer, complete with suede elbow patches. He was also accustomed to the room falling silent when he approached the podium.
“What about you, Dr. Wang? Which is your favorite translation?”
He drops his eyes for a moment before he speaks.
“When I was a boy in China,” he said, “The government came through our town and confiscated all of the Bibles and burned them. They told us we had no further use for these ancient myths.”
He paused. His weight shifted from foot to foot.
“We continued to gather and pray, though. Each night one of the elders would call up a passage from memory and share with us what it meant. They were a living Bible. No pages. Only words.”
The room fell silent.
“One night, my father came into my bedroom. He had a stack of paper that he had been collecting for weeks and a stub of pencil. He handed this to me and asked me to write down what he was getting ready to say. That night he dictated to me the entire gospel of John, from memory.”
He paused for a moment, looking down, as if wondering whether to continue.
“You asked my favorite translation. This is it. I still have those old papers. Many of them appear blank now because the pencil is so faded, the paper so old.”
“I can still read it, though. I can hear my father’s voice, saying:”
In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
He was with God in the beginning.
Memorizing something makes it part of you and gives you the opportunity in the future to go through the filing cabinet of your mind and pull it out and recite it. Maybe it gives you words and language for things that you didn’t have before, but anyone can memorize anything. But it’s different when it becomes a part of you.
I think when God through Jeremiah speaks of the covenant being written on your heart, it’s more than the cognitive knowledge of something, but that which lives deep in your bones. It’s the thing you believe when you’re not sure you believe in anything. It’s the psalm you turn to or repeat in the dark night of your soul. It’s the chorus of the song or hymn when you’re feeling afraid.
Sometimes it’s highlights, part of a verse and an idea. It’s God saying, “Let us make humans in our image” and that you are made in the image of God. It’s “even though I walk through the darkest valley, You were with me” and knowing you are never alone. It’s “whatever you do to the least of these” and in your bones knowing in your bones God’s call to mercy, justice, and compassion. It’s prophets like Jeremiah standing before the powerful, the wealthy, the rulers and calling them back to a covenant of love and community.
When Baruch took Jeremiah’s prophecy to the temple and they were afraid because they believed it, they believed in the coming destruction, and then it found its way up to King Jehoiakim and he had no interest–there was no benefit for him to believe the prophecy of his and his kingdom’s destruction. It was better for it to just go away to throw it in the fire. Watch it burn.
The danger today seems less about the powerful destroying texts or burning scripture–although there is a long history of book burning. No, the danger today is not the burning of the covenant but the using it like we did so many years ago–as a weapon. The danger seems to be turning the living word into something that becomes part of the machine of hatred and violence and marginalizing accumulation and power.
They hear the song of Mary, that we will hear next month, and imagine it instead says that God will put in place and give more power to the powerful; fills the vaults of the rich with gold; sends away the lowly and leaves the hungry together wither. They will try to make their enemies God’s enemies, having enemies at all.
It’s capitalist Jesus. It’s beefy Jesus. It’s a nationalist Jesus and they will tell you it’s right here, in these bibles. There are those who will use the Bible, God, Jesus for hatred, violence, and injustice.
I want to believe that we are made in love and we are made with love and we are made for love. So, when they use the word as a violence, when it is used against others, when it meets up with the love in your heart and bones, when it doesn’t settle well in our ears, our mind, on our bodies, and our minds, it does not penetrate to our heart and it does not settle in our bones.
I think in the days, the weeks, the years to come, like years we’ve had in the past, it’s going to be important for us to be discerning about what we listen to, who gets to tell us what things mean, or tells us what the Bible means, what is the word of God, what is truth, what are their credentials. Can you tell what they believe, what lives in their bones, what compels them, and what they just know or know just enough?
And I get the irony of me saying be careful who you listen to, to who’s trying to tell you what is truth, what this all means while I get up and tell you what I think it means every week. I hope you always weigh what I say against the truth, the word in your heart, and the love in which you are made. How does it settle in your ears, in your mind?
We do this work of discerning within ourselves, and we do the work of discerning and community. That is why we have community. The before we let things get written on our hearts, before they settle into our being, We can bring them to the community and say, “Look at this. What isn’t it? What does this say about the God we believe in and about the creation that God loves? What does this say about what it is to be human and how we should live in this world?”
This isn’t a call to memorize anything or to only listen to religious people (some of them are real dangerous). This is called to know what is the truth you have been given– what is the covenant written on your heart? What has settled in your bones, that moves you in the world?
And to hold lightly what you hear, read, are given. Examine it, turn it over okay and see what is underneath it. Bring it to your community and poke at it until you figure out. Is it a truth about the god of love and Justice and mercy who has written love on your heart? Or, is that truth they are trying to turn in the fire pots?