By Greg Jones

Episcopalians are people of a common book. Whether we worship in the Churches of England, South Africa, Sudan or the Episcopal Church – all Anglicans share a common book of prayer, worship and wisdom. It predates the American Revolution, the Enlightenment, and, yes, even the Bard himself. Our common text of life in Christ was finished before Henry VIII got married the first time – and before Thomas Cranmer said the Eucharist in English. Yes, our truly common book is the Bible. Quite by itself, the Bible is the inspired text of our Church. The Bible constitutes the sacred vocabulary of the Body of Christ, through which the living and active Word of God continues to breathe its transformational power. The Bible describes our common life in Christ, the incarnate Word of God, and it informs our every song, story, and prayer.

The Book of Common Prayer and Hymnal which form our twin expressions of Episcopal doctrine are themselves as good as they are because they are the fruit of deep engagement with Scripture. As the Prayer Book says, "Lord Jesus ... kindle our hearts, and awaken hope, that we may know you as you are revealed in Scripture." Indeed, our liturgical life is a lived engagement with the Word of God in the Bible – and not much more. Thus, in our spiritual and worshipful encounter with the Word of God in the Bible, Christ is made manifest in us, to us, and through us – who by baptism have become members of Christ's body. The way I see it, the Bible is the utterance of the Body of Christ to the Body of Christ.

In her prophetic work The Dream of God, the late Verna Dozier offers a reflection on the following collect from the Book of Common Prayer:

"Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning; Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life; which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ."
Dozier says that it is "exciting beyond telling" that God caused the Scriptures to be written, not just to inspire us, or comfort us, but to teach us.

She writes:

"[The Scriptures] are written for our learning (sic). There is something we need to learn, and the only place we can find the subject matter for that learning is in the Bible. We need to know the story, the story the Bible – and only the Bible – tells. The climax of the story is Jesus Christ...[and] you will never understand the answer to the question of who Jesus is unless you know the story the Bible tells."

In a nutshell, we believe that the Word of God in the Bible was uttered, edited and published in and by the Body of Christ at the instigation of the Holy Spirit – for the purpose of delivering to hope, assurance and learning. And not just a general hope, assurance or learning – but the kind which only comes from life in Christ Jesus.

Just as Christ has caused the Church to be His body, the Church believes God has caused the Bible to be, and that in our engagement with it, God will grant us the gift of hearing his Word – not only with our ears but with our minds and hearts. And the aim of all this is transformation into Christ. The purpose of all this is that we might 'put on Christ,' and live into fuller, deeper, truer lives.

We believe that in our reading of the Word of God in the Bible, the Holy Spirit will write this Word in our hearts, that in our active "marking and learning," in our searching the Scriptures, we will incorporate this Word into the very makeup of our selves, souls and bodies – just as food disintegrates and then becomes the body which consumes it. We believe that Christ wants this for us.

Dr. Ellen T. Charry is professor of systematic and historical theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, and an active Episcopal laywoman. Charry believes the first priority of Christians is to seek a living and active relationship with the God who transforms lives. She says this enterprise of inquiring after God, listening to God, and heeding God's call to transformation, is what the Bible is all about – and is how the Bible came to be in the first place. The Bible is the story about a people's journey into God which has itself become a journey into God. Charry writes, "The biblical documents were written to disclose to readers the God they discuss." She says, "the purpose of reading [the Bible] is to be enlarged, not simply informed."

The Rev. Greg Jones, rector of St. Michael's Church in Raliegh, North Carolina, blogs at fatherjones.com

By Derek Olsen

It’s the Easter season and we bask in the newly recaptured glow of the resurrection. Our services reflect the glow with mystical musings from the Gospel of John, dramatic stories of the earliest church from the Acts of the Apostles and—the Book of Revelation.

Wait a minute, how’d that get in there?!

Quite naturally, actually… Remember that we didn’t always have books with the really thin paper in today’s Bibles. Furthermore, getting a big stack of paper in the ancient world wasn’t quite as easy as it is today. Costs were literally calculated in the cows or sheep whose skins provided the pages. One complete Bible would require an entire flock! To keep the page counts and costs down, the biblical books were split up over a number of volumes: the four gospels were bound together, as were the epistles of Paul, and—according to some of the most common reckonings—Acts and Revelation were bound in a volume. In the monastic Night Office lectionary dating back to the eight century, Acts and Revelation were read together during the Easter season. The great lectionary revisions following Vatican II that resulted in the Revised Common Lectionary honored this ancient tradition by selecting the first reading during Easter from Acts and the second from Revelation.

And that couldn’t make me happier; Revelation is one of my favorite books. Yes, it can be strange and difficult; yes, it has provided fodder for some of the worst impulses of religion and yet—I find its poetry and cadences compelling. One image from the book that I find myself returning to again and again this Easter shines from its closing pages: Revelation 21:9–22:5, the vision of the New Jerusalem.

I love the detail and the dazzling description, the whirl of odd images joined together. I love that—but what draws me back is the glitter of light through stone. It’s the image of the city, the New Jerusalem, built of gemstones one to another, cleaving in a clash of light, colored and reflected as it plays through crystal. Truly, St. John has given us an image of rare beauty—but to what end?

Scholars of Classical Greek tend to turn up their noses at the prose of the New Testament—it’s a low-brow dialect, removed from the diction and rhythm of Golden Age Athens—but when they come to the Greek of Revelation, they throw up their hands in horror. The Greek of John’s Gospel, simple as the vocabulary might be, at least conforms to the basic rules of grammar and can contribute an interesting turn of phrase—but this? This is down right barbaric… It reads like a rude translation by someone for whom Greek was a second language. It reads like a work written by someone not steeped in the proper exempla of fine Greek prose. Or, perhaps, it reads like a work written by someone steeped in a rude translation…and so it is. For the language of Revelation, the terms, the turns of phrase, the images are not new—just newly recombinated. The language echoes, nay, inhabits the tongue of the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, produced in the last few centuries before Christ, the translation that was the first Bible of the early church. This is not Classical Greek, nor is it trying to be; rather it is Bible Language, a dialect we recognize deep in our bones when a preacher suddenly lapses from words of cell phones and cell structures to thees, thous, forthwiths, and forsooths. The language of the book is our chief lead. Its meaning is indistinguishable, inextricable from, incomprehensible without the Old Testament.

The chief artform of jewel and light is the mosaic, where thousands of tiny bits of glass and gold and jewel called tesserae combine to form glittering vistas, haunting visages of emperors, kings, clergy, or Christ. This bejeweled city is nothing less than a myriad of scintillating fragments of Old Testament prophecy and praise forming a portrait writ in three dimensions of one indistinguishable, inextricable from and incomprehensible without the breath of the Spirit speaking through the prophets. The tesserae glisten and play: the liturgical garment of the Aaronic high priest, the city of hope for an exile people, the vision of a temple rising from desolation, the garden of God, the peerless bride of the great king, even the slain beloved of the Lord. And together they form an image where these fragments are bound and transformed, set one with another until their individual hues blend and blind and form a new image wrought of the old. It is truly a paradise, truly a city, truly a temple, truly a people. Composed of a myriad jewels, the city rests upon its twelve great foundations: jasper and emerald, diamond and chysolite, topaz and amethyst and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

Lean close and I will tell you a mystery. This is the mystery of the gleaming city, the New Jerusalem. The twelve great foundation stones, they do not represent the apostles. They do not stand for the apostles. Rather, they are the apostles. And the soaring pinnacles of rubies, the windows of agates, the pavers of gold, who are these, you ask, who are these—but you and me? Lain with fair colors, living stones, builded one with another, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. The company of all the faithful people—do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? For God's temple is holy, and you—all of you—are that temple.

At the center of the city, at the heart of the New Jerusalem, lies the Bridegroom’s bower, the throne of God and of the Lamb and the city has no need of light for the glory of God is its light and its lamp is the Lamb. The light shines forth in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it. And our calling, our spiritual worship, is nothing less than to reflect and to refract. Our role is to allow the light to splash and play, to illumine and be illumined, to catch fire and be cast by our facets into the darkness. The light of the resurrected Lord blazes in and through us. We—we—are to spread that light into a dark world as it filters and shines and is hued by who and what we are and what we do. We are the people; we are the city. We are the beacons to spread the light of the dayspring who has visited us to shine upon them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death and to guide our feet into the way of peace.

If you conquer, I will make you a pillar in the temple of my God; you will never go out of it. I will write on you the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem that comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name. (Rev 3:12). Amen; Come, Lord Jesus.

Derek Olsen is completing a Ph.D. in New Testament (with a healthy side of Homiletics) at Emory University. He keeps the blog Haligweorc.

By Greg Jones

The Bible is not a magical instrument, but it has the ability to put the reader or reading community “in touch with the living God who can give you spiritual life just as he has given you natural life,” writes the English evangelist Michael Green. “The written word can put you in touch with Jesus the living word (or self-disclosure) of God.” In other words, by reading the Bible with an open heart, Christians believe that a revelation of Jesus Christ may be had, and a personal relationship formed and fostered.

In this way, like Eucharist, the Bible is spiritual food, a means of grace, being itself a revelation to readers of Christ. Moreover, outside the Bible we have no other reliable source of witness about Jesus in common. But what we all share in the Bible is a common portrait of Christ, which counts every testament, book, chapter and verse as necessary brushstrokes. As Green writes in his little book, The Bible for Amateurs, “by our Bible reading we study the portrait as a whole, the miracle happens and the figure comes to life. Stepping down from the canvas of the written word, the everlasting Christ of the Emmaus story becomes himself our Bible teacher, to interpret to us in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.”

Green identifies seven necessary dispositions for transforming Christian engagement with Scripture. I have elucidated them here:

1. Humility

The first thing seekers and disciples of Christ must do in their approach to the Word of God in the Bible is assume a posture described by Jesus himself – we must approach humbly. St. Augustine of Hippo said that the Word of God in the Bible cannot be understood by those who come with pride. The Bible is a book for those who come to it humbly. An appropriate prayer before reading Scripture is this: “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”

2. Expectation

The desire to meet God in Christ through the written texts of Holy Scripture is another essential ingredient. Unless we come to the Bible deeply seeking after God, our engagement with Scripture can be quite a tedious affair.

3. Honesty

Reading the Word of God in the Bible is not really that easy. There is much in Scripture – whether in terms of content, language, style or story – that is intellectually and emotionally challenging. I liken the Bible to a box of nails – it really cannot be engaged with comfortably for long. When one delves into the box of nails, as with Scripture, one’s hands will be punctured or poked or scraped or contested in some painful way. Because there is much that challenges us in Scripture, we must be honest and accept that these challenges are real. We mustn’t deny those challenges, nor must we allow those challenges to keep us from continuing our active engagement with the Word of God in the Bible.

4. Imagination

As with all good stories, our truest enjoyment of them comes when we find ourselves in the midst of them. Unless we identify with the characters of a story, unless we find ourselves on stage and involved personally with them, unless we connect with the narrative in our imaginations – the stories really aren’t good to us. Green argues that the God-given imagination all human beings have is a gift we ought to use to help us engage with the Word of God in the Bible.

5. Attentiveness

Hurry may get us through the Bible faster, but it will not do anything to get the Bible through us. We must make time to read, reread, mark, learn and digest the Word of God in the Bible – as the Prayer Book teaches. The conviction here is that if we do—God will indeed show us something and make the text breathe into our hearts.

6. Obedience

My first parish church had a verse of Scripture written on the wall in big gold letters, “Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only.” I always felt like that passage of Scripture spoke to me the essence of an incarnate Word of God. We must come before the Word of God in the Bible with an attitude of obedience for it to have any transforming power in our lives. As Jesus’ brother says in the Epistle of James:
“But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing.” (James 1.22-25, NRSV)

7. Regularity

As the Prayer Book emphasizes, the Scriptures are best consumed daily. Again, Green likens reading the Word of God in the Bible to the eating of food: “I do not have a massive lunch on Sunday and starve for the rest of the week. I like my lunch every day! Very well, then, I should make a regular daily meal of my Bible reading. It can have an enormous impact on our lives if we come to it regularly, and allow it to affect the way we behave. It is life-transforming, no less.”

The Rev. Greg Jones is rector of St. Michael’s Church in Raleigh, North Carolina and a member of the board of directors of the General Theological Seminary. He keeps the blog fatherjones.com

By Derek Olsen

The center of the Daily Office is dwelling in the house of the Psalms. As the years turn, we wend our way through the pages of Holy Writ but our home, our abiding dwelling, is in the house of the Psalms. It has ever been so. Whether we recite them weekly with Benedict, monthly with Cranmer, or every seven weeks with the latest lectionary, it is their rhythm and rule that ultimately centers our spirituality.

Three truths confirm our choice of dwellings. The first truth is that the Psalter is a microcosm of Scripture. St. Athanasius once explained that if the various parts of Scripture—the Law, the Prophets, the Gospels—are like gardens that each bear a single fruit, the Psalter is a garden that not only bears its own but those of the others as well. There are those that tell of the wanderings of the children of Israel, those that lament the sack of Jerusalem, those that glory in the Law of the Lord, those that invoke the words of the wise. The creation of the world may be found here, the loosing of the waters, the firming of the land. Too—moving into mysteries—the Church has found the birth of our Lord, the Passion of our Lord, and—moving deeper yet—the very conquest of hell writ in figures deep. These are the rooms of the house—rooms of lament, rooms of praise, rooms of wisdom, history, and Law. Rooms through which we wander as we make our daily way through corridors and shadowed atriums, to smell its flowered metaphors, to partake of its edifying fruit.

And, the learning of the psalms is not just a journey through a microcosm of the Old Testament but the wellspring of the New. For how can the sacrifice of our Lord be grasped apart from Mark’s meditation upon the Psalter—“My God my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”—or Luke’s: “Into thine hand I commit my Spirit…”? Indeed what is the letter to the Hebrews but an extended commentary upon the Psalter bathed in resurrection light? How can the riddles of Revelation be read without recourse to a fountainhead of its meaning and language: the cup of wrath, utterances from the throne?

The second truth to be told is this: the Psalter is a mirror of your soul. Look deep within it and study the reflection; see what attracts—and what repels. And know: that from which you recoil dwells in your own depths too.

To learn the psalter is to be confronted: can these thoughts and feelings really be in the Bible? How tragic it seems to move from elevated words of praise and thanksgiving to graphic thoughts about the ends of enemies—dogs lapping up spilled blood, hating with perfect hatred, bones scattered at the mouths of graves. Why must these songs be marred by these…infelicitous and offensive thoughts?

Do you really ask—O child of earth? Is that really repugnant wonder in your voice—or recognition?

For the truth is that these thoughts appear not only in the Psalter; they live in our own hearts as well. The psalms puncture the pride of a superficial piety that presents a smiling mask of religious fervor. Gaze into its words long enough and you shall find the pathway into your own soul too—behind the mask, behind the facades, behind how you think a Christian should feel. Gaze into the mirror and recognize yourself.

But a mirror does more than simply reflect—and the same is true of the Psalter. On one hand, it reveals to us the baseness of our own soul—our petty desires for success or revenge, our self-aggrandizement, our self-loathing. On the other hand, a mirror shows us—without apology—our blemishes and imperfections, not to condemn or drive us to despair, but to offer us the opportunity for correction. The mirror reveals the hairs out of place, the collar askew, so that these may be mended and amended. So too, it is with the Psalter.

Even when it comes to what we feel, we must be taught. Here too the psalms teach. They form in us pathways of religious feeling—the affections of the Christian life—teaching us how to feel and respond. For to be Christian is to be human—to feel the depths of woe and desolation as well as the heights of joy. And any piety that proclaims otherwise promises lies—not truth. Wave your hands and proclaim your constant state of heavenly bliss if you will; in the time of darkness a shallow chorus will fade, but the psalms will give your despair voice—if only: How long, O Lord, how long? Rebuke me not in thine anger nor punish me in thy wrath; out of the depths I cry unto thee… The words that make us in our sheltered chapels and shaded studies recoil from their rawness do nothing but speak the reality of a world entrapped in sin and our rage against the darkness that encompasses—yea, and touches—us. What experience of horror lies behind these words: happy—happy are we who recoil and do not understand…

Prayer, praise, lamentation, exultation, the soul quiet as a child upon its mother’s breast, all of these inhabit the psalms and more, providing us the words when we have none, and revealing the patterns of the Christian life; this is our emotional grammar. It is a grammar where we step through conjugations of praise and pain, righteous indignation and naked fear, despair and confidence. As individuals, as peoples, as voices in the great congregation, it exercises us to pray alone or in throngs. And as exercise it is a form of training. For the longer we dwell in the house of the psalms, the longer they will become the thoughts of our hearts, the words on our lips before we summon them.

Further now, a third truth I tell. Within the Psalter lies the paradox of pronouncement. The psalms give breadth of learning; the psalms providing training in the affections, the cultivation of Christian ways of feeling and being. But these truths are not the source of its power. The source of its power lies in paradox. These words that we read—these words are human. They evoke the deepest depths of human despair, heights of joy, human curiosity at the boundaries in which the soul is enmeshed. Historically these words are bounded: in the fugitive words of a bandit chieftain destined to be king—but not by his own hand alone; in the lamentations of a temple defiled; in the hardships of a people in exile—and a people returned home. These words are the concrete words of a concrete people, and yet… They are words, they are prayers to God, preserved though and over the centuries. And yet… They are also the words of the Spirit, breathed into human hearts, human minds, human lips by the Spirit that spake by the prophets. Words of humans they are also Holy Writ, the words of God that contain all things necessary for salvation. This is the paradox: the words of the psalms are human words to God—yet also Scripture, human words inspired by the very God to whom they are prayed. When we dwell within the house of the Psalms, we dwell not simply in a structure built by human hands—rather one breathed by God. Whoso is simple, let him turn in hither… Come, eat of my bread, and drink the wine that I have mingled… These psalms, these prayers, are God’s words, returned again in prayer and praise.

One more dimension completes this truth. Throughout its history the Church has ever reminded and been reminded that the body does not—cannot—speak but through its head. The preeminent speaker of the Psalter is none other than Christ. The one who calls upon God to go out with his armies is the conquering Lion of the tribe of Judah, the innocent one silent before his accusers is the Lamb standing as if it had been slain. Who of us may speak of our righteousness before God? He alone… And as we take these words upon our lips—words of humans centuries old, words spoken by the Spirit—we speak them with the awareness that it is not only we who speak but that Christ in us speaks in them and through them, directing their way both in us and before the throne of God.

We who live by the Daily Office dwell in the house of the Psalms. Daily we make our ways through its corridors and rooms, building our lives therein. As we dwell, its character imprints itself on our character. As we open our hearts and minds to its gentle pressures, it works its ways within us. As we fit ourselves to its niches and courts, it too fits us for courts above.

Derek Olsen is completing a Ph.D. in New Testament (with a healthy side of Homiletics) at Emory University. His reflections on life, liturgical spirituality, and being a Gen-X dad appear at Haligweorc.

(This is a companion to a previous posting.)

On View: The Paraclete, a photograph by Chuck Kirchner, as seen Illustrated Word at Episcopal Church & Visual Arts.

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By Greg Jones

It should go without saying, but bears repeating anyway, that Jesus and his disciples were all Jews. The Church emerged from Judaism, and was literally born with a Bible in its cradle. The New Testament itself may be seen as a first-century Jewish collection, and it behooves us today to really explore how Jesus and the first Christians beheld and engaged with the Word of God in the Bible.

In Judaism, the first five books of the Bible – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy – are called “the Law” or, in Hebrew, Torah. These books represent the story God told to Moses on Mt. Sinai as he was leading that disgruntled mob of slaves out of Egypt and toward the land of promise. Judaism holds that God revealed the definitive saga to Moses, and Moses brought this sacred story back from the mountain top in both written and oral form. The written form is called Torah, which tradition says was penned by Moses himself, and the oral form would be handed on vocally but never in writing for over a thousand years. Amazingly, the oral transmission would not be committed to written form until late antiquity – roughly between 200 and 500 AD – long after the time of Christ. The “oral Torah,” as it was sometimes called, is the basis for the Mishna and Talmud, and for numerous books of rabbinical commentary, generally called midrash.

While the oral tradition would become immense and varied over time, and quite difficult to fathom even in its later written form, the written Law is remarkably concise and exact. Indeed, Torah was an established sacred text – a scripture – many centuries before Jesus’ time. As a concise, established and fixed text, Torah most certainly was the master version of the story told to Moses by God, the ‘control copy’ so to speak. And as such, for thirty centuries now, Torah has been revered by klal Yisrael [the whole community of observant Jews] as the God-breathed and perfect version of God’s special message.

As the story uttered to Moses by God, Torah reveals who Israel is as a people, where Israel comes from, and what Israel is called by God to do. What’s more, as Jacob Neusner writes in Judaism: An Introduction, through Torah God utters the divine word not only to and about the people of Israel, but to and about all people, and the whole of creation. In Torah, Judaism asserts that we may encounter a “story about eternity,” and anybody living anywhere at any time in human history can engage this story and find herself in it.

For practicing Jews, Torah utters the Word of God which must always be uttered in every age, in every place, by everyone. Torah is not just a story to be remembered. It is a story to be taken personally, it is a story not only to live with, but to live inside. To find oneself on stage inside the unfolding drama told therein is the spiritual calling of the person who engages with Torah. In Torah, observant Jews find themselves as a people and as individuals both literally and literarily inside the master sacred story of God and all things.

The Torah says the story of God and his mighty acts of deliverance for his people must be told, retold, and not only that, but lived out in the lives of those people who even today live inside that master story.

The Rabbis

In the first century when Jesus and his followers lived, Judaism had several major divisions. The priestly and aristocratic caste centered its life around the precincts of the Temple in Jerusalem. The revolutionary radicals engaged in violent resistance against Roman rule were called ‘zealots,’ and they moved around as terrorists and guerilla warriors are wont to do. The isolationist holy men, who sought refuge from the corruptions of Jerusalem, fled to the hills and deserts – like the community which produced the Dead Sea Scrolls. And the Jews dedicated to the copying and interpretation of the Bible, and who taught that Jewish life ought to be righteous, in accordance with the Scriptures, were the scribes and the rabbis. Among scribes and rabbis in general was a community of bible teachers specifically referred to as the Pharisees. The Pharisees were righteous interpreters of Scripture, and it was this group which seemed to overlap the most with Jesus and his followers.

Jesus himself is called ‘rabbi’ in the Gospels, and we know that the apostle Paul was trained in the rabbinical school of Hillel, by the famous Pharisee, Rabbi Gamaliel.

Rabbinical Methods

In other words, in the heart of the New Testament we have not only stories about Jesus and his followers. We also have a body of teaching and commentary on the Hebrew Scriptures as well, by Jesus and his followers, done in the classical rabbinical style. So what is the rabbinical method of engaging with Scripture?

Classical rabbinical interpretation of Scripture is generally thought to begin around the time of Jesus, with the great Rabbi Hillel. Rabbi Hillel formulated a set of seven rules for the interpretation of Scripture. His rules applied to biblical interpretation in areas of Jewish legal questions. The rabbis were primarily concerned that Jewish people live righteous lives in accordance with the Scripture. They sought to answer the question, “How should observant Jews obey the commandments of Torah?” In the Gospels we encounter the essence of this pursuit as the Pharisees are frequently seen to be asking Jesus what sorts of behaviors are ‘lawful.’ Bible scholars have quite easily discovered how all seven of Hillel’s rules may be seen at work in the teachings of Jesus and his followers. Of course, and again, this is not surprising since Jesus was called ‘rabbi’ and the apostle Paul was a student of Hillel’s greatest disciple Rabbi Gamaliel.

First, the primary stance of classical rabbinical interpretation of the Bible is that the Word of God in the Bible is “omnisignificant”—there is no detail in the text, no matter how small it might seem, which is meaningless. As one third century rabbi said, Simeon ben Lakhish, in Torah “there are verses which are worthy of being burnt,” yet even they are the perfect and meaning-filled word of Torah. As such, though parts seem obsolete, or empty of currency, this is an illusion – the meaning is simply obscured from the reader’s eyes.

Second, this disposition that the Bible is omnisignificant, the rabbis believed that the Bible always bears meaning for each person who searches it. Rabbi Akiva, who died around 135 CE, taught that the “Law is no empty thing.” His point was that if a verse seemed empty of meaning, it was the reader himself who was empty.

Rabbi Akiva’s teaching was that if a reader searching the Scriptures could not connect with it, the deficiency was with the reader, not the Bible. The job of the seeker after God in reading the Bible, according to the values of classical rabbinical teaching, is to make the biblical word connect to you.

Third, the rabbis believed the Bible was a cryptic document whose true meaning is not easily discerned from a surface reading of the text. One has to go deep into the text with special skills and wisdom. Fourth, while difficult to understand and interpret, at the same time the Bible is a perfect document, without contradiction, inconsistency or superfluity. In other words, the text is as it should be. The assumption which arises from this second point is that those parts of the text which seem erroneous, or contradictory, or inconsistent, or superfluous are blessed opportunities for interpretation. And fifth, the rabbis believed that the Scriptures are of divine origin. While this is not precisely articulated, it is entirely believed.

Given these assumptions about Scripture, that it is literally filled with meaning, for all readers in every time and place, and that it requires a lot of hard work to struggle and engage with the text in order to connect to those meanings, and that the text itself is also to be honored as it is, and not dismissed, changed, or ignored, the work of the rabbis was ongoing and extensive. The rabbinical work of wrestling with the Word of God in the Bible is reminiscent of the biblical story of Jacob, who spent all night wrestling with a messenger from God, before becoming blessed and having God change his name to, “Israel,” or “he who struggles with God.”

In general terms, the hard work of wrestling with Scripture is called midrash. Midrash is helpful for Christians as they seek to engage with the Bible, and not only as a long ago text, but as a means through which a living and active Word of God may connect to them, today.

The Rev. Samuel Gregory (greg) Jones serves on the board of his alma mater, the General Theological Seminary. He is rector of St. Michael's Raleigh, and author of Beyond Da Vinci (Seabury Books, 2004). He blogs at fatherjones.com.

“One must have the courage to say that the goodness of Christ appeared greater and more divine and truly conformed to the image of the Father when ‘he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross’ (Phil 2:8) than would be the case if he did not will to become a slave for the salvation of the world.”

Origen, Spirit & Fire: A Thematic Anthology of His Writings, ed. Hans Urs von Balthasar (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1984), p. 127.

This beautiful passage from Origen suggests something about the divine nature that we seldom give as much credit as we should. Often, we think of the humility of Christ as something accidental, added on at the right time, solely “for us and for our salvation.” It is true, no doubt, that the humility of our Lord in the Incarnation is part of God’s response to sin, suffering, and death. But, if Origen is right (and here, at least, he seems so to me), the humility of Jesus points to an eternal humility within the Godhead. Never is Christ more like the Father than in his humility and obedience unto death. From beginning to end, the story of Jesus Christ reveals the true character of God. In his person, the Son bears the very imprint of the divine nature (see Hebrews 1:1-4). And so, we ought to rethink our conception of God, from the ground up, in light of the humble, merciful, self-offering of Jesus Christ. Or, as the collect appointed for Proper 21 would suggest, God’s “almighty power” is declared chiefly in “showing mercy and pity.” (BCP, p. 234) In all that he does and suffers for us, Jesus reveals the Father’s love. Indeed, he and the Father are one.

The Rev. Bill Carroll serves as rector of the Church of the Good Shepherd in Athens, Ohio. His parish blog is at here.

Psalm 69 “O God, you know my foolishness, and my faults are not hidden from you.”

One of the Native Youth with whom I work has just moved out of state for a job. He chats with me on line. “Everything is really good. I like it here and I have already saved money for a car. It is going so great.”

It was an upbeat conversation and we ended by saying the usual “later.” Before I could sign off, he sends another message.

“There is one thing I am worried about,” he writes. “I am praying that everything continues to go well. What I am afraid of is that some of the things I’ve done in the past are going to kick me in the face. I’m afraid that one day will be payback time from God and everything will come crashing down.”

Thankful that I had time to think before I respond, I finally write down, “God already knows all about it. He doesn’t do payback time. You are his beloved child. Even if you have some hidden stuff you think no one knows about, Grandfather God knows and cherishes you anyway. He doesn’t do revenge. The way it works is that when we face up to all our foolishness, God’s forgiveness is a done deal. Until then, we are totally loved as we are, regardless of how much we mess up or run away.”

After we disconnect, I look at the four basic faith issues that keep coming up in this youth ministry. This is the story out of which these at risk youth make decisions. “I can’t have value because I am basically a bad person who has been in trouble all my life. Life can’t be good because I can’t trust anything that happens to me to be without pitfalls. My past cannot be forgiven because guilt and shame weighs me down. My future is closed because I can’t trust that good change is possible.” This is the story for those who have been crushed by indifference, by curtailed promises, by reprisal, and by contempt.

Since they have been interacting with the Church, that destructive story has been eroding along with the behaviors that go with it.

Sometimes they have had a brief moment in which they realize that they are truly children of a forgiving God and start to make choices in reference to that moment. And when that happens, even if they, like all of us, start to slip back into old behaviors... When that happens, they and we are healed.

The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them, they said to him, "Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?" They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her." And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground. When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus straightened up and said to her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?" She said, "No one, sir." And Jesus said, "Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again." John 8:3-11 NRSV

Sometimes I feel like I am drowning in all the garbage of dysfunctional images of a quick fix god who spends his time floating in the air condemning everyone in sight. Where do these images come from? Yes, I know how the church has overcompensated with one image or another in specific historical crisis. And I remember my racist grandfather searching through the bible line by line searching for anything that can justify his ranting against those who are different. I listen today to those who are so scared that their world of exclusive saintliness has come to an end that they desperately proclaim that they and they alone have the truth that will protect us from “those people.”

After I read the above story of the woman not condemned, a teenager asks, “Why would he do that?”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

He continues, “She was guilty wasn’t she? If she is guilty she should be punished.”

I show them a rock I have where I have painted the words “First Stone.” “Why do I need this stone to remind me of something important?” We read the story again. We discuss the different parts.

One of the young adults says, “I remember the post you erased on FB where someone said that instead of all the things we do, including our homeless mission, we should concentrate only on the drinking problems we have. Who did he think he is to judge us? I get so tired of that. I think this is about who is qualified to judge.”

“We do it too,” says one of the young adults. “I criticize people all the time. My mother hit me on the side of the head when I walked in late from school one day. We got into a big fight yelling at each other and all I could think of is how much I would like to slam her. Later I found out she had lost her job and didn’t know how to tell us. I’m too quick to condemn someone.”

“We don’t know what is going on with a person. It’s up to God to judge.” Someone concluded.

“This is too easy,” I say. “It sounds like you are all giving me the ‘right’ answers. Go back to the first question. ‘Why would he do this?’”

One of the teens responded, “He made them think about their own problems instead of why someone else is wrong. And even though he knew she was wrong and he had the right to judge, he still said that he did not condemn her. That’s extreme. That’s really big.”

We left it at that. I know that we haven’t finished with that story. We are so used to censuring and being censured by those who do not have our standards. But to receive the message “Neither do I condemn you,” is so radical an act of majesty.

Somehow to say, “This is really big” may be the most comforting expression that can be said in our limited understanding.

Kaze Gadway has worked with the emerging leaders of the Episcopal Church within the Native American community of Northern Arizona as a volunteer for eleven years. They are youth of promise from ages twelve to twenty-four. The Spirit Journey Youth is an outreach program of the Episcopal Diocese of Arizona with forty young people. She is on Facebook and blogs at infaith's posterous