I grew up hearing popular children’s stories from the Bible, but when I re-dedicated my life to Christ in college, I realized I had very little knowledge of the actual contents of the Bible, like so many people today. After my second year of college I answered a call to go to Thailand and work with a native missionary family that I had befriended. The husband, a Thai pastor, told me that I needed to be ready to teach from the Bible as a Bible teacher when we visited the remote Lisu and Lahu hilltribe villages of Thailand. I protested, feeling totally inadequate for such a task. But the pastor insisted that not only did I have much more education and knowledge just by virtue of being raised in America, but that God would help me. For several months I prepared by buying an easy to read Study Bible. I read that Bible voraciously every day and marked it up on every page. I took an overview of the Bible class at my church, and started reading commentaries along with the Bible. I focused on the New Testament, particularly the Gospels and Paul’s letters, and actually found that within just several months I had vastly increased my knowledge and understanding of the Bible. This was really the moment that I became a true student of the Bible, something that all Christians are called to be…I just needed that extra nudge.
I left for Thailand full of nervousness and excitement. I will never forget how inadequate I felt on my first trip in to a Lahu village to be a “Bible teacher” when I was barely 19 with only 2 years of junior college under my belt. To get to the village, we had to traverse into the mountains by foot for many miles in deep mud after the monsoons. The mud was so thick we had to take off our shoes and hang them around our necks. I wasn’t adept at walking up mountains barefoot in mud and everyone in the group passed me by. I was so slow and kept falling, and cutting up my feet on sharp objects. As I approached the village, just barely before nightfall, I saw people coming towards me and my heart sank when I realized how truly ridiculous I must appear: sweating profusely, totally worn out, my face, clothes, and hair plastered in mud (mind you no one else fell on the way or was covered in mud)…it was beyond embarrassing. Someone motioned to me and showed me to a bathroom, or at least what I thought was a bathroom: It was a tiny bamboo structure with a large hole dug into the ground and a little bucket of water. It was too dark to see much of anything but they handed me some clean, dry clothes to put on. I tried to change into the garment, some lovely colorful thing that the women of the village wore, but I had no idea how to put it on…it had no ties, buttons or zippers. After several failed attempts I finally just bunched it up into a knot around me, and with my face red with embarrassment, stepped out and sat next to the fire. There were a lot of giggles. I could now tell that I not only had the garment on wrong, but actually backwards. Some brilliant Bible teacher I was going to be!
I second guessed myself all night…I felt like such an imposter, what did I really know? I was just some ignorant college kid that didn’t know right from left in this culture. How could I even imagine that I could be a Bible teacher for these people? The Thai pastor and translator I was with was brilliant and spoke 8 languages while I was still working on “hello” and “thank you” in the Lahu language. The next day I went back over my Bible lessons and prayed as hard and as earnestly as I ever had for inspiration and understanding from God.
What happened surprised me: but the Bible came alive to me in a way it never had during that week. To this day I fully believe I experienced something supernatural, because it was as if the words and their meaning were being opened up to me in a way that was totally unrelated to my actual knowledge or intelligence, but purely from the Holy Spirit. The Bible actually became a page turner for me and I couldn’t put it down, reading late in the night by candlelight.
And when I finally taught, nerves and all, the words flowed smoothly, and insights jumped into my mind when I would otherwise have drawn a blank. Every day we were there, more and more people came to hear me and my two fellow teachers. By the end of the week, that little Lahu church was overflowing with students of all ages, standing along the walls and in aisles because there were no benches left. At the end of the week we baptized a dozen people in the river from this little village and they thanked us over and over and over again with tears and smiles. I learned then how much God can and does teach us when we read the Bible, when we ask the Holy Spirit to reveal its’ meaning to us.
In our Gospel lesson today, Jesus says: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.” When Jesus speaks about the law and the prophets he is talking about what we as Christians refer to as the Old Testament, but what is known as the Torah and writings in Judaism. Jesus is simply talking about the Hebrew Scriptures, explaining that his purpose is to fulfill the Scriptures. Then he says something rather amazing. Jesus says, “For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.” The word used here for” jot” is “iota.” The iota is the smallest, tiniest letter in the Hebrew alphabet, it’s comparable to a dot on our letter “i.” The word iota is used by English speakers in the phrase, “I don’t give one iota about it.” In other words, we don’t care even the tiniest bit about something. Here Jesus is saying that until heaven and earth themselves pass away, not even one iota will pass from the Scriptures until all is accomplished. Scripture is so important and central to us as people of faith. Jesus’ whole life was lived fulfilling the words of the Bible and we are called to do the same. But how can we do that when we don’t really know what’s in the Bible? This is where our 5th basic practice from our Guide to Christian practices comes in: “Study Scripture.”
Jesus goes on to express how important it is to keep the commandments that we find in Scripture, and even more than that, to make sure that our “righteousness exceeds that of the Scribes and Pharisees.” I find that statement intimidating because the scribes and Pharisees knew way more about the Scriptures than I ever will. They also followed the letter of the law. But Jesus says we have to do one better than that. Not only should we know what the Scriptures contain and follow them, but we need to make sure we aren’t just going through the motions. We are called to move beyond just the law and really live out the Gospel’s call to love, grace, and compassion, by looking at the intention behind the commands. As Jesus points out elsewhere, it’s really not enough to say, “Well, I never killed anyone” when one’s heart is full of hatred and murder.
The point behind studying Scripture is certainly not be become a legalist, it is primarily in order to know God better. If and when we’re open to God’s Spirit, we can find ourselves transformed by this book, THE BOOK, the one that contains God’s words and The Word: Jesus. It’s interesting to me how people will flock to read a new book that claims to be divinely inspired or reveals some new, secret truth, when so many have never taken the time to really read and study the Bible.
Leading up to the time of the Protestant Reformation, the Bible had been taken away from the people. They could not read the Bible and were not even allowed to read it, in their own language, lest they misinterpret it. They had to wait to hear about the Bible from the Pope and the clergy. One of the reasons we Episcopalians are Protestants today and are not Roman Catholics, is because during the Reformation in England we claimed the Bible for the people, in the English language. People like John Wycliffe and John Hus were among the first in the world to translate, circulate the Bible in the English language and teach the importance of reading the Bible in one’ s own language, but they did so upon risk of death. Among the many that were killed during the reformation, John Hus was burned at the stake and it is said that Wycliffe’s English Bible manuscript was actually used as kindling for the fire.
When we walk into Borders bookstore today we have a plethora of English Bibles translations and types at our finger tips, and we rarely realize what it took for us to have that opportunity. People gave their lives so we could read and study the Bible for ourselves because it really is that important and central to our faith. “Study Scripture.”
If you new to the idea but willing to start studying Scripture, I have a few suggestions.
1. Get a translation you feel comfortable with (whether in print or online). We read the New Revised Standard Version in our service. However, even that can be heady, so you may want to start with something simpler like the Contemporary English Version, the Good News Bible, or even The Message. Avoid the King James version.
2. Get a Study or Student Bible or even just a basic Introduction to the Bible to use during your reading.
3. Read just a little bit of the Bible every day. You can read through the Bible in a year by reading just a few chapters every morning. Start by reading the Gospels and then work your way into rest of the letters of the New Testament.
4. Finally, before you ever open the Bible, pray for God’s Spirit to give you understanding and an open mind and heart. Then expect to really hear from God…because you will.
The Scriptures are truly a treasure worth seeking!
I left for Thailand full of nervousness and excitement. I will never forget how inadequate I felt on my first trip in to a Lahu village to be a “Bible teacher” when I was barely 19 with only 2 years of junior college under my belt. To get to the village, we had to traverse into the mountains by foot for many miles in deep mud after the monsoons. The mud was so thick we had to take off our shoes and hang them around our necks. I wasn’t adept at walking up mountains barefoot in mud and everyone in the group passed me by. I was so slow and kept falling, and cutting up my feet on sharp objects. As I approached the village, just barely before nightfall, I saw people coming towards me and my heart sank when I realized how truly ridiculous I must appear: sweating profusely, totally worn out, my face, clothes, and hair plastered in mud (mind you no one else fell on the way or was covered in mud)…it was beyond embarrassing. Someone motioned to me and showed me to a bathroom, or at least what I thought was a bathroom: It was a tiny bamboo structure with a large hole dug into the ground and a little bucket of water. It was too dark to see much of anything but they handed me some clean, dry clothes to put on. I tried to change into the garment, some lovely colorful thing that the women of the village wore, but I had no idea how to put it on…it had no ties, buttons or zippers. After several failed attempts I finally just bunched it up into a knot around me, and with my face red with embarrassment, stepped out and sat next to the fire. There were a lot of giggles. I could now tell that I not only had the garment on wrong, but actually backwards. Some brilliant Bible teacher I was going to be!
I second guessed myself all night…I felt like such an imposter, what did I really know? I was just some ignorant college kid that didn’t know right from left in this culture. How could I even imagine that I could be a Bible teacher for these people? The Thai pastor and translator I was with was brilliant and spoke 8 languages while I was still working on “hello” and “thank you” in the Lahu language. The next day I went back over my Bible lessons and prayed as hard and as earnestly as I ever had for inspiration and understanding from God.
What happened surprised me: but the Bible came alive to me in a way it never had during that week. To this day I fully believe I experienced something supernatural, because it was as if the words and their meaning were being opened up to me in a way that was totally unrelated to my actual knowledge or intelligence, but purely from the Holy Spirit. The Bible actually became a page turner for me and I couldn’t put it down, reading late in the night by candlelight.
And when I finally taught, nerves and all, the words flowed smoothly, and insights jumped into my mind when I would otherwise have drawn a blank. Every day we were there, more and more people came to hear me and my two fellow teachers. By the end of the week, that little Lahu church was overflowing with students of all ages, standing along the walls and in aisles because there were no benches left. At the end of the week we baptized a dozen people in the river from this little village and they thanked us over and over and over again with tears and smiles. I learned then how much God can and does teach us when we read the Bible, when we ask the Holy Spirit to reveal its’ meaning to us.
In our Gospel lesson today, Jesus says: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.” When Jesus speaks about the law and the prophets he is talking about what we as Christians refer to as the Old Testament, but what is known as the Torah and writings in Judaism. Jesus is simply talking about the Hebrew Scriptures, explaining that his purpose is to fulfill the Scriptures. Then he says something rather amazing. Jesus says, “For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.” The word used here for” jot” is “iota.” The iota is the smallest, tiniest letter in the Hebrew alphabet, it’s comparable to a dot on our letter “i.” The word iota is used by English speakers in the phrase, “I don’t give one iota about it.” In other words, we don’t care even the tiniest bit about something. Here Jesus is saying that until heaven and earth themselves pass away, not even one iota will pass from the Scriptures until all is accomplished. Scripture is so important and central to us as people of faith. Jesus’ whole life was lived fulfilling the words of the Bible and we are called to do the same. But how can we do that when we don’t really know what’s in the Bible? This is where our 5th basic practice from our Guide to Christian practices comes in: “Study Scripture.”
Jesus goes on to express how important it is to keep the commandments that we find in Scripture, and even more than that, to make sure that our “righteousness exceeds that of the Scribes and Pharisees.” I find that statement intimidating because the scribes and Pharisees knew way more about the Scriptures than I ever will. They also followed the letter of the law. But Jesus says we have to do one better than that. Not only should we know what the Scriptures contain and follow them, but we need to make sure we aren’t just going through the motions. We are called to move beyond just the law and really live out the Gospel’s call to love, grace, and compassion, by looking at the intention behind the commands. As Jesus points out elsewhere, it’s really not enough to say, “Well, I never killed anyone” when one’s heart is full of hatred and murder.
The point behind studying Scripture is certainly not be become a legalist, it is primarily in order to know God better. If and when we’re open to God’s Spirit, we can find ourselves transformed by this book, THE BOOK, the one that contains God’s words and The Word: Jesus. It’s interesting to me how people will flock to read a new book that claims to be divinely inspired or reveals some new, secret truth, when so many have never taken the time to really read and study the Bible.
Leading up to the time of the Protestant Reformation, the Bible had been taken away from the people. They could not read the Bible and were not even allowed to read it, in their own language, lest they misinterpret it. They had to wait to hear about the Bible from the Pope and the clergy. One of the reasons we Episcopalians are Protestants today and are not Roman Catholics, is because during the Reformation in England we claimed the Bible for the people, in the English language. People like John Wycliffe and John Hus were among the first in the world to translate, circulate the Bible in the English language and teach the importance of reading the Bible in one’ s own language, but they did so upon risk of death. Among the many that were killed during the reformation, John Hus was burned at the stake and it is said that Wycliffe’s English Bible manuscript was actually used as kindling for the fire.
When we walk into Borders bookstore today we have a plethora of English Bibles translations and types at our finger tips, and we rarely realize what it took for us to have that opportunity. People gave their lives so we could read and study the Bible for ourselves because it really is that important and central to our faith. “Study Scripture.”
If you new to the idea but willing to start studying Scripture, I have a few suggestions.
1. Get a translation you feel comfortable with (whether in print or online). We read the New Revised Standard Version in our service. However, even that can be heady, so you may want to start with something simpler like the Contemporary English Version, the Good News Bible, or even The Message. Avoid the King James version.
2. Get a Study or Student Bible or even just a basic Introduction to the Bible to use during your reading.
3. Read just a little bit of the Bible every day. You can read through the Bible in a year by reading just a few chapters every morning. Start by reading the Gospels and then work your way into rest of the letters of the New Testament.
4. Finally, before you ever open the Bible, pray for God’s Spirit to give you understanding and an open mind and heart. Then expect to really hear from God…because you will.
The Scriptures are truly a treasure worth seeking!
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