On a blustery March morning in a midsized town in northeastern Ohio, people gather for Sunday worship. With about 400 baptized members, Trinity Lutheran Church an ELCA congregation is similar to the
community it serves, with an even mix of young, mature and senior members.
“The congregation is small enough to know people by their names and yet large enough to be always meeting someone new,” says a man extending his hand in greeting to a visitor.
Settling into a front pew is a senior couple with the grandsons they are raising.
At the back of the assembly is a young family — new members — a mother, father, their 3-year-old toddler and his infant sister, who was baptized just the week before.
A single mom and her teenage daughter are chatting with a retired widower, whose children left the nest years ago.
A brother and sister play a rhyming game while their parents talk to friends about the upcoming adult forum retreat.
A typical Sunday morning for this ELCA congregation?
Not really. Because today is Bible Sunday, and this year it’s different.
When the congregation’s pastor, Tom Lyberg, returned from an ELCA Churchwide Assembly, he was brimming with ideas for the “Book of Faith: Lutherans Read the Bible Initiative.”
The vision of the five-year initiative is: “That the whole church become more fluent in the first language of faith — the language of Scripture — in order that we may live into our calling as a people renewed, enlivened and empowered by the Word.”
One idea the pastor brought back was: “Never give a child a NEW Bible. Instead, take that Bible and pass it around to family members, parents and grandparents, and have it marked up with favorite Bible passages.”
The pastor thought it was perfect for his intergenerational congregation. This March morning, as the hum of activity dies down and people are seated, carefully marked Bibles are being placed into the hands of fourth graders.
A mother watches her child eagerly turn the pages of his Bible in search of the brightly colored highlights she made for him. She remembers the cross bookmark a member of her home congregation crocheted for her when she was a child. It now marks the page where her confirmation verse can be found.
A teenage girl laughingly points to the passage she was allowed to pick out for her little sister from Leviticus 3: “All fat is the Lord’s.”
A woman tells her granddaughter about the beautiful white Bible she received the day she was confirmed, April 6, 1952. She remembers the date because it is stamped in gold leaf on the back cover of the now well-worn book she still uses in her daily devotions.
“I want her to read the passages that have touched me from the Gospels of Mark and John,” says the grandmother. “Perhaps one day she too will give her grandchildren special Bibles with her favorite passages marked and tell them of the Bible their great-grandmother marked for her. She may even share the verses I picked out, and they will know a little something about me.”
As the call to worship begins, members of the adult forum wonder what ideas the pastor is going to use at their upcoming Bible retreat.
“Yep,” a man whispers to his wife, “Never give a child a new Bible — I can’t wait to see what the Bible is going to give us on that retreat.”
Passing on Bibles doesn't seem like a bad idea as one means of sharing one's faith, assuming you can bear to mark up your books like that. I can't.
On a related topic, that initiative's vision really concerns me. The purpose of the Bible is NOT as a crutch to help us "live into our calling" but to convey God's promise of salvation in Jesus Christ. If a Lutheran Bible initiative should be doing anything, it needs to be teaching the proper distinction between Law and Gospel and how to read Scripture with an eye to each. Without that, you're probably better off not reading the Bible.
Thank God Luther translated the scripture into the common folks language so they don't have to rely on others to teach the proper way of understanding Gods plan for their salvation. What a concept. A person who stumbles across a Bible, picks it up and reads it, and then commits his life to Christ would be better off had he not found the Bible at all. Why? Because there was no law / gospel expert on hand to teach this person the highly sophisticated gospel message. Maybe we should burn all the Bible accept those written in Latin so only those who have superior knowledge can explain things to us commoners. Otherwise we would be better off ignorant.
It's not about superior knowledge, or even our commitment to Christ but about Christ's commitment to us, exemplified on the cross. Reading the Bible as Law and trying to do the Bible as Law gets you nowhere. You might as well be Muslim or an atheist. The fundamentalist Bible-thumping crowd is probably the biggest threat to Christ's church today, though Roman Catholicism and other denominatinos still try reasonably hard to drive people from Christ as well.
All that said, yes, some people who have barely heard of Christ do encounter Christ in the Bible and have their lives transformed. But so many more mistake the Bible for an instruction manual on life, the universe and everything. The particularly Lutheran contribution to reading the Bible is our Law/Gospel lens, which we as a Lutheran church should be sharing.
You said “If a Lutheran Bible initiative should be doing anything, it needs to be teaching the proper distinction between Law and Gospel and how to read Scripture with an eye to each. Without that, you're probably better off not reading the Bible”.
How can you say it’s not about superior knowledge? The law / gospel knowledge that these “teachers” possess must be so superior, that without their instruction the untaught would be better off not even reading the Bible. If that is not about superior knowledge, I don’t know what is.
You say “so many mistake the Bible for an instruction manual on life” when you know that all Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work(2 Timothy 3:16-17). Doesn’t that sound an offal lot like an instruction manual on life? That’s probably where these fundamentalist Bible thumpers get this stuff.
You say “Reading the Bible as Law and trying to do the Bible as Law gets you nowhere”. That’s a pretty powerful statement there Peter. Salvation aside, trying to live your life following The Ten Commandments and Jesus’ teaching are very beneficial, not only to you, but also to those around you. And do you really think that people trying to live this way might as well become Muslim or atheist? It really is your way or the highway isn’t it?
You seem to be saying it is better to be an Augsburg confession thumper than a Bible thumper. Is it possible to be a fundamentalist and be legalistic about gospel?
You say “The particularly Lutheran contribution to reading the Bible is our Law/Gospel lens, which we as a Lutheran church should be sharing”. This law / gospel lens that we Lutherans have, is it a superior lens? Is this the lens that leads people to say “people would be better off not reading the Bible without our lens?
It's not superior knowledge because it's not about knowing the Law/Gospel distinction so much as hearing the Gospel. There are people who get it with very little hearing. These are also the people for whom a Bible-reading initiative is not necessary. The biggest part of this distinction is that God saves regardless of our works, but instead through His work in Jesus on the cross and in the resurrection. If you don't get that out of the Bible or try to make room for our work, even a tiny little bit, there is no benefit to be had that you couldn't get out of another work.
Yes, I believe there is a right way and wrong ways to read the Bible, and that wrong ways are as harmful to the reader as being an atheist. Neither one gets you to God.
I did say that taking the Bible as Law gets you nowhere. What I should have said was that it doesn't get you anywhere you can't go as an atheist, Muslim, Jew or anything else. Plenty of other religions have "the Golden Rule" and great ideas for structuring society. And really, any rule in the Bible that is beneficial for living one's life is one you should be able to empirically demonstrate and explain to an atheist without needing to appeal to God's authority. Yes, it is useful as 2 Timothy says for teaching people to do good works, but that is back to First Use of the Law (though 2 Tim also mentions 2nd Use, but the righteousness of which he speaks is civil righteousness-- see Luther's Two Kinds of Righteousness). There's no Gospel that comes from good works. (indeed, it's the other way around-- from hearing the Gospel, one does good works).
I tend to think LCMS when you say "Augsburg Confession thumper". My view on ecumenism is something Luther said: "Where you hear the Gospel proclaimed and the Sacraments rightly administered, there kneel down and pray". It all comes back to proclaiming the Gospel. Law/Gospel is the traditionally Lutheran language to pull the Gospel out of Scripture. Although I can't think of any other way to get Gospel out, many do it without consciously thinking of the systematics. The reason this lens is so necessary is that otherwise you end up with just Law. Law is good, and helps society, but so far as salvation is concerned (which is the church's concern), it says we're lost. Anyone who tries to make the Gospel into a new Law does not proclaim the salvation that is in Jesus Christ.
The gospel is simple. People generally understand the way of salvation upon reading the Bible. People usually get into trouble when they are led astray by bad teachers. You see a lot more gospel than I do. I tend to favor the law side. From my experience, we represent opposite ends of the spectrum. The vast majority of the folks are somewhere in between you and I. But I don't believe either one of us are outside the realm of salvation. I don't believe anyone can read a Bible and come to conclusions that are not somewhere in between where you and I are. This means that people would surely be better off reading the Bible even without the law / gospel instructions.
I am surprised you value the sacraments. Isn't that law? Kneeling down and praying, and going to church, isn't that works?