Thursday of the Fourth Week of Lent
Growing up, I was among “the unchurched.” My parents stopped taking me to church before I was six. So, I had no training in the Bible. I knew nothing. And I mean nothing. Had you stumbled upon me in elementary school and asked me to tell you about any of the major (and rather dramatic) highlights of the Bible, I would have responded with a baffled look. I would not have been able to tell you about the Creation, Fall, Flood, Ten Commandments, burning bush, parting of the Red Sea. You get the idea.
Back in the early 1970s, when I was little, TV was all about the mundane (Guiding Light—a weekday soap opera—comes to mind), on the one hand, and the epic (Ben Hur—an MGM tour de force released to theaters in 1959 and telecast over five nights on CBS in 1971) on the other.
I remember seeing ads for that telecast featuring the larger-than-life Charlton Heston complete with six-pack abs and a chariot. Those ads relentlessly claimed that the film retold “the greatest story ever told.” I had no idea what that meant. Why was this archaic story about a buff guy on a chariot the greatest story ever told? It seemed to have something to do with Jesus, but I couldn’t figure out how.
Yet, at the same time, I loved Bibles. My grandmother on my father’s side gave me my first Bible when I was probably in the sixth grade. It was a “red-letter Bible.” I think she was very wise in selecting that Bible. Though I had no idea how to read the thing, at least I knew when Jesus was talking.
Given my ignorance of its contents, it’s perhaps not surprising that my attraction to Bibles had a lot to do with its aesthetic properties. The incredibly thin paper—the feel of it, the sound of it, the fact that it has to be crazy thin because this book is so big that if the paper weren’t thin we couldn’t carry it around. The leather cover—if you were lucky enough to have a Bible with one. Maybe you could get your name embossed on it. The page that appears very early upon which you can write your name.
Given all that (or maybe because of all that), it is surprising that I think I get something of what Jesus was talking about in the text from John today. Here, Jesus is responding to accusations made against him by identifying three witnesses who could defend him: John, Jesus’ works, and the Father. But none of these seems to be working. For a while John’s testimony seemed convincing. But not anymore. His accusers have never heard the voice of God, so that’s a bust. And then he turns to the Scriptures. He says that "you search the Scriptures because you think you have eternal life through them."
Wow. That’s a sentence that should give me pause: “You search the Scriptures because you think you have eternal life through them.”
Now, I should say that while I love the Bible, I do not feel compelled to insist on reading the whole thing literally. Still, do I need to ask myself: In loving Bibles so much, do I risk making them into an idol—a molten calf of the 21st century? Do I risk becoming “stiff necked” if I invest more in the Bible than I do in Jesus’ works?
In the text before us today, Jesus seems to be saying something like—why are you fixating on Scripture when what stands right in front of you is the Logos—the Word of God. What more do you need than me? Why do you not come to me to have life?
I have to confess that it’s easy for me to love my (too) many Bibles. Goodness, they are lovely. And I have to confess that it’s tempting to think that in loving them, I am being faithful. But the word I am hearing from Jesus today presents a major challenge to my comfort in that.
What I think Jesus is saying to me today is that it’s really rather easy to love Bibles.
What he wants to know is if I love him. Do I really love him who said that what I do for “the least of these” I do for him? Do I love him enough to truly follow him?
Of course, one of the ways I encounter this challenge from Jesus is through one of my beloved Bibles. Perhaps the word that Jesus has for us today is something like: love your Bible. But do not love it more than you love me.
Sue Trollinger