Adult Gospel Study - following the 9am Mass - during Advent
The Many Dimensions of Reading Scripture
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 embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
To speak of Scripture as something we “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest” is to acknowledge the central place of importance that the Bible occupies in the Christian life of faith, while at the same time calling attention to the various dimensions of our encounters with it. That the Bible is one of our chief touchstones as disciples of Christ goes almost without saying. That our engagements with it are numerous and quite varied, is equally obvious. As Anglicans, we are well aware, for example, of the extent to which our various liturgies and prayer books and are saturated with language, allusions to, and passages derived from Scripture. However, what seems to be the less obvious are the creative, discursive, and interpretive aspects of our encounters with the Bible. In other words, we tend not to be as aware of the fact that through our reading, marking, learning, and inwardly digesting we become the media through which Scripture lives, breathes, and helps to transform. One question that we would do well to consider is how we might manage our rather complex relationship with the Bible responsibly and in a manner that promotes the mutuality and respect characteristics of all mature relationships.
The disciplines just described should keep us from making the Bible something that it is not: a replacement for God as a focal point of our worship. As the word about the Word, it deserves our close, careful, contextual, critical, and imaginative reading. Our relationship with the Bible ought to reflect many of these same facets. It should reflect the particularities of our circumstances. In reading it, we should acknowledge the circumstances within which we are seeking to understand it. In marking it, we would do well to be attentive to those places where its worldview is similar to and radically different from our own. In learning it, we need to be in dialogue with the world around us – i.e., with the Arts, Sciences, Humanities, and various sub-fields of Theology. In inwardly digesting it, we need to allow our imaginations t be honed in ways that let us read our way into, around, and – when necessary – beyond the words, ideas, and concepts found therein. We need to keep one eye on the text and another on the circumstances we encounter day in and day out. We need to be attentive to the mysteries that the Lord reveals in, through, and beyond, and in light of Scripture. Embracing such approaches to the Bible promise to enrich our journey with the Ineffable One disclosed by grace therein, the one who comes to us when we gather to break bread. They enable us to read well and – most importantly – the read with Love.
During Advent on Sundays following the 9 a.m. mass, adults are meeting to study the Gospel reading and apply it to our lives in preparation for Christmas. Please meet in the Rectory living at the table next to the bookcase.
