Invitation from the Rector

Lent: Reading the Bible Together

We often take on a Lenten practice that involves a book study of some kind. Here’s a suggestion for this Lent. Let’s read the Bible together. Beginning with Genesis. I’m inviting the entire St Thomas community to read the Book of Genesis along with me during this Lenten season and to come to the Adult Forum each Sunday (except March 4 when I will be with the Vestry at St Andrew’s House and Project Outreach will present at the Forum) where we will discuss what we are finding on our journey through this beautiful and foundational text. There are 50 chapters in Genesis ranging from the two Creation stories (yes, there are two) to the Fall to Noah to the stories of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs all the way to Joseph and the people’s arrival in Egypt. Read 10 chapters a week. Even if you can’t make the Forum, you can listen to the podcast. If you can’t listen to the podcast, you can know that your parish family is reading and discussing right along with you.

We will read Genesis and one other book together this Spring and then in September we will launch the Bible Challenge. Begun at St Thomas Episcopal Church Whitemarsh in suburban Philadelphia two years ago, the Bible Challenge has now spread around the world. http://thecenterforbiblicalstudies.org/bible-challenge-invitation/

Why read the Bible? This wonderful collection of narrative and poetry and letters and law has been given to us by God for the sake of wonder. It has been given to us, not as a source of information, but for our transformation. The Bible is not primarily a set of ideas. It is certainly not a rule book. It is an invitation into a new set of experiences, and invitation for us as readers and listeners to take on a new set of eyes and ears. If we approach the Bible with an open mind an open heart, with humility and with “poverty of spirit” as Jesus says in the Beatitudes, if we read and listen with the innocence of a child, the biblical revelation has the power to transform us, our families, and our community of faith. And reading the Bible in this way, letting the Bible speak to us rather than looking to the Bible to confirm our already existing assumptions, has the power to transform our image of God. Walter Breuggemann, the great Old Testament scholar, has observed that the God the people of Israel--- and Jesus—knew is consistently understood to be merciful, gracious, faithful, forgiving, and steadfast in love. But that will not always be self-evident. Like everything else in real life, God’s revelation in the Bible is often one step forward, two back, and three sideways. As we move through the biblical story together, though, we will find that our capacity to be with God will deepen and increase. We will see the patterns of God’s work unfold. We will see how God is so often manifest in the ordinary, the everyday, the actual. One meaning of the Incarnation is that the divine and the material, the ordinary are one. We just couldn’t see that until God put them together in a body, namely, Jesus!

So please join your parish family on this wonderful adventure reading the Bible together. It’s our story, after all. If you need a Bible, let me know, and you will have one! Be ready to be transformed.

Faithfully,

Lex