Meeting Christ in the Bible

When my grandson was two years old, he was famous for the amount of food he could put away at dinnertime. He happily chomped his way through an adult-sized portion of whatever had been cooked up for the family, and it wasn’t unusual for him to put up his hand for seconds.

Fast forward a couple of years, and he has hit the picky stage. Now he can push even small portions of curated offerings around his dinner plate, distracted by anything else happening in the vicinity and seemingly uninterested in even those foods that have been cooked with a discriminating five-year-old in mind. (He does, of course, make exceptions for mac and cheese, French fries and chicken nuggets.)

As you might imagine, his parents are keen for him to recognize that whatever his feelings about the meal in front of him, he is fortunate to have access to healthy food, cooked with love. Every sandwich, every portion of shepherd’s pie, every dish of pasta is a gift given to him by someone who cares - even if appreciation is not always top of his mind when he would rather be set free to watch Bluey or play outside.

It struck me this week that many of us may be similarly guilty of pushing around on our spiritual plate God’s gift of the holy scriptures. When it comes to the Bible, we who live in this time and place are spoiled for choice — easily accessible to us are hundreds of versions and translations, in printed or audio form, accessible in print or on our phone. I dare say it has become easy to take the Bible for granted.

But in many places around the world, this same book is banned or its distribution heavily restricted. Punishment for possession or smuggling of the Bible can be severe indeed; despite this, courageous people persevere in covert sharing of the scriptures at significant personal risk. We can only imagine the hungry delight with which they consume their contraband Bible, and the avidness they bring to listening for God’s word.

Back here at home, though, I can tell you that, like Jax being lured away from the dinner table by a hockey game on telly, I can be distracted away from regular Bible reading by all sorts of temptations.

Often, these temptations have a very pious air about them. I have, for example, vast quantities of wonderful theology books and study programs I engage with, and oodles of resources for creative spiritual endeavour. But I am the first to admit that I often get more excited by reading about the Bible than the Bible itself.

This acknowledgment has been dancing through my head as I have been considering what it would have been like to have been Peter, James or John at the Transfiguration of Jesus. To have been witness to the dazzling white, indescribable Christ light shining through their very flesh-and-blood friend who had sweated alongside them as they climbed the mountain together.

Is the Transfiguration just an ancient story - or might it encourage us to seek an similarly intimate revelation of Christ? How might we move from a relationship with God that may sometimes feel stuck in an intellectual appreciation of the divine, and experience more directly the love of God at the level of our heart and soul?

Well, we can’t all have Jesus of Nazareth as a hiking buddy. But it turns out that these kind of head-to-heart conversion experiences - these spiritual epiphanies, whether modest or massive - are just as likely to happen when we commit to walking with Christ in scripture.

We sometimes hear of people picking up the Bible and it having an instant transformative impact on their lives. Just one example is of Sir David Suchet, the actor known for his 25-year-portrayal of Hercule Poirot on the BBC series. Filming a different show in Seattle some years ago, he picked up a Bible from his hotel room and turned to Paul’s letter to the Romans.

Quoted later, Suchet said "By the end of the letter … I was reading about a way of being and way of life that I had been looking for all these years." From there David Suchet grew in his Christian faith and eventually went on to narrate a wonderful audiobook of the Bible in its entirety, which has since been enjoyed by millions of listeners.

While the Bible can influence us in the immediate moment, it is more remarkable in how it powerfully affects us over the course of time. I learned this week of an interesting research study that was conducted by the Center for Bible Engagement. Over a span of eight years, more than 100,000 people from around the world and in different denominations were surveyed about their spiritual lives and their engagement in virtually every spiritual practice common in Christianity. These included prayer, meditation, fasting, church attendance, Sunday school, Bible study, small groups, reading non-fiction books, reading fiction books, listening to Christian music, mission trips, and Christian schools.

None of those practices predicted spiritual growth as consistently as Bible engagement, the study’s authors said. They went on to note that a key discovery was that "the life of someone who engages Scripture four or more times a week looks radically different from the life of someone who does not. In fact, the lives of Christians who do not engage with the Bible most days of the week look no different from the lives of non-believers."

So, what becomes "radically different" in the lives of these regular Bible readers? The study found a number of benefits, including significantly less fear, anxiety and discouragement. People were 60 per cent less likely to feel spiritually stagnant and 30 per cent less lonely. They were more than twice as likely to share their faith with others. And they are far less likely to engage in harmful behaviours such as lying, neglecting family, lashing out in anger, gossiping and so on.

It bears repeating the statement above: according to the authors of the study, the lives of Christians who do not engage with the Bible most days of the week look no different from the lives of non-believers. That gave me pause for thought.

This wasn’t a stand-alone study. Other research projects point to the essential role in regular scripture engagement in the spiritual flourishing of an individual. And although these particular researchers cautioned against using their study as a magic "formula with automatic and guaranteed results," the multi-year survey indeed found a sharp uptick in effect when people engage with the scriptures four or more times.

It doesn’t seem to matter particularly what version of the Bible you use; whether you journal alongside it, whether you use a reading plan, or whether you use a printed copy, an app, or an audio version. What is important, though, is that we don’t just read a passage from the Bible by rote; we listen for meanings that arise for us and prayerfully reflect on the message God might have for us within the words of the story.

Many of us will know this approach as lectio divina, or sacred reading, and it is an ancient monastic practice. Despite the Latin moniker, there is nothing fancy about lectio divina - quite the opposite. It is simply a matter of putting time aside to sit quietly with God’s word and listening with the ear of the heart.

The biggest reason people cite for not reading their Bible more often is, you guessed it, "I’m too busy." But I think if we’re honest, even busy folks can find 10 or 15 minutes in their day to sit with a scripture reading - or maybe even listen to one while you’re doing the dishes.

I have been appreciating this book, Seeking God’s Face, that with a psalm, a few prayers and a Bible reading invites people into a short daily practice of lectio divina that follows the calendar of the church year.

And sometimes when I am in a listening mood, I use the beautifully scripted and presented Lectio365 app, which offers a morning scripture reading for reflection as well as noonday and evening pauses for prayer.

I cling on to these, because I know how distractable I can be; how easy it is to find oneself always learning about the word instead of listening to the word. Case in point: I found this lovely book in Indigo this week, The Illustrated Bible: Story by Story. It moves through the narrative arc of the Bible, lavishly decorated with art from the ages, maps, historical sidebars, archeological photos, timelines and definitions. I couldn’t, however, find the Biblical text of the stories. I found scripture references, I found the occasional quote from the Bible, but try as I might I couldn’t find the actual Bible - just sort of a Coles Notes version of what would have been in the Bible, had it in fact been a Bible. But it’s cool, so I bought it any way and will no doubt devote many happy hours to it.

What else keeps us from holding the Bible as close as we might? Well, dismayed by those passages that seem to glorify conquest, blood shed or other morally abhorrent acts, I can view with Bible with some reserve, trying to domesticate it to fit in with my personal sensibilities. But when I see the life-changing effect that the Bible has had on people’s lives over the centuries and around the world - people who have encountered the Bible in its raw state, without a side dish of well-intentioned preachers or progressive liberal studies - I get a lot more humble. Often enough, the best thing we church leaders can do is get out of the way and let the Bible speak for itself in a way that we might never predict, and could never control. The well-known 19th century Baptist preacher, Charles Spurgeon, once famously said "Open the door and let the lion out … The answer to every objection against the Bible is in the Bible."

I don’t want to leave you with the impression that there is no place for good Bible study programs, history lessons, and other tools to better understand the world in which the Bible was written, and the different lenses we might bring to our reading to increase our ability to engage with the text on different levels.  I love all that stuff, and it helps me immensely.

But if we want to truly encounter the transfigured Christ who can shine God’s bright light into our lives, it is far more likely we will do so in our scripture reading, not in our study guides. This Lent - among all the other offerings we have for your consideration - I invite you to make a date to meet Jesus in the Bible. In fact, I invite you to seek God in scripture four times a week, and see what happens over the course of the Lenten season.

I hope and I trust that my grandson's picky eating is a phase, and that he’ll go back to seeing the meal on his plate as a gift to be relished. So may we, too, put aside all that distracts us from the Bible on our bookshelf, and return again to read with a curious mind and an open heart the greatest stories ever told. Amen.