| Knowing and Doing
In Steinbeck’s classic, East of Eden, Liza Hamilton serves as the matriarch of faith for her family. She is a pugnacious advocate of biblical morality and reads the Scriptures daily as the guide for her life. Yet there are cracks in her pious veneer. Steinbeck describes her use of the Bible sublimely:
Her total intellectual association was the Bible … In that one book she had her history and her poetry, her knowledge of peoples and things, her ethics, her morals, and her salvation. She never studied the Bible or inspected it; she just read it … And finally she came to a point where she knew it so well that she went right on reading it without listening.
The final line is haunting. When we hear a Sunday Scripture lesson, it is too easy to read it quickly and then move on because of its wide familiarity within our culture. “Oh, the Good Samaritan – I know what that one’s all about.” Yet biblical texts that are familiar to us are often the very ones whose messages have often been muted rather than unleashed. The same could be said about the very familiar stories in any one of the Gospels or an Old Testament reading. Familiarity may not always breed contempt, some times it may just breed casualness, which in my estimation is even more perilous.
I can remember moments in life when our children were smaller and I would mention something from the Bible in a discussion or moment of discipline. There seemed to be a willingness to hear and act on that piece of wisdom. By the time the teen years rolled around, the mention of an example would create rolled eyes and a “There you go again dad, bringing the Bible into everything.” ”Yes, I would respond, everything.”
Each week, we challenge ourselves anew to hear again what the ancient words have to tell us. Not only do we discover that we know the words, more often than not, the Word knows us. We are challenged and confronted anew with the will and purposes of God for our lives. That is why I enjoy the challenge of preaching from unfamiliar texts. The work forces me to listen to the wisdom of the Word. The words of Ecclesiastes may be familiar, but are they transforming? It may depend upon which set of ears we bring.
See you soon in the place where the One we worship speaks, then asks us to “go and do likewise.”
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