Wednesday, September 8, 2021

When I was preaching regularly, I stayed in one place. Since my retirement from parish ministry 25 years ago, however, I have travelled around the church, attending services every Sunday of the year in congregations ranging from very small to very large, rural to urban, across the US, Canada, Scotland, and England. Occasionally I have been the preacher, but far more often I have been a worshipper in the pew. That is a lot of Sundays, and quite a few weekdays as well, from evensong in Canterbury Cathedral to Morning Prayer in a tiny chapel in the woods. In all of these thousands of services, I have noticed one thing above all, and that is the quality of the oral reading of Scripture. When the reading is done well, it can be revelatory. When it is done poorly, it is a serious disservice to the people of God. Mostly, I am sorry to say, it is done poorly, sometimes inaudibly, without commitment or understanding.

I believe that this single factor says more about the state of our worship, our faith, and our theological condition than any other—even more than poor preaching and sloppy liturgy. It is not the fault of the readers themselves. It shows a lack of commitment to the Word of God on the part of worship leaders that is hard to understand.

At Grace Church in New York City when I was there from 1981 to 1995, great care was taken in the choosing and training of lay readers. The quality of the readers was high to begin with, because at that time it was a church in renewal, bursting with enthusiastic young people, vital middle-aged people, and deeply committed longtime elders. The clergy were all, in one way or another, deeply biblical in their orientation. The sermons were richly grounded in Scripture. Most important of all, the congregation expected something to happen on Sunday morning (and, for that matter, on Wednesday evening at the 6 PM service). A lackadaisical reading of Scripture would not have been welcome.

I was in charge of the lay readers for a number of years. I entered on this task of choosing and training them with one significant advantage. Thereby hangs a many-times-told tale. I was a student spending a semester at General Theological Seminary in 1974 (because my favorite professors at Union had gone on sabbatical), and I was put into the rota (roster of readers) like all the other students, for the reading of the lesson at the Daily Office. When I stepped up to the lectern for the first time, I was very confident. I knew I was a good reader. I knew how to pronounce all the words and I knew how to inflect a sentence. Great was my mortification when, after the service, one of the professors came up to me and said, bluntly, “We don’t read that way here. Go and get a copy of Bonhoeffer’s Life Together and read what he says about reading Scripture in worship.”

Looking back, I realized that that one moment was the most important thing that I learned at General. After he spoke to me, I wasted no time. I went straight to the library and got the book and read Bonhoeffer’s words. It changed me overnight.

Here is what he writes (it’s in chapter 2, “The Day With Others”):

How shall we read the Scriptures?…It will soon become apparent that it is not easy to read the Bible aloud for others. The more artless, the more objective, the more humble one’s attitude toward the material is, the better will the reading accord with the subject.

Often the difference between an experienced Christian and the novice becomes clearly apparent. It may be taken as a rule for the right reading of the Scriptures that the reader should never identify himself with the person who is speaking in the Bible. It is not I that am angered, but God; it is not I giving consolation, but God; it is not I admonishing, but God admonishing in the Scriptures. I shall be able, of course, to express the fact that it is God who is angered, who is consoling and admonishing, not by indifferent monotony, but only with inmost concern and rapport, as one who knows that he himself is being addressed. It will make all the difference between right and wrong reading of the Scriptures if I do not identify myself with God but quite simply serve Him. Otherwise I will become rhetorical, emotional, sentimental or coercive and imperative; that is, I will be directing the listeners’ attention to myself instead of to the Word. But this is to commit the worst of sins in presenting the Scriptures.

If we may illustrate by an example in another sphere, we might say that the situation of the reader of Scripture is probably closest to that in which I read to others a letter from a friend. I would not read the letter as though I had written it myself. The distance between us would be clearly apparent as it was read. And yet I would also be unable to read the letter of my friend to others as if it were of no concern to me. I would read it with personal interest and regard. Proper reading of Scripture is not a technical exercise that can be learned; it is something that grows or diminishes according to one’s own spiritual frame of mind…

There have been a few moments in my life of nearly instantaneous change as a result of advice I’ve received. Being guided to Bonhoeffer’s wisdom was one of those moments.

At Grace Church in New York City, we had a number of actors (mostly stage, not film) in our congregation. Not all of them were good readers of Scripture at first. They were used to a more theatrical way of declaiming a text. But they surely knew how to take direction. I gave them the Bonhoeffer passage and they immediately understood.

The reading of the Bible—the story of God’s salvation of the world, first through his election of the Jews and climactically through his Son Jesus—is as solemn and privileged a ministry as that of preaching. It is in itself a form of preaching when done with the sort of rapport that Bonhoeffer describes. And yet it is a humble task, because the reader wants to disappear as the significance of the reading appears. When Scripture is read with the kind of understanding and commitment that Bonhoeffer is describing, it can become an Event of the Word of God, like a sermon. The text is a living thing in the possession of the Holy Spirit. It does not belong to the reader or to the congregation, but is an active agent creating hearers and doers. The reader is only a vessel, a messenger. Humility is therefore the right approach to reading.

Here, then, are some guidelines:

• First of all, prayer. The purpose of reading Scripture aloud in public worship is to give central place to the speaking of the living God through his Word. The reader begins preparation by asking the Holy Spirit of God, in the living Name of Jesus Christ, to make God’s voice speak through the reading, for the enlivening of the listeners, for the strengthening of the church, and for witness to the world. Such a prayer will orient the reader toward the great undertaking.
• If Bonhoeffer’s analogy is useful to a reader, then he or she will probably want to stop making eye contact with the listeners. One would not look up from reading a letter of a friend, but would keep one’s eyes on the page, “with personal interest and regard.” Not everyone agrees with this particular stricture, but in my opinion, when the reader looks out at the congregation while reading, not only does it break the reader’s “inmost concern and rapport” with the text, it also interrupts the focus of the listeners.
• I argue that the public reading of Scripture began to decline in quality years ago when the lessons began to be printed on single sheets of paper. It is sad to see people coming forward with pieces of paper as though the Holy Bible did not even exist, or that it was too much trouble to bother with. I vividly remember from my childhood the arrival at the lectern of the best readers in our little church. He or she would step up to the very large, heavy, red-leather-bound lectern Bible and turn to the marked page. There was an unmistakable solemnity about this, similar perhaps to the opening of the Torah scroll (have synagogues gone the route of little pieces of paper? somehow I doubt it). The effect would be similar if the reader carried her own well-worn Bible up to the lectern and opened it to the passage. This action signals two things to those in the congregation: that the reader has her own Bible and knows her way around in it; and that the Scriptures are a whole. Each lection has its place in the assembled canonical books; no passage exists independently of its context in the story of salvation. Reading from an actual Bible also enacts the connection of the lay reader to the Scripture; his familiarity with the books of the Bible and ability to find the passage communicates to the hearers that reading Scripture is a lifelong work of devotion. It is sad that even in some of the most biblically-oriented congregations the big lectern Bible has been removed, presumably so the readers can spread out their pieces of paper on the reading surface. This trivializes the whole concept of Holy Scripture.
• The reader should practice. This might seem obvious, but I could not count the number of times that I’ve heard readers stumble over unfamiliar words, phrases, or names. It was obvious that they had not prepared. Getting pronunciation right takes some foresight; the reader might need to make a quick Sunday morning phone call to a pastor who is not taking calls at that time! Every lay reader can invest in a self-pronouncing Bible which, at the very least, will steer the novice confronted with the name Elimelech (in the book of Ruth) to say E-LIM-a-lek instead of El-i-MEL-ek (I actually heard this mistake recently). Indeed, there are numerous online resources for finding the correct pronunciation of biblical names.
• The reader should give thought to the content of the message and the right emphasis to give to the high points. I remember hearing a reading of II Corinthians 8:1-15, Paul’s teaching about the “gracious work” of financial giving. That passage contains one of the most striking verses in all of Paul’s letters: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.” The lector that day clearly had no idea what she was reading. She was just trying to get through it. She gave no clue that she understood or cared about that revelatory sentence. She had not practiced it, nor had anyone taken the time to explain to her how important it is. She had simply been given a piece of paper and put in front of the congregation.
• Reading the Scriptures in worship is a high privilege and responsibility. Indeed, it is a calling. The pastor or lay person in charge should identify persons in the congregation who have that calling and invite them to become regular lay readers. The roster of readers should not be made up of volunteers. It should be considered an honor to be asked.
• I have visited English cathedrals for evensong on many occasions, and I have been amazed that sometimes (not always) the readers of the lessons have been inaudible. What a disappointment! Audibility is crucial. Many people simply cannot make themselves heard. It is not a good idea to put forward readers who do not have the gift of enunciation and articulation, or the vocal endowment to go with it. There is not much point in choosing underendowed readers with the hope that they can learn (unless they are willing to go to a voice teacher). At the same time, a reader should not be chosen for a big voice either, if s/he is not willing to use it humbly in the service of the Word of God.
• No one should be chosen as a lay reader if he does not want to be trained—to take direction, like a stage actor. A reader of Scripture is a servant of the Word of God, and this is not to be taken lightly.
• Worship leaders might consider having enough Bibles in the pews for every person to have one, just like hymnals and prayer books, in order to encourage familiarity with the actual Bible. Ideally, every worshipper should bring her own Bible to church, but this is difficult to put across in liturgical churches. At the very least, the passages can be printed in the bulletin—although that is admittedly a cop-out!
• Congregations can be taught to be expectant listeners of Bible reading and biblical preaching. This is the responsibility of the clergy who preach and lead a congregation. If the readers are not chosen and trained with care and reverential attention, the congregation will not expect anything and their minds will be elsewhere. If those who read regularly are genuinely committed to it as a vocation from God, it will be clear to the hearers. Congregations can be taught to expect readings in which God is actually speaking. The results can be transforming.

I have been writing this piece in my head for years. I have been increasingly concerned that the reading of Scripture in worship as a central responsibility of the Church is slipping away. I have often had the impression that congregations were listening to readings by people who had been assigned the passage casually, offhandedly, as if by default. Only a small percentage of the readers I’ve heard in all these decades have given the impression that they had really committed themselves to this divine service. When such a reader comes to the lectern and begins, you can tell right away if he or she has a vocation of Scripture reading. The very posture and demeanor of the reader communicates at the outset the importance of the reading and the hearing, and when it is finished, it can be a genuine event of the Word of God. That is the foundation for the establishment and building of the body of Christ. That is the context and meaning of the Lord’s Supper. In this way, the church is renewed week by week by the living Word of God that brought creation into being, redeems it from the ill effects of the Fall, and sustains it through suffering and death into the Age to Come.

FR

Pentecost 15, 2021

Alford, Massachusetts

PS. To my amazement and amusement, as I was working on this blog post, a splendid short piece by Wesley Hill came into my view. Here it is:

https://livingchurch.org/covenant/2021/09/01/bring-your-bible-to-class-or-church/

Professor Hill wants his students to bring actual printed Bibles to class. To this end he quotes something I wrote on this very subject a few years ago. I don’t remember having ever done that, so I apologize for the repetition. However, the message—whether “delightfully pugnacious” (Wes’ description) or not so delightful, the message remains. At the age of almost-84, I have ceased to try to pull my punches!

Reading the Resurrection chapter

I wrote this for Easter Day in 1986. It is an excellent companion to what I have written above.

When my beloved father died two weeks ago, we asked that the major portion of St. Paul’s Resurrection chapter (I Corinthians 15) be read at the funeral. The layman who was assigned to read the lesson did a superb job; in fact, I have never heard this difficult text better delivered. I asked him about it afterward. He said that although he had heard parts of it before, he had never read all of it, and so he had spent quite a bit of time studying it the previous evening. “I wanted to know what St. Paul meant,” he said.

I wanted to know what St. Paul meant! How could there be a simpler, clearer, more penetrating intention for Bible study? If all students of the Bible set about the task this way, we would have hermeneutical heaven.

This man’s reading of the text was a model for Scripture reading in church—measured, thoughtful, strong. He followed, whether he knew it or not, the recommendations of Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

It may be taken as a rule for the right reading of the Scriptures that the reader should never identify himself with the person who is speaking in the Bible…. [the meaning will be conveyed] not by indifferent monotony, but only with inmost concern and rapport, as one who knows that he himself is being addressed. It will make all the difference between right and wrong reading of the Scriptures if I do not identify myself with God but quite simply serve Him.

(from Life Together. Emphasis added.)

As is fitting in reading from the Bible, my father’s friend kept his eyes on the text, “as one who knows that he himself is being addressed.”

Only once did he look up, and it was an unforgettable moment. When he came to the verse, The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be… he stopped, looked up, and with an expression of wonderment, and in a tone filled with awe, he read the single word,..changed.

Paul surely meant that word, changed, to strike us with amazement. The Resurrection of the dead means a transformation hitherto unthinkable. In order to understand the fullest meaning of this change, we may turn to another great Pauline text, Philippians 3:20-21:

But our commonwealth is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,  who will change our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power which enables him even to subject all things to himself.

We can do no better, this Easter Day, than to draw these thoughts to a close as St. Paul did:  Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. (I Corinthians 15:58)