 I'm in that stage of life where I can see my text better without my glasses. I can also see you less well, which is quite encouraging. When we get to the Q&A, I will put my glasses back on so that I can see who's asking the questions. Let's pray together. Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing to you. O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen. I'm going to tell you a little bit what I'm planning on doing this afternoon. I'd like to say a little bit about our usual consciousness and talk about how that consciousness affects our Bible reading. I would like to then consider the mind of Christ as an alternative consciousness and talk about how reading with and like Jesus can shape and enable communal Bible reading. Today is more of a big picture think piece, at least I hope it is. For some specific practices and processes, come to my workshop tomorrow afternoon and please bring your own ideas as well. This afternoon, I'm drawing primarily on a book by Cynthia Bourgeau entitled The Wisdom Jesus. This really brought Pastors Week 2014 theme into focus for me. I'm also referring to a recent book by Walter Dickhout called Building a Community of Interpreters. This is actually a book for preachers but the way he's talking about communal interpretations is very helpful for thinking about group Bible study and congregational settings. I'll also use a quote from Walter Bruggeman from an article, The Preacher, the Text and the People. It's an old article but a really good one from theology today, volume 47. I'll refer very briefly to Jewel Gingrich-Longenecker's as yet undefended dissertation entitled The Pastor as Vital Link, a study in how seminary educated pastors engender engagement with Scripture in select congregations. This is a very modest title. When this is published, you will want to buy it. It's terrific. Finally, I'll be referring to a book by social work professor and researcher Brene Brown, her book Daring Greatly. Her Ted Talks actually may be familiar to some of you. Bourgeau writes that the most common view of Jesus is soteriological, saving, emphasizing Jesus' difference from us and what Jesus alone can therefore do, which is save us from our sins. She proposes instead a soteriological or a wisdom view of Jesus, which emphasizes Jesus' similarity to us. Thus, what Jesus did is also for us to do. She says our job is not to admire Jesus, but to see through his eyes, to hear through his ears, to feel through his heart, and to respond to the world with his healing and wholeness. So far, so good. This sounds right, doesn't it? What could you possibly disagree with? Well, not much, because in fact this is exactly what we want. Prioritizing the same things that Jesus did and then living them out. The innovation Bourgeau proposes, however, is not ethical action, which is I think where we resonate with this, about the spirit and posture from which that action flows. Richard Rohr in his book on the two halves of life, entitled Falling Upward, has a quote from the introduction that I have referred to repeatedly in my meditations on Bible study in the last couple of years. He says it's relatively easy for us to do our job, preach, teach, parent, be a family member, be a church member, but quote, it takes much longer to discover the task within the task, what we are really doing when we're doing what we're doing. Two people can have the exact same job description, and one is holding a subtle or not so subtle life energy in doing their job, while another is holding a subtle or not so subtle negative energy while doing the exact same job. That is what they are really doing. He goes on to say everybody will feel, suffer, or enjoy the difference. Bourgeau names these two energies as operating systems, and sees Jesus' main work as inviting us to move from the usual mindset or operating system to the mindset or operating system of the reign of God. There would be lots of ways to define this usual operating system, but I am going to define it as scarcity. The mindset of Mer enough, and this particularly dog way we approach the Bible in congregations, I think. If you are like me, if you are like many people I talk to, your first waking thought of the day is often, I did not get enough sleep. And I will confess to you that I did not. I woke up at quarter-tale four, bing, wide awake, thinking about this moment. I then read a novel for two hours because I had a rule starting in seminary that if I woke up before five o'clock, I would never use it for work. I did not want to tell my mind and body that that was an acceptable practice. Our second thought is often, I don't have enough time. Whether either of these is true or not, the thought of not enough occurs to many of us so automatically before we even think to question it that it becomes a kind of mantra, a default setting, an operating system for our thinking about everything. Not enough, not enough warmth, not enough people, not enough students in my class, not enough time, not enough money, not enough people showing up at the Bible study. I've heard that one lots. Scarcity thinking activates our reptilian brain, which is committed to our survival and has two strategies for helping us with that. Fight or flight. Working out of our reptilian brain leads to what social scientists call vulnerability avoidance. Because vulnerability is uncertainty, risk, emotional or other exposure. Key behaviors or habits of mind that grow out of vulnerability avoidance include a demand for certainty, which replaces curiosity. A stiffening of our position over against others, ourselves, new ideas, climate. And our nervous system gets flooded so that we cannot hear with distortion or respond with clarity or frankly think a new thought. So when we are in fight or flight, all we can think about is running away or confronting the thing. It doesn't occur to us that maybe what we should do is sit down, take a breath, have a drink of water, consult an expert, sleep on it, any number of other things become impossibilities. All we can see are these two options. How does this scarcity operating system affect our Bible reading? I am drawing here on some notes that Terry Hsu passed along to me from the MCUSA gathering in Pittsburgh in 2010, where the delegates were asked to identify challenges the church's face, or the church faces, in teaching and reading the Bible. These realities may also be true in M&I Church Canada and I will be counting on my Canadian brothers and sisters to enlarge our perspective. MCUSA delegates noted several challenges. First of all, lack of knowledge about the Bible, to which Jewel would add in her dissertation lack of critical scholarly tools available to people in congregational settings that can help with interpretation. The delegates also said that people feel unprepared to teach. The burden of biblical literacy is left solely to the congregation rather than being addressed in homes and schools. Now I will tell you that as I read through this list, it occurred to me that perhaps the delegates in the best-hearted possible way were remembering a past that did not perhaps exist in exactly the way they thought it did. Nonetheless, I think they are pointing to some things that are worth our attention. So I am not sure that there was a golden age when everybody went to a church school and every family spent a gigantic chunk of time studying the Bible together. When I was growing up and my parents felt like we should have devotions, I remember rather distinctly my brother and sister and I taking our minds away because we were not interested in that. So first of all, lack of knowledge. Second of all, teachers feeling like they have a burden that is bigger than they can carry. Third, time is short. There are lots of things vying for our attention, both as leaders and as congregational members. In the Lent Planner that we had a couple weeks ago, we were talking about Bible study in congregational settings and the thing that kept coming up over and over from pastoral leaders is we do not have time to do this kind of Bible study, personally or in our congregations. Fourth, polarization in the culture at large and in the church predisposes people to, as Terry wrote, rush to an understanding of Scripture which fits their own perspective, whatever those perspectives are, rather than stand in the mystery. In this context Bible reading becomes contentious and many of us dislike conflict and avoid it when possible. The delegates also noted that Scripture has been used in ways in the past which are abusive and harmful. Or as Lisa Miller in a February 2014 Newsweek article writes, the Bible has at certain times in history been read to support slavery, wife beating, kidnapping, child abuse, racism, polygamy, etc. As Walter Dickhout says, we deny the Bible its transformative power by turning to its pages so predictably for comfort, confirmation, reinforcement, and modestly manageable doses of illumination. Or by dismissing it as having any authority to speak to our current context. As the delegates said, people will make the Bible say whatever they want it to say so that it's no longer a reliable source for ethical or moral discernment. We also don't come to the Bible often with any expectation that Bible reading is crucial or that it makes a difference in our lives or in our congregations. I think this is particularly an issue in developed countries and especially for middle class people. My middle son, Sam, who is now 23, I remember a conversation we had, we were talking about baptism, and he said, you know mom, in the most beautiful way, I don't know why I need God, I have a good life. This kind of broke my heart, I have to say. This was not the kind of Christian formation that I was hoping to offer the children in my household. But I think it is a part of my social location. In fact, Sam has everything that he needs. This will stop soon, I'm quite certain, and has already. But up until that point, it did not seem like there was any need in his life for God. I think many of us are functional atheists. Julia talked about interning at St. James AME, and I have been attending St. James AME this month. And it is striking to me in this congregation how people do come expecting and needing in a way that is not the case in many of the Mennonite congregations that I attend. Okay, so far so good, is this making sense? Any questions for clarification before I go any further? All right. So all of these challenges to Bible reading, I think they're true. It's not that these are the wrong problems, and yet, two things. Scarcity thinking is by definition small. It focuses on lack. And so there are some things that it will not be able to see. And as Einstein is reputed to have said, you cannot solve a problem with the same consciousness that created it. Whether he said that or not, that is a great quote. There are all kinds of versions of this if you look it up on the internet, and I pick the one I like the best. This is where I think Bourgeois thinking is so mind-blowing. It outlines an alternative consciousness, an alternative way of seeing the consciousness of Jesus. It helps us see Jesus in a new way, and it helps us see with Jesus in a new way. So this whole new way of thinking. When Jesus arrives on the scene, the first thing he says to people is, repent, the kingdom of God is here, or change your whole way of thinking, the kingdom of God is here. So what is this whole new way of thinking? Well, Jesus' talk of the reign of God in and of itself, we know is mind-blowing, because his disciples and the religious and political authorities don't get it. And not only do they not get it in his time, but we through the ages have struggled to understand what he was about. I belong to a little prayer group that meets weekday mornings, and we read through the Anabaptist prayer book. We've been doing this for about four and a half years. And for about two years, our entire prayer book conversation was about what is the kingdom of God? And we'd come back to it every day, day after day, week after week, month after month, two years. And it was an incredibly rich conversation, and it also made us realize, we don't know what this kingdom of God, I mean, Jesus will have tossing this around, and we're like, what are you talking about? Bourgeois' explanation is that the reign of God is really a metaphor for a state of consciousness. It is not a place you go, but a place you come from. It's a whole new way of looking at the world. A transformed awareness that literally turns this world into a different place. If we can see differently, what we see is not the same thing. But our tendency has been to see Jesus' consciousness. Jesus is teaching as the same old, same old, but translated into religious language. To see the spiritual journey as an ascent up to God, perfecting our virtue. This is one way the Sermon on the Mount has often been read, if it's not being dismissed as unrealistic. This was certainly the way I read the Sermon on the Mount when I started out. And actually, frankly, this is my first reading every time. A way to be a better person. It's always my interpretive lens for the Bible. So I always have to say, okay, first reading. Maybe there's something more here. This same old, same old is actually quite good and a necessary beginning. It helps us get our lives together as Christians, which is the first step to maturity to in the image of Christ. But to go all the way with Jesus, we are going to need to go down. And to go down by a particular kind of dying to self that's not inner renunciation or guarding the purity of our being. Being righteous, working harder at righteousness, which just saying is a kind of ascent. I am a more awesomely righteous person than I used to be, right? Even though I'm supposed to be going down. But as Bourgeois says, through radically squandering everything. Here I'm quoting. What seems disconcerting to nearly everybody around Jesus was the messy, free-wheeling largeness of his spirit. Abundance and a generosity bordering on extravagance seem to be the signature of both his teaching and his personal style. Remember how shocked John's disciples were when they came to him? They were like, seriously, Jesus? Like, you're eating and drinking. Aren't you supposed to not be doing that? Like righteous people don't do that. And the Pharisees kept bumping into the way he was trespassing on all kinds of boundaries, hanging out with prostitutes and sinners, break healing people on the Sabbath. I heard Richard Rohr once say, which I thought this was hilarious. So it sounds like Jesus' plan is, okay, let's see, Friday night, time to do some healing. He waits all the rest of the week for Saturday. Apparently, this kind of keeping Sabbath is not at the center of Jesus' consciousness. He associated with women, like he treated them like actual people, all kinds of ways that he is extravagant, trespassing boundaries, letting things go. At the center of Jesus' life and death is love. And love is profoundly powerful and profoundly vulnerable. Quote, anyone who is willing to take up the burden of the much more difficult task, not the manageable complexity of rules and regulations, but the unmanageable simplicity of being present to one's life in love, that person is walking the path of Jesus. And Jesus' teaching assures us that if we enter into this abundant and extravagant path that we will have what we need, we will receive it. This is why I asked Hedy to play Jesus Loves Me at the beginning of our session. It is rootedness in this kind of love that allows us to head in this vulnerable direction. Otherwise, we should stay home and stay in bed. So what does this enough-ness with regard to the text, to the people and to the leader look like? These categories are all interrelated in my mind, so I'm going to start with the Bible, because it's the Bible, but actually none of them make sense apart from each other. What does it mean to think about the Bible as enough? Walter Bruggemann talks about allowing the text to have the power and freedom to utter its own voice as a real voice in the conversation. One of the things I notice when we approach biblical texts is how we make them into objects, especially when we're teachers and preachers. We make it into a thing that we can do stuff with to other people often. Good stuff, but we make it into an object. What does it mean to allow the text to be another self in this conversation? To see ourselves as in conversation with the text, in conversation with each other through the power of the Holy Spirit. Hospitality to the text means that we pay the text careful attention. First of all, friends, it means we need to read it. I've participated in lots of Bible studies where we say, okay, Luke 17, one through eight, let's start talking. No, let's start reading. Let us read again. We read it, and we allow the text to speak in its own voice, even or especially when it says something we don't like. The Iona community in Scotland understands the role of the Holy Spirit to comfort and disturb. This is true for the text also, and especially, and this is hardest of all, to allow the text to comfort others and disturb us. It might also be helpful to think about reading with the Jesus hermeneutic. In the fall issue of the mendicant, which is a newsletter from this Center for Action and Contemplation, Rohr talks about his Jesus hermeneutic, which I will propose to you. I actually think this would be an awesome thing to have a Bible study group do. What is our hermeneutic? What is our individual hermeneutic, and what is our corporate hermeneutic? What are the lenses through which we read, and what do we think are the lenses through which Jesus is reading? So Rohr identifies these three or four-ish. Didn't number them, so I don't know. First of all, he honors his religious tradition whenever possible. I'm teaching junior high Sunday school currently, and one of the earnest young men in the group, Delightful Gent, said to me, well, I mean, I don't think we really have to read the Old Testament, right? Because that's like when God is bad and mean and they fight. We're just all about Jesus. And I said, yay, Jesus. And also, what do you think Jesus's Bible was? So we sat and thought about that for a little bit, and then his eyes got big and I said, yeah. So if Jesus can honor his own religious tradition and build on it, find its core and go from there, we can do that too. Jesus also de-emphasized the parts of his scripture that were imperialistic, punitive, exclusionary, or that presented God in that light. This is the core of the Sermon on the Mount. You have heard and you assumed it meant, let me tell you where that was really headed. Rohr talks about it in terms of discerning the accidentals or regressions. I actually think the inclusion of the regressions in the Bible is wonderful. How many religious traditions show us their dirty laundry so publicly and canonize it? This is great. This is a great lesson for all of us. We have dirty laundry. We may as well be dealing with it. Okay, I think I may be at three. He threw his weight behind the direction things were headed toward inclusivity, justice, and mercy. He reads eschatologically. Where's it going? And how can we get behind that direction? So the enoughness of the text. The enoughness of the people gathered around the scripture. My core conviction here is that we cannot, we, you, we cannot have other people's engagement with the text or transformation through the text for them. It'd be really nice if we could, but we can't. So what that means is that we as leaders, as teachers, as pastors have to find ways to hand over and elicit that engagement and transformation. This means claiming and enacting the reality that we are all interpreters of the text and each voice is needed. This is like classic Anabaptist Bible reading stuff, friends, but we don't do it. And then finding processes for listening carefully to all of those voices and listening and speaking with vulnerability. A process that I've come across recently is called Circle Process. I will talk more about this in my workshop. I have found this to be a very useful and disciplined way of attending to group dynamics and surfacing all of the voices. As courage, we can notice that Jesus was always sharing stuff around, even with incompetence like his disciples. So we could be similarly generous. Another part of living into the people being enough is giving people some information, though not with it. So our job, and this gets into where the leader needs to do the work, but as we're preparing to selecting the one or two things that you have to know in order not to go totally astray with this text and sharing that with your Bible reading partners. And over time, again, in this mindset of there is enough, you do that week after week after week after week. You insert it in a little tiny introduction to the Scripture reading in worship. You drop it in a conversation with the folks at the elders group meeting. We can fill people's toolboxes with important biblical information, but we don't deliver it all on a big old hunk that lands on their feet or their laps and makes them feel like they can't participate in this process. For me, the biggest challenge is allowing for mistakes. Allowing for my mistakes. Allowing for the mistakes of the people I study with. Allowing for horrendous misinterpretations. Yes, I think you should encourage your daughter to marry the old dude, right, from this morning. That would be a great plan. No. Well, I mean, maybe, I don't know. Maybe he would be a fabulous husband for her and she would like to marry him. We don't know that. But allowing for those mistakes and trusting that the Spirit can use even these mistakes and correct what needs to be corrected. My experience in reading with groups of people is that if I can bite my tongue, somebody will say what needs to be said. And it is so much more valuable if it doesn't always come from me. Now, if it's really going into crazy pants land like, yes, we do not need to read the Old Testament, then I feel totally free to say, let's pause for a moment and think about what's going on here. But in general, trusting that there is enough so that we don't have to be the watchdogs for whether mistakes get made or not. Now, from my perspective, what I'm going to say next is the most important part. And that has to do with what we need to do as leaders. This is the thing I'm longing for you to hear and talk with me about. We are the delivery systems for the teaching and preaching and leading that happens. And so how we are and how we do it makes a tremendous difference and we need to pay attention to that. First of all, I would encourage all of us to find ways to fill our cups. This may mean praying for the desire to read the Bible. When I was at Kern Road on the pastoral team, an evangelism committee got started by a bunch of people who thought evangelism, but it's so core to the work of Jesus, how can we go all about it? And the first thing that they did was spend regular time praying for the desire to tell other people about what God had done in their lives. Not doing it, praying for it. We can pray for the desire to read the Bible and we can encourage people that we work with to pray for that desire. Other regular practices of Bible reading. Some of you may be familiar with the website Sacred Space, which leads you through prayers and meditation and a little sip of scripture. Oh, there's sip of scripture from third-way media too. I have found the Anabaptist Prayer Book, the practice of reading this with a group of six or seven people on a very regular basis as part of my ordinary life, really, really helpful. In fact, about a year and a half into that, when I was still in pastoral ministry, I noticed how this was changing my engagement with Bible reading groups because I could come to Sunday school or to a Bible study without needing to get anything from it. And it made me so much more generous as a leader. I already had my community of conversation. My cup was full. So, anything I got out of anything that happened in the congregational setting was frosting. It was great. I mean, sometimes it was inches of frosting, but I didn't have to have it. Maybe we should say peanut butter, right? So, like, it's not cupcake and frosting as if this were something you didn't need. It was real nutritious food, but I already had, like, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich underneath that peanut butter. The reason I'm talking about filling our cups is we cannot offer what we don't have. One of the refrains that comes up over and over in the Anabaptist Prayer Book is that God will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask, yes, this is true. And if we ask for it, we will receive it, and if we receive it, it will be available to us. Working with fear is especially key for leaders who are leading groups. One of the things that I did in my thesis for my Doctor of Ministry degree is write a Bible reading program, and I'll have Jewel email you out a link to really an awesome website by Central Plains Conference. Biblesomethingsomething.org. I can't remember what it is. Okay, whatever. We'll send you the link. Let's see, I got distracted. What was I talking about? Oh, I wrote this Bible reading program, I mean a way approach of reading the Bible, and then I field tested it in several congregations. And one of the things that was so interesting to me is all the leaders in conversation with me said, man, this is really hard, because I'm a really good Bible teacher, people coming to my classes, and I teach them stuff. And when I'm trying to invite them into a conversation with me, it's lots more dangerous. And one of the most challenging parts about doing this is working with my own fear. It's important for us to work with our fears because we set the tone for the group's interactions in really important ways. And we are going to be afraid, because not only is vulnerability unavoidable if you're being real, it is also the hallmark of the Jesus way. How can we work with our own and the group's fears? Well, first of all, remember I was talking about the reptilian brain? I've had some really excellent experiences with my reptilian brain quite recently actually. On Sunday morning at 5 a.m., this was before this morning at 3.45, my reptilian brain woke me up with a rush of adrenaline, and then I got hot, so I hopped out of bed. And I thought, okay, I'm going to have 48 hours of wrestling with my reptilian brain. And then I listened to what I was saying. And I thought, oh, my poor reptilian brain is just trying to keep me safe. And this analogy of wrestling is actually not a very Jesus-y way of approaching my reptilian brain and maybe just puts me in another sort of double layer of fight and flight. And so I imagined my reptilian brain as my youngest son because I love him. And it was easier to love my reptilian brain looking like Luke than like whatever else I was imagining. And so to understand what I'm talking about here, when Luke was 15, we went on a backpacking trip in Colorado. And as we were coming back off the trail, like four days of awesome backpacking, beautiful vistas, pretty good family interaction, not eaten by bears, and so looking forward to getting to the hotel and having the first shower and like hot food, because our food was problematic. As we were getting into the car, I grabbed the side of the car and my husband Randy slammed the car door on my hand. And Luke, ever the savior, left out of the car, ran around it, said, I will save you, Mom! Grab the handle on the car and ripped it totally off. Meanwhile, I'm still standing here with my hand in the car door. Eventually we were able to open the car door from the inside and that outside handle was really expensive. Surprising. But this image of the reptilian brain as Luke running around the car, desperate to save me, helps me understand how kind my reptilian brain is, but just a little impulsive. And without many possibilities. And so instead of wrestling with my reptilian brain, I decided to, I spent the last two days sitting next to my reptilian brain and saying, oh honey, honey, honey! Yes! You're so sweet! But I don't think these people are really going to like kill me. And this mental switch, I think, makes a difference. So this is not about fighting or fleeing our fight or flight, but putting our arm around it and saying, oh, fight or flight, my old friend, thank you. Thank you for keeping me alive. And actually, you are not so helpful in this circumstance. So why don't you just chillax a little bit and we'll go on to some other things. If we can do this with our own reptilian brains, our capacity to do this with the reptilian brain of the group gathered in front of us is much enhanced. And this means that we can do some very interesting things in group settings. So working with our own fears and working with our fears in a Jesus-y way. I think this is Jesus-y. I think Jesus would like Luke as my reptilian brain too. So first of all, recognizing that resistance, fight, flight, our own or that of others is normal and normalizing it for ourselves and others. Oh yes, man, I don't know how to answer that question and that makes me feel kind of anxious. But I bet if we sit here quietly, the Holy Spirit has a good idea and the Holy Spirit always does. Or else we'll go look it up in a commentary or ask, you know, call up Yale Grubber Coons and say, Gail, you can do this. Call people at the seminary. Find out from them. We also need to be patient with how long it takes us or a group to settle down after being all riled up. This is a shock because anxiety can spike instantaneously and it takes forever to go down. Right? I woke up at 5 a.m. on Sunday. Boom! Totally awake. I'm only feeling better now because this is almost done. All right? Two whole days, buddy. And learning to tolerate our anxious moments and use them as opportunities for creative responses. If your reptilian brain attacks you or it attacks somebody else or gets attacks, not the right word, I'm trying to reframe this, right? See, like I'm still in this anti-reptilian brain thing. We can use that not as a piece of information that says, oh my gosh, what a stupid idea. Why did I ever think I should do Bible study with junior hires in preparation for worship? Whose idea was that? But instead to say, oh, okay, this is an invitation to pause and breathe and remember that this is not about me. This is about what God wants to do here with us. Finally, I just want to give you, like, the kernel of Jules thesis. Characteristics of pastors who are effective Bible teachers. And I name these because they are so true and because they help us imagine where we're heading. Not because there is any person out there who does all of this beautifully, but because it gives us an imagination for what's possible. So this one, I did number four of them. Number one, eager to learn and lifelong learners. Another way to talk about it is beginner's mind. This is why I like doing Bible study with junior hires, is because, man, oh, man, do they have beginner's mind. They will say the most astonishing things, but they are totally game. Number two, social and emotional intelligence, being self-aware and contextually aware. Andy helped us think about context. This self-awareness piece I think is a lot about our own lenses and our own fears. This one, number three, I thought was very interesting and seems really true to me. A rejection of ideology. All of the pastors that Jules talked to said, well, you know, like, I'm sort of liberal in this way, not really, I'm kind of conservative in this way. We don't divide the world into either or. That is actually what it takes to be good pastors and wise leaders, because to lead, we need to be able to incorporate rather than reject. Yes, yes, okay. So you think that the Jesus way is the only way. That is great, great, great, great. New Testament, fabulous. And if you could look a little bit bigger, there's awesome stuff in the Old Testament, and truthfully, Jesus was teaching a lot from Deuteronomy, so maybe you wouldn't want to miss that. Bigger mind is what we need to teach. And fourth, adaptability, learner-centered. Can we flex with the people who are in front of this? This flows out of all of these other eagerness to learn, contextual awareness, rejection of ideology. Can we work with, can we love the actual life that we have, the actual people who are in front of it?