Bible Reading

“You study diligently the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about Me, yet you refuse to come to Me to have life.” (John 5:39)

This phrase explains the action during the poignant Pre-Sanctified Liturgy performed only during the Great Lent. The royal doors are opened, the readings from Genesis or Exodus, Psalms or Proverbs heard, the celebrant holding the smoking censer and candle turns to the congregation and announces: “The light of Christ illuminates everything.” The scriptures having just been read require interpretation. They all point to the Messiah. They all look forward to the life, ministry, death and resurrection of our Lord, God and Savior.

He was speaking to His own people, the Israelites. They missed the point then and they still do. That happens when a person:

A. Has not the Holy Spirit in his or her heart. Those who hear the word of the Lord and are listening for a verification of their own mental image of who the Lord is and what He would say and teach bring to the Bible their own agenda, and they are not prepared to hear the word of the Lord.

B. Understands the Bible as the word of the Lord but resists the living Word who came into the world to save sinners, the God-Man Jesus Christ. The word can be Law. That they accept, but the word as Person is unacceptable to them. It’s one thing for us to say that, but another to read every passage with the image of Jesus of Nazareth before our faces and in the eyes of our minds. How can we criticize the Jews who study the Bible every day of their lives if we do not have the ability to comprehend what it means: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us full of grace and truth” and “We have beheld His glory.” What is His glory, and when did we see it?

I recall the class in seminary, Homiletics, taught by Metropolitan Andrei of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. Oddly, he didn’t have us deliver homilies; rather, he explained what they were, how they were to be delivered, and what ought to be the ultimate outcome of our preaching. He gave an order to us that is locked in my memory: “Young men, you must read the Bible every day of your lives. Even after you have memorized it—because the Bible never changes, but you do.” He was so right. By now I have memorized much if not most of the Psalms, for example, simply because they are recited again and again in our public and private worship. Nevertheless, moments of insight arise when my mind latches onto the meaning of a phrase in a way that it never quite realized before. “Yes,” the word meets the moment. Like the Titanic meeting the iceberg, the experience of the day is illumined by the ancient hymn, and I grasp the meaning with my soul. Was it Jesus or was it the Holy Spirit, or both? Dare I consider that the Father addressed me through the text in ways that He spoke to Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham and Moses? Is that the height of presumption? Who can say?

What I know is that Jesus Christ is leading me on the Way. His icon is always in front of me. I cannot read the sacred Scriptures without His face before my eyes. His life, message, death and resurrection give meaning to a world that oscillates from Him to Satan, now doing glorious deeds to enhance all living things that share our time and space, now acting in horrendous ways to negate all the praiseworthy actions that make us proud to be humans. We are queer creatures, impossible to anticipate, but “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.”