I regularly teach Bible class. Almost every Sunday. And it’s the rare Sunday that I don’t preach, even though I’m not officially a preacher. I’m expected to take the Word of God and make the message plain for others.
Too many times, however, I get in the way. Especially when dealing with narratives in the Bible. I don’t see them as sufficient (if you’ll allow me to be honest about it). The story isn’t enough; I’ve got to add some lessons to it. In a wonderful essay on biblical authority, N.T. Wright says:
In the church and in the world, then, we have to tell the story. It is not enough to translate scripture into timeless truths. How easy it has been for theologians and preachers to translate the gospels (for instance) into something more like epistles!
Guilty as charged. I don’t find enough power in the stories in the gospels; I’ve got to bring out my own lessons, based on those stories.
So many of the narratives in the Bible have no moralizing to them. The narrator doesn’t tell us if what the person did was good or bad, if it was right or wrong. That’s not easy for us to live with.
Maybe that’s why so many of the stories in the Bible get relegated to Bible hour, never making it onto the big stage in the main assembly. They’re kids’ stories, not material for adults. (Though a lot of those kids’ stories would get an R rating if they were made into movies!)
Wright also writes:
And as we tell the story—the story of Israel, the story of Jesus, the story of the early church—that itself is an act of worship. That is why, within my tradition, the reading of scripture is not merely ancillary to worship—something to prepare for the sermon—but it is actually, itself, part of the rhythm of worship itself. The church in reading publicly the story of God is praising God for his mighty acts, and is celebrating them, and is celebrating the fact that she is part of that continuous story. And, that story as we use it in worship reforms our God-view our world-view—reconstitutes us as the church. The story has to be told as the new covenant story.
How can we do better about letting God’s story be told? How can preachers and teachers get out of the way so that the story can be heard? Or is there enough value in the stories alone? Do they need our “three points, a poem and a prayer” to make them worthwhile?