Sundays at 9:50 - 10:40 a.m.
Wednesdays at 7:30 - 9:00 p.m. (beginning September 10)
Fridays at 10:30 - 11:45 a.m. Snacks served at 10:00 a.m. (beginning September 12)
Tuesdays a special gathering for Young Adults at 7:00 - 8:30 p.m.
Christ the King Lutheran Church embarks on a new project this fall to enhance biblical literacy in small group settings using materials developed by some our finest biblical theologians.
I think that is safe to say that we are biblically ignorant in the church. I know that some among us have a great deal of knowledge about the Bible. But the problem is that we do not share a wider level of knowledge about the Bible that allows the community to grow in ways shaped by the Bible. Such knowledge has to be communal if we are to deepen our understanding of what it means to be in the body of Christ and to serve the mission of the church in the world. Lutheran ways of reading the Bible can help in avoiding some of the pitfalls that result from various blind spots in the contemporary church.
Here are three examples of how that ignorance can work itself out in our congregations. First, there is a tenacious belief that we honor the Bible only when we take it literally and defend it as being scientifically and historical accurate. The Lutheran tradition does not teach a literalism. Luther taught that the Bible has a plain sense. This sense resides in the language of the Bible in whose speech the Word of God addresses its listeners gathered together in the assembly.
Secondly, the Bible is used to prop up certain groups in their self-understanding as superior. This is a form of triumphalism that naively—if not dangerously—would read national, cultural, or ethnic identity from our time into the Bible which is 2000 to 3000 years older. We have only to think of the British who more easily found in the Bible their imperial claims to superiority. But there are too many Americans who identify the United States as being God’s people. They use the flag more than the cross to express their faith.
Thirdly, there is the moralistic fallacy that the Bible confirms our current understanding of morality. On closer examination we find groups mining the Bible for the moral content they hold most dear. The result of this limited selection is to miss the thrust of Biblical tradition in its witness to God’s love, God’s demand for justice, and God’s imperative for peace as the fulfillment of human communion with nature, neighbor and the ineffable God.
These three factors infect all of us consciously or unconsciously not only in the Bible Belt but now as far north as the Canadian border.
What do we do when we read the Bible faithfully and discover that the Bible is filled with metaphor, symbol, poetry and narrative art? We discover that the words are striving to bring us the Word. In the Gospel of John the Word is Jesus Christ himself. Jesus is God’s address to us speaking God’s will, that is, God’s demands of us and also speaking God’s promise to us.
In 2007 the ELCA churchwide assembly voted to embrace an initiative called “Book of Faith.” The initiative called for the whole church to become more fluent in the first language of faith, the language of Scripture. This session will mark the beginning of a conversation among young adults on “how we may experience more fully the power of the Word and to recall or learn anew the Lutheran approaches to Scripture that have been so fruitful over the centuries.” (Preface to Opening the Book of Faith, Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2008. P. vii)
Take this opportunity to join with others in the study of the Bible in order to better learn the language of faith. Copies of the book, Opening the Book of Faith: Lutheran Insights into Bible Study, are available in the church office at a cost of $10. This book will serve as secondary resource for several Bible study groups to form this fall.
Sundays beginning September 7 at 9:50 - 10:40 a.m. in the council room (second floor) taught by Pastor Moore
Wednesdays beginning September 10 at 7:30 - 9:00 p.m. in the council room (second floor) taught by Pastor Moore
Fridays beginning September 12 at 10:30 - 11:45 a.m. (Snacks served at 10:00 a.m.) in the council room (second floor) taught by Pastor Moore and Pastor Liebster
Tuesdays a special gathering for Young Adults will be taught by campus pastor Brad Fuerst beginning September 2 at 7:00 - 8:30 p.m. in the Melanchthon House across the street from Christ the King Church.