In Conversation with Everything and Everyone
Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting
Pastor Bob Henry
March 5, 2023
Good morning, Friends and welcome to Light Reflections. This week we continue our series on the Bible. Our text is from Acts 2:42-47a from the New International Version.
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people.
In 2014 I remember reading a brief article by Brian McLaren in Christianity Today titled, We've entered a new era of Bible reading.
In the article he described three different eras of Bible reading which he labeled, Bible 1.0, Bible 2.0, and Bible 3.0.
We are currently in a new era, which he calls Bible 3.0. McLaren characterizes it, as an approach that sees the Bible less as inerrant and more as being "in conversation with everything and everyone.” I love that concept.
Actually, I found this approach rather inviting. To think of the Bible “in conversation with everything and everyone” meant it would no longer be just through my specific denomination’s eyes or for that matter my personal faith community’s eyes.
I remember being taught about the great fear of the Early Catholic Church that the Bible would get into the hands of common people or peasants, and they would try and interpret the Bible for themselves and find they disagreed with the Catholic Church.
The reason Luther’s reformation was so successful – and other reformations after his – including the peace church reformation which Quakers, Mennonites and Brethren are included in, is because of the printing press coming into existence and common people getting their hands on the Bible for the first time.
This reformation or what we might call today, deconstruction and reconstruction has continued because of the unprecedented access we now have to the Bible.
Now, more than ever we have a broad range of readings, interpretations, and commentaries of the Bible at our fingertips just by opening an app on our phone or on our computer.
Whereas in the past, Christians might have had to go to another denomination's church or a completely different part of the world to hear a different take on Scripture. Today, the internet allows us to immediately access a myriad of different interpretations and understandings of the same text.
Brian McLaren says, "Now everybody can hear how everybody else is interpreting the Bible.” And the result is that we can no longer assume that all smart, good people interpret it the way our pastor, fellowship or denomination does. "Mastering one way of dealing with the Bible is not going to carry the weight it used to. We're going to have to deal with the fact that this book is contested."
Throughout history, McLaren says, the Bible has been contested – by biology, history, psychology, genetics and other intellectual movements.
What is different about this era, that is key to Bible 3.0, is the fact that everyone can now be involved in challenging not just what the Bible says, but the way we have traditionally understood what it says. "It's not just that it's being challenged and contested, it's that everybody knows it is being challenged and contested."
So, let me take a moment to define the three eras McLaren describes - Bible 1.0, 2.0, and our current era 3.0. I think this will help you understand how we have evolved in our approaches over the years.
Bible 1.0
McLaren describes Bible 1.0 in terms of the medieval Catholic approach to Scripture, when most Christians were illiterate and had never held a Bible, much less read one. "Bible 1.0 was read and controlled by the religious elite," he says, and used at times to entrench or exert authority. Bible 1.0 relied on inerrant leaders, the Church elite, to interpret Scripture and explain to ordinary Christians how they should understand the portions of it they had heard.
And then we moved into a new era - Bible 2.0.
In Bible 2.0, the emphasis shifted from religious leaders to the Bible itself. Situating this era of biblical understanding in the Protestant reformation and the Christian world since then, McLaren says that, "Reading the Bible became a way to challenge the power of those religious leaders," and that the Bible itself was viewed as inerrant.
In most evangelical and fundamentalist churches today, Bible 2.0 is very much still in force and, as a result, he says we have "started sorting ourselves based on how a certain set of scholars interpreted the Bible." This is most obvious in the fact that, depending on which Bible school or theological seminary a pastor goes to, there will be certain scholars that one simply could not quote. "There still is a control over the Bible's interpretation," he says, even if we have unprecedented access to Scripture itself.
An then we arrive at Bible 3.0 – our current era.
McLaren believes since there are so many people now aware of how many different interpretations there are of single passages or entire books of the Bible, it is helping us move into the era of Bible 3.0. Under Bible 3.0, he says, it doesn't matter that the Bible is inerrant, because so many of us derive completely different meanings from the same inspired, inerrant texts.
McLaren doesn't see the world of Bible 3.0 as a threat to Christianity or to respect and reverence for the Bible, though. While he acknowledges that some people will simply go to the Bible for encouraging quotes, without looking for context, broader or deeper meaning, he is confident that Bible 3.0, with its "emerging, collective intelligence" about the Bible, will not mean giving up the idea of inspiration, just "an openness to inspiration coming to you in fresh and different ways."
McLaren concludes very optimistic.
"If we are ready, we are going to discover the Bible as better, deeper and richer than before."
I find this this new era approaching the Bible both freeing, as well as linked directly to our faith community. Seeing the Bible become more conversational with everything and everyone…then means it will have to be read, wrestled with, questioned, and studied within the context of community!
I believe this was also important to the fallible and human writers of the Bible. We probably could actually look to their approach to help us understand our approach and application, today.
(dot) Bible: For All Things Bible Online in a blog about “Reading the Bible in Community” points out that, “If a culture is a community of people who converse (or argue) about the same things across many generations, it makes sense to learn the contours of the main players in the conversation.”
To understand how we approach the Bible, we should probably take some time to explore the various groups of Quakers and how they have approached the Bible throughout the years. Interestingly, early Quakers looked specifically at how Jesus and his disciples lived it. Often demanding that we return to the teaching and ministry of Jesus and the apostles.
If you take a quick look through the gospels, you will find Jesus entering ongoing conversations among Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots, Herodians, priests, scribes, prophets, Roman authorities, excluded sinners, and the poor.
Jesus is always seeing a communal context. He desires to understand and often push back against the main players in the conversation – the cultures, the leaders, even the laws and norms of his day. And yes, his own Jewish faith was not above questioning or wrestling with.
Quaker Henry J. Cadbury in his second book on Jesus said,
“There is much in the gospels as they stand to suggest that the kind of knowledge Jesus looked for was not so much imparted information as insight achieved. There is in fact reason to suppose that he did not refer so often to what his followers were to be told as to what they were to recognize and to discover. “
That discovery and insight clearly came through interaction with community and the cultures of his day. The diversity was huge for Jesus’ day.
Pharisees and Sadducees would come to debate him in public discourses.
Zealots were drawn to him. Judas was a Zealot he let into his inner circle of 12.
He conversed with the priests in the temple, and even took to gorilla theater – flipping the tables - to get the priest’s and the money-changer’s attention.
He challenged the scribes of his day with the words, “You have heard that it was said…but I say.”
He not only challenged the prophets of his day, but he also spoke as one of them.
He pushed back on Roman Authority but also had an audience with the highest officials in the land.
He befriended, healed, and spoke to the outcast, unclean, poor, unhealthy, and destitute.
Jesus, yes, even addressed and dialogued with his own enemies.
The reality is that Jesus’ own ministry, life, and teaching was an example of conversation within community and culture.
Back when I was working on my doctoral degree, I had a one-on-one session with my psychological director. He had asked me what I was wrestling with currently in my ministry. Since I was in campus ministries and were in a year of studying diversity at Huntington University, I decided to share with him my personal struggle with how some of my colleagues thought diversity was simply a black and white race issue. I asked him what he thought of diversity and its roll in our lives and ministry.
I will never forget the answer he gave. He said, “Well, Bob, that is an interesting question. Do you fear diversity?” I said I wasn’t sure what he meant by that. He then gave me an example. He said,
“My church in North Carolina just went through this difficult conversation. We talked about Black and White race issues, same sex marriage, and even inter-faith issues. He said, people quickly laid down lines and began to take sides. So, our pastors decided to look at Jesus’ approach. We started by making a list of all the diverse people Jesus talked with, used in illustrations, and even who he allowed to attend his lectures and teachings.
In a weird conclusion we found that he refused no one. Prostitutes, religious zealots, rich, poor, sick, mentally ill, people confused, people in leadership, and the list could go on and on. Only once does he refuse people – and that is his own family – and that was probably for their own protection.
So, instead of refusing anyone or fearing diversity, we embraced it. To be like Jesus was to invite everyone in. Soon, same-sex couples were sitting in the same row as people who had renounced their sexual orientation. A mixed race couple opened up about their relationship and started dating in public – and remember this was in the South. A family with an autistic child was embraced by a single woman that considered herself a Buddhist but fell in love with the community at our church. He said, once we began to look at Jesus’ approach, we stopped fearing diversity and began to see it blossom.
He concluded,
“Bob, I think we need all kinds of people around us, I want people who have different experiences and perspectives on life around me. I think the church needs them too. We grow so much with diversity around us.
The church needs LGBTQIA people. We desperately need people of color. We need the poor and rich, democrats and republicans, academics and trades people, and I could go on – but we need to all be in the same room sharing our perspectives – because when we do, we are empowered to see a bigger picture of God.
That conversation changed me in a big way.
Quaker Carole Spencer, who we had here for our inaugural Linda Lee Spiritual Retreat, taught my first class in my doctoral program and she made us read a variety of spiritual writers, feminists, First Nations people, African-Americans, Asians, and even atheists.
As I read them, I realized how enlightening it was to read their views of the Bible. It was so inspiring I found myself writing a paper on the influence of Gandhi on Martin Luther King’s Spiritually During the Civil Rights Movement that became a major part of my dissertation. And amazingly Gandhi had a lot to say about the Bible – especially the Beatitudes.
And I will never forget when I taught a class on the Bible at the Chicago Bible Institute for 20 some African American Women leaders in the Cabrini Green Community. We were reading through the book of Psalms and I began the class by reading Psalm 51:7
“Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.”
After reading the text, I paused to begin my lesson. That is when I noticed a hand raised. I asked if there was a question. The woman proceeded to ask the entire class, “Is that how your Bible reads?”
All 20 or so woman were quick to shake their heads and say, “not mine.”
I found this interesting since we were all working from the same Bible. So, I went over to the woman and read it from her Bible. Again, I read,
“Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.”
It was in this second reading that I realized that this verse was loaded and full of pain for this woman. I sat the Bible down and simply asked for those in the room to share their experience. Immediately another woman said,
“Our ancestors were quoted this verse over and over by white people who abused, enslaved, and killed them.”
Another said,
“Professor, you said there may be better metaphors
to use than what we read in the Bible, why do we have
to use such a painful one like being “whiter than snow?”
For the rest of the class we looked at almost 40 references in the Bible to being “whiter than snow.” We shed tears as they told their stories, and shared what their ancestors had passed on to them. They even wrote their own versions of the text and in an almost sacred ceremony we crossed out those words in their bibles and replaced them with the words that came through their experience and stories.
For an idealistic white boy working on a master’s degree in the Chicago suburbs, I was getting a real education this night. Again, it changed me and how I read my Bible.
At one point during our conversation, one of the woman stood up and began to sing “Amazing Grace.” There wasn’t a dry eye in the room as all our voices joined her. She held on to the notes as she sang, “I was blind but now I see.”
I think those words were for me – and maybe us this morning.
This, folks is the power of allowing the Bible to be in conversation with everything and everyone. Anytime we read the Bible within community, we have an opportunity to learn, grow, be corrected, and even delve deeper into our lives together and our relationship with God.
And every week, we have that same opportunity right here in this Meetinghouse when we enter waiting worship – it opens us up to a conversation with everything and everyone and the diversity within this room.
Let’s open that conversation to everything and everyone this morning. If you need something to prompt you, take a moment to ponder the following queries.
1. Is there an openness in me for inspiration to come in fresh and different ways and through a diversity of people?
2. Do I fear diversity within my faith community?
3. How might I experience a more diverse reading of the Bible within my community?