Putting on Christ

Article in Daily Democrat, 9/16/2011

It has not been cool enough to put on a jacket, but I am sure looking forward to doing just that. I hope to find a five dollar bill in a pocket, I certainly will find a receipt or a business card from the last time I wore the jacket. I will take this item out and recall the event that brought me to save said item in the pocket. Often I remember it quite well, yet my memory was jogged by the discovery. Would I have remembered the event without finding the item, perhaps, but I obviously forgot about the item tucked within the jacket.

The Christian cannon, we refer to as the Bible, is not something we can read from Genesis to Revelation in one sitting. Well that is if you have any other responsibilities in life, and fitting three books in a week is hard enough, making sixty-six very difficult even if some are as short at Philemon. Of course, no one expects someone to read the entire Bible between Sundays every week. However, even those of us that have read the entire Bible once is not enough. We must return to the scriptures every day. Yet I know many Christians who concentrate on certain scriptures, and there is certainly reasons to hang around the familiar, the friendly, and favorites, for they confirm and comfort. That is important.

We must also read the passages we find less familiar, for we will find things we forgot. Our memories will be jogged by our discoveries, even memories that were not ours individually. We are all part of the one body as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12:12 “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.” Therefore, our individual discoveries are assisted by others. Pastors, theologians, commentaries, scholars, church mothers and fathers, have all left important knowledge, be it in writings, sermons, actions, and questions, and all of them must be part of one’s Bible reading experience. We read the Bible and read the comments in our respective Bibles. We read old and new scholarship. We are in it together thus we go to Bible Studies and help each other. We do not simply have people tell us the truth, we together as Christians discover the truth of God’s Love and Grace, together. Every time we open our Bible we open it together as church, and we have personal epiphanies, assisted by our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Knowing the Bible is not done in a day and it is not done alone. It is done with a jacket that has many pockets, with many depths and textures. We read our Bible with this jacket of Christ’s that we share and explore all pockets of the truth united by the Holy Spirit.