Tag Archives: scripture

November 21, 2012

A Little Anabaptist Ambivalence about Scripture

Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend a chapel service at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, one of two graduate schools owned and operated by Mennonite Church USA. For this service, six individuals stood up to read a scripture passage that had been formative in their life, and to offer a short 2-3 sentence reflection on why this text was important to them. There were some lovely, poignant reflections, and after each speaker, we in the congregation would respond by singing the stanza, “The word of God is solid ground, our constant firm confession.”

At the end of this service, prior to the benediction, the worship leader asked us to take some time to meditate on our own formative scriptures and to share them with the person sitting next to us. This question stopped me in my tracks. A few scattered verses ran through my head, but I couldn’t help but feel ambivalent about sharing any of them.

You see, I’m ambivalent about scripture. I know this is nothing new, and it’s an anxiety that many people share, but it’s something I usually stay quiet about. Indeed, as a good Anabaptist Mennonite, shouldn’t I really love the Bible and see it as a keystone text?

Indeed, the recent Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective says, in the article on scripture, “We believe that all Scripture is inspired by God through the Holy Spirit for instruction in salvation and training in righteousness. We accept the Scriptures as the Word of God and as the fully reliable and trustworthy standard for Christian faith and life…We acknowledge the Scripture as the authoritative source and standard for preaching and teaching about faith and life, for distinguishing truth from error, for discerning between good and evil, and for guiding prayer and worship.” And this is not a new belief. From its founding in the 16th century, Anabaptist confessions like the Schleitheim Brotherly Union statement in 1527 and the Dordrecht Confession in 1632 use effusive scripture quotations to undergird their statements and actions. Taking scripture seriously is part of the legacy that I’ve inherited.

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April 5, 2012

A Loose Canon

In honor of my friend Nelda Kerr, who is getting ready to launch her thesis art show tomorrow, entitled “A Loose Canon,” I thought that I would develop a list of the texts (music, books, movies, etc.) that have worked their way into my own personal canon. Although the 66 books of the Bible (give or take a few apocryphal texts, depending on your bend) are often considered to compose the entire canon, I think this means that we sometimes miss the glimpses of the sacred that are available from other sources, as well.

So, in the spirit of troubling the edges of a closed canon, I offer my top 5 “sacred” texts beyond the Bible and if you are in SoCal or anywhere near, visit Claremont School of Theology tomorrow for live music and the big reveal of Nelda’s awesome art show:

#5 – Rain, Song by Patty Griffin 

“It’s hard to listen to a hard, hard heart

Beating close to mine.

Pounding up against the stone and steel

walls that I won’t climb.

Sometimes a hurt is so deep, deep, deep

you think that you’re gonna drown.

Sometimes all I can do is weep, weep, weep

with all this rain, falling down.

Strange how hard it rains now

Rows and rows of big dark clouds

When I’m holding on underneath this shroud:

Rain.”

#4 – The Nonviolent Atonement, by J. Denny Weaver

“These considerations point to the need for a theology that takes seriously Jesus and his work but renders much more difficult the accommodation of violence so evident in the theology of Christendom. This book offers narrative Christus Victor as such an approach to atonement…one that emerges directly from the New Testament’s narrative, but does not pass through the violence-accommodating formulas and motifs of traditional theology…”

#3 – Life Abundant, by Sallie McFague 

“Revelation, as I now see it, is God’s loving self-disclosure, and that is what I have experienced. I am meeting God and God is love. How outrageous as well  as platitudinous that sounds! I can scarcely believe I am writing it, let alone intending to publish it. Why am I doing so? Simply because it is true; it is what has happened, is happening, to me.”

#2  – Proverbs of Ashes, By Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Parker 

“Those who cannot grieve fail to recognize when life is at risk. Mourning strengthens our ability to choose life and protect it, even as the pain of grief threatens to destroy us. Those who mourn experience the mystery of a presence that is not wholly lost, that accompanies the living with a tenderness and power that alters their lives. The world changes. The surface mask thins, life becomes luminous with fire. The heart expands its breadth. Love is as strong as death.”

#1 – Wild Geese, Poem by Mary Oliver

“You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.”

What texts would you add to your personal canon? What texts have shaped the ways you view the Divine?

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