Sunday, January 27, 2019
This Sunday
Dear St. Luke Community,
Our two scriptures for this Sunday place importance on the tradition of reading from “books.”
Nehemiah 8:1-10 and Luke 4:14-21.
Our Bible is a collection containing many books within it. What is our relationship with these books? While some of us read from the Bible daily, others don't have one. If we were honest about it, we might find everything from love to skepticism to caution around its writings.
And yet the Bible lives as the center of our faith. Especially for the reformers who placed their primary focus on the “the Word.” In Protestant churches, you'll often find the pulpit front, center and elevated because of the reformers elevated importance placed on the written Word. This came to be in conjunction with the invention of the printing press. Gone was the stained glass to allow more light for reading.
Our Protestant tradition holds slogans, one of which is; sola scriptura (Lat. “Scripture alone”). A slogan of the Protestant Reformation indicating that the church’s authority is only the Holy Scriptures and not ecclesiastical traditions or human opinions. This was called the “formal principle” of the Reformation, or the “Scripture principle.”
Did you know that Presbyterians have a reputation for being intellectual in their approach to faith?
Intellectually approaching the Bible is one way to read. And that can be fun. But so can reading with the heart. Placing yourself in the story, as you would any good book. Asking what it must have been like to be them, to live like them, to feel like them. And the more we do that the more we realize with new eyes that we are them. In the particulars of their experiences live a universal truth for all of us.
That is something to celebrate this Sunday Sunday as we worship God and hear The Word.
See you Sunday,
Nicole