But for your part, stand by the truths you have learned and are assured of. Remember from whom you learned them; remember that from early childhood you have been familiar with the sacred writings which have power to make you wise and lead you to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All inspired scripture has its use for teaching the truth and refuting error, or for reformation of manners and discipline in right living, so that the man of God may be capable and equipped for good work of every kind.
I want to pause a moment to offer some thoughts that Lisa's sermon, and this text, brought to me, with a bit of a coda at the end on one of my favorite hymns, which opened today's service.
Not to get all post-modern on you, but I think that Paul's little bit of advice - or, should we be technical, the author of this epistle attributed to St. Paul - is important, but lacking in the kind of contemporary qualifications necessary for truly opening the Scriptures. In fact, I would go so far as to say as there is a certain unspoken post-modern assumption buried within this missive that needs to be made explicit in order for the radical nature of the advice to really shine. I realize I may be reading in to the Scripture something that is not there, but bear with me. For the author of this bit of sage advice, please recall, "sacred writings" and "inspired scripture" was what we call "The Old Testament" or the "Hebrew Bible". Should we be a modern, critical reader, we might note that there is nothing either explicit or implicit with the Hebrew scriptures that points specifically to Jesus of Nazareth as the embodiment of God's promised deliverance. The bone of contention between Jews and the newly-formed Christian movement, at the time the second letter to Timothy was written, was a debate over what scripture actually said concerning issues of messianism, national deliverance, and the like. I want to side-step for a moment the question of whether or not these debates differed on a this-worldly versus other-worldly approach to this question, to focus on this issue alone: the entire controversy that led to the eventual separation of the Christian church from its Jewish parentage came down to an issue of reading.
Buried within this seemingly innocuous, indeed somewhat authoritarian missive to remember one's Bible-reading is the radical idea that new ways of reading offer new ways of thinking and living. It is all well and good to insist that we return to the Scriptures, and remember all the benefits gained thereby. To be honest, however, returning to something we have previously read is always turning to something we have in fact not read, because we are not the same person we were when we originally read it. We are changed, and the text changes with us. The voice we hear changes. The emphases and accents change. Even the language itself may change. Just as Heraclitus said that we never enter the same stream twice, we never encounter the same text twice. Returning to the Bible, because of the very nature of reading, is never really a returning, but always a new beginning.
The service opened with the Fanny Crosby hymn "Blessed Assurance". Fanny Crosby was a voluminous hymn-writer. Living and working in the poor areas of New York City, including Hell's Kitchen, blind from birth, she had writing partners who approached her with what contemporary musicians would call "a riff". They would play the opening line, or chord-structure, and Crosby would say, "This sounds like . . ." and give the opening line. The two would then sit down and compose the hymn in tandem, although sometimes the completed hymn would be brought, with minor changes necessitated by Crosby's versifying. While steeped in late-Victorian sentimentality, Crosby's hymns still resonate because of the earnest simplicity and transparency of her faith. I love "Blessed Assurance" because of all the hymns she wrote, this works best in a large musical setting. The bigger the congregation, the better this hymn sounds. I especially like the bald confession of submission in the last line of the last verse - "filled with his goodness, lost in his love." I always choke up on that, because that is the goal, after all. Singing these words, one knows that Crosby believed this about herself. It is, not so much a confession and testimony for me, as it is an honest, fervent prayer:
This is my story
This is my song
Praising my Savior all the day long
This is my story
This is my song
Praising my Savior all the day long
Lyrics by Fanny Crosby
Music by Phoebe Knapp
p. 369, The United Methodist Hymnal1988, Nashville,TN: The United Methodist Publishing House
