The Bible: Beyond Sunday School

March 2009

by Karen G. Bockelman

What comes to your mind when you hear the word Bible? Do you remember learning Bible stories in Sunday school? Memorizing Bible verses? Family devotions? The LWT Bible studies?

Maybe you’re new to this Bible stuff and it isn’t part of your memory bank at all. Or maybe what you picture is a beautiful, but seldom opened coffee-table Bible.

Perhaps you associate the Bible with old-fashioned language, outdated moral codes, and strange prophecies. Does the idea of reading the Bible make you think about long-ago people and events with no relevance to today? Does the idea of studying the Bible make you worry about losing your faith?

My father grew up in a German-American community in northwestern Ohio. He and his brothers spoke Low German at home and High German at church, and only began learning English when they started school—a one-room building, grades one through eight, with a one-shelf library.

As he learned to read, Dad discovered a wonderful book in that library. It was a book of adventure stories: fights against lions, battles with giants, tales of great warriors and tricky spies—just the kind of stories that appeal to a young boy.

The summer after second grade, Dad started “German school,” an important tradition in his Lutheran congregation. It was an ambitious summer program for kids ages 8 to 12: some 60 days of all-day catechism and Bible instruction (in German and English), but, as my father has said, “It sure beat hoeing beans.”

In his first year of German school Dad made an amazing discovery— that book of adventure stories on the school library shelf was really a book of Bible stories! What a wonderful gift that discovery turned out to be. Dad’s interest and imagination were captured by the stories rather than by the label Bible.

There are many ways people can fall in love with the Bible—children’s storybooks are only one. Gifted Sunday school teachers and pastors can make the Bible come alive for their hearers. Artistic depictions, from stained-glass windows to computer-generated graphics, tell the stories visually and vividly. Dramatic readings and Christmas pageants pull us into the story. Our minds and our hearts can be stirred by new teachings and new insights.

My father has never lost his early love of Scripture. Even more, he never lost that sense of wonder and expectation—reading the Bible could be an adventure, an opportunity to learn something new, fresh, unexpected, stimulating, even exciting.

One drop of water

On the drive to church one Sunday, my pastor’s young daughter announced she would rather come to the adult forum with her dad than go to Sunday school.

“That would be fine, sweetie,” her dad said.

“What are you going to talk about?” she wanted to know.

“We’re going to talk about the Bible,” he answered.

“You mean grownups talk about the Bible in their Sunday school, too?” she asked.

“Yes, we do.”

“But I suppose you talk about serious Bible stories, not the fun ones like we do.”

“Well, yes, we talk about serious stories, but we also talk about some of the same stories you learn in Sunday school. Even grownups need to hear those stories over and over again.”

This young girl already sensed that grownups might look at the Bible differently than kids do. Where we are in our life’s journey can make a difference not only in what we are drawn to reading, but also in our understanding of what we read. A developmental psychologist has pointed out that fifth-graders, for example, tend to be concrete and detail-oriented. So when they read or hear the Exodus story they might wonder, “Didn’t even one Hebrew get one drop of water on them?”

Can the Exodus story be meaningful for fifth-graders? Absolutely. Is there more to the story than crossing the Red Sea on dry ground? Just as absolutely.

When our Bible learning stops with our Sunday school days or gets stuck at that level, we don’t have a chance to grow in faith. We think we know what the Bible says because we once learned the story, and we let that early sense of adventure and discovery be overshadowed by the indifference and even contempt that can grow out of familiarity.

The fruit of the tree

I have often used a Bible Christmas quiz to help people look more closely at what the Bible actually says. One of the multiple-choice questions asks how Mary and Joseph got to Bethlehem. Most people pick “Joseph walked and Mary rode a donkey” even though the Bible actually says nothing about their mode of transportation. But, of course, many Christmas cards and children’s Bibles or Sunday school lessons show Mary riding a donkey, led by Joseph.

Another question asks about the baby Jesus crying and nearly everyone insists, “he never cried.” Why? Not because the Bible says so, but because every Christmas we sing “Away in a Manger” and are reminded “but little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes.” (For the Christmas quiz and other ideas about teaching Scripture, see Teaching the Bible Creatively: How to Awaken Your Kids to Scripture by Bill McNabb and Steven Mabry, Zondervan Publishing House, 1990.)

Women of the ELCA has a strong, long history of regular Bible study. Many of our congregations have taken part in other Bible courses such as the Bethel Bible Series and Crossways. These are designed for the experienced and they can be challenging if the last time we really looked at the Bible was in Sunday school or confirmation class.

A friend of mine spent more than 25 years away from church and, she would say, away from God. When she and her husband moved to a new town, she began to think about looking for a church as a way to connect with people who wanted to do good in the community.

On her first Sunday in church, the pastor preached on the creation account in Genesis. In a kind of throw-away line the pastor said of Adam and Eve, “of course they didn’t really eat an apple.” My friend was flabbergasted. What kind of pastor was this who didn’t even know about the apple? And what was worse, these people in the congregation actually believed him!

She left the service that day determined to check out Genesis for herself and prove to that pastor that Adam and Eve did too eat an apple. To her great surprise she discovered the Bible doesn’t say anything about an apple—just “the fruit of the tree.” That experience opened her to Scripture—and now she’s a pastor!

Book of Faith

There are many ways to approach biblical study. Diane Jacobson, director of the ELCA’s Book of Faith initiative, lists four approaches that have proved helpful through the years: devotional reading, historical reading, literary reading, Lutheran theological reading. While each has particular strengths and challenges, they all have at least two things in common: centering our study on the text of the Bible itself and a desire to hear what God is saying through that text.

Throughout my ministry I have heard people express their fear that historical or literary methods of study will destroy faith. They worry that anything that raises a question about the factual truth of something in the Bible raises a question about the whole truth of God’s word to us. Such fear cannot be taken lightly, but I’ve always said that if asking questions is all it takes to destroy faith, then we’re all in big trouble.

The Bible is not simple. God’s word is not easy. Sometimes I wish it were. Sometimes I long to have the final answer—to know fully, not just in part. No more questions. No more doubts. One clear, right way to understand what God is saying. (The maybe I could preach one good sermone on a given text—no matter how many times it comes up!)

But most of the time I’m glad for the struggle. I know that I’m different every time I open the Bible to read. I know that the people to whom I preach and the people with whom I study are different every time we come together. I know the world changes every day. And I know God speaks to us anew in every time and place.

I love coming back again and again to the same stories, the same texts, and finding something new. I love being surprised by an unexpected insight. I’m thrilled with the ELCA’s Book of Faith initiative. I love reading different translations and versions of the Bible (especially Eugene Peterson’s The Message). I love reading commentaries and hearing the questions and discoveries of others. I love looking at Scripture in different ways, as in the visual illuminations of the Saint John’s Bible.

I am truly my father’s daughter. I couldn’t ask for a better inheritance than his love of the Bible and spirit of adventurous discovery. What about you?

The Rev. Karen Bockelman is a retired pastor, currently serving part time as executive assistant to the Secretary of the ELCA. She lives in Duluth, Minnesota—when she’s not working in Chicago or camping in the Southwest with her husband.