In his book Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading, Eugene Peterson warns against a sort of upward sacrilege that can happen in reading the Bible. There is a tendency to inflate scripture with elegance and seemingly “holy” language. As much as I enjoy a good Jane Austen novel, her ancient english does not easily work itself into my everyday life. She provides me with stories for pleasure that transport me to another world, not life shaping narratives to infiltrate my very existence.
That’s the task of scripture.The Bible itself was written in the language of commoners. It was not written in the language of the highly educated or the elite. It was written for those on the streets in the language they used in the most mundane parts of their lives. Why? Because God sought to reveal his involvement in those very moments! The Bible is not a classic novel. It is the revelation of God to his creation. It is an invitation to see one’s own place in the story of God.
It was Peterson’s discussion of the Lord’s prayer that drove this point home for me (pp 148-150). He speaks of the line that states, “Give us this day our daily bread.” For years people sought to spiritualize this line. After all the Greek word used here for daily was nowhere to be found, so who was to say it actually meant “daily?” It could have certainly meant something more spiritual. Why would the prayer taught by Jesus himself, one that centered around spiritual things such as the will of God and his kingdom mention something so physical as bread? It was not until an ancient document containing that very Greek word in a way that could only be translated as daily or todays that the physicality of that verse was accepted and seen. Why did this strike me? Because God does care about the physical! In the midst of glorifying God the Father, in asking for his will to be done, in repenting of sins, Jesus makes the simple request for bread. There is nothing spiritual about this. It is a felt material need, and yet Jesus speaks it. The relationship between God and his people is one that seeps into every area of life. God is not some metaphysical being sitting in the sky, uninvolved in our lives. He is not an abstract deity that cares only of our spiritual existence. He is a personal God who longs to be in relationship with us, a relationship that invades every part of life. How do we know this? Because he reveals himself to us in the ordinary. The stories told in the Old Testament are ones of family experiences and daily tasks. When Jesus walked the earth he spoke the language of the people. He walked their streets and told them stories. The Bible then cannot be viewed as a well written classic that will forever be on the New York Times bestselling list. Rather, it must be the words that define every simple, common and ordinary moment of our lives. From the confessing of our sins to the making of our bread, God is involved in it all.
Let us not turn his words into empty sentences respected only for their eloquence. Instead, let us see the earthy, physical nature of scripture and may it become the soil from which we grow into the members of God’s story we were created to be.
