The Bible Study

Gospel Reading: Matthew 16.21-28
(Click HERE for last Sunday's readings)

One of the most enduring of truth is "hip sells". I haven't actually heard anybody say this, but I'm willing to bet. What passes for hip among folks like us, sells.

Depending on the particular us you belong to, definitions of hip vary. A lot. Let's just consider things automotive. Whether you purchase a Dale Earnhardt (rest his soul) comfortor and pillow sham set or the Hermes edition Bugatti, hipness played a big role. And I'll bet no one has ever sprung for both.

Kathleen Norris doesn't mention the word "hip" anywhere in her chapter on "The Bible Study." She may not mention the word in the book, but this seems like as good a moment as any to suggest that the meditations in Amazing Grace depends on the regular transgression of a hipness boundary that her readers roughly share.

Part of the pleasure of reading comes from believing that we're the author's kind of people. A good writer makes us feel like the rest of the world may not understand her subtle intentions, but we do. We understand just what she's saying and we're pretty sure she would like us if we ever met for cocktails.

It's clear from this week's reading that Kathleen Norris didn't see the women's Bible Study at Spencer Memorial Presbyterian Church as her target audience. Timid, older women who attend a regular Bible study have a decidedly smaller hipness quotient among most people than either Dale Earnhardt or Hermes.

That's why the story works on us. We're not meant to feel comfortable among these people, and we're not meant to feel like they might have stumbled onto anything much of interest within the small circumference of their lives. But there at the Bible Study, one of the women pulls a folded up placemat out of her purse (probably not a Hermes). She'd saved it from a church bazaar because it bore a quote from Martin Luther: "If you could understand a single grain of wheat you would die of wonder."

Sometimes reading the Bible feels like that. Like pulling something breathtaking from a tasteless purse.

After calling Peter "Satan" (tasteless, don't you think?), Jesus said, "For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life?" Letting go of our lives might be letting ourselves be transported just past the hipness boundaries that make the most sense to us. Or at least letting ourselves see beyond them and smile.

We let our likes be our likes, be they NASCAR or Bugatti, and we enjoy them. But we lose the illusion that the truth comes to us only in tasteful containers.

Christian

Gospel Reading: Matthew 15.10-28
(Click HERE for last Sunday's readings)

I often think that if I'm a Christian, I'll be the last to know
- Kathleen Norris in Amazing Grace

I used to wonder whether the whole world was a sham. It seemed possible to me as an introspective (neurotic?) child that the reality I experienced was carefully staged.

You see, I didn't know what people were thinking, and I didn't know what they really did as soon as they left my sight. Maybe they stepped into a waiting room replete with discarded magazines and the drone of unwatched television sets until it was their turn to appear as a jogger, or a bank teller, or a President of the United States in the underwhelming drama that is the life of Scott.

My description sounds terribly narcissistic (at best). But the whole strange hunch arose from an appreciation of all that we don't really know, more than the thrilling or terrifying sense that the universe revolved around me. Self consciousness was the definition of all I really knew firsthand.

Religious faith has come to be a self conscious affair. We assume that religion happens, if it happens, in the recesses of self consciousness. Or it arises from an overly exercised self consciousness. But Kathleen Norris makes the counterintuitive suggestion that if she's Christian, she may be the last to know. How can that be?

Our gospel Sunday also shakes up our idea of what it might mean to be a Christian. The hero of the story, a Canaanite woman, is dismissed and demeaned by Jesus himself. It's clear that she doesn't have a warm feeling that she's loved by this Jesus. She just won't go away. And Jesus tells us that this is what great faith looks like.

Self consciousness would have (and still does) kept me from Jesus, I'm afraid. I'm comfortable thinking about religion, but I'm challenged by this Canaanite woman's religion. The same root for 'ligament' lives in 'religion'. Which reminds us that religion binds us to other people. It's not just an isolated, internal affair. So maybe there's nothing more religious than begging an offensive but apparently holy man for the miraculous healing of someone we love.

I don't think this woman was thinking about what it meant to be a Christian. She probably would be the last to know. But maybe Christian faith has always been a leap beyond self consciousness and towards someone or something else. An uninhibited leap towards the holy.