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.