Monday, March 29, 2004 AD
No Clue Sunday
Churches are being invited to take part in No Bible Sunday on May 16. The idea is that churches give up using the Bible for a day "to challenge people to remember how much they love the Bible."
Leaving to one side those churches that are already well into No Bible Century, what depresses me about this is that it inadvertently reveals just how "optional" the Bible is even in many churches that do actually value, believe and teach it. This is partly because many "sound", but non-liturgical evangelical churches have little or no biblical content outside the sermon and maybe one short reading.
But more to the point, it shows how far forgiveness of sins is from our minds when we go to church these days. If we really believed we needed forgiveness more than anything else, and that the promises of Gospel were the only place where forgiveness could be found, "No Bible Sunday" would be completely intolerable even as a well-meaning gimmick to promote Bible reading and translation.
And also, it betrays a view of worship which revolves entirely around what we do, not what God does. To have a service without the Bible is to have a service without God speaking. That is no service at all!
What I love about Lutheran worship is the emphasis on (i) forgiveness of sins and (ii) the liturgy as God's service to us in which he gives us this forgiveness. Thus the liturgy consists almost exclusively of Scriptural texts - or at the very least, texts at a very close remove from the original Scripture; and "No Bible Sunday" - read, "No Gospel Sunday", "No Absolution Sunday", "No Forgiveness Sunday" - would not only be unthinkable in principle, but literally impossible to carry out in practice.
But wait! The stated purpose for "No Listening to God Sunday" is to "challenge people to remember how much they love the Bible". As I hope this post shows, it's already done just that for me. So perhaps it's not such a bad idea after all... erm...
Leaving to one side those churches that are already well into No Bible Century, what depresses me about this is that it inadvertently reveals just how "optional" the Bible is even in many churches that do actually value, believe and teach it. This is partly because many "sound", but non-liturgical evangelical churches have little or no biblical content outside the sermon and maybe one short reading.
But more to the point, it shows how far forgiveness of sins is from our minds when we go to church these days. If we really believed we needed forgiveness more than anything else, and that the promises of Gospel were the only place where forgiveness could be found, "No Bible Sunday" would be completely intolerable even as a well-meaning gimmick to promote Bible reading and translation.
And also, it betrays a view of worship which revolves entirely around what we do, not what God does. To have a service without the Bible is to have a service without God speaking. That is no service at all!
What I love about Lutheran worship is the emphasis on (i) forgiveness of sins and (ii) the liturgy as God's service to us in which he gives us this forgiveness. Thus the liturgy consists almost exclusively of Scriptural texts - or at the very least, texts at a very close remove from the original Scripture; and "No Bible Sunday" - read, "No Gospel Sunday", "No Absolution Sunday", "No Forgiveness Sunday" - would not only be unthinkable in principle, but literally impossible to carry out in practice.
But wait! The stated purpose for "No Listening to God Sunday" is to "challenge people to remember how much they love the Bible". As I hope this post shows, it's already done just that for me. So perhaps it's not such a bad idea after all... erm...
