The Mysterious Seb’n

 

 

Is it spelled “sebm” or “seb’n”? Either way is fine. If you’ve never heard it pronounced, you are forgiven for scratching your head. This pronunciation was a mystery to me for 75 years. I used to wonder why my Dad pronounced the number seven as “seb’n”. It was never “seven.”

 

One was one, three was three, nine was nine; but seven was seb’n and twenty-seven was twenty-seb’n. As a young child I wondered about this, and finally at 75 years old I found the answer.

 

I have always been fascinated with language, pronunciation, accents, and alphabets. I recall listening to the speech of my aunts and uncles, my Dad’s brothers and sisters – they did not all speak the same. Those who had formal education and who were doing well professionally spoke one way, those who had little formal education and tilled the soil or turned a wrench or worked retail had another pattern of speech. They all had Virginia accents, but Virginia has many accents – though I suppose as with other parts of the country, they are dying out…a pity.

 

When Vickie and I first moved from Baltimore, MD to Richmond, VA she worked for a state trade association. There were times, when speaking on the phone with someone from “Southside” Virginia, or from the deep southwestern part of the Commonwealth, that she had to ask them to please spell a word – her Iowa ear simply could not understand what the other person was saying.

 

My Daddy had four sisters and three brothers who lived to adulthood, there were two brothers who died in childhood. When my grandmother Rosa was pregnant with her last child, a daughter (Christine), her husband Caskie died at 41 years old (1988 – 1929). A sad irony is that Caskie Withers, Jr., my uncle, died when only 48 (1918 – 1966). I have often wondered about Rosa, pregnant with so many children at home and losing her husband – what must that have been like? What fear? What heartbreak?

 

If you’ve ever watched The Waltons, then you have a pretty fair idea of where my people lived, for Earl Hamner Jr. grew up in Nelson County, VA, just as Grandpa Caskie. Mr. Hamner lived in Schuyler and Grandpa lived close to Roseland. Google Maps tells me it is 32 minutes and 27 miles between the two by car, 2 hours and 24 minutes by bicycle, and 8 hours if you walk. What it is by horse, or horse and buddy, or a Ford Model T I don’t know, but it surely took some time in the early 20^th century to get from “here to there” in Nelson County – a place with hollows and creeks and mountains and twists and turns.

 

Did you know that hell came to Nelson County on August 19, 1969? Those quaint rivers and creeks and mountain sides turned into hell when 25 – 31 includes of rain fell in 5 hours from Hurricane Camille. Over 100 bridges were swept away, 900 buildings along with orchards, livestock, and worst of all, 124 people died. Camille’s devastation in Virginia led to the creation of FEMA.

To be continued...

 

Reading the Bible, Knowing Jesus (1)

 

I have had three conversations over the past year that have challenged me about how we read and teach the Bible. They have forced me to look in the mirror and critique my own communication of God’s Word, they have me questioning myself, with one of the conversations shocking me because it was about me as much as about the Bible. I wonder what “we” who teach the Bible have done, I wonder what I have done, and I wonder if there can be a recovery of reading the Bible and encountering Christ in the Bible in the Western church. I don’t know, things are moving so fast, I really don’t know.

 

Two Stories

 

I recently had a sweet time with a friend in the Scriptures. During this time, as he shared with me the form of his Bible reading, I realized that the translation he is using may be a barrier to his comprehension and reading rhythm. While translations are quite important to me, it is more important that people read the Bible and experience Jesus Christ. I tell folks, “Find a car you can drive; when you become an experienced driver then you can look at other cars that might be a better fit.”

 

I talked to Vickie about us purchasing a certain translation, which I thought would be more accessible and fluid, and give it to my friend. I was looking for an edition without interpretive notes for I wanted my friend to experience the Bible directly, without a mediator – I wanted my friend to meet Jesus, not a human interpreter. I wanted my friend to experience John 16:12 – 15 and 1 Corinthians Chapter 2.

 

What I assumed would be an easy purchase turned out to be impossible. I was looking for an edition with just the Biblical text, though cross references would be fine. It turns out that every edition of this translation now comes with free access to an “app” that has interpretive notes for the entire Bible. This app comes with every Bible in this translation, in every single one!

 

Distracted reading is the death of reading and understanding the Bible. I have seen this in Sunday school class after class, I have seen it in small groups, and I have seen it in preachers and teachers. There only ought to be one text on a page of the Bible, just one text, and that is God’s Word (I am not including cross references, they can be helpful).

 

I can’t tell you how many times I have wanted to see adults work through a Bible passage, to wrestle with it, to submit to it, to seek Jesus in it, and they automatically allow their eyes to focus on interpretive notes in their study Bibles and the growth and “aha” opportunity has closed – the possibility for adventure in Jesus has passed, the possibility for knowing Him more deeply has passed, the joy of working through the passage with others has disappeared.

 

An irony is that we have done what many in ancient Judaism did, just as ancient rabbis “hedged the text,” so have we hedged the text. We have so hedged the text of the Bible that few can penetrate the hedge to the living Christ within the text.

 

Another irony is that often those who make much of there being “one mediator between God and man, the man Jesus Christ” (1 Tim. 2:5) interpose themselves or other teachers between people and the Bible, becoming de facto mediators – forcing the minds, hearts, and souls of would-be readers of Scripture into the image of mediators, including mediators in the form of study Bibles.

 

What is the point of having Bibles if we have bought into a mentality that we cannot read the Bible and know Jesus directly in and through the Bible? We might as well go back to the days before Guttenberg’s printing press.

 

It is frankly “nuts” that people are marketing the “John Smith” study Bible, or the “Sally Ann” study Bible, or the “Reformed study Bible,” or the “Pentecostal study Bible,” or the “Cool young person’s study Bible.” It is heretical that others, such as the American Bible Society, now market perversions such as a patriotic God and Country study Bible. What are we doing? We have lost our minds.

 

(There are other ways we have hedged the Bible, which I will focus on in the course of these reflections.)

 

My second story concerns a phone conversation (not one of the above three conversations) a couple of days ago with our friend Pete. Pete and Martha were in our New England parish years ago and our sweet friendship has continued with each passing year. After we moved back to Virginia, Pete and Martha were travelling through our area and stopped to spend the night with us. They had been living in Florida for a few years and were quite active in their local church, leading small groups in their home and elsewhere.

 

During their visit they said to me, “Bob, our home group is finishing it current study, do you have any recommendations about what study material we should use next?”

 

I replied, “Why not try the Bible?”

 

“You mean, just the Bible?”

 

“Yes,” I said, “just the Bible. See where the Holy Spirit leads you. Pick a book of the Bible and go for it.”

 

During our recent phone conversation, Pete said to me, “Bob, we’re still studying the Bible, reading the Bible, gathering around the Bible. Ever since you suggested that we’ve been doing it, and people are excited about it and they are learning to read the Bible and talking to others about it.”

 

It has been about 16 years since I suggested that Pete and Martha use the Bible as their text, trusting Jesus and the Holy Spirit to lead them and their small groups – and they are not only still excited about it, but their enthusiasm has been caught by others. (This does not mean that Pete and Martha don’t prepare for their small groups, it does not mean that they don’t use Bible study resources. It does mean that the Bible is what they and their groups encounter face-to-face, there is no mediatorial filter such as a study guide – the Bible is the first impression.)

 

I have seen few, if any, study guides or Sunday school curricula worth using, I’m sorry, this is the way I see it. Their questions are typically not worthy of consideration, and they fail to present any challenge to the mind or heart – they may be good for promoting boredom or passing the time, but I seldom see any learning theory or Biblical spirituality incorporated into them. Learning should be challenging, it ought to stretch us, it ought not to be cotton candy. If we want fast food, let’s go to McDonalds.

How is the Holy Spirit speaking to you as you read the Bible? (John 16:12 – 15).

 

Before you began reading the Bible, ask the Holy Spirit to reveal Jesus to you. Ask Jesus to show Himself to you. Ask the Father to hear His Voice.

 

I often pray, “O Jesus, that I may touch You and be touched by You.”

 

I hope you will see Jesus coming in the Scriptures today; coming to you, coming for you, coming through you to others.

 

 

 

On A Bridge Over A Creek

 

 

Sixty years ago, sometime in the spring, I stood with my friend Tommy on a small bridge overlooking a wooded creek in the Twinbrook area of Rockville, MD. I took my New Testament and Psalms from my shirt pocket, opened it to Romans Chapter 8, and read aloud:

 

What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.

 

For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

 

My voice was excited as I read, and Tommy’s face glowed as he heard of God’s love for us. Tommy was my best friend, and as I was coming to know Jesus it was natural that I would share Jesus with him. A coworker at my after-school job had shared Jesus with me, it never occurred to me not to share Jesus with Tommy and others.

 

When I first read Romans 8 and its marvelous crescendo, I read it again and again and again. (I have quoted from the King James Version in this reflection, for the King James is what I first read in those early days). I couldn’t wait to see Tommy and read it to him.

 

That was 1966, today, in 2026, as I read Romans 8 once again, I am still excited. How many times have I read this passage? How many times have I quoted it? Times beyond number, perhaps as the sand of sea and the dust of the earth and the stars of the sky. This is one of my most-quoted passages to congregations, to small groups, and in conversations with individuals – it is as natural as breathing to me. I suppose I could say that it is my breath of life in Jesus Christ.

 

It is also what we seem to have missed. We’ve missed it in our churches, in our seminaries and Bible schools, in our small groups, and most certainly in our engagement with the world around us. We have missed the message that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

 

We have twisted and turned and traduced the Gospel into a worldview, into defective and murderous foreign policy, into nationalism, into sociology, into politics, into an industrial religious cash machine…into any number of things…and we have missed the sacrificial love of God for us in Jesus Christ and we have failed to communicate it to our people.

 

I am at the age where I get to write, “I have lived a long time,” and I will tell you this, the one thing people need to know, whether they are “church” people (God help them and us!) or folks who haven’t a clue about Jesus and religion, is that the Father and Jesus love them. I have never been in a congregation which didn’t need to know this, I have never taught or preached to a people who didn’t need to know this, I have never worked in business with others who didn’t need to know this, I have never had a neighbor who didn’t need to know this.

 

All of our theology, all of the sociology that we’ve imported into the church, all of our slick religious marketing, all of our music, all of the “stuff” we do so very well, means nothing unless we know the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. People do not need a better worldview, people need to know the love of God in our Lord Jesus Christ.

 

If we knew the love of God in Christ Jesus, we would be aghast at much of our behavior, we would be shamed before our Lord and our fellow man…and we would be of some benefit to the people around us…we would offer them some hope.

 

There are those who think that when we read the Bible aloud that we ought to read it in a monotone, perhaps the way we’d read a technical manual. Frankly, that is crazy. If we can read Romans 8 in a monotone, then we have never received a love letter, a passionate Valentine’s Day card, and we ought to be checked for a pulse. The Father has given us the Bible to be our book, it began as His Book and He has given His Book to us…and it ought to possess us and we ought to possess it.

 

O dear friends, we are called to follow Jesus, to love Him with all that we have and all that we are and to share His glorious love with others. As a lad I learned Psalm 73:25, “Whom have I in heaven but You? And besides You, I desire nothing on earth.”

 

Is Jesus our love, our passion, our reason for living? Are we sharing His love with others? Do we realize how deeply God loves us? Are we living cruciform lives?

 

If Jesus isn’t everything, then Jesus isn’t anything (Mark 8:34 – 38).

 

Why not read and reread and then read again Romans 8:31 – 39? Why not make it “your passage” for the next 30 days? Why not allow it to live within you? Why not share it with others?

 

Who will you read Romans 8:31 - 39 aloud to?