Reading the Bible, Knowing Jesus (5)

 

Are you a tourist, a traveler, or a pilgrim?

 

I heard that G. K. Chesterton observed that “Travelers see what they see, tourists see what they came to see.” When you read the Bible, are you a tourist or a traveler? Is the Word of God changing your life and transforming you into the image of Jesus Christ (Romans 8:29), or are you pretty much the same person you were a year ago, five years ago, ten years ago, a lifetime ago?

 

Do we shape Paul’s letter to the Romans into our image, including our image as Baptists, Pentecostals, Lutherans, Roman Catholics, and Presbyterians, or does Romans shape us into the image of Jesus Christ? Do we read our confessions and statements of faith and doctrinal distinctives through the lens and filter of the Bible and the Person of Jesus, or do we form the Bible into our particular mold and “see” the Bible through our lens of doctrine, and tradition and practice?

 

In other words, when we read the Bible do we see what we came to see, or do we see what is actually there? What will always be actually there is Jesus Christ, it will not be our doctrinal traditions, it will not be our modes of expression, it will not be neat and tidy.

 

Our doctrinal statements do not generally encourage questions and allow ambiguity, they are meant to create uniformity in thought and practice; the Word of God keeps us off balance and yet at the same time, in Christ, creates a security and confidence in Jesus Christ that leads us into heavenly places and beckons us into a glorious eternity in Him.

 

One of the beauties of the Nicene Creed, unlike most other confessions of faith, is that if we actually believe it, we walk through a door of endless possibilities in our relationship with the Trinity and with one another. Most confessions confine us. They may not have been intended to imprison us, but they are used to imprison us. That is, their authors may not have intended them to inhibit our relationship with Christ, but in practice that is what they do, that is what they are used for by others.

 

As a Body, we are meant to have unity in diversity and diversity in unity. (1 Corinthians 12; Romans 12; Ephesians 4). The only way this is possible in when Jesus Christ is our Head, when all things flow from Him to us, and from us to Him (Ephesians 4:15 – 16). This means that Jesus Christ must be in control, that we must work and live “without a safety net.” This is not a pleasant thought for us, there are too many things can go wrong, too much mess to clean up – we like tidy theological houses, tidy congregations, we want to be predicable.

 

All of this contributes to our propensity to live as tourists, when we read the Bible we read what we came to see, we do not read what is actually there.

 

Travel writer and tour guide Rick Steeves talks about tourists, travelers, and pilgrims.

 

“The tourist typically seeks relaxation, entertainment, and escape from the routines of daily life through superficiality and, sometimes, frivolity. They prioritize fun over deeper connection and may depend on curated tours or package vacations to see the best beaches, landmarks, and restaurants that get overexposed not just in guidebooks, but on travel blogs and on social media feeds.” Rick Steeves.

 

The Bible-reading tourist enjoys a Sunday school class or a small group and then moves on with life. He may especially enjoy a video series, or perhaps a series on prophecy and the End-times because they can be entertaining and give a sense of being “in the know.” For the tourist, reading the Bible (or material that is supposed to represent the Bibe, like small group or Sunday school studies) is like visiting one tourist spot after another, you never remain long in one place. Looking back you may recall a nice experience here or there, maybe a good meal, some beautiful scenery, or even some people you meant. Over time all the spots tend to blend together, and while you may collect stickers to put on the back of your car indicating all the places you’ve been, you’ve been to them all as a tourist – you are still the same person you were when you took your first trip.

 

Many of our churches are tourist destinations, focused on entertainment, on experience for the sake of experience (and of course for the sake of getting return tourists). In fact, many pastors speak of “the Sunday morning experience.” When one church falls flat, a tourist will visit another church.

 

“Travelers, by contrast, are in search of more thoughtful experiences. Most travelers I know, they're proud to be known as a traveler as opposed to a tourist: 'I'm more thoughtful — I'm not just here to shop and get a selfie’…it is the traveler's goal to become a "temporary local" and experience real people, real food, and real culture.” Rick Steeves.

 

It seems to me that Bible-reading travelers do their homework prior to meeting with the saints, whether in Sunday school, a small group, or in congregational gatherings. They read the Bible text and other material, if the pastor is preaching a series, they read the text of the coming Sunday and ponder it. They read the Bible text, they pray about it, they read it again; they may read it in various translations, they read other Bible passages that relate to the text. They ask themselves questions, they seek to see Jesus, and they seek to know how to respond obediently to the text.

 

These people tend to appreciate working through a book of the Bible rather than hopping, skipping, and jumping all over the Bible. They instinctively know that you can’t bounce around in the Bible and learn much, they know that their lives cannot be molded with such an approach. These people do not want to be entertained; they are usually not in a hurry. They want to meet the people of the Bible, they want to meet the Bible, they want to drink in the Bible, they want to walk with Abraham, Moses, David, Paul, Deborah, Huldah…and of course, most of all, with Jesus.

 

Many of these folks can tell you about a study they participated in years ago, say in Jeremiah or the Gospel of Matthew, or Romans. They can do this because they didn’t go there to see preconceived images or popular destinations, they went there as travelers, they went to live in Romans, Matthew, and Jeremiah – to live in the text, to live with the people, to walk with Jesus through those books. Furthermore, they return again and again to renew their relationships – they return to meet old friends and to make new ones.

 

"A pilgrim learns about themselves, and you learn about yourself by leaving your home and looking at it from a distance, you try to get closer to God through your travels.” Rick Steeves.

 

What do you think a pilgrim looks like when reading the Bible?

 

We’ll reflect on being a pilgrim with our Bible reading in our next reflection in this series…the Lord willing.

 

 

 

 

The Mysterious Seb'n (5)

 

 

So it was that a few weeks ago when we were watching a documentary about Appalachia, that one of the residents of the Blue Ridge Mountains who was being interviewed answered my question of almost 76 years when he said, “It took ‘em ‘bout seb’n years to git it dun.”  

 

When I heard the word “seb’n” my heart jumped. “That’s it!” I thought. “He said, ‘seb’n,’ he said ‘seb’n’!”

 

I picked up my phone, hit the Google app, typed in “seb’n” and got a couple of hits. Sure enough, “seb’n” is part of an Appalachian dialect, and Nelson County is part of Appalachia in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

 

When my Daddy would say, “seb’n” (or seb’m) he was speaking the language of his childhood, he was talking Nelson County talk – talk with roots stretching across the Atlantic into Ulster and from Ulster across the Irish Sea to Scotland and England. To say that “seb’n” is not a word is to say that Bluegrass is not music, music that also traces its roots to peoples surrounding the Irish Sea.

 

Since then, I have read about Appalachian dialects (for Appalachia has many regions) and have been fascinated, realizing that I’ve heard many of the words and expressions and pronunciations over the years but never realized their roots. Some folks think that these dialects may bring us close to the form of English speech practiced in Colonial times. This reminds me of a study I read which concluded that the French spoken in Quebec is closer to the French of 1750 than that of modern France because of Quebec’s relative isolation from the home country after the Seven Years War (what we term the French and Indian War).

 

Whatever the case might be in terms of Colonial English, traditional Nelson County English now has a beauty for me that I never really appreciated nor truly “heard”. I am sorry we now live far away from those mountains and hollows.

 

Are there words or expressions you heard growing up that you’ve wondered about? Are there questions about the people who surrounded you, their language and their ways, while you were growing up? Should there be questions?

 

When we moved from the D.C. - Baltimore area to Richmond in the 1980s, one of the many changes we encountered had to do ways of doing business and of meeting people in general. In Baltimore and D.C. when you first met someone to do business you sat down and got to the point and then you left. In Richmond there was a warm-up conversation, and it nearly always had to do with, “Who are your people? What did your Daddy do? What about your Mamma? Tell me about yourself and your people.”

 

People did not want to know so much about where you were from; they wanted to know about your people. (I should also mention that in Richmond another thing folks often wanted to know was what college you attended. Where you a Hokie or Cavalier? Did you go to VCU or UR? In D.C. and Maryland, as a rule no one cared about that kind of thing.)

 

How might you describe your people? Your family and the families around you? What was your neighborhood or region like? How have things and people changed over the years?

 

I realize we may never make another trip to that honeycombed land of the Blue Ridge – but the land is etched in my heart, I can see it as I write this – and the people, the people I have known and wish I had known – it is a beautiful land, with a beautiful people, with a beautiful language.

 

One, two, three, four, five, six, seb’m, eight, nine, ten.

 

 

 

 

 

The Mysterious Seb’n (4)

 

 

Harvard once had an American dialect assessment you could take online, it was by far the most accurate tool of its type I’ve encountered; it nailed where I grew up as well as other regional ways of speaking that have influenced me. 

My Dad, with his “seb’m”, was from Nelson County, VA, but lived in the Washington D.C. area and in rural Northern Virginia after his father died. My grandmother Withers moved to be closer to her family in Northern Virginia, and as my Dad grew into his teenage years he lived with an older sister and her husband in D.C. When he was 17 years old Daddy joined the Navy during WWII. The childhood memories my Dad shared with me were of the Andersons, his mother’s family in Northern Virginia, not of the Withers family in Nelson County.

 

The population of the post-WWII D.C. area, in which I grew up, reflected the War years in that we had neighbors from many parts of the country whose families had moved to the area during the War to work for the Federal government, in associated organizations, or in the local expanding economy – the influx of people needed to be housed, fed, clothed, educated and entertained. My Dad may have been one of the few adults in our suburban Maryland neighborhood who had attended D.C. area public schools.

 

As a result of the foregoing, I heard many ways of speaking as a child, many accents, and various terms for the same thing. I recall having an argument with a neighbor friend over what meal was “dinner” and what meal was “supper.” Words mattered to me even as a kid. (As I recall, the Harvard dialect assessment dealt with the regional distinction between dinner and supper.)

 

A question on the Harvard assessment had to do with how you pronounce “Washington.” Some of us may be unaware that there is more than one pronunciation of the first syllable. This distinction extends to words like “water” and “washing.” How is “wa” pronounced?

 

Keeping in mind that I grew up in the D.C. area…drum roll please…I was raised with the pronunciation “Warshington.” This means that water was warter, and washing was warshing. I am not suggesting that all Washingtonians did this, but many Warshingtonians did it – it was natural. I’ve not taken the time to track down where this “r” came from, that is, whether it was imported from another region, but it was notable enough to be included in the Harvard dialect assessment – so I am not alone.

 

Which is to say that while my Dad had his “seb’m” that I had my Warshington.

 

Vickie, being from Iowa, was quick to point out what was, for her, my unusual way of pronouncing Washington. As I thought about it, and about the way most of the world says “Washington,” I did something I suppose I might be ashamed of and which I will confess to you, I changed my way of saying Washington, water, and washing.

 

I admit that even though it has been many years since I made the change, I still do not say “Wa-shington” naturally, for I was raised a “War-shington” boy and I’ll always be a Warshington boy; you can take the boy out of Warshington but you can’t take the Warshington out of the boy. People may hear me say “Washington” but I’m thinking “Warshington.”

 

Do you call Pepsi or Coke a soft drink, pop, soda pop, soda, or tonic? Is dinner the midday meal, or is the midday meal lunch? Is dinner the evening meal, or is that supper? Is the paper thing they put your groceries in a bag or a sack or something else? Do you go for a walk in the woods or in the timber?

 

 

 

 

War-sington