CONNECTING II

Last week I was talking about connecting with an audience and theatre and suggested that had something to do with the Scriptures as well. For probably the last 15 years or so I have encouraged people to “find themselves” in Scripture. Where are you in the story? Occasionally I have done imaging exercises to help people find themselves in a particular story. For some people it is a powerful experience.

Let me relate one of the most fascinating experiences I had with a person who suddenly connected with Scripture. A youngster around 14 came to me with a question. She had attended a Christian school during her elementary years and now was enduring the rocky experience of a public high school. The inevitable science-religion conflict arose. So she asked, “How do Adam and Eve fit with the cavemen?” I stumbled through some unsatisfactory explanation until I hit on this. “Think of Adam and Eve not as a story about people who lived a long time ago, but as a story about you.” And her faced brightened as if the sun had suddenly shone in her. “You mean it’s like drama.” “Exactly,” I said. And she went away satisfied. She knew how drama worked, how it revealed much more than the mere story. She knew how to find herself in a drama, now she knew you could find yourself in Scripture. She connected.

This was my first experience with a “theatre kid.” (Side note: I wrote a short skit for her and a friend to perform at a Christmas Eve service that year. One of the few works I’ve ever had performed.) Since this was shortly before I moved to a new church, I didn’t have the opportunity to see how she developed over the years. But I know from later experiences that young people involved in theatre often have better insights into people than psychologists. I suspect that when they are free of strictures about how you’re “supposed” to read scripture, they probably have amazing insights there also. They know how to connect.

I had another experience some years earlier that taught me what happens when a person is prevented from connecting with Scripture. A member of my congregation asked me to speak to a youngster around 12 who she was trying to “convert” to Christianity. I said I would meet with them as long as the girl’s mother was aware we were meeting and knew what we were going to talk about. My member and the girl had been reading the Bible together. Unfortunately, they had started in Genesis rather than with the Gospels. The stories of Genesis seemed so outlandish to her that they were an insurmountable obstacle. Noah was the story causing the greatest problem because she couldn’t figure out how Noah could have stopped the lions from eating the antelopes and so forth. And it occurred to her that there was no way no many creatures would fit on the ark. I wanted to help her understand the story as a metaphor when the woman from my church began banging on the table with her fist and shouting at her, “You have to believe. You have to believe.” She had reduced faith in God to believing every word in the Bible was literally and historically true. Because I couldn’t around this woman’s views, I couldn’t open the Scriptures to the girl. She couldn’t connect. I lost her. (Eventually the woman quit the church because I was obviously a heathen.)

An observation: one of the greatest catastrophes in Scriptural studies was the addition of verse numbers to the text. It chopped everything into isolated pieces that people string together like beads rather reading to grasp the wholeness of what is being said.A very different approach is offered by Craig Bartholomew and Michael Goheen in their book The Drama of Scripture. The present the entire Bible as a Drama in six acts: Act 1, God Establishes his Kingdom: Creation. Act 2, Rebellion in the Kingdom: Fall. Act 3, The King Chooses Israel: Redemption Initiated. Interlude, a Kingdom Sstory Waitning for an Ending: The Intertestamental Period. Act 4, The Coming of the King: Redemption Accomplished. Act 5 Spreading the News of the King: The Mission of the Church. Act 6, The Return of the King: Redemption Completed.

It’s a sweeping approach to Scripture, but it is the subtitle of the book that grabbed my attention: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story. Hey! I’ve been saying that for years! I don’t even get a footnote, but they do credit N. T. Wright, the Anglican Bishop of Durham for coming up with the idea of the Bible as a Drama. I guess my special contribution to the discussion will be the notion of connecting. How do we connect to the Scripture? Where are we in the story?

I suggested in discussing theatre that the actors connect with the audience to convey the wholeness of the play. Did you ever consider that the writers of the Bible were intentionally trying to connect with their audience? They didn’t just write stuff for others to figure out, they tried to communicate where people fit into the story and what it ought to say to people.

Well, this is getting a little long again. So I’ll try next week to show you what I mean. (Note: Those of you who have been in my Bible Study on Mark will already know everything I have to say next week, so you may take a break.)

I hope you will always be connected with a loving community and with a loving Lord. May the Lord bless you on your journey, and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

P.S.

I note that last week's blog received 46 hits, more than any of my blogs to date. I don't think it has anything to do with the quality of my writing, but maybe people searching out a review of "Once Upon A Mattress." Having seen it four times, I can testify that it was a great success.

That being the case, here's a shout out to O.C.T. performers Alex, Christine, Angela, Amanda, Scotty, Christopher, David, & of course Katie who contributed so much. And to Jason and Shane down in the pit. And to the director, Tom.

BRAVI!



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