The Bible Study Crasher Had 2 Humps
Maybe I just shouldn’t go to Bible studies that are supposed
to be nice. Nice people look at the
Bible and ask questions that I would not ask of the text. I am aware that things are not always as they
seem in real life, so why should we presuppose that Bible stories have some idyllic
method for comprehension? I will give
you my two most recent examples.
The very nice lady remarked, “The story that worries me is
the Narrow Gate. What if I am not quite
on the Narrow Road, I think I am, but I may not be? I won’t be able to pass through what the Lord
calls the Narrow Gate.” My brain
scrunched. I think I even squinted and
tilted my head to the side. Why do we
presume that Jesus is telling us we might not make it? If His baseline message was mercy and
forgiveness, and I am banking on Him being honest with us – He did say “I am
Truth” after all – then why would anyone presume, even accidentally, that He
was setting us up for an ultimate failure?
God would be very unjust indeed if He told us to follow Him, and we did,
and then He jettisoned us to hell in the End.
I looked at her and said, “I have the answer. There is a mystery story here.” Everyone’s attention was on me. I told them to look at the Gate in the
story. The gates in Jerusalem were low
and short and, well, Narrow, as He said.
In order to get a camel through the gate, you have to make it kneel
down. Have you seen a camel
lately? I will give you $20 if you can
make him kneel down all on your own.
Once the camel is kneeling, the handler unloads all the baggage
from the camel. To get through the door
loaded with parcels is not only useless:
it is an obstruction. The stuff
on the camel may be good or may be junk, but it aint going to make it easier to
get the camel through the gate: It makes
it harder.
Now you just have the camel at the gate entrance. And all hands on deck need to assist the
camel through the passage. WE ARE ALL
CAMELS. That is the key to the
story. Keep your eye on the camel!
#1) To enter into The Gate, symbol of eternal life, we have
to kneel down, to humble ourselves.
#2) We have to divest ourselves of the baggage we
carry. The stuff that weighs us down and
makes our shape distorted needs to be stripped away, set aside. It may be our accomplishments or our
hang-ups. It may be our wallowing in
brokenness or our obnoxious pride. We
have to set it aside.
#3) We have to realize that this journey is not a solitary
one. There is a Guide who is more
committed to our passing through the Narrow Gate then we are ourselves. The hands of the community of faith, as well
as the hands of God will guide us – sometimes gently, sometimes with a shove….
And we will be through the gate. We are
not alone. And, we won’t accomplish the
task alone.
The friends listening to me liked the image. The almost-deacon asked if he could borrow it
for a future homily. I said sure, unless
I get to preach it first. No one knew
what to do with that. Our faith culture
is still “muting” women, despite education, experience, or virtue. Mother Teresa, I am not. But I worked hard for what I know and I don’t
believe God is going to set me aside because of my gender. At present, women are not permitted to the
Catholic diaconate. At present. But that is a custom, and customs can
change. If maybe all the women who are
catechetical leaders across the world pick a Boycott Sunday and just don’t do
their jobs until we get some review of the scope of our duties, maybe that will
wake The Boys Club up. Maybe.
My second Bible Study crasher example comes from Luke
5. For decades of our lives we hear a
Bible story preached the same way every year.
We may get one piece of the pie, but we are missing another. I asked the study group if they, like me, had
noticed the one person no one EVER mentions in their homily. Nope.
We talk about Jesus. We talk
about the man who was healed. We talk
about his friends who lower him through the roof to be healed by Jesus. No one ever talks about the guy who owned the
roof!
What was HIS reaction to the dismantling of his
thatchment? Did he say, “Sure, guys,
take some more of that off! I was getting
around to working on that next week anyways.”
I bet he did not. I bet he
said, “HEY! WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU DOING
UP THERE! WHY DO I SEE SHAFTS OF LIGHT AND
PARTICLES OF DUST AND PIGEON POOP DROPPING DOWN INTO MY LIVING ROOM?!” Did he not let a swear word slip out because
Jesus was standing there – we can only hope he didn’t.
Here’s the point: he
was more than inconvenienced. His roof
was damaged, dismantled. He was going to
have to deal with that himself because everyone else got all swept-up in the miraculous
happenings. Sometimes before the
miraculous can happen, status quo gets interrupted. The things we are comfortable with, the
things that in our minds “are the way they should be” get tweaked … as does our
nose.
Application:
sometimes when God wants to do something miraculous you are going to be
inconvenienced. He does things His way,
His time and without needing to ask any piece of His creation for
permission. We have to yield to the
moment of the miracle. We have to allow
our own sensibilities to be offended, our roof to be dismantled, as it were. We have to accept that our inconvenience is
not God’s problem. He is like the friend
that comes over to watch a movie with you on Friday night. When you say to him, “make yourself comfortable,”
and truly mean it, that friend might just get his own beverage out of your refrigerator,
open your cabinets without asking, sit in your recliner, and put his feet up on
your coffee table. If that is His definition
of “comfortable,” and you truly are the Good Host, then you are good with that.
Are we good with that? Do we let God have that kind of leeway? I hope I do. I love God’s miracles. I love to be around when He starts working. I surely don’t want to be an obstacle to what He needs to do. I am all about letting Him have His way… not just when I am sitting in church and singing those surrender songs. The rubber meets the road when I walk out the front door of church and someone cuts me off in the parking lot. It begins that quickly.
“Have Thine own way, Lord, have Thine own way. Hold o’er my being, absolute sway. Melt me and make me after Thy will, while I
am patient, waiting and still.”
Well I’m not still yet.
And I’m not even patient, but when He gives me that look, I melt. He can have His way. Even if I get kicked out of nice Bible
studies.
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