Mitch Lewis

In a recent conversation with one of my colleagues, we discussed which chapel furnishing were essential for Christian worship. I suggested that every chapel needs a baptismal font. My friend didn't understand. "What if there weren't any families there," he said, "so there wouldn't be any babies." For military service members in a forward deployed area, that might indeed be true.

"I baptize adults at the font as well," I replied. "And even if I never baptize anyone at the font," I continued, "it serves as a visible reminder of our union with Christ."

The more I've thought about this, the more convinced I've become that the font, the table and the pulpit are the three most important furnishings in the church's worship space. Visually and experientially, those three items put word and sacrament at the center of the church's communal life. Baptism, communion and the preaching of the word are at the heart of what God's people do when they gather to worship. These three object define who we are.

So, for me, the baptismal font is more important than a brass cross for the wall or table. It's more important than a Bible stand for displaying the Holy Scriptures. It's more important than candlesticks or offering plates or flower stands. It's more important than liturgical hangings or clerical vestments or stained-glass windows or religious artwork. It's more important than a piano, an organ or a set of drums. It's more important than chairs or pews.

Yes, we need a chalice and paten (or communion set) to actually use the communion table. And I like the idea of reading the sacred texts from a large, visible pulpit Bible. I think of these things are components of the table and pulpit.

We can function, I suppose, without any of these things. I've baptized from a canteen, offered communion from the tailgate of my truck and preached from a Bible I kept in my pocket. If we are going to have dedicated worship spaces, however, the pulpit, font and table visually represent the essential functions of the Christian church: preach God's word, make disciples and live together in union with Christ.

What do you think? How would your prioritize the physical objects that comprise your worship space?

Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you; each one of you is to return to his family property and each to his own clan. Leviticus 25:10

I want to illustrate the importance of narrative context to the interpretation of scripture by looking briefly at the institution of Jubilee in Leviticus 25:8-55. Jubilee is often held up as a divine mandate for redistribution of wealth, a denunciation of the concept of private property and an indication that an ever-growing gap between rich and poor is evil. In Jubilee, it is said, God is showing us how those concerned for the poor live.

In reality, the situation is more complex than that. The author's primary focus is not simply "concern for the poor" or, more radically, a universal prescription for economic life in the world.

Let me make this clear from the outset: God's people ought to care for those in need. Isn't "love your neighbor as yourself" sufficient for us to know that? If not, there are countless Biblical texts that make our duty to the poor clear. The Jubilee texts under consideration command the Israelites not to treat those in need harshly and not to take advantage of their weakness by profiting from their misfortune. But in the context of the Biblical narrative, is the Jubilee primarily a universal prescription about personal charity or economic structures?

What is Jubilee? And what did it mean in the narrative context in which we find it in the Bible?

Here's the bottom-line up-front: it's about God's promise that Abraham's descendants would possess the land.

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In a recent series of posts, Michael Bird pointed me toward a term with which I was unfamiliar: regula fidae [rule of faith]. So, I dug a little deeper. Here's what I found.

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I wish that all the pieces of my theology fit together seamlessly like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. When I gain an insight from the Bible or change my understanding of what a portion of the Bible means, I want to fit that understanding into the "big picture." How does my new insight fit into the rest of the pieces that I have assembled in my head?

Unfortunately, not everything fits neatly. I find gaps or overlaps in the picture. The pieces don't always fit where I think they should. I could take a hammer and pound the new piece into place, but I would wind up damaging something important in the process.

I think I expect too much.

Part of it is me. My little brain can't take it all in.

Part of it is the text itself. Some would have us see the Bible as one monolithic document; if we could only understand it correctly, the picture it would paint would be complete and internally consistent. But the Bible is not one document; it is a library. God has chosen to make himself known in a library of documents of varying genre, written in different ages for different purposes. (See God's Bookshelf)

Asking how to make the pieces to fit together seamlessly is like asking to where the pickle fits when you're building a bicycle.

There is a unity to the scriptures, but it is not the simple unity of pieces that fit together like parts of a machine. It's the kind of unity that an artist can perhaps appreciate more than an engineer.

And if we're going to use metaphors from the art world to understand God's self-revelation in the scriptures, we should probably think more along the lines of sculpture than of painting. That is, we should think in three dimensions, not two.

To understand a three-dimensional work of art, you have to look at from all sides. The same sculpture can look very different when you walk around it and change your point of view. Similarly, the various components of the canonical scriptures give us insight into God from a number of different perspectives. We need them all to get the whole picture.

Related follow-up: Rule of Faith

I subscribe to a form of Christianity that understands the Christian faith to to be a "revealed religion". In that, Christianity is distinguishable from those religions which are not founded on claims of divine self-disclosure, and from other "revealed religions" with quite different claims of revelation.

What do I mean by the phrase "revealed religion"?

In my first assignment as a chaplain, hundreds of Soldiers in Basic Training attended the weekly worship services and religious education classes I conducted. Many, if not most, came into the chapel with little or no Christian background. The first religious education class that I conducted for each new group of Soldiers always went something like this.

I asked a volunteer to stand behind a partition that divided the classroom. After the volunteers were separated from their peers, I instructed them to perform some action silently behind the screen. I then returned to the large group and asked what the volunteers were doing behind the screen. Some ventured a guess, and some of their suggestions were hilarious. Some said, "I don't know." Some asked if there was really anyone behind the screen. Perhaps I had sent them out the door.

Then I asked the volunteers to continue the activity but to step out from behind the screen. "Now," I asked the group, "who can tell me what the volunteer is doing? And how do you know?"

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Blessed are those who do not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but who delight in the torah of the LORD and meditate on his torah day and night. (Psalms 1:1-2)

The longest chapter in the Bible is Psalm 119,. It is composed of 176 verses, each one an acclamation of praise for God's self-revelation (and neatly arranged in stanzas of 8 verses each beginning with the same letter of the Hebrew alphabet). The author variously refers to God's law, words, precepts, decrees, statutes, commands, promises and so forth.

Similarly, Psalm 19:7-10 praises God's law, statutes, decrees and ordinances.

The law of the LORD is perfect, refreshing the soul.
The statutes of the LORD are trustworthy, making wise the simple.
The precepts of the LORD are right, giving joy to the heart.
The commands of the LORD are radiant, giving light to the eyes.
The fear of the LORD is pure, enduring forever.
The ordinances of the LORD are sure, and all of them are righteous.
They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold;
they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the honeycomb.

How did the author of Psalm 1 encounter the torah so that he could meditate on it day and night? We 21st century Christians need to remember that when the psalmist commends meditation on the torah of God, he wasn't talking about reading the Bible at home. Not until well after Mr. Gutenberg invented his printing press did individuals come to possess personal copies of God's word.

When the written word came to have a significant role in the religious life of Israel (and later, the church), the people encountered that word as they heard it read in the assembly of God's people. Someone would have the opportunity to read aloud, while the others would listen. This is the pattern we see in Luke 4:17-21.

He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. (Luke 4:16-17)

When Psalm 119:103 declares

How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!

the author is most likely talking about his opportunity to read God's word aloud in God's gathered community. Except in the case of scribes who copied the sacred scrolls, the assembly was the only place that God's people could hear or read God's word.

The Christian church followed the pattern of the synagogue when it came to scripture reading. It was in the ekklesia ('assembly' but translated 'church') that Christians heard the scriptures (that is, the Old Testament) read aloud. In addition, they regularly listened to the writings that would come to comprise the New Testament. As they became a central element of corporate worship in the early church, the New Testament documents functioned like scripture. Over time, they came to be recognized as scripture.

When the Psalms praise God's laws, statutes, precepts and commands, they are also lifting up the importance of God's s people assembling together around the word of God. It is in the assembly that the word was read, heard and interpreted. And while it's a good thing that we can study the scriptures on our own today, we should remember that God's word was originally designed to be encountered in community and not treated as one's private channel to the almighty.