Week Two | Loving God with Everything You’ve Got

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Walking in the Dust of Rabbi Jesus Online Biblical Study
Reading Assignment – Chapters 3 & 4
Listen to the Audio version | Reading Time: 4 minutes

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Bree: 🎶“I’m diving in, I’m going deep in over my head, I want to be…” [record scraaatch]
Gloria: “Wait! What? What did you sing there? ‘Head over heels, I wanna be?’”

Through a quick search, Google proved that Gloria had been singing the lyrics to Dive, the 1999 hit by Steven Curtis Chapman, incorrectly all these years (whoops!), and while I realized that though I had sung it correctly, I couldn’t recall what the individual words were unless I sang the whole lick.

Turns out, I needed the context of the entire line for it to make sense.
And Gloria needed to hear someone else sing it, to know that she’d misinterpreted it.

Reading the Bible is a lot like that!

Better Together

We’ve all had those “light bulb” moments when all of sudden, a passage of Scripture that we thought we knew and understood was shared from a different perspective – one of clarity – that revealed we’d been mistaken all along.  I’ve had a lot of those moments since I began studying the context of Scripture.

It is interesting to consider just how much we end up misreading when we rely on our own understanding.  

In our last Online Biblical Study, The Gospel on the Ground, our community gave a collective gasp when we finally came to understand the meaning of Matthew 13:31-32, NIV.

“Jesus likened the kingdom of God to a mustard seed.  As Westerners, we look at the form (size of the seed).  As Middle Easterners, they look at the function (what the seed does).”

Kristi McLelland, Pg. 39 of “The Gospel on the Ground”

We learned the mustard seed in the Middle East is not thought of as this remarkable illustration of faith, at least not to gardeners or farmers.  Mustard seed is a weed!  The kingdom of God is a mustard seed, in that once it begins to grow, it is hard to stop.

I never would have picked up on this mustard seed-sized shift in perspective that completely changes the meaning of this passage on my own.  

I know that when I am left to my own devices, I have been known to read things into passages that do not belong.  Based on my personal history, current situation, or my mood at the time of reading, it has the potential to color what I’m reading in the Bible very differently than what the author originally intended.  And I know that I’m certainly not alone.

“Modern Christians, especially American Protestants, still maintain a strong sense of ‘Jesus and me’ individualism, emphasizing one’s ‘personal relationship with Christ’ as the essence of faith.”

Lois Tverberg, Pg. 57 of “Walking in the Dust of Rabbi Jesus”

No wonder we often fall flat on our faces when it comes to studying Scripture on our own.  The culture in which we live has taught us that we’ve gotta do it all on our own and operate under the “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” method to answer the complex questions that come with reading the Bible.

Thank God, we have such a vast number of Bible study resources available to us, quite literally at our fingertips, but also the wisdom (thanks to many blunders of others before us) that going it alone is not always best.  The number of concordances, commentaries, or different translations we use cannot compare, supplement, or be viewed as a replacement for communal study.

Often when with a study buddy revelations are made regarding our faulty understanding, and clarifications are given to help us better see and know the heart of God.

Within the Context of Community

In the ethical teachings from the Rabbinic Jewish tradition, Pirkei Avot, the Ethics of the Fathers, Hillel, the Jewish sage said, “Don’t separate yourself from the community.” (Pirkei Avot 2:5)

Rabbi Joshua Lief, of Temple Shalom, recently shared that this ancient Hebraic teaching is not only adhered to in the every day but is a reminder to Jews of how one should approach Scripture; not individually but within the context of community.

“Judaism throughout the centuries has declared that ‘life is with people.’ Religion, in their thinking, is inherently communal. Whereas Christians seek out solitude for drawing close to God, many Jewish prayers can only be recited in the presence of a minyan (min-YAHN), a group that contains at least ten adult Jewish men.”

Lois Tverberg, Pg. 57 of “Walking in the Dust of Rabbi Jesus”

Lois shares in chapter 4 how ironic it is that we often pray in solitude, even praying the Lord’s Prayer, which in its first line specifically states a sense of unity, “Our Father, who art in heaven…”.  Since this is the example that Jesus gave His disciples to pray, it is important for us to recognize the need to come together in community, in prayer, and in our study.

We often struggle to balance our personal and communal faith.  Sometimes we feel the need to step away, inwardly reflect, and spend time alone with the Lord.  It is often in those times that we find strength.  But we need to remember to rejoin the community of faith and not lose our sense of connection with one another.  It is there where we can share what we’ve learned in private with others.

TODAY WE LEARNED:
1. Our many Bible study tools cannot compare, supplement, or be viewed as a replacement for communal study.
2. Judaism throughout the centuries has declared that ‘life is with people.’
3. A balance of personal and communal faith can be a struggle.
4. It is within the context of community, where we are able to share what we’ve learned in private with others.

ANSWER THIS IN THE COMMENTS BELOW:
In what ways do you balance between private and communal Bible study and prayer?