Biblical wandering

Last Sunday I noticed that the big bible, usually kept on the lectern, wasn't there anymore. I found it on a back pew. There are other bibles in the chapel--smaller more portable ones. I wondered, in fact, whether someone had used our lectern Bible as a pillow--stretching out on the pew for a nap in sacred space. As scientific research now tells us "sleeping on it" can be a very positive way to learn and to stretch your creative thinking. . . "Whatever"... as they say. At the Chapel things have a way of wandering--so many different groups and individuals make use of the space, and each has their own sense of order.

But our wandering bible reminded me of a bible I saw at the New York City Public Library. It was very old and it had a huge chain on it. Bibles were often chained to the pulpit or lectern in churches. Precious. Liable to be taken. Hard to imagine anyone stealing a bible these days. A part of me wished that weren't the case. People might take to stealing bibles if they saw the value of the scriptural words soaring like gold.

Of course back then, printing was a new thing, and there weren't that many bibles around. The Gutenberg Bible and those that followed represented a radical notion: that ordinary people could access scripture by themselves. Read the word, hear it, and take it in. No second or third hand interpretations needed. The King James Bible whose 400^th anniversary we celebrate this year was one of those that made the words of scripture available to folks in their own language. At some level, I suppose those early chained bibles represented the attempt of the clergy to hold on to their privileged status as 'protectors' of the word.

Seeing that bible in chains also set me thinking about the long history of chaining the word of God. Interpreting it according to our own opinion, proof-texting, using it to defend our own convictions, keeping its meanings tight, and not letting its poetry and metaphor carry us into God's surprising imagination. Often those chains are still in place in our own day.

Our roaming bible in the Chapel is perhaps a token of the ways the word moves among us on a Sunday in our worship, stirring whoever feels so moved to speech and interpretation, and wonder, and questioning, and then to silence. Holy time.