October 2002

Article from Epistle to the Presbyterians, October 2002

As Kim and I purchased Emily’s notebooks for school last month, it brought to mind an image over which Angus and I have enthused many times. The image is of the Bible not as a hardbound book but as a three-ring binder. It is not so much that I want to remove a vast amount of our present Bible (though there are passages that I am fairly certain embarrass even God). It is that I want to add to it. (Yes, I know the portion of the Revelation that warns against adding or taking away from “this book.” The reference is not to the Bible since, at the time of its writing, the canon (contents) of the Bible had not been decided. There was much “adding and subtracting” to the Bible by church councils in subsequent centuries before settling on our present compilation). While I honor and cherish much of the scripture we have, it is impossible for me to believe that nothing has been written, filmed, declared, discerned, or discovered since the canon was “closed” that is worthy of being accorded the status of Holy Writ. Surely the Spirit of God is still revealing the glory, the justice, and the dream of God in our day as well as in all the former times.

So, the idea of a three-ring binder Bible in which we may modify and add to the canon of scripture is beguiling to me. Of course, it would be as hard for us to come to a consensus about any additions we might want to make as it was for the church councils of earlier years (and still, today, Protestants and Catholics do not agree as to the composition of the Bible). But, oh, what scintillating conversations we could have! For me, for starters, including the entirety of Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek in a three-ring binder Bible would be a must. Pilgrim has been one of the most formative books of my life. It taught me that the world and everything in it is as ripe for exegesis and God-sightings as are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Then, too, I would press the case that Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail should stand in the company of St. Paul’s epistles. Responding compellingly to a statement published by eight clergymen from Alabama while he was in jail on charges related to his civil rights activism, King wrote this most amazing letter in the margins of the newspaper in which the statement appeared and on other scraps of paper that were smuggled into him. (You can find Letter in the library or on the worldwide web at http://almaz.com/nobel/peace/MLK-jail.html ). Then, also, to my mind, Daniel Berrigan in his statement on the burning of draft files in Catonsville, Maryland in the late 1960s is every bit the prophetic peer of Isaiah, Jeremiah, or Amos and needs to be added immediately in these days of “rumors of war” to the three-ring binder Bible. Berrigan begins, “Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house. We could not, so help us God, do otherwise…” (see http://www.webster.edu/~barrettb/justice.htm )

Scripture is critically important for revealing God to us through the record of humanity’s encounters with and reflections on the Holy One. But scripture itself is not God. Scripture’s task is to point us to God and God’s ways toward the end that we may live faithfully as God’s people. Once it has done so, scripture’s work is finished. Scripture is neither to be idolized nor, to my mind, finalized. Officially, the canon of scripture is “closed” (the need for control is ubiquitous, isn’t it?) and is not likely to be reopened by the church. But that does not mean we cannot ruminate on and share with each other the books, writings, snippets of movies, poems, or songs that speak to us of God, that reveal God to us. I have given you a peek at a few of the “scriptures” I would hasten to add to a three-ring binder Bible. What are some of yours?

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