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Small World

David Gambrell

If you’ve ever lived in a small town or close-knit community you know what it’s like – every pathway is marked with memories; every landscape frames a story; around every corner, a familiar face. On a simple walk to the post office time collapses, horizons merge, and worlds collide, as you bump into old friends, catch up with neighbors, and reminisce about days and years gone by.

Yesterday I was telling a group of colleagues that, more and more, this is my experience with the daily reading of Scripture. We were gathered at lunchtime for a Presbyterian Center Company of Pastors meeting, discussing our common commitment to daily prayer and Bible study – sharing the blessings and challenges of this regular discipline.

As I’ve been following the Daily Lectionary, which has featured sequential readings through the Gospel of Mark since the first Monday in Lent, I find that time collapses, horizons merge, worlds collide. I find familiar faces around every corner.

• Thursday’s reading, Mark 2:1-12, is the subject of the song my daughter is singing in children’s choir.
• Friday’s reading, Mark 2:13-22, is the passage we just translated in Greek class at the congregation where I worship.
• Saturday’s reading, Mark 2:23-3:6, gives me an idea for an article I need to write.
• Sunday’s reading, John 5:19-24 (the daily lectionary briefly swerves away from Mark), reminds me – on the anniversary of my baptism! – that in Christ I have “passed from death to life” (John 5:24).
• Monday’s reading, Mark 3:7-19, moves me to pray for a friend who is sick and another who is struggling with a demon.
• Tuesday’s reading, Mark 3:19-35, includes the text for a sermon someone has contributed to the journal I edit.
• Today’s reading, Mark 4:1-20, challenges me to think in fresh ways about a project I’m currently working on …

And that’s just one week! From day to day and week to week, Scripture is the bridge that seems to span and connect the various worlds in which I live and move and have my being.

Or maybe I have that backwards. Hans Frei, in his book The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative (Yale University Press, 1974), made the case that, at some point in the past few centuries, we lost the sense that we inhabit the world of God’s story, and have replaced it with the notion that we ought to try to fit God’s story into our history. Frei calls us to recover a larger view of the biblical narrative that overarches and encompasses our little histories and horizons – to let God’s story be the world in which we live and move and have our being.

When we are attentive to God’s Word and Spirit, the discipline of daily Scripture reading has the potential to restore our priorites and turn our world upside down. This simple practice can become, by the grace of God, a way of re-immersing ourselves in God’s story. It can be a way of rediscovering that this “small world” is God’s world after all.

If you’re interested in having your own total immersion experience in the Gospel of Mark, I encourage you to check out the resource the Office of Theology and Worship has prepared for hosting a public reading of the Gospel of Mark in your congregation. This is one part of our recent Invitation to the Word initiative. You can also subscribe to the Daily Lectionary by email through our website.

• Posted at 1:43 p.m.
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Tags: daily prayer, invitation to the word, scripture