Teacher says Christians
should feed on Scripture
By Paula R. Kincaid, The Layman, July 22, 2009
NEW WILMINGTON, Pa. – “Eat This Book” was the title of Tuesday’s mission study by Rev. John McCall. It was also the title of a book by Eugene Peterson, who used the metaphor “as a way to receive the words of the Bible in ways to shape us as Christians,” McCall said.
McCall, a teacher at the Taiwan Theological Seminary, spoke is teaching one of several mission studies at the 104th New Wilmington Mission Conference in New Wilmington, Pa., which concludes July 25.
He said he was indebted to Peterson who was a pastor first and then a teacher.
“He practiced, then he taught,” said McCall. “He’s a great scholar of Bible languages.”
Peterson’s book and McCall’s text for the study was based on Rev. 10:8-10:
“Then the voice that I had heard from heaven spoke to me again, saying, ‘Go, take the scroll that is open in the hand of the angel who is standing on the sea and on the land.’ So I went to the angel and told him to give me the little scroll. And he said to me, ‘Take and eat it; it will make your stomach bitter, but in your mouth it will be sweet as honey.’ And I took the little scroll from the hand of the angel and ate it. It was sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it my stomach was made bitter. (ESV)”
McCall said the words of the Bible should be spoken in a way that can enter into people’s lives – the words of the Bible should be preached, sung, lived and prayed.
“Get this book into your body … get these words moving through your bloodstream,” he said. “Chew on them and swallow them so they can be turned into muscle and bone.”
“At times the Bible is sweet as honey,” said McCall. Psalm 23 would be an example of a “passage that is sweet as honey.”
And passages that are bitter would include when God tells Abraham to kill Isaac, or 98 percent of Job.
McCall said the Bible “speaks the truth, shakes up our world and hurts our stomach.”
Karl Barth “reminds us that the Bible is like no other book,” he said. “It reveals a strange new world. …this world is bigger than we can imagine – it stretches our imagination.”
“We need to spend our lives exploring His world from the pages of Scripture and enjoy the view – the intricate and huge worldview that is presented,” he said.
“Spiritual reading should change our lives, not just get into our heads,” he said.
“Christians feed on Scripture,” said McCall. “Christians just don’t learn Scripture. We take it into our lives and it shapes us into new creatures in Christ. It shapes us into people who do acts of love.”
“The Bible is not just a tool, it is a new way of seeing, living and feeling,” he said.
McCall spoke of Lectio Divina, Latin for divine reading, spiritual reading or “holy reading.”
According to Wikipedia it “represents a traditional Christian practice of prayer and Scriptural reading intended to engender communion with the Triune God and to increase in the knowledge of God’s Word. It is a way of praying with Scripture that calls one to study, ponder, listen and, finally, pray and even sing and rejoice from God’s Word, within the soul.”
“Lectio Divina encourages us to live the text,” McCall said. It contains four steps:
- Reading is the first thing. “Scripture well read shouldn’t be just reading but really listening to the text,” McCall said.
- “We meditate on the text,” he said. “We move from looking at text to entering into the world of the text.”
- “We pray the text,” McCall said. “The text always requires response … The Scripture read and prayed is our primary avenue to access God.”
- “We live the text. … This is where we connect,” he said.
“Lectio Divina allows us to access and really live it,” said McCall.