Lent 2008--Brian Housman

For the past five years, once or twice a year I've written or co-written a daily Bible guide-sort of a guided tour through one of the books of the Bible.  There are many things I've enjoyed about those 40-day (as they've tended to be) experiences, but I think what I've most enjoyed is the conversations the Bible guides have provoked.

There's nothing quite like someone walking up to me and, without so much as a 'Hello,' saying, 'I've been thinking about what you said today about forgiveness . . . '  and then launching into an incredibly interesting, thought-provoking, and challenging response to the things I'd written.  While I hope that my ideas were somewhat stimulating, I have a feeling that most of the power of those interactions came simply from the fact that people knew that I'd read and thought about the same Bible passage they had read that day.  Knowing that we were reading the same thing was, in and of itself, an invitation to a conversation that made the reading more meaningful.  While my experience as the author of the guides might be somewhat unique, I don't think I was completely alone.  Phrases along the lines of, 'It's just like what we were reading today in the Bible guide,' or, 'That reminds me of today's Bible passage,' seem to be pretty common in conversations around here during those 40 Days.

In short, it seems like reading the Bible together tends to be more interesting, more powerful, more encouraging, and more helpful than doing it alone.  The Bible reading seems to go a little easier, and it brings a different quality to everyday interactions.

I won't be writing a 40 Days guide for these 40 Days of Devotion.  I will, however, be reading the Bible.  I'd love to have you join me in reading the same Bible passages, and I'd especially love it if you'd keep engaging me in those fascinating, encouraging, challenging conversations about what we're reading.

For reasons I'll explain a little later, we'll be starting with the books of I Corinthians, Mark, and portions of Genesis.  I'll give brief introductions to these three books of the Bible below.  If our 6 weeks or so with these books go at all well, at least some of us have the idea of continuing on for two years and pretty much going through the entire Bible together.
By the way, if you're someone who is especially helped by the 40 Days Bible Guides I've written in the past, it just so happens that I've already written a daily guide for Mark, one of our current books; since it was written for 2003, the dates are off, the passage divisions a little different, and some of the 'Taking It Home' suggestions might be referring to past circumstances, but I imagine it could still offer some useful thoughts and suggestions.  Speaking of Bible guides, while I won't be writing a new one for this Lent, if we do continue beyond that, there's some chance that I'll be including guides on some of the shorter books of the Bible-or maybe even specific stories or chapters-as we go along.

A brief introduction to the liturgical year and the daily readings

When you get to the reading schedule, you'll notice the peculiar detail that we're starting one of our books in chapter 37.  That's because, to borrow a phrase from TV news breaks, we're joining a program already in progress.  From early on in the history of the church, communities of followers of Jesus-particularly communities of monks and nuns-began to put some structure to their common life of prayer, worship, and reading.  They generally organized their devotional life around the major seasons of the church year, also known as the liturgical year (Liturgy basically means, 'pattern of worship').  While more contemporary churches like ours tend only to celebrate a few major holidays, in the more ancient church traditions the year is divided into whole seasons of fasting and feasting. While there are some differences among the various communities, the 'liturgical' churches all basically follow this pattern in their calendars:

1. Advent-the month of December, a fasting period with the theme of waiting for the coming of Jesus;
2. Christmas-a 12-day feast to celebrate Jesus' birth and his promise to one day come again;
3. Epiphany-something of a break between the major seasons;
4. Lent-a forty-day period of fasting during which we grieve the ways our sins separate us from God.  See the Leap of Faith page for Dave's more detailed description of Lent;
5. Easter-a long season of feasting to celebrate Jesus' resurrection;
6. Ordinary time-another break, between the Easter feast and the Advent fast.

So, as we start our reading, we're joining in the middle of the year, in an on-going pattern of reading, in a long tradition of worship life.  However, since we're starting at the beginning of one of the seasons, it shouldn't be that difficult for us to get into the swing of things: things do tend to re-set a little at the beginning of the seasons, as the readings take on the theme of the season. Two of our books start at the beginning, and even Genesis begins at the start of a major storyline.

The specific reading schedule  we'll be following is from the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer.

The daily readings put an emphasis on a balanced diet of Bible reading.  Each day, there's a reading from each of four major sections of the Bible:

• Psalms-the book of Psalms is the Bible's collection of prayers and worship songs.  We'll look at one psalm each day.  Those who are familiar with the liturgy will notice that in our schedule we're not following the liturgical calendar for the Psalms.  We decided that, rather than the usual 3 to 5, it might be more attainable to focus on one psalm per day; that being the case, it seemed simplest to me if we simply took them in order.  During Holy Week, however, we'll abandon our sequential approach and read the psalms assigned by the liturgical calendar.
• An Old Testament reading-the Old Testament is the story before the birth of Jesus.  It mostly follows God's relationship with the people of Israel, the nation God calls to be his special representatives in the world.  If we decide to go for the full two years, we'll end up reading the Old Testament once.
• A New Testament reading-the New Testament is the part of the Bible written after the birth of Jesus.  Since the Gospels (the next section) are treated separately, much of our New Testament reading will be from the letters written by early church leaders to their churches.  We'll read the New Testament on about a once a year pace.
• A Gospel reading-each day we'll read something from the life and teachings of Jesus (Gospel is just Old English for 'good news,' meaning the good news of Jesus' coming to earth).  There are four different presentations of the story.  If we go two years, I think we'll read each of the gospels about three times.

One of the things I love about this idea of following the liturgical calendar is the fact that we'll be reading several different things, from different parts of the Bible, at any given time.  Whereas the Daily Bible Guides led us into a fair amount of depth in a single book, this reading schedule will give us more Bible breadth.