Bookless Bibles[1]

I wonder whether one of the ways that we can reintroduce the biblical narrative to people on urban estates is by taking seriously a method called Remembering the Bible.[2]

Janet Lees opens her book with the following words: ‘It is quite nonsensical, unrealistic, impractical and brainless – in other words wacky – to suggest that we can do Bible studies without Bibles. Well, without written Bibles anyway. To make links between lived experience and the Bible in order to develop a more chaotic spirituality that is like the real world, we shall not use a written Bible but a remembered one’ (p. 18).

Part of Lees’ Remembered Bible initiative is quite close to the methods of the liberation theologians of Latin America and South Africa. Carlos Mesters chronicles this well with his narrative of how Christians, living in conditions of oppressive poverty, re-connected the ‘written Bible with the Bible of life’, of experience.[3] Janet Lees’ work is different having been done in the UK, and in estates in Sheffield, including Shiregreen, which I know very well indeed. Indeed, some of the cadences in the reports Janet gives are exactly how someone from a North Sheffield estate would put it.

Remembering the Bible begins with what people remember of the written Bible stories. As the remembering process is being done, no texts of scripture are present. I think I would struggle with that. Indeed around me, as I write this blog, I have several different translations including a Greek New Testament and an Action Bible. I am prepared though to accept the struggle if the process is liberative for others, because in turn it will liberate me.

An example found in Word of Mouth is the story of Jesus at the home of Mary, Martha and Lazarus. I am going to give you the version from the Anglicised Version of the NRSV first.

³⁸ Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. ³⁹ She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. ⁴⁰ But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.’ ⁴¹ But the Lord answered her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; ⁴² there is need of only one thing.^[a] Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her’ (Luke 10:38-42)

The following is what happened when the Bible was remembered:

“In Bethany, Jesus turns up at tea-time. Martha panics. There is no food and she wants to do her best. Martha wants to do what is right and Mary winds her up. Mary gets distracted and Martha gets distracted. Martha loses her temper and there’s the usual sibling rivalry stuff. Martha says to Jesus: ‘Don’t you care?’ Jesus says to Martha: ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried about many things.’ Martha said to Jesus: ‘I knew you would take her side’.[4]

I confess I like it. I like it a lot. There is interpretation going on in the remembering, but for NT exegetes like me, it does not appear to depart too much from the biblical text. I am not sure whether it would matter too much if it did, for the purpose of Remembering the Bible, like much other contextual theology, is giving power back to the participants.

Practically, Remembering the Bible is done collaboratively with everyone chipping in as they re-tell a particular biblical narrative. It gives people their voices back, and can be quite messy. Estate life can be messy. All life can be messy, and if all we have to offer is a neat and tidy Bible that tells a story of a neat and tidy Jesus then the written text and the text of people’s lives will continue to go their separate ways.

I do have some questions. Some of them will no doubt be answered when I meet Janet next week and see Remembering the Bible in action.

First, I am unsure whether such models work satisfactorily in a culture where the Biblical narrative continues to be increasingly unknown.

…those in the pulpit as well as in the pews have a shrinking biblical literacy. We know less about the Bible – its stories, its diverse forms, its presentation of anthropological and theological truths. Consequently, we are less able to engage the biblical witness and to make sense of scriptural categories in an integrated, theological way.[5]

Remembering the Bible does not require much of what McSpadden is talking about, however the decline in the amount of time allocated to the Bible in training those for authorised ministry may have a knock on effect on the ability of clergy and lay leaders being able to facilitate Remembering the Bible at a local level. It would be interesting to see how well this method might be used in schools and/indeed in residential homes with those outside the church. Theologies for liberation were not restricted to church people and places.

Second, how does remembering the Bible work the non-narrative parts of Scripture? I am aware that people whom I have worked with have been able to piece together narratives of some of the Old Testament. In an evening, we managed to tell the story of Abraham, Joseph (with a little bit of a debt to Lloyd-Webber) and Moses. In the midst of this we were able to ask what about the women and where their story was, and remembered Moses’ mother, Miriam (who is a prophetess in her own right), Huldah (who was preferred to Jeremiah) and recalled the famous tent peg incident. Remembering allows for interpretation and demonstrates the fact that when people have their voice, there is usually quite sophisticated theology going on.

People could in a different session put together the story of Jesus (what he did, said and the titles used to address him). It is my experience that the non-narrative parts of Scripture are less widely known, including the writings of Paul. It would seem to me that some of the letters might be possible to ‘re-member’, Galatians springs to mind, which has more narrative than most, for example 2:11-14

¹¹ But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood self-condemned; ¹² for until certain people came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But after they came, he drew back and kept himself separate for fear of the circumcision faction. ¹³ And the other Jews joined him in this hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. ¹⁴ But when I saw that they were not acting consistently with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, ‘If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?

I will blog later in the week concerning how this might be used in remembering. It seems to be the method can work, with a little more effort needed from what Lees calls “socially engaged biblical scholars” (p. 51).

This method is something I am going to come back to and practice locally. I think it offers much in helping people engage or re-engage with the Bible. This is not to learn the Bible per se, for as John Vincent puts it succinctly: ‘Theology takes place as the people of God see themselves as part of the biblical story, project themselves into that story and then project that story out into their corporate and individual lives’.[6]

Re-engagement by Christian people with their scriptures might be one way of bringing hope and renewal to the places we call home.