For practical reasons our family celebrates Christmas the same weekend as the Martin Luther King’s Birthday holiday.  Our kids in Atlanta, since they manage retail stores, are unable to travel between Halloween and the post New Year’s Day inventory.  Our children in Chicago have the freedom to get away from their jobs for a long weekend in mid-January. So that our staff can be with their families during the holidays, I assign myself to be on-call here in Michigan on Christmas Eve in case any of our pastors have an emergency requiring immediate pulpit supply. Accordingly, like the magi of old, we do finally arrive at the manger…it just takes us a bit longer to get there.

 

Christmas Day itself was very quiet at our house this year. The only sounds emanated from the crackling flames in the fireplace, the Nutcracker Suite on the CD player, and my laughing aloud while reading A.J. Jacobs latest book: The Year of Living Biblically – One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible.

 

I heard about the book on National Public Radio. Everyone from John Shelby Spong to Jim Wallis recommends its reading. The book reads like a journal in which each and every day Jacobs (a self-described agnostic Jew) tries to add one more law, one more commandment, one more requirement found on the pages of the Bible to his must-do list – everything from growing a beard to wearing tassels on his shirt, to not wearing two different touching fabrics, to playing a ten-string harp, to keeping a kosher kitchen, to sacrificing an animal, to stoning an adulterer, to being fruitful and multiplying… While pointing out the absurdity of taking the Bible literally, he pokes fun only at himself. And, by year’s end, he finds himself both impressed by the devotion of those who do try to live their daily lives faithful to the Bible’s teaching, and in no small way having his own spiritual life made more meaningful by his valiant attempt to be religiously disciplined.

 

Jacobs’ resolution to live biblically for a year began with an immersion in the scriptures. He spent five hours a day for four solid weeks reading the entire black leather, gold-edged, tissue-thin paged book cover to cover. While reading the Bible from front to back is a fairly common New Years’ resolution, few ever make it past the holiness code in Leviticus from which we hear, far too often, single verses quoted judgmentally.

 

Again this year I’ve made a resolution to read through the entire Bible. To help me keep this spiritual discipline, I’ve secured a copy of the Moravian Daily Texts 2008 devotional guide (also available as a free daily e-mail subscription by going to http://www.moravian.org/daily_texts/). Assigned for each day is a passage from the Hebrew Scriptures, a passage from the Psalms, a passage from the Christian Covenant, a prayer, and two Biblical verses to carry with you during your day.

 

In 1722 Moravian refugees were given land by Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf.  Every morning and evening the Moravian community would gather to hear God’s word. At the evening service on May 3, 1728, Zinzendorf started the practice of assigning a Biblical verse -- known as the “watchword” -- for devotional purposes. Daily leaders of the Moravian community would make pastoral calls on all the families to engage them in pastoral conversation regarding the “watchword” for the day. In 1731 the first edition of the Moravian Daily Texts was published with 365 “watchwords” selected by the Count. Since 1788 these “watchwords” have been drawn at random from a collection 2000 suitable verses from the Old Testament, along with appropriate interpretive verses chosen from the New Testament.

 

While the first American edition was published in 1767, I first encountered this devotional aid while visiting in Germany a few years back, where I was impressed that all of the pastors and all of the lay leaders I encountered all seemed to know what the “watchword” was for the day…and all seemed surprised that I had never heard of it!

 

There are 30,000 Moravians living in Europe, but over 1,000,000 editions of the Moravian Daily Texts are published in German every year. While the Moravian Church has only 700,000 members worldwide, its devotional resource is published in 51 languages, thereby having a spiritual impact far beyond their numbers. As written in its preface: “…this little book is probably the most widely read devotional guide in the world, next to the Bible. It forms an invisible bond between Christians on all continents, transcending barriers of confess, race, language, and politics. In its quiet way it performs a truly ecumenical service for the whole of Christendom.”

 

I began using this daily devotional last fall. From several months’ experience I now can affirm it has helped me tremendously to keep the spiritual discipline of reading through the Bible. Carrying a “watchword” with me through the day -- to borrow an image from John Calvin -- has been to see life through a new set of scriptural glasses.

 

Though it seems obvious, in the modern church where so many are so very biblically illiterate (including out-of-context-Bible-quoting literalists), actually reading the Bible daily feels to me to be a critically important spiritual discipline to keep...at least if we want engage in the humble quest to follow the Bible as meaningfully as possible.

Peace and joy!

 

 

Dec/Jan Edition