Let us pray: O God, may these words be ones which guide us to understand what it means to have love for you written on our hearts. Bless them and use them. Amen.

    I grew up as the child of two teachers, so I don’t know whether it was a result of this particular circumstance or whether it is a more universal situation, but it seemed that quite early in my life I was party to complaints from those older than myself that they just didn’t teach children the way they used to. One of the most often cited examples of this was the sad lack of memory work. The commentator would then go on to give samples of the kind of memory work they were required to do when they were in school - perhaps quoting a much loved piece of poetry for exampe. This particular grievance was even more pronounced when it came to analysis of church school, or as it was more likely to be called back then, Sunday School. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve encountered in my life who have recalled for me from their childhood religious education the requirement to memorise passages from the Bible. Usually this is followed by the concern that this is sadly lacking today.

    As I recall these episodes, I can clearly remember heaving an inner sigh of relief that things were not that way anymore. The thought of having to memorise bible passages or anything else was pure drudgery for me. I was glad that pedagogical theory for whatever reason had seemed to lead off in another direction.

    For the most part I still agree with that childhood sentiment. Memorising bible stories is not enough. I would much rather that biblical criticism be taught instead. Of course that is easier said than done, and lots of people much more gifted than me in that area have done much work trying to put that theory into practice. This, of course, is not limited to work with children. The most important thing I learned during my years at seminary was biblical criticism. I can remember during the first couple of months in my first year there wondering why this had escaped me all the many years before. It was like a veil had been lifted from my eyes and mind and suddenly  a whole new way of looking at the scriptural story was revealed. If there is one topic in seminary discourse that generated the most discussion it was about the gap between pew and pulpit with regard to an understanding of the bible. A regulare question was, “How can we bridge the chasm that seems to be present between the average church goer and their understanding of the bible and those who have taken some courses in biblical criticism.”. Many have tried with varying degrees of success. I was in the Public Library this week and in a very cursory examination found a shelf of books written with an answer to that question in mind. Obviously, for the sheer number of them, no one has done it absolutely successfully.  I remember a few years ago there was an earnest and dedicated group of people within Alberta and Northwest Conference engaged in the Biblical Literacy committee - their goal being to increase the level of biblical knowledge among church people. A friend of mine went away to do some post graduate work in the United States and his work resulted in a small book that was yet another attempt to describe the bible for questing Christians. The Biblical Literacy committee published it.

    Of course, this is all a vast generalisation. There are many people in the pews who do know about biblical criticism. The gap has been bridged many times, but it still exists for many others. Sometimes the existence of this gap has been couched in negative ways - that it is a way by which those in the know can hold some kind of power over those who are living in some kind of darkness. Some people believe that we are not all that far from pre-Gutenberg days when the bible was controlled by a privileged few who had access to the manuscripts. I’m sure you know that the invention of the printing press was a large step in the process which put the bible into the hands of everyday people and thus opened up the possibility for other ways of looking at the scriptural record. All of a sudden people could see for themselves that the bible said something different than they had been told. This led to massive change in the church, wresting power from the privileged clergy and handing it to the regular church member.

    As much as that happened, there are still those who would say that it hasn’t happened enough, or the power has been maintained in other ways - clouding and subverting the message. That may be true in some cases, but certainly among the people I know the desire is the exact opposite. The search is for ways to open the bible up more effectively than it is to find ways to keep it hidden and uninterpreted. In fact, I see my work in large part as just that - the work of engaging people with the biblical story - understanding the context and conditions which led to the telling of the story in the first instance and the application of that story to our own situation and circumstances in the second instance.

    Interestingly enough, the chorus of people that I remember from my younger days decrying the lack of memory work in church school seems to have diminished. Unfortunately, statistics tell us that the number of people in church school also seems to have diminished. So it doesn’t seem that memory work was what was keeping them away! In fact, an unscientific analysis might suggest the opposite. It’s not that simple however, and much more time than I have available today is needed to delve into the subject.

    So, in the time I have left, let me offer this perspective. This musing about memory work was prompted by the passage we heard this morning from the book of the prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah, acting as God’s messenger, says that it was not good enough for people to have the covenant laid out for them intellectually. So, God proposed something else - a covenant that would address their emotional and spiritual selves. This covenant would be written on their hearts.

    It’s a curious thing that memory work which involves filing stuff in our brain’s memory banks is actually said to be learning something by heart. We put it in our head, but it comes out from our heart. I think that is what is behind the bygone wish for more memory work in Sunday School - that puttingthe story in the heads of young children will actually work a transformation in their hearts. I actually don’t think it is a completely bad idea - except that I would want to modify the process somewhat. Rather than putting the passages into our heads, I would rather put techniques into our heads so that we could grasp, as I said previously, understanding of the context and conditions of the stories so that they help us understand better our own situation and circumstances.

    I recalled earlier that one of the most common topics of discussion in seminary was how to transmit biblical criticism from pulpit to pew. A close second was how to make sure that spirituality was honoured in the academic community. Many seminarians often expressed concern that the focus on academic issues robbed us of the opportunity to express and grow our spiritual selves, that sometimes having the veil lifted from our eyes in some disciplines had a reverse effect on our spiritual life. Foundations for belief sometimes crumbled and new ones needed to be built. When it comes right down to it, it is the fear of that happening more widely, that sometimes prevents biblical criticism from being shared more openly.
    
    We should not be afraid. My experience shows that ultimately the path which leads to understanding the heart of the biblical story - and I mean that in the spiritual and emotional sense - is also the path which leads us to find our own heart - the emotional and spiritual centre which works itself out in our faith lives - which results in our action for justice and our attention to following God’s way. The heart of the matter is this - the heart of the matter. Amen.