The Sin of Scripture Reading

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I recently attended a worship service in which the assigned scripture was read in an unctuous, dramatic fashion by a lector who was not visibly present at the altar. Perhaps he had been recorded ahead of time and it was merely played through the sound system. If it was not an incarnate event, then it was even more dreadful.

The experience called to mind Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s instructions for reading scripture in worship. My friend and mentor Fleming Rutledge frequently points preachers back to Bonhoeffer’s guidance in Life Together; in fact, Bonhoeffer stipulates that preachers are often the worst readers during the liturgy.

Bonhoeffer’s instructions for public Bible reading comes in the context of pastoral concern for those enduring the anguish of Anfechtung, Luther’s term for despair. “How are we supposed to help rightly other Christians,” Bonhoeffer asks, “who are experiencing troubles and temptation (Anfechtung)?” Clearly, he notes that the believing community has no other and no better medicine to dispense than God’s own Word. In the face of despair, all our words fail for we cannot promise what only God can unconditionally promise, the future. As Paul Zahl says often, preachers should proceed on the assumption that their hearers have crawled over glass to get there for a word from the Lord. Given the stakes, we have something more important to do than perform.

Given the stakes, we have something more important to do than perform.

Bonhoeffer likens Christians to the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old (Matt. 13:52). Just as the master does, Christians can speak “out of the abundance of God’s Word the wealth of instructions, admonitions, and comforting words from the Scriptures.” If the gospel is God’s invasive power in a world under the Power of Sin, then God’s Word itself is the Lord’s weapon with which we will be able “to drive out demons and help one another.”

Thus the question of how to read the scriptures rightly in worship is a question about how to handle best the TNT the Lord has given us. For Bonhoeffer, it’s a matter of how to dispense properly the medicine God has entrusted to us.

The pastoral concern then leads Bonhoeffer to ask, “How should we read the Holy Scriptures?”

Bonhoeffer proffers these instructions:

“In a community living together it is best that its various members assume the task of consecutive reading by taking turns. When this is done, the community will see that it is not easy to read the Scriptures aloud for others.

The reading will better suit the subject matter the more plain and simple it is, the more focused it is on the subject matter, the more humble one’s attitude. Often the difference between an experienced Christian and a beginner comes out clearly when Scripture is read aloud.

It may be taken as a rule for the correct reading of Scripture that the readers should never identify themselves with the person who is speaking in the Bible.

It is not I who am angry, but God; it is not I giving comfort, but God; it is not I admonishing, but God admonishing in the Scriptures. Of course, I will be able to express the fact that it is God who is angry, God who is giving comfort and admonishing, by speaking not in a detached, monotonous voice, but only with heartfelt involvement, as one who knows that I myself am being addressed.

However, it will make all the difference between a right and a wrong way of reading Scripture if I do not confuse myself with, but rather quite simply serve, God.

Otherwise I become become rhetorical, over-emotional, sentimental, or coercive; that is to say, I divert the reader’s attention to myself instead of the Word—this is the sin of Scripture reading.

If we could illustrate this with an example from everyday life, the situation of the one who is reading the Scripture would probably come closest to that in which I read to another person a letter from a friend. I would not read the letter as though I had written it myself. The distance between us would be clearly noticeable as it was read. And yet I would also not be able to read my friend’s letter as if it were of no concern to me. On the contrary, because of our close relationship, I would read it with personal interest.

Proper reading of Scripture is not a technical exercise that can be learned; it is something that grows or diminishes according to my own spiritual condition.

The ponderous, laborious reading of the Bible by many a Christian who has become seasoned through experience often far surpasses a minister’s reading, no matter how perfect the latter in form. In a community of Christians living together, one person may also give counsel and help to another in this matter.

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