I had a beautiful moment this past week. I was talking with a family about an upcoming funeral, through ideas for hymns, scripture readings and the rest. Their elderly mother had died, and the three adult offspring and I were working together to compile a service that reflected her faith. One of them mentioned that their mother used to recite scripture with them at bedtime, and together they started to remember it aloud.
The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want…
At first, it felt a little textbook. The 23rd Psalm is the Psalm for funerals, isn’t it? But here were three adult children, looking back to their childhood and finding these old words that their mother had taught them, finding comfort as they spoke them together. It was beautiful.
They wanted a Bible to read the words there, testing their memory, but of course, my Bible (New Revised Standard Version – Anglicanized Edition) wasn’t what they were looking for. They needed the King James’ Version. The old familiar. (Although apparently their mother used to rework it a little, so on Monday, when I am reading it for them at her funeral, I’ll be leaving out the “ths.”)
She gave her children a gift in teaching them this bit of scripture. Even if it was only for that moment, that one afternoon, sitting in a sunny church office and dealing with the logistics of grief. By planting those words in their hearts, she gave them something to hold onto in that moment when she couldn’t be there to hold them herself.
But it isn’t fashionable to teach children scripture anymore.
I say that, and I think many would agree with me, but perhaps it’s more precise to say that within most of mainline Protestantism, it isn’t fashionable. When I googled “memorizing scripture,” I found plenty of sites advocating it as a practice. But what I found made me uncomfortable. So many of these sites proclaimed that the key reason we should memorise scripture, and teach our children to memorize scripture, was as a method of warfare.
Now, I know what these writers are asserting. And, of course, it is an excellent thing to have the Word present in our hearts when we face temptation. I won’t argue with that. But I am not sure that confrontation should be the primary reason to memorise scripture. What about the good of keeping words of beauty and comfort close at hand? What about the worth of immersing yourself in a rich literary landscape that can feed you spiritually, just as it has over the centuries? What about as a way of bing open to the internal work of the Spirit?
When I worked at St Andrew’s Church in Ottawa, one of the on-going projects I got to promote was the “Words to Remember” program. Each month, the congregation would be invited to memorize a certain passage. There were various levels you could shoot for: verse 1, verses 1-3, verses 1-6 etc. The Sunday School children would work on the verse together during their gathering time, and after the service, they would find members of the congregation to recite at, collecting initials in small notebooks. Then, once a month, the congregation would recite the passage out loud during the service. I love the group motivation that goes along with this, as well as the modeling – or perhaps, competition – among the generations. (If you want to look at their program, you can find it here.) I wish I could say that I aced it every time. But I didn’t, and that was okay, too. The words were printed in the order of service to read as we needed them. But, it was even better to stand in the sanctuary and to listen as the others said the words aloud, letting the congregation remind me how the words flow. It is powerful to hear scripture spoken aloud by a congregation. Living words indeed.
I am afraid that I tend to memorize more recipes than scripture. Mainly variations on bread, but also cookies and pancakes. And after this weekend’s culinary experiments, I have the beginings of a candied lemon tart recipe settling into my heart… I remember recipes because I am using them all the time. But, shouldn’t this also be the way with words of scripture? They are words to use as nourishment, words to keep thinking about. And they are also words that we need to teach our children to chew on.
