II Samuel 6:1-5, 12-19

 As I sat with the story of David leaping and dancing, I found myself thinking about three questions about my own life, and I invite you to think about the same questions.

 The first question is this: What, in your life, has caused you to leap and dance?  For David, it was bringing the ark of God to Jerusalem.  The Ark of the Covenant had been part of Jerusalem’s history since the time of Sinai.  It was a sign of God’s presence with God’s people, called by God to be a blessing to the world.  As the ark was coming into the city, David began to dance and leap and celebrate.  David had fallen in love with God.  I want to suggest that whenever you were most whole in your life, when you wanted to leap and dance, you were the most you.  A lot of us pay attention to problems in our lives, but are we paying attention to the joy in our life?

 The second question is this: When have you been resentful of someone else’s joy?  When have you been like Michal, the daughter of Saul, who looked out the window and saw David dancing and despised him?  When have you felt resentful of someone else’s dancing?  When have you felt resentful of someone else’s joy, someone else’s success, someone else’s elevation?  When have you been unhappy because someone else was praised and rewarded?  It is a part of our human condition.  It is a consequence of our own joylessness, because when we ourselves are not full of joy, we become resentful of others.  Much of the harm we do to one another is a consequence of the lack of joy in our own lives.  If we had joy in our own lives, it would make us happy to see others living out their lives with joy and fulfillment and happiness.

 The third question is this: What is keeping you from leaping and dancing today?  What is getting in the way of your joy?  When David could not face his own pain, his own dishonesty, when he could not look at the hard aspects of his own life and deal with them, he also lost his joy.  When we cannot face that part of our lives which is painful or in which we have anxiety or sometimes when we feel empty, when we cannot face the hard things, then we also numb ourselves to the experience of joy.  There is no way to joy except through grief.  There is no way to joy except through living through the pain and the agony and the emptiness that is also part of our lives.  The only way out of hell is through the middle.  When we refuse to face our own pain and brokenness, we also lose our joy.

 If we could see the God of the Bible in love with us, we would run and dance and leap and whirl into the wee hours of the morning on the streets of Oak Cliff until people thought we were touched.

Stephen Prothero, chair of the Religion Department at Boston University, has done Americans in general, and religious communities in particular, a great service by laying out in methodical fashion our religious illiteracy.  In his book Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know – and Doesn’t, he makes the claim that religious illiteracy is as pervasive as cultural illiteracy, and more dangerous.  He says that it is more dangerous because religion is the most volatile constituent of culture and because religion has been, in addition to one of the greatest forces for good in world history, one of the greatest forces for evil.

Interestingly, Dr. Prothero’s argument is neither that liberal education needs religious studies nor that real faith requires religious knowledge.  The argument he puts forth is that we need religious literacy in order to be an effective citizen.  Religious illiteracy makes it difficult for us to understand what is happening in our world today.  For example: Without a knowledge of the Bible of the Quran, it is difficult to make sense of a world in which people kill and make peace in the name of Christ or Allah.  How are we to understand international conflicts in the Middle East without understanding and weighing the role of Jerusalem in the sacred geography of the Abrahamic faiths?

Religious literacy, as Dr. Prothero defines it, refers to the ability to understand and use in one’s day to day life the basic building blocks of religious traditions – their key terms, symbols, doctrines, practices, sayings, characters, metaphors, and narratives.  All of these concepts are currently being employed in American public life.  Consider suicide bombings in the Middle East, the enduring popularity of end time predictions, and the ritual cycle of presidential elections, to name a few.

The gospel according to John instructs Christians to “search the scriptures.”  However, here is a sampling of a lack of searching being done: only half of American adults can name even one of the four gospels.  Most Americans cannot name the first book of the Bible.  Only one-third know that Jesus, not Billy Graham, delivered the Sermon on the Mount.  Ten percent of Americans believe that Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife.

The church needs to provide opportunities for growth in faith and knowledge.  Please let me know if there is an opportunity for you to grow in faith and understanding through KPUMC.

Here is a sampling of questions from a religious literary quiz Dr. Prothero gives his students.  The answers will be published in the next newsletter:

1. Name the four gospels.
2. Name a sacred text of Hinduism.
3. What is the name of the holy book of Islam?
4. Where, according to the Bible, was Jesus born?
5. President George W. Bush spoke in his first inaugural address of the Jericho Road.  What Bible story was he invoking?
6. What are the first five books of the Hebrew Bible or the Christian Old Testament?
7. What is the Golden Rule?
8. “God helps those who help themselves.”  Is this in the Bible?  If so, where?
9. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.”  Does this appear in the Bible?  If so, where?
10. Name the Ten Commandments.  List as many as you can.
11. Name the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism.
12. What are the seven sacraments of Catholicism?  List as many as you can.
13. The First Amendment says two things about religion, each in its own “clause.”  What are the two religious clauses of the First Amendment?
14. What is Ramadan?  In what religion is it celebrated?
15. Match the Bible characters with the stories in which they appear.  Draw a line from one to the other.  Hint: Some characters may be matched with more than one story or vice versa:

Adam and Eve                                                  Exodus

Paul                                                               Binding of Isaac

Moses                                                            Olive Branch

Noah                                                              Garden of Eden

Jesus                                                              Parting of the Red Sea

Abraham                                                          Road to Damascus

Serpent                                                           Garden of Gethsemane