Can I Ask That? – Part Twenty-Two – Why Do We Stand for the Reading of Scripture?
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Nehemiah%208%3A1-5&version=NLT
Head/Mind – Helpful Information
Our sermon this morning was going to be, What Is the Bible, and Why Was It Given to Us? The simple answer is that the Bible is God’s written word and it was given to us help us know him better and to help us understand the story that we have been invited to be a part of.
As I was preparing this sermon, the question came up, why do we stand when the scripture is read in worship? And, in some Methodist churches, like the ones some of you grew up in, standing for the scriptures was an honor reserved for the four Gospels alone. So, why do we stand, no matter where in the Bible the lesson is taken from?
First, let’s talk about the origins of standing for the reading of the Bible. And, in order to do that, we need to go back the Old Testament books of Ezra and Nehemiah, which recount the story of God’s people coming home after decades in exile, in order to rebuild their homes and their nation.
The Hebrew people had been called into a special relationship with God. They would be his people, loving and serving him, and establishing their culture on justice, mercy, and compassion, so that other nations could get a sense of what God is like. Likewise, the Lord would be their God and he would watch over them and guide them in faithfulness. In order to do that, he gave them prophets and priests, but most importantly, he gave them his written word as a forever guide to understanding what it means to be God’s people.
Sadly, the people had neglected this covenant with God to the such a point that they lost nearly everything, including coming very close to losing God’s written word. In exile, the people spent a lot of time reflecting on how they had allowed all of that to happen. And, they came to the conclusion that if they had paid more attention to the story and guidance found in God’s word, they would not have strayed away from him.
So, over the next several decades there was a concerted effort to gather the scrolls containing God’s word, to preserve them, establish a way of transmitting them, and to create a systematic way of teaching them to the next generation.
Decades later, back in their homeland, that work was far from complete. The important thing was that it had begun and the people marked the occasion by holding a mass gathering in which the entire Torah will be read and expounded upon. In reverence, all who could stand, stood as the words were read. The idea of standing was to act as if they were the first generation of Hebrew people, standing upon the mountain, waiting for Moses to come and bring a word from God. They stood, eagerly waiting to receive it. That is basically the first explanation.
Now, for the longer part. Originally Methodism was a renewal movement within Anglicanism. John Wesley had no intention of starting a rival church. He thought the Anglican Church was fine. In fact, he thought it was one of the best expressions of Catholic/biblical Christianity in the world. The only thing wrong with it was that it had grown cold and overly-formal, and his intent was to help fan the flames of revival within the Anglican Church and to bring it back to its original glory. And one of the keys to fanning the flames was the Methodist renewal movement. But, Methodism was never meant to take the place of the Anglican Church, only to revive it. So, Methodist worship was not designed to take the place of what was done on Sunday mornings in the local parish church. That means that for more than 40 years, the way Methodist worshiped was not intended, or designed to be a whole church service, but something with a more limited goal in mind. So, for the first forty plus years, when Methodists gathered, mostly what they did was sing (a lot), pray, and preach. The rest of it Methodists would get by attending the local church.
One of the events that led to Methodism to becoming its own church was that Methodist immigrants took Methodism to the new world. They planted Methodism in the American Colonies and it began to grow. Still Wesley thought that even in the colonies, Methodism should be closely related to the Anglican Church. But Wesley never really understood the scope and size of the American colonies. He could not even conceive of the fact that for some Methodists, the closest Anglican Church was more than 80 miles away, meaning that congregation could not be their church.
Things got even harder to manage when the American Revolution started, and many Anglican priests packed up their bags and went back home to England, making it even less likely that Methodists in American would form strong ties to the Anglican Church.
These pressures forced John Wesley to acknowledge the fact that the American Methodists would need to form into their own church. So John Wesley commissioned Thomas Coke and Francis Asbury to travel to America for the purpose of establishing a church and acting as its first episcopal leaders, which they did at the Christmas Conference in 1884.
John Wesley, who thought that all Methodists were like him in identifying strongly with the Anglican Church, designed a worship service that looked a lot like the one used by the Anglican Church. But, by that time, Methodists, most of whom, who had never had a relationship with Anglican Church, had grown up worshiping in the Free Church form of worship experienced at Methodist meetings, which was comprised of singing, praying, and preaching. They had no interests in doing things like the Anglican Church did them. So, they ignored the order or worship Wesley had sent with Coke and Asbury. And for the next 130 years, they kept doing things pretty similar to how they had always done them. They did add a few things here and there, such as the use of the Apostles’ Creed and the Lord’s Prayer, but otherwise, Methodist services looked more like a revival meeting, than as a formal church service. In fact, others called early Methodists “Shouting Methodists” because of the enthusiasm found in the services. And, by the way, whenever the Scriptures were read, most churches stood for them, no matter which part of the Bible they came from.
In the early 20th century, Methodists began seeking to align their way of worship with the historic form of worship found in the Anglican, Orthodox, and Roman Catholic Churches. They began reforming their worship to bring it into conformity with this ancient pattern. Part of the reform was adopting the lectionary. The lectionary, when used as designed, takes a congregation though about 84% of the Bible every three years.
When you use the lectionary properly, you have four readings every single Sunday – One reading from the Old Testament, one reading the Psalms, one reading from a New Testament epistle, and one reading from one of the four Gospels. The idea is that the morning sermon will incorporate all of these readings so that the congregation has a good understanding of the Biblical narrative in all of its breadth.
When this is done, the Gospel reading is the only lesson during which the congregation stands. The point being that the life, death, and resurrection become the highpoint, the pinnacle, and the lens through which the church reads the rest of the Bible. But, it also creates the context in which the Gospel itself can be understood. Also, the lectionary is meant to lead the congregation to the conclusion, which is Communion/Eucharist, which Wesley assumed Methodist would observe every Sunday. That, of course, never happened in American Methodism.
Unfortunately most Methodist churches never used the lectionary properly. One perceived problem was that using all four scripture readings created a worship service that was far too long for most Methodists. Also, incorporating all four readings into the sermon was more work than most Methodist preachers were used to doing on a sermon and something that most of them, unfortunately, were not capable of actually doing.
That meant that what happened in practice was that the four readings generally became two readings, or even just one. And gradually, overtime, most Methodist preachers gravitated to the practice of always reading and preaching from the Gospel text, which on the surface seems fine, but it’s not.
Let’s start with the fact that the gospel becomes nearly incomprehensible when it’s detached from the larger story. Jesus comes to fulfill the promises made to Israel, and, according to Jesus himself, the entire biblical story is about him (see John 5 and Luke 24). Jesus is the central character. He is central theme, and the whole story points to him. But if you detach Jesus from the story he came to fulfill, then Jesus becomes incomprehensible. For example Jesus comes into Jerusalem to the shouts of blessed is the Son of David. And, Matthew compares Jesus to Moses, while John says Jesus is the answer to the Promises made to Abraham. How are you supposed to understand any of that if you do not know the stories of David, Moses, and Abraham. When you isolate the Gospels from the rest of the story, all of the Jewish details of Jesus life just seem to be extra pieces left over, and not a key to understanding him. We end up with a free floating Jesus, that makes no sense in his original context. And when you do that, it’s not long before you’ve created, not only a biblically illiterate laity, but even a biblically illiterate clergy.
So what I would say is that if our church ever goes back to the form of worship that was historically embodied in Anglicanism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Roman Catholicism, and we read all four scriptures, then, yes, we will privilege the gospel as the interpretive key that holds all of it together and makes sense of the entire thing. But if not, if we follow the trajectory that Methodism has actually been on for the last 300 years, where we primarily read and preach from only one text, then we’re gonna do what our evangelical and revivalist forefathers and mothers did. We’re going to treat any text that we read and preach from as sacred scripture. And well honor the God who gave it by standing for the reading of the scripture.
Heart – Personal Connection –
Standing is about more than honor. It is about standing ready to receive what God might say to us. It is about posturing ourselves in such a way as to say that we are ready to hear. It is about anticipation. It is about saying with our body, “I don’t want to miss this.”
The Solider Receiving Orders
Think about the diligent solider standing before their commanding officer. They are waiting for their marching orders. And, because they believe in the mission, they are ready to spring into action at the command of that officer.
Scripture gives us our marching orders. And, if we are dutiful, it tells us what to do when we go forth.
The Classroom Bell
Think about a classroom right before the teacher walks in. The students are chattering, distracted, but when the bell rings and the teacher enters, most students—especially the ones who want to succeed—quiet down, sit up, and prepare to listen. They may not know what’s coming, but they know it matters.
That’s what standing for Scripture is like. It’s the ringing bell. It says: “This is the moment to focus. God is speaking.”
A Letter from Someone You Love
Now imagine you receive a handwritten letter from someone you deeply love—maybe a spouse, or a friend you haven’t seen in years. You don’t read that kind of letter casually. You find a quiet place. You slow down. You savor every word because love makes you want to listen closely.
That’s how we should approach the reading of Scripture. Not just as obligation, but as a letter from the One who loves us most. We stand because we want to say with our whole body: “Lord, I’m listening. Speak.”
Hands – The Practical Application
How we treat the Bible says a great deal about how we treat God.
Many Christians affirm with their lips that the Bible is God’s Word—but their lives suggest otherwise. We say we believe it, but we rarely read it. We call it holy, but we barely give it our attention. If we treat God’s Word casually, what does that say about our relationship with the God who gave it?
The opening of the Psalms offers us a different picture.
“Blessed is the one who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked… but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night.” — Psalm 1:1–2
That kind of life—rooted in Scripture, nourished by it, drawing strength from it—is the life God blesses. It’s the life Jesus modeled and commended.
Jesus himself affirmed the enduring authority of Scripture:
“Truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one jot or tittle will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.” — Matthew 5:18
Not even the smallest stroke of a letter, Jesus said, will be forgotten or set aside. If that’s how Jesus treated the Scriptures, then we should approach them with the same reverence, urgency, and love.
So yes—we stand when the Bible is read, not just out of tradition, but out of conviction. We are saying: “Lord, we are listening. Speak, and we will follow.”