The following story explains the circumstances in my life that led me to get started studying the Bible. This “Open Letter to Confirmation Students” was delivered as a sermon on the first day I was getting ready to teach the Bible to a class of youthful confirmation students. Whatever has brought you to this point, I hope that your journey will also be deeply enriched by a growing engagement with God and the scriptures that teach us what it means to walk with God.
Dear Confirmation Students,
I am excited that you are beginning confirmation classes this Sunday, right after this service. We are scheduled to have ten classes between now and June, during which we will focus on studying the Bible together.
In the scripture lesson today, Jesus walked down the beach looking for disciples—people he could teach, and people who could also become leaders of the church someday in the future. I don’t think it is any accident that he was walking along the beach—that’s where you can find fishermen. Fishermen are people who try over and over to present some bait to the fish, hoping that they will bite. If one kind of bait doesn’t work, then good fisherman switch to another kind of bait until they figure out what will work.
I often think that is why there are many different kinds of Christian churches—it is God’s way of “fishing” with different kinds of bait, hoping that all of us will join with God in God’s great mission. With the words, “Follow me,” Jesus invited the disciples in this story to come with him, and they did—they left their boat and their nets on the shore, and from then on they followed Jesus and learned from him. They made plenty of mistakes on their journey, but he loved them every step of the way, he forgave them, and he helped them.
I can safely say that your church family wants that for you, too. I have been thinking back this week on my own journey—especially during the days when I was much younger, about the age that you are now. During that period of my life, I attended confirmation classes because my parents made me go, and to be honest, sometimes they were boring. Who knows—I might continue the tradition and bore you sometimes too! However, due to a strange set of circumstances, I began to discover the Bible as a resource for living at that same time. I was no good at sports, but I loved to play the trombone, and so I want to tell you a couple of stories that make me wonder if one way God went fishing for me was through using my love of the trombone. Who knows?
In Junior High School band, usually the trombone players, who are mostly boys, sit behind the flute players—who are mostly girls. And trombones have a long slide that can easily reach, well, the “posterior” area of the flute players in the front row. That fact, combined with the fact that the average junior high boy wants to get the attention of the girls, but doesn’t really know how else to do it other than poke them with the trombone slide, means that band is not a very safe or peaceful place for the girls who have to sit in front of the trombone section.) I guess what I’m trying to say is that when I was in Junior High School, I wasn’t nominated for sainthood, and certainly not by the flute players. The point I hope you will see is this; the Bible has a way of relating to everyone, no matter what our life is like at the time. It can bring deep, spiritual, and constructive change to our lives—even for trombone players!
If you were hoping to learn about the Bible like a book of ancient history, then let these introductory stories serve as a warning to you—sometimes the ideas you read in the Bible will pop into your head when you least expect them to, and if you’re not careful, reading the Bible just might change your life.
Ready for the first “Bible & Trombone” story?
One day after school during my senior year of high school, I went to stay overnight at my friend Joe’s house. I had my homework, and my trombone, with me. I woke up the next morning before he did; he was sound asleep, and it got boring listening to him snore. I got to thinking it might be funny to wake him up by blasting a note or two on my trombone…maybe somewhere near his bed. (This was back before “Funniest Home Videos” were invented.)
I laughed to myself, thinking about having some fun with this practical joke, but by then, I had been reading many of the proverbs in the Bible, and one of them popped into my head at that moment that says, “You might as well curse your friend as wake him up in the morning with a loud greeting.” Now, that proverb was written more than 2000 years ago, based on years of some pretty funny research, I would imagine. And even today, if you watch similar pranks on TV, the observation is still as true as ever. Maybe you can have a great time at someone else’s expense, but they quickly get mad, and to them, it feels like you just cursed them. So go ahead and treat your friends and family however you want, but if you have been lucky enough to learn something from the Bible, at least you have been forewarned that pranking them is not the best way to have a good day with a friend.
But for now, let’s get back to Joe, who is still sound asleep on his bed. Fortunately for him, thinking about that proverb gave me just enough wisdom, in advance, to understand that if I carried out my plot, he would be rudely awakened, I would have a big laugh at his expense, and then he would be angry and probably give me a pounding. So I left the trombone in its case, and just asked, in a quiet voice, “Joe, are you awake yet?” I think we had a better day because of it. (Although, I still feel kindof guilty about those flute players!)
See what I mean? Reading the Bible might mess up your plans for a practical joke, but it might help you become a more thoughtful friend.
You may wonder why I had been reading the Bible enough to know about that proverb. The answer lies in another Bible and Trombone story from three years earlier—when I was a freshman in High School.
As a high school freshman, I was frequently bullied.
I think I was a target partly because I was a somewhat geeky kid with a silver front tooth and brown plastic glasses and hair that hung straight down, and I had not yet experienced anything resembling a “growth spurt.” Anyway, I was no match for four big, nasty seniors, I assure you.
It was the fact that I played trombone in band that put me in harm’s way. Our band director insisted we practice daily, and trombones don’t fit in student lockers, so I had to take my trombone to the band room every morning before school. Unfortunately, the band room was located at the bottom of a long, spiral, concrete ramp in the basement of the old school building.
When I took my trombone down the ramp, those four big senior guys were usually waiting for me when I walked back up. It was a dark and unsupervised area in the years before bullying had been identified by school and political leaders as an issue. Those four guys would push me back down the ramp, call me names, and one day they even stuffed me in a trash can to see how far they could roll me down the ramp. The daily taunting and abuse didn’t stop until the bell rang and they had to go to their classes.
Now, for most of my life before freshman year, the Bible the church had given me as a kid was gathering dust on my book shelf. But about a year before I was bullied, I had a religious “awakening” of sorts.
It all started when I had to practice a Jr. High trombone solo for music contest at Julie’s house—she played piano, and accompanied my trombone solo. After we practiced I waited for my mother to pick me up, and during that time, Julie asked me, out of the blue, “Are you saved?” Julie was Baptist, and at our United Methodist church, we never used the words “getting saved.” Maybe I was just beginning to mature mentally, or maybe it was the fact that I was taking confirmation classes at the time, but anyway, there was something about the way she asked her question that triggered a “spiritual curiosity” in me. I did not understand her question, so I asked what she meant. She tried to explain by quoting some scriptures, and then, when she could see I didn’t get it, she got her mother to come in to try to explain it to me, and then my mother arrived to pick me up and I went home, without an answer, but still feeling the power of the question. Without knowing exactly what I was doing, in the quiet of my bedroom that evening, I simply asked God to come into my life (I remembered Julie’s mom saying something about that). No alter calls—just a sincere, albeit completely uninformed, moment with God. After that, I had a hunger to read the Bible, and to talk to other people about what it meant to be a Christian. I found and underlined many scriptures that seemed to be “speaking to me”—and the Bible began to made sense to me in ways it never had before.
During the time I was being bullied, one of the scriptures that “spoke to me” was Jesus’ command to forgive our enemies. He said if they strike you on your cheek, turn the other cheek, and pray for those who persecute you.
When I read that scripture, of course I thought about the bullies. So I tried to be patient with them (not an effective strategy, I discovered). One friend, when he found out what was happening to me, was outraged. His advice: “You should kick ‘em where it counts!” But I knew that if I did that, they would really clobber me then. Besides, the Bible seemed to say that I should show love and concern, even for my bullies. Once I even tried mentioning the Bible to them, but they ridiculed me. I refused to take a swing at them, but instead of improving the relationship, the bullying got more violent. They mocked me and hit me and they even stuffed me into a garbage can and rolled it down a concrete ramp. They managed to bring me to tears on more than one occasion, and I dreaded going to school because I knew that no matter what I did, they would be waiting to torment me every morning. Then one day, they ripped my shoes off my feet, tied them together, and managed to get them stuck, hanging by the shoelaces high in the metal beams of the gym.
Going to classes without shoes is a problem that is hard to ignore and “turn the other cheek.”
So after the bell rang and the bullies set me free that day, I walked in my socks to the office. A janitor had to go fetch a huge lift to retrieve my shoes…and that is when the principal found out what was going on. I’m not sure what happened to those boys after that, but I know that I was assigned a “bodyguard” who walked with me down and up the ramp for the next few weeks.
My bodyguard attended a prayer group that met before school, down at the bottom of a different ramp, so I went with him there. It was a much more pleasant place to be; a group of Christian youth who shared their joys and concerns, and then joined hands and prayed before school started each day. In that group of friends, we discussed the Bible, supported each other, and through the years our faith and friendship grew.
Even though more than 40 years has passed since that experience, I still think it is challenging to apply the Bible’s words in our everyday life. Right now in the news, North Korea is threatening to fire missiles at the United States, including Austin, Texas, where one of our sons is working. So, how should Christians respond to bullies? How about rude drivers and unfair referees and insensitive spouses and people who sit on the other side of the political aisle?
Not every situation in life has an instant “fix,” but the message of the Bible does remind us that beyond the situation, there is a love from God that even includes bullies. At least consider God’s love, even for bullies, before you resort to lashing out at people who hurt you or make you furious. Further, I have come to believe that even though four big guys have a lot of power over one little guy, there is even more power and strength in showing love. Love is stronger than hatred and violence, including those who we consider “enemies.” So, if you read the Bible enough to conclude that Jesus was right–that love is the ultimate kind of strength in life, then what does that imply for the rest of the situations any of us face day to day?
Meanwhile, it is clear that we can be threatened by people who act like monsters, but we can also be blessed by people who love us enough to walk by our side. The Bible certainly makes a case for us to become people more like my bodyguard than people who act like my bullies did. But now we are getting into values and beliefs—see? If you are not careful, when you read the Bible, you might get distracted from the simple facts about the Bible, and start thinking about how to live your own life.
And to tell the truth, my hope for you is that as you study the Bible, you will do much more than learn a lot of new facts about the ancient scriptures. I do hope its message will sink in deep, and pop into your mind just when you least expect it. May the life lessons that you learn through the pages of the Bible bless your life, make you a blessing to others, and help you experience the One who walks by your side through it all.
Jeffrey Rasche 