A muddle about the Bible in small groups

If we ask each other, “What is the Bible?” How do you respond? If we ask each other, “What does the Bible itself say about what it is?” How do you reply?

What we think the Bible is shapes how we read it. Think about reading a recipe before ordering a food delivery, or reading a map of the London Underground before a Taylor Swift concert, and compare these two ways to read with the different ways that the Bible tells us to read it.

A lamp and a light: These words “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Psalm 119.105) picture the world in which we live as a dark place spiritually, where it is not always easy to see the way ahead, not always easy to know what to say or not say. It is often not easy to see what to do or not do, how to proceed, what to think about God or ourselves, or those around us, or the options before us. Imagine someone crossing a moor at night, wanting to stay on the path, with a lantern to show the way.

The lantern does not always show everything we would like to see, but always shows us enough to take the next step.

If ‘lamp’ and ‘light’ express what God’s word is and if that’s how God’s word functions among his people then it will be helpful for small group leaders and small group members to keep this metaphor in mind, as they meet. The group can pray, asking God to make his word - e.g. from the bible passage on Sunday - to function as a lamp and a light, showing the next step in the life of the church, and showing the next step in the life of the group, and in the lives of the group members¹.

The Bible includes other metaphors to describe what it is and what it is for, and how it functions in our lives. Each set of metaphors offers a different angle for thinking about the purpose, the priorities and the pattern of the meetings in our small groups.

There is a sense in which the Bible provides testimony to the wisdom of God and the glory of God, the wisdom and glory of God that is fully revealed in the Lord Jesus Christ, and that is further revealed throughout the scriptures.

If we think of scripture as a God-given testimony to God’s wisdom, then reading scripture together becomes an opportunity to help each other hear God’s wisdom revealed in the passage, and to help each other to see how God’s wisdom lands in our lives today.

There are several food based metaphors for scripture including milk, bread, meat and honey. The movement from milk through bread to meat, pictures growth towards spiritual maturity in ways that parallel the changing diet that is appropriate during physical development².

When we notice that picturing the Bible as spiritual food is helpful for small group leaders and members, it is worth thinking about our responsibilities as readers or leaders within the framework provided by the food metaphor. For instance, the group leader will work and pray towards ensuring that each member of the group is feeding from the passage at a level appropriate to their Christian experience. The relevant spiritual gift is perhaps hospitality. God has provided more than enough spiritual food for every member of the group to digest. But in some groups there is sometimes a person who is quick to speak before thinking, or as part of thinking, in ways that make it harder for a quieter group member to join in. A group leader like a host at a table, might need to help individual group members to serve each other and learn to chew over a passage together, with contributions from every voice.

It is sometimes helpful in small groups to set a short sequence of metaphors alongside each other, and to move from one to the other. For almost any passage, we could think about these three pictures one after the other: scripture as a mirror, in which we see ourselves, followed by scripture as a pair of glasses, through which we see God more clearly and closely, and scripture as an invitation to the wedding supper of the lamb, in which we hear of God’s love for us.

The first of these three pictures is a direct biblical metaphor, the second and the third pictures capture aspects of the function of scripture without appearing in scripture as a metaphor for scripture.

James 1 pictures scripture as a mirror, where the great temptation is to see what the mirror is showing about ourselves, or the world in which we live, and then walk away without doing anything about it. Every passage in scripture functions as a mirror to reveal our hearts and our need of God’s gracious forgiveness.

John Calvin pictures the purpose of scripture using the metaphor of a pair of glasses. Scripture is God’s gift to us, to enable us to see him more clearly and closely, because he knows that our spiritual vision is fuzzy. We could ask of any passage in the Bible: How does this passage reveal God to us? And how shall we respond to what we see and hear?

Tim Keller pictures the whole of scripture as an invitation to a wedding. The bible tells the story of God’s search for a bride for his son. Every passage is part of God’s invitation to come to Christ, and in coming to Christ to come to supper with Christ, as his bride. The Bible is the story of God’s gracious love, and every passage contains an invitation to know God’s love more deeply. We could ask how any individual passage expresses God’s love?

Each of the metaphors functions as an invitation to pray. If we look in the mirror, how shall we pray? When we see through the glasses, what shall we pray? When we receive the invitation to the supper, how shall we respond?

Small group leaders could work together to write a series of prayers, based on the various metaphors, asking God to enable his word to function in these different ways in the life of the group and its members.

A small group could work together to think about the implications of a particular metaphor for scripture through a series of meetings, before moving to another metaphor for the next leg of the journey.

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1. This approach to bible assumes that the message is first of all to the church as a whole, as in the NT letters, and then to small groups within the church, and to individuals and families within the context of the church. The primary audience, and therefore the primary application for Scripture is to ‘us’ in our life together as a church community. The bible speaks to us before it speaks to ‘me’ as an individual.↩︎

2. This is why some churches call their small groups ‘Growth Groups’. A title that explains what the groups are designed to achieve, although not the kind of growth they have in mind, nor the means by which the growth will occur.↩︎

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