If I close my eyes, I can still see its picture in my mind's eye, sitting on the shelf. The solid blue hardcover book, the title emblazoned on the front with an accompanying picture. "The Clue of the Screeching Owl." It has been too long ago for me to remember the details of the story, but I still remember Joe and Frank Hardy. I still remember the Hardy Boys and their series of exploits as detectives, chronicled in the Hardy Boys book series. I had many of the books in that series, just as my older sister had the similar Nancy Drew books. Although I am sure it wasn't the first, "The Clue of the Screeching Owl" remains in my memory as one of the first books I ever read.

It thus symbolizes for me an entire period in my life, the period in which I learned to read.

I remember the gleam of anticipation I had in my eye when we went to the library. I remember the pride I felt when my card was stamped as part of the library's reading program. If you could have been present when I first opened the books to read them at home, you might have observed a slight intake of breath as I prepared to jump in headfirst into a pool of imagination.

Do you remember learning to read? What was the first book that you ever read? Do you remember? More importantly, do you remember the magic, the sense of excitement?

For me those early books, those early days of introduction into the magical world of stories and imagination, they weren't just something I was excited about, rather the excitement was greater than that, I didn't seem to have excitement as much as excitement seemed to have me. Although I wouldn't have thought about it this way at the time, in retrospect I would say it was a religious experience, an experience of wonder and fun and anticipation.

At their best, books and stories have a way of creating that kind of magic. I am reminded of the Emily Dickinson poem which goes,

There is no frigate like a book

To take us lands away,

Nor any coursers like a page

Of prancing poetry.

This traverse may the poorest take

Without oppress of toll;

How frugal is the chariot

That bears a human soul!

She could have said, there is no ship like a book, to take us lands away, nor any horses like a page of prancing poetry. But no, reading isn't quite as ordinary as that, stories are more magical than that, at their best you need language like 'frigate' and 'coursers.'

Given the magic potential that reading stories possesses, the results of a recent survey are perhaps a bit sad. You may have already read the results of an Associated Press - Ipsos poll about American reading habits. According to the results of the poll, released about three weeks ago, the number of books read in a year by a typical American has been declining. This recent poll said that the typical American reads only four books a year. Not only that, but 27 percent of Americans had not read a single book over the course of the previous year. A similar poll released a few years ago by the National Endowment for the Arts found that 43 percent had not read a book in 2002. The title of that report was "Reading at Risk." It mentioned television, movies, and the internet as reasons for the decline. (see www.cnn.com/2007/LIVING/wayoflife/08/21/reading.ap/index.html, 9/7/2007)

Now I am not against television, the movies, and the internet, but given that our system of government, and therefore, to some extent, our society as a whole, depends on the informed consent of its citizens, this decline in reading is rather disturbing. After all, one is limited in what one can learn from brief articles on the internet.

For the purposes of this sermon, however, my main concern is not with the decline in reading in general, rather it is with the decline of reading in the church. Just as our larger society is not the group of readers it once was, so too is our church not the community of readers it once was.

In the church, this manifests itself in a lack of Biblical literacy. We don't know the stories of the Bible like as we once did, which is another way of saying, we don't know the story of our Christian faith like we used to. Theologians and sociologists of religion have been observing this for years now. It used to be the case that one could safely allude to various Biblical stories, trusting that people would be able to understand the allusions. Those days are no more, as seminaries now teach pastors not to rely on prior Biblical knowledge among the parishioners. For example, once upon a time, a pastor used to be able to read from Isaiah, trusting that people would know where in the Bible the book of Isaiah can be found. They would have known that there was more than one prophet Isaiah, they would have known approximately when those prophets lived and to whom they prophesied. They would have known what some of the main themes and images of Isaiah were. They would have already known all this without being told, so that when the liturgist stood up to read from Isaiah, it would have been much easier for the congregation to place the passage in context.

The reasons for this are many. Partly it is because people don't read the Bible together as families anymore -- my family certainly never did. Partly it is because the Christian faith doesn't dominate our American culture as much as it once did. But partly it is also because of the churches, it is because we don't emphasize it as we once did.

This problem seems particularly acute among the mainline Protestant denominations, the Presbyterians included. If you want to know what's in the Bible, don't ask a Presbyterian -- ask a Baptist or a conservative evangelical. We Presbyterians often don't know what's in the Bible. Sometimes it almost seems as if we take a perverse pleasure in our ignorance, as if we are proud of our illiteracy. It is almost as if we falsely assume that knowing the Bible well means being a fundamentalist. Eager to disassociate ourselves with fundamentalism, we sadly disassociate ourselves from Biblical literacy as well. This is perhaps understandable, if regrettable. Many of us know the pain from being hit over the head with the Bible by fundamentalists, and it isn't easy to separate the tool from its user.

Who cares, you might ask? So what? We know what we believe. We've heard the story before. Why do we need to keep reading it, why is knowing and reading the stories repeatedly important?
Aside from the implicit arrogance in this view, the arrogance that we have all the answers, we don't need to learn anything else, I would suggest there is also the issue of power. Reading and power have always been associated with each other throughout history. In ancient civilizations, those who could read were granted power and wealth. Better to be an ancient Egyptian scribe than an Egyptian peasant. Those who could read were seen as having access to the divine. There was an air of mystery about them. It was and is the story-tellers of society, the keepers of the story, who have the greatest influence on the path of its people.

If you think of the association between reading, storytelling, and power as merely a matter for the history and anthropology books, think again. Times have changed, but the integral relationship between power and stories hasn't. Just pause to reflect on the power of the storytellers of our society, the politicians and the journalists, and their ability to shape public opinion. Just think about the use of propaganda, about the manufacture of consent for unnecessary wars. In next year's presidential election, it will likely be the greatest storyteller that will win, the one who is most able to speak to and shape our hopes and fears.

Similarly, as a church, knowing the Bible, knowing our own story, is empowering. I am reminded of an interfaith conversation in which I participated a few weeks ago in Chautauqua, New York. The conversation was moderated and led by that summer's resident theologian, a Jewish scholar. At the beginning of one of our sessions, he listed five of the central hallmarks of each of the Abrahamic faiths, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. I don't remember all of what he said about Christianity, but one of the things he mentioned was the importance of the land. Although most of those present were Christian, everybody seemed to be easily absorbing what he said, until I said, "The importance of the land? The land isn't important in Christianity, it certainly isn't a central aspect of the faith. When does Jesus talk about the importance of the land? Never. When do any of the New Testament writers talk about the importance of the land? Never."

If I hadn't been there, presumably even Christians would have walked away thinking the land was somehow central to Christianity. It is a minor example, but it shows how ignorance can be manipulated. I suspect this ignorance is one of the reasons for the success of Dan Brown's book, The DaVinci Code. It is only because people know so little about Christian history that such a work of fiction can be mistaken as truth by so many.

When you know the story, when you know how to read, you can't be easily manipulated, you have a power of your own. I am reminded of a story that my grandmother loves to tell. As she continues to age, she likes to tell some of the same stories again and again, and through the constant retelling, they become sacred stories. One of her favorite stories is of when she read to me as a young child. Even before I learned to read, as she read certain books to me repeatedly, I learned the stories. As she tells the story now, on the occasions in which she would forget a word or make a mistake, I would chime in, "No grandma, that's not right, that's not how the story goes." I didn't yet know how to read, but I already knew those stories and could not be persuaded otherwise. I leaned into those stories, waiting with baited breath for the next word, even though I already knew what it was, the familiar words were always becoming fresh again.

Those stories had become rooted in me, and I had become rooted in them. That's what happens with repeated stories. They root you. They give you strength to lean into the future, to take risks. When you know where your community has been, when you know who you are, when you have some idea where you are going, you are not easily shaken. You have a sense of purpose.

That knowledge is important at all times, but it is especially important in those times and places when you feel like you have lost your anchor, it is especially important when you are suffering and in the dark. Remember who you are, remember that your story is not your own, it is a part of God's story, and it goes back, way back, it goes back to Jesus and Isaiah and Moses and Abraham, indeed it goes back to the very beginning and beyond. There is a strength in that memory and knowledge, a saving strength.

Knowing the stories of our community of faith, knowing the stories of the Bible, is therefore related to our mission. Reading the Bible isn't just about reading the Bible, in other words. Knowing who you are, who we are, isn't just about you, it isn't just about us. It is about who God is, about what God is doing. It is through reading and learning the stories of the Bible, that we learn to read and see God's presence and activity in our world. It is in being reminded of who are we are, that we are reminded of whose we are.

That is part of what is at work in our Scripture lesson from Matthew this morning. Jesus laments that the people don't know how to read the signs of the times. They are ignorant, they don't know how to read. And as a result, they get it wrong, they miss out, they fail to understand who Jesus is, what God is doing. I don't want that for us.

Finally there is another way that reading empowers us for mission. It isn't just from the knowledge that is gained when we read the Bible and learn our story. Rather, it is perhaps above all the community that is formed. Like our Jewish and Muslim brothers and sisters, we are a people of the book. We gather together to become a reading community, because something happens when we read together, something magical and new, something not altogether different from what was happening in me when I read those Hardy Boys books as a child. What happens, I believe, is that God happens. God is present when we read together, God binds us together with each other and with God. Reading the Bible together isn't so much about learning something old, it is about becoming something new, something that we cannot become on our own, by ourselves -- it is about becoming a community that in its reading together, its mission together, its worship together witnesses to an ancient yet ongoing power of transforming love.

I believe that kind of community is still available to us today. It is available to us because of who God is, because the Spirit of God is still at work among communities of readers.

Therefore, it is my hope, and frankly, my expectation, that you as members of this congregation will actively participate in the Christian Education of this church. Period. I expect you to be here. Either Sunday mornings or Wednesday nights or Sunday afternoons. I invite you to come and learn to read, to learn to read the Bible and the signs of the times, and more importantly, to let God use the reading to shape us into a community. Christian Education, learning to read, is not just something that we happen to do -- it is who God calls us to be.

In closing, most of you probably know that I started a Theology Reading Group when I was in Tokyo. But most of you probably don't know that I started another reading group as well. We read works of fiction and met in my apartment one Sunday a month after church. We were all church members. We drank wine together, ate together, shared our hopes and concerns with each other, laughed together, and had long discussions together. We didn't always agree on an interpretation, but I always felt like I learned a lot from the discussion. More importantly, the members of that group entered my heart. That meeting once a month was always one of the high points of my month. And although it has been almost two years since I left, I still keep in touch with all of the former members of that group. Indeed, just in the last month I have spoken with five out of six of them. For me, that small community of readers was, and still is, a sacred community.

May God grant us such a community here.