You've just come back from a church election meeting; and yes, you're the new First Reader! Maybe it was the farthest thing from your thought. Maybe you're apprehensive about it—or even a bit scared. Maybe you were looking forward to it and hoping someday such a lovely opportunity might come your way. Maybe you were quietly cherishing the office of Reader for whomever it might come to, confidently relying on divine wisdom's guidance for your branch church and community. Whatever, now you're it! Where do you go from here?
How about to the Manual of The Mother Church by Mary Baker Eddy? The By-Laws on reading are a compass clearly pointing the direction you can go. Spirituality, morality, scholarship, study, devotion, consecration, unselfishness, love, spiritual listening—qualities indicated in Article III of the Church Manual are a good start, a good foundation, a good launching pad for successful reading in church.
It's helpful to remember that people hear words but they feel thoughts. So the service should never be routine. It's never just a mechanical process of reading the words from the books. It's always a spiritual experience, the result of effective prayer. The words of the Bible Lesson are the same in each branch church on a particular Sunday. But the services and their effect can be very different. What makes that difference? Isn't it the spiritual preparation of the Readers and members of the congregation that lifts the service beyond words to the spiritual dimension of comfort and healing? Daily prayer for oneself, prayer to remain, as Mrs. Eddy says in the Manual, "uncontaminated with evil," prayer for a pure heart, prayer to stay in the straight and narrow way brings receptivity to God's Word and freedom to express it.
Prayer for ourselves might include the desire to be a transparency for the Christ, Truth, to shine through. There's a familiar but useful analogy about transparency—a clean window through which you can see a beautiful scene. Of course, the purpose of the window isn't to have people say: "What a beautiful window" but "Oh, what a lovely view!"
This analogy helps take away concern about speaking in public. We don't need to worry about how many people are in the audience. For instance, if there are a lot of people, we may be tempted to think they are coming to hear us. Or if there are just a few people, we may be tempted to think not many wanted to come hear us. We may also be concerned about which particular individuals might be in the audience. But the best thing we can do for the congregation is to read with inspiration, dedication, consecration, spiritual authority, joy, and love, and confidently leave the outcome in God's hands. The violin doesn't concern itself about the techniques of playing or who might be in the audience. It just responds to the hand that moves over it. Our prayer can be, "Father, use me for Your own purpose. May I be Your instrument for You to play upon."
Readers may want to explore more fully the spiritual basis of true communication. Divine Mind is the one communicator—Mind unfolding itself, expressing itself, revealing itself, interpreting itself, and receiving itself. To the degree that we listen to Mind's guidance and yield to it— to that degree we are an instrument in divine Mind's unfolding plan.
One Reader says he always studied the Bible Lesson with the idea of finding its central message. He had found over the years that each lesson (although the same subjects are repeated) was entirely individual and approached its subject in a unique way. After he felt he had got to the core-meaning of the lesson, he would then listen prayerfully and research earnestly to find the hymns, Scriptural selection, and benediction that would complement the lesson. Nothing could be routine or mechanical about it. The placement of the hymns—their tone as contemplative, rousing, or joyous had a specific purpose.
He tried to have the Scriptural selection as an opening bridge to the lesson itself. And the notices weren't something "to get through." They were another means in the service to bring information, comfort, love, and healing. The reading of "the scientific statement of being" and the correlative Scripture from I John at the end of the service also varied in tone and texture, depending on the message of the lesson. He said he made his benedictions a comforting promise of God's care as it related to the central theme of the Lesson-Sermon.
Finally he always devoted adequate time to reading the entire service aloud so the meaning of the message would come through. He felt these measures gave a sense of unity and direction that made the entire service more understandable, cohesive, and retainable.
Whatever the approach, whatever the human preparation, first, last, and always prayer is the real basis of effective reading: prayer for oneself, prayer for the service, prayer for the congregation, prayer for the community and the world. A service without prayer might be likened to a picture of the sun. It might look beautiful but it doesn't have the light and warmth to make the flowers grow!
In praying for the service, Readers may want to give special thought to the definition of Church from the Glossary of Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, applying it specifically to the service. It begins: "Church. The structure of Truth and Love; whatever rests upon and proceeds from divine Principle."
One Reader said he could see the services as expressing "the structure of Truth and Love." He prayed to know that the service rested on Truth and Love, not on personality—his or others'. It didn't rest on professionalism or the size of the congregation. It didn't rest on human opinions, personal likes or dislikes, pet criticisms, personal ambition or fear. He saw that which "rests upon and proceeds from divine Principle" as safe, normal, pure, free, unrestricted, healthful, and helpful.
We can find inspiration, strength, progress, and spiritual growth from this period of service in the church. This Manual-provided activity is protected and safe. Readers can surely apply to themselves this comment by Mrs. Eddy: "Beloved brethren, to-day I extend my heart-and-hand-fellowship to the faithful, to those whose hearts have been beating through the mental avenues of mankind for God and humanity; and rest assured you can never lack God's outstretched arm so long as you are in His service."
So, welcome home from your church meeting, newly elected Reader. Have a wonderful time!
On Wednesday testimony meetings: comments by a former First Reader
There's a wholeness, a perfect balance, in Mrs. Eddy's provision for Sunday services and Wednesday meetings—a balance of learning and living, knowing and doing, understanding and sharing. The daily study and exploration of the Bible Lesson during the week by most of the congregation culminates in their hearing it again as their Sunday sermon—a final coming together with a familiar and loved friend whose themes, depths, and implications they've had plenty of opportunity to plumb. The focus is largely on learning and listening.
By contrast, on Wednesday the focus is more on application and sharing. Members of the congregation must have proved something of the truth and must share this verbally, or there's no testimony part of the meeting. And the reading, with no announced subject, is heard just this once, without an opportunity for the congregation to study the citations further. So from that one hearing of the reading, the listeners need to have a clear enough sense of its application to their lives, to some issue in public thought, or to the needs of the world to take its truths and put them into practice.
This makes a special demand on the Reader. The subject must be radiantly clear—more readily grasped than the themes in a Lesson-Sermon, which can be studied. When a reading has this clarity and is timely, practical, relevant to current needs, the listeners can get the message and apply it instead of spending time wondering what the reading is all about. Often the first hymn can indicate the subject clearly (and the other hymns need to be equally well related to the subject).
I found it helpful, whenever possible, to begin the reading with a verse or two, or even part of a verse, that virtually proclaimed the subject, before proceeding to a story or text that developed it. One reason for this is that most Bible narratives can be used to illustrate several different topics, and it's helpful to know which of those topics is being brought out in this reading. For instance, I was once preparing a reading on "joy" and found to my surprise that Mrs. Eddy refers often to the joy resulting from overcoming sin—not at all the direction I'd contemplated. But this led to using as a correlative Christ Jesus' story of the prodigal son with its lead-in parables—rejoicing over finding the lost sheep and the lost coin (see Luke 15:3-24). Yet to start with those parables without first establishing what aspect of them was being developed would have been confusing.
This experience illustrates something I found to be a veritable rock to stand on—trusting our pastor (the Bible and Science and Health—see Man., Art. XIV, Sect. 1) to guide, teach, and preach. When I let a subject develop in the direction our pastor pointed out (as with the reading on "joy"), it was far more powerful than when I tried to make the books say what I wanted them to (which never worked). To be effective, I had to let the books teach and guide me in the preparation.
And it was likewise with the presentation. I might doubt my own ability to convey a subject adequately. But I knew those books could preach with authority and that I could trust that preaching. I knew the pastor could speak with all its own vitality and aliveness, its rich meaning and healing potency, as long as I got a false sense of self out of the way and let it preach. This helped me to see more clearly my role as a transparency. In one sense I was the mouthpiece for this truth. But more fundamentally I was listening to the pastor's message just as those in the congregation were. We were all listening together, even though I happened to be the one through whom the words were voiced.
I remember hearing a comment to the effect that what is needed is not the false humility that views oneself disparagingly, but the deeper humility that forgets self altogether. When we become so filled with ideas the pastor is presenting that we forget self, then those ideas come through with clarity and aliveness, freshness and vitality, strength and gentleness, as well as the rich variety inherent in the inspired ideas themselves. Then the pastor is really doing its own preaching. And we can trust it to accomplish its purpose.
The Second Reader's task
To be Second Reader is not to have a secondary task. To read the Book of books really well is no small achievement. The First Reader conducts each Sunday service, and the Second Reader shares the responsibility for its unity. Does this mean the Second Reader must work prayerfully to cherish the healing purpose of our service? Yes, in that to honor the Word—to read it so as to reveal its beauty, majesty, power, glory, and relevance to human need—is to cherish it as it should be cherished; it will then cherish the Reader and the congregation.
The platform in a Christian Science church does not have two levels, one for the First Reader and one a little lower for the Second. The pastor of our Church, though two books, is one pastor; therefore the Readers act as one in serving it. Second Readers have a lively sense of the primacy of the Bible, for without it Science and Health could not have been written. In our Leader Mrs. Eddy's words, both books "preach for this Church and the world" (see Man., Art. XIV, Sect. 1).
If we think of ourselves as mere mortals trying to read with spiritual understanding, we probably won't feel very successful. In a way, the words would enter the human eye and issue from the mouth, and still be mere words. The Apostle Paul put it this way: "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned" (I Cor. 2:14). The Word of God is therefore best read as we live in daily communion with the Father and are seeing something and being something of our real selves, His humble servants. Holiness is natural to spiritual man, so we need use no special "holy" tone just because we read from the holiest of books.
The beautiful poetry and prose of the Bible were written long ago; its metaphor, simile, and parable belong to past millennia; its scenes, pastoral settings, even its history and geography may not be easy to visualize clearly through our twentieth-century eyes. It is, consequently, a special demand on Second Readers to be well acquainted with Bible times and their peoples, their hopes and fears, and even the heat and the dust, the better to express the message within the words they read with verity and sincerity.
Other translations of the Bible can be a help, as are commentaries, where the word meanings are obscure. For example, when let means "hinder," or prevent means "go before," how can one convey their true meaning. One's tone of voice has to tell the real story; if the Reader really feels it, the listeners will too.
Readers naturally read aloud a great deal in practicing. To read all the Lesson-Sermon aloud helps to unify the platform. Second Readers have the duty of leading the congregation in alternate verses of the Responsive Reading, and can do much to lift it far above a mere recitation of well-known words.
Perhaps the quiet hope of any Reader would be to earn from someone with a perceptive ear what might be the highest praise: "Thank you. As the years went by I heard you less and less and the Word more and more."
Studying and healing—one Reader's experience
First among the duties our Leader assigns to Readers is that they "must devote a suitable portion of their time to preparation for the reading of the Sunday lesson—" (See Man., Art. Ill, Sect. 1.) This disciplined study doesn't make something happen on Sunday morning. It's simply a way of making ready for Truth's revealing. "Study to shew thyself approved unto God," the Bible tells us, "a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth" (II Tim. 2:15).
One lesson that was particularly memorable for me began with this Bible verse as its Golden Text: "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you. ... Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid" (John 14:27). And that theme continued throughout all six sections of the lesson. In preparing for the Sunday service, I explored the word peace and found that it meant, among other things, "agreement to end hostilities" and "freedom from disquieting or oppressive thoughts." I'd been struggling with a hostile belief of life in matter and fear of its consequences as a result of a rather serious fall. (This involved what appeared obviously to be broken bones in the wrist and arm, although no physical examination was ever made.) Through study and prayer, prompted by the lesson, I began to see that I could agree to end the hostility between Spirit and matter by acknowledging Spirit's supremacy, the might and omnipotence of God, and the nothingness of evil in any form. The healing began then. Several symptoms were quickly alleviated. And eventually the complete healing was accomplished as the quiet assurance of God's allness melted fear.
This healing came early in my reading experience and brought with it marvelous conviction. It was Mind that held things together, both me and the church service. The integrity of the service and the wholeness of man as God's reflection were intact. Freedom of movement, rhythm, ease and comfort, free expression—all that constitutes the completeness of man, and of reading —I knew came from Mind. I felt the presence of the Christ speaking to human consciousness, with all the power of God behind it; no projected thought to or from anyone, just the omnipresence of Mind filling all space, present with every individual to reveal and to heal.
Bible commentaries, dictionaries, and various translations have given me a genuine appreciation for the spirituality and love for God among many Christian scholars and have often opened for me new vistas of thought. But the key to the Bible, called Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, is indispensable. Throughout Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, and in the thirteen books of which Prose Works is comprised, there are thousands of Bible quotations illuminating Scriptural passages.
In a Bible Lesson on "Life," for instance, there was a verse from Proverbs that's simple enough yet profound in its deeper meaning. The verse reads, "Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors" (Prov. 8:34). I remembered that somewhere Mrs. Eddy had spoken of the gates of spiritual understanding, and so I checked out the word gates in the Concordances to her works. In Miscellaneous Writings I found her reference to St. John's revelation of the new heaven and earth without pain, sin, or death. "The gates thereof he declared were inlaid with pearl,— likening them to the priceless understanding of man's real existence, to be recognized here and now" (p. 30). If one has this definition of gates in mind while reading the Bible, that "priceless understanding of man's real existence" will be felt, for divine Love gives each one of us the capacity to understand all that God gives.
You see in the work that it's not one's self struggling for inspiration. You start with God. It's His work. You get it all from Him. "Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you," we read in James (4:8). That's what study in Christian Science is all about. It's drawing close to God.
