Why We Read

I Samuel 3:1-10

Mark 1:1-3

There are more ways to read than ever before.  We can load ebooks onto our Kindles and nooks or we can use apps read them on our phones.  We can download all kinds of audio books and podcasts and have them with us wherever we go. (I listen to audio books while I run.  (My runs last for about two acts of a Shakepearean play or about five cantos/chapters of Dante’s Divine Commedy).  You can even, if you’re really nostalgic and retro, read actual, printed books!

No matter how you read what you read, most of us are reading.  Statistic show that 75% of American adults read at least one book last year.  Young adults between 20 and 30 read an average of nine books last year.  Adults over 30 read an average of 13 books.  And this doesn’t even count all the print magazines and online articles and blogs we read.

 

The American population breaks down into roughly three categories:

About a third are “infrequent readers” (1 to 5 books a year)

About a third are “medium readers” (6 to 20 books a year)

About a third are “frequent readers” (21 or more books a year)

But why do we read?  Why do you read?

80% of American adults said they read for pleasure.

78% say they read to keep up with current events.

74% say they like to research topics that interest them.

56% say they read occasionally for work or school.

One of the dumbest statistics I found reported that parents with grown children tend to read more than parents with small children at home.  You don’t say!!! 

These statistics are fascinating.  The rise of technology along with all sorts of gadgets, computers, smartphones, and tablets, the prevalence of video games, the multiplication of TV channels and movies available in our homes – all of this would make you think that reading would decline significantly.  But it hasn’t.

Enough with the statistics.  I emailed two of our English teachers to ask them why they read.

Shawn LaSota writes, “I read because I discover things about myself each time I open and close a book. It gives me a chance to break the monotony of reality and go on adventures down the river with Huck and Jim, through the war and the depressing despair of relationships with Hemingway, or to all the parties with Gatsby.  I've learned more from books than I ever did in a teacher's classroom. I learned how to hot wire a tractor from a Stephen King story. The entire universe is at my fingertips and there is no end to where I can go except the limitations in my mind. I read because it ensures that I am never bored (an aphorism from my mother: Smart people don't get bored). It expands my vocabulary and my mind. It gives me plenty of thought for my own writing. I read because each book is a glimpse into another world where only I can visit, unless someone else has read the book, in which case it's like we share a secret. It's like my own little pocket-sized wardrobe into different Narnias. (Holy [bleep], pretty sweet analogy between reading books and the world of Narnia that I didn't think of until now).  . . . That's why I read 70-80 books a year.”

Jane Campbell wrote . . .

I read for lots of reasons but in general reading is just basic to who I am.   I solve problems by reading.  When something goes wrong for me or for someone close to me my first thought is always "I need to read about that."  When I'm sad or fat or frustrated or confused I always assume there is something I can read that will help me find a solution to the problem.  Reading shapes my perception of the world.  Books are the reason I vote the way I do, attend the church I do, raise kids and grandkids the way I do, teach the way I do....etc.  I see certain writers as my friends. I feel closer to some of them than to folks I talk to in person every day.  Stephanie gave me an Anne Lamott book for Christmas.  The whole time I read I imagined taking long walks and talking with Lamott the writer.  Good writers look honestly at life and record what they see.  And what we learn from what they think and feel grows our souls.  We'd all be smarter, nicer, better creatures if we read more.

There are all kinds of good reasons to become readers.  And most of those are also good reasons to become readers of Scripture.  When we read Scripture, we take our place beside generations of Christians and Jews for whom reading Scripture has become part of the fabric of a good, wise, joyful life lived with others.  We learn what little Samuel was learning – that life with God requires the capacity to listen for the sound of God’s voice speaking to us.

For the next couple of months we’ll be reading Mark’s gospel together.  And I’ve challenged you all to take up the reading of Mark at your own pace and in your own way. 

I performed a little experiment this week.  I sat down and read Mark’s gospel through in one sitting.  It took me about an hour and a half.  (Though I admit I took a restroom break and responded to a few texts).

So it’s definitely longer than your average magazine article or short story, but it’s not as long as a typical novel. 

We don’t know who authored the gospel.  In the earliest manuscripts we have, the opening line was meant to be the title, “The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah.”  Whether there was a guy named Mark or a team of people behind the writing down, editing, and organizing all this material, we simply don’t know.  Nor do we know where it was written.  Or when it was written – though it was likely around 70 AD or a little after. 

What is a “gospel” or “good news” story anyway?  Well, it’s “news” first of all.  It’s saying something that isn’t old hat, isn’t common sense, isn’t something everyone already knows.  And its specifically “good” news.  Its news that gladdens and calls for rejoicing.  It is news that is welcome to those who hear it.

CS Lewis says that “We read to know that we’re not alone.”  We read with the hope of discovering that we’re not the only ones who have lived through difficulty and hardship and heartbreak.

Reading through the gospel I was moved by the stories of people caught in heartbreaking situations.  Parents with children deathly sick.  Parents whose children suffered from disorders that made them thrash violently and harm themselves.  People with disabilities and deformities that marked them as outcasts.  People furious with the government.  Women with no options but to sell themselves.  People who had gotten rich but regretted it.  Men with infectious skin diseases that removed them from daily life and from physical affection.  Women living with shameful, embarrassing hemorrhages.  All kinds of people cut off from love and affection, bereft of friendship and joy, all desperate for some kind of healing and wholeness.

In Mark 5 I read the story of Jesus sailing across to the far side of the Sea of Galilee.  There at Gerasa he encounters a man possessed by demons.  This is a man who has been in the demonic grip of mental illness for his whole life.  He was removed from his family and institutionalized, kept like a beast chained to a wall for much of his life.  When he escaped he lived naked and filthy in a cemetery, cutting himself with sharp stones. 

At first we see him as a dangerous monster, but then the longer we look at him the more he looks like us.  His life had been twisted out of shape by forces that were much too strong to understand.  And he was completely isolated from all the things that give meaning and purpose to life.

The scene that plays out shows us that the Spirit given Jesus at his baptism is more powerful than all demonic, life-destroying powers.  And Jesus casts the demons out of the man.  When the people from the village heard what had happened and ran out to see it, they saw the man “dressed and in his right mind.” 

“As Jesus was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon-possessed begged to go with him.  Jesus did not let him, but said, ‘Go home to your own people and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you” (5:18-19).  Yes, we read to know that we’re not alone.

I recently finished reading the novel Don Quixote, a Spanish novel 940 pages long written by Cervantes in two parts, 1605 and 1615.  I read it off and on for over a year.  It was so good I finished it and immediately turned to the beginning and started over again.  During the course of the year the characters became part of my life.  It felt like it would never end, but in a way I didn’t want it to.  It involved a variety of characters – from priests to prostitutes, but none so vivid as the two main characters, Don Quixote and his sidekick, Sancho Panza. 

It’s a novel about medieval knights, and chivalry, and adventure, and romance.  The whole thing gets going because a guy named Alonso Quijano reads too many tales about medieval knights and their adventures, it drives him mad, and he decides at age 50 to take the new name Don Quixote, dress up like a knight with a bowl for a helmet and a skinny nag for a horse, and ride around the countryside with his fat little squire Sancho, looking for adventure, for damsels in distress, for people to rescue and for wrongs to right.  Because he’s gone insane and is fully mad, all the adventures are unpredictably funny.  But then after 940 pages, he returns to his village, realizes its all been a mad illusion on his part, and dies.

And even though Cervantes’ novel is a masterpiece of literature, and even though the character of Don Quixote is well known, there is no sense that Don Quixote lives outside the pages of his story.  He dies, and we close the book.

The gospel of Mark ends with a report of Jesus’ arrest, trial, and crucifixion, followed by a report that the women who went to the tomb on Sunday morning found the tomb empty.  An angel tells the women, “He has risen.  He is not here.”

The end of the story is not the end of the story.  The end of the story is actually the beginning of a new story about groups of people gathered by the good news that they too have been loved, forgiven, healed and restored by Jesus.  And while they do not believe that Jesus is only to be found in the pages of the gospels, they do believe that reading the gospel stories is the primary way to encounter and experience the one who was crucified and is now risen.

Why do we read?  We read because we desperately need good news.  May you be like the boy Samuel, who learns to listen for God’s voice.  Happy reading.