I have some interesting news for you country music fans out there. It turns out that Willie Nelson is a United Methodist! Willie Nelson! And he’s just written and recorded a new song to be used in a campaign to raise funds for United Methodist mission work, called “My Mama’s Bible.”

I’m eager to hear it. It will have that distinctive Willie Nelson sound, no doubt, twangy nasal voice, guitar, and will surely tell a story that will go straight to the heart. “My Mama’s Bible.”

I love this day on which we present Bibles to our fourth-graders each year. I’ve been here long enough now to marvel, as I’m sure you do as well, that these kids who were just yesterday so little, are today in the fourth grade and ready—ready to receive their very first Bibles from their church. We pray that this is a gift that will further them down a life-long path of reading and studying the Bible. And someday show it to their own kids, who will cherish it as “mama’s Bible” or “dad’s Bible.”

I wonder what Bibles you have known? I still have my little white Bible with pretty pictures in it that was presented to me by my home church at this age. I have my grandmother’s Bible, with her hand-writing in the back showing how she read it cover to cover each year: Jan. 1, 1910 - Dec. 31, 1910, and so on, year after year, right up ‘til her death. I have the little pocket Bible she gave my Dad when he shipped off to report for duty in World War II. I have the Bible my parents gave me when I left for college. I have the first real study Bible I had in seminary, full of notes and underlining, and questions. All of these Bibles are worn, used, and cracking with age. They contain the Word of life.

Americans still report loving the Bible more than any other people on earth. Poll after poll continues to find the Bible on the bestseller list. One survey after another confirms that a very high percentage of American households claim to not only own one Bible or more, but to read it on a regular basis. Pressing a bit deeper, however, contradictions and disturbing trends begin to emerge.

Bible reading is highest among those ages 60 and above: 55% say they have read the Bible in the past week. But the numbers then start to drop to 47% of adults in their 50s, 44% of those in their 40s, 37% of those in their 30s and only 30% of those in their 20s. How important it is, you see, to not only give Bibles to our fourth-graders, but seek to nurture familiarity and love of its content as they then grow into maturity as adults and as Christians.

We’re not doing too well on this one. Teachers and college professors report that they can no longer refer to Biblical characters or stories and assume that their students will have any idea about who or what is Moses, Daniel, the Lion’s Den or Ezekiel in the Valley of the Dry Bones. In fact, some of the answers to pollsters’ specific questions about the Bible reveal humorously our embarrassing ignorance. A recent poll by the Barna Research Group reports that 10% of respondents claimed that Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife. 16% were convinced that the New Testament contained the Gospel of Thomas. 38% believed that the Old and New Testaments were written right after the death of Jesus. And someone volunteered that the Epistles were the wives of the apostles! Evidently none of these folks had take Disciple Bible Study 1, 2, 3 or 4!

We may, as a people, revere the Bible. We may buy the Bible, but do we read it? Do we know it? Do we live our lives in its light? Is it, as the Psalmist said, a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path”?

When someone asks me how to start reading the Bible, I usually suggest starting with the Gospels--the stories of Jesus, or the Psalms. These writings are fairly accessible, and especially if your Bible has a few study notes, you will probably do OK on your own. A lot of people, though, think you need to start with Genesis, page 1, verse 1, and plough on through. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus…I wonder how many hundreds of thousands of erstwhile would-be Bible readers became bogged down in Leviticus and never made it out! I even wonder sometimes if my own Grandmother Farris actually read Leviticus every time, all those years? But, strict Southern Baptist that she was, I’m sure she felt that she had no choice in the matter.

One thing that makes the Bible challenging for us to read through is that it contains a whole variety of writing styles: history, law, intrigue, story, and National Geographic style description. In fact, the word “Bible” means “collection of little scrolls,” “biblia.” It is a collection of books, books of many kinds. There are histories and letters, stories and dreams. There is poetry, prophecy and travelogue. And all of it, we remember, comes to us out of different languages, ancient cultures and a whole gamut of perspectives and points of view. The Bible is a book that calls for study, serious study, and that’s why we continuously offer a variety of long- and short-term Bible study opportunities here at the church. There is so much to be learned about the text that deepens our comprehension of it.

There’s another kind of Bible study that those of you taking part in Companions in Christ, the Way of Forgiveness, the Way of Blessedness, are experiencing as well. More than learning about the text, these spiritual formation groups invite participants to live into the text. One learns how to read devotionally and to practice ancient Christian methods of prayer and discernment in the light of the ancient story.

However we study and live with our Bible, we Christians are to be rooted and grounded in its teachings and its wisdom. With Jews and Muslims, we are called “People of the Book,” because each of our faith communities is formed by a sacred text. Much of the text we share in common. It is powerful for us here this morning to know that Friday night and Saturday, our sister congregation of the Santa Monica Synagogue, Shar Am’ei, has been in this very place for their High Holy Day services, reading and hearing the same texts we call the Old Testament, sacred scripture shaping their worship and forming their lives.

At some point along the way, they, as we, will hear the same verses we heard Char/Jim read from that pesky book of Leviticus this morning: “You shall keep my Sabbaths and reverence my sanctuary; I am the Lord. ..I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt. You shall keep all my statues all my ordinances, and observe them. I am the Lord.”

The Bible tells us who we are and whose we are. The Bible makes clear that our God is the same God who brought us out of slavery in Egypt and led us into the Promised Land with laws designed to keep us a holy people. The Bible reminds us that we are to live always in close relationship with this God, whose Word is revealed through the pages of this book.

People of God, the Bible must be for each of us more than the book we see in the pew rack each Sunday. It’s good that it is here for our use during worship and I know that many of you like to open it and follow along as our lectionary passages are read each week. Many of you have told me that you can hear better if you can see the words. But you know the whole design of the weekly lectionary readings around which we shape our worship service is predicated on the belief that we are also reading the Bible ourselves every day at home. That what we hear on Sunday is only one little part of what we’ve read during the week, not the ONLY Scripture we’ve heard since last we gathered. And I worry that this may be becoming less and less true for us, as we join the ranks of those that may very well own a Bible but do not read it and know it.

Bible Presentation Sunday, then, can take on new meaning for each of us here today. Along with our fourth graders who receive their Bibles today, imagine yourself receiving your Bible anew this morning. Receive it as the church’s gift to you, a new chance to delve into the Word of life. Go home and find yours, dig it out, open it up and take some time each day to read and ponder a bit of its precious treasure.

In Mark’s Gospel this morning, Jesus tells us to have salt in ourselves, that we have been salted with fire. This is one of those great enigmatic passages that biblical scholars will wrestle ‘til we’re all in heaven and can ask Jesus for ourselves just what in the world it really means. One thing we know it means has to do with salt being a seasoning and a preservative. To have salt in us is to be alive and zesty. It is to have within us the strength to persevere and to prevail through all the trials and temptations of this life. To be salted with fire is to be alive in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, to know the promise and truth of life everlasting, life overcoming death. It is to know hope in the midst of suffering, peace in the midst of tribulation.

Brothers and sisters, to persevere and thrive as God’s faithful people in this crazy and challenging world of ours, we need that salt within us. And we will find it, over and over again, in the pages of this holy book.

May God bless to us its wisdom, its healing balm, and its everlasting word of life.

Amen.