by Pastor Dan Baumgartner

I’m definitely a fan, but not a full-fledged Bruce Springsteen junkie like some people I know. I’ve never seen him in concert, and only have a few of his songs on my iPod. Still, when I first heard the song called “The Rising” I was intrigued. There was a hint, a mere sniff of faith and spirituality, maybe even Christianity to it:

• “Come on up for the rising.”
• “Bells ringing filled the air.”
• “Wearing the cross of my calling.”
• “Lord as I stand before your fiery light.”
• “I see you Mary in the garden.”

I was interested. I listened a number of times. I liked the song. Then I found the lyrics online and read them as a poem, trying to parse out the meaning. Then I did some research- which means I called Bethany’s Matt Eyler who IS a Springsteen junkie. He knew a bunch of stuff and sent me a link to Bruce himself talking about the song. It was written after 9/11 as a sort of tribute to the firemen who went into the crumbling buildings in New York City. That was very helpful, and opened up some new doors into studying the lyrics. I looked at it some more. I wrote down some questions. Then it hit me. I was exegeting Springsteen.

Exegesis is one of those scholarly academic words that mostly means “interpretation.” Linguistically it contains some of “ex” (out of) and “gesis or genesis” (birth, beginning) and has to do with original meaning. In a Christian context it usually means interpreting the Bible. And since our Bethany elders and staff on Session often spend time digging into scripture, I thought “Why should I have all this fun myself?” So I recruited their help.

At our February Session meeting we broke into small groups, listened to the Springsteen song and read the lyrics. No background, no hint of where we were going or even why we were doing such a crazy thing. There was a little understandable confusion. I mean, listening to Springsteen at Session is not exactly in the Presbyterian Book of Order. Then I asked the groups to come up with every conceivable question that the song raised for them. They were brilliant:

• What was the context for the writing of this song?
• Why this word or that word?
• What did this sentence mean?
• Can we look up a definition?
• Why is this song powerful?
• Which Mary are we talking about?

After 15 minutes of filling a whiteboard with questions, we made the shift. If we can exegete a song and pepper it with questions, what would happen if we read scripture in the same manner? I turned the small groups loose on Exodus 3:1-6, Moses at the burning bush. Again, the task was to come up with every conceivable question that came to mind. And again, the teams were brilliant:

• Why did God want Moses to take off his sandals?
• Was there anything unique about Moses’ locale?
• Why was that place called the “mountain of God?”
• Had the bush been burning before and Moses just now noticed it?
• Where did this story appear in the Moses narrative?
• Was it significant that Moses was tending sheep when this happened?
• Was there anything about Moses that “deserved” direct contact with God?

We were just starting to answer some of these very good questions when we ran out of time. But we had engaged scripture in a different way- by asking questions. I use it every week in preparing sermons. It is equally helpful in any situation where scripture is read, including devotionally. Instead of simply reading the words on a page and mentally checking off the passage, what if you asked questions and wrote them down? You could chew on them over the day, or look up some resources, or talk to someone else.

During this Lenten season we are immersed on Wednesdays and Sundays in The Way of Jesus, studying his walk towards death and resurrection. These are some of the most profound passages in the Bible and they deserve more than a cursory reading. We want to use every tool at our disposal to listen for God’s voice- questions, burning bushes, even the Boss.