Anna Carter Florence
Eerdmans, 224 pages
Reviewed by Sharon K. Youngs
“Discovering God’s Word in community is one of the best adventures you’ll ever have,” writes Anna Carter Florence in her latest book, “Rehearsing Scripture.”
Drawing on her background in theater studies, Florence, the Peter Marshall Professor of Preaching at Columbia Theological Seminary, invites readers of Scripture to move from examining biblical texts solely with our heads – and alone – to exploring texts together, feet-first, as the “repertory church.” In theater, a repertory company is a group of resident actors that performs a variety of productions over time. They each take on various roles, depending on the needs of a performance. By learning to trust and work in concert with one another, they provide, in Florence’s words, “a powerful witness of what it means to work together on a common vision over the long haul.”
Florence applies that image to the church as a way to “breathe new life” into reading and interpreting Scripture. “There are times to stop talking about Scripture and learn how to live as those who have been set loose with it.” She likens that setting loose to young Max, who donned a wolf suit and sailed to monstrous adventures in “Where the Wild Things Are.” Scripture is “wilder than anything we can imagine,” she writes. “We need a reading space where we can make mischief of one sort or another … with the biblical text.”
We need to discover “the script in Scripture.” We don’t change the script itself; we change the ways we play it. Florence’s college professor told her theater studies class, “Go rehearse a scene [together] … come back when you’ve found something true, show us, and we’ll see.” The same thing happens when a group rehearses Scripture: “We can’t wait to come back and say something true about the God we’ve encountered in our reading.”
Florence stresses the importance of verbs in a biblical text. Unlike nouns – which tend to be wedded to a particular context, require explanation (e.g., manna or tongues of fire), and allow us to safely keep a text at arm’s length – verbs draw us in. They make Scripture “relevant.” She says: “You’ll have more relevance on your hands than you know what to do with; you’ll see yourself everywhere, in verbs you’ve played. It’s the fastest way I know to make a script out of Scripture. And once we have the script in front of us, we can rehearse it to find something true.” Also, by focusing on verbs rather than nouns, “we can stop fighting about what the text means, and start listening to it, and to one another. We can find something true before we decide what’s right.”
Florence illustrates her design through several passages: Genesis 3, Mark 5, 2 Samuel 13, Exodus 3 and Esther. She provides bountiful resources for groups: conversation starters, rules of etiquette, questions to prompt rehearsals and more. The resources underscore Florence’s conviction that “rehearsing Scripture … doesn’t require … special skills or expertise. It just takes a group of people who are eager to discover God’s Word, and who are up for the adventure, with all of its joys and surprises.”
Each chapter builds upon the previous one; thus, readers will want to resist the temptation to jump straight into Florence’s treatment of specific texts or the appendices. Otherwise, they will find themselves entering midway into an important conversation.
I’ve begun using Florence’s approach, with encouraging results. She’s right: Discovering God’s Word in community is one of the best adventures you’ll ever have.
Sharon K. Youngs is pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
