It is my contention that Christians don't know what Scripture is, and consequently don't know how to read it or employ it. Scripture is not simply to be read for information, or systemitized into dogmatic propositions. Nor is it anyone's personal devotion book. But it is the church's book to be prayed by the church in the church. It is worship. It does not only contain liturgy but is liturgy.

What was done with the scrolls of Scripture in OT times? Were they simply kept on a shelf in the temple and guarded? Were they read and studied only by clergy? Or were they liberally employed as the corporate worship of God? And if the latter then what did this look like?

Rather than take the OT lesson for Pentecost Sunday as simple reportage we do well to conceive of it as actual liturgy on the tongues of God's people. Try to imagine it read or chanted (more likely) antiphonally, that is in the form of versicle and respone between two groups of worshipers. Consider this possible arrangement.

GENESIS 11:1-9

V: Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.
R: And as people migrated from the east they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.

V: 3 And they said to one another,
R: “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.”
All: And they had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar.

V: 4 They they said,
R: “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens,

V: and let us make a name for ourselves,
R: lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”

V: 5 And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower which the children of man had built.
R: 6 And the LORD said,

V: “Behold, they are one people,
R: and they have all one language,

V: and this is only the beginning of what they will do.
R: and nothing that they propose to do will no be impossible for them.

V: 7 Come, let us go down and there confuse their language,
R: so that they may not understand one another’s speech.”

V: 8 So the LORD dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth,
R: and they left off building the city.

V: 9 Therefore its name was called Babel,
R: because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth.

All: And from there the LORD dispersed them over the face of the earth.

When a portion of Scripture naturally divides into segments (as do all the Psalms and most of the prophets for example) we should first think of them as actual liturgy. The worship of God by which the people of God proclaim the glory of him who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light.

Such understanding of sacred Scripture will teach us to respect and reverence Sacred Scripture highly. It will also aid in liberating Lutherans from a propositional understanding of the faith, and restore the centrality of worship among them.