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Foundry United Rev. |
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Sermon Series:
Christianity Without Easy Answers “What Am I Supposed
to Do with the Bible?” Sunday, February 22,
2009 |
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Hebrews 4: 12-16
Rev.
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We say
that the Bible contains the Word of God and, because of this, that it is the
ultimate authority for what we believe and do as Christians. We say
or imply that when we come to church and listen to a sermon we are not
hearing the preacher’s opinions and ideas but we are hearing the truth of God
as it is revealed in the Bible. When we send our children to Sunday school,
they are not being taught the opinions of Theresa Thames-Lynch or the Sunday
school teacher’s ideas, they are being taught the Bible. A key
verse in the Bible for our understanding of the Bible is II Timothy 3: 16:
“All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof,
for correction, and for training in righteousness …” No matter that at the
time this verse was written the only scripture that existed was the Hebrew
scriptures, as soon as the New Testament was formulated we applied this same
principle to it – the idea that scripture is inspired by God – literally God
breathed – and authoritative. Except…
Except
for quite some time now, we who are not fundamentalists, have been,
well, sort of fudging on this, haven’t
we? We have seemed to waffle on the factuality and authority of the
Bible. One
area we have waffled on is the relationship between what the Bible says and
what science has discovered. Science has discovered things which appear to
conflict with some ways the universe is portrayed in the Bible. Science has
developed an understanding of the way the world works that makes us think
that some of the events described in the Bible are unlikely to have happened
the way they are described. Bill
Maher interviews Senator Mark Pryor of Most of
us who are not politicians in This,
however, may be confusing to our friends who wonder then what parts of the
Bible we do consider to be literally true. If the Garden of Eden story is not
factual, what about the Exodus? What about the Christmas story? What about
the Jesus’ healings? What about the resurrection? How can we know what is
factual and what isn’t? These
are hard questions. No wonder our friends are confused. These kinds of
questions may even confuse some of us here. You
will hear people say: “The Bible is not a science textbook.” I have probably
said it myself, but this is not quite right. The writers of the Bible are
pretty careful, it seems to me, to draw upon the best “scientific” thinking
of their time. The Genesis creation account draws upon the most advanced
thinking about creation of the time – Babylonian “science.” Parts of the
Bible may have served to education people about the “scientific” thinking of
the time in which it was written. Parts of the Bible may have been a science
textbook when they were written. But we
have learned new things about our universe in the last two to three thousand
years. So the Bible needs to be read in light of what new we have learned
about our universe and the way it works. The Bible is bound by the
“scientific” understandings of the time in which it is written. But
there is an even more difficult problem than this, at least for me. This is
the problem of what we do with the parts of the Bible that are morally
inferior or even morally repugnant. What do we do with the ethnic cleansing
that seems to happen in the occupation of the Promised Land? What do we do
with the harsh treatment of children in parts of the Bible, the oppression of
women, the endorsement of slavery, the homophobia? Rabbi
Michael Lerner addresses this question about the Torah, a part of the Bible
both Jews and Christians share. He says that the Torah offers “a liberatory
worldview that guides us in our struggles to heal and repair the world.”[ii] But, he adds, “the Torah also contains
rituals, ways of thinking, and injunctions, which are insensitive,
chauvinistic, or even cruel.”[iii] Rabbi
Lerner’s answer is that the people of “To the
extent that we are ready to hear God’s voice, we can find it in Torah,” he
says. “But to the extent that we are morbidly drawn to our own tendencies
toward cruelty and pain, those will be the resonant voices we respond to in
Torah.”[iv] There
are those who would agree with Rabbi Lerner about the Old Testament but then
want to make different claims for the New Testament. But there are also parts
of the New Testament that are insensitive, chauvinistic or even cruel. Howard
Thurman, the African-American teacher and mystic, wrote about reading the
Bible two or three times a week to his grandmother who had been a slave. She
would not let him read to her from Paul’s epistles. He asked her why. She
said to him: “During the days of slavery the master’s minister would
occasionally hold services for the slaves…Always the white minister used as
his text something from Paul. At least three or four times a year he used as
a text: ‘Slaves be obedient to them that are your master…, as unto Christ.’
Then he would go on to show how it was God’s will that we were slaves and
how, if we were good and happy slaves, God would bless us. I promised my
Maker that if I ever learned to read or if freedom ever came, I would not
read that part of the Bible.”[v] The
Apostle Paul initiated the end of slavery by writing: “There is no longer Jew
or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and
female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal. 3: 28) But he himself
was not able to see the political and economic implications of the spiritual
truth he had discerned, so his endorsement of the institution of slavery
helped to justify its practice for the next 19 centuries. The same is true of
his support of patriarchy, undemocratic government, oppressive household
codes and homophobia. Within the pages of the Bible, Paul never transcended
the cultural limitations of his own time even though within his teachings
were the seeds of future social, political and religious revolutions. So
Paul’s writings can always be read as either revolutionary or reactionary
depending on the way we choose to read them. What do
we do with the parts of the New Testament that are insensitive, chauvinistic,
or even cruel? There is another answer we will hear. This answer is that we
should focus on the teachings of Jesus. Someone told me once that she is a
Jesus fundamentalist. She believes everything Jesus taught and takes the rest
of the Bible with a grain of salt. A lot
about this answer appeals to me. Jesus certainly seems to be freer of the
oppressive assumptions of the times in which he lived than Paul was or
anybody else in the Bible. Yet,
still, there are aspects of Jesus’ teachings that unsettle me. In Matthew,
Jesus tells the parable of the talents. The parable is about a master giving
servants some money to manage for him. Two of the servants make a profit. One
doesn’t. The parable ends with the master, who clearly represents God,
saying: “Cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness; there men will
weep and gnash their teeth.” (Matt. 25: 28-30) This seems rather harsh. In Luke
it is even worse. The story ends with the enemies of the master being
slaughtered in his presence. (Luke 19: 27) The
parable I find the most distressing is the one about the ten bridesmaids.
Bridesmaids in Jesus’ time would have been teenage girls. In the story five
of the teenage girls didn’t think to bring extra oil for their lamps. They
end up with the bridegroom shutting the door on them. They say: "Lord,
lord, open to us.” But he replied, "Truly I tell you, I do not know
you.” (Matt. 25: 11-2) They were teenage girls. Some of
Jesus’ parables end harshly, even violently. Personally, I actually think
these endings don’t come from Jesus. I think they were added by early church
leaders who were trying to control their people their people by using images
of eternal punishment. I really don’t
think these images came from Jesus. But you
can understand that, when someone like me who is entrusted by the church to
teach the Bible says something like this, it is confusing. What in the Bible
can we trust? What in the Bible is authoritative? Or can we just pick and
choose what we want to follow and what we want to ignore? So let
me summarize what I’ve tried to say so far: The Bible is dated. Every part of
the Bible comes from a particular place and a particular time and it reflects
the assumptions and thinking of the time and place from which it comes. The
Bible is not inerrant. It contains errors and mistakes and some ideas that
are insensitive, chauvinistic, and even cruel. At the
same time – at the very same time – we say the Bible contains the Word of God
and that it is the ultimate authority for what we believe and do as
Christians. In fact, many of us, myself included, love the Bible. We study
it. We preach and listen to sermons that seek to explain and apply the Bible.
We want its story and stories to shape our character and form our values. We
believe that if the Bible shapes our character and forms our values this will
give us the capacity to distinguish that within the Bible which is beautiful,
good, honorable and true from that which is insensitive, chauvinistic and
even cruel. I want
to suggest this morning that we can find two basic truths within the Bible
that cause us to claim that it contains the Word of God and that leads us to
allow it to be authoritative of what we as Christians say and do. These two
truths are the overriding truths in scripture that put all the rest of the
Bible into perspective. First,
we see the truth about ourselves in the Bible. We discover who we are in the
Bible. Who of us can not find ourselves in the Bible? ·
Eve disobeys God and can not stand to be disobedient alone so she
talks Adam into eating the fruit as well. Then Adam tries to avoid
responsibility by saying Eve made him do it. Who of us cannot see ourselves
in the story of Eve and Adam? ·
Noah drinks. ·
The Israelites pray for freedom and then are resentful and angry
when it comes at a price. ·
Samson is obsessed with Delilah to the point of insanity. ·
Eli spoils his children and lets them run amuck and ruin his life. ·
King Saul is so threatened by David’s youth and popularity he tries
to kill him and goes mad. ·
David plots an elaborate cover-up to hide his sin. ·
Elijah hides in a cave. ·
Jonah does a good thing for the wrong reason and becomes consumed
with bitterness. ·
Peter swears to Jesus that he would never deny him but does three
times. ·
Mary Magdalene won’t let go. ·
Paul doesn’t do what he wants to do but does the very thing he
hates. Anyone
here not see yourself somewhere in that list? If not, there are more examples
like this I could mention. But
this is not the whole story, of course. ·
Abraham and Sarah cannot stand the idea of dying in Horeb so they
set out to a new place and change history in the process. ·
Esther, who has everything, risks everything to save her people. ·
Moses leaves behind his peaceful life to lead his people to freedom. ·
Jonathan loves David more than his own life. ·
Job trusts God even when he loses everything. ·
Nehemiah gives up his position of power and prestige to rebuild the
city. ·
Mary offers God her womb. ·
The woman with the issue of blood believes so fiercely that she
touches the hem of Jesus’ garment. ·
Jesus dying on a cross forgives. We can
see something of ourselves in this list as well. Bill
Coffin once quoted a man who had devoted years of his life to translating This is
the criteria of all great literature, Coffin said. We see ourselves there
reflected. I don’t think there is any character in Shakespeare or in the
greatest novels whom we cannot find first in the Bible. Great literature
becomes like the Bible when we see ourselves reflected in it. This is
one reason why the Bible becomes for us the Word of God: We see ourselves
there reflected. We discover ourselves in the Bible. We discover our family
in the Bible. We discover our nation in the Bible. The Bible becomes
self-revelatory for us. It can become a Word of God for us and to us. The
more we learn from the sciences – the physical sciences and social sciences –
the more important the Bible and the kind of story told in the Bible becomes,
because the Bible insists on our moral agency. We are never merely victims of
our time and place. We are never merely victims of our biology or our
psychology. We are never merely victims of our class or ethnicity. This is
why, in the Bible, Rahab the prostitute becomes a heroine and a great-,
great-, great- grandmother of Jesus, Noah the alcoholic becomes a savior, and
Peter the coward becomes a martyr. We are victims neither of our identity nor
our past. We are
responsible to a reality greater than ourselves for the decisions we make in
life. We can never be defined. We can be described by our gender, our
ethnicity, our sexual orientation, our class, our diagnosis, our vocation,
but we can never be defined. We cannot be reduced to the elements that make
up our bodies. There
is a truth about who we are in the Bible that science by itself can not tell
us. There is a truth about ourselves in the Bible that we can not know by our
own devices. The
Bible becomes the Word of God for us when we see ourselves there reflected. Secondly,
we discover in the Bible an invitation to hope. All of life is lived on the
spectrum between hope and despair. It is our daily decision, made either
consciously or subconsciously, to live someplace on the spectrum between hope
and despair. It is sometimes a moment by moment decision although it tends to
become habitual. The Bible is an invitation to hope. Five
pivotal things happen in the Bible. (Many more happen but these five are
perhaps the most pivotal.) The five things are creation, the exodus,
prophesy, resurrection and Pentecost. The universe comes into being, slaves
are liberated, corruption is challenged and decried, a community of people
experience Jesus Christ risen from the dead, and an inclusive community in
which all human divides are overcome is born. In each
case the Bible says that these events are not happenstance. The Bible says
they reveal something about the nature of reality. Another way to say this is
to say they reveal something about the intentions and the heart of God. Creation
reveals that the universe exists for beauty and community. The universe is
not merely accidental but an essential expression of the truth of reality. The
exodus reveals that human beings are created for freedom and justice. The
exodus was not merely the efforts of a group of people who desired freedom.
The exodus is evidence that the tide of history flows toward freedom and
justice. Another way of saying this is to say that God intends for us to be free
and to treat each other justly. The
emergence of the prophets and prophecy reveals that injustice, oppression and
corruption are intolerable. The human spirit and the human voice have within
itself an understanding of right and wrong and can be called to repentance
when it does wrong. Another way of saying this is to say that God holds
humanity and you and me accountable. The
resurrection reveals that death can not destroy us. Pentecost reveals that
all humanity is meant to be one. Can any
of these things be proved? No. The
community that wrote the Bible, and the community whose book the Bible is,
are the people who choose to hope these things. We choose to believe that
creation, exodus, prophecy, resurrection and inclusive church are signs of
the deepest truths of reality and the heart of God. We tell
ourselves these stories again and again by reading and studying the Bible,
through music and hymns, through rituals and sacraments, through the way we
live together as a congregation, by the mission we do together. We do this as
a way of choosing hope rather than despair. The
Bible is not Christians’ only book, but it is our most cherished book. We
don’t believe the Bible is the only place where we find God’s revelation. We
don’t even believe that every word of the Bible or any particular word
reveals God. But in the Bible we dependably see our own selves reflected so
that we can come to know ourselves more fully, and in the Bible we see an
understanding of reality that can give us hope. This is why we say the Bible
contains the Word of God even when there are mistakes and errors and
contradictions and misunderstandings within it. This is the source of its
authority in our lives…not that we believe quoting this verse or that proves
anything, but because it compels us. The
Word of God, wherever it appears, whether in Jesus Christ or the story of
Christ told in the Bible or in music or in literature or in Holy Communion or
in our dreams – the Word of God, Hebrews says, is living and active, sharper
than any two edged sword. We are naked before it. It requires us to face our
own selves and it invites us to a life of boldness and hope. It invites us to
take hope and to thus live with courage. I am amused when people try to prove things to me from
the Bible. Gabriel Josipovici is a novelist and a professor of literature at
the The
Bible doesn’t prove anything. You can’t use it to prove anything. The Bible
reveals us to ourselves and the Bible invites us to hope. This is why we live
in it. This is why we love it. www.foundryumc.org |
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