Danbury United Methodist Church

Pastor Karen Karpow

October 17, 2010

The Word of God

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Pray also for me, so that when I speak, a message may be given to me to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel. Ephesians 6.1

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Today’s worship service focuses on God’s word, the holy scriptures, the Bible. We opened worship by reading part of Psalm 119 to each other. We’ve heard two other scripture readings as well, from the prophet Isaiah, and the letter of Paul to Timothy. Scripture makes an appearance in every worship service here at the Danbury UMC. We gather to hear God speak to us, and scripture is one of the ways that happens. Christians generally say that the Bible is really important to them.

But how well do we know God’s word? You may have heard about a recent survey conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. A telephone poll asked a representative sample [3,412] of American adults a series of 32 questions about religion—Christianity, world religions, and religion in public life. Overall, agnostics and atheists scored highest by far—isn’t that ironic?—getting 21 of the 32 questions right. Mainline Protestants scored 15.8 out of 32—just less than 50%. That, my friends, is not a passing grade. Now, some of the questions were about Buddhism or Islam, which Christians might not be expected to know so much about.

But what’s even more troubling is that, when asked specifically about Christianity, mainline Protestants (including us Methodists) got 5.8 out of 12 questions right. That’s 48.3%, an even lower percentage than on all the questions together.

I’m sure that all of you would do far better than average on this quiz, but still, this is alarming. It seems that many people in the pews have little Bible knowledge beyond what they learned childhood—if anything. People claim to believe the Bible, but it seems that few read it. For being the most-sold book in the world, the Bible might have the most unopened copies.

I want to spend some time this morning thinking about how we think about the Bible. Our three scripture readings today point toward three different approaches. The first is the biblical literalist.

⁹⁷ Oh, how I love your law!

It is my meditation all day long.

⁹⁸ Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies,

for it is always with me.

What a place to start: with a challenge from Psalm 119 to actually love God’s law. The Psalmist is referring to all of God’s laws in the Old Testament—which is all that existed when the Psalms were written. These laws begin with the Big Ten—the Ten Commandments—but include hundreds of other laws, 613 to be exact. It is not my experience that human beings like laws very well, much less love them—except when they apply to other people. At least for myself, I far prefer exceptions to laws.

But the psalmist describes the law not as something that restricts us, but something that feeds us—sweeter than honey.

I have encountered people who claim to follow God’s law exactly as laid out in the Bible—at least the parts they think are important, which, amazingly, often seems to work out to their advantage. A.J. Jacobs recently wrote a book called The Year of Living Biblically. He describes himself as an agnostic Jew—“Jewish in the same way that Olive Garden is an Italian restaurant.” He says he had always assumed that people would become enlightened during his lifetime and religion would just fade away—and when that clearly was not happening, he decided to investigate. As a journalist in Manhattan, he threw himself into a whole-hearted attempt to follow all the laws in the whole Bible for a whole year—not just the Big Ten (although he says not coveting, lying, or gossiping was particularly hard at work) but also the ones that govern the sacrifice of oxen, forbid the shaving of one’s beard or wearing of clothes of mixed fibers, and command the stoning of lawbreakers, including teenagers who insult their parents. He spent some time with fundamentalist groups, who claim to follow the Bible literally, from creationists to snake handlers, Hasidic Jews to the Amish. He became, for a year, an ultra-fundamentalist. And here is what he discovered:

I found that fundamentalists may claim to take the Bible literally, but they actually just pick and choose certain rules to follow. By taking fundamentalism [to the] extreme, I found that literalism is not the best way to interpret the Bible. (from www.ajjacobs.com/books/yolb)

So, if taking the Bible literally isn’t the best way to interpret it, what is? Some people go to the opposite extreme and say that the Bible isn’t really necessary any more, since Jesus came and all. Jesus said we only have to follow two commandments, not 613. Who knows what they are? (Matthew 22)

³⁷ [Jesus] said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ ³⁸ This is the greatest and first commandment. ³⁹ And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ ⁴⁰ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

There it is, apparently all we need to know. The “old way,” keeping all the Old Testament laws, wasn’t working very well for making God’s people closer to God, even 2600 years ago when it was written. In our reading from the prophet Jeremiah today, we learn that God has a new plan.

³¹ The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. ³² It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors…—a covenant that they broke…says the Lord. ³³ But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. ³⁴ No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord…

The “covenant with the ancestors” to which Jeremiah refers is the covenant at Sinai, when Moses brought the Ten Commandments and the rest of the Law to the Jews. Jeremiah says something new is coming—and Christians think that “new covenant” is fulfilled in Jesus. Jesus told us there are only two commandments we need to know—though they are big ones. And he promised to send the Holy Spirit to teach us everything we need to know—which happened on Pentecost, and is still happening. We do rely on the Holy Spirit to guide us. So, if the law is now written on our hearts, why would we need to pay attention to all that old writing, thousands of years old?

The answer is found in our reading from Timothy.

¹⁶ All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, ¹⁷ so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.

We need the scriptures to be prepared to be good followers of Jesus, to be prepared to be God’s people. Certainly the scriptures are essential to my job—all of my sermons are based on scripture, and I spend a lot of my time wrestling with God’s word each week. I also spend time with the scripture that’s not sermon preparation. Every day I sit down with my ratty old seminary Bible to read and pray.

But Paul says that knowing the scripture is essential not just to my job, but to all of our jobs. Our work as Christians is to witness to God’s power in Jesus Christ, to tell people of God’s love and salvation. God is still speaking to us—and scripture is one of the ways God speaks.

Paul tells Timothy that all scripture is inspired—the Greek word is actually “breathed.” In the beginning, the book of Genesis tells us, God breathed life into a lump of clay, and it became a person. So too does God breathe life into words on a page. As we interact with those words, as we ponder and struggle, they become alive.

A.J. Jacobs, the Jewish agnostic, found that something very unexpected happened to him as he tried to literally keep God’s law for a year. (He actually added on a couple of extra weeks, going 381 days.) He didn’t really think it was going to “work,” and I suspect he might even have been a little cynical going into the project. But as he studied God’s word, trying earnestly to figure out how to obey, he began to change. He found himself on a surprising spiritual journey. He says, “As an agnostic, I’d never seriously explored such things as sacredness and revelation.” And then he found himself wrestling with a God he wasn’t even sure he believed in. Like God did to his ancestor Jacob, God snuck up on him. Jacobs writes,

“This opponent of mine is sometimes beautiful, sometimes cruel, sometimes ancient, sometimes crazily relevant. I can’t get a handle on it. I’m outmatched.” (p. 119)

When we earnestly seek God, we have no idea what we will find. But the seeking requires scripture. It is the antidote to just thinking whatever suits us. Paul knew this about us. He predicted in his letter to Timothy that we would crave the new, crave the easy, crave the exciting. Returning to God’s word, and wrestling with it, fixes that. Paul wrote,

³ For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, ⁴ and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.

Sound familiar?

In this sermon, I have actually done, carefully, what I urge you not to do. I have taken a line or two from each reading and used them to structure my thoughts. But you should see the pages and pages I threw away so that we wouldn’t be here all day! This week I want you to consider how you approach the Bible. Do you approach it at all? When is the last time you opened one? (If you don’t have a Bible at home, please speak to me and I’ll give you one.) All the scriptures for today are printed out for you in your bulletin, but I want you to go home and open up a Bible. Start with one of the gospels—we’ve been working with Luke here in church, but John is gorgeous, and Mark is short. If you’re a law-and-order sort, Matthew is good. I never open a Bible without saying a prayer first. So sit with a Bible in your lap, say a prayer asking the Holy Spirit to guide and teach you, and open up God’s word. Discover what God is saying to you. Be inspired—be God-breathed. Let the scripture come alive, breathing, in you and in your life.
Jeremiah 31.31-34

³¹ The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. ³² It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband,^g says the Lord. ³³ But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. ³⁴ No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

2 Timothy 3.14-4.5

^3.14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, ¹⁵ and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. ¹⁶ All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, ¹⁷ so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.

^4.1In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I solemnly urge you: ² proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching. ³ For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, ⁴ and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths. ⁵ As for you, always be sober, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, carry out your ministry fully.

Ps 119.97-104:

⁹⁷ Oh, how I love your law!

It is my meditation all day long.

⁹⁸ Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies,

for it is always with me.

⁹⁹ I have more understanding than all my teachers,

for your decrees are my meditation.

¹⁰⁰ I understand more than the aged,

for I keep your precepts.

¹⁰¹ I hold back my feet from every evil way,

in order to keep your word.

¹⁰² I do not turn away from your ordinances,

for you have taught me.

¹⁰³ How sweet are your words to my taste,

sweeter than honey to my mouth!

¹⁰⁴ Through your precepts I get understanding;

therefore I hate every false way.

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^g Or master