The
Good Book
Bible Sunday
John 1: 1-4
After
“Say something in Hebrew for us,” they taunted. “Preach to us your next sermon.”
The old
rabbi stood there. Then he began to
speak words that time and again reminded
In
the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
And God said, “Let there be light, and there was light.”
And it was good.
Those barbarians had taken the man’s clothes. They had taken his beloved synagogue and were about to take his life, but they would never---could never---take away those words. It was God, not the Nazis, who said the first word in creation, and it was God who would have the last.
Words are
powerful. They create and they
destroy. And God’s Word in the
Bible is the most powerful of all. A
seminary professor, once recounted that the church defeated the mighty
These are the texts that we read from every Sunday. Week-to-week, we do different things in church. We sing; we pray; we preach. The one constant is the book on which it is all based. It is the source out of which everything we do in worship flows. It all begins with the Bible.
John Wesley used to say, “I am a man of one book.” Mind you, John Wesley was extremely learned and read many, many books. He wrote volumes on a variety of subjects. But they were all secondary to the existential word of Scripture. Without it, there would be no Methodism, no church at all.
Used best, the Bible is not so much a rulebook, telling us exactly what to do in every situation. Rather, as 2 Peter says, it is a light shining in an often dark and confusing world. It is not a floodlight but a lamp, giving us a glimmer of light, a sense of which direction to go.
As important as is it is to read and to be guided by scripture, there are at least two things we do not need to believe about the Bible. If somebody claims that you have to take the Bible literally, word for word, or not at all, ask him if you have to take John the Baptist literally when he calls Jesus the Lamb of God.
On the other hand, if someone else says that you can’t take the Bible seriously at all because it is an ancient writing and the product of a pre-scientific age, ask that person if they take Shakespeare seriously who knew less about science than the average third-grader today. I’m also reminded of the warning by Shakespeare about how some people try to justify their beliefs based on a few words taken out of context, “Even the devil quotes scripture for his own purposes.”
Both the literalist and the skeptic base their beliefs on the modern idea that only that which we see and hear can be believed. But the Bible claims that there is so much more, a reality beyond this temporal plain that is surrounded and invaded by a spiritual one. And we Methodists claim that while it is the document of men and women who were inspired by the Holy Spirit, it is not handed down from on high, pristine and untouched by human hands. The Bible may be divinely inspired, but it also mediated through human experience. It emerged from the struggles of people who were trying to be faithful in their own day, trying to do what God wanted them to do in their own time and place.
We do not read the Bible for science or even necessarily for factual history, then. It operates on an entirely different level, as William Sloane Coffin once said, “The account of the creation in Genesis may not be scientifically true---it is eternally true.” Do you see? A geology textbook can tell us how the world came into being, but it can tell little about why it came into being, or what our purpose on this planet can possibly be.
This does not mean that the Bible is easy to understand. It is talking about big things, really big things. Things like God and the nature of existence. But over time, with practice and with patience, the Bible becomes a great delight and the source of unmatchable wisdom. As the ancient author Origen wrote, studying scripture is like launching our little boat onto an unpredictable, uncontrollable sea. When we “dare to enter so vast a sea of mysteries,” God will provide us the favorable breeze of the Holy Spirit to take us to wonderful new lands.
So how do we approach this somewhat disorderly collection of poetry, prose, prophecy and legalism which is often tedious, obscure and sometimes even barbaric?
Fred Buechner suggests thinking of it this way: “If you look at a window, you see flyspecks, dust, the crack where you child’s Frisbee hit it. If you look through the window, you see to the world beyond.”
That is the difference between those who look at the Bible as a bunch of strange old words and stories and those who see in it the Word of God that speaks out of a distant past into our reality today. Its language may be a bit mysterious, but its message is as relevant to us as it was to our ancestors. The fundamental human issues that we all face about life and death and love and relationships and finding real, lasting happiness are the same as they have always been. Which means that the Bible is a book not only where we find God but where we can find ourselves.
Here we are today reading from a book whose pages are grimy with millions of fingerprints but continues to shape us all the same. The unbound, unlimited Word of God that was in the beginning, moving and giving life, still creates and makes new. The Word, through which we can see into the world of God and into the very depths of our souls, lives on.
Let us take these wonderful words of life to our hearts. Let us read them, study them, mull and meditate over them, and let them be a lamp that guides us through dark places to that land where we find our best and truest selves. Amen.
*ECH