Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
July 29, 2007
Psalm 119:97-106
At a preaching conference I once heard a speaker say: “Whenever I find myself in a public meeting and someone stands up and states, ‘The Bible says…’ I know that someone else is about to get hurt.” I don’t know if you have ever experienced that? Maybe you share that feeling? His words certainly strike close to home in these divisive, partisan, ‘my truth is the only truth,’ ‘my faith is the only true faith’ times in which we live. So often, it seems, the Bible today is used primarily as a weapon, a big club, with which to clobber people with whom we disagree religiously, politically or ideologically. “It says here ‘God is love!’ Believe it my way, or else!” It is even used to keep some people out of full participation in the life of the Christian church, away from the Lord ’s Table for heaven’s sakes! And so in response to this Bible as a weapon of theology and ideology, many people, certainly in this part of the world and perhaps even in this church, have given up on the Bible and have chosen to look for guidance, inspiration, formation elsewhere. I know it, I understand it, at times I am even sympathetic with it. And yet, knowing all the conflicting feelings we may have about the Bible, today I would like to speak a good word for the Good Book, and explain why, in spite of the horrible ways it has been misused, I still believe it is essential to the life of faith and to the worship and devotional life of our community of faith. Why it remains for me “a lamp for my feet and a light for my path,” which is to say, why I still read the Bible.
But before getting to the positives, I want to start with some negatives. I want to share some popular reasons that are given for reading the Bible, reasons which do not appeal to me at all. A lot of things come to mind, I’ll share three. First, I do not read the Bible because I believe it is literal and infallible, coming directly to us from the mouth of God. I have no trouble stating that the Bible is the work of human beings. Actually the Bible isn’t one book, it is a collection of books written by many different people, each with a particular point of view, each expressing his or her own unique experience of the faith, indeed, their own encounter with God. As far as I am concerned, literalism, this insistence that everything happened just the way the Bible says it did, that everything is literally true forever, actually destroys the Biblical word for me, robs it of its power, its depth, its mystery.
Do you know that there are actually people who have measured the intestinal tracts of large fish in order to prove that one could have swallowed Jonah? Now nobody likes a big fish story as well as I do, but that is really missing the forest for the trees. To spend so much time trying to prove that the Book of Jonah is literally and historically true, is to miss the deep and important truths about God’s compassion and forgiveness that this story has to teach us. Did Jonah actually get swallowed by a large fish? Did he even exist? There is some humor in this story – last night at the play the question was asked: why do you fundamentalists have no sense of humor? Did this event actually happen? Probably not. Ah, but is the story true? You’re darn right it is! When you are reading the Bible, don’t mistake literalism for truth. Thomas Mann once defined myth as a story – a narrative – about the way things never were but always are. One could say much the same thing about the Biblical word. Infallible? No. Inspired? Oh yes! I’ve always liked the words of the famous theologian Karl Barth who proclaimed, “I take the Bible too seriously to take it literally.”
Secondly, I do not read the Bible in order to have some proof-text to win an argument. No one likes to win arguments with the Fundamentalists more than I do, but I try not to use the Bible to prove how right I am and how wrong you are… which gets close to using it as a weapon. The fact of the matter is you can find proof for almost anything in the Bible. And to search the scriptures for verses to support my theology or politics or my favorite prejudices is really to miss what the Bible is all about. And even self-proclaimed literalists still use this proof-texting selectively. So they will gladly quote Leviticus 20:13 in their condemnation of homosexuality, but they don’t have much to say about Colossians 3:22 where Paul tells slaves to obey their masters. Now if Bible is eternally right about homosexuality then it must certainly be eternally right about its casual acceptance of slavery…right? You see the trap of proof-texting? In just picking and choosing verses to suit our needs, or points of view, we lose the grand and redemptive sweep of the biblical narrative.
And finally: I don’t read the Bible as some kind of crystal ball for the future. Don’t let anyone tell you that the Left Behind series is biblically-based. It isn’t true. Even Jesus when asked, insisted he had no idea what the future might hold, had no idea what God had in store for us. Actually, the God of the Bible seems far more interested in how we are living our lives today. The Bible is not an indelibly written blueprint for tomorrow. And those who use it so, in my humble opinion, misuse it.
So enough of the negative. Why do I read the Bible then, why do I find so much here for preaching and personal devotion? I am reminded of an episode of the television show The Walton’s… it was on TV just after the glaciers receded from California. One episode sticks in my mind: Mrs. Walton is having trouble with couple of her neighbors. These two women are always criticizing her, they are upset about her children, they don’t like her wardrobe, it just goes on and on. She now finds them in her living room and they are criticizing her about something, going on and on. Finally she just leaves. She goes into the other room and opens her Bible. Now Pa Walton is there and he says to the children, “Look out, you’ve got to be careful whenever Mom opens the Bible.” She reads the Bible for a few minutes and comes back into the room. Does she condemn the women, does she attack them, these difficult, angry women? No, she invites them to stay for dinner. Rather than using the Bible as a weapon against these women, Mrs. Walton opens it up and hears the biblical call to forgiveness, reconciliation and hospitality, to rise above narrowness and suspicion and fear, and to engage the world around us with compassion, openness and nonviolence.
As I said in our children’s message last week, as discouraging as it was to see so many areas of New Orleans still devastated, what was immensely hopeful was the sight of so many church groups in that city doing what they can to help. As one of our UCC workers told us, there would be no recovery in New Orleans without all these church groups. Why are so many people still there? I can’t speak for anyone but myself. Did I go because there is some deep spark of goodness within me that told me I just had to help? I like to believe that there is at least a little spark or goodness in me, but I truly believe that what moved me to go was my lifelong relationship with the Book, and particularly with the teachings of Jesus that I find here. Somewhere along the way I read about a Good Samaritan who risked his life to help someone else and then I heard the words, “Go and do likewise.” I read about a leper no one would touch except Jesus, I read about a banquet to which absolutely everyone was invited, and always those haunting words… “As you do to the least of these my brothers and sisters, you do it to me.” These powerful and compelling stories; this powerful and compelling witness, is relentless. It has shaped me and shapes me still, always calling me to be a better person than I think I can be. And so I keep reading.
There is so much more I could say. I can’t even begin to do this topic justice, but two more quick points: I read the Bible also because it dares us to imagine another world. The Bible does not invite us to flee reality. No, it actually invites us to participate in the construction of a whole new reality. Hopefully this is what the church is…a community where we are seeking to make this new world of the scriptures real. Already, sadly, it looks like many presidential candidates are competing in the “who can scare Americans the most” contest. Be very afraid, we’re told. The world is full of people out there who want to get us. And our only possible response is violence and more violence – not to mention torture and secret prisons – all based on fear. But over against this message, people of the Book have this from Micah: “He shall judge between many peoples, and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away; they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more… and no one shall make them afraid.”
The Bible insists there is another way. We do not have to be held in bondage to a world of violence and fear, scarcity and consumerism, anxiety and exhaustion. The Bible is all about liberation: it’s the lion and lamb lying down together, it’s the lilies of the field growing only through the grace of God, it’s Jesus hosting a lunch on the hill with a few loaves and fish and everyone having enough…everyone…enough! So much of the Bible is about new creation, new freedom, new justice, new birth, allowing our often fearful selves to be pulled toward strange and hopeful new voices that are not our own. And so, yes, I keep reading.
And finally, I read the Bible because here I find hope, stubborn, persistent, inextinguishable hope. I find hope in the Bible’s realism. Here we find humanity…warts and all. Scoundrels and cheats, liars and schemers, betrayers and cowards. Which is to say, here we find people a lot like me.
I loved last night’s play talking about some of God’s sense of humor in picking Moses to lead the people. So here is Moses leading the children of Israel for forty years in the wilderness and he finally plants them in the only place in the Middle East where there isn’t any oil.
And yet, somehow God always manages to work in and through all kinds of people to further God’s great purposes. And when I read that, when I read all of those great stories, I find myself thinking if there was hope for them, maybe there is hope for me. If God could use them, perhaps God can use even me.
But I find an even larger hope. In the Holocaust Museum there are many moving photographs but one of the most moving has to be the photograph of a mother and her daughter being taken to the gas chambers at Auschwitz, a hopeless moment. What can a mother do? In that moment the photo captures the one thing she can do. In that photograph you see her covering her daughter’s eyes – one last act of compassion so the girl can’t see where they are going.
At a recent conference, Thomas Long was talking about this photograph: “Whenever I look and see that photograph I think to myself, ‘God don’t let this be the final word.’” I think about that when I read of the ongoing turmoil and suffering in Iraq, everyday with the names of the dead U.S. military personnel listed, not to mention the over 20,000 who have been wounded in what is increasingly a misguided and unnecessary war. “God don’t let this be the final word.” I think about it everyday when I open the paper and read of some new area of human suffering, “God don’t let this be the final word.” I think of it every Sunday when I listen to your prayer requests, for family and friends struggling with cancer or other illness, drug abuse, depression, grief,. “God don’t let this be the final word.” Then I open this book and hear the proclamation, “Be of good cheer, have faith, the final word belongs to God.”
Last night the play finished with a musical tribute to the Book of Revelation. Singing about lakes of fire, sinners screaming and then singing, “That’s Armageddon….” Well I have to disagree with my friends, theologically, at that point because I really don’t believe the Bible speaks of the destruction of the world. Why would God destroy the very creation God had pronounced good, and with a wrath-filled Jesus leading the charge? What horrible theology! Not the destruction of the world, but the Bible does speak of the transformation of the world – a new heaven and new earth, a wholeness, a fullness, where all God’s children will sit down at the great banquet and all have enough. It is a transformation not yet realized to be sure, but it is promised and it is there and it is here and it is God’s final word, a God who is not finished, who is not defeated, who has not given up. A God whose will will be done.
Soon I will baptize my grandson, as I have baptized many children. And I will have the audacity to call young Ben a child of God, and I will dare to proclaim that this God is mindful of him, delights in him, cherishes him and will never abandon him. That is our hope. That is God’s last word. And how do I know this? The Bible tells me so.