Wednesday, October 12, 2016

Let's Talk About the Bible


Typically, in sermons about the Bible itself, the preacher acknowledges that it is not easy reading and that it takes some commitment and energy to stay with it. For example, the late Ellsworth Kalas, a noted preacher of recent times, wrote:  

 "... our Bible is not what one would expect a book of religious instruction should be. If you and I were preparing a book to bless and guide people's lives, we wouldn't include large portions of Numbers, Chronicles or Ezekiel. And we'd organize it differently. We have to acknowledge that this book has a style and a purpose of its own; and we confess that in a sense, it has succeeded in spite of itself. On the surface, it isn't the sort of book which looks like a bestseller. It's long, and there are many dull and difficult portions. And while there is a plot, you have to pay attention if you're to find it." 

            Of course, it should not surprise us that Kalas insisted that the plot was worth discovering. I agree. Some have said the Bible is the story of a love affair between God and the human race. I like that. Yet, I do not think that goes far enough. Without God revealing who God is in a specific time and place, we might have hints, clues, intuitions and some logic to speculate about God. Yet, we would never know. Thus, in that regard, the poorly educated person who sounds out the words of the Bible to read it but tries to live by what it says is actually closer to the spirit that animates the Bible than the intellectual who reads it simply for its historical, theological, or philosophical value.

Yes, a spirit animates the Bible. Those who are longtime Bible readers have no doubt noticed that you can be reading along in a passage you have read many times before. Suddenly, something jumps out at you, some word of encouragement, hope, guidance, or conviction. You hear something you needed to hear at that particular juncture of your life. The Bible seems to possess that uncanny capacity. Author Elie Wiesel has suggested that like the paintings of the great masters, the Scriptures "soak up" something from the lives of all those readers who have interacted with them over the ages.

If you get past the skepticism and suspicion many of us have of ancient texts, you might find a challenging Word from God.

Admitting all of this, our modern skepticism and suspicion may well become blocks to truly hearing a challenging Word from God.

Let us be honest about this. In some places, we understand the Bible all too well.  

The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. --Søren Kierkegaard, Provocations: SpiritualWritings of Kierkegaard. 

Robert Farrar Capon, The Romance of the Word (Eerdmans, 1996), 214-5, shares the following. He reminds us that the Bible is a library. Yes, we can go to a library and find the history section (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, and Acts). We can also go the poetry section (Psalms, Ecclesiastes). We can go to the literature section (Ruth, Jonah, Joseph in Genesis). You can find plays (Job). The modern fascination with “post-apocalyptic” movies and stories finds a counter-part in Revelation and the last part of Daniel.

Whenever we leave on a long journey, we want to take certain things with us. Before leaving on the trip, we have to pack. We haul the suitcase down from the attic (or up from the basement), open it on the bed and ponder the age-old question: What to bring?

How you answer that question has everything to do with what kind of trip you are going to have. Leave out something important, such as an umbrella or an extra sweater, and you will be miserable if the weather turns raw. Pack something unnecessary, such as a pair of snowshoes for a trip to Hawaii, and you will do nothing but complain about how heavy your bags are. Some items that go into the suitcase are necessary equipment. Others are merely baggage — dead weight that impedes progress.

When the author of II Timothy writes that the purpose of studying the Scriptures is that his readers may be “equipped for every good work,” he means something very similar. The Bible is an eminently practical document. It is like a traveler’s guidebook for the strange land that is the human soul: It teaches us things about God and ourselves that we could never discover in any other way.

Here are four metaphors that each suggests a way of viewing the Bible. I acknowledge some indebtedness to Marcus Borg for the first three.

First, the Bible is a finger pointing to God. Nothing that points to God is asking us to believe in it but in that to which it points. Being a Christian does not mean primarily believing in the finger, but believing in the God to which the finger points. In a similar way, as Mary Lathbury's well-known hymn, "Break Thou the Bread of Life," puts it, "Beyond the sacred page, I seek thee, Lord."

Second, the Bible is a lens through which we view God. For me as a follower of Jesus, what clarifies my vision is the Bible is the original witness to the revelation of God. This revelation occurred first to a family, then to a people, and eventually to a nation called Israel. I know this because God has offered a final and definitive revelation in Jesus. We see here the love and grace of God. We see here that we are sinners in need of that grace and clarifying vision. Granting the difficulty we have in reading the Bible, it remains the clearest view of God we have.

Third, the Bible is a sacrament or means of grace, something like communion, to enhance our experience of the presence of God. Communion does not ask us to believe in the bread and wine, but to let them act as a kind of go-between to deepen our experience of God. The Bible is a go-between in the same sense.

Fourth, the Bible is, as Peter dubbed it in one of his letters, "a lamp shining in a dark place" (II Peter 1:19). A lamp does not eliminate all darkness, but it enables us to find our way through it.
 
If we let it, the Bible will slowly (sometimes suddenly) alter the way we view our lives and our world, and therefore lead to a change in our lives.

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