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Sermon on the Bible: Interpretation

A SERMON ON THE BIBLE: INTEPRETATION

TEXT: SCATTERINGS

INTRODUCTION TO THE SCRIPTURE
As is true today, in Jesus' time, there were some people who tried especially hard to live by Biblical precepts. Jesus was confronted by one of these passionate believers who wanted to go deeper into his spiritual life. "What scriptures will show me the way?" he asked. Please join me in re-creating this encounter. It is printed in your bulletin.

SCRIPTURE Reading of the Great Commandments: From Matthew 22:39-40

LEADER: A scholar of God's law came to Jesus one day and asked,
"Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" And Jesus said to him, "

PEOPLE: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."


THE HERMENEUTICAL KEY
The Bible is vast, complex, contradictory, and often completely baffling. How does one make sense of this sprawling, weird, often incomprehensible text? Jesus offers and interpretive key. He measures all of it against this simple precept: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind and your neighbor as yourself.

If you memorize no other passage of scripture, memorize this.

Today, instead of preaching from the Bible, I'm going to preach about the Bible. I thought about starting this sermon by asking for a show of hands of all the people who study their bibles daily or at least regularly. But perhaps that would be embarrassing. One scholar wryly observed, "If all the neglected Bibles were dusted at the same time, we would have a record dust storm and the sun would go into eclipse for a whole week." (David Nygren)

THE BIBLE: IMPORTANT, REVERED ... AND UNREAD
I believe in the importance of the Bible as the text which lies at the foundation of our faith. When you go to Pilgrim's website, you will find that the first point of our statement of purpose is that we "Gather for worship that is Biblical, relevant, and joyful." Those of you who might not have raised your hands when I asked you if you regularly studied your bible can cut yourself some slack if you attend worship on Sunday. Every week we take a passage, analyze it in some detail and prayerfully invite it to influence our lives. We celebrate the central principle of the Reformation that claims scriptures were not the sole property of the clergy. Lay people should have equal access and an equal voice in interpretation. But we also hold to the understanding that, from the beginning, this book was not written for individuals but for communities. God intends for us to read it together.

BIBLE STUDY: CONTEXT, SCHOLARSHIP, AND CONVERSATION
Pilgrim has a Bible study group that has met weekly here for at least a dozen years. It has included many of you as time allows you to slip in when you can. It's an easy-access group. If you're interested, just show up on a Tuesday morning. One of the first things we learned as we embarked on our studies, is exactly how difficult the bible can be-how alien, counter-intuitive, and obtuse it can be. To make sense of it, we are informed by the work of biblical scholars. We need the context, the author's point of view, an understanding of the life of Jesus. And we need prayerful, honest, hilarious discussion with each other.

READ THE BIBLE, IT WILL SCARE THE HELL OUT OF YOU
One of the more conservative churches sponsored a billboard campaign to bring people to Christ. One of the big signs on the highway said, "Read the Bible, it will scare the Hell out of you." Well, perhaps. Especially if you take it at face value.

FOR INSTANCE, HERE'S A SCARY STORY
Take the passage from Acts the Bible study read a couple of weeks ago. Here's the story. After Jesus' death, the disciples are starting to form a community around his life and teachings. One of the basic principles of this community is radical equality. To that end, they pool all their property and resources. One couple, Ananais and Sapphira, sell their land as recommended but decide to give a part of the proceeds from the sale of it, not all.

Peter, the head of this church, finds out and thunders at Ananias. "How is it you contrived this deed in your heart. You did not lie to us but to God!" On hearing this accusation, Ananias falls down dead.
Three hours later, Sapphira comes in and Peter sets her up, "So, you sold the land for this price and you gave it all to us, right?" "Right," she says. "Gotcha!" yells Peter. "Look, marching into the door are the feet of those who just buried your husband and they have come to carry you out." And immediately she fell down at Peter's feet and died. (Acts 5:1-11)

Now there's a stewardship sermon!

BIBLICAL LITERALISM REQUIRES ONE TO ACCEPT A CRUEL GOD
Read the Bible, it will scare the hell out of you. Yeah, either that or it will make us say, "I want no part of this wacky religion and I want no truck with that vengeful God either." This is another story, by the way, that gives the lie to those who say the God of the Old Testament is a God of wrath and the New Testament God is a God of love. Not really. There are stories of judgment throughout both Old and New Testaments. And equally distributed are stories of forgiveness and mercy that totally contradict this one. Abraham Joshua Heschel says, "An attempt to explain the Bible is a supreme opportunity to become ridiculous."

And yet as Jacob wrestled with the angel, we cannot avoid wrestling with these texts as they present themselves to us. Accepting them as literal, historical fact is not an acceptable option to me, if only because I would lose my faith if I did.
So, knowing we will never completely "explain the bible" what is a reasonable approach for our conversation with biblical texts. For instance, what do we make of this shocking story in Acts?

THE BIBLE: MANY FORMS OF LITERATURE, INCLUDING IMAGINATIVE STORIES
We have many lenses through which we interpret scripture in our Bible study and also in our worship. The most significant one is this: the bible is not a book of fact and history. It is not even a rule book even though it has a lot of good principles for the good life. Primarily, it is a record of a people groping toward God. It tells the story of their relationship with God and it does so through poetry, theological tracts, preaching, metaphor, and story. Story-yes, imaginative, symbolic story-telling like I believe the tale of Ananais and Sapphira to be. Luke is the author of Acts. The Luke who tells this story is the same Luke who brought shepherds to the manger as a way of saying this messiah/child is for all people, even the poorest and most despised.

EMPHASIZING THE THEMES OF ECONOMIC JUSTICE, FREEDOM FROM MATERIALISM
It's the same Luke who has Jesus say, "Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be filled." "Woe to you who are rich. It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for you to enter the kingdom of heaven." Luke's kingdom of heaven is about economic justice and plenty for all.
His Jesus exemplifies the joy and freedom one finds giving all you have and living like the lilies of the field.

And here we are, in the early church. Jesus is gone, this group of disciples is now charged with continuing his radical teaching. Luke tells this cautionary tale about what happens when the message is diluted. Ananias and Sapphira don't get it. They have not embraced the principles of total equality and interdependence. And as a result, they are dead to the community. The cohesiveness of the early church is threatened by those who are not wholehearted in their commitment and it is threatened even more so, by their lies. Trust is vital to this movement. If Ananias and Sapphira lie about their pledge, will they not betray their cohorts to the Roman officials who seek to destroy them?

WHAT THE BIBLE MEANS NOW. GOD REVEALED
That puts the story in its historical context, but that doesn't mean we leave it there. There would be no point in meeting week after week to study the Bible if we didn't give it an authority against which we measure our lives. There is no reason to preach from scripture if we simply regard it as a charming relic. As members of the United Church of Christ, we believe that God is still speaking. And that one of the ways God communicates with us is through the Bible. As Christians, we allow scripture to call our own lives into question and to shape us.

In Bible study, we first read a text aloud, ponder it, and then start talking about it. When we read this text aloud, there was a pause at the end of it, and then a sudden outbreak of laughter. I think all of us figured we'd kinda write it off as a fanciful story and move on quickly. But the conversation turned intense fast. We came to the conviction that there is nothing that can destroy a church more effectively than a lack of trust. People need to feel safe, we need to trust our leaders and the people in charge of our finances. We need to trust each other to hold our souls in times of our deepest need.

On that sunny December morning, this story inspired some soul searching about the ill effects of gossip, the honor of having someone's trust, the difference between confidentiality and secrets. We ended up unlocking this passage using the key Jesus recommend as the ultimate message of scripture. "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind and your neighbor as yourself."

If you memorize no other passage of scripture, memorize this.