What Makes the Difference

The Sermon Study Guide can be found here.

Hebrews 4:12-13; Matthew 7:24-27

July 28, 2013 • Portage First UMC

VIDEO INTRO

Last summer, on our last full day in Israel, our guide got us all up early to head out into the desert, the Judean wilderness, because he wanted to get to Masada before it got too hot. Despite his best efforts, when we got to the top of this solitary mountain that sticks up 1,300 feet in the middle of the desert, it was already somewhere around 90 degrees at 8:00 in the morning! As we rode up the side of the mountain in our air-cooled cable car, Mike (our guide) pointed out that some people were just starting to walk up the side of the mountain. The so-called “snake path” winds up the side of the mountain for 2 miles, and Mike said that if you really want to make that hike, you should start about midnight when it’s cooler. Starting when the temperature is already 90 degrees and climbing is a bad idea, because it’s a challenging hike even when you’re in good shape. In either case, what would make the difference between success and failure on such a hike is whether you try it alone or you go with someone else.

What’s true on a difficult hike is also true in many areas of life. While we’re been brought up to believe in the “rugged American individualist,” there is something hard-wired into the human personality that reaches out to others, that needs others. We were made for community. When we rely solely on our own perspective—in any area of life—we become rather self-centered, self-concerned and self-justifying. We need others, and I want you to hear that clearly this morning as we wrap up our series on reading and studying the Bible. To make the journey, the often difficult hike, into the pages of Scripture, and to really see what these stories have for us, we need others to come along on the journey with us. Last week, we talked about studying the Bible with the whole community of God, opening ourselves to traditions different than we might be used to. This morning, though, I want to focus on why reading and studying the Bible in small groups is so important to us as Christians, and invite you to make plans this fall to be part of a small group.

Small groups are rooted deeply in our history as Methodists. John Wesley preached all over England, to hundreds and thousands of people. He saw many, many people give their lives to Jesus, but then he had a problem. He couldn’t stay there and pastor them, lead them. What could he do to make sure that they would grow in their faith? Wesley set up a system—a method—of what today we would call small groups or cell groups. There were the Methodist Societies, which would equate to maybe a Sunday School class or a larger gathering. They used lecturing, teaching, hymn singing and reading of Scripture to teach new believers what it meant to be a Christian. Then there were class meetings, which were smaller groups of about 10-12 people and they met for accountability. Their main question was, “How is it with your soul?” And then there were bands, even smaller groups that were homogenous by gender, age, and marital status. Different shapes and forms of small groups seeking to help people grow in their faith—but do you know where Wesley got that idea?

Well, there was this guy named Jesus, who preached to hundreds and thousands, but most of his time wasn’t spent with the crowds. Most of his time was spent with twelve men, his disciples. He invested his life in them, taught them the way God had called people to live, and then he sent them out to change the world. They, too, then, invested in small groups. In the book of Acts, we find that the early church grew not just by preaching, though there was certainly that, but also through a network of relationships. In Paul’s letters, he often sends greetings to the church that meets in someone’s home—today, we would call those small groups. The problem the modern church faces is that, by focusing on large groups and bigger gatherings, we’ve developed people and leaders who are “a mile wide and an inch deep.” We know lots of people, but we know little about the Christian faith and life. We have a Bible, but we know little about it. We expect too little of ourselves (Kinnaman, You Lost Me, pgs. 123-129)

Jesus told a parable once about such a situation. In Matthew 7, Jesus is wrapping up what we call the Sermon on the Mount. This is the first big section of teaching in Matthew’s Gospel, and in many ways, it’s sort of the constitution of the Kingdom of God. It’s all the ways Jesus is upsetting the first-century Jewish way of life, reinterpreting what they’ve always assumed to be true, and showing the path to real life. So he’s taught them that intention is the same as action—in other words, if you hate someone it’s the same as murder, if you look lustfully at another person it’s the same as adultery. And he’s taught them that they should love their neighbors, store up treasure in heaven rather than on earth, don’t judge other people, and be on guard against false prophets. He’s covered a lot of ground in this sermon, and then he comes to the end. Now, in public speaking classes, they always tell you to end with a strong reminder of your main point. People will remember the last thing you say. So Jesus tells a story that is bound to make a lasting impression. Remember, Jesus was a carpenter. Scholars debate the meaning of the word tekton, which the Gospels use to describe Jesus. He may have been more of a stone mason (which would make sense since stone is amply available in Israel and wood is not), but whether he worked with wood or stone, he is a builder. That’s the trade he learned from his earthly father, Joseph (Card, Matthew: The Gospel of Identity, pg. 72).

So Jesus tells about two men who build houses. Drawing from the Old Testament wisdom tradition, he calls them “wise” and “foolish.” The wise man, as the old Sunday School song reminds us, built his house upon the rock, while the foolish man built his house upon the sand. The wise man dug down to find a solid foundation, while the foolish man simply built on whatever land was there. Now, Israel doesn’t get a lot of rain, but when they do get it, it often comes quickly and violently. All over the country, there are these dry stream beds that run down the side of the mountains—they’re called wadis. They’re dry most of the year, but when the rains come, they can very quickly turn into raging rivers. That’s the image Jesus is using here: the rains come, suddenly, and the water rushes down the wadis. It quickly becomes apparent which house is better built. The wise man’s house stands because it’s built on a solid foundation, while the foolish man’s house is swept away. It has nothing to hold onto. When I read this parable, I think back a few years ago when a hurricane—I can’t remember which one—hit central Florida, and it was noted that the houses that remained standing were houses built by Habitat for Humanity. They weren’t built by professionals; they were built by volunteers. When people began asking why, they were told it was because a volunteer with Habitat tends to put three nails in where a professional only puts one. The way a house is built determines how well it stands when the storms come.

This parable is a parallel to our lives. Jesus says the foundation for a life that will stand when the storms come is building our house on his words—hearing them and putting them into practice (7:24). And I want to add one other piece to this, using my imagination because I’ll admit this isn’t explicit in the text. But knowing Jesus is a builder, I’ve got to imagine that he would have envisioned part of the wisdom of the wise man as being consulting others, or even having others help build his house. The foolish man, had he asked anyone else, had he involved anyone else, would surely have been told the foolishness of building on the sand. Now maybe he did ask but simply chose to ignore the advice he was given. Either way, I think part of this process of building our spiritual lives and homes on the rock of Jesus’ words is involving others in that process. We need others. 

So often, we simply leave this place after worship, and if we’ve heard God speak to us in any way, we determine that we will simply try harder, do more, somehow earn God’s attention. But Jesus doesn’t say that trying harder would make a difference in the storm. What made the difference was the security of the foundation of the house. Without a firm foundation, no amount of effort or trying harder can save the foolish man’s house. It comes, literally, crashing down around him (7:27). The foundation makes the difference. So how do we get a firm foundation upon which to build our life? Because we haven’t done so well. In our culture, we’ve grabbed onto the idea that disciples, followers of Jesus, can be mass-produced in big groups. Just get them to a rally or a worship service and that will produce a follower of Jesus. Many, many churches were and continue to be built on that premise. But those that are honest have come to realize that, without small groups, without interaction among people, with the only input being from the pastor on Sunday, we risk losing the next generation because they simply haven’t learned how to grow in their faith. They haven’t learned the very basics. Again, that’s why Jesus, though he preached to crowds, invested himself in twelve men. There are so many times in the Gospels when Jesus pulls these twelve aside and explains things to them. They don’t always get it, they don’t often understand until later, but he pours himself into relationships with these twelve, and we know eleven of them later turned the world upside down—all because, in a small group of believers, they built a faith on a firm foundation that would go the distance.

One of the benefits of studying the Bible in a small group is the many different perspectives that come together when you gather. When I was in seminary, we were part of a small group led by the pastor that met in the parsonage on Wednesday evenings. And in that group were all ages, though we were by far the youngest. We had some folks, though, who had walked long with Jesus, and some others who were fairly new to the faith. So we studied topics like prayer and parables and many others in those two years together. But as we looked at what, to me, were familiar stories and passages, I gained so much by hearing from those older members. I also gained from those who were seeing the text for the perhaps first time. The questions they asked sometimes put many of our assumptions to the test. The wisdom they shared and the questions they asked were both enriching and challenging to this young seminary student, and when I went back to the class, those things were in my mind and heart. Seminary students are often tempted to try to tie everything up in a neat little bow, but I couldn’t do that because behind that text was Flossie and Jay and Kathy and Sid and Carolyn and so many others who gave me new perspectives to consider.

Being in a small group also gives you broader perspectives. Think about the group Jesus gathered. That group of twelve contained fishermen (salt of the earth, ordinary people), a tax collector (who was a collaborator with the Roman government, employed by them to extort money from their countrymen), one and possibly two zealots (which was not yet a political party, but were people who passionate enough to use force against Rome, sometimes even killing collaborators and soldiers), and two who were known as “the sons of thunder.” Think about how a nickname like that might have come about! Quite an unlikely group, and we know they at least argued about which one of them was the greatest, even on the night before Jesus was crucified (cf. Luke 22:24). Don’t you imagine, with all those perspectives, they likely argued a lot about things Jesus said? Imagine putting a fundamentalist, a liberal, a moderate, a Muslim and a Buddhist in a room together and you might have a bit of a sense of what it might have been like. And yet, those broader perspectives, as I shared a bit about last week, can be helpful in understanding the text, even if we don’t change our opinion. It’s powerful to hear how others hear the text. And we are at a time in our history as a country where we need to learn to listen to each other. We are divided politically, socially, and sadly still very divided racially as recent events have shown. Being in a small group, centered on the text that brings us together, can broaden our perspective and help us hear better the Scriptures that we claim as our authority.

Another reason small groups are important is to counter our tendency to be me-centered. When I read the Gospel lesson this morning, for instance, my tendency (my natural inclination) is to read it for me: am I, myself, personally, building on a firm foundation? And while that’s an important question, it completely puts the burden on me. My building. My foundation. But we’re called to build together. I don’t have to do it all myself because I have brothers and sisters to help me build. In another way, when we read together, we’re also less likely to take verses out of context as if they were written for us alone. I begin to hear how the Scripture impacts another person. I begin to realize I am not alone in this journey. I begin to pray for that other person. I become more community-centered rather than me-centered. Study of the Bible becomes less about what I can get out of it and more about how it is shaping all of us. Because we are all being formed by something (Foster, Life With God, pg. 139). There’s no way around it. What we put in our life shapes us. Like water flowing over a landscape, we’re being molded and shaped into that which is around us. When we stay by ourselves, whether in our reading of Scripture or in any activity, we become me-focused, me-centered. When we gather in small groups, when we trust others, we’re shaped not only by own experience, but by the experience of caring for persons beyond ourselves. We become more who Jesus calls us to be when we allow others to be part of our shaping.

So how should such a small group approach the Bible so that the fire of the word can be stirred within them? I’m not offering a “plan” or a “schedule” for such a group. Rather, I want to share four pieces of an approach to Scripture that, as author Chris Webb puts it, will help us read and study the Bible more as someone who is love with God than as someone who is analyzing God. The first of these is to approach the Bible prayerfully. This doesn’t mean we simply offer a prayer before we begin, though that’s certainly important and good. But more than that, it means we come to God grateful that we have a text, a Bible to study. It’s a bit like saying prayers before meals. In our home, the kids usually do that, and sometimes they pray so fast, we’ve barely gotten our heads bowed before they say, “Amen.” But prayer before meals is meant to awaken our gratitude, no matter what the meal tastes like (which is, I think, why we pray first, before we know how it turned out, especially if I’m cooking)! When we’re about to receive a spiritual meal from the Bible, why not begin by praying a prayer of gratitude? You know, when I’ve been to a Jewish synagogue service, I love the moment when they bring the Torah scrolls out. It’s a moment of celebration, and in many places, they lift the scroll up, and then they bring it out among the congregation, and the people gathered will kiss their prayer book and touch it to the scroll. And there’s singing, great singing—all meant to express gratitude to God for this word that’s about to be read to them. Are we grateful for the Scripture? As we gather in small groups, we come prayerfully, gratefully.

Second, we come to the Scriptures with empty hands. That is to say, we come without our preconceived agenda, open to whatever God wants to say through the group that day. As I said a couple of weeks ago, we read the Bible for a lot of reasons—to confirm what we already believe, or to refute someone else’s ideas, for guidance, for inspiration, for answers to big questions. None of those are necessarily bad, but when we come together as a group, we need to leave those things out. Sometimes, we try to impress upon the text things that preachers and authors have dreamed up, things that aren’t there. We need to come to the text with empty hands, admitting that our agenda, which is so tempting to hang onto, might not be God’s agenda. So rather than praying something like, “Speak, Lord, about this pressing issue…” we can say, “Speak, Lord, about whatever you desire, for your servant is listening.” If we come with closed fists, or hands full of things we’ve already picked up, we can’t take anything away. We can’t pick up anything else. Empty hands are key in studying Scripture together.

Third, we come with humility. In the context of approaching Scripture, that means we come with the readiness to be obedient to what we read. That’s the truly loving response. Wait a minute, you say, love? What does obedience have to do with love? We’ve separated those two, but in the ancients’ understanding, loving someone meant you obeyed. Even though we’ve taken it out of the wedding ceremony in modern times, that was the underlying assumption when couples were asked about loving, honoring and obeying. It wasn’t meant to be an avenue for abuse, as it sometimes became. It was an idea rooted in the very beginnings of God’s dealing with people. When Moses was preparing to die and giving the people his final sermon, he reminded them that “loving” the Lord means this: “keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you” (Deuteronomy 6:2). That attitude is summed up in the great Shema or “hear” of Israel, a verse that is repeated daily: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God will all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” (6:4), a commandment Jesus said is primary (cf. Matthew 22:34-40). We love as we obey. Loving God is not about romantic feelings; loving God is a matter of doing what he says. “The true lover of God is not the one who comes to Scripture looking for an inspirational rush, but the one who comes ready to listen attentively and act accordingly” (Webb, Fire of the Word, pg. 75). That’s why studying the Bible requires humility: putting our own agenda aside, putting our plans down in order to discern what God is saying in community. Then we respond accordingly.

Then, fourth, we come expectantly. We tend to get out of things exactly what we expect, don’t we? If we come expecting nothing, that’s probably what we’ll get. But if we come to small group expecting to encounter Jesus in the pages of the text and in the people in the group, what do you think we’ll get? The writer to the Hebrews described the power of the Scriptures this way: “For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart” (4:12). It’s a powerful book we have! But if we come expecting nothing, or if we treat it just as a quick reading assignment, we’ll get out of it just what we expect. What if we come to studying the Scriptures with the attitude that we want to meet the Author, with the expectation that he will meet us in the midst of the Bible and the gathered community? Again, that takes the burden off of us. It’s not longer my job to “get something out” of the Bible. Instead, I come expecting God to have something for us (Webb 70-78).

Now let me address what, in my experience, is the number one excuse people give for not being part of a small group: I don’t know everything. I don’t know enough about the Bible. And you know what? You’re right. You don’t know everything, and you don’t know enough about the Bible. I don’t know everything, and I don’t know enough about the Bible. But tell me how in the world you’re going to learn and grow if you don’t take advantage of opportunities that are right before you? One of the reasons I have led eighteen Disciple classes in the last twenty years is because I don’t know everything and I don’t know enough about the Bible. I have yet to have a single Disciple class in which I’m not challenged in some way or am able to see a passage from another perspective. I’m constantly learning from others in the group, and hopefully they learn a thing or two from me as well. I need that small group study to strengthen my faith and to deepen my reliance upon Scripture. And do you know that many of our best ministry initiatives have come about as people in this church have been in a small group studying and God has led them, through reading the text, to make a difference in their world? No, you don’t know everything, and neither do I. That’s why we need to be part of a small group. Don’t worry about your level of Biblical knowledge; that’s why we’re there, to learn together, to help each other, and to sit together as Jesus’ feet to see what he might say to us.

So, now, the “ask:” where will you find your place in a small group this fall? I’ve never been quiet or secretive about my goal of having 100% participation of this church in small groups. I believe in them that strongly. I believe it’s the model Jesus set out for us, and I believe there are great things waiting to happen in your life and in the life of the church when we come together in small groups around the Scriptures. If the Bible is as important as we say it is, then it’s worth our time and commitment to engage with it and with each other. There are many opportunities coming up in just a few weeks for you to grow and learn. Alpha, which is sort of a Christianity starter course, a crash course in what we believe, will begin September 4, just a little over a month from now, and the best part about that small group is that you get free dinner! Alpha is the first step on what we call “The Journey,” an intentional process for helping people who are new to the church or who are longtime members of the church get connected with the Scriptures and with what we believe as United Methodist Christians. The next two steps in that process are called “Knowing God” and “Loving God,” both short-term classes that help us grow in our understanding of what God wants us to do and who God calls us to be. “Knowing God” will be offered this fall during the Sunday School hour beginning September 8, and “Loving God” will be offered on Monday nights beginning September 9. A third piece of that, “Serving God,” will be offered later in the year.

And then there’s Disciple Bible Study. Disciple is a long-term, high commitment study aimed not at solely providing you more information but really aimed at transforming us into disciples of Jesus by studying the Scriptures. Everyone starts with Disciple 1, which Pastor Deb will be leading this fall. Disciple 1 takes you on a 34-week trip through the entire Bible; when you’re done, you will have read about 80% of the text. It asks for about 20-30 minutes of reading each day and a 2½ hour class each week. Disciple 1 will begin August 11, so if you’re thinking about that, we really need to know this week so we can get materials ordered. If you’ve already taken Disciple 1, you can sign up for Disciple 4 this year, which I’m going to lead. Disciple 4 will take you through the “wisdom books” in the Old Testament (Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Solomon and such) and the writings of John in the New Testament, including Revelation. It’s a 32-week class and will begin August 18, but again, we need to know soon so we can order materials. Now, the normal plan is for you to complete “The Journey” and then jump into Disciple, but that’s not a hard and fast rule. You can talk to myself, or Pastor Deb, or Jeff King if you have questions about any of those groups.

In addition to that, we have a weekly daytime Bible Study called Brown Bag that has met for many, many years but is always ready for new folks to come and join them. They do various studies throughout the year, and as the name implies, they bring lunch and eat together. That’s on Wednesdays at 11:30, and you can talk to Wanda Samuelson (freshly back from Alaska) about that. And if none of those meet your needs or your schedule, start your own. Pastor Deb or I would love to resource you and help you get started. Gather a few friends in your home, or you can use the building here if you want. Start your own, and see what God might do in your midst. Here’s the question: where will you get connected so that God through the Scriptures can begin to work in and transform your life?

Wise is the one who builds with others on a firm foundation, who roots a spiritual house down deep on the rock that is Jesus Christ. When the storms come, that foundation will hold, and more than that, those who helped build the house will come alongside and help repair whatever damage the storm might have caused. Wise is the one who builds with others on a firm foundation. Foolish is the one who builds on sand, on a shaky foundation, and who tries to do it all himself. When the storms come, the collapse will be great. He will not stand, nor will his spiritual house. Foolish is the one who builds on a shaky foundation and has no community to help him rebuild. Do you want to be wise or foolish? Let’s pray.

Into the River

The Sermon Study Guide is here.

Luke 4:14-21

January 13, 2013 • Portage First UMC

VIDEO INTRO

Eighteen years ago—though it seems like just yesterday—I stood at the edge of the river. Several months before, in a youth planning session, someone had suggested we take the youth group whitewater rafting in the summer. Sure, I thought. Why not? Never mind the fact that I’m not a swimmer. Why does that matter? We’ll be in a boat! So we did the research, found out that one of the best places to raft is the New River in West Virginia, and we drove out there, two vans full of youth and adults. The next day, we loaded into the company’s vans and drove down to the river. As we travelled, I remembered the safety instructions we had been given that morning. You know, they had told us comforting things like, “Whitewater rafting is an adventure sport that could result in death or other serious injury.” Then they said, “Please sign this waiver.” Death or other serious injury? I’m sorry; to me, death is more than an injury. I was starting to wonder what I had gotten myself into.

When we arrived at the launching point, there was another group ahead of us, so I watched as they loaded into their rafts and started down the river. Then it was our turn. Now, as a non-swimmer, I would have been perfectly happy at that point had they said, “I’m sorry, the rafts are full, we need someone to stay behind.” Me! Me! Pick me! But they didn’t say that. Instead, they said it was time to get into the river. So with the threat of “death or other serious injury” hanging over us, we dutifully drug our rafts into the water and then jumped in and began to paddle. Miraculously, we all made it to the end of the river in one piece, with very few actual injuries. But you know, what made the difference in getting down the raging river safely was the fact that there were others with me in the raft. I wasn’t alone. I didn’t have to do all the paddling, and I didn’t have to keep the raft afloat by myself. And once I knew I could survive it, I actually had a lot of fun. We went back a couple of other times to get into the river.

Because if you’re going to experience all that whitewater rafting has to offer, you have to get into the river. You can’t stand on the shore. You can’t watch from a distance. We brought home a video of our rafting trip, and while watching it was fun, it wasn’t the same experience as being in the river, surrounded by others who are experiencing the same thrill, the same discovery, the same journey, only from different perspectives. You have to get in the river, and I’ve been thinking about that during this series we’re working through on reading and studying the Bible. There are a lot of folks who want to approach the Bible the same way I tried to approach whitewater rafting. We want to stand on the side, maybe hear a few words from the Bible on Sunday, but we’d really rather not get too involved in this book. And sometimes we’ll say it’s because we don’t understand what we read. After all, as Chris Webb puts it, “The Bible comes to every one of us as something wholly strange and unusual, a world sketched out in awkward and irreconcilable angles. It alternately comforts and jars, inspires and grates. Scripture is untidy, unwieldy, difficult. We stretch our minds to make sense of it…Yet the Bible resists us at every turn. It will not cooperate, it will not conform to our schemas, it will not be tamed” (Fire of the Word, pg. 31). I can relate to that. There are things I don’t understand, but deep down, sometimes, like Mark Twain once said, I should be more worried about the parts I do understand than the parts I don’t. There is a lot in the Bible I understand but just fail to live, to follow, to do. And so I stand on the shore, not wanting to get into the river because it might sweep me away. It will do that. However, if we’re really going to encounter Jesus in the pages of this book, we have to get in. We need to get into the water.

And we’ll need others along on our journey. We can’t do it alone. So this week and next, we’re going to be talking about what it means to read the Bible in community. Next week, we’re going to talk about the importance of small groups, but today, I want us to focus on reading with what the book of Hebrews calls “the great cloud of witnesses” (12:1), the larger body of Christ. Within the Christian tradition, there are at least six streams of living water, six traditions or ways of approaching the Christian faith. One of the beauties of the Methodist tradition, and one of the reasons I continue to be a Methodist, is that John Wesley had this wonderful way of pulling out the best of many different streams of the faith, many different traditions and helping us experience Jesus and the living God in many different ways. Each of these streams or traditions could be a sermon by themselves, but this morning I want to just briefly look at these six streams and, more importantly, help us see what each part of our faith brings to our understanding of the Bible. How do these various Christian ways of viewing life help us read the Bible? And then the question I’m going to ask at the end is this: which of these streams are you lacking? Because we really need all of these streams coming together to form the river of life, the river that John in the book of Revelation sees as flowing from throne of God (cf. Revelation 22:1). If we’re going to read the Bible effectively, we need to get into the river and allow others to come along with us.

The first stream is the contemplative tradition. Now, that sounds to some of us like going out in the wilderness to a monastery and becoming a monk or a nun. In reality, what we’re calling “contemplative” could also be called the prayer-filled life. It’s not a life that only a few are called to; it’s a life we’re all invited to participate in. In the midst of their busy lives, Jesus invited his disciples to “come with me by yourselves to a quiet place” (Mark 6:31). Paul called believers to “pray continually,” or, as some translations say, “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). And of course the Bible is full of the prayers of God’s people, especially (as I mentioned last week) in the psalms. The psalms are prayers of all sorts and have brought both comfort and challenge to praying people for centuries. In many ways, prayer is the language of love between ourselves and our creator. I mean, think about those you love. If you never talked to them, would they know? What kind of a relationship would you have? It would be like the man and woman who had been married for forty years, but she was ready to leave. When they went to counseling, the counselor asked what was wrong. “He never tells me he loves me,” she said. The counselor asked the man if that was true, and he said, “I told her I loved her forty years ago, and if that changes, I’ll let her know.” You can’t have a relationship with someone you don’t talk to. The contemplative life calls us to engage Scripture prayerfully and helps us see the Bible as a book of prayer.

The Gospel of Luke is, many scholars say, the Gospel of prayer (cf. Card, Luke: The Gospel of Amazement, pg. 21). From the very beginning of the book, people are in prayer. Zechariah, Simeon, Anna, and perhaps most importantly, Mary, the mother of Jesus. In Luke 1, Mary encounters an angel who tells her the greatest news she’s ever heard: she’s going to give birth to the Messiah, the Savior. The song she sings later in that same chapter is one of the great prayers of the Bible (Luke 1:46-55). Mary was just going about her business; she wasn’t a priest or a religious leader. She was just a girl living in a small town, living her day-to-day life. Her life reminds us how the contemplative life is not a special vocation. It’s not just for religious professionals. It’s a calling to be prayerful as we approach the Scriptures, and to pray the words of Scripture. As we jump into the stream of the contemplative life, we experience the nearness and the love of God pouring forth through the pages of the Bible. Prayer is the language of the heart.

The second stream we can call the virtuous life, or the holiness tradition. Early on in his dealings with the Hebrew people, God told them, “Be holy, because I am holy” (Leviticus 11:44), a theme Peter picked up in his writings (1 Peter 1:16). Jesus told his followers, “Be perfect…as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). The call to holy living is all throughout the Bible. Unfortunately, we hear “holy” and we think of “holier than thou.” We think of people who lord their “right living” over others and feel compelled to judge others because they are so virtuous. But that’s not what holiness is. There are right ways and wrong ways to live. There are things that please God and things that do not. No question about that. The Bible is clear. This gets us back to those things we do understand and simply don’t follow. But we confuse the call to holiness and make it a call to legalism. The Bible’s call is to holiness of heart. It’s not about rule keeping; it’s about loving God and loving others. It’s not about getting into heaven because of our good works; it’s about cooperating with the work of the Holy Spirit in our world. It’s not about appearing perfect. There are plenty of people who try to appear perfect. I think I’ve told you before about a women in my home church when I was growing up who seemed to have it all together. A good marriage. The perfect family. A seemingly deep faith. And one day she left it all. She walked out. It meant nothing to her any longer. It’s not about appearing perfect; it’s about purity of heart, about having our hearts in tune with God. And it results in joy. Holiness is not meant to be a burden, because it’s living life the way God intended it to be. Jesus described it this way: “My yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:30). That simply means that what he calls us to do and who he calls us to be—this call to holy living—is meant to bring joy, not to be a burden.

So in the holiness tradition we read the Bible seeking to know how God calls us to live. What does the holy life look like? Unfortunately, even those who have been a part of the “holiness tradition” have often settled on outward symbols of holiness, and do you know why? Because those are easier to measure and manage than inward holiness of heart. The college that sat across the street from my seminary was often that way. There were strict rules, even in terms of what people wore to class. One of the rules (that was done away with when we were there, by the way) was that women had to wear dresses to class and in public on campus. Now, what a dress had to do with holiness is beyond my ability to figure out. I’m not sure how that showed some deeper love for God. The holy life is not about focusing on externals or judging someone by your list of rules. It’s about seeking to live the way Jesus would have us live and leaving the judging to God.

The third stream of the Christian life is the charismatic tradition, or the Spirit-empowered life. For some of us, that word “charismatic” brings up all sorts of images, not all of which are positive. But the word itself simply refers to the the work of the Holy Spirit, something the Gospels and all of the Bible attest to. The “charismata” (to use the Greek word) are simply the gifts of the Spirit, what he gives to believers and to churches in order to see the work of ministry accomplished. Jesus is described as having the Holy Spirit descend on him at the time of his baptism (cf. Matthew 3:16-17) and we know from Acts 2 that, when Jesus returned to the Father, the Spirit came to live within believers, to give gifts and abilities so that the Gospel would be proclaimed throughout the world. The Spirit has worked in all sorts of ways throughout history, up to the present day. In fact, if the Holy Spirit is not working in a church, it’s not a church. Now, it is the case that some branches of the Christian church have become overly focused on particular gifts, especially those that are supernatural or look like magic of some sort. But the picture in the Bible is that, while the gifts of the Spirit are given here and there, the deeper work of the Spirit is to grow the fruit of the Spirit in us: “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23). The real evidence of the Spirit’s presence is not a particular gift but the growing fruit.

When we neglect the Spirit’s work, it’s far too easy to reduce God to someone manageable, someone tame, someone small. The Spirit reminds us that, ultimately, we are not in control. When we read the Scriptures in the charismatic tradition, we’re see God who is bigger than we can handle. We see a God who calls us to do things that, if he doesn’t show up, will fail. We learn to trust in a God who doesn’t always tell us all the details but leads us on the path we should go. We often talk about the Bible being “inspired” by the Holy Spirit, and some people take that to mean that the Spirit dictated each word. That’s not what we mean when we talk about the inspiration of the Scriptures. Rather, the Spirit worked through individual human beings, and sometimes communities, to be able to show us what God wanted us to know. The Spirit continues to do that as we read these ancient words. The charismatic tradition calls us to trust that, even when we can’t control it or understand it, God is working.

Next, we come to the compassionate life, or as some call it, the social justice tradition. Here is one where we Methodists tend to excel. This tradition hears the clear call of the Bible to care for the least, the last and the lost. The prophets in the Old Testament make this call over and over again. Micah, for one, says it clearly: “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (6:8). Jesus picked up that same theme, because the people he most often hung out with were not the wealthy, the well-to-do. He didn’t hang out with power brokers or politicians. He hung out with prostitutes, beggars, fishermen, widows, lepers, children—in other words, those who had nothing, those who were worth about nothing in their society. Jesus came to bring healing and hope to the folks who were on the underside of life. When we swim in the compassionate stream, we hear the Bible’s call to reach out and make a difference in the lives of others.

As Luke tells it, this was Jesus’ primary mission while he was on earth. In the Gospel lesson we read this morning, Jesus gets a chance to preach at his hometown synagogue. According to Luke, this is the first time Jesus preaches after his temptation in the wilderness. Now, he’s not actually the preacher of the day. He is “clean-up batter.” At the end of the synagogue service, there was and is a portion of Scripture to be read called the haphtarah, and any young man from the community might be asked to read that and make a comment on the passage if he wanted to. That’s what Jesus is doing here. He selects a passage from Isaiah to read; remember, he’s reading from a scroll without chapter or verse numbers, so he’s very intentional about the passage he chooses to read. It’s a brief reading from Isaiah 61: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (4:18-19). Then he says, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” (4:21). This is shocking, because what he’s read is really a reference to the year of Jubilee, a year promised (cf. Leviticus 25) by God to happen every fifty years, a year when everything would be reset: slaves would be set free, land would return to its original owners and all debts would be cancelled. Now, it’s not hard to see why there is no evidence that, despite a clear Biblical command, the Hebrews never practiced Jubilee. It’s too much for us to want to give up the debt, the slave, the land. But Jesus says in him, Jubilee has come to pass. Everything is about to be made right. Slaves to sin will be set free, debts to God will be cancelled, and our eternal inheritance will be secured. He is the fulfillment of the promise of Jubilee (cf. Card 69-71). Things are about to be made right for all people, and that’s why they try to throw him off the cliff near Nazareth at the end of this story. He’s a threat. He’s dangerous. Making the world right, leveling the playing field—that’s more than we want in a savior. He has not come to make us feel good; he has come to give us himself—to set things right. Jesus calls us to see the compassionate life in the Scriptures. And from this moment in Luke’s Gospel, he goes out and brings healing, hope, life. Compassion flows from him as he attends to the needs of others. The same should be said of us as we read with compassionate eyes.

The next stream is the evangelical stream, or the word-centered life. The word “evangelical” has, unfortunately, become all-too-political these days, but it wasn’t meant to refer to a particular political persuasion. Rather, the evangelical tradition centers on a personal experience of conversion to Jesus Christ, an insistence on sound doctrine, and a call to share the good news with others. In some ways, disciples like Peter and preachers like Paul remind us of this. Their teaching and preaching was deeply rooted in Israel’s history, in their Scripture. On the day of Pentecost, when Peter tries to explain to the crowd what has happened to them, he reaches back into the Old Testament to show that such a day had been promised, and then he invites people to put their trust in Jesus, the Savior (cf. Acts 2:14-41). Paul was also deeply rooted in the Scripture, and held it with high esteem. In his letters, you can see him wrestling with what those ancient words meant for people in his day. You also hear him calling people to trust even more in Jesus. No one in our time has lived up to that sort of calling more than Billy Graham, who faithfully preached the gospel to millions around the world, calling people everywhere to trust in Jesus. Now, I know there have been detractors for Graham’s methods, and undoubtedly there have been some who have gone forward for the altar call and haven’t stayed with Jesus. But I’ve known many, many more who have. The reality is, the same thing can be said of the local church. We call people to Jesus, some choose to trust in him but not all stay with him. And yet we keep offering Jesus, inviting people to follow him.

Reading the Bible with evangelical eyes, contrary to what you’ll likely hear on most Christian television, is a call to share our faith, to witness about Jesus has done in our lives in every moment. It’s rooting our faith firmly in what the Bible says—so we’ll have to know what it says. And then it’s taking that faith out, living it out, speaking about it, and holding firm to this faith we have been handed. You know, there are a lot of temptations and pressures today to compromise, to change the faith we’ve been given. One Episcopal bishop even wrote a book titled Why Christianity Must Change or Die. That challenge and that pressure is nothing new. Paul wrote to his young protege Timothy these words: “I give you this charge: Preach the word…For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths” (2 Timothy 4:1-4). The word-centered life equips us so that we can share the truth of the gospel.

And that brings us to the final stream: the sacramental life or the incarnational tradition. The word “sacrament” simply means an outward sign of an invisible grace; it’s something we do that represents something happening inside of us. In the Protestant church, we have two sacraments: baptism and communion. Baptism uses water to represent God’s claim on us, God’s cleansing of us. Communion uses bread and grape juice to represent what Jesus did for us, that he gave his life to save us from sin, death and the grave. In both cases, we do something in order to represent something that can’t be seen. The incarnational tradition calls us to take what we’ve read, what we’ve experienced, the ways we have encountered Jesus in the text and live it out. It invites us to celebrate what one ancient author called “the sacrament of the present moment.” It reminds us that every moment is a moment for worship, service and love of God. Paul probably best described this tradition in his letter to the Colossians: “Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (3:17). Living in such a way calls us to recognize that every moment and every action is informed by what we’ve read and by the ways we’ve been influenced by Christians past and present. Every moment is a moment in which we either live to give honor to God or in which we turn our backs on God. When we live out the faith we have read, we are honoring him. When we deny the faith we have read, we turn our backs on him. Everything is an occasion for living our faith: putting away the dishes in the kitchen, reading the Bible or any other book, shopping at the store, cheering your team on to victory or defeat, the way we talk about others, the way we treat our spouse and our children, showing up at work on time and being ready to do the task we’ve been assigned—I could go on and on, but I think you get the idea. Every moment is a God-moment.

The sacramental or incarnational tradition brings all of the traditions and all the ways we read the Bible together. It’s, again, like my experience on the New River. Any one of the smaller streams that feed into that river would not suffice for a full whitewater rafting experience. It’s only when they all come together, when they flow together that you get the whole thrill. The same is true in our reading of the Bible. If we lean on one particular tradition, we can become unbalanced. We need to learn to read in the midst of the whole river of God, the whole scope of Biblical and Christian tradition so that we can hear the whole message of God. Saints from past generations, brothers and sisters from this generation from different traditions come together and enhance each other’s understanding of the text. We need each other. One of the richest times of my life was many years ago when I was part of an ecumenical group of pastors who got together each Tuesday morning to talk about what we were going to preach the next Sunday. We would talk about the texts we were going to be working with, and then invite others’ input. That was rich because in that group were people who were more conservative than me and some who were more liberal than me. They all enhanced my understanding, because I needed those other traditions. I may not have changed my reading of the text, but hearing those other perspectives gave me a better vantage point from which to preach. We need each other. We need all the streams to come together, and we need to be in the river with each other.

One more story, this one from Luke 10, a story many of you probably know. Jesus has come to a town called Bethany to visit his friends, Mary, Martha and their brother Lazarus. Martha immediately does what she knows she is supposed to do. The Middle Eastern culture, still today, is governed by strong rules of hospitality. You take care of guests, no questions asked. So Martha goes to the kitchen to make dinner for Jesus and his twelve disciples. I mean, just picture what you be like if thirteen big, burly fishermen suddenly showed up hungry for dinner. Martha’s a bit frazzled. Mary, her sister, however, joins the men in the living room. She sits down at Jesus’ feet, like any disciple would, to listen to what Jesus is saying. Now, the houses were not so big that Martha couldn’t hear Jesus in the kitchen. I’m fairly certain she was listening, but she’s also beginning to stew a bit because she needs help. Mary has no business sitting in there with the men. It wasn’t proper in that time and place. Luke says that the longer this went on, Martha became “distracted,” and finally she’s had enough. She storms in, interrupts whatever teaching Jesus is giving, and says, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!” And of course, Jesus should have. That would have been the “right” thing to do. But he doesn’t. He tells Martha, “Mary has chosen what is better” (Luke 10:38-42). And for centuries, because of that, we’ve understood that sitting at the feet of Jesus is somehow more important than fixing dinner. Many, many sermons on this passage condemn Martha and praise Mary. But Jesus doesn’t condemn Martha. He points out how “worried and upset” she is, but he doesn’t condemn her. What Martha is doing is needed. And what Mary is doing is needed. Both actions, both responses to Jesus are important and vital. Mary and Martha need each other, just like we need each other across traditions, across expectations, across all the lines we draw in order to fully understand what Jesus is up to.

So, I promised I would ask you this question: which of these streams are you lacking? Where are you unbalanced in your reading, interaction with and understanding of Scripture? Whichever one is most needed in your life, seek to read the Bible this week through those eyes. Contemplative: seek to read prayerfully. Holiness: listen for where God is calling you to be more like him. Charismatic: seek the fruit of the Spirit. Compassionate: ask the text how God is calling you to serve others. Evangelical: find a place you can share what you read with someone. And incarnational: remember that every moment is meant for living out this faith. Allow the streams of Christian tradition to flow together in your life. And those differences that we get so hung up on? Oddly, when you step fully into the river, you come to realize that God is big enough and strong enough to be able to handle our little differences. So this week, step into the river and grab the hand of our strong God (cf. Foster, Life With God, pgs. 103-129).

Word Made Flesh

Sermon Study Guide is here.

John 20:1-18

July 14, 2013 • Portage First UMC

VIDEO INTRO

“Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body” (Ecclesiastes 12:12). Those words were written centuries ago, but they certainly apply today, perhaps more than ever. It’s estimated that the human race publishes a new book every thirty seconds, and that 81% of Americans feel they should write a book. There are books upon books; if you don’t believe me, just ask my wife! Buying books is an occupational hazard for me, and I keep saying I’m not going to buy anymore until I read the ones I have—then a great deal comes along, or a book that I have to read comes out—well, the reality is, that promise doesn’t last very long. The other day, this addiction really came home to me when I was looking for a particular book and came across a couple of other books I hadn’t read. In fact, I remembered buying them when I was in seminary, and I’ve never read them. That was over twenty years ago. Chances are, those books are never going to get read. We read for a wide variety of reasons: to gain information, to be inspired, to support our own beliefs (when was the last time you read a book that was contrary to what you already thought?), or just for entertainment. I usually have many books going at the same time, because each book meets a different need. Cathy doesn’t understand that, as she generally focuses on one book at a time. But I live by the belief: “so many books, so little time!”

We also live in an age when, in spite of so many books being published, bookstores are routinely going out of business—even large chain bookstores. People are turning to online booksellers and even to eBooks or audiobooks to meet their needs. I admit I’m part of the problem; I can’t tell you the last time I bought a book in a bookstore. I usually browse, then get on my phone and see where I can get it cheaper. It’s also true that, in many cases, we simply don’t read as much as we used to. We get what we want in sound bites and short snippets from the internet, from television, or from Facebook. So what do we do, then, in a world like that, when we, as Christians, are people of a book—the Book? From the beginning, the people of God have looked to the Bible, the Scriptures, as their guide for life. The founder of Methodism, John Wesley, wanted to be known as a “man of one book.” Even though he read widely, he always came back to the Bible as the ground of his belief, his faith and his hope. The Bible was his standard by which everything else in his life was measured. That has not changed for the people called Methodist. Our church today calls the Bible “the primary source and criterion of Christian doctrine” (2012 Book of Discipline). Other “sources” might be tradition, reason or experience, but the Bible is always where we start. So if the Bible is that important, why are we as a people largely Biblically illiterate? One article a couple of years ago observed that Americans love their Bibles so much that most of us keep them in pristine, unopened condition. George Gallup observed, “Americans revere the Bible but, by and large, they don't read it.” Time magazine found “that only half of U.S. adults could name one of the four Gospels. Fewer than half could identify Genesis as the Bible's first book. Jay Leno and Stephen Colbert have made sport of Americans' inability to name the Ten Commandments—even among members of Congress who have pushed to have them posted publicly” (“Why Johnny Can’t Read the Bible,” Christianity Today, May 24, 2010).

Perhaps that’s why, when we asked about sermon topics for this year, learning more about the Bible and how to study it was a close second to topics about life and death. We know we should understand the Bible, but many of us struggle—even to see it as one whole story, which is why Pastor Deb began last week by helping us see that. When we read the Bible in worship, we get such disjointed pieces, a passage here and a verse there. Few of us invest the time to really allow the message of the whole Bible to soak into our lives. If all we seek to get out of the Bible is information or a way to back up our arguments about what we believe, if all we do is use the Bible to prove what we already think, we’re misusing this book. I want to suggest that reading the Bible should do more in our lives than simply serve as a history lesson, and to do that, I want to first consider the story of the resurrection from John 20 as a parable for our lives.

Now, when I saw I want to look at it as a parable, I’m not saying I don’t believe it’s a true story. I do. I hope you know that. But I think in the midst of the truth of the story is a picture of what the Bible ought to do for us and in us, because the whole point of reading the Bible is to encounter Jesus, and that’s what happens to Mary in this story. Let me explain by first setting the scene. It’s Sunday morning on the worst weekend of Mary’s life. She has watched her lord and master, Jesus, be nailed to a Roman cross on Friday, and then she watched as he was put into a borrowed tomb just before the Sabbath began. They have waited through the Sabbath, the day of rest, the day when they were not allowed to do any work, and now early on Sunday morning, she heads out to the garden where Jesus was buried. Luke (24:1) says there were other women with her, but John wants us to focus on Mary, to be able to see clearly her transformation. When they find the tomb empty, Mary runs back, tells the disciples, only two of which (Peter and John) care enough to go check things out for themselves. The others are too tired, too defeated, too depressed or too something by recent events. Mary’s story is just too unbelievable to them. (She’s a woman, after all, and women weren’t considered reliable witnesses in the first century.) They aren’t going to have their hopes dashed once again. But Peter and John are at least willing to check things out, and Mary apparently follows them back, because after they leave (they’re not quite sure what has happened at the tomb, though John seems to begin to believe at this point), Mary remains behind in the garden. This is where I want us to watch her very carefully.

Mary looks into the tomb again. Perhaps she saw some of the hope that was on John’s face as he ran by, and she wants to see what he saw. Earlier, the tomb had been empty. Now, there are two angels there, asking her why she’s crying. “I can’t find Jesus,” she says, and then she turns around. Now, again, I have no doubt that she did literally turn around, but in John’s writings, it’s also important to know that “turning around” refers to seeing things from a different perspective. In Revelation, for instance, the writer often “turns around” before he sees something brand new. So Mary turns around, and she sees another man. She assumes he is the gardener. Was he dressed like a gardener? Was he pulling weeds out of the flower beds? Or was it just because she didn’t expect to see anyone there that early in the morning, and if it was anyone, it must be someone taking care of the garden and the tomb? “Who are you looking for?” he asks. Notice he doesn’t say “what are you looking for.” “Who.” And she tells him the same story: “I have no idea where Jesus is. Did you move him?” And that’s when the gardener calls her by name: “Mary.” Was there something in his voice that suddenly opened her eyes and helped her see who he really was? Was it the way he said her name? Or was it the simple fact that he knew her name, when he wouldn’t have if he were just a gardener? Whatever she heard in his voice, in that moment, she became part of his story. Her eyes were opened, and she knew that the gardener was really the one she had been looking for all along: Jesus. “Teacher!” she cries out. Suddenly, the tears are gone (except maybe for tears of joy) because she has found the one her heart has been looking for. She can’t wait to tell the others. She runs back to where they are staying and calls out, “I have seen the Lord!”

It’s my contention that we often approach the Bible like Mary first approached the tomb. We glance in, see what’s there, and we run away, off to whatever is next on our agenda. That’s assuming we even open the Bible. For some of us, the only time we “read” the Bible is here on Sundays, and the only study we get is what the pastors do. Research shows we’re all too often like the other disciples, back in the upper room, not even bothering to go to the garden (to the Bible) ourselves. And if we do, we sometimes go having no idea what we’re looking for. Perhaps a verse to inspire us or to post on Facebook or Twitter. Maybe something that will make us feel better that day. That’s a “what” approach to the Bible: “What are you looking for?” Something for me, something that centers on me. But anytime we approach the Bible, we should be looking for Jesus. We should take a “who” approach: “Who are you looking for?” It is the Christian’s belief that every page of the Bible points to Jesus. The pages of the Old Testament or the Hebrew Scriptures, point toward his coming. We catch glimpses of him in those pages, and we read them and view them through the lens of Jesus. The pages of the Gospels tell us about Jesus, and the rest of the New Testament points us back to him and to what he means in our lives, as well as toward his promised return. Every page of the Bible points to Jesus—are we able to see him there? Often, like Mary outside the tomb, we’re standing right in front of him and we don’t recognize him. We think he is someone or something else. It’s only when we personally encounter Jesus in the pages of the Bible that we are transformed, that our lives are changed. That’s why I say we must not come to the Bible with the intention of just reading a verse for the day, or to settle an argument, or to back up what we already believe. “God will not serve our favorite orthodoxy” (Foster, Life With God, pg. 73). Mary, for instance, didn’t believe in resurrection until she encountered the living Jesus in that garden. He upset and transformed her world in that moment. He will do the same to us if we come with an open and expectant heart. We come to these pages with the desire to encounter him and to allow him to transform us from the inside out.

I want to teach you a way to read the Bible that will help us to read with heart and mind, and will make room for the Scriptures to transform us, but first I want to say a word about “the Word.” We often heard the Bible referred to as “the Word of God,” and I use that language, too, but it’s not really accurate. The Bible itself, in the very beginning of John’s Gospel, talks about “the Word.” You probably remember those verses; we read them at the end of every Christmas Candlelight service: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). John is, of course, referring his readers back to the very beginning of creation, when, according to Genesis, with a word God spoke creation into being. Genesis tells us God spoke, and it was so. John says that same Word which has existed from the very beginning is still around, still living, still powerful. And more than that, his claim is that this Word “became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (1:14). The Word of God is Jesus Christ; he is everything God wanted to say to us. The words of the Bible tell us about and point us toward that Word. The words of the Bible were written across centuries by men and women inspired by the Holy Spirit. Not dictated, inspired. And we believe that the words of the Bible are sufficient for our salvation. They tell us everything we need to know in order to find life with God. When we argue over issues like inerrancy and inspiration and which translation is the best, we’re missing the point. The Word of God is Jesus; the Bible points us toward that Word. And so in everything we must be looking for him in these pages. To do otherwise is to, essentially, waste our time. So how do we do that? How can we allow the Bible to get inside of us? How can our reading of the Bible be more than a “quick snack” and instead become a “gourmet meal”? How can we learn to see Jesus in this book?

There is an ancient practice called “Lectio Divina,” which simply means “spiritual reading,” that has made a comeback of sorts over the past few years. It’s a method by which we allow ourselves to sort of soak in a passage of Scripture. We come to the Bible seeking depth rather than breadth, looking to immerse ourselves in a passage rather than simply read a whole lot at once. There is a place for reading large chunks (like in Disciple class), but this practice is not so much for study as it is for transformation. So I’m going to describe it to you, and then ask you to take the passages that are listed this week for reading in the bulletin and practice this type of reading, of immersion in the Bible. [8:30 & 10:00] In fact, the Titus passage we read this morning is the first one you’ll have a chance to work through tomorrow. Reading it this morning gives you a bit of a head start.

So, before you begin, you’ll need to choose a passage. Now, for the next week, we’ve done that for you. In fact, you could continue to use the suggested readings in the bulletin each week this way, or you can work through a book of the Bible, taking short passages or a single story and focus on it. You’ll most likely want to find a quiet place where you can be undisturbed, and that’s hard to do in our busy world. One of my favorite places to go and read is Starbucks, but even there, the music can sometimes be too loud and people will occasionally break into your space. You need to find a place where you can calm your heart and mind. In fact, Richard Foster, who has taught spiritual formation for many years, suggests we spend sixty seconds in silence to quiet our souls before God before we read (64). To be honest, even though I’m an introvert by nature, I think this is the hardest step for me. I want to just read and get the assignment done. My mind, from the moment I wake up, gets flooded with the day’s agenda, with things that need to get done. It’s hard to slow down, to be quiet, and to allow just sixty seconds, one minute, of quiet is a challenge. It seems like such a long time, but how many minutes do we fritter away on something useless? How many minutes do we spend waiting on other things? Can we take a minute, breathe in and out, push back the heaviness of the day so that we can encounter Jesus in the pages of the Bible? Or, to ask it another way, is encountering Jesus valuable enough that it’s worth a minute of silence? I’m asking myself that as much as anyone else here.

So, choose a passage and get quiet. Then, the first piece of this method is “listening.” You read through the passage once, don’t hurry. This is Mary gazing into the tomb to see what is there. You take your time and allow your heart and mind to hear what really is being said in this Scripture. It may be something you’re familiar with and you’ve read or heard before. But, you know, “just because we have read it doesn’t mean we have heard it” (Peterson, Eat This Book, pg. 92). So the question to ask in this time is this: what catches your attention in the passage? Now, here’s the challenge when we’re reading. We think of the Bible as one book when, in fact, it’s a library of 66 books, written over many centuries by different people in different styles. We can’t read or understand an historical account the same way we read and understand poetry, and we don’t read a letter the same way we read a book like Revelation. There are all sorts of different ways we learn to read. Some folks will say to you, “Well, you just have to take the Bible literally, and that’s all there is to it.” Really? The next time someone says something like that to you, look to see if they have both hands and both eyes, because, you know, Jesus said if our hand causes us to sin, cut it off, and if our eye causes us to sin, pluck it out (Mark 8:43-48). The Bible also says no one is without sin (1 John 1:8; Romans 3:23), so if someone wants to take the Bible strictly literally, they should be missing a hand or an eye. There are parts of the Bible that are historically true. There are also parts of the Bible that are metaphor and imagery, meant to teach us something through the images. We don’t read the two types of literature the same way. I want you to hear me clearly: we always take the Bible seriously, but we can’t always take it strictly literally (Peterson 94). We have to understand what we’re reading and listen closely to what the text is actually saying. So we read and we listen to the message of the text, with a commitment to take what it says seriously. Listen.

The second movement, then, is reflecting. We read back through the passage prayerfully, seeking a word or phrase that is God’s word for us today, this time, this moment. Many times, I have read through a passage that I thought I had all figured out. I’d read it before, I’d preached it, I’d studied it, and yet there in that moment, in the midst of the circumstances of my life right then, God had a fresh word for me. What’s the word, the phrase, the insight, that God is speaking to you through that passage for that day? This is like the moment Mary heard her name spoken by the resurrected Jesus. Suddenly she was part of his story; it became personal. How is Jesus speaking to you in this passage right now? Again, we need to understand what it is we’re reading and what the context is. It’s not correct that we can yank any passage out of its context and assume it was written directly to us. It was not. The letter to the Corinthians was written to a first-century church in Corinth. Contrary to what a lot of people seem to think, the book of Revelation was not written to or about modern America. It was written to seven churches in Asia Minor that were experiencing persecution. A good study Bible will help us in this regard, because “no text can be understood out of its entire context” (Peterson 102). So we seek to reflect and to enter the world of the text. Apply all your senses to the text. Imagine yourself in the midst of the text. What word does Jesus have for you then and there? That’s what we want to take in. It’s like a meal you’re been working on for hours, something special, and you’ve been smelling what’s cooking for a long time. You’re hungry, and then it’s served and you take that first bite. You take what you’ve been anticipating inside of you to give you nourishment. That’s the sort of approach we take when we reflect: longing to hear something from God, and taking it in so that it can begin to work on us, transform us. Reflecting.

This, then, leads us to praying—our response to God. Mary’s response was to call out to him, “Teacher!” Our response could be widely varied, depending on what the message has been to us that day. And God will listen. We take that for granted, sometimes. I was struck by Eugene Peterson’s comment in that regard: “It is a wonder that God speaks to us; it is hardly less a wonder that God listens to us” (Peterson 104). Do we take prayer for granted? The Scriptures ought to call us to new ways of prayer, new wonder as we engage with God, as we respond to what we have read. We may cry out prayers of gratitude, grateful that God has spoken to us through the written word. Or we may offer prayers of confession, admitting how far short we have fallen from what God has called us to do and who God has called us to be. The psalmists very often responded with prayers of lament, mourning their sins and the ways they failed to live out God’s message to them. We may lift up prayers of relief or of praise. The important part here is that we’re engaging God. We’re connecting with God in response to what he has shown us in the Scriptures. Like Mary, we respond because we have begun to see Jesus there. Some folks, wondering what sort of words to use, have turned to the psalms through the centuries for their prayers. The psalms are the prayer book of the Bible, and in those pages we find all sorts of emotions and responses and ways of engaging with God. Anger? Yes, it’s there. Confession? Of course. Joy and praise? Yes! Tears and lament? Big time. Anything goes in prayer (cf. Peterson 105), and we respond out of the way God is working in our hearts. We don’t make excuses for the past; instead, our prayers ought to point us toward the future. Praying leads us, then, to the last piece, obeying.

Obeying is seen in the moment when Mary turns from Jesus, runs back to the Upper Room and does what he told her to do: she tells the others she has seen the Lord. The question for us in obeying is whether or not what we have read has gotten deeply enough inside of us that others notice, that our lives are changed in such a way that we live differently, act more like Jesus. Do our lives proclaim, “I have seen the Lord” in the pages of the Bible? Sometimes we call this “application” or “action steps,” but it’s much more than that. When we take the time to read, reflect and pray, it ought to change us for good, not just long enough to carry out an application. Obeying is seeking to follow the lead of the Holy Spirit in each moment, knowing that the Spirit will not lead us to do things that are contrary to what God has revealed in his Scriptures. He will not lead us to hurt others; he will lead us to love others (cf. John 13:34-35). He will not lead us to perpetuate injustice; he will lead us to be people who allow justice to roll down like water (cf. Amos 5:24). He will not lead us to hate our enemy; he will lead us to love our enemy and do good to those who hurt us (cf. Matthew 5:44). Very often, he will call us to do things that are so contrary to the world’s way of doing things that we might be misunderstood. Obeying is a matter of seeking wisdom for living out this word to us. Peterson says, “It means getting the text into our muscles and bones, our oxygen-breathing lungs and blood-pumping heart” (109). This is where real transformation takes place, fulfilling the promise found in Isaiah 55, where God promises that his word will go out and not return empty. “It...will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it” (55:11). And it will do that through you and me.

Obeying is putting hands and feet to our reading of the text. It’s tying the sanctuary to the world, while at the same time not drawing attention to ourselves but helping others see Jesus in us. It’s not about you. It’s not about me. It’s all about him. He is the Word of God made flesh, but in a very real way, we become Jesus made flesh—the word made flesh in our own day and time—as we live out what we see of Jesus in the pages of Scripture. We live out this Bible in the real world. It’s not something we do with great fanfare, and it most likely is not even something we do with a whole lot of intentionality. As our prayer becomes, “God, help me live this,” we begin to live it unconsciously or subconsciously. The Bible just becomes a part of us. We don’t have to think, “Oh, I’m supposed to love my neighbor today.” We just live in such a way that shows love toward our neighbor—and our enemy. We seek to live in such a way that what we have read becomes a part of us and flows out of us to nourish the dry world around us.

So—listening, reflecting, praying and obeying. Four pieces of “spiritual reading” that can enable us to become the word made flesh to our own world. Now, you may be wondering: how much time each day will this take? I’m already rather busy; I can’t add one more thing! Honestly, other than the time it takes to choose and read the passage, much of the rest of this can and perhaps should take place throughout our entire day. Reflect on the passage as you get the rest of the family ready to head off for the day. Pray through the passage as you drive to work or head out to run errands. And allow the Scripture to permeate every interaction you have during the day. It’s not a matter of going off by yourself for a long, extended period of time. “Spiritual reading” is really something that can be and should be incorporated into our whole life. The goal is to get the words of the Bible into us so that the Word of God (Jesus) can transform us from the inside out.

I was thinking about this the other day when I was working in my garden. I have a love-hate relationship with my garden. I love the fresh produce we get out of it in the late summer and early fall, but I hate all the work that goes into it! I’m not a big fan of yard work in any form! I also have mixed results when it comes to my gardening. Sometimes the plants make it, and sometimes they don’t. Right now, I have tomatoes that are doing fairly well, along with broccoli and cucumbers. But the beans are struggling. Actually, the beans struggle every year. We always plant a whole bunch and only a few come up—and then you have to fight off the rabbits to make sure those survive. But I was struck by the thought that what makes the difference in healthy plants and not-so-healthy plants ultimately is how deep their roots go. It’s the plants that dig deep, that seek sources of nourishment that we can’t see, that really take off and produce what they are supposed to produce. And gently in my soul, God whispered, “It’s the same with you. When you just jump in and jump out of the Bible, looking for a phrase or a passage to inspire you for the moment, you’re not going to grow. It’s only when you dig deep, when you seek places of nourishment other people can’t see, when you allow the word to transform your soul—that’s when you’re going to grow in me.” The seeds that grow are the ones that are planted deep, whether we’re talking about my garden or our souls. This week, spend some time in the Bible—listening, reflecting, praying and then obeying—and see what work God might do in you because you’ve sought the nourishment of his written Word. Will you join me in this adventure? Let’s pray.