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.