Of Books and Itchy Ears

Let’s try a little exercise to begin the sermon today. I’m going to read a paragraph I wrote for an essay on biblical literacy a couple of years ago and you pick out images and phrases that come from the Bible:

Some folks said that he was the apple of his father’s eye [Deut. 32:10; Psalm 17:8; Prov. 7:2]. A prodigal [Luke 15:11-32], the boy had broken his father’s heart by going in search of his fortune in the Promised Land [Exodus 12:25 & elsewhere]. Instead he found himself in an unfamiliar country where the habits of the inhabitants were like the tongues of Babel [Genesis 11:1-9]. He tried to make a go of it by establishing a business and networking with new friends, but a series of downturns and tragedies left him sitting on the ash heap [Job 2:7-8] of his life. Finally, tired of feeling like a stranger in a strange land [Gen 23:4; Ex. 2:24, Psa. 39:12], the boy prayed that he might be delivered from his misfortunes which felt like the belly of the whale [Jonah 1:17-2:2]. He prayed that he might return home despite his father’s admonitions that in pursuing money he was giving himself over to the root of all evil [1 Timothy 6:10]. In his fervency he was sweating blood [Luke 22:44] as he prayed. The next day he started back and when he got home he found that his father met him with an olive branch [Gen. 8:10-11] and forgiveness.

A few weeks ago the Pew Research Center came out with the results of a survey that gave some fairly depressing results. When they asked people to answer 32 basic questions about religion, hardly anyone passed. You know who answered the most correctly? People who identified as atheists or agnostics. They were followed by Jewish and Mormon respondents. Where did mainline Protestants like United Methodists show up? You don’t want to know. They averaged a little over 15 correct answers – less than half. Evangelical Protestants were only a hair better. The conclusion of the researchers was that, despite the fact that the United States is one of the most religious nations in the world, “large numbers of Americans are uninformed about the tenets, practices, history and leading figures of major faith traditions – including their own.”[i]

You know, if just having a Bible were the key to literacy, we Americans would be among the most biblically literate people in the world since about 93% of us have a Bible in our home.[ii] But having a Bible in the home doesn’t make you literate any more than having a dictionary makes you a good speller. If it’s going to be useful, a Bible has to be read. But even here Americans rank pretty high. 75% of us say we have read from the Bible in the last year compared to only a quarter of Spaniards.[iii]

We also have a high view of the Bible. A Barna survey found that 48% of all adults “agreed strongly that the Bible is totally accurate in all of its teachings” and that number has increased by 13% since 1991.[iv] Most of us believe that it is “the inspired word of God.”[v] We say with our lips, at least to surveyors, that the Bible is a critical source for God’s revelation.

Even with all that, though, we have a hard time identifying even basic information about the Bible. Only half of American adults can name just one of the four Gospels. More than half can’t name the first book of the Bible. Ten percent of us believe that Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife.[vi]

So what’s the big deal? I don’t know how electricity works either, but I use it all the time. Does it really make a difference that Christians don’t know the basic information about the Christian faith? Is the name of Noah’s wife really essential information?

In the Second Letter to Timothy, (which is one of the 66 books of the Bible, by the way), the wise apostle writes to young Timothy and says, “Remember.” Remember what you learned. Remember who taught you what you know. Remember those scriptures that formed you and made you. Stay close to the scriptures, (and here he would have been talking about the scriptures we know as the Old Testament), because they are inspired and useful. They will tell you what to teach and they will help you know when there is an error in teaching that is leading people astray. They will form people in righteousness, just like they did you, Timothy, so that they will be ready to go off into the world and to do good works. Stand firm in the story that was given to you, Timothy.

It seems like such a strange exercise. Maybe even a pointless exercise. We stand up here week after week and we force ourselves to read about strange peoples the Amelekites and the Jebusites and we read strange names like Mephibosheth and Jehosophat. We read about strange customs and strange practices that have long since disappeared from the earth. Why would we do such a thing? Who are these ancient Hebrews that we should care? I was born in Virginia. Shouldn’t I care more for Thomas Jefferson and Arthur Ashe?

Questions like that assume that there is no connection between the people of God in Israel and the people of God in Franktown today. Questions like that assume that the only important connections are the ones that I can make and the only identity that matters is the one that I create. But something very dangerous happens when we try to create ourselves. We become empty and at the same time full of ourselves. We make of ourselves a question, as St. Augustine put it in the 5^th century.

I heard an interview recently with a researcher who had worked with a man who had no memory. After undergoing surgery as a young man he had lost the ability to retain any information. So, while he could tell you all about World War II, if you told him that he was celebrating his 80^th birthday he would laugh and say, “That can’t be true.” Each day he would look at his friends and not recognize them. Each day he would forget where he lived. When he began to read he would get to the end of a sentence and not remember how it started.

He said it was like living constantly in a dream. Without memory there was no basis or context for his social relationships. He couldn’t keep track of ongoing events. He was completely disabled.

As Christian people we run the risk of this sort of amnesia when we lose touch with our most basic stories. But it’s worse with us. We also run the risk of intentionally turning our backs on these stories. What was it that Paul warned Timothy about? That the day would come when people would not be content with the stories they had been given. The day would come would they would have itchy ears, anxious to hear some other story, some other message. Something that was easier to hear. Like maybe a gospel that didn’t ask too much of us. Like maybe a gospel that promised us earthly prosperity. Like maybe a gospel that was not very much different than the platform of a particular political party. Like maybe a gospel that affirmed our prejudices, affirmed our lifestyles, affirmed our moral decisions and never challenged us to act differently than we do. Like maybe a gospel that didn’t have much place for a cross, or for the poor, or for those who hunger and thirst after righteousness.

The only way that you get a gospel like that is if you forget. If you forget where you came from, the gospel can be anything you want it to be. If you close the Bible and never crack the cover…if you let it sit there because it seems too difficult or too archaic or too boring or too irrelevant…if you think its stories are too ridiculous, too outlandish, too over the top…if you think the God you meet in the Bible is too hard to understand and too impossible to believe in…then you can make a god out of anything you want. And so we do.

Why do we go back to the Bible? It certainly doesn’t make sense by any other standard in the world. It only makes sense because there are some stories that we claim and there are other stories that claim us. The Bible tells us about the story that we walked into. It’s a story that began a long time before we did. It’s a story that includes tales of people who were a lot like you and me and who had a difficult time living with and loving God, just like we do. But the Bible says these are our ancestors. Crafty old Jacob – yep, that’s my grandfather (with several greats tacked on). Beautiful Queen Esther? My aunt. Jesus? My brother. My savior. The Word of God spoken into a broken world for the salvation of all people.

So what can you do? Here’s a challenge. Just start with one gospel. When the season of Advent begins next month we’ll be reading a lot from the gospel of Matthew. How about reading that one gospel between now and Thanksgiving? Some things won’t make sense. Matthew talks a lot about things that the prophets have said. But the story is clear enough and the Jesus you will meet in Matthew is the same Jesus who is trying to speak into your life and into the life of the world today.

What else can you do? Join a Bible study or create one. Talk to me or Rae if you’d like some ideas about where to start. Use a devotional like the Upper Room, which is out in the narthex, to start entering the Bible a verse at a time with the help of a devotional writer.

Above all else, approach the Bible like your life depends on it. It’s OK to rage at it, question it, wrestle with it…to study it with all the questions and suspicions that come from being who you are. But expect that there is a life-giving word for you there. Because God still speaks through these ancient words. And God has a message for you and for the world. Just don’t go there unless you want to be transformed.

I’ve been struggling with the Bible my whole life. Sometimes it’s like my crazy relative that I look at and say, “Really? I’m related to him?” But sometimes it’s like my grandmother who could take anything I was going through and turn it into love and warmth. Why do I study the Bible? Because it hasn’t given up on me yet. And if I ever get to the point where my memory fails and I can’t remember one solitary thing about who I am, I hope I can at least remember the words of one of the first church songs I ever learned: Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. Thanks be to God.

2 Timothy 3:14 - 4:5

But you: continue in the things you learned and believed. You know from whom you learned them, and you also know that from earliest childhood you have known the sacred writings, which have the power to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All God-inspired writings are also useful for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting faults, for bringing someone up in righteousness, so that the person of God may be fully ready, equipped completely for every good work.

I charge you on behalf of God and Christ Jesus, the one who is coming to judge the living and the dead, and looking to his revelation and his reign: preach the word, stand ready whether the time seems right or not, rebuke, reprove, invite, with all patience and teaching. Because the time will come when sound teaching will not be accepted but instead everyone will gather teachers that titillate the ears as each one sees fit, and they will turn their ears away from truth, but will go out of their way for fictions.

But you: be clear-headed in everything, bear afflictions, do the work of one who announces good news, fulfill your ministry.

---

[i] “US Religious Knowledge Survey,” The Pew Forum on Religious and Public Life, 28 September 2010, http://pewforum.org/Other-Beliefs-and-Practices/U-S-Religious-Knowledge-Survey.aspx.

[ii] Cindy Wooden, “Not an easy read: Survey indicates Bible hard to understand,” Catholic News Service, May 2, 2008, http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0802435.htm.

[iii] “Vatican survey compares Americans and Europeans on biblical literacy,” June 3, 2008, The Christian Century, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1058/is_11_125/ai_n25486031/print?tag=artBody;col1.

[iv] “The Bible,” Barna Reach Group summary of surveys on the Bible and biblical literacy, http://www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page=BarnaUpdateNarrow&BarnaUpdateID=216&Pa.

[v] “One-Third of Americans Believe the Bible is Literally True,” Gallup News Service, May 25, 2007, http://www.gallup.com/poll/27682/One-Third-Americans-Believe-Bible-Literally-True.aspx.

[vi]Stephen Prothero, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know – and Doesn’t, [Harper One: New York, 2007], p. 39.

Truly, Madly, Deeply

Something is stealing my brain. I’ll bet it’s stealing yours, too. Its goal is to keep me from focusing. It doesn’t want my mind to give concentrated attention to anything. Not to the book in front of me. Not to the presenter trying to offer a lecture. Not to the road I’m driving down. Not to the environment around me. Not to my cat. Especially not to God. Especially not to prayer or meditation or Bible study.

It started with cell phones. I remember how strange it was when I started hearing people talking on cell phones regularly. I remember where I was. I was at a gas station filling up my car. There were 3 other cars at the pump with me. And two of the other people started talking, so I assumed they were talking to me, but, no, they were on cell phones. The four of us were all standing within 20 feet of each other, but none of us was really there.

Then it was the Internet. My first step away from a typewriter was a word processor, which I thought was about the most incredible device ever. It had this funky orange screen and you could type on it and then push a button and it would print out pages using this special paper that allowed you to burn words into it. Absolutely amazing. But it didn’t do anything else.

Now on my computer there is the constant temptation to check email. Check my Facebook. Chat with people. Check the sports scores. Watch the dancing baby video on YouTube. Giving the project in front of me my full attention is an effort. A challenge. A chore. Giving that sort of attention to God? It can seem like a fantasy. Can you relate? Something is stealing our brains and we are letting it happen.

So today we’re starting a focus in worship that I’m kind of calling the Truly, Madly, Deeply series. That was the name of a romantic comedy awhile back but I want to use those three adverbs as a way to describe the kind of love I want to have for God again. I don’t want a superficial relationship with God. I don’t want to settle for an occasional glancing reference to Jesus. I don’t want to blog about my relationship to God. I don’t want to refer to it as though it were an old fling that I’ve outgrown. I don’t want to be a stranger to God. I don’t want to settle for a kind of faux friendship – like maybe God is somebody I allow to see my profile on Facebook and to whom I’ll occasionally tweet but never really talk to. God deserves more than 140 characters of my life. I want to fall truly, madly, deeply in love with Her. And here’s the thing – I know God wants the same thing and has built me to love that way.

It’s easy to forget that we’re made that way. We like to think we can make it on our own and that we don’t need a relationship like that. We’re Americans, right? We pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. Wasn’t that the essence of the Horatio Alger stories of the 19^th century?

Believing that has given us a great optimism about the future and a great sense of potential, but it can have some nasty side effects. There’s a scene in the television show The Simpsons where Bart Simpson finds himself sitting down to dinner with his family and the pastor of their church. He’s asked to give the blessing and his father groans, knowing that Bart is bound to say something inappropriate. Sure enough, what Bart prays is: “Thank you, God, for nothing. We worked hard to earn the money for this food. We bought it at the store and my mom cooked it. Amen.”

In its own satirical way, The Simpsons was pointing out what happens when we become a forgetful people. It’s the same danger Moses warned the people of Israel about when they were heading into the Promised Land after years of wandering in the wilderness. In Deuteronomy chapter 8, verse 17 Moses says, “Do not say to yourself, ‘My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth.’ But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth.”

We think we can do it on our own. We think we don’t need to be grateful. We think we don’t have to return to the center, to return to God. We think that to love God truly, madly, deeply is to be weak or foolish or naïve. We think we can do it on. We think we have to do it on our own. We’ve been burned so often by things and people in which we placed our trust that we can’t risk going there again. We are told that we can’t trust others and maybe we feel like we can’t trust God. Have you ever felt this?

Jesus was starting to walk towards Jerusalem. He’s moving away from Galilee where he has been teaching and we know where he’s going. We know what Jerusalem means. It means the cross. It means the humiliation. It means the suffering. It means death. But it’s where Jesus has to go. It’s where God is going to set all things right.

So Jesus moves along on the border between Samaria and Galilee and he comes to a village where there are ten men standing at a distance and they are united by just one thing – they all have leprosy, a hideous skin disease. But it’s not just the disease that’s the problem. In Jesus’ day having leprosy meant a long, slow death and lifetime living on the edges of the village. People with leprosy were considered unclean. People with leprosy, if they touched anyone else, could make others unclean. These were isolated men who respected Jesus by keeping their distance when they called out to him.

But let me tell you what lepers know. People with leprosy didn’t have any illusions about who they were or what it took to survive. They could not believe that they could make it on their own because their illness forced them to see something that it takes some other people a lifetime to realize – that they were absolutely dependent on a community that could provide what little resources they could beg from them. Survival on their own was not an option. They knew their limits and they knew that it would take something bigger than themselves to get by.

Jesus saw them, but he didn’t heal them right away. No, he tells them to go show themselves to the priest, which is what you would do if you hoped to be declared clean from a skin disease. On the way to the priest, they were all healed. Their exile was over. They could now go on to live.

One of the men paused before beginning his new life, though. Just one. He turned around and went back to Jesus. He wasn’t even a member of Jesus’ race. He was a Samaritan and not a Jew. But that’s the one that returned and fell down at Jesus’ feet. He could fall down at Jesus’ feet now! He didn’t have to call from a distance. He didn’t have to holler out for mercy from the edges of the crowd. He could fall down at Jesus’ feet and he did. He praised God and he thanked Jesus. Truly, madly, deeply.

Jesus was startled. At least he seemed to be. He was startled to see who had come back – this foreigner whom Jews considered to be outside the covenant with God. But he said to the man, “Get up and go on your way. Your faith has made you whole.” The Samaritan had found his way to true wholeness. He hadn’t just been healed; he had gotten in touch with something much deeper. He had gotten in touch with that part of himself that was restlessly waiting to respond to God and to connect him to the grace that makes all things new.

How do I know that there is such a place in the human heart? How do I know that we are made that way? Because the Bible tells me so. Psalm 65, my favorite psalm, begins with words that can be translated like this: “For you, praise waits in still repose, God.” For you, praise is waiting. There is a place within me, within you that needs to praise the living God. There is within me a place waiting to respond to grace. There is within me a song of joy that needs to be lifted up and a hymn of thanksgiving to be sung. ‘There’s within my heart a melody, Jesus whispers sweet and low. Fear not, I am with thee, peace, be still, in all of life’s ebb and flow’? Do you know what I’m talking about?

And we are letting the Internet eat our brains? We are letting the distractions of this life take away that joy? When what our souls desire more than anything else is to love God truly, madly, deeply.

O, I know, there are cares and woes, aren’t there? There are trials and temptations, aren’t there? There are losses we grieve, loved ones that we miss. There are dreams yet unfulfilled and there are moments of darkness and despair. There are relationships that need mending and challenges that need tending. There are addictions we can’t seem to overcome and there are children who worry us, parents who just can’t understand. There are money woes and school issues. There is low self-esteem and high gas prices. There are moral failings and unfinished business. There are cats. There are so many things that can keep us from God.

That’s not all there is, though, is it? You know your blessings. You know that if you wanted to or needed to you could start counting them this moment and never finish. Some of them are as obvious as the sun in the morning sky. And some are unseen but no less real.

You don’t have to count your blessings, though, to know how grateful you are. All you have to do is look into your heart, because praise is waiting there. God is waiting there and even if we lost all the world, we would not lose this grateful heart because it was given to us by Jesus Christ, who knew you didn’t have a lot of things to count to know that you were blessed. In the end, stripped of everything he had, he stretched out his arms and blessed us and blessed God. He loved us truly, madly, deeply, with everything he had.

You can love like that, too. You can because beyond all the distractions and all the things that call us away to the circus in the city, you have a heart that knows how to love truly, madly, deeply. It may be untrained. It may be unused. But it’s there. And no brain-eating evil can take it away. There’s within my heart a melody, Jesus whispers sweet and low. Fear not, I am with thee, peace, be still. Thanks be to God.

Luke 17:11-19

As he began to go toward Jerusalem, he passed through the middle of Samaria and Galilee. And when he entered a certain village, ten men with leprosy approached him and stood at a distance. They called out saying, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us."

Upon seeing them, he said to them, "Go, show yourselves to the priests." And as they were beginning to go they were made clean.

Now one of them, seeing that he had been healed, retuned with a loud voice praising God, and he fell on his face at his feet, thanking him. And he was a Samaritan.

Jesus responded by saying, "Weren't ten made clean? So where are the other nine? Could no one be found returning to give praise to God except this foreigner?" And he said to him, "Rise, go; your faith has saved you."