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 5th 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 80th 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.
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1 comment:
Thanks for this, Alex!
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