Scripture's Place in our Lives (II Timothy 3:10-17)
Four Bibles I am rather proud in a humble Mennonite sort of way over my little collection of Bibles. I think I have altogether about 15-18 Bibles. I brought four of them along this morning which are the ones I normally use. They are all NRSV Bibles. One is a devotional Bible that Ken passed along to me. Then I have this big bulky Bible, with apocryphal books. This looks like the formal Bible that should be in a pastor's office. Then there is this smaller one that's the most marked up, it's been torn and taped together, it's dog-eared, it feels really used, it has a good tactile feel to it. Then there is this pocket size Bible. I like the feel of it too. It's my visiting Bible though I need enough light to read the fine print. Again, I'm fond of these Bibles.
I have lived around the Bible my whole life unlike the many people in the world, Christian and otherwise, who don't have one of their own. My mom and dad have long been faithful Bible readers, and their disciplined practice has always been an example for me.
This week my dad called me and said he had a question from the Bible that he wanted to talk to me about. Their daily Bible reading had recently taken them into the book of Numbers. There was the story of Moses and the people out in the desert, wandering around. It was a time out there in the desert when the people were complaining about their conditions, especially about the food made available to them.
My dad's particular question was this. The text says there were six hundred thousand men out in the desert. He figured that actually there might have been over a million people, not to mention all their animals. How in the world, he wondered, could all those people roam around? What kind of a logistical nightmare was this?
And then he said, the text in Numbers says that Moses spoke to ``the people.'' How in the world could Moses speak to six hundred thousand people, much less a million, all at the same time? He didn't have a huge football stadium to put them in. He didn't have microphones and speakers. How could this possibly be?
Well, we had an interesting conversation. This simple and relatively inconsequential story points to how the Bible can be the ``book of the church'' yet at the same time serve to cause us to wonder.
The letter to Timothy The letters to Timothy (perhaps written by Paul or, as was familiar in those days, or written by someone who assumes his name and writes in his spirit) serve to exhort and offer instruction to early second century church members. The general counsel is to pursue all that is good and right, and to flee from all that is bad and unrighteous.
In our passage this morning Paul says that scripture is God inspired and is useful for teaching, correction, and righteousness so that all who belong to God might be proficient and ``equipped for every good work.'' So in this bit of pastoral counseling, Paul says to the young Timothy that you can lean on scriptures as you test in your own life what the right thing to do is. Scripture serves as a guide, a ``lamp unto our feet,'' as it says in Psalm 119. Scripture trains us for righteous living, it shapes and molds us, and it equips and inspires us for doing good works.
The Mennonite World Conference shared convictionand the meaning of authority Now we will make the leap from these simple words Timothy received in letter to our own time. The place and role of the Bible in the Christian church is an important contemporary question.
In the Anabaptist Christian story the Bible has always been important, though perhaps not in quite the same way as in other Christian traditions. The earliest Anabaptist confession, the Schleitheim Confession of 1527, mentions scripture but makes no particular point about the Bible. (Baptism, the sword, oaths and other questions are treated) Our Mennonite Church USA confession uses the word ``authoritative'' to describe the place of the Bible in our lives. It is the ``authoritative source and standard for preaching and teaching about faith and life, for distinguishing truth from error, for discerning between good and evil, and for guiding prayer and worship.''
Our church constitution nuances that slightly in saying ``We commit to live by the authority of God's word as disciples of Christ and to share with this fellowship the responsibility to interpret the Scripture in the spirit of Christ.''
And the MWC shared conviction, which was composed by Mennonites from around the world, says As a faith community, we accept the Bible as our authority for faith and life, interpreting it together under Holy Spirit guidance, in the light of Jesus Christ to discern God's will for our obedience. The idea of the Bible as authoritative for faith and life is common to all these statements. Noteworthy is the fact that we don't use words like infallible or inerrant. We say the Bible is authoritative.
So what does it mean for the Bible to have authority?
Usually when we think about authority we associate it with the ability of power to enforce that authority. The police can enforce that you drive the speed limit by giving you a ticket. Or they can enforce the rule that gang members can't associate in a certain part of town by arresting individuals if they do. The owner of a restaurant can say I want my employees to work up to a certain standard, and dress a certain way, and if you don't you are fired. A teacher can enforce his or her authority through grading.
Some people may wish or try, when thinking about biblical authority, to try to find a strong-armed way of enforcing its authority. But the Bible's authority in our community and in our lives can not be proved or enforced. Rather, it must be lived, modeled, and demonstrated. As the Bible is lived it becomes invitational, prodding others to check it out, and to come to trust in it for themselves.
Importantly, the MWC statement speaks of biblical authority in the light of the ``faith community.'' This is important. We accept and we wrestle with the Bible as a faith community. In an Anabaptist perspective we appreciate the importance of individual Bible study but we should also acknowledge that this pattern fits the individualistic impulses of our times. A more Anabaptist perspective is to discern the meaning of Scriptures in a community context.
Reading the Bible in communitybut which community? It's common knowledge how the Bible is taken seriously in many different places around the world, and interpreted wildly different ways in many different places. This is one of the great challenges the Christian movement in our time. Here we have this unifying book (though of course we recognize it's not just the words on the page as it is discovering what God is saying and doing todayin other words, the living God who speaks and acts today) but it is looked at so differently in other places.
It has been rehashed many times how the Old Testament is looked at differently in swaths of the global South than in the global North. The Old Testament world is simply more familiar and natural to some in our world than to us here in 21st century California today.
For some, familiar with blood sacrifices which are part of their traditional culture, the idea of a blood atonement, of Jesus as the perfect sacrifice, is easy to understand. Poor, economically strapped communities in the global South feel the issues of poverty, debt, political oppression and famine in ways different from us in the global North. Exorcism, and ideas about spiritual warfare, the occurrence of literal beyond science miracles, find a more comfortable home in the global South.
As our world becomes smaller, as people travel back and forth, as we strive, at least from time to time, to define community in a broader world-wide sense, we will have our understandings of the Bible stretched. It's important for us as we read the Bible to contemplate its meaning from a global perspective.
Scripture has to be lived The Bible has power and authority not just because it is, but it gains power and authority when it is lived. The Bible becomes real and relevant as we allow ourselves to be moved and maybe even transformed by the God-word coming to us via the Scripture.
I'd like to conclude with some suggestions of what you can do with the Bible. I've believed this for a long time: that the Bible is a very simple book and that my grandma's simple reading of the text is probably right on. And I believe that the Bible is depthless, and endlessly complex, and that it has so many twists and turns, so many contradictions and conundrums, that it can tie endless brilliant minds in knots forever and ever. It's the book that you both want to take a scissors to yet it contains the words you want to hear in the long night of undeserved grief.
Here are the (random) suggestions: (1) .Read a whole book of the Bible in one sitting. Or, just read one book over and over again. There's something about the repetition, I think.
(2) Try to write a modern version of a psalm, or a parable. For example retell the Good Samaritan story, putting the kindly soul in Fresno.
(3) Memorize a passage.
(4) Open the Bible and read it in a public place. You might have an interesting conversation.
(5) Cultivate what Gerald Gerbrandt (a Canadian Mennonite) calls ``a hermeneutic of suspicion.'' He says this: ``The natural tendency when doing biblical study is to discover in scripture support for previously held positions and validation for our own situations. Given this tendency, a hermeneutics of suspicion should raise questions about any interpretation that confirms previously held theological positions, or that appears to fit too comfortably with our gender, economic status, political leanings, etc…we have to be careful not to read our preferences into the text.'' (Gerbrandt in Vision, Spring 2005, p. 12)
(6) Practice lectura divina. This is where the passage is read slowly, over and over again, in a small group, allowing it to soak in.
(7) Keep a Bible around, in a bag, in your car, in a purse.
May the God of love and mercy, justice and peace, abide with us all. Amen.
