Baggage Or Equipment?
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Dear Fellow Preachers,
The veneration of the Bible in Western (especially American) culture is amazing. It is at least outwardly praised by a disparate variety of groups, both secular and religious. Pietistic types have viewed it as a kind of holy lottery, with the hope of chancing upon individual verses that answer questions or provide guidance in times of personal distress. Orthodoxist types have scanned its pages for support of properly worded doctrines. Millions of ordinary Christians read portions of it every day. Many heated arguments have centered on the question of its inspiration, its "inerrancy," and whether or not it is the Word of God. (I like Samuel Coleridge's way of putting the matter: The Bible becomes the Word of God for some persons but not for others.)
In this issue of The Immediate Word, team members reflect on some of these matters. Lead writer Carlos Wilton, drawing on the lectionary's Second Reading for the day, 2 Timothy 3:14--4:5, distinguishes between proper and improper use of scripture, arguing for our internalizing of the central thrust of scripture, allowing its "unified theology" and its emphasis on faith and justice to shape our lives. As usual, other team members also provide pertinent responses and illustrations.
In this issue we offer more worship-resource options than usual, some of them drawing on other appointed lections for the day (Jeremiah 31:27-34 and Psalm 119:97-104 [or Genesis 32:22-31 and Psalm 121]; Luke 18:1-8).
"BAGGAGE OR EQUIPMENT?"
2 Timothy 3:14--4:5
By Carlos Wilton
"All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work." (2 Timothy 3:16-17)
The Message on a Postcard
As any backpacker (or even any business traveler) knows, before undertaking an arduous journey it's essential to pack carefully. What we choose to bring can make all the difference between a successful trip and a grueling ordeal. Once the journey begins, we'll discover soon enough whether each item is essential equipment or merely baggage.
Second Timothy speaks of the role scripture plays in our lives. Scripture's role is to insure "that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work." Scripture, in other words, is our equipment for the Christian life. Is the Bible, for us, an essential piece of equipment for life's journey -- or is it merely baggage?
The question takes on greater urgency when we reflect on the many and varied ways scripture is used in the great debates of our day, both inside and outside the church. Various political candidates on both sides of the aisle have been criticized for speaking in the cadences of scripture, but not getting the quotations quite right. This conveys a feeling of comfort to certain listeners who like to know that their candidate is a moral person, but it's inherently unbiblical.
Others take their stand on great moral issues of the day but base their positions on a proof-texting style of exegesis: quoting single verses but ignoring those verses' larger context. For still others, the mere presence of the Bible is the thing -- as in the reading of scripture verses in school opening exercises, without any teaching or interpretation accompanying the reading. The mere reading of Bible verses is supposed to have some automatic moralizing effect on a roomful of bleary-eyed schoolchildren; but, unless the children already have a respect for the scriptures and are actively listening, it's about as effective a teaching tactic as taping slips of paper to restroom mirrors.
Such are examples of scripture as baggage: a comforting thing for a Christian to carry on the journey, perhaps, but likely to be useful only in the rarest of circumstances. Second Timothy 3:16-17 has a very different outlook. Although the scripture spoken of here is the Old Testament (and not the Bible as we know it), the result is still the same: God's word is meant to be "read, marked, learned and inwardly digested," as the old Book of Common Prayer puts it, not just stuffed into a suitcase. It is only in this way that Christians may be "equipped for every good work."
Some Words on the Word
Biblical inspiration -- can there be any doctrine that has caused more contention than this one, at least in the modern era? Here in 2 Timothy we have the master text for the doctrine of the inspiration of scripture.
This passage is not without its textual problems. Among them is the absence of the verb "to be" in the first part of verse 16. What the Greek text literally says is, "All scripture inspired by God is useful ..." Translators of some English versions insert the word "is," so it reads: "All scripture is inspired by God, and is useful ..." Is the author of this letter making a categorical statement about all scripture being inspired? Or is he saying that certain scriptures are inspired and are therefore useful? Probably the latter: the general sense of the passage is to emphasize the usefulness of scripture for the Christian life. For the author, the usefulness of scripture is the thing, not any a priori philosophical claims about it.
We ought to be careful about using 2 Timothy 3:16-17 as the basis for such a priori claims about the authority of scripture, for several reasons. First is the question, "Which scripture?" This letter was written far too early to be referring to the Bible as we know it; what the author means is the Old Testament. Second, even if the passage somehow does refer to the New Testament as well as the old, it would be self-justifying: a circular argument. Third, the general sense of the passage is pragmatic rather than doctrinal. It occurs in the latter part of the letter, in which the author is providing practical advice of various kinds.
The practical outcome of relying on scripture is that believers will be "proficient, equipped for every good work." The word translated "proficient" (artios) means "completed," as in training that is completed. The word translated as "equipped" (exertismenos) likewise means "finished" or "completed." It's more commonly used to refer to an object that has been completed, such as a bowl created by a potter. Both words imply a process, rather than a single event. Disciples are equipped when they are thoroughly familiar with scripture, rather than simply armed with a proof-text or two for occasional use. (Similarly, mountain climbers are better equipped to attempt a summit after completing a thorough program of physical conditioning, than if they had simply gone down to the wilderness outfitters and purchased a pair of boots and a hiking stick.)
This letter is encouraging Christian disciples to live with scripture over time, to make it a part of themselves, as opposed to occasionally consulting the Bible as a reference book. Scripture here is an organic whole, not merely a sum of its parts. This reading tends to discourage those who view the Bible as a collection of discrete "scriptures" that can be deployed for particular purposes: as in, "Pastor, can you give me a few scriptures to help me strengthen my marriage?" Second Timothy views scripture as a practical tool, yes: but it's a tool that's more like a carpenter's favorite, well-broken-in hammer than the case of drill bits from which an item may be selected for a particular job.
At the heart of this passage is a fascinating compound word that occurs nowhere else in the New Testament. Theopneustos -- translated "inspired" -- literally means "God-breathed." Our English word "inspired" closely follows this sense: "inspiration" is etymologically related to "respiration." That which is inspired has the Spirit of God within it; literally, it is "inspirited." Unlike any other book, whenever we open the Bible there is the distinct possibility that we will encounter in its pages the living God.
A Map of the Message
A sermon on this passage could begin with a personal anecdote -- preferably from the preacher's own experience -- about packing for some kind of journey. Which items find their way into the suitcase or backpack, and which don't? And which of those packing decisions will later cause feelings of regret?
Some things we choose to take on a trip are essential equipment. Others are mere baggage -- dead weight that impedes progress.
Most Christians would agree that scripture ought to be part of life's essential traveling-kit. The author of 2 Timothy would certainly agree. The point of "knowing the sacred writings" is that we may be "proficient, equipped for every good work" (3:15, 17). Yet there are circumstances in which scripture may prove to be not equipment, but baggage.
It's all in how the scriptures are interpreted. For centuries, Christian preachers quoted passages that appeared to them to justify the institution of slavery; that was scripture as baggage. Similarly, some emphasized passages that led to the treatment of women as second-class citizens of God's creation: baggage, again. The Inquisition imprisoned Galileo for teaching what he'd seen with his own eyes, through his telescope, about the orbits of heavenly bodies -- contradicting then-current interpretations of Genesis 1. In Mein Kampf, his notorious manifesto of hatred, Adolf Hitler misquotes 1 Peter 2:9 as a justification for racism: "You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people."
But there are also historical examples of scripture as equipment. When Martin Luther read in Galatians 2:16, "We know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ," that single insight started a Reformation that changed the world.
Earlier in history, there is the example of a dissolute Roman nobleman named Augustine, who one day heard a voice bidding him, "Take and read." Augustine's life was in a shambles as a result of sin. In his own words, "I was mad for health, and dying for life; knowing what evil thing I was, and not knowing what good thing I was shortly to become ... I was greatly disturbed in spirit ..." What Augustine "took and read" was Romans 13:13: "Let us live honorably, as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarrelling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires." For this jaded playboy, these were life-changing words. He concludes in his autobiography, the Confessions: "I wanted to read no further, nor did I need to. For instantly, as the sentence ended, there was infused in my heart something like the light of full certainty and all the gloom of doubt vanished away."
So what makes the difference between a scripture citation that is used to oppress and enslave, and one that leads to liberation? As circular and even contradictory as this logic may sound, the best rule is to let scripture interpret scripture. There is a unified theology arising out of scripture as a whole: a standard of love and justice that begins in Genesis and runs clear through Revelation. There is also a person, Jesus Christ, to whom much of scripture points. When someone's interpretation of an individual verse appears to contradict this overall theological standard, or seems to be something Jesus himself would never countenance, then it is wise to subject that interpretation to further scrutiny.
There's a natural and understandable human desire to have all the answers at our fingertips: to take the Bible into our hands and believe we're holding a mystical oracle, in which we can look up simple, unambiguous answers to all of life's questions. But the scriptures simply cannot be made to function that way. Yes, the Bible is "inspired by God and ... useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness" (2 Timothy 3:16). But this does not mean the Bible works like the Yellow Pages, in which -- if only we have the right sort of index -- we can look up brief citations that tell us all we need to know.
Serious Bible study is more than memorizing an index that tells where to look up certain proof-texts, that we can then apply like Band-Aids to life's wounds. It's a lifelong task of becoming familiar with the whole Bible, learning the great themes that run through its many books and finding our own place in its compelling narrative. It is only when we have undertaken this sort of wide-ranging study that we can be said to be "proficient, equipped for every good work."
Team Comments
Carter Shelley responds: In thinking about this topic while driving to a church function eighty miles from home today, the scriptural baggage I carried along would have fit into two separate cases. The first would be a suitcase filled with memories of the important part the Bible has played in my life as a Christian from childhood up to today. The second case would be a backpack stuffed with scholarly tomes and texts used by me in writing my Ph.D. dissertation, "The Use of Feminist Hermeneutics in Biblical Preaching." Though each case contains different aspects of myself and my faith, they are all of a piece, because both are grounded in the centrality of God's Word as revealed in scripture.
The Suitcase. Baptized as an infant in the First Presbyterian Church, Danville, Virginia, I have no recollection of a time when the Bible and its stories weren't a part of my life. As a child I was both told and taught the key biblical stories of the Old and New Testament. After I was old enough to read, I would pour over the Children's Bible with its plot summaries and many old pictures of biblical heroes who talked, walked, prayed to and acted on behalf of God. These stories offered a model for my own life as a child of faith. I wanted to have the courage and selflessness I saw in Abraham, Joseph, Queen Esther, and Jesus' disciples. I knew Jesus was out of my reach. The stories were real. The people were real. I wanted to be like them, to be the best Christian I could be.
With Confirmation class and more in-depth Sunday school, Bible studies gave me access and appreciation for more of the Bible: the Psalms, the letters of Paul, and other early church leaders, and so on. I continued to understand the Bible as both a guidebook for living and for knowing about and understanding God's will and way. It wasn't until my freshman year of college that I ever encountered scholastic details rarely shared or discussed in church youth groups or Bible studies. What I learned excited me more and gave me even more awe and wonder at the contents and treasures the Bible contains. My stance toward the Bible hasn't changed much since 1970, when I first learned about multiple authors for the Pentateuch or the different theological perspectives and emphases of the different Gospel writers. It all seemed and seems more miraculous, more wonderful, more relevant than ever when one considers how many different individuals, viewpoints, cultures, centuries, and insights are provided within its pages. The book itself is a miracle and a wonder. It remains the foundation of my faith and the most challenging book I ever attempt to read.
What I love most about it is the way it remains open, relevant, fluid, personal, and revelatory to all comers who take the time to let it speak to them instead of us telling it what it should mean. That's the challenge we preachers face each Sunday along with our parishioners. How do I know if the Word I read, interpret, and share is truly God's Word and not my will instead? Our task as preachers is awesome, because we have an awesome task to perform: reveal the will and Word of God for this time, this place in the most honest, pious, and holy way we can, in Jesus' name and for Christ's sake. Amen.
The Backpack: A Brief Consideration of the Difference between the Bible as Authoritative Discourse and the Reformed View of the Authority of Scripture. Reader beware! This section comes from my dissertation composed to impress professors. Feel free to read only the block quotes. Mikhail Bakhtin was a twentieth-century Russian literary theorist whose ideas have been far-reaching in biblical and literary studies in the past two decades.
What is fundamentalism? It is a way of thinking that espouses the fact that "God is and God has spoken." He has spoken to us by the prophets, by Jesus Christ, and by the apostles, as accurately recorded and preserved in the Bible. The Bible's absolute, universal truth is equally true for all men, unchangeable truth for all generations. The Bible reveals truth and does not conceal it in some mystical, allegorical presentation. God said what he meant and meant what he said. We can know the truth by reading the Bible in the same way we read an encyclopedia or any historical book. The Bible is to be understood literally, unless the context clearly indicates otherwise.
This is the soul of fundamentalism. The difference between a liberal and a fundamentalist is in their approach to truth. The liberal says, "Truth is relative and obscure." The fundamentalist says, "Truth is absolute and clearly presented in the Bible." Despite the numerous factions that may exist among the ranks of fundamentalists, all fundamentalists solidly unite in believing God's Word to be infallible and inerrant. All fundamentalists interpret the Bible literally. We agree on the virgin birth, the deity of Christ, the blood atonement, the physical resurrection and the return of Christ, and other major doctrines. To believe anything else is impossible if one believes the Bible and interprets it literally. (Dowell 10)[1]
Bill Dowell, Jr., Speech and Theology Professor at Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Missouri, defines "truth" with confidence and clarity. The understanding of truth he supplies is diametrically opposed to that of Mikhail Bakhtin. For Dowell, and for other contemporary fundamentalists like him, truth does not grow out of continuous dialogic communication; truth exists clearly and immutably in the biblical word of God. Dowell's statement provides an incisive entry into a number of issues I am considering in this chapter. First, Dowell's confident affirmation of biblical revelation as the one, true source of transcendent truth is one which is shared by many Christians present, and past. Second, his definition of fundamentalism beautifully expresses Dowell's conviction that the Bible is an authoritative discourse. Third, Dowell's rhetoric underscores the key attributes Bakhtin identifies as characteristic of authoritative discourse. Fourth, Bill Dowell's concluding sentence introduces the hermeneutical method most compatible with fundamentalists' interpretive stance: the literal reading.[2]
It is my contention that the interpretive stance an individual takes toward the Bible will influence and, to some extent, determine what the reader will discover, understand, interpret, and preach from the Bible. When the interpretive stance of authoritative discourse is adopted toward the Bible, the reader/preacher proclaims the biblical text to be literal, factual, plainly written, and comprehensible. Thus, Bakhtin's theoretical notion of authoritative discourse provides an entry point into this fundamentalist's epistemology.
Bakhtin was not the first to assign the word authority to the Bible. The authority of scripture is a fundamental tenet of Protestantism; however, what Bakhtin and fundamentalists mean when they say the Bible has authority and what Reformed theologians and ministers mean when we speak of the Bible's authority is very different.
The conviction that the Bible is the word of God does not grow out of the authority of the church or out of any of the humanly discernible qualities that may be found in its pages. No achievement of scholarship can establish that the Bible is anything more than another human book with all the relativity's of human frailty, time, and space. The experience of the Bible as the word of God depends finally upon the "witness of the Holy Spirit." Here again it is apparent that a revival of the Reformed tradition cannot be programmed or commanded. It depends upon a gift of grace and upon that mysterious interaction of the spirit of God and the human spirit in the reading of the scripture.
The serious study of the Bible with the use of the best intellectual equipment available must be carried on, for God has commanded his people to love him with their minds. (Leith 216).
Much more could be said about the authority of scripture ... The point I am establishing here is that Bakhtin's concept of the Bible as authoritative discourse is not at all the same as the Reformed doctrine of the authority of scripture. Here I use Bakhtin's definition of authoritative discourse to show why Bakhtin consigns the Bible to this theoretical category of alien discourse and not to that of internally persuasive discourse. Along the way I'll provide examples of the literal reading hermeneutical method at work and will identify their significant characteristics....
Bakhtin's term authoritative discourse identifies texts that a given society has designated "sacred" and "inviolable." The Torah, the Bible, the Koran, and the Book of Mormon are examples of religious texts frequently read as authoritative discourse. The words "sacred" and "inviolable" do not refer to the religious content of authoritative discourse but to the reader or listener's understanding and attitude toward the text. The word "sacred" implies respect on the reader's part, and an acknowledgment of distance between the reader and text. The reader understands the text as discourse offered from an alien source. It's not Aunt Effie's homespun wisdom; it's "the Word of God," or it's "the law." Authoritative discourses are handed down from one generation to the next. The word "inviolable" describes authoritative discourse as a text that is not to be revised, edited, added to, changed, or tampered with in any way. No significant changes were made to the Bible between the canonization of its books in the fourth century A.D. up to the time of the Protestant Reformation, when Martin Luther made the Apocrypha into an Appendix to the Bible. No new books, letters, or gospels have been removed or added since the sixteenth century, nor are they likely to be.
No discourse is authoritative unless it is taken that way by the reader and the listener. One day while I was working away on this dissertation my doorbell rang. When I answered it I was greeted by two young men in white shirts, dark ties, and gray slacks. "Hi," I said, "You're Mormons aren't you?" I then told them that I was a Presbyterian minister, that I knew several Mormon families in the community and had read quite a bit about their beliefs and practices and knew I was not interested in converting. At this point, one of the men started to quote Joseph Smith's words from the last chapter of The Book of Mormon, their authoritative text. As he recited the words that meant so much to him, and absolutely nothing to me, I found myself saying: "Look, if you want to talk to me about your beliefs, that's fine, but first you have to come in and sit down and listen to mine. I'll spend thirty minutes talking about predestination, the providence of God, and the authority of scripture, and then you can take thirty minutes to do the same." Well, they didn't want to hear about Calvin or Presbyterianism; they wanted me to accept the authority of their text based upon their reverence and awe of it, but they did not wish to turn their text into an object of intellectual debate, so they left and I went back to writing this dissertation.
Bakhtin writes that discourse becomes authoritative when it is taken to be absolutist, when it forbids further insights and interpretations, because its meaning has been established and understood to be set, constant, and finite. The term "authoritative" accurately describes the status of such discourse. It is the word of authority handed down from on high by an authoritative figure such as a judge, a minister, or a dictator.
[1]Dowell is co-pastor of the Baptist Temple Church and a regular contributor to the Fundamentalist Journal, from which this statement is drawn.
[2]"Interpretive stance" is not a term Bakhtin uses. I have coined it to help describe the interpretive attitude a reader or preacher takes when he or she opens the Bible and starts to read.
George Murphy responds: The problems of translation of verse 16 are not trivial. While the traditional reading begins, "All scripture ..." there are good reasons to render that instead as, "Every scripture ..." The emphasis in the verse is on the usefulness of each part of scripture rather than on the whole of it, although the latter, of course, is not to be denied.
More controversial is the issue to which Carlos refers. Are we to translate as, "Every scripture that is inspired ..." (as he suggests) or, "Every scripture is inspired ..."? Commentators on the Pastoral Epistles are divided, Dibelius and Conzelmann opting for the first possibility and Kelly for the second. It seems to me that the second, more traditional, rendering is preferable, since the first would leave open the question of just what parts of scripture the writer was pointing to as useful.
The scriptures (in the sense of "all scripture") under consideration are those of what Christians now call the Old Testament. Other writings of what would become the New Testament were in existence when 2 Timothy was written, but it took time for Christians to recognize them as "scripture" in the same sense as the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings. But that recognition did come fairly soon, and in 2 Peter 3:16 (coincidentally!), in what may be the latest of the New Testament writings, the letters of Paul are put in the same class as "the other scriptures." Thus what is said in 2 Timothy about scripture in general would be applied to Christian writings placed in that category. Of course, a detailed discussion of just which writings those are would require that we get into a discussion of the canon but that's a topic more for an adult class than for a sermon. F. F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture (InterVarsity, 1988) would be useful for those who want to get into that topic.
There has not been too much debate among Christians about the statement in our text that scripture is "useful" for various purpose. What has been more hotly contested is the meaning and implications of the description of scripture as "inspired" -- literally, "God-breathed" (theopneustos).
What I find problematic about the way in which some Christians use this text is that they make the automatic equations "inspired" = "inerrant" = "historically or scientifically accurate narrative." The first step, the assumption that an inspired text must be true, seems plausible. But in what way is it true? There are different types of texts and they are true in different ways. To say that the creation stories of Genesis (to take an important example) are true and authoritative does not settle the question of what kinds of texts they are -- that is, how we are to read them. And if we are mistaken there we can get completely off track. If you read a letter from the IRS the way you read a love letter -- or vice versa -- you can be in big trouble.
In other words, one problem with the idea of "inerrancy" is that people understand it to mean more than just that texts are true. They also insist that that they have to be true in a certain way, i.e., as historical narrative or scientific account.
To get this across to classes at various levels I've sometimes handed out a sheet that has two texts about the death of Abraham Lincoln. One is an account of the Lincoln's assassination and death from Benjamin Thomas' Abraham Lincoln, with all the care and detail of the historian. The other is Walt Whitman's poem "O Captain! My Captain!" And the question I pose is, which of these texts is true?
The answer of course is, "Both of them." Thomas' account gives the fact and Whitman's is concerned with what the brute fact meant for the poet and for the nation. There is no contradiction between them. But someone who insisted on reading both of them as the same type of thing, as historical narrative, would be faced with the task of "harmonizing" them on an historical level. And since Lincoln didn't die on board a ship ("Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead"), but (as Thomas clearly states) in a house across the street from Ford's Theater, the result could only be absurd.
Thus it is crucial to distinguish the different types of literature that can be found in scripture. That is the case when we're talking about any text, not just the Bible. But there is another, more distinctively theological point that we need to be aware of.
What are we to make of statements and allusions in the Bible that, if we're honest, simply reflect an understanding of the world that we now regard as outdated? The creation story of Genesis 1 pictures heaven as a "dome" or "firmament" over the (probably flat) earth with waters above it (see also Psalm 148:4), which just isn't the way things are. The account of the sun standing still for Joshua shows a view of the world quite different from that of modern astronomy. The mustard seed is not really the smallest of all seeds. And this concern is by no means limited to facts about the natural sciences. How do we reconcile the calls to holy war and extermination of certain peoples in the Old Testament with belief in a God of love? How can texts that allow slavery (though with some limitations) be seen as true and authoritative for Christians who have come to believe that owning other people just doesn't fit with treating other people as Jesus calls us to?
I think that what we have to see is that the process of inspiration of scripture also involved God's accommodation of the message that was to be communicated to the levels of understanding of the biblical writers and their cultures. Though of course he wasn't aware of the modern critical study of scripture and all the issues it raises, Calvin, for example, refers to such a concept of accommodation to explain things like the differences between teachings in the Old Testament and the New. God condescended to communicate to people through the medium of imperfect human understandings of the world, society, and human nature. This may not seem so surprising to us if we realize that even our own knowledge of those things is far from perfect. Even if the Bible made use of the scientific worldview of the early twenty-first century, it might appear outdated to the people of the twenty-second century.
But we can go even deeper than that. Scripture has an incarnational pattern. Just as God's supreme revelation took place under the limitations of human nature in the culture of Palestinian Judaism of the first century, so scripture as the inspired witness to God's revelation "was made flesh" with respect to the knowledge of the world that people two to three thousand years ago had. And just as the human Jesus of Nazareth is the Word of God, so the human words of scripture are the inspired Word.
Related Illustrations
From Carlos Wilton
The writer Annie Dillard, in Teaching a Stone to Talk, tells the story of the ill-fated Franklin Expedition to the Canadian arctic. In 1845, Sir John Franklin, accompanied by 138 officers and men, set sail from England. They were determined to discover the fabled "Northwest Passage," across Canada to the Pacific.
Each of Franklin's three sailing ships was equipped with a steam engine for emergencies -- and with all of a twelve-day supply of coal, for a journey that was projected to take two to three years.
"Instead of additional coal, each ship included a 1,200 volume library, a 'hand-organ, playing fifty tunes,' china place settings for officers and men, cut-glass wine goblets and sterling silver flatware.... Engraved on the handles were the individual officers' initials and family crests. The expedition carried no special clothing for the arctic, only the uniforms of Her Majesty's Navy."
It was not for many years that England would discover the fate of the Franklin expedition. The Inuit hunters -- the Eskimos, who crisscrossed the frozen north, following their sled dogs -- they knew. They had stumbled across the frozen bodies of the expedition members, in small groups, all across northern Canada.
The ships had become frozen in pack ice. The crewmen decided, after many months of waiting, to walk for help. They took with them whatever items they considered most valuable. Dillard continues: "[One] search party found two skeletons in a boat on a sledge. They had hauled the boat sixty-five miles. With the two skeletons were some chocolate, some guns, some tea, and a great deal of table silver. Many miles south of these two was another skeleton, alone. This was a frozen officer.... The skeleton was in uniform: trousers and jacket of 'fine blue cloth ... edged with silk braid' .... Over this uniform the dead man had worn 'a blue greatcoat, with a black silk neckerchief.' "
These foolhardy explorers were ill-prepared for the bitter climate of the arctic. Yet so worried were they about their sterling-silver flatware (engraved with family crests), and their silk-braided uniforms, that they took these trivial items with them on their last, desperate race across the ice.
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Phillips Brooks, one of the greatest preachers of the nineteenth century, used to describe the Bible as similar to a telescope. If we look through a telescope, we can see worlds beyond our own. Yet if we only look at the telescope, we won't see anything but the telescope. The Bible is a thing to be looked through, to see that which is beyond: but all too many people only look at it, and see only the dead letter.
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William Sloane Coffin once bemoaned "Christians who use the Bible much as a drunk does a lamppost -- more for support than for illumination."
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Encouraging people to study the scriptures, Harry Emerson Fosdick said, "Read until you stumble upon yourself on its pages."
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Most people want to wake up in the morning with a general at the foot of their bed saying, "Go do this." The problem is, there's somebody at the foot of their bed saying, "Once upon a time ..."
-- Bishop N. T. Wright, speaking of those who study the Bible
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On February 25, 2004, U.S. Representative Jim McDermott of Washington State spoke out against President Bush's expressed desire that a constitutional amendment be written to codify marriage according to biblical principles. Speaking tongue-in-cheek, McDermott proposed the following text as part of a constitutional amendment establishing a biblical model of marriage:
A. Marriage in the United States shall consist of a union between one man and one or more women. (Genesis 29:17-28; 2 Samuel 3:2-5)
B. Marriage shall not impede a man's right to take concubines in addition to his wife or wives. (2 Samuel 5:13; 1 Kings 11:3; 2 Chronicles 11:21)
C. A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed. (Deuteronomy 22:13-21)
D. Marriage of a believer and a non-believer shall be forbidden. (Genesis 24:3; Numbers 25:1-9; Ezra 9:12; Nehemiah 10:30)
E. Since marriage is for life, neither this Constitution nor the constitution of any State, nor any state or federal law, shall be construed to permit divorce. (Mark 10:9)
F. If a married man dies without children, his brother shall marry the widow. If he refuses to marry his brother's widow or deliberately does not give her children, he shall pay a fine of one shoe and be otherwise punished in a manner to be determined by law. (Genesis 38:6-10; Deuteronomy 25:5-10)
-- The Congressional Record
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In his book, The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America, journalist Bill Bryson tells of visiting Hannibal, Missouri, the boyhood hometown of Samuel L. Clemens (better known as Mark Twain). Visiting the Clemens home, he encountered a fellow tourist, a Twain enthusiast, who said he visited the place two or three times a year, and had probably been there twenty or thirty times altogether.
"You must be a real fan and follower of Mark Twain," Bryson marveled. "Would you say the house is just like Mark Twain described it in his books?"
"Oh, I don't know," said the tourist. "I wouldn't have the foggiest notion. I've never read any of his books!"
Visiting his shrine, but ignoring his books. So like the experience of all too many followers of Jesus Christ!
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You Americans! You take the Bible so literally, why can't you take it seriously?
-- A Palestinian woman, speaking to a Lutheran pastor who was visiting her homeland
***
Echoing the World War II era, a company called Innovative Marketing Alliance is publishing God's Armor New Testament, a bulletproof pocket-sized Bible for loved ones who are at risk. "While its fundamental function is to provide the spiritual assurance that comes from carrying God's Word next to the heart, its antiballistic qualities built into the cover provide a reminder of the world we live in." However, the armor is only capable of resisting a .38 caliber bullet.
-- Brian Kelcher, "Not So Good News," in The Door, November-December 1996, p. 41
Worship Resources
By Julie Strope
CALL TO WORSHIP (Psalm 119:97-104 and 2 Timothy 3:16)
Leader: How good it is to be together! Sweeter than honey!
People: We have gathered to encourage each other in the faith journey. We are also here to thank God for guidance for our daily living.
Leader: God's Law is with us all the time; it makes us wise.
People: God's word is a lamp to guide us and a light for our paths.
Leader: Together we can keep our solemn promises to please God.
People: We turn again to the Bible for inspiration and direction, for scriptures are inspired by God and give us wisdom for our inner and outer realities.
PRAYER OF ADORATION
Thank you, Holy One, for ancient ideas that still have meaning for us today. For Torah and all its stories of living and dying, of human trials and your faithfulness, we are grateful. For your constant love, we give you thanks. In this hour, speak to us of truth, courage, and grace. We give you our undivided attention. Amen.
HYMN SUGGESTIONS (available in The Presbyterian Hymnal, 1990)
"O Word Of God Incarnate" (Tune: MUNICH. N.b.: this hymn's last verse is an allusion to Psalm 119:105)
"Break Thou The Bread Of Life" (Tune: BREAD OF LIFE)
"Deep In The Shadows Of The Past" (Tune: SHEPHERDS' PIPES. N.b.: the tune for this hymn is somewhat familiar; the words are a nice telling of the early Hebrews and their experience with God)
"Thanks To God Whose Word Was Written" (Tune: WYLDE GREEN. N.b.: this hymn is a thanksgiving to God for the Word without making the Bible the object of praise)
CALL TO CONFESSION
Leader: Take a moment to quiet your heart and mind. Notice whatever is there that keeps you from being your best self. Observe what separates you from intimacy with the Holy.
CONFESSION (unison) (2 Timothy 3)
Living God,
We want to live a godly life in union with Christ.
Yet we are drawn to hurtful things.
Set us free from selfish desires; cleanse us of greed and conceit.
Lead us in paths that manifest your love, and give us inner peace. Amen.
ASSURANCE OF PARDON
This is the good news for today:
there will be difficult times;
however, divine grace is dependable.
With Christ there is purpose and truth.
With Christ, there is strength and hope for each situation. Hallelujah!
(An easy choral response might be one of the versions of "Bless The Lord, O My Soul.")
AN AFFIRMATION (2 Timothy 3; Psalm 119; Luke 18)
We believe that God is both judge and lover of the world and its peoples, inviting us to be involved with keeping the earth clean and beautiful.
We see the God-human relationship most clearly in Jesus of Nazareth and we choose to live by his teachings.
We experience the Holy Spirit living within us, prompting us to do justice, to be honest and to care about our neighbors.
As a household of God, we endeavor to be welcoming to strangers as well as to familiar faces. Through easy times and in times of uncomfortable changes, we will practice gentleness while struggling with disappointment and pain.
In living and in dying, we walk beside one another.
Let it be so!
INTERCESSORY PRAYERS (leader)
Great Mystery,
The world rotates and we stand still. You are absent yet present with us. Look at this planet and wrap your love around all Creation. Feel the nations and their pain as mercilessness and hatred maim and kill. With each breath, we say, "Come, Loving God and rain peace upon ancient lands. Remove the need for walls. Save the children to grow gentle and neighborly. Let bombs and tanks become food and water." Come, Mystery, and bring peace.
Creating God,
We do not understand your ways any more now than when the Palmist observed this truth. We do not understand suffering nor betrayals nor disease. We do know that you never forsake us. So hold us together, hold us up when our pain seems too great to bear. Heal us from the inside out. Comfort us whose loss is unfathomable. Touch those who long to feel your reassuring grace.
God of the Ages,
Transform us; reform us; revolutionize us so we become twenty-first century witnesses to your activity in our hearts and in the cosmos. Thank your for churches around this globe seeking to equip adults and children to be citizens of this world and the next. Thank you for teachers and mentors who pass the spark of divine love and life abundant.
God of the Seasons,
Thank you for the colors and coolness of autumn. As the nights get longer, may we be alert to your light shining in us and through us. Let us carry goodness wherever we go. Amen.
OFFERTORY STATEMENT (leader)
Remember what we have inherited -- the tradition of proclaiming God's love on this street corner and around the world. Remember how we equip one another and the next generation. Remember the ministry that happens in this building among the blind and the mentally and physically challenged.
Your tithes and offerings make it possible.
THANKSGIVING PRAYER (leader)
Holy One,
We are yours, body, mind, and psyche. Thank you for the gifts and the resources that have been assembled here. Thank you for money and talents, for hope and for passion. Amen.
BENEDICTION / CHARGE
Leave here better equipped to be God's hands and feet on your street.
Leave here with ideas to inspire you until next time we gather.
Go your way, conscious of indwelling Holy Spirit.
Be at peace -- deep peace. Live joyfully.
Worship Resources
By George E. Reed
OPENING
(N.b.: All copyright information is given from the first cited place where found. Some copyright information may differ in other sources due to adaptations, etc.)
MUSIC
Hymns
"Seek The Lord"
WORDS: Fred Pratt Green, 1986; MUSIC: George Henry Day, 1940.
Words (c) 1989 by Hope Publishing Co. music (c) 1942, renewed 1971 The Church Pension Fund. As found in UMH 124.
"Christ, Whose Glory Fills The Skies"
WORDS: Charles Wesley, 1740; MUSIC: J. G. Werner's Choralbuch, 1815; harm. William H. Havergal, 1861. Public domain. As found in UMH 173; Hymnal '82: 6, 7; LBOW 265; TPH 462, 463.
"Ask Ye What Great Thing I Know"
WORDS: Johann C. Schwedler, 1741; trans. Benjamin H. Kennedy, 1863; MUSIC: H. A. Cesar Malan, 1827; harm. Lowell Mason, 1841. Public domain. As found in UMH 163; TNCH 49.
"Come, My Way, My Truth, My Life"
WORDS: George Herbert, 1633; MUSIC: Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1911; adapt. E. Harold Geer. Public domain. As found in UMH 164; Hymnal '82: 487; LBOW 513; TNCH 331.
Songs
"I Sing Praises"
WORDS and MUSIC: Terry MacAlmon. (c) 1989 by Integrity's Hosanna! Music. As found in Renew 79.
"Lift Your Heart To The Lord"
WORDS: John E. Bowers, 1982; alt.; MUSIC: Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1906. Music used by permission of (c) Oxford University Press from the English Hymnal. As found in Renew 61.
"Now Holy Spirit, Ever One"
WORDS: Ambrose of Milan; versified in The Hymnal 1982; MUSIC: William Knapp, 1738. Harm. Emily R. Brink, 1994. (c) 1994, CRC Publications. As found in Renew 284.
CALL TO WORSHIP
Leader: The Law of God is our love.
People: It is our meditation all day long.
Leader: The commandments of God make us wise.
People: They give us understanding beyond our teachers.
Leader: The words of God are sweet.
People: They are sweeter than honey.
Leader: The commandments of God give us understanding;
People: They cause us to eschew every false way.
COLLECT / OPENING PRAYER
O God, who created us and knows our every need: Grant that we may receive the guidance and strength you offer through scripture so we may mature into the fullness of your likeness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
or
We come to hear a word from you, O God, so that we may be able to live as your people and as disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ. Help us to open our ears to your voice and give us courage to follow the instructions that we hear. Amen.
RESPONSE MUSIC
Hymns
"Break Thou The Bread Of Life"
WORDS: Mary A. Lathbury, 1877; MUSIC: William F. Sherwin, 1877. Public domain. As found in UMH 599; Hymnal '82; LBOW 235; TPH 329; AAHH 334; TNNBH 295; TNCH 321; CH 321.
"Wonderful Words Of Life"
WORDS: Philip P. Bliss, 1874; MUSIC: Philip P. Bliss, 1874. Public domain. As found in UMH 600; AAHH 332; TNNBH 293; TNCH 319; CH 323.
"Open My Eyes, That I May See"
WORDS: Clara H. Scott, 1895; MUSIC: Clara H. Scott, 1895. Public domain. As found in UMH 454; TPH 324; TNNBH 218; CH 586.
"Be Thou My Vision"
WORDS: Ancient Irish; trans. Mary E. Byrne, 1905; versed by Eleanor H. Hull, 1912, alt.; MUSIC: Trad. Irish melody; harm. Carlton R. Young, 1963, alt. (c) 1989 The United Methodist Publishing House; harm. (c) 1964 Abingdon Press. As found in UMH 451; Hymnal '82: 488; TPH 339; TNCH 451; CH 595.
Songs
"Thy Word Is A Lamp"
WORDS: Amy Grant, 1984; MUSIC: Michael W. Smith, 1984; arr. Keith Phillips. (c) 1964 Meadowgreen Music Co./ Bug and bear Music. As found in UMH 601.
"Open Our Eyes, Lord"
WORDS: St. 1 by Bob Cull; st. 2, anon.; MUSIC: Bob Cull. (c) 1976 Maranatha! Music. As found in CCB 77.
"Your Loving Kindness Is Better Than Life"
WORDS: Based on Ps. 63: 3, 4; MUSIC: Hugh Mitchell. Chorus (c) 1956 and verses (c) 1962 Singspiration Music/ACAP. As found in CCB 26.
PRAYERS OF CONFESSION / PARDON
Leader: Let us confess the blindness in our lives.
People: We confess to you, O God, that we are a stiff-necked people who look but do not see; who listen but do not hear; who perceive but do not comprehend. You have shown us what is required of us but we offer excuses and alibis instead of obedience. When we do obey it is with slow and ungrateful hearts.
Help us to hear the love in your voice and the urgency with which you call us to choose life by following the example of our Lord Jesus. You offer us life. Help us not to choose anything less.
Leader: The God who calls us to follow is the One who loves us. In the Name of Jesus Christ you are forgiven. Amen.
GENERAL PRAYERS, LITANITES, ETC.
You are the One who is beyond all of our understanding. Your ways are not our ways and your thoughts are not our thoughts. Yet you come to us and speak your words of life and joy. We adore you for your greatness and praise you for your great love that leads you come to us with guidance and grace.
(The following paragraph is most suitable if a prayer of confession will not be used elsewhere.)
We confess to you, our God and Savior, that we have failed to be an obedient people. Even though you come to us in love and care and offer us the way of life, we choose to take our own path that leads to destruction and pain. Send your Holy Spirit upon us once more that we may become once again your faithful people.
We thank you for all the ways in which you speak to us. We thank you for the beauty of nature that tells of your glory and for the words of scripture where we learn of your steadfast love and faithfulness.
We give you thanks for our home, this earth, and all the bounty you supply through it. We are grateful most of all for our Lord Jesus and the gentle way he shepherds us and leads us to you and to life.
(Other specific thanksgiving may be offered.)
Surrounded by your loving presence, we offer up to you the cares of our hearts. We pray for those who are denied the good things you intended for them because of our greed and the greed of others. We pray for those who find sickness to be a constant way of life. We pray for those who have not yet heard or yet believed in your loving presence.
(Other petitions may be offered.)
All these things we ask in the Name of Jesus who taught us to pray saying, "Our Father ...."
Hymnal & Songbook Abbreviations
UMH: United Methodist Hymnal
Hymnal '82: The Hymnal 1982, The Episcopal Church
LBOW: Lutheran Book of Worship
TPH: The Presbyterian Hymnal
AAHH: African American Heritage Hymnal
TNNBH: The New National Baptist Hymnal
TNCH: The New Century Hymnal
CH: Chalice Hymnal
CCB: Cokesbury Chorus Book
PMMCH3: Praise. Maranatha! Music Chorus Book, Expanded 3rd Edition
Renew: Renew! Songs and Hymns for Blended Worship
A Chidren's Sermon
Tell God your troubles Object: a telephone Based on Luke 18:1-8
How do we talk to God? (get answers) We pray and just talk to him, right? Prayer is just like talking to a friend. Some people would say that talking to God is like having a telephone conversation. (show the phone) You punch in the numbers, wait for God to answer, and then you can talk to him. But what if he's not home? Does he put on his answering machine and take messages? I don't think so. I think he's always waiting to talk to us.
In today's lesson Jesus reminds us that God is quick to answer prayer. He tells a story about a woman who goes to a judge to get justice for a wrong she had suffered. She goes to him over and over, but he just ignores her. Finally, she pesters him enough and he agrees to help her. He doesn't really want to help her, though. He just wants to make her go away. He finally gives her what she wants just so she won't bother him anymore.
Jesus teaches that God is not like that. God is eager to hear our troubles and will answer us right away.
Have you ever been sad? Have you ever had a problem and wanted to get help right away? Boy, I have. What do you do when you feel like that? (get responses) Sometimes I keep my troubles inside and don't tell anyone. Do you ever do that? Here's the problem with that: How can anyone help you if they don't know what you need? Jesus teaches us that God is waiting to help us, but we must go to him and tell him our troubles. He is eager to help us get better, but he will wait for us to tell him what we need. We don't have to pester him, like that woman had to pester the judge. Today's lesson reminds us that he will answer us right away.
God doesn't have his answering machine on. (pick up the phone) All you have to do is call on him whenever you need to talk to him. He has promised to be there and listen to all you have to say. He's always there for you.
Prayer: Heavenly Father, you are waiting to talk to us and hear our prayers. Thank you for always being there for us. Amen.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
The Immediate Word, October 17, 2004, issue.
Copyright 2004 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802-4503.
The veneration of the Bible in Western (especially American) culture is amazing. It is at least outwardly praised by a disparate variety of groups, both secular and religious. Pietistic types have viewed it as a kind of holy lottery, with the hope of chancing upon individual verses that answer questions or provide guidance in times of personal distress. Orthodoxist types have scanned its pages for support of properly worded doctrines. Millions of ordinary Christians read portions of it every day. Many heated arguments have centered on the question of its inspiration, its "inerrancy," and whether or not it is the Word of God. (I like Samuel Coleridge's way of putting the matter: The Bible becomes the Word of God for some persons but not for others.)
In this issue of The Immediate Word, team members reflect on some of these matters. Lead writer Carlos Wilton, drawing on the lectionary's Second Reading for the day, 2 Timothy 3:14--4:5, distinguishes between proper and improper use of scripture, arguing for our internalizing of the central thrust of scripture, allowing its "unified theology" and its emphasis on faith and justice to shape our lives. As usual, other team members also provide pertinent responses and illustrations.
In this issue we offer more worship-resource options than usual, some of them drawing on other appointed lections for the day (Jeremiah 31:27-34 and Psalm 119:97-104 [or Genesis 32:22-31 and Psalm 121]; Luke 18:1-8).
"BAGGAGE OR EQUIPMENT?"
2 Timothy 3:14--4:5
By Carlos Wilton
"All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work." (2 Timothy 3:16-17)
The Message on a Postcard
As any backpacker (or even any business traveler) knows, before undertaking an arduous journey it's essential to pack carefully. What we choose to bring can make all the difference between a successful trip and a grueling ordeal. Once the journey begins, we'll discover soon enough whether each item is essential equipment or merely baggage.
Second Timothy speaks of the role scripture plays in our lives. Scripture's role is to insure "that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work." Scripture, in other words, is our equipment for the Christian life. Is the Bible, for us, an essential piece of equipment for life's journey -- or is it merely baggage?
The question takes on greater urgency when we reflect on the many and varied ways scripture is used in the great debates of our day, both inside and outside the church. Various political candidates on both sides of the aisle have been criticized for speaking in the cadences of scripture, but not getting the quotations quite right. This conveys a feeling of comfort to certain listeners who like to know that their candidate is a moral person, but it's inherently unbiblical.
Others take their stand on great moral issues of the day but base their positions on a proof-texting style of exegesis: quoting single verses but ignoring those verses' larger context. For still others, the mere presence of the Bible is the thing -- as in the reading of scripture verses in school opening exercises, without any teaching or interpretation accompanying the reading. The mere reading of Bible verses is supposed to have some automatic moralizing effect on a roomful of bleary-eyed schoolchildren; but, unless the children already have a respect for the scriptures and are actively listening, it's about as effective a teaching tactic as taping slips of paper to restroom mirrors.
Such are examples of scripture as baggage: a comforting thing for a Christian to carry on the journey, perhaps, but likely to be useful only in the rarest of circumstances. Second Timothy 3:16-17 has a very different outlook. Although the scripture spoken of here is the Old Testament (and not the Bible as we know it), the result is still the same: God's word is meant to be "read, marked, learned and inwardly digested," as the old Book of Common Prayer puts it, not just stuffed into a suitcase. It is only in this way that Christians may be "equipped for every good work."
Some Words on the Word
Biblical inspiration -- can there be any doctrine that has caused more contention than this one, at least in the modern era? Here in 2 Timothy we have the master text for the doctrine of the inspiration of scripture.
This passage is not without its textual problems. Among them is the absence of the verb "to be" in the first part of verse 16. What the Greek text literally says is, "All scripture inspired by God is useful ..." Translators of some English versions insert the word "is," so it reads: "All scripture is inspired by God, and is useful ..." Is the author of this letter making a categorical statement about all scripture being inspired? Or is he saying that certain scriptures are inspired and are therefore useful? Probably the latter: the general sense of the passage is to emphasize the usefulness of scripture for the Christian life. For the author, the usefulness of scripture is the thing, not any a priori philosophical claims about it.
We ought to be careful about using 2 Timothy 3:16-17 as the basis for such a priori claims about the authority of scripture, for several reasons. First is the question, "Which scripture?" This letter was written far too early to be referring to the Bible as we know it; what the author means is the Old Testament. Second, even if the passage somehow does refer to the New Testament as well as the old, it would be self-justifying: a circular argument. Third, the general sense of the passage is pragmatic rather than doctrinal. It occurs in the latter part of the letter, in which the author is providing practical advice of various kinds.
The practical outcome of relying on scripture is that believers will be "proficient, equipped for every good work." The word translated "proficient" (artios) means "completed," as in training that is completed. The word translated as "equipped" (exertismenos) likewise means "finished" or "completed." It's more commonly used to refer to an object that has been completed, such as a bowl created by a potter. Both words imply a process, rather than a single event. Disciples are equipped when they are thoroughly familiar with scripture, rather than simply armed with a proof-text or two for occasional use. (Similarly, mountain climbers are better equipped to attempt a summit after completing a thorough program of physical conditioning, than if they had simply gone down to the wilderness outfitters and purchased a pair of boots and a hiking stick.)
This letter is encouraging Christian disciples to live with scripture over time, to make it a part of themselves, as opposed to occasionally consulting the Bible as a reference book. Scripture here is an organic whole, not merely a sum of its parts. This reading tends to discourage those who view the Bible as a collection of discrete "scriptures" that can be deployed for particular purposes: as in, "Pastor, can you give me a few scriptures to help me strengthen my marriage?" Second Timothy views scripture as a practical tool, yes: but it's a tool that's more like a carpenter's favorite, well-broken-in hammer than the case of drill bits from which an item may be selected for a particular job.
At the heart of this passage is a fascinating compound word that occurs nowhere else in the New Testament. Theopneustos -- translated "inspired" -- literally means "God-breathed." Our English word "inspired" closely follows this sense: "inspiration" is etymologically related to "respiration." That which is inspired has the Spirit of God within it; literally, it is "inspirited." Unlike any other book, whenever we open the Bible there is the distinct possibility that we will encounter in its pages the living God.
A Map of the Message
A sermon on this passage could begin with a personal anecdote -- preferably from the preacher's own experience -- about packing for some kind of journey. Which items find their way into the suitcase or backpack, and which don't? And which of those packing decisions will later cause feelings of regret?
Some things we choose to take on a trip are essential equipment. Others are mere baggage -- dead weight that impedes progress.
Most Christians would agree that scripture ought to be part of life's essential traveling-kit. The author of 2 Timothy would certainly agree. The point of "knowing the sacred writings" is that we may be "proficient, equipped for every good work" (3:15, 17). Yet there are circumstances in which scripture may prove to be not equipment, but baggage.
It's all in how the scriptures are interpreted. For centuries, Christian preachers quoted passages that appeared to them to justify the institution of slavery; that was scripture as baggage. Similarly, some emphasized passages that led to the treatment of women as second-class citizens of God's creation: baggage, again. The Inquisition imprisoned Galileo for teaching what he'd seen with his own eyes, through his telescope, about the orbits of heavenly bodies -- contradicting then-current interpretations of Genesis 1. In Mein Kampf, his notorious manifesto of hatred, Adolf Hitler misquotes 1 Peter 2:9 as a justification for racism: "You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people."
But there are also historical examples of scripture as equipment. When Martin Luther read in Galatians 2:16, "We know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ," that single insight started a Reformation that changed the world.
Earlier in history, there is the example of a dissolute Roman nobleman named Augustine, who one day heard a voice bidding him, "Take and read." Augustine's life was in a shambles as a result of sin. In his own words, "I was mad for health, and dying for life; knowing what evil thing I was, and not knowing what good thing I was shortly to become ... I was greatly disturbed in spirit ..." What Augustine "took and read" was Romans 13:13: "Let us live honorably, as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarrelling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires." For this jaded playboy, these were life-changing words. He concludes in his autobiography, the Confessions: "I wanted to read no further, nor did I need to. For instantly, as the sentence ended, there was infused in my heart something like the light of full certainty and all the gloom of doubt vanished away."
So what makes the difference between a scripture citation that is used to oppress and enslave, and one that leads to liberation? As circular and even contradictory as this logic may sound, the best rule is to let scripture interpret scripture. There is a unified theology arising out of scripture as a whole: a standard of love and justice that begins in Genesis and runs clear through Revelation. There is also a person, Jesus Christ, to whom much of scripture points. When someone's interpretation of an individual verse appears to contradict this overall theological standard, or seems to be something Jesus himself would never countenance, then it is wise to subject that interpretation to further scrutiny.
There's a natural and understandable human desire to have all the answers at our fingertips: to take the Bible into our hands and believe we're holding a mystical oracle, in which we can look up simple, unambiguous answers to all of life's questions. But the scriptures simply cannot be made to function that way. Yes, the Bible is "inspired by God and ... useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness" (2 Timothy 3:16). But this does not mean the Bible works like the Yellow Pages, in which -- if only we have the right sort of index -- we can look up brief citations that tell us all we need to know.
Serious Bible study is more than memorizing an index that tells where to look up certain proof-texts, that we can then apply like Band-Aids to life's wounds. It's a lifelong task of becoming familiar with the whole Bible, learning the great themes that run through its many books and finding our own place in its compelling narrative. It is only when we have undertaken this sort of wide-ranging study that we can be said to be "proficient, equipped for every good work."
Team Comments
Carter Shelley responds: In thinking about this topic while driving to a church function eighty miles from home today, the scriptural baggage I carried along would have fit into two separate cases. The first would be a suitcase filled with memories of the important part the Bible has played in my life as a Christian from childhood up to today. The second case would be a backpack stuffed with scholarly tomes and texts used by me in writing my Ph.D. dissertation, "The Use of Feminist Hermeneutics in Biblical Preaching." Though each case contains different aspects of myself and my faith, they are all of a piece, because both are grounded in the centrality of God's Word as revealed in scripture.
The Suitcase. Baptized as an infant in the First Presbyterian Church, Danville, Virginia, I have no recollection of a time when the Bible and its stories weren't a part of my life. As a child I was both told and taught the key biblical stories of the Old and New Testament. After I was old enough to read, I would pour over the Children's Bible with its plot summaries and many old pictures of biblical heroes who talked, walked, prayed to and acted on behalf of God. These stories offered a model for my own life as a child of faith. I wanted to have the courage and selflessness I saw in Abraham, Joseph, Queen Esther, and Jesus' disciples. I knew Jesus was out of my reach. The stories were real. The people were real. I wanted to be like them, to be the best Christian I could be.
With Confirmation class and more in-depth Sunday school, Bible studies gave me access and appreciation for more of the Bible: the Psalms, the letters of Paul, and other early church leaders, and so on. I continued to understand the Bible as both a guidebook for living and for knowing about and understanding God's will and way. It wasn't until my freshman year of college that I ever encountered scholastic details rarely shared or discussed in church youth groups or Bible studies. What I learned excited me more and gave me even more awe and wonder at the contents and treasures the Bible contains. My stance toward the Bible hasn't changed much since 1970, when I first learned about multiple authors for the Pentateuch or the different theological perspectives and emphases of the different Gospel writers. It all seemed and seems more miraculous, more wonderful, more relevant than ever when one considers how many different individuals, viewpoints, cultures, centuries, and insights are provided within its pages. The book itself is a miracle and a wonder. It remains the foundation of my faith and the most challenging book I ever attempt to read.
What I love most about it is the way it remains open, relevant, fluid, personal, and revelatory to all comers who take the time to let it speak to them instead of us telling it what it should mean. That's the challenge we preachers face each Sunday along with our parishioners. How do I know if the Word I read, interpret, and share is truly God's Word and not my will instead? Our task as preachers is awesome, because we have an awesome task to perform: reveal the will and Word of God for this time, this place in the most honest, pious, and holy way we can, in Jesus' name and for Christ's sake. Amen.
The Backpack: A Brief Consideration of the Difference between the Bible as Authoritative Discourse and the Reformed View of the Authority of Scripture. Reader beware! This section comes from my dissertation composed to impress professors. Feel free to read only the block quotes. Mikhail Bakhtin was a twentieth-century Russian literary theorist whose ideas have been far-reaching in biblical and literary studies in the past two decades.
What is fundamentalism? It is a way of thinking that espouses the fact that "God is and God has spoken." He has spoken to us by the prophets, by Jesus Christ, and by the apostles, as accurately recorded and preserved in the Bible. The Bible's absolute, universal truth is equally true for all men, unchangeable truth for all generations. The Bible reveals truth and does not conceal it in some mystical, allegorical presentation. God said what he meant and meant what he said. We can know the truth by reading the Bible in the same way we read an encyclopedia or any historical book. The Bible is to be understood literally, unless the context clearly indicates otherwise.
This is the soul of fundamentalism. The difference between a liberal and a fundamentalist is in their approach to truth. The liberal says, "Truth is relative and obscure." The fundamentalist says, "Truth is absolute and clearly presented in the Bible." Despite the numerous factions that may exist among the ranks of fundamentalists, all fundamentalists solidly unite in believing God's Word to be infallible and inerrant. All fundamentalists interpret the Bible literally. We agree on the virgin birth, the deity of Christ, the blood atonement, the physical resurrection and the return of Christ, and other major doctrines. To believe anything else is impossible if one believes the Bible and interprets it literally. (Dowell 10)[1]
Bill Dowell, Jr., Speech and Theology Professor at Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Missouri, defines "truth" with confidence and clarity. The understanding of truth he supplies is diametrically opposed to that of Mikhail Bakhtin. For Dowell, and for other contemporary fundamentalists like him, truth does not grow out of continuous dialogic communication; truth exists clearly and immutably in the biblical word of God. Dowell's statement provides an incisive entry into a number of issues I am considering in this chapter. First, Dowell's confident affirmation of biblical revelation as the one, true source of transcendent truth is one which is shared by many Christians present, and past. Second, his definition of fundamentalism beautifully expresses Dowell's conviction that the Bible is an authoritative discourse. Third, Dowell's rhetoric underscores the key attributes Bakhtin identifies as characteristic of authoritative discourse. Fourth, Bill Dowell's concluding sentence introduces the hermeneutical method most compatible with fundamentalists' interpretive stance: the literal reading.[2]
It is my contention that the interpretive stance an individual takes toward the Bible will influence and, to some extent, determine what the reader will discover, understand, interpret, and preach from the Bible. When the interpretive stance of authoritative discourse is adopted toward the Bible, the reader/preacher proclaims the biblical text to be literal, factual, plainly written, and comprehensible. Thus, Bakhtin's theoretical notion of authoritative discourse provides an entry point into this fundamentalist's epistemology.
Bakhtin was not the first to assign the word authority to the Bible. The authority of scripture is a fundamental tenet of Protestantism; however, what Bakhtin and fundamentalists mean when they say the Bible has authority and what Reformed theologians and ministers mean when we speak of the Bible's authority is very different.
The conviction that the Bible is the word of God does not grow out of the authority of the church or out of any of the humanly discernible qualities that may be found in its pages. No achievement of scholarship can establish that the Bible is anything more than another human book with all the relativity's of human frailty, time, and space. The experience of the Bible as the word of God depends finally upon the "witness of the Holy Spirit." Here again it is apparent that a revival of the Reformed tradition cannot be programmed or commanded. It depends upon a gift of grace and upon that mysterious interaction of the spirit of God and the human spirit in the reading of the scripture.
The serious study of the Bible with the use of the best intellectual equipment available must be carried on, for God has commanded his people to love him with their minds. (Leith 216).
Much more could be said about the authority of scripture ... The point I am establishing here is that Bakhtin's concept of the Bible as authoritative discourse is not at all the same as the Reformed doctrine of the authority of scripture. Here I use Bakhtin's definition of authoritative discourse to show why Bakhtin consigns the Bible to this theoretical category of alien discourse and not to that of internally persuasive discourse. Along the way I'll provide examples of the literal reading hermeneutical method at work and will identify their significant characteristics....
Bakhtin's term authoritative discourse identifies texts that a given society has designated "sacred" and "inviolable." The Torah, the Bible, the Koran, and the Book of Mormon are examples of religious texts frequently read as authoritative discourse. The words "sacred" and "inviolable" do not refer to the religious content of authoritative discourse but to the reader or listener's understanding and attitude toward the text. The word "sacred" implies respect on the reader's part, and an acknowledgment of distance between the reader and text. The reader understands the text as discourse offered from an alien source. It's not Aunt Effie's homespun wisdom; it's "the Word of God," or it's "the law." Authoritative discourses are handed down from one generation to the next. The word "inviolable" describes authoritative discourse as a text that is not to be revised, edited, added to, changed, or tampered with in any way. No significant changes were made to the Bible between the canonization of its books in the fourth century A.D. up to the time of the Protestant Reformation, when Martin Luther made the Apocrypha into an Appendix to the Bible. No new books, letters, or gospels have been removed or added since the sixteenth century, nor are they likely to be.
No discourse is authoritative unless it is taken that way by the reader and the listener. One day while I was working away on this dissertation my doorbell rang. When I answered it I was greeted by two young men in white shirts, dark ties, and gray slacks. "Hi," I said, "You're Mormons aren't you?" I then told them that I was a Presbyterian minister, that I knew several Mormon families in the community and had read quite a bit about their beliefs and practices and knew I was not interested in converting. At this point, one of the men started to quote Joseph Smith's words from the last chapter of The Book of Mormon, their authoritative text. As he recited the words that meant so much to him, and absolutely nothing to me, I found myself saying: "Look, if you want to talk to me about your beliefs, that's fine, but first you have to come in and sit down and listen to mine. I'll spend thirty minutes talking about predestination, the providence of God, and the authority of scripture, and then you can take thirty minutes to do the same." Well, they didn't want to hear about Calvin or Presbyterianism; they wanted me to accept the authority of their text based upon their reverence and awe of it, but they did not wish to turn their text into an object of intellectual debate, so they left and I went back to writing this dissertation.
Bakhtin writes that discourse becomes authoritative when it is taken to be absolutist, when it forbids further insights and interpretations, because its meaning has been established and understood to be set, constant, and finite. The term "authoritative" accurately describes the status of such discourse. It is the word of authority handed down from on high by an authoritative figure such as a judge, a minister, or a dictator.
[1]Dowell is co-pastor of the Baptist Temple Church and a regular contributor to the Fundamentalist Journal, from which this statement is drawn.
[2]"Interpretive stance" is not a term Bakhtin uses. I have coined it to help describe the interpretive attitude a reader or preacher takes when he or she opens the Bible and starts to read.
George Murphy responds: The problems of translation of verse 16 are not trivial. While the traditional reading begins, "All scripture ..." there are good reasons to render that instead as, "Every scripture ..." The emphasis in the verse is on the usefulness of each part of scripture rather than on the whole of it, although the latter, of course, is not to be denied.
More controversial is the issue to which Carlos refers. Are we to translate as, "Every scripture that is inspired ..." (as he suggests) or, "Every scripture is inspired ..."? Commentators on the Pastoral Epistles are divided, Dibelius and Conzelmann opting for the first possibility and Kelly for the second. It seems to me that the second, more traditional, rendering is preferable, since the first would leave open the question of just what parts of scripture the writer was pointing to as useful.
The scriptures (in the sense of "all scripture") under consideration are those of what Christians now call the Old Testament. Other writings of what would become the New Testament were in existence when 2 Timothy was written, but it took time for Christians to recognize them as "scripture" in the same sense as the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings. But that recognition did come fairly soon, and in 2 Peter 3:16 (coincidentally!), in what may be the latest of the New Testament writings, the letters of Paul are put in the same class as "the other scriptures." Thus what is said in 2 Timothy about scripture in general would be applied to Christian writings placed in that category. Of course, a detailed discussion of just which writings those are would require that we get into a discussion of the canon but that's a topic more for an adult class than for a sermon. F. F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture (InterVarsity, 1988) would be useful for those who want to get into that topic.
There has not been too much debate among Christians about the statement in our text that scripture is "useful" for various purpose. What has been more hotly contested is the meaning and implications of the description of scripture as "inspired" -- literally, "God-breathed" (theopneustos).
What I find problematic about the way in which some Christians use this text is that they make the automatic equations "inspired" = "inerrant" = "historically or scientifically accurate narrative." The first step, the assumption that an inspired text must be true, seems plausible. But in what way is it true? There are different types of texts and they are true in different ways. To say that the creation stories of Genesis (to take an important example) are true and authoritative does not settle the question of what kinds of texts they are -- that is, how we are to read them. And if we are mistaken there we can get completely off track. If you read a letter from the IRS the way you read a love letter -- or vice versa -- you can be in big trouble.
In other words, one problem with the idea of "inerrancy" is that people understand it to mean more than just that texts are true. They also insist that that they have to be true in a certain way, i.e., as historical narrative or scientific account.
To get this across to classes at various levels I've sometimes handed out a sheet that has two texts about the death of Abraham Lincoln. One is an account of the Lincoln's assassination and death from Benjamin Thomas' Abraham Lincoln, with all the care and detail of the historian. The other is Walt Whitman's poem "O Captain! My Captain!" And the question I pose is, which of these texts is true?
The answer of course is, "Both of them." Thomas' account gives the fact and Whitman's is concerned with what the brute fact meant for the poet and for the nation. There is no contradiction between them. But someone who insisted on reading both of them as the same type of thing, as historical narrative, would be faced with the task of "harmonizing" them on an historical level. And since Lincoln didn't die on board a ship ("Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead"), but (as Thomas clearly states) in a house across the street from Ford's Theater, the result could only be absurd.
Thus it is crucial to distinguish the different types of literature that can be found in scripture. That is the case when we're talking about any text, not just the Bible. But there is another, more distinctively theological point that we need to be aware of.
What are we to make of statements and allusions in the Bible that, if we're honest, simply reflect an understanding of the world that we now regard as outdated? The creation story of Genesis 1 pictures heaven as a "dome" or "firmament" over the (probably flat) earth with waters above it (see also Psalm 148:4), which just isn't the way things are. The account of the sun standing still for Joshua shows a view of the world quite different from that of modern astronomy. The mustard seed is not really the smallest of all seeds. And this concern is by no means limited to facts about the natural sciences. How do we reconcile the calls to holy war and extermination of certain peoples in the Old Testament with belief in a God of love? How can texts that allow slavery (though with some limitations) be seen as true and authoritative for Christians who have come to believe that owning other people just doesn't fit with treating other people as Jesus calls us to?
I think that what we have to see is that the process of inspiration of scripture also involved God's accommodation of the message that was to be communicated to the levels of understanding of the biblical writers and their cultures. Though of course he wasn't aware of the modern critical study of scripture and all the issues it raises, Calvin, for example, refers to such a concept of accommodation to explain things like the differences between teachings in the Old Testament and the New. God condescended to communicate to people through the medium of imperfect human understandings of the world, society, and human nature. This may not seem so surprising to us if we realize that even our own knowledge of those things is far from perfect. Even if the Bible made use of the scientific worldview of the early twenty-first century, it might appear outdated to the people of the twenty-second century.
But we can go even deeper than that. Scripture has an incarnational pattern. Just as God's supreme revelation took place under the limitations of human nature in the culture of Palestinian Judaism of the first century, so scripture as the inspired witness to God's revelation "was made flesh" with respect to the knowledge of the world that people two to three thousand years ago had. And just as the human Jesus of Nazareth is the Word of God, so the human words of scripture are the inspired Word.
Related Illustrations
From Carlos Wilton
The writer Annie Dillard, in Teaching a Stone to Talk, tells the story of the ill-fated Franklin Expedition to the Canadian arctic. In 1845, Sir John Franklin, accompanied by 138 officers and men, set sail from England. They were determined to discover the fabled "Northwest Passage," across Canada to the Pacific.
Each of Franklin's three sailing ships was equipped with a steam engine for emergencies -- and with all of a twelve-day supply of coal, for a journey that was projected to take two to three years.
"Instead of additional coal, each ship included a 1,200 volume library, a 'hand-organ, playing fifty tunes,' china place settings for officers and men, cut-glass wine goblets and sterling silver flatware.... Engraved on the handles were the individual officers' initials and family crests. The expedition carried no special clothing for the arctic, only the uniforms of Her Majesty's Navy."
It was not for many years that England would discover the fate of the Franklin expedition. The Inuit hunters -- the Eskimos, who crisscrossed the frozen north, following their sled dogs -- they knew. They had stumbled across the frozen bodies of the expedition members, in small groups, all across northern Canada.
The ships had become frozen in pack ice. The crewmen decided, after many months of waiting, to walk for help. They took with them whatever items they considered most valuable. Dillard continues: "[One] search party found two skeletons in a boat on a sledge. They had hauled the boat sixty-five miles. With the two skeletons were some chocolate, some guns, some tea, and a great deal of table silver. Many miles south of these two was another skeleton, alone. This was a frozen officer.... The skeleton was in uniform: trousers and jacket of 'fine blue cloth ... edged with silk braid' .... Over this uniform the dead man had worn 'a blue greatcoat, with a black silk neckerchief.' "
These foolhardy explorers were ill-prepared for the bitter climate of the arctic. Yet so worried were they about their sterling-silver flatware (engraved with family crests), and their silk-braided uniforms, that they took these trivial items with them on their last, desperate race across the ice.
***
Phillips Brooks, one of the greatest preachers of the nineteenth century, used to describe the Bible as similar to a telescope. If we look through a telescope, we can see worlds beyond our own. Yet if we only look at the telescope, we won't see anything but the telescope. The Bible is a thing to be looked through, to see that which is beyond: but all too many people only look at it, and see only the dead letter.
***
William Sloane Coffin once bemoaned "Christians who use the Bible much as a drunk does a lamppost -- more for support than for illumination."
***
Encouraging people to study the scriptures, Harry Emerson Fosdick said, "Read until you stumble upon yourself on its pages."
***
Most people want to wake up in the morning with a general at the foot of their bed saying, "Go do this." The problem is, there's somebody at the foot of their bed saying, "Once upon a time ..."
-- Bishop N. T. Wright, speaking of those who study the Bible
***
On February 25, 2004, U.S. Representative Jim McDermott of Washington State spoke out against President Bush's expressed desire that a constitutional amendment be written to codify marriage according to biblical principles. Speaking tongue-in-cheek, McDermott proposed the following text as part of a constitutional amendment establishing a biblical model of marriage:
A. Marriage in the United States shall consist of a union between one man and one or more women. (Genesis 29:17-28; 2 Samuel 3:2-5)
B. Marriage shall not impede a man's right to take concubines in addition to his wife or wives. (2 Samuel 5:13; 1 Kings 11:3; 2 Chronicles 11:21)
C. A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed. (Deuteronomy 22:13-21)
D. Marriage of a believer and a non-believer shall be forbidden. (Genesis 24:3; Numbers 25:1-9; Ezra 9:12; Nehemiah 10:30)
E. Since marriage is for life, neither this Constitution nor the constitution of any State, nor any state or federal law, shall be construed to permit divorce. (Mark 10:9)
F. If a married man dies without children, his brother shall marry the widow. If he refuses to marry his brother's widow or deliberately does not give her children, he shall pay a fine of one shoe and be otherwise punished in a manner to be determined by law. (Genesis 38:6-10; Deuteronomy 25:5-10)
-- The Congressional Record
***
In his book, The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America, journalist Bill Bryson tells of visiting Hannibal, Missouri, the boyhood hometown of Samuel L. Clemens (better known as Mark Twain). Visiting the Clemens home, he encountered a fellow tourist, a Twain enthusiast, who said he visited the place two or three times a year, and had probably been there twenty or thirty times altogether.
"You must be a real fan and follower of Mark Twain," Bryson marveled. "Would you say the house is just like Mark Twain described it in his books?"
"Oh, I don't know," said the tourist. "I wouldn't have the foggiest notion. I've never read any of his books!"
Visiting his shrine, but ignoring his books. So like the experience of all too many followers of Jesus Christ!
***
You Americans! You take the Bible so literally, why can't you take it seriously?
-- A Palestinian woman, speaking to a Lutheran pastor who was visiting her homeland
***
Echoing the World War II era, a company called Innovative Marketing Alliance is publishing God's Armor New Testament, a bulletproof pocket-sized Bible for loved ones who are at risk. "While its fundamental function is to provide the spiritual assurance that comes from carrying God's Word next to the heart, its antiballistic qualities built into the cover provide a reminder of the world we live in." However, the armor is only capable of resisting a .38 caliber bullet.
-- Brian Kelcher, "Not So Good News," in The Door, November-December 1996, p. 41
Worship Resources
By Julie Strope
CALL TO WORSHIP (Psalm 119:97-104 and 2 Timothy 3:16)
Leader: How good it is to be together! Sweeter than honey!
People: We have gathered to encourage each other in the faith journey. We are also here to thank God for guidance for our daily living.
Leader: God's Law is with us all the time; it makes us wise.
People: God's word is a lamp to guide us and a light for our paths.
Leader: Together we can keep our solemn promises to please God.
People: We turn again to the Bible for inspiration and direction, for scriptures are inspired by God and give us wisdom for our inner and outer realities.
PRAYER OF ADORATION
Thank you, Holy One, for ancient ideas that still have meaning for us today. For Torah and all its stories of living and dying, of human trials and your faithfulness, we are grateful. For your constant love, we give you thanks. In this hour, speak to us of truth, courage, and grace. We give you our undivided attention. Amen.
HYMN SUGGESTIONS (available in The Presbyterian Hymnal, 1990)
"O Word Of God Incarnate" (Tune: MUNICH. N.b.: this hymn's last verse is an allusion to Psalm 119:105)
"Break Thou The Bread Of Life" (Tune: BREAD OF LIFE)
"Deep In The Shadows Of The Past" (Tune: SHEPHERDS' PIPES. N.b.: the tune for this hymn is somewhat familiar; the words are a nice telling of the early Hebrews and their experience with God)
"Thanks To God Whose Word Was Written" (Tune: WYLDE GREEN. N.b.: this hymn is a thanksgiving to God for the Word without making the Bible the object of praise)
CALL TO CONFESSION
Leader: Take a moment to quiet your heart and mind. Notice whatever is there that keeps you from being your best self. Observe what separates you from intimacy with the Holy.
CONFESSION (unison) (2 Timothy 3)
Living God,
We want to live a godly life in union with Christ.
Yet we are drawn to hurtful things.
Set us free from selfish desires; cleanse us of greed and conceit.
Lead us in paths that manifest your love, and give us inner peace. Amen.
ASSURANCE OF PARDON
This is the good news for today:
there will be difficult times;
however, divine grace is dependable.
With Christ there is purpose and truth.
With Christ, there is strength and hope for each situation. Hallelujah!
(An easy choral response might be one of the versions of "Bless The Lord, O My Soul.")
AN AFFIRMATION (2 Timothy 3; Psalm 119; Luke 18)
We believe that God is both judge and lover of the world and its peoples, inviting us to be involved with keeping the earth clean and beautiful.
We see the God-human relationship most clearly in Jesus of Nazareth and we choose to live by his teachings.
We experience the Holy Spirit living within us, prompting us to do justice, to be honest and to care about our neighbors.
As a household of God, we endeavor to be welcoming to strangers as well as to familiar faces. Through easy times and in times of uncomfortable changes, we will practice gentleness while struggling with disappointment and pain.
In living and in dying, we walk beside one another.
Let it be so!
INTERCESSORY PRAYERS (leader)
Great Mystery,
The world rotates and we stand still. You are absent yet present with us. Look at this planet and wrap your love around all Creation. Feel the nations and their pain as mercilessness and hatred maim and kill. With each breath, we say, "Come, Loving God and rain peace upon ancient lands. Remove the need for walls. Save the children to grow gentle and neighborly. Let bombs and tanks become food and water." Come, Mystery, and bring peace.
Creating God,
We do not understand your ways any more now than when the Palmist observed this truth. We do not understand suffering nor betrayals nor disease. We do know that you never forsake us. So hold us together, hold us up when our pain seems too great to bear. Heal us from the inside out. Comfort us whose loss is unfathomable. Touch those who long to feel your reassuring grace.
God of the Ages,
Transform us; reform us; revolutionize us so we become twenty-first century witnesses to your activity in our hearts and in the cosmos. Thank your for churches around this globe seeking to equip adults and children to be citizens of this world and the next. Thank you for teachers and mentors who pass the spark of divine love and life abundant.
God of the Seasons,
Thank you for the colors and coolness of autumn. As the nights get longer, may we be alert to your light shining in us and through us. Let us carry goodness wherever we go. Amen.
OFFERTORY STATEMENT (leader)
Remember what we have inherited -- the tradition of proclaiming God's love on this street corner and around the world. Remember how we equip one another and the next generation. Remember the ministry that happens in this building among the blind and the mentally and physically challenged.
Your tithes and offerings make it possible.
THANKSGIVING PRAYER (leader)
Holy One,
We are yours, body, mind, and psyche. Thank you for the gifts and the resources that have been assembled here. Thank you for money and talents, for hope and for passion. Amen.
BENEDICTION / CHARGE
Leave here better equipped to be God's hands and feet on your street.
Leave here with ideas to inspire you until next time we gather.
Go your way, conscious of indwelling Holy Spirit.
Be at peace -- deep peace. Live joyfully.
Worship Resources
By George E. Reed
OPENING
(N.b.: All copyright information is given from the first cited place where found. Some copyright information may differ in other sources due to adaptations, etc.)
MUSIC
Hymns
"Seek The Lord"
WORDS: Fred Pratt Green, 1986; MUSIC: George Henry Day, 1940.
Words (c) 1989 by Hope Publishing Co. music (c) 1942, renewed 1971 The Church Pension Fund. As found in UMH 124.
"Christ, Whose Glory Fills The Skies"
WORDS: Charles Wesley, 1740; MUSIC: J. G. Werner's Choralbuch, 1815; harm. William H. Havergal, 1861. Public domain. As found in UMH 173; Hymnal '82: 6, 7; LBOW 265; TPH 462, 463.
"Ask Ye What Great Thing I Know"
WORDS: Johann C. Schwedler, 1741; trans. Benjamin H. Kennedy, 1863; MUSIC: H. A. Cesar Malan, 1827; harm. Lowell Mason, 1841. Public domain. As found in UMH 163; TNCH 49.
"Come, My Way, My Truth, My Life"
WORDS: George Herbert, 1633; MUSIC: Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1911; adapt. E. Harold Geer. Public domain. As found in UMH 164; Hymnal '82: 487; LBOW 513; TNCH 331.
Songs
"I Sing Praises"
WORDS and MUSIC: Terry MacAlmon. (c) 1989 by Integrity's Hosanna! Music. As found in Renew 79.
"Lift Your Heart To The Lord"
WORDS: John E. Bowers, 1982; alt.; MUSIC: Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1906. Music used by permission of (c) Oxford University Press from the English Hymnal. As found in Renew 61.
"Now Holy Spirit, Ever One"
WORDS: Ambrose of Milan; versified in The Hymnal 1982; MUSIC: William Knapp, 1738. Harm. Emily R. Brink, 1994. (c) 1994, CRC Publications. As found in Renew 284.
CALL TO WORSHIP
Leader: The Law of God is our love.
People: It is our meditation all day long.
Leader: The commandments of God make us wise.
People: They give us understanding beyond our teachers.
Leader: The words of God are sweet.
People: They are sweeter than honey.
Leader: The commandments of God give us understanding;
People: They cause us to eschew every false way.
COLLECT / OPENING PRAYER
O God, who created us and knows our every need: Grant that we may receive the guidance and strength you offer through scripture so we may mature into the fullness of your likeness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
or
We come to hear a word from you, O God, so that we may be able to live as your people and as disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ. Help us to open our ears to your voice and give us courage to follow the instructions that we hear. Amen.
RESPONSE MUSIC
Hymns
"Break Thou The Bread Of Life"
WORDS: Mary A. Lathbury, 1877; MUSIC: William F. Sherwin, 1877. Public domain. As found in UMH 599; Hymnal '82; LBOW 235; TPH 329; AAHH 334; TNNBH 295; TNCH 321; CH 321.
"Wonderful Words Of Life"
WORDS: Philip P. Bliss, 1874; MUSIC: Philip P. Bliss, 1874. Public domain. As found in UMH 600; AAHH 332; TNNBH 293; TNCH 319; CH 323.
"Open My Eyes, That I May See"
WORDS: Clara H. Scott, 1895; MUSIC: Clara H. Scott, 1895. Public domain. As found in UMH 454; TPH 324; TNNBH 218; CH 586.
"Be Thou My Vision"
WORDS: Ancient Irish; trans. Mary E. Byrne, 1905; versed by Eleanor H. Hull, 1912, alt.; MUSIC: Trad. Irish melody; harm. Carlton R. Young, 1963, alt. (c) 1989 The United Methodist Publishing House; harm. (c) 1964 Abingdon Press. As found in UMH 451; Hymnal '82: 488; TPH 339; TNCH 451; CH 595.
Songs
"Thy Word Is A Lamp"
WORDS: Amy Grant, 1984; MUSIC: Michael W. Smith, 1984; arr. Keith Phillips. (c) 1964 Meadowgreen Music Co./ Bug and bear Music. As found in UMH 601.
"Open Our Eyes, Lord"
WORDS: St. 1 by Bob Cull; st. 2, anon.; MUSIC: Bob Cull. (c) 1976 Maranatha! Music. As found in CCB 77.
"Your Loving Kindness Is Better Than Life"
WORDS: Based on Ps. 63: 3, 4; MUSIC: Hugh Mitchell. Chorus (c) 1956 and verses (c) 1962 Singspiration Music/ACAP. As found in CCB 26.
PRAYERS OF CONFESSION / PARDON
Leader: Let us confess the blindness in our lives.
People: We confess to you, O God, that we are a stiff-necked people who look but do not see; who listen but do not hear; who perceive but do not comprehend. You have shown us what is required of us but we offer excuses and alibis instead of obedience. When we do obey it is with slow and ungrateful hearts.
Help us to hear the love in your voice and the urgency with which you call us to choose life by following the example of our Lord Jesus. You offer us life. Help us not to choose anything less.
Leader: The God who calls us to follow is the One who loves us. In the Name of Jesus Christ you are forgiven. Amen.
GENERAL PRAYERS, LITANITES, ETC.
You are the One who is beyond all of our understanding. Your ways are not our ways and your thoughts are not our thoughts. Yet you come to us and speak your words of life and joy. We adore you for your greatness and praise you for your great love that leads you come to us with guidance and grace.
(The following paragraph is most suitable if a prayer of confession will not be used elsewhere.)
We confess to you, our God and Savior, that we have failed to be an obedient people. Even though you come to us in love and care and offer us the way of life, we choose to take our own path that leads to destruction and pain. Send your Holy Spirit upon us once more that we may become once again your faithful people.
We thank you for all the ways in which you speak to us. We thank you for the beauty of nature that tells of your glory and for the words of scripture where we learn of your steadfast love and faithfulness.
We give you thanks for our home, this earth, and all the bounty you supply through it. We are grateful most of all for our Lord Jesus and the gentle way he shepherds us and leads us to you and to life.
(Other specific thanksgiving may be offered.)
Surrounded by your loving presence, we offer up to you the cares of our hearts. We pray for those who are denied the good things you intended for them because of our greed and the greed of others. We pray for those who find sickness to be a constant way of life. We pray for those who have not yet heard or yet believed in your loving presence.
(Other petitions may be offered.)
All these things we ask in the Name of Jesus who taught us to pray saying, "Our Father ...."
Hymnal & Songbook Abbreviations
UMH: United Methodist Hymnal
Hymnal '82: The Hymnal 1982, The Episcopal Church
LBOW: Lutheran Book of Worship
TPH: The Presbyterian Hymnal
AAHH: African American Heritage Hymnal
TNNBH: The New National Baptist Hymnal
TNCH: The New Century Hymnal
CH: Chalice Hymnal
CCB: Cokesbury Chorus Book
PMMCH3: Praise. Maranatha! Music Chorus Book, Expanded 3rd Edition
Renew: Renew! Songs and Hymns for Blended Worship
A Chidren's Sermon
Tell God your troubles Object: a telephone Based on Luke 18:1-8
How do we talk to God? (get answers) We pray and just talk to him, right? Prayer is just like talking to a friend. Some people would say that talking to God is like having a telephone conversation. (show the phone) You punch in the numbers, wait for God to answer, and then you can talk to him. But what if he's not home? Does he put on his answering machine and take messages? I don't think so. I think he's always waiting to talk to us.
In today's lesson Jesus reminds us that God is quick to answer prayer. He tells a story about a woman who goes to a judge to get justice for a wrong she had suffered. She goes to him over and over, but he just ignores her. Finally, she pesters him enough and he agrees to help her. He doesn't really want to help her, though. He just wants to make her go away. He finally gives her what she wants just so she won't bother him anymore.
Jesus teaches that God is not like that. God is eager to hear our troubles and will answer us right away.
Have you ever been sad? Have you ever had a problem and wanted to get help right away? Boy, I have. What do you do when you feel like that? (get responses) Sometimes I keep my troubles inside and don't tell anyone. Do you ever do that? Here's the problem with that: How can anyone help you if they don't know what you need? Jesus teaches us that God is waiting to help us, but we must go to him and tell him our troubles. He is eager to help us get better, but he will wait for us to tell him what we need. We don't have to pester him, like that woman had to pester the judge. Today's lesson reminds us that he will answer us right away.
God doesn't have his answering machine on. (pick up the phone) All you have to do is call on him whenever you need to talk to him. He has promised to be there and listen to all you have to say. He's always there for you.
Prayer: Heavenly Father, you are waiting to talk to us and hear our prayers. Thank you for always being there for us. Amen.
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The Immediate Word, October 17, 2004, issue.
Copyright 2004 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802-4503.
