April 30, 2006

It Is True, and Can Be Trusted

Acts 3:12-19
1 John 3:1-7
Luke 24:36b-48

Every Sunday without fail we read at least one, and usually two or three, lessons from the Bible. This is standard operating procedure in most churches. And in some fashion or other, you expect me to preach a sermon that connects with at least one of the Bible lessons you've just heard. Though it might be entertaining, you really didn't come to church this morning to hear about my latest exploits in bike riding, or my pet peeves, or my opinion on how well I think the Red Sox will do this year. Not that I can't bring in anecdotes or opinions that may be relevant, but my primary purpose is to try to connect the Bible to life, to the lives we lead, to make the teachings relevant, and most important, to preach the Good News of the gospel.

This is not as easy as it may sound, because biblical interpretation is not an exact science and the Bible is a very complex book. To further complicate things, well-meaning, faithful Christians have divergent views regarding issues such as whether the Bible is literally, factually true, every word of it, or whether one can believe that, yes, it was written by God-inspired people, but that one needs to reflect on metaphorical, historical, or cultural considerations to get the most complete biblical interpretation possible. The Southern Baptist Church, the largest Protestant denomination, has gone through some terrible internal traumas the last couple of decades or so around just these kinds of issues. For moderates who see their church being taken over by staunch fundamentalists, it has been a painful process. Tensions over biblical interpretation sometimes arise even in churches like ours between evangelicals and more moderate or liberal thinkers; confusions even arise when different Bible versions or translations are used. Beneath all this is a basic question: Is the Bible true or not?

In the Gospel of John, Jesus is arrested and brought before Pontius Pilate, who questions him about who he is and what he is about. Near the end of their dialogue, Jesus says: "For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice." And Pilate replies, somewhat rhetorically, "What is truth?" (i) But when it comes to understanding the Bible, this is not a rhetorical question. We really do want to know whether what we're reading or hearing is true or not. Sometimes when I finished reading the scriptures, I used to say, "This is the Word of God, it is true and can be trusted." When I said that, was I telling the truth? Is the Bible true or not?

Take our Gospel lesson for today. The resurrected Jesus returns to his frightened disciples, and at first, in their terror, they don't recognize him; they think they're seeing a ghost. But Jesus shows them his wounds, and then asks, "What have you got to eat?" He then proceeds to chow down some broiled fish - not exactly what we might expect of a ghost. When he finishes, he explains the scriptures to them, and their minds are opened, and they believe. Is this true?

Before we can answer this, we need to clarify what we mean when we say something is true. The truth of a statement, for example, depends on what it means and on how it means what it means. For instance, if we read John Grisham's novel, The Firm, we might say that it's true to the American legal system. We're not saying it's an eyewitness account or an historically accurate report of some court proceeding, but rather, that it reveals how things really are in the court system of our country. There is some truth in what Grisham writes, but it's just a novel, not history. Likewise, if we read a well-written biography, we assume that the author is not making up events or manufacturing dialogue. (ii) A biography has truthful facts and true-to-life situations.

Both a novel and a biography can be true, but they are true in different ways. There are different ground rules for each. So also with plays, humorous stories or jokes, and history. Each has its own way of approaching truth. What gets tricky, and is somewhat challenging, is that the Bible is composed of several different types of literature, and we must determine which type we are reading or hearing at the moment. For example, if Jesus says, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers ..." we know we're about to hear a parable, not history, not poetry, not a letter, but a story. And when we say that the parable of the Good Samaritan is true, we are talking about a particular kind of truth presented in a particular way, not necessarily literal truth.

William Sloane Coffin, former pastor of Riverside Church in New York and Chaplain at Yale, who recently died, once began a sermon on Genesis like this: "The Genesis account of the creation of the world may not be scientifically true, but it is eternally true." I like that distinction. I believe there is much truth in the creation story - that God is the creator of all that is; that the creation is good, very good; that God has put us humans here to take care of, to be stewards of, the created order; that we are created in the image of God; that we live our lives east of Eden (and it's not perfect); and that we yearn to return to that Garden. (iii) One does not have to believe every detail, like the world was literally created in six days, for example, to believe the underlying truths. Scientists may be better able to tell us the truth about when or how the world came into being, but the Bible deals with the deeper question of why. (iv)

Even when the Bible deals with history, it may not be true in the ways we think of history, but it still can be true in a deeper sense. The history writers of the Bible didn't get hung up on getting every minute detail correct in the way that most contemporary historians try to. Sometimes they reported things out of chronological order, but that wasn't an issue with them. They were more concerned about the meaning of particular events, the significance of the events.

Another problem we have in determining the truthfulness of the Bible is that we sometimes forget that we're dealing with a book written in antiquity, from two to three thousand years ago. There's a huge distance between Bible times and our time. We literally and figuratively live in a different world. That's why it's so amazing that we can still get from the Bible the incredible wisdom and truth contained in its pages that we do. But we must always remember that the various parts of the Bible were written within particular historical and cultural contexts, at different times, by different authors, and for different purposes. When we ignore literary, historical, or cultural contexts, we run the risk of misusing the Bible or misunderstanding its deeper truths.

Two illustrations. Slavery is mentioned many times in both the Hebrew and Christian parts of the Bible. In some places it is explicitly or implicitly condoned, or at least accepted as necessary for society. So, is slavery okay? The Bible says it is. This was the reasoning taken two hundred years ago by American slaveholders who read in their Bibles about slavery being permitted, and that gave them the moral sanction for owning slaves themselves. In our time, we would say that such an interpretation is wrong, because one cannot take out of context an approval of slavery, made in a different time and in different circumstances, and apply this to today.

The other illustration is homosexuality, one of the "hot button" issues of our day. Many people over the centuries have turned to the Bible and used what they have found there about homosexuality - and they've had to look long and hard, because it's not a prominent biblical concern, albeit quite negative in the few places where it is mentioned - but they have used these few texts to justify discrimination, prejudice, oppression, hatred, or violence against those who are so oriented. Doing so, however, ignores the original cultural contexts of the passages, and also the linguistic and literary issues that need to be understood surrounding these texts. For example, there is no Hebrew or Greek word that exactly corresponds to our word homosexual, and for sure those ancient cultures knew nothing about our understanding of sexual orientation. A benchmark I often use when I'm considering any difficult issue is to ask, "What did Jesus say about this," or "What do I think he would say or do?" Truth is, Jesus said nothing about homosexuality, but he did say a lot about love and acceptance and reaching out to and caring for others - even those on the fringes of society, even those, like the Samaritans, considered by most as second class citizens. And he matched his words with compassionate actions.

You know where I come down on this issue, and it's a place I've arrived at after much study and prayer. I'm fully aware that we're not all of one mind, as reflected in the Deacons' decision last year. So be it. But I hope the dialogue will continue among you in the future. How we treat this class of citizens in our society is not going to go away, and I believe we need to take the Bible seriously, and follow Jesus' teachings of love and compassion. For me the Christian response has to be not only tolerance of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered persons, but also openness, acceptance, and affirmation.

The Bible really is not a hopelessly complicated or impossible-to-understand book. But like all good literature, it must be pondered seriously. Maybe this metaphor I heard may help. When we have friends whom we trust, we recognize their jokes as jokes, their fanciful speech as fanciful speech, and when they're serious, we know it. And we know that they won't tell us things about ourselves, themselves, or others that will lead us astray. We can trust the Bible in a similar way. Overall, it contains truths we can live by, thus, we say it is true. Each Sunday here in church, though we may not understand everything we hear read from the Bible, though we may not find everything immediately relevant, we do learn to trust the Bible. We trust it because more times than not, it helps makes sense of our crazy world, or gives us some tools to better cope with it. The Bible is not some fake, phony collection of never-never-land wishful thinking, but something solid we can turn to, to strengthen our faith and enable us to live more faithful lives. To continue the metaphor, like a good friend, the Bible may not always tell us what we want to hear, but if we listen carefully, it tells us what we need to hear to be better people and to be more faithful Christians. (v)

In our gospel lesson, the disciples are huddled together, and then without warning, the risen Christ comes and stands among them. They are scared and perplexed. Then Jesus speaks to them, shows them his scars, has a meal with them, and "opens their minds to understand the scriptures." Now, is this true? Is this the way it really happened? There is no way we can know for sure, but we do know that it does happen, maybe not this Sunday or every Sunday, but it does happen sometimes, even right here at Pilgrim Church. Think of the times you've come here despondent, or depressed, or frightened, or anxious, or confused - you may not even know why you're here or where to turn next, and then sometime during the service, something happens. Maybe it's during the singing of a hymn, or an anthem, or in the middle of a prayer, or when you hear the scripture read, or during the sermon, whenever, and something mysterious happens to you, a divine presence, very real, is felt. The scriptures are opened. A meal is shared, literally when we have Communion, or at the very least, when we're fed spiritually. We are filled, healed, comforted, and we leave here quite different from when we first came in. Today's Gospel is kind of a parable of Sunday mornings here at our church, a truthful depiction of why we're here. (vi)

Let's be honest. We're not here because we understand everything in the Bible. We're not here because we have all the answers. We're here because we're waiting for Jesus to come and stand among us. And he does. The risen Christ comes to us as a gift of grace, the Holy Spirit, and heals our doubts, calms our fears, and reveals himself and his truth to us. If we try to understand the Bible as best we can, if we look to it as a trustworthy guide for living, if its truth grabs us and changes us, it's not because we're smart, or we've read all the commentaries, or we have an incredibly deep faith. It's because it is a gift, part of Jesus' promise to come to us, to not ever leave us alone to fend for ourselves, and to give us what we need to survive as his faithful followers. And he does all this - and even more. And that's the truth. Amen.

The Pilgrim Church of Duxbury
Rev. Kenneth C. Landall

i John 18:38.
ii William H. Willimon, Pulpit Resource, 4/13/97.
iii Marcus Borg, "The Heart of Christianity," p. 52.
iv Willimon, op. cit.
v Ibid.
vi Ibid.