For those who Struggle with the Scriptures
Luke 20:27-38
“Do you believe in the Virgin Birth?” That was the leadoff question a Pulpit
Nominating Committee asked in my first interview after seminary. There was a whole range of subjects they
could have raised to begin our conversation, but they chose that one. Why?
Why was that so important to them?
That’s what I asked myself when I faced those nine who examined me with
all the scrutiny of a customer looking over a used car. Truth be told, I was taking their measure as
well. What are these people like? What’s important to them? What will they expect from me?
It
turned out that the Virgin Birth question was a litmus test to determine my
view of scripture. One of them said, “We
just wanted to know if you really believed in the Bible.” For them the Bible was a pretty simple book
that could be summed with the bumper sticker slogan, “God said it. I believe it.
That settles it.”
They
wondered why people argue over scriptures that seemed to them so crystal
clear. They were puzzled when they heard
folks in the larger church wrestle over the controversial questions of gay
marriage, abortion, and war. Some of
them never squinted and shook their heads over some hard to understand scrap of
scripture - and they felt bad for those who do.
Maybe there’s someone here today like
that. Maybe the Bible is for you a very
simple book and you know exactly what it says and what it means in every verse. Chances are better that you have found the
Bible sometimes hard to read and difficult to understand. You have struggled over the scriptures and
are more akin to the preacher who said, “Anyone who reads the Bible and is not
puzzled at least half the time doesn’t have his mind on what he is doing.”
In
our scripture today we get to eavesdrop on a Bible showdown between Jesus and
the Sadducees. Both will quote from
scripture, but only one “rightly handles the word of truth.”[1] This is more than a matter of personal
interpretation and not every answer is right. As we see Jesus plumb the depths
of scripture we may learn how to better understand God’s Word for
ourselves. Let us pray:
Lord,
you have chosen to reveal yourself to us through words printed on a page, but
we confess we often find them hard to read and even harder to take. So, we close the book and find something else
to divert and distract. Open our eyes
today. Through your Holy Spirit lift
these words off the page and into our hearts.
Through Jesus Christ, the word made flesh we pray. Amen.
“Some
Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus and asked him
a question.”[2] Now questions are good. That’s how we find
answers, how we learn things. Although, my teachers always said, “there is no
such thing as a stupid question”, there are questions that are insincere,
questions we ask for purposes other than learning.
For example, when my wife asked me
before I left for church, “Are you really going to wear that tie?” – she was
not looking for information. When my son
looks at my desert and inquires, “Are you going to eat that?” – this is not an
abstract search for knowledge. When one
of you comments on my sermon at the door and asks, “Are you crazy?” – You are
not really wondering about my mental heath – or maybe you are.
There are questions and then there are
questions. Some are sincere. Someone is really looking for an answer. Some
are not. The question is intended only
to provide some entertainment or amusement, an intellectual distraction.
William Willimon tells about
the time a great and aging preacher Carlyle Marney came to the Duke University
Chapel.
A student asked, "Dr. Marney, would you
say a word or two about the resurrection of the dead?"
Marney
replied, "I will not discuss that with people like you."
The student
was surprized and a little offended, "Why not?"
Marney
said, "I no longer discuss such matters with anyone under 30.”
Again the student surprized and a litte
offended asked, “Why not?”
Marny said, "Look at you, in the
prime of life, powerful and filled with potential - never have you known
honest-to-God failure, heart-burn, real disapointment, weakness, solid defeat,
brick walls, mortality. So what can you know of a dark world which only makes
sense if Christ is raised?"
There
are some questions that should only be asked by those who are desperate for an
answer. There are some subjects so
sacred we dare not play with them like some kind of theological toy. When the
Sadducees asked Jesus about the resurrection they were not really wanting an answer
that spoke their souls. What they were
doing was setting a trap because they didn’t even believe in the resurrection. This
was just a hole they dug a hole and covered it with leaves, and dared Jesus to
cross.
“Teacher,
Moses wrote for us (right here in Deuteronomy) that if a man’s brother dies and
he leaves a wife but no children, the man is supposed to marry the widow and
raise up children for his brother (so he will be remembered). Now, let’s say there were seven brothers; the
first married, and died childless; then the second married her and died and
then the third and so on and so forth until all seven died childless. Finally, the woman also died. In the resurrection, whose wife will the
woman be?”[3]
This
was not a real question. The real question
has to be, “What was the seventh brother thinking as he stood to marry this
woman who had buried all six of his brothers?”
He’s got to be tugging on his collar and looking for a loophole to get
around that verse that told him he was supposed to do this.[4]
This
command was in the Bible and more than that it was in the Thorah. That was important. The Sadduccees believed
all the answers to life’s big questions could be found in the Books of Moses,
the first five books in the Bible. As far as the Sadducees were concerned, if
it wasn’t in the Thorah, it didn’t matter, and they could find resurrection
nowhere in those five books. So, they
concocted a trick question about this woman and her seven husbands as a litmus
test to separate the liberal from conservative, old school from new, tradition
from the latest fad.
They thought they had Jesus because their trap
was so exquisite. How could he choose
one and ignore the others who had all been legally married to this woman? And if he said all seven would be her husband
in heaven, well everyone could see the problems with that. Heaven would soon
become hell. They could anticipate no answer that would not make him look
foolish. This was the first example of
“gotcha” journalism.
You
see the Bible can be used to hurt or heal.
It can be used to curse or bless.
It can be used to confuse or to shed light, to be be a hammer or a “lamp
for our feet and a light for our path.”[5]
But,
how can the average person know when the Bible is being used to rightly
instruct or wrongly destruct. When you
are on the sidelines watching the religious pros go at it, amd they are
throwing scripture around like name-droppers at a political party, how do you know which one is right, which one
to listen to?
The
first question to ask is, “Does this make sense?” The Sadduccees story of the
woman and the seven brothers is what some call “logic chopping”. Others call it “proof texting”. It works like this. You take a scizzors and
snip out a bit of scripture here and a bit of scripture there, maybe find some
contemporary idea that is floating around, and then you tape the whole mess
together to prove whatever it is you’re trying to prove. In that way peope over
the years have used the Bible to justify slavery, the subjugation of women, and
why God has chosen a particular side in war.
Most
of us have pretty good instincts and know when that is being done. You knew the question of the woman and the
seven brothers was ridiculous because that kind of thing never happens. You
never see that in real life so you knew this was just a game of gotcha. A red flag went up right away, so if you were
in the crowd that day you would have known to hold onto your wallet.
Most of the time we know
when a salesman is trying to sell us a bill of goods. But, sometimes we do get snookered and end up
bringing home the gizmo that’s guaranteed to help us lose weight, look better,
and live longer. Sometimes our instincts
are not enough. We need to be careful
about relying too much on our feelings, or even the way we usually think,
because we thought that gizmo was a good idea at the time.
Jesus knew that too and
that’s why he returned to the scripture because it speaks with the authority of
God. He said, “Moses himself showed in
the story about the burning bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” Jesus point
is that when God spoke he used the present tense. He didn’t say “I was”, he said “I am.”[6] So God is God not of the dead, but of the
living. Here, we have an early hint of
resurrection, a clue that will lead us to something yet to come. This, the Sadduccees with all of their
emphasis on the Thorah missed.
That’s the thing about
scripture. You can study it for years,
but not see all that is there. You can
spend every morning in the Word and still stumble upon a phrase or meaning you
never noticed before. You will never
master it, and that is both its frustration and its glory.
There will be passages you
will never understand because the Bible itself says, “For now we see in a
mirror, dimly, now we know only in part.”[7] For some that is a roadblock. It stops them dead in their tracks. They hit some verse or story and wonder how
Jonah could fit in that fish or how Jesus could walk on water. They don’t understand why God would “harden
Pharoah’s heart” or send an apocolypse in Revelation.[8]
These questions without
answers prompt them to slam the book shut and return it to the shelf. But, if
you do that you throw the baby out with the bathwater, and that’s too bad because
there is truth here that can be found nowhere else. There is comfort in these pages that can
carry you through your next operation.
There is hope that is promised if that operation doesn’t go so well.
The Sadducees stumbled
over Jesus’ promise of resurrection because they could only conceive of heaven
as being like this world - only bigger.
They were like six year old boys who shudder at the thought of ever
kissing a girl and can never forsee a time when that might be a good idea. Let ten years pass though and their thoughts
on this subject will change. That, Jesus
said, is the difference between this world and the next. We will look at things differently because
then, the Bible says, we shall “know more fully” and more importantly we shall
be “fully known.”[9] The Bible puts it this way, “It does not yet
appear what we shall be.”[10]
Whatever it is we shall
become and whereever end up can be discovered in clues scattered through the
scriptures. Finding them and
understanding them is worth the effort because they do serve as a “lamp for our
feet and a light for our path.” That’s
how we know how we should then live.
Chances are you are going
to need some help for no other reason than “two heads are better than
one.” That’s why we believe our Adult
Education Classes and small group ministries are so important. Even I, after
all my years of study, will sit in one of these groups and hear a new take on
some bit of scripture I’ve read a hundred times before. Someone new to the scriptures will see
something I had missed and that is exciting because it means I’m still growing
and growing in the Lord is always better than standing still. Moving streams are always more clear than
stagnant waters.
If, in frustration, you
have slammed this book shut and thrown it in the corner, I encourage you to
pick it up once more. Remember there
will be some things you will never understand and some things you only think
you understand. But, there will be a few words that will leap off the page and
you’ll nod your head and smile and even feel your pulse rate rise. Like the two who walked with the risen Lord
on the road to Emmaus you may say to yourself, “Did not my heart burn within me
while he opened up the scriptures.”[11]
Let us pray:
O
Word of God incarnate, O Wisdom from on high,
O
truth unchanged, unchanging, O light of our dark sky;
We
praise you for the radiance that from the hallowed page,
A
lantern to our footsteps, Shines on from age to age. Amen.[12]
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