We are People of the Book: The Bible and the Word of God

The LORD offers tablets, lower panels, “The Covenant with Moses,” art-glass window, FPCE

FIFTH IN A SERMON SERIES, “CONFIRMATION FOR ADULTS,” 2 Timothy 3:14-17; John 1:1-5

THE REV. JOHN HEMBRUCH, D.MIN. + March 1, 2020

We continue the sermon series “Confirmation for Adults,” with part 5 of 11.  Today, we turn our attention to the topic “We are People of the Book: The Bible and the Word of God.”

When we say, “We are people of the Book,” we say something distinctive about our community of faith, whether we realize it or not.  Among world religions, some place great emphasis on a particular set of holy writings, while others do not. Christianity’s foundational set of holy writings is known as the Bible, of course.  This was true in the era of handwritten manuscripts; it was true during the 500 years when mass printing made it easier for common people to read it in paper form; it’s still true as people increasingly access the Bible in electronic formats.

If you ask the question, “What is the Bible?” it’s good to know that the word itself comes down to us from the Greek ta biblia, meaning books, and the Latin phrase biblia sacra, meaning “holy books.” In terms of numbers, the Bible is composed of 66 books, 39 in the “Old” or Hebrew Testament, and 27 in the “New” or Christian Testament.  The books of the Bible are not in chronological order.  Parts of the Bible, like Job or portions of Genesis, may be more than 3000 years old; other parts, like 2 Peter or 2 Timothy, may be as new as the early second century A.D. There is a fascinating history about how the books of the Bible were collected, and formed into an authoritative collection or “canon” of scripture, but it’s more than time allows today.

During my 30+ years as a pastor, I’ve discovered that certain questions about the Bible tend to pop up again and again.

One such question may take the form, “Is the Bible we have today ‘accurate’?”  One way I might respond would be to tell you that the Christian New Testament is better attested by manuscript evidence than any other book from antiquity.  It has been preserved in more than 5,800 Greek manuscripts, 10,000 Latin manuscripts and 9,300 manuscripts in various other ancient languages including Syriac, Slavic, Ethiopic and Armenian. There are approximately 300,000 textual variants among the manuscripts, most of them being changes in word order and other comparatively minor differences. As textual experts point out, despite these minor differences, great care was taken in copying manuscripts; upon comparison they maintain a 99.5% accuracy to each other. This measure of accuracy is unsurpassed by any other ancient text. 

Another question takes the general form, “Is the Bible ‘true’?” As I’ve mentioned in another sermon, a major stumbling block to faith is the mistaken assumption that the authors of biblical books were writing as today’s newspaper reporter records events, or as a university professor would write an engineering textbook. But interpreting the Bible with contemporary biases will lead us astray.  We must appreciate that the Bible contains many genres of literature, different categories of composition, each with its own logic that made perfect sense when they were composed.

Examples are helpful for understanding. 

·      The Bible contains poetry, the function of which is to create an impression that calls for an emotional rather than an intellectual response.

·      The Bible contains prophecy, not the record of crystal-ball gazers foretelling the future, but rather social prophets who could read the signs of the times, spokespersons on behalf of the poor and oppressed.  Prophecy is not so much “foretelling” as it is “forth telling,” that is speaking out against oppressive forces.

·      The Bible contains apocalypse, highly imaginative literature which symbolizes its message in such a way as to be hidden to all except those who know what the symbols stand for.  In the Hebrew Testament, “Daniel” is such a book; in the New Testament, “Revelation” is the chief example.

Again, in answering the question, “Is the Bible ‘true’?” you can’t force the Bible to speak as a science textbook or contemporary newspaper.  You have to accept it on its own terms, and read it as its authors intended.  If you approach the Bible in humility and with faith, you will find it is true. It speaks truth about God’s good news of grace and peace.  

In the primary subject of its writing – the gospel of Jesus Christ – we discover its deepest truth, what the Neo-orthodox theologians like Karl Barth thought of as the Word within the words. Jesus is the Word, that’s what our Gospel lesson says today. The words of scripture, in 31,102 verses, 1,189 chapters, and 66 books, all put together support the message of grace and peace that Christ embodies.

This week, I searched for a new way to express this old truth, and found some inspiration in the writing of Dan Taylor. Dan Taylor is a retired English professor, who taught for 33 years at Bethel College in Minnesota. In one of his addresses, Taylor says there is a difference between the propositions of scripture and the stories of scripture.  For example, he says, “’God is powerful’ is a proposition, an abstract declaration of fact.” The human brain may accept it as true or false. But a story embodying God’s power engages us more broadly and deeply. 

Taylor gives this example from his childhood, saying “It was at a drive-in, in the 1950s, in Santa Barbara, California, out by the airport, that I first witnessed the parting of the Red Sea. Don’t think you understand the parting of the Red Sea until you’ve seen it through the eyes of a nine-year-old on a huge outdoor screen through your car windshield, holding a bucket of butter-wet popcorn. Charleton Heston stood up on that rock, with the weaselly Edward G. Robinson whining about the approaching Egyptian army, and he said something about the power of the Lord and raised his staff and — yousers! — the waters boiled for a moment and then separated into towering walls on either side of a strip of dry land. Then the nation of Israel marched right through the middle of the sea! It was enough to make me stop chewing on the popcorn and start chewing on the idea that God was God and that, when he wanted to, he could do eye-popping things.”[i}

Anyone can read the Bible, and deduce, “God is powerful.” But when with the gift of faith you are engaged more deeply and broadly in the Bible, when, as Taylor says, you are engaged with “intuition, memory, curiosity, imagination … (with) desires, affections, fears … (with) resolve, motivation, perseverance,” it is then that you are meeting the Word within the words.

Taylor offers a neat summary: “The Bible is many things, but among the most important it is a big storybook devoted to memory. Not memories in the sentimental sense, but memory in the crucial sense of understanding where you come from and what you are to do. And the key to memory is story. The Bible is a book of stories in many different forms — poetry, biography, song, history, letters, and more. It is a collection of stories that are chapters of the one great story: the story of God and his love for his creation. This is the meaning, says the Bible, of the story we call human history: God made us, God loves us, God calls us. That is the master plot of the greatest story ever told.”[ii]

If you read the words of the Bible, and feel deeply and fully that 

·      with Jesus, God made us;

·      in Jesus, God loves us; 

·      through Jesus, God calls us; 

·      and if you live your life in ways that reflect God’s grace and peace, 

then I would take these things as reasonably good evidence that you have met Jesus Christ, the Word within the words.

ENDNOTES 

[i] Dan Taylor, “The Life-shaping Power of Story: God’s and Ours,” 27 Sept. 2008, https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/the-life-shaping-power-of-story-gods-and-ours , accessed 28 Feb. 2020.

[ii] Ibid.