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The Bible Matters                                                                                             November 4, 2007

Deuteronomy 6:1-7

Luke 2:41-46

 

I.          Introduction

            A.        Family Feud game

            B.         Survey with 11 questions about the Bible

            C.        Makes adults anxious, uncomfortable, feel Biblically illiterate

 

II.         There is something we, in the progressive, liberal branch of Christianity, too easily overlook or dismiss:

            A.        The Bible Matters!

            B.         Deuteronomy 6

                        1.         This I teach you so that you and your children and your children’s children

may love the Lord your God all the days of your life and it may go well

with you as the Lord the God of your ancestors has promised you.

                        2.         Recite these words to your children and talk about them

            C.        Luke 2

                        1.         The boy Jesus and his parents stand mid-way in the generations who have

handed the Bible down to us since that day with Moses in the desert.  1,000 years after Moses, we see that Israel, of which Jesus and his parents were a faithful part, is still following God’s instructions: recite these words to your children and talk about them.

                                    a.         From his birth, Jesus, Luke tells us, was brought up in the moral

and ritual life of his faith tradition (Judaism).  He was formed by his home, his synagogue, and by the temple in Jerusalem.  His circumcision 8 days after he was born, his dedication in the temple six weeks after that, and his bar mitzvah (which would have preceded today’s events at Passover), all demonstrate his parents’ faithfulness in raising him within the covenant.

                                    b.         Today, as he sits and listens and talks with the temple teachers, he

is claiming for himself the relationship with God initiated by his parents on his behalf when he was a baby.  Because he has been equipped by his parents and faith community through the generations, he is ready to do so.

                                    c.         This scene from Jesus’ boyhood (the only one we have in all the

gospels), is filled with images of Jewish piety, fidelity and respect for custom.  it emphasizes how Jesus was trained in the Torah and its requirements, and knew how to fulfill his obligations as a young man of faith. 

                                    d.         This is because his parents, and their parents before them, for the

300 generations going back to Moses had kept the commandment to pass on the Word of God to their children, forward down through the ages, generation after generation.

           


D.        God gave these commandments to Moses, which have come to us finally in the

form of ancient sacred texts we call the Bible, as much for the next generation and the generations to follow that one, as for the original people who first them from Moses.

            E.         The ancient story takes the present generation and the next generation, back to the

past, and it brings the past afresh to the present.  That is one very big reason why

The Bible Matters!

 

III.       Have we been faithful to this covenant?  Have we faithfully passed down these ancient

words from the generations who came before us, on to the one who will come after us?  do we take this responsibility seriously—especially with respect to the Bible?

 

A.        An example of another kind of text passed down from one generation to the next that may help to illustrate this point in a fresh way, is this letter: Civil War letter from my great-great-grandfather, Daniel Barrows.

B.         Sometimes we forget the Bible is just as personal and relevant as a family artifact like that letter

C.        And not only is the Bible personal and relevant like the letter, it is so much more powerful.

1.         It is not just a source of images and stories about God’s relationship with

our ancestors in the past

2.         It also has the power to mediate God’s Spirit in relationship with us today,

in this present moment.

 

IV.       In other words, The Bible Matters!  (A summary of Marcus Borg’s wonderful book,

“Reading the Bible Again For the First Time”)

 

A.        The Bible’s stories shape our vision of God and disclose the character and will of God.

B.         The stories define who we are in relation to God and give us a sense of what faithfulness to God means.

C.        These stories shape us and will continue to shape us because the Bible is a vehicle by which God becomes present to us now, and through which we experience the Spirit in the present.

D.        The Bible tells us stories of the divine-human relationship in the past, and when we enter into conversation with them today, they help to create our own story of divine-human relationship in the here and now.

E.         The rich diversity of voices in the Bible speak in unison on 3 fundamental truths:

            1.         God is real and knowable—a mystery we know experientially.

            2.         Our lives are made whole and right by living in a conscious relationship

with God—a relationship that takes us on the path from slavery to liberation, from death to the old way of being into a new way of being.

3.         God is a God of justice and compassion who is passionate about the well-being of the whole creation and who calls us to participate in that passion.

F.         This Biblical message can be summarized in “The Great Commandment” (Jesus combined what we heard from Deuteronomy 6 and added another commandment from Leviticus)—paraphrased here by Borg:

            “The first relationship is: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,

 all your soul, all your mind and all your strength.’  This is the great and first

 relationship.  And a second relationship is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor

 as yourself.’  On these two relationships depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

 

V.        We are part of this inter-generational relay race, spanning back thousands of years behind

us, and forward thousands of years ahead of us into the future of our children’s children’s

children and beyond.  Moses gave the sacred story to the children of Israel, who passed it down to Jesus’ parents, who passed it down to him.  From him, countless generations carried the story forward to our forbears—those who came just before us.  Now it is our turn to recite the ancient, sacred stories to our children, and through them, to their children and their children’s children.  How fitting that today we pause to honor those of both sides of us in this chain—our children, to whom we handed down the sacred texts this morning (literally), and now our predecessors—those who went before us in this place, entrusting us to keep the Word of God alive in our hearts after they were gone, and to kindle it in the hearts of those who will come after us.

 

Let us remember them now, as we hear their names read aloud…(The Necrology)