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Sermon: How to use the Bible

Submitted by ann.philp on Mon, 18/02/2008 - 14:09.
26/10/2007 - 14:00

Bible Sunday 26th Oct  2007 St Andrews

Today is commonly kept as Bible Sunday and I thought I would take the opportunity to talk a little about how we use the Bible and say a little about what it is and what it isn’t.All great religions have Holy Books but contrary to what some people say they are not all the same and their uses and interpretation vary. Some Christians are Biblical Fundamentalists. They believe that every word in the Bible is equally and without exception historically and scientifically true. They exist but they are a minority and I believe are profoundly mistaken.One thing you need to hold in your mind is that much of the oldest parts of the ancient Jewish scriptures, that which we call the Old Testament is by far the most ancient literature people have met. Its earliest bits date to about 1800 years before the birth of Christ. These ancient bits of literature contain much that is true and accurate.....eg most of ancient Israel’s history is pretty accurately recorded…it’s supported by archaeology and other research.....so historically it is of great interest but all its concepts and ideas are subject to the limitations of what people believed at the time it was written. For example….they believed the world was flat so early narratives reflect that.  Evolution had not been dreamt of…so you cannot expect them to talk about it. Ideas are the writers’ ideas and we have to examine them in the light of modern knowledge as well as in the light of what we know about the teaching of Jesus.When the Old Testament talks about God killing all the people in Jericho....or even wanting them killed…..that reflects what humans believed about what God wanted. God was not like that. God has always been the same. It is mankind’s beliefs that have changed….that also applies to the development of moral awareness. In the Old Testament, disobedient teenagers and adulterous women are to be stoned....that is not what God wants....it was part of a very ancient legal code which was much in advance of its neighbours but does not indicate what we should be doing…much of it therefore is of social interest but it is in its broad sweeps that we admire and apply it. That is most clearly reflected in law codes like the Ten Commandments which are of universal value for all time…they deal in principles not in legal and religious enforcement. The principles stand. The enforcement changes as God reveals himself to us over time.There are in the Old Testament in particular ancient poems and devotional material and love songs….all of which have value for all time…..but there are books about ancient practices that are of less immediate value….although still of interest...eg Leviticus records the sacrificial system in the Jewish temple. The Old Testament also contains ancient myths. Myth is not another way of saying Untrue.....it is a way of describing a story which has a religious purpose. For example the story of the tower of Babel, where mankind in his arrogance builds a tower high up so that he can be like God…and the story goes on to say God knocked down the tower and scattered people each with their own language so such cooperation became impossible to gain in future. This story reflects many things…the Babylonian habit of building ziggurats with a shrine at the top…the Israelite writers’ disapproval of paganism....so copying the Babylonians was a no-no activity. It is seen as sin  therefore and as they did not believe in life after death…punishment must follow  immediately and as a by product you neatly explain why there are so many languages in the world….something which puzzled people of ancient times. Then of course there is in the New Testament the teaching of Jesus and that of the apostles…here we are on much clearer ground and the principles on which Jesus would have us build our lives is clear…love forgiveness, sharing, compassion….justice… and the epistles likewise spell out the theology of what we believe and why....the significance of the life of Jesus, who he was and what he came to do…. But even the letters of Paul are set in their own social background....so that even as he proclaims that in Christ there in neither male nor female, bond or free....in other words all are equal….even so....the early church accepted slavery as a given in life and it was not until the 19th century that real action was taken against it…and in some forms it still exists. I would argue that the same goes for homosexuality…emerging biological knowledge was not available to the ancient world.So how are we to judge these social things?Firstly I do believe that the Bible I contains revealed truth, it is worthy of our study and of our devotional reading. I do believe it should be part of my daily prayers.  It does give us guidelines and comfort and truth…but I believe also that God has given us our brains and that the great advances in science are not to be ignored…….. although we must not fall into the trap of thinking that science gives us all answers to our moral dilemmas……….    The teaching of Jesus has to be the bedrock of the Christian faith. That is at the heart of our reading.  I do believe that if we read the Bible devotionally, with understanding God will actually guide us through its words…we will, as Jesus said, be guided into all truth. It will offer answers to many of our dilemmas. What we must not do is forget that Jesus gave us the Holy Spirit and told us that he would guide us into all truth…..we will discover new things…and Jesus is in those new things too. It is for us to dwell prayerfully over scripture and find what God is saying to us through  it without forgetting that He is also in the wonders of the new knowledge that is so much part of our world. Scholarship has now enabled us to date the books of the Bible....it is possible to rearrange them in date order, it is possible to see what influences have been on the writersGod has revealed himself progressively throughout time and has enabled us to see his hand at work in all that is. He has promised to be with us always. He has redeemed and strengthened us and promised us the Spirit for our on-going growth …and strangely....or perhaps not so strangely… we see the old ideas have a curiously modern relevance if we do but dare to open our eyes.In the creation myths Adam is given the care of his world.....Eden is his to maintain and tender. He is the gardener set in God’s world. The animals are his to protect and name….we do not have to deny the theories of evolution  to see the mirror images in the reports we have been reading in papers this week....where our stewardship of God’s world has been found to be wanting....and we are in the process of being called to account for all that. As gardeners we are miserably failing. The great emphasis in  the New Testament....is that Jesus has made us one with God, in him we are promised guidance for the future, he has promised to be with us always, he has given us himself in this sacred meal and we have security in the promise of life to come. This is what is at the heart of our Holy Book. That is why we read it with eyes that  are motivated by prayer, knowing that through it God will guide and comfort us.  That is why we carry the book of the gospels high in our liturgies and always treat them with respect…………it is far more courageous to know that a book is Holy and contains the most profound truths and yet know that it is subject to the frailties of those who wrote it and reflects the beliefs and knowledge of the times.... far more honest to stand there in that position of truth, than to need the false security that a fundamentalist position brings with it…for ultimate truth lies in  Christ ..in God himself…nowhere else…..for Jesus said,
I am the Way the Truth and the Life    
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