October 17, 2004

TWENTIETH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
FATHER ANDREW GREEN

FIRST READING:
Jeremiah 31: 27-34
PSALM:
119: 97-104
SECOND READING:
2 Timothy 3:14 - 4:5
GOSPEL:
Luke 18: 1-8

(Father Green holds up a Bible with a leather cover).

You will have to look closely as you see the dust rising. This is my floppy Bible, and it is a special one to me. Inside is actually a paperback edition of a Roman Catholic version of the Good News for Modern Man, but the cover was made by the son of a waitress at Denny's, because, for the last 15 years, we have had a men's Bible study that more or less meets at Denny's on Wednesday mornings (actually, I don't know if it was Denny's or at the time of Rick's). The waitress's son was in prison and had made this cover that she gave me; so I still have it on a particular Bible, but I don't read that one very much.

All that is to say that, if you have a Bible at home, because you are Episcopalians, my money is on the fact that yours is as dusty as this one. I assume that there are enough exceptions out there to prove the point. But the truth is that the Bible is a significant resource for us as Christians, and, quite often, as today, in our Church, we wrestle with issues surrounding the Bible. What I want to talk about is not "the Bible", but I want to talk about God's Word; because they are not necessarily the same thing. The Scriptures, today, all deal with this same subject.

In Jeremiah, the prophet whom we usually associate with prophesies of doom and destruction, the prophesies that he deals with are generally so tough that he prayed to God once, "Lord, give me some good news. I am so tired of taking them bad news. They hate me. Please give me some good news". Well, in this one, He does. After he has given the people prophesy after prophecy of destruction, he is letting them know that God is going to re-seed their land with people and with animals, and that the land is going to experience a re-birth as people return from exile. He says, "I am going to make a new covenant with My people; not like the covenant that they broke, even though I was their husband". God is going to make a new covenant, even though the people of Israel and Judah have essentially committed adultery by putting other gods in front of the One God. God is going to make a covenant with them, not written in stone, not written on tablets that came down from the mountain, but written in their hearts, in our hearts.

The Psalm talks a lot about the Law. "I love your Law; I love your commandments." And, when we hear that, we tend to think of a code. I'm on the school board, so I think of Ed Code. I love your Ed Code, O Lord. That is not what the psalmist is saying. The psalmist is talking about God's Word. The Law is God's Word, not just a series of propositions. Do you remember when I preached on faith, I think a couple of weeks ago? I talked about our faith as Christians as not faith in a group of propositions, but faith in a relationship with God. God's Word is not a list of propositions or a codification, but it is the revelation of God that is put down in Scripture, but is always more than even the Bible can contain.

The reading from Second Timothy talks to us about all Scripture being useful - all Scripture being inspired. Well now, remember, when something gets written in a letter by St. Paul, usually it is because a question came up. When Paul talks about all Scripture being useful and inspired, he is responding to the fact that there were some people out there who were saying that only some parts of it were inspired, and others were saying that different parts were inspired. He was wanting them to know that all the Scripture is inspired, and it is useful. But, the thing is, Paul never tells Timothy that reading the Bible and using it for reproof or encouragement, for training in righteousness, is equivalent to having a relationship with God. The primary issue that makes us Christians is our relationship with God, not what we think about the Bible. But the Bible, for us who are Christians, is inspired and is nourishment for us.

Now, as I mentioned, if you have a dusty Bible like this one, it is clear that the nourishment that you are getting is probably, at best, once a week, when you come to Church and you get a boat-load of Scripture. You get Old Testament; you get a psalm; you get an Epistle; you get a Gospel, and we even sing some of it, which makes it maybe easier or harder, depending on your musical abilities, to deal with. Imagine if you were on a diet where you got to eat between 10:30 and 11:00, only on Sunday, and that is how you were to stay healthy - that is how you were to grow strong in your physical being. We would probably have a lot of cadavers walking around here, wouldn't we? Well, for many of us, if that is the only dose of Scripture we get - if it is the only connection we have with God's Word - then we are probably spiritual cadavers. We probably are under-nourished or mal-nourished. Under-nourished is not getting enough, and mal-nourished is only reading the parts that you think you need at a given moment.

Now, Susan and I and a few other people read Morning Prayer here, Mondays through Fridays, at 7:00 A.M. We sit right over there, and we read the Old Testament and either the New Testament or the Gospels, and we read through the whole of the Bible. Over a period of two years, you go through everything. During the summertime, we get all of the really nasty books of the Old Testament - Joshua, Judges - there are some really nasty things; I mean tent-pegs being driven through people's heads and stuff like that! That is part of the Scriptures. We read through all of Paul's letters. We read through the Gospels. In fact, we really go through the Gospels every year. And then we read the Book of Acts, and, sometimes, we get really tired, so we switch over to the Gospels, because the Book of Acts can get tiresome sometimes. But we are reading it every single day, about half a chapter to a chapter, depending on the day. On Fridays and Mondays, we read the Saturday and Sunday lessons, too, so, if you show up on those days, they will be a little bit longer services.

The reason for all of this is that what you want is to be nourished. You want to be able to understand the Scriptures as something that nourishes your relationship with God. You will not find your relationship with God in the Bible. You have to find your relationship with God by God's reaching out to you, just like God said in Jeremiah. "It won't be like the Old Covenant written in stone. I'm going to go out to each of you, and I am going to write my Law in your heart. I am going to write my covenant in your heart", so that everyone will know of that relationship. Now, is God choosing to go out and write that Law - write that covenant, write that Word - in only the hearts of good people - only in the hearts of Episcopalians? No. God is writing that Law in the hearts of everyone because God will forgive them. By the process of God's coming to us and connecting with us and inviting us to be inspired by God's Spirit, God is forgiving us from whatever stands between us and God. God isn't saying, "Only for the people who have already been repentant and have been forgiven will I write this covenant with them". Very specifically, it is everyone in the whole of God's Kingdom whom God is reaching out to and inviting into that relationship, and, when you have a relationship with God, the Scriptures are a wonderful piece of nourishment.