October 19, 2011
How is the Bible the Word of God?
THE MESSAGE
Today we’re continuing our message series entitled “Making Sense of Scripture.” Before we press ahead, I’d like to remind us again why we’re doing this series. As Lutheran Christians, we put a very high value on Scripture. We treasure this book. We count it as a great gift. We hold it in very high esteem. In fact, the average Lutheran owns three Bibles!
Yet less than 20% of Lutherans read the Bible outside of church on any regular basis. How can that be? How is it that we can say we value the Bible so much, and yet we read it so little? I don’t think it’s because we would say that we already know it so well. If Lutherans are like the average American, then only 60% of us can name five of the Ten Commandments, 82% of us believe that the Bible teaches that “God helps those who help themselves” (actually, it says just the opposite!) and 12% think that Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife. Seriously!
No, I suspect there are at least two reasons why most Lutheran Christians don’t read the Bible as much as they would like to. First, we can all acknowledge that the Bible is not always an easy book to understand. There are passages that both trouble and confound us, and other passages that leave us wondering what, if anything, they have to do with us.
But second, I think many of us have been led to believe that the Bible just sort of fell straight out of God’s heavenly typewriter, that it’s some kind of divine reference book, and in order to be faithful we have to read it literally. It’s sort of like the popular bumper sticker of a few years ago: “The Bible says it, I believe it and that’s all there is to it.”
Does that mean that, in order to be a faithful Christian, you need to believe that the cosmos was created in six days, and that the earth is about 6,000 years old? Does that mean that, in order to be a faithful Christian, you need to believe that a man named Jonah actually lived in the belly of a big fish for three days? Or that at some point in history God thought it was a good idea that fathers should take their rebellious sons outside the city gates and stone them to death as punishment?
Throughout this series, we’re suggesting that there are other ways to read and understand those passages. Now, that does not mean that if you believe those things literally happened you are unfaithful or wrong. What we’re teaching through this series is that a literal reading of the Bible is not the way Lutherans, or Christians in general, have read and understood the Bible for most of Christian history. Martin Luther and the early reformers certainly didn’t read it that way. We’re not trying to teach some new and radical way of reading and understanding the Bible; we’re seeking to reclaim our own roots. In the process, you’ll find tools and a framework that we hope will set you free to regularly engage with the Bible in ways that fire up your faith and empower you for daily, faithful living.
Today we’re asking the question, “How is the Bible the Word of God?” We frequently refer to this book as the Word of God – and rightly so – but that may be one of the reasons why some people think that the Bible sort of fell out of God’s typewriter, that everything in the Bible is something that God has said. But that’s not what Lutherans mean when we talk about the Bible as the Word of God. In fact, Lutherans and many other Christians talk about the Word of God in three distinct, yet connected, ways.
First and foremost, when we talk about the Word of God, we’re referring to Jesus. In today’s Scripture reading, John puts it this way: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God … and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” That’s Jesus. Obviously Jesus isn’t a word in the sense that he is somehow letters on a page. By calling Jesus the Word, John is saying that Jesus is the greatest expression of God’s love and intention for the world. John is also tapping into Greek philosophy, in which “word” refers to the creative energy that gave birth to the cosmos and sustains it still. If you want to know what God is like, if you want to know God’s heart and God’s intentions for all of creation, you look to Jesus, the Word of God. Just as God spoke all creation into being, God has spoken the salvation of all creation through his Word, Jesus. Jesus is God’s living Word.
Second, when we talk about the Word of God, we’re referring to the Gospel, to God’s good news for all of creation. Martin Luther was especially fond of this reference to the Word of God. The Gospel is God’s living Word because it is alive with God’s power to create faith in God’s saving love.
And then, finally, when we talk about the Word of God we are indeed referring to this book, the Bible, but not in the sense that these words come straight out of God’s mouth. Notice we don’t call this book the “words of God.” Instead, we call the Bible the Word of God because it bears witness to God and God’s work in the world, especially the saving work of God in Jesus.
So, when we talk about the Word of God, we mean at least three things: Jesus, the Gospel, and the Bible. Understanding how these three things fit together can help us make more sense of the Bible. In order to connect these three things, we need to understand the connection between three words: event, meaning and medium. Put simply: something happens, we assign meaning to it, and then we need a way to communicate it to others. This isn’t as complicated as it sounds. In fact, we do this all the time. Let me give you an example.
Imagine that you’re single and you go out on a date. You’ve gone on lots of dates before, but by the end of the evening you sense that this one is special. The conversation flows easily. You both feel so at ease. You’re amazed at how much you have in common. By the time you get home later that evening, you just can’t shake this feeling that this might be “the one.” The next day, you write a quick email to your best friend, who happens to be out of town on business, to tell her all about your date and your sense that this is someone very special.
Now, in this scenario, the date was an event. And because of your experience on that date, you assign meaning to that event. It was such a remarkable event that it rose above other dates and you dare to believe that this person you were out with is someone very special. And when that happens – when we experience an event and assign it meaning – we frequently look for a way, for a medium, to communicate it to others.
In this scenario our medium for communicating was an email. Event, meaning, medium. See how they fit together? Now let’s apply them to the Word of God.
Jesus’ life, death and empty tomb were an event. They happened in time and space. Lots of people experienced Jesus. They heard him teach and they watched him die. Some people quickly forgot all about him, but others did not. Their experience with Jesus was so extraordinary that they assigned meaning to him. They dared to believe that Jesus was no ordinary man. They proclaimed that he was, in fact, God in human flesh. He was the light and the life of the world. Naturally, they couldn’t keep this to themselves. This faith of theirs was so powerful, so life-changing, that they needed ways to communicate it to others. And so some, like Paul, preached. Others, like John, wrote.
John’s Gospel is a medium to communicate the meaning of Jesus for the whole world. Our Scripture reading for today isn’t merely a reporting of historical events, nor is it something that fell from God’s typewriter. It is John’s confession of faith that, in Jesus, God is doing something profound, and profoundly wonderful, in the world. And by writing this Gospel, this confession of faith, John is inviting us into the story. John believes, as do we, that it isn’t about the words on the page, but about what God chooses to do through these words in the lives of people just like you and me. John himself says this very thing at the end of his Gospel. He tells us what his purpose for writing this is: “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”
If we read the Bible like an encyclopedia that can be intellectually grasped, then we’ll read it for little more than information. We’ll study it, memorize it, be confused and bored by it, and remain largely unchanged. But when we begin to understand that this book is the Word of God, filled with the power of the Holy Spirit to not only point us to Jesus but invite us into the ongoing story of God’s saving work in the world, then this becomes more than a book. It becomes a means by which God speaks into our lives. It becomes a means of a living conversation between us and God. It becomes a means through which God confronts us, changes us, empowers us, inspires us and includes us in God’s ongoing work in the world.
We don’t worship a book; we worship the One to whom this book gives witness, the One who meets us in its pages, the One who is the Light and Life of the world.
*From the book by David J. Lose “Making Sense of Scripture.”
