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Today is the second of our three part series, "Why I Am a United Methodist." It is an interesting subject because many of us come from religious traditions other than United Methodism. While our church is enriched by the gifts we all bring from other places, nevertheless, we ARE a United Methodist Church. And so it is important for us all to understand the roots of Methodism and gain an identity as United Methodists. Why am I a United Methodist? Last Sunday the answer was because religion is of the heart. Today the answer is because the Bible is our book. Our scripture today tells the story of a strange, forgotten scroll found in the walls at Jerusalem during a renovation. Can you imagine the excitement when the wall was knocked down and a treasure was found inside? It was a Torah scroll, a collection of the law of Moses which the Lord had given to Israel. The prophet Ezra assembled the whole nation at one of the Gates, and there he read aloud the whole law from the newly discovered scroll. Most had never heard it. It had been lost during years of turmoil and exile. The people heard again those ancient words, "Hear O Israel; the Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might." The people wept when they heard the law, when they heard again what God wanted of them. They wept tears of repentance and confession. Israel’s faith is a religion of speaking and listening. God speaks. They listen. So Judaism and Christianity are not religions we fully find in our hearts, or discover completely in nature walks in the woods, or stumble upon by thinking deep thoughts in our study. These religions come to us as a WORD FROM BEYOND OURSELVES. In other words, we cannot know and understand Jesus Christ without the witness of those who lived with him as recorded in the Bible. There is a separateness between God and the created order. Our God is not some projection of our collective imagination. Our God is a real, separate being whose thoughts are deeper than our thoughts, whose ways are higher than our ways. We have to be told what this God wants of us. Somebody has to speak it to us. A couple took their 3-yr. old son to be baptized in church. The pastor told the child that his Mom and Dad were promising to help him grow up to be a Christian, and have God live in his heart. The boy listened very attentively. The next morning he showed up for breakfast with his hand tucked inside his pajama shirt, and announced, "Guess what? God is in my heart. I feel him bumping around in there." It may be hard to understand, but God does live within the human heart, the human soul. And yet God is still a separate being. God may be bumping around in the hearts of people. But God also stands apart from creation. God is immanent, that is, very near. God is also transcendent, very far away. It’s part of the paradox, the mystery of God. The solution to the human condition is not found within us. It is found wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. And every day we get out of bed, turn off the alarm, brush our teeth, and remind ourselves that we live in the light of this story and not some other story. As United Methodist Christians we live by a story called the gospel, the good news. This doesn’t mean that the Bible is a rule book. On many issues in life, the Bible will not tell us exactly what to do. But the Bible is helpful in placing us in the right context whereby we can begin to ask and to answer our questions as people of faith. One way to illustrate this is to say the Bible is more like a compass than a road map. This book won’t give us detailed directions to the place we want to go, but it will point us in the right direction. If we don’t read it, if we don’t pay attention to it, how can we find our way? We all agree that the Bible is an important book for Christians. But Christians don’t all agree on where its authority lies. Baby boomers and every generation following them have been taught to question authority. Many no longer believe it is good to blindly accept the words of others without testing. So where does this leave us with the authority of Scripture? If you don’t believe the Bible has authority to challenge and correct your life, then why would you read it? If you don’t believe that God can speak to you through the stories and words of the Bible, when why would you read it? A physician who was driving between hospital calls one evening, exceeded the speed limit rather shamelessly in an attempt to make up for lost time. Suddenly a police car pulled up behind him and turned on the lights. Having some considerable experience in both speeding and getting caught, the doctor picked up his stethoscope and held it up for the policeman to see in hopes of communicating that he was on a medical emergency. Yet the police officer continued in pursuit with no regard to the physician's signals. Once more the doctor waved his stethoscope in the air, this time more dramatically, in hopes of conveying the importance of his mission. But when the physician looked into his rear-view mirror to see whether the police officer got the message, he saw a smiling officer waving his own symbol of authority in the air, his revolver. There are times in life when we do whatever we want. It’s called sin. Eventually a time will come when a deeper reality dawns upon us…the reality that the authority of God is what matters most. And the main source of this authority can be found in the Bible. Our challenge as Christians is to understand how this book can speak to our world today. Willimon writes, "The Bible is not as much a road sign at an intersection as a collision. When reading the Bible, at home, in private, or on Sunday in church, we come to a head-on collision with our preconceptions and limited, self-centered opinions." John Wesley took great pride in saying he was "a man of one book," though he certainly read more than the Bible. In saying that the Bible is primary, we are saying, with Wesley, that the task of being a Christian is the tough, daily, difficult challenge to take the Bible a little more seriously and ourselves a little less so. Willimon tells the story of a young man who came to him and said, "I think I’m losing my faith. I’m no longer able to believe in the virgin birth of Jesus." Willimon responded, "Well, what day is today? Tuesday? I seem to believe in the virgin birth today, but who knows where I’ll be on Wednesday? The point is not what you or I happen to believe, it’s what the church believes, what the Bible asserts. Relax, maybe it will come to you when you are older." The young man persisted, "But how can I be a Christian when I can’t believe this doctrine?" "Look, I hate to tell you, but the virgin birth is not the strangest thing we are going to ask you to believe." "Really?" "Really. We’re going to ask you to turn the other cheek rather than turn violent, to look across a communion table and believe these strangers are sisters and brothers, to start thinking that the poor and the outcast are really royalty. We start you out on the virgin birth because we think if you can believe that without choking, we can eventually get you to swallow the really important, really essential stuff about Jesus." After his Aldersgate experience John Wesley encountered an England fraught with poverty and despair. He could have said to himself, "These 18th century English people are poor, not too well educated, biblically illiterate victims of poverty and addiction. What can anybody do?" But he didn’t do that. Instead he created structures to enable ordinary people to be people worthy to hear and embody scripture. Wesley’s societies and class meetings were places where everyday people got to deal with the Bible, not as an intellectual problem, but as a social, political, personal challenge to transformation. Wesley’s societies were a political response to the serious call of scripture to make a biblical people out of ordinary folk. As we read and listen to the Bible it is both a wonderful and devastating encounter with the living God. A collision, something similar to a scroll being discovered after being long hidden in a forgotten wall. But we must remember one thing. This collision won’t happen…this wonderful encounter won’t happen if we don’t pick it up and read it. When a son left for his freshman year at Duke University, his parents gave him a Bible, assuring him it would be a great help. Later, as he began sending them letters asking for money, they would write back telling him to read his Bible, citing chapter and verse. He would reply that he was reading the Bible, but he still needed money. When he came home for a semester break, his parents told him they knew he had not been reading his Bible. How? They had tucked $10 and $20 bills by the verses they had cited in their letters. There are treasures within these pages. There is wisdom from God in this book. There are things God desperately wants to say to us that will never be heard until we pick it up and read it. Let us take this Holy Book today, tomorrow, this week, and read it, and wrestle with it, and listen to the voice of God speaking through it to our hearts. |
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03.16.03 - Why I Am a United Methodist -Part 2 (Nehemiah 8:1-10)
