Listening to the Truth:
The Stewardship of Scripture
2 Timothy 3.14-4.5
It stays in a little box in my bedroom. It is a blue, leather, pocket-size King James translation of the New Testament and Psalms. My name is embossed in gold on the front. It is one of the treasures of my childhood, given to me by a family friend named Memi. Her face has now faded from view, and I can no longer hear the sound of her distinctive voice. But her instructions have been woven into my consciousness. I opened the little book again this Thursday, and read in her carefully scripted hand, the words which I knew well: “To: Russ. From: ‘Memi.’ This book will guide you through life if you will heed it’s teaching.” (sic)
I have no memory of Memi actually giving me the Bible or penning those lines, but since that time, her inscription has been etched on my heart. And since that time, there has always been something about this good book. Something special. Something sacred.
Paul encouraged his young student, Timothy, “continue in what you have learned and firmly believe, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings…” (vss.14-15). Amy has told you how Eunice and Lois passed on their faith to little Timothy. Like passing the jelly at the breakfast table they gave Timothy their faith by teaching him the stories of scripture.
This is my story. There was always a Bible close-by in my house. Reading from it was a part of our family routine. At the breakfast table, my mother would draw a Bible verses from the ceramic loaf of bread, and she would read, and we would repeat to her, that morning’s “daily bread.” In our bedtime devotions, my mother or father always shared with us a Bible verse or story. In “Sunbeams” I memorized the books of the Bible. In “sword drills” I raced to locate passages in the Bible, always thumbing for the big book of Psalms as a mid-way reference point. Sunday School teachers encouraged me to be disciplined during the week, so I could check those boxes on my offering envelope, marked “Daily Bible Reading” and “Bible Brought.” In “Training Union” I memorized familiar passages like the 23rd Psalm and the Lord’s Prayer. In R.A.’s and Youth Group, the memorization and study of scripture continued.
I would not trade my little blue testament for “all the tea in China,” as they say. It represents my love for the biblical story, which began to take root in my childhood. The biblical story has become my constant companion, my conscience. This book represents the knowledge that is the foundation of my faith – that is, it is the center of what I believe. It is also the basis for how I try to live. I believe that Memi was right, “This book will guide [our lives] if [we] will heed its teachings.”
But as I was studying for this sermon, I went to my bedroom to retrieve the testament, and found it there, in a dresser drawer, tucked neatly away inside a small rosewood box. Wooden boxes are a weakness of mine. On the island of Bermuda some years ago, Amy saw me admiring this particular box in an antique shop. When I got back to the ship, the box was waiting for me. A simple ivory inlay borders the edges, and there is an Arabic phrase inlayed in the corner. Among a few keepsakes inside the box, I keep the piece of paper on which the merchant had scratched out the pronunciation and meaning of the words: “namasthe – the divinity in me salutes the divinity in you.”
When I saw this again, I smiled at the irony. My little Bible, which represents the honesty of a simplistic Christian faith, has found a “home” within in the mythology of a strange religion. I smiled, because in a way, this Bible and this box serve as an appropriate metaphor for my own faith. The simple faith of my childhood has, by some standards, become a “foreign home” for the scripture that is scribbled inside my soul.
(A recent Sunday night found me channel surfing. I paused on the broadcast of a Charlotte church service long enough to comment to Amy how very different my morning message was from the one coming from the television. And I wondered out loud, “can ours honestly even be called the same faith?”)
The point I want to make today is that though my faith has changed immensely from my childhood, my love for and my commitment to “the good book” are stronger than ever. The Bible still provides the center of that which I believe. It still guides the ethical direction of my decision making. It one of the great treasures of my faith. It is a treasure which is to be tended carefully and diligently.
What about you? What kind of steward are you of this wonderful treasure?
On July 28th of last year, we were sitting in the church library. We had arrived at 3:00 p.m. for our first interview with the search committee. If we had known that at 10:30 p.m., we would still be answering questions, we might not have gotten out of the car! Late in that conversation, we were discussing children’s education. What do you teach children from the Bible? How do you teach children its truth? (There are stories in the Bible, we all agreed, that are so graphic that they are inappropriate for young children.) Something was said about Jonah and his wonderful adventure, and neither Amy or I will ever forget the look on Sue Helt’s face, or the inflection in her voice when she asked her next question. For many reasons, her question became a defining moment in our conversation together. “Amy… do you believe that Jonah was swallowed by a fish?”
If you have not followed Baptist life for the last 20 years, you cannot know how wonderful it is to be able to sit in an interview, or stand in a Baptist pulpit, and answer Sue’s question honestly. So Amy replied, “Well, no, Sue. We don’t believe literally that a man named Jonah was literally swallowed by a fish… But we’re not afraid to tell that story to Jackson and Bennett. Because,” she said, “I read to them last night about Matt. Matt, who turned himself into a fire truck and raced through the house to save the family cat before arriving at the breakfast table for pancakes. And they believed that.”
One day Jackson and Bennett will understand that Matt did not become a fire truck, and it will be their first lesson that the story is more powerful, even more important than the facts. And if we keep teaching them along the way, they will learn that listening to the truth means that no one should ever outgrow the wonderful story of Jonah and the fish.
Dr. Richard Hays says “Debates of questions like, ‘Did this really happen?’ need to be replaced by asking ourselves questions like, ‘How is this biblical text asking me to change’ ‘How does my world blind me to the message that this text is attempting to get me to hear?’” If we spend our time feuding over the “facts” of Jonah, conservatives and liberals alike will never hear its real truth.
A few years ago, a friend, living in Jerusalem, sent a copy of an article from a Jerusalem newspaper that claimed that for more than half a century, archaeological findings had refuted the historical truth of many of the stories of the Old Testament. The article went on to outline the fight between conservative Jewish archaeologists, and these more liberal ones over the so-called evidence. Our friend observed that they all had missed the point. What mattered in the biblical story of Jericho, for example, was not how tall the walls were, and where the actual town was. How the walls fell down and when, or if they fell down at all… The biblical story of the conquest of Jericho is a religious story. As such, it seeks to convey spiritual truth. Not facts. The question we need to be asking is not, did it happen? But who told this story? And why?
Paul makes very clear in his instructions to the young student, Timothy, that scripture was not given to answer scientific questions, whether about Jonah or Jericho. Scriptures was given “to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus…” Scripture, all of scripture, is given to tell a story of salvation. Salvation, which is that process whereby ordinary human beings come to recognize the presence of an extraordinary God in their own history and in their very humanity.
Let me make two brief suggestions as to how we might learn, together, to be better stewards of these sacred writings.
First, we need to reclaim our heritage as “people of the book.” I have told you that I believe we have given up too much to Christian Fundamentalism. They have redefined too many good, biblical words -- “salvation,” “evangelism,” “sin” and “grace” to name a few -- and we have abandoned them. And in running from fundamentalist theology, too many thinking Christians have allowed the treasure of scripture to become “their book,” some kind of pre-scientific, antiquated rulebook that has little relevance for modern life. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Open the pages of scripture, dig deep, and you will find in the wonderful stories of these ancient texts, ancient people who, yet, share our own concerns, our struggles, our joys, our doubts.
We pride ourselves on being a thinking church. We want us to think more about scripture and the story that it tells about our salvation.
Secondly, we need to reclaim scripture as sacred story, and we need to reclaim this story as truth. There is nothing better than a good story is there? I was at Furman yesterday morning, gathered with old friends for a 15th reunion. We spent the entire time together telling stories. “Do you remember the time when…?”
All of the truth of scripture comes to us by way of a story, which was told and retold, passed-on orally before any of it was written down. And, all of those stories bore sacred truth, before the scriptures became doctrine. Those who have grown skeptical of the “factuality” of biblical miracles or of the Old Testament’s narratives of war need to learn to read again, with what some scholars have called a “narrative innocence” or a “second naivete.” We need to learn to hear, again, the story of Israel. The story of the church. We need to learn that their stories are our story, too.
I close with the words of scripture.
Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers; but their delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law they meditate day and night. They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither. In all that they do, they prosper. (Psalm 1.1-3)
Let us listen to the truth, for
This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Pastoral Prayer
O God of the great story
open our ears, again, that we might hear
open our hearts, again, that we might feel
open our lives, again, that we might be changed
by listening to the truth
Forgive our skepticism
which is that certain intellectual ability
to know all the facts
and to miss the truth, still.
O God of the great story
who comes to us in the light of the moon
and the rising of the sun
who comes to us in flood and rainbow
who comes to us in many-colored coats
and escape from bondage
who comes to us in the five smooth stones
and sling shot of a shepherd boy
O God of the great story
who comes to us in virgin births
and the resurrection from the dead
come to us today
and make the old, old story real for us again.
Give our own story your life
that we might know that revelation comes
not just in black and white
but in every shade of human experience
O God of the great story
open our ears, again, that we might hear
your truth…
and that we might believe.
Hear our prayer O God
and make it your story.
Amen!