Sermon: The Public Witness of Billboards

Here is my sermon from May 4th, 2014

The UCC: Reading the Bible

I picked up a pamphlet from my church about reading the Bible and I like its content. I found it again on the website, and I`m going to quote it below (I will add in blue the parts that were in the pamphlet but not the website)

The Bible is central to The United Church of Canada. As a source of wisdom, personal prayer, and devotion, we believe the Bible can bring us closer to God.[It's at once the holy writings of the Christian tradition, with stories of our ancestors in the faith, a guide for our living, and a source of prayers, songs and poems. All of this, yet so much more.] It remains one of our best ways of experiencing God's continuing work of creation and liberation in the world, while offering us forgiveness, healing, and new life in Jesus.

We often refer to a passage as "the Word of God." By this we mean the writer was inspired by God.

Yet we also know the various books that make up the Bible are the stories of two ancient communities trying to be faithful to God under difficult circumstances-ancient Israel and the early Christian movement-and some of what was experienced and written then doesn't fit with today's world. We don't condone slavery, for example, or stone those who commit adultery.

Nevertheless, in its stories and teachings the Bible has a mysterious power to inform our lives[: the story of ancient Israel, a people enslaved, then liberated, who wandered in a wilderness for years, is also the story of our own bondage and alienation. The wisdom of Jesus speaks to us, who are as much in need of healing and liberation today as those he taught and touched 2,000 years ago].

The order of the content is slightly different in the pamphlet as well. If you are interested in reading more about the beliefs of the United Church of Canada, this part of the website 

(http://www.united-church.ca/beliefs/overview) covers baptism, marriage, sacraments, etc.

Luke 4:10 The Temptation of Jesus OR the Devil quotes scripture

In this chapter, Jesus spends forty days in the wilderness being tempted by the devil. First the devil offers him food, which Jesus declines saying "man cannot live by bread alone". This happens to be one of my favorite Bible quotations because although my material needs are consistently met, I still ache for meaning. I feel that I cannot truly live unless I nurture my relationship with the divine.

Next, the devil offers Jesus "all the kingdoms of the inhabited Earth". Jesus doesn't take him up on this offer either, not surprisingly, especially when you remember that he tells his disciplines not to bring a spare shirt with them when they travel around (Luke 9:3). Jesus didn't seem to be a fan of material goods. [on a side note, when I googled "Bible Verse Jesus Shirt" to get a reference for Luke 9:3, I did not get any useful hits. Most of the search results were along the lines of "Put a Bible Verse on a Shirt for only $12.95!". I used to have a shirt that said "Slide Jesus Some Skin" with a picture of an outstretched hand attached to a robe-clad arm. This was back in the days when "Jesus is my homeboy" shirts were really popular. Ah, the plethora of Christian merchandise].

In the third temptation, the devil quotes scripture. He is quoting Psalm 91:11. He basically tells Jesus that he should jump from the temple because scripture says that the angels will catch him. Jesus answers with another quotation from scripture "do not put the lord your God to the test". It is really striking to me though to notice the Bible being quoted as a literal interpretation to attempt to incite someone to do something incredibly stupid. Striking but strangely familiar...

Reading the Bible: why bother?

I had quite a productive day today. I am starting up a new student club at my university to promote locavorism: eating local food. There was quite a bit of interest and I'm hoping we can share some tips and recipes and have some fun potlucks this year.

While I was at the University's Clubs and Societies Fair, I chatted and signed up with all the Christian groups as well as the one pagan group who was there. I think it is important for me to get over my fear of Christians from other denominations. It frightens me to think of meeting people who believe that they have a monopoly on the truth. It really leaves no space for constructive dialogue. The only thing I really believe is that no human or group of humans can fully understand God. So you can see why I have a strong urge to avoid fundamentalists.

I picked up a bunch of pamphlets from "The Navigators". These people want to "know Christ and to make Him known". The lady doing the tabling was very nice. We didn't talk about Jesus at all, we talked about the pros and cons of French Immersion and homeschooling.

The first pamphlet I decided to read tonight was "The Bible: Inspired by God or thought up by men". You can actually read it online on their website. Here:
http://considerthegospel.org/resources/fulfilled_prophecy_pamphlet_2005.pdf

I've encountered this before: people who claim that the Bible is the word of God because it has prophecies in it which came true. Well, this pamphlet has a lot of details about those prophesies, and how Jesus fulfilled them, and you can read it if you care. I don't find it very interesting though.

The only Bible quote in this pamphlet that really interests me is "All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness" (2 Timothy 3:16). Now, I conceive of God as the Creator and if you are into the poetry of the Genesis story, he breathed life into into Adam's nostrils (Genesis 2:7). So if humans wrote the scripture, which, you know, they did, then it is God-breathed.

So in point number two, the Bible is supposed to be useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness. It's not a how-to manual for life on Earth. It is useful for teaching, rebuking correcting, training because it is a lesson in subtlety, because there is more to it than meets the eye. It is a lesson in rebuking, because it is in itself contradictory. The Bible is God-breathed, but the breathers who wrote it were human beings, just like us, and we should be reading the Bible critically to think about how we can learn from our past mistakes and triumphs so that we can live as best as we can possibly know how.

The prophesy proof for the Bible isn't important to me. The Bible is a good book to read whether or not the New Testament is the official sequel to the Old Testament, whether or not the two books together are the official version of God's word. I often think about how in the tradition of Aboriginal storytelling it is said that "this story is true, even if it never really happened".