How to "Eat this Book" (Revelation 10:1-11)

Nothing sweeter will ever enter us than God’s word, the content of the Bible.  The truth, the hope, the joy, the peace, the promise – all of it fills us and provokes change in us so that we infect one another and people outside our church family with a disease known as the Gospel.  Symptoms include salvation, Holy Spirit power, forgiveness, grace, mercy, and abundant life. 

          Nothing more difficult to swallow will ever sit in our stomachs than God’s word, the content of the Bible.  The Bible confronts us in our sin.  The Bible demands that we tell the truth about the damages of sin in the world, and in doing so, we criticize extremely popular institutions in our culture.  Being confronted is no fun.  Confronting others is no fun.  God’s word does the first – confronts us - and then commands us, followers of Jesus. To do the second – confront the world.

          Sweet in the mouth and sometimes tough to swallow – the word of God is both.  Overall, it is life.  Even the tough parts are truth.  When we swallow the tough parts, and by swallow I mean take them in and conform our lives – our speech, choices and relationships – to the tough parts, we discover joy.  It is not an easy joy, but a penetrating one, a lasting joy.

          Revelation chapter 10 serves us this metaphor of honey and bitterness – here we are invited to think of God’s word as both sweet and challenging. 

          Entering the chapter, it might be helpful for us to see the word rather than hear or read it.  Close your eyes and wake up your imagination.  John is in the throne room of Heaven, in God’s presence, surrounded by heavenly beings and by the apostles, all dressed in white robes. 

          What does that look like, Heaven’s throne room?  I have never been in a throne room of any kind.  I have to guess at it.  How about when John sees the visions – what does that look like?  Is it on a screen?  Or is it in 3-D?  Imagine John being shown things by God.

          The vision of chapter10 begins. 

          I saw another powerful angel come down from heaven. This one was covered with a cloud, and a rainbow was over his head. His face was like the sun, his legs were like columns of fire (v.1).

          A powerful angel … a cloud and rainbow … face like the sun, legs like columns off fire … what do you see?  Imagine you are seeing what John sees.  In your mind, describe it as if you were telling another person what you are seeing.

          With his hand he held a little scroll that had been unrolled. He stood there with his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land. ³ Then he shouted with a voice that sounded like a growling lion. Thunder roared seven times (v.2-3).

          I have walked along the shore, the lapping waves washing over my bare feet.  It could be said that I have stood with one foot on land and one on the sea.  That is not what I envision here.  I picture a great angel, gigantic, with an enormous foot planted in the sand and the other foot way out in the waves.  How tall is this angel?  20 feet?  50 or 100?

          I imagine my bones within me trembling at the angel’s thunderous roar.  Weakened as I am before this great one of Heaven, feeling small as I do, still I remember I am in John’s vision, seeing what John has seen.  He has already witness as seven wax seals on another scroll were opened.  He watched the graphic scenes of God’s wrath poured out as judgment on a rebellious world.  Then he saw it all again as seven trumpets were blown. 

          Seven seals of judgment, seven trumpets of wrath, and now seven thunders; John has been commanded to write down all he sees, so his picks up his pen again.  But we continue through the chapter and we see that this is different.

          After the thunder stopped, I was about to write what it had said. But a voice from heaven shouted, “Keep it secret! Don’t write these things” (v.4).

          Some things are not to be revealed.  God shares what we need to receive blessing and live as his followers, worshiping him and walking with him in love.  But God does not share all.  Some mysteries stay mysteries. 

          The angel I had seen standing on the sea and the land then held his right hand up toward heaven.⁶ He made a promise in the name of God who lives forever and who created heaven, earth, the sea, and every living creature. The angel said, “You won’t have to wait any longer. ⁷ God told his secret plans to his servants the prophets, and it will all happen by the time the seventh angel sounds his trumpet. (v.5-7).

          As great as this magnificent angel that stands on land and sea is still, the angel is beneath the mighty God.  He serves God and speaks for God.  Here he promises that fulfillment has come. 

          Remembering the seven wax seals, after the 5^th seal was opened, John saw the martyrs.  There in Heaven’s throne room were the martyrs who had died for their faith in Christ.  Many experienced torture before death, yet they did not speak against Jesus.  Even when it was painful to do so, they announced that Jesus is Lord. 

          Man of these martyrs lived in the first century, but many have lived in the two millennia since then.  In fact, there were more people killed for their testimony about Jesus in the 20^th century than the previous 19 combined.  John saw the martyrs after the 5^th seal judgment.  They asked, “How long, holy and faithful Lord, before you bring justice” (6:10)?  Here in chapter 10, we have the response.  But what we don’t count on is our role in God’s justice.

          Again, put yourself there.  See what John sees.

          ⁸ Once again the voice from heaven spoke to me. It said, “Go and take the open scroll from the hand of the angel standing on the sea and the land.”

          ⁹ When I went over to ask the angel for the little scroll, the angel said, “Take the scroll and eat it! Your stomach will turn sour, but the taste in your mouth will be as sweet as honey.” ¹⁰ I took the little scroll from the hand of the angel and ate it. The taste was as sweet as honey, but my stomach turned sour (V.8-10).

          Eugene Peterson uses this text as a metaphor for living the scripture.  John is there, so small, and he is told to approach the mighty angel, he of the voice of thunder.  A voice from Heaven tells John to go and get the scroll from the angel’s hand.  I feel like I would be too terrified to move.  But John does as he is told and the angel tells him to eat the scroll.

          This is what Eugene Peterson writes about John, the 1^st century Christian who was taken up in the vision that in our Bible is called the Revelation.

“He was the pastor of marginally, economically, and politically powerless Christians in a society in which their commitment to following Christ branded them as criminals of the state.  His task was to keep their identity focused and their lives Spirit-filled, their discipleship ardent, their hope fresh against formidable odds – the living, speaking, acting Jesus front and center in their lives.  He didn’t settle for mere survival, throwing them a plank to hang onto in the storm; he wanted them to live, really live – outlive everyone around them. This is what prophets and pastors and writers do, and it is never easy. No easier now than it was for John.[i]

          I believe the scroll tasted sweet because it is the Gospel – the story of our salvation, our life in Christ.  We are forgiven, made new, called to love, filled with the Spirit, and joined together with God and each other.  In Jesus we are one.  The gospel is a life we can savor. 

          But John immediately knew this gospel also meant naming the injustice of corrupt governments.  For us it means confronting racism and deception, materialism and exploitative sexuality.  The rampant craving for immediate satisfaction, the give-me-what-I-want-and-I-don’t-care-who-gets-hurt mentality, the lie that money and expensive stuff will satisfy – this all poisons our world and we have to speak against it.  To speak the truth about Jesus is also to confront sin. 

          In his quote, Peterson said this is what prophets and pastors and writers do.  I would add it is what eaters do – those who consume the word of God. 

          Peterson says,

Christians feed on scripture.  Holy Scripture nurtures the holy community as food nurtures the body.  Christians don’t simply learn or study or use scripture; we assimilate it, take into our lives in such a way that it gets metabolized into acts of love, cups of cold water, missions into all the world, healing, and evangelism and justice in Jesus’ name, hands raised in adoration of the Father, feed washed in company with the Son.[ii]

          To this I would add our consumption of the Word becomes our announcement of it and sometimes we have to make that announcement as prophets declaring “The Lord has said.”  The final word for John and I would contend for readers of Revelation has an ominous note.  This time it comes not from the angel but from other voices in Heaven.

          “Then some voices said, “Keep on telling what will happen to the people of many nations, races, and languages, and also to kings” (v.11).

          Following through Revelation what happens to kings, to some kings at least, is judgment and death.  Revelation 18 is a funeral dirge for Babylon.  “Fallen!  Powerful Babylon has fallen and is now the home of demons.  It is the den of every filthy spirit and of all unclean birds and every dirty and hated animal” (v.2).  Babylon is Rome, it is the Inquisition, it is Nazi Germany, and even, when our own beloved empire exports values contrary to the Gospel, it is us.  And it is not popular to announce Babylon’s fall prior to that fall happening.  Babylon does not like that and tends to punish the prophets who make that announcement with persecution, isolation, and dismissal.

          The day after judgment, after God has rendered final punishment to those who rebel against God and hurt people – that day is sorrowful for the prophet.  We do not rejoice at the death of sinners.  We weep for them as Jesus wept over Jerusalem (Luke 19:41).

          The word of the Lord can seem like a tough pill to swallow but swallow it we must. We must eat this book.  We must devour the word of God.

          It does not end with a funeral.  It ends with a wedding – an unending wedding banquet.  Revelation 21 sees the bride, the church joined to the groom, the exalted Lord Jesus.  The tears in this story give way to lasting joy in God’s embrace. 

          As we have talked about getting into the Bible and getting the Bible into us, I have proposed different pathways into Bible reading.  I offer another now as we close.  Take the Bible to bed with you. 

          I did this several years ago and will take up the practice again this week.  Psalm 63 is a prayer of great desire for God.  The singer says in verse 6, “When I remember You on my bed, I meditate on You in the night watches.”

          I took that literally.  For a period of time, before bed, I would take that verse or meditating on God, seeking God, praying to God.  It was the last thing I did before drifting off to sleep.  I did it every night.  Any time I awoke in the middle of night, I did not just go back to sleep.  I would sit up and meditate on that verse and seek the Lord.  When I woke in the morning, the first thing I did was to go to Psalm 63:6 and again seek the Lord in prayer.

          I urge this practice for you this week, but not necessarily with Psalm 63:6, nor with the command to eat in Revelation 10.  Remember, it is a metaphor, eat this book. 

          I recommend another passage in Revelation – 21:3-4.

Then I heard a loud voice from the throne:^[a]

Look! God’s dwelling^[b] is with humanity,
and He will live with them.
They will be His people,
and God Himself will be with them
and be their God.^[c]
4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
Death will no longer exist;
grief, crying, and pain will exist no longer,
because the previous things^[d] have passed away.

          Before bed read it, think about it, pray it, especially as you contemplate your life.  If you wake in the middle of the night, go to this passage.  Read it.  Pray it.  The first thing when you wake – read it.  Pray it.  This is how we stomach and enjoy even the challenge of the word.  This is how we eat this book.  This is how we are filled.

AMEN

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[i] E. Peterson (2006), Eat this Book, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, Grand Rapids, MI, p.19.

[ii] Ibid, p.18.

More of the Bible in one Hand and the Newspaper the Other

I saw this story about Libya collaborating with Western governments to destroy WMD’s.  I know it is a small victory for peace in a region rife with bloodshed.  But, small victories may potentially begin a movement.

You can see the story here: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/03/world/africa/libyas-cache-of-toxic-arms-all-destroyed.html?hp&_r=0

I found this paragraph enlightening.

“As Libya’s weak central government grapples with turmoil and unrest, and as kidnappings and assassinations of military and police officers accelerate in the country’s east, American and international weapons specialists hailed the destruction of the Libyan stockpile as a bright spot in an otherwise gloomy security environment.”

Clearly Libya is not becoming a desert paradise any time soon.  But in an effort that required cooperation between Germans, Libyans, Swedes, Canadians, and Americans, is something to cheer.  I thought of the words of the prophet Micah, especially, v.3 (see below).

Micah 4

English Standard Version (ESV)

The Mountain of the Lord

4 It shall come to pass in the latter days
    that the mountain of the house of the Lord
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
    and it shall be lifted up above the hills;
and peoples shall flow to it,
²     and many nations shall come, and say:
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
    to the house of the God of Jacob,
that he may teach us his ways
    and that we may walk in his paths.”
For out of Zion shall go forth the law,^[a]
    and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
³ He shall judge between many peoples,
    and shall decide for strong nations far away;
and they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
    and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
    neither shall they learn war anymore;
⁴ but they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree,
    and no one shall make them afraid,
    for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken.
⁵ For all the peoples walk
    each in the name of its god,
but we will walk in the name of the Lord our God
    forever and ever.

Rejoicing in the Word (Nehemiah 8:1-12)

          On October 10 of last year, I began reading through the Bible.  I read The Message, an English version translated by Eugene Peterson.  He said his intent was to translate the Bible into “American English.”  Read The Message and you will realize how quickly language shifts.  What he calls “American English” is very much 20^th century “American.” A few phrases and idioms are out of vogue.  Even so it is a delightful translation and I read all the way through by the end of the year. 

          Not everyone would want to do that.  Not everyone has the freedom.  That’s a lot of scripture in a short time, but not as short a period when author Margaret Feinberg read through the entire Bible during the 40 days of Lent last year.

          Why would she or I or anyone try to digest the entirety of scripture this way?  In such large chunks, it is hard to narrow in and meditate on specific ideas in the Bible.  What is the benefit of this approach to reading?

          It helped me condition my thinking according to the world of the Bible.  I felt the story.  The journey through 1^st and 2^nd Kings alone is exhausting and painful.  Over and over the kings of Judah and Israel worship false gods, ignore the prophets of the one true God, exploit the people, and find themselves at the mercy of foreign monarchs who abuse without restraint.  By the end of 2^nd Kings, the reader is depressed. 

          But then, exile comes as the last King, Zedekiah, is blinded and led off to slavery in Babylon.  And then, we see God’s people in Babylon and Persia and we realize God is there too.  Even as the layers of disobedience pile up, God never leaves.  Esther, Nehemiah, Daniel, and Ezekiel show God’s faithfulness and grace as second chances are given over and over.  Reading through it all gives the reader the arc of the story, a sense of God as God moves with humanity through the eras of history. 

          Another book I read in 2013 is The Book of God: The Bible as a Novel.  Wangerin is extremely creative in his telling of the stories of scripture.  Max Lucado too is an author who brings passion to his depictions of the Bible narratives. 

          I am recommending as a pathway into the Bible that we read it as a great story.  Ignore chapter and verse and simply get into the story.  A translation like The Message may facilitate this.  So too might a novelization like the writings of Wangerin or Lucado, to name just two of many outstanding writers who reflect on scripture.  This year I am going to go through the Contemporary English Version.  Like The Message it is in language patterns similar to our every day speech.  I won’t cram it in in less than 3 months like in 2013.  I’ll read a chunk, leave it, then go back to it.  For me, the exercise is a way to live in the story world. 

          This approach to the Bible as story helped me tremendously in reading Nehemiah.  Nehemiah is situated in the time of exile.  Israel has fallen to Babylon.  Then Babylon falls to Persia and the Israelite slaves go from one master to another.  Yet all is not lost.

          We see in the Bible the Jewish people cling fiercely to their role as God’s chosen even when they appear utterly defeated.  Other ancients assumed when they were defeated that the gods of their conquerors were superior to their own gods.  Not Israel.  No matter what happened, Israel claimed the uniqueness and superiority of Yahweh as the only God. 

          In the book of Genesis, Israelite Joseph, son of Jacob is a slave who rises from death row to become governor.  He runs the empire and through his divinely inspired wisdom the Egyptians survive the famine.  Similarly, Daniel rises in Persia to great authority, a slave ruling over the nation.  Nehemiah, also in Persia, becomes the cupbearer to the King.

          This slave from Jerusalem is so important that the Persian emperor a man with enormous responsibilities pays attention to Nehemiah’s emotions.  Nehemiah receives reports that Jerusalem, the city of David, lies in ruins.  He is overcome with depression and the king takes note of his sadness.  The king grants Nehemiah permission to leave his service as cupbearer, travel to Jerusalem, and rebuild the city. 

          By the time we arrive at the book of Nehemiah, chapters 8 and 9, the priest, Ezra, has come from Persia, to join the rebuilding effort.  Israel will not be the people of God without worship and not just any offering to the Lord, but proper worship.  This is crucial to know in the story world of Bible.  Worship matters.  The identity of the great “I AM,” Yahweh, the God of Abraham, demands that worship be at the core of who Israel is.   

          With this sense of story, we realize what is happening when we open Nehemiah 8 and see Ezra addressing the nation as they gather.  They are starting over.  After slavery, after the destruction of the temple and the city, they once again gather, turn their hearts to God, and worship.  We would not get all the undertones of the story by just opening up Nehemiah and beginning our reading at chapter 8, verse 1. 

          British preacher Peter Mead says, “I often ponder the fact that the Bible men and women whom I most aspire to be like are not those with a ready quiver full of pithy proof-texts, but those who know the God of the Bible because they are washed in the Bible as a whole, book by book.”[i]  Are we so washed in the Bible so that we get a sense of what God is doing both in the Bible story we are reading and in our lives as we read?  Or do we just whip a verse or there with no connection to all God is doing in history.  Dangling Bible verses quoted out of context do a disservice to God.  When we quote without a sense of story, we deceive ourselves into thinking we are being Biblical when in fact we’re just self-righteously drawing to our own abilities to memorize.  Quoting is fine and is good, but only when it is connected to story – God’s and ours.

          In Nehemiah 8, worship stands as the highpoint marking the moment the nation re-forms as God’s people.  In the center of the worship is the Torah, the law, the word.  Torah is the content of the first five books of the Old Testament.  It is what God gave Moses on Mt. Sinai as God called his people out of Egypt in the Exodus.  Before they could go to the Promised Land, they had to understand God.  The Torah is creation, 10 commandments, the story of deliverance, and the review in Deuteronomy, the entire law revisited to prepare the nation to enter the land. 

          Nehemiah 8:3 reports that the people, men, women, and children, stood at the Water Gate in Jerusalem while the priest Ezra read.  I thought about having us all stand throughout the sermon this morning.  They stood there from early morning to midday, maybe as long as 4 hours without sitting.  They stood and listened as Ezra read and explained the Torah. 

It had been so long since the people of Israel lived in the land and live in the word that many had even forgotten the language.  They needed priests to translate Ezra’s teaching from Hebrew into Aramaic (8:7-8).  But they patiently endured the lengthy session because they could not think of anything that mattered as much as being in the word.  Their return to God would be founded upon the word.  The Torah was how God communicated and on it they would stand. 

          Walter Brueggemann comments that “remapping and reconstruction becomes the ongoing work of Judaism.  It is clear,” he writes, “the work of Judaism is always postexilic [after fall in sin and restoration by grace] and is always on the horizon of Yahweh’s gathering, healing, forgiving, loving propensity.”[ii]  In our lives as followers of Jesus, we remember that he is the Jewish Messiah and that in Him, as we read in Romans; we are grafted into the people of God.  But this is only so because of what Jesus accomplished on the cross.  Our story cannot be told without the cross and the resurrection.  Israel had to begin with Torah and continuously return to Torah.  We have to begin with the Gospel and continuously return to it.  This ongoing work of reconstruction is ours as we commit ourselves to repentance (turning from our sins), receiving forgiveness, and giving it.  As the New Testament puts it, the Gospel is new wine and we are new creations.

          In Nehemiah 8, when the law was being read during that four-hour stretch, people began weeping.  They were overcome by their own guilt.  However, the governor, Nehemiah, and the priest, Ezra, stopped the lamentations.  The people felt their sin, the weight of it, the filth of it, but Ezra and Nehemiah wanted to introduce a new emotion – joy.  We weep in sin because we are cut off from God.  We grieve our sins because sin rips us away from the good that God created us to be.  We become something less than fully human.  At the cross, Jesus took it all on himself.  In Him, in the waters of baptism, the sins are washed away.  Isaiah 61:3 – He gives beauty for Ashes, gladness instead of mourning.

          Nehemiah 8:10: “This is a special day for the Lord your God.  So don’t be sad and don’t cry.  Enjoy your good food and wine and share some with those who don’t have anything.  … This is a special day for the Lord, and he will make you happy and strong.  This is a sacred day, so don’t worry or mourn” (8:10b-12).

         

          A few weeks ago, we talked about the sin cycle that is so prevalent in the book of Judges.  The people worship other gods and fall away from the Lord.  The Lord gets angry.  The people fall into domination at the hands of cruel invaders.  The people cry out and the Lord responds by sending a hero, a judge.  Through the judges, the Lord brings salvation.  After the salvation, the people live in peace, joy, and faithfulness.  This is bliss until they forget and in disobedience, they abandon the Lord and it starts all over.

          Nehemiah lies within the story of this cycle of sin, fall, and deliverance.  Chapter 8, verse 1, the deliverance has come.  Ezra stands and reads the word because the story is important and nothing can happen between God and the people until they locate themselves within it.  They hear and they realize their place and they weep. 

          Sin.  Restoration.

          And then, as Ezra and Nehemiah insist, not weeping, but rejoicing.  God has given the word, which speaks who He is and it – the word – is able to hold us up and make us new. 

          To be human is to live with our own failures.  Dreams die.

          It does not mean we die with them.  It may feel that way.  But no.  We can’t wallow in sorrow because a story is beneath us and around us and the God of that story lifts us. Fallen, we rise because he raises us.          When we start again, after the fall-out and deep pain has infected our souls, we stand on the Gospel.  We stand on the truth that God spoke to the world through Israel, and then again through His son our Savior Jesus.  The Bible draws us to Jesus and Jesus lifts us to our feet.  Failure is not the end of our story.  We belong to Jesus, risen one.  Because of Him, the sin cycle is broken and in all circumstances, we have joy.   

AMEN

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[i] Peter Mead (2014), Sermon Central website - http://www.sermoncentral.com/pastors-preaching-articles/peter-mead-why-bible-reading-is-down-at-your-church-1801.asp?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=scnewsletter&utm_content=SC+Update+20140130

[ii] Brueggemann (1997) Theology of the Old Testament, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, p.444.

Read the Bible as you Read the News

A few weeks ago in a sermon, I recommended that Christians read the Bible with the newspaper open; and, when followers of Jesus read the news, which we should do, we do so with the Bible open.  This is an attempt to demonstrate what I meant in that recommendation.

I was looking at the Saturday New York Times, pages A6-7.  The following headlines grabbed me: “Syrian Talks, Ending First Round, Fail Even to Agree on Easing Aid Blockade; Indonesian Militants Join Foreigners in Syria; Abuse claims in Ukraine Rise among Protesters.  In one photo, Ukrainian politician and former heavyweight boxing champion Vitali Klitschko leans over the hospital bed of a man who had claimed to have been tortured.  Another picture shows the haze resting over the Syrian town of Aleppo right after it had been bombed.

And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars – Matthew 24:6a.

If Jesus was specifically referring to Rome’s inevitable conquest of Jerusalem, then it is not a perfect fit to call upon that text in reflection upon the violence and political upheaval in the world right now. But it is enough to note that our Lord, the one we call “Prince of Peace," was a giver of true peace.  He did not, though, promise that violent conflict would disappear.  Just the opposite; men would and do kill men.  Nations destroy nations.  People groups and religious factions seem bent on wiping each other out. 

From the time humans were driven from Paradise (Genesis 3:24), sin has been a part of our existence and violence and war are one of the worst manifestations of sin.  What’s happening in Syria and Ukraine and North Korea and Iraq and Egypt – in all these places it is sin.  Sin is an unavoidable reality in the Biblical story.  Sin screams in a thousand shrill voices from the pages of the newspaper.

In your own reading, you may not easily call to mind a specific passage like Matthew 24 or Genesis 3.  But even if you read the paper and think and pray and still no scripture comes to mind, don’t be discouraged.  Just working at it got you to think and pray.  Keep at it – the reading of the Bible with the news in mind and the reading of the paper with your Bible open.  After weeks and months, scriptures will come to mind.  I promise.  If they don’t, let me know.  I’ll work at it with you. 

The Bible story is relevant.  We feel the relevance deeply when our reading, our prayer, and our media consumption are all intertwined.  

Read Commentary on the Bible

            I have been talking about Pathways into the Bible.  I’ve mentioned several including memorizing scriptures and reading the Bible in conjunction with reading the news.  I will provide a full list of Bible pathways on this blog when the preaching series is concluded on February.

            Today, I suggest the Bible reader invite experts into the conversation.  The operating assumption is that the Bible is being read.  Along with it, read commentary.  There is the inspirational type of writing, books that act as extended sermons, by authors like Max Lucado.  There is critical-historical writing by authors like Scot McKnight, Craig Evans, and Luke Timothy Johnson.  Note that works of this type are sometimes technical, for academic reading.  Authors like Walter Brueggemann and N.T. Wright offer theological interpretations of the Bible.  Alister McGrath and Douglas Groothuis are examples of authors who write apologetics, leaning heavily on the scriptures.  Gabe Lyons, Andy Crouch, and other similar writers deal with current topics and refer to the Bible throughout their works. 

            I go on listing authors.  The point is there is a lot of good literature from men and women who unveil the deep truths of scripture.  In the course of reading, the Bible reader will encounter authors with whom he does not agree.  Excellent.  When I disagree with an author, especially concerning the Bible, I have to clarify my thoughts.  I need to try to know the material so I can be confident in my opinion.  Occasionally, I come across poorly written books.  I just close them and move on to better material.

            Read commentary as a regular part of your reading of scripture.  Your views will be enlarged, your understanding deepened, your mind quickened, and your wit sharpened.  

Entering the Story of Life (John 20:30-31)

Sunday, January 26, 2014

John 20:30-31

³⁰ Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book.³¹ But these are written so that you may come to believe^[a] that Jesus is the Messiah,^[b] the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

David Lose of Luther Seminary in Minnesota observes “that the primary challenge facing the Christian Church in North America in the 21st century is that for most of our people, God is no longer a primary actor in the story of their lives. … It’s not that people don’t believe in God, it’s just that apart from church they don’t think about God all that much. … The biblical story – the narrative, that is, that teaches us to recognize God’s activity in the world – is relatively and increasingly unfamiliar to them and certainly not a source of the kinds of stories we regularly tell and share as we seek to make sense of our lives.”[i]

I agree with his observation, which is why our church wide emphasis is on understanding the Bible, getting into the Bible and getting the Bible into us.  Church-goers are by and large Biblically illiterate.  This lament fills seminary halls, the pages of Christian literature, and the conversations of pastors when they get together.  A lot of people claim the Bible is important.  Few actually know what it says.  Fewer still understand what a rigorous, lifelong endeavor it is to read and live in the Bible. 

If upon hearing this, your reaction is, oh no!  I don’t know the Bible!  He’s talking about me.  Relax.  There will be no quiz this morning.  When I observe that people generally, even church goers, are unfamiliar with the Bible, I do not say it as an accusation.  I intend it as an invitation.  If someone said to me, I don’t know the Bible; my response is “You can.” 

The Bible is not intended as an inaccessible holy book only the experts and the initiated can understand.  It is not easy.  It is often challenging.  But the challenge is there to be met.  Difficulties that come up in reading, understanding, and applying the Bible to life are invitations from God.  God is challenging because God is holy and sin blocks our view of him.  God reaches to us and invites us to look past whatever is blocking the way.  As we overcome the obstacles sin lays down, we get to where we have a real, dynamic, life-making relationship with God. 

The 20^th chapter of John’s Gospel ends with a statement of purpose.  “Jesus did many signs … not written in this book.”  John acknowledges this without hesitation or apology.  John wasn’t trying to write an exhaustive biography.  The Gospel has qualities of a biography, but the goal of the final composition was not to simply tell Jesus’ story.  Was the author of John’s gospel aware of Matthew, Mark, and Luke when he wrote John?  That question inspires much debate.  I tend to think, yes, he knew of the traditions that went into those other gospels.  I doubt he had copies of them in front of him when he wrote John.  I am not fully convinced that John was the last one written.

Nor am I at all convinced that the Apostle John, one of the 12 disciples, is the author of the Gospel of John.  I don’t know if there is any way of being certain of the identity of the original author and compilers.  The Gospel itself only says that the author was the disciple whom Jesus loved (21:20, 24).  In John chapter 11, Lazarus was described as the one Jesus loved (11:3b).  Certainly, there were more disciples than just the 12.  I think a compelling, though not convincing, case can be made that the author of the 4^th gospel was Lazarus. 

At any rate, this Gospel was written with a purpose, and that purpose was not to exhaustively catalogue Jesus words and actions.  Much was included that is not in Matthew, Mark, & Luke.  Much in those gospels is not in John.  And the material in all four is arranged and presented uniquely in each. 

The Gospels of John wants to be read.  The Gospel of John wants the reader to see Jesus within the pages.  The Gospel of John wants the reader to meet Jesus and believe in him, that he is the Messiah, the Son of God, God in human flesh.  The Gospel of John wants this because if one believes in Jesus, that person will have life.  There are plenty of people in the world, billions, who eat, grow, procreate, work – they are alive.  They don’t know Jesus at all and yet a biologist would define them as living.  No, says, the Gospel of John.  Life, life as God intends it, can only be had by the one who knows Jesus.

Thus the problem as observed by David Lose.  People in our day, place, and time, don’t think much about God outside of Sunday morning, and they don’t look to God’s word to make sense of their lives.  People are alive but not living.  We immediately see what this means for us, a church family.  Before us sits the fourth gospel saying – read!  Read and believe!  Believe and have life – life as God intends it. 

Have we read?

Are we living the life we’re invited by God to live?

What about people around us who don’t have this?  Either they have not read the Gospel or they have no access to it or they aren’t interested in it.  Whatever the cause, we are surrounded by people who do not have the life God wants people to have.

John is the Gospel that records Jesus saying, “I have come that they might have life and have it abundantly” (10:10).  John is the abundant life Gospel.  John is the Gospel where Jesus says to a Pharisee, Nicodemus, “God so loved the world, he gave his only son so that whoever believes may not perish but have eternal life.”  In John, Jesus tells Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life.  Those who believe in me though they die will live.  And everyone who lives and believes in me will never die” (11:25-26).  John is an open book – open for everyone, every person.  We read, meet Jesus, believe, and have eternal life; abundant life. 

Before us sits the fourth Gospel, the word of God.  Are we into the life God wants for us?  Are we inviting the world around us into that life?

I have been recommending pathways into the Bible.  Some readers will be blessed memorizing verses of scripture like John 3:16, or one my favorites, John 14:6.  “Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life and no one comes to the father except through Him.”  Memorization helps us feel the wholeness of God’s word encapsulated in a verse or 2.

Others feel blessing in the walking through the Bible in a deliberate fashion reading a few chapters each day all the way through in a year’s time.

I suggested reading as a way of meeting God; keep a God notebook in which you record your encounters with the Creator of all that is as you meet him in the pages of the book He had given.

I suggested reading the Bible and the newspaper together each talking to the other so that our journey in scripture relates the world around us and we see the world in light of scripture.

A fifth pathway into the Bible involves deep introspection.  Write your own life story.  We heard Matthew share his last week.  Chris and Nelson shared theirs two weeks ago.  Imagine you were to be recruited to share your faith story, your testimony.  Next Sunday you would tell who you are.  Surely the journey would include season, maybe long stretches, in which you felt very far from God.  And maybe stretches felt like you walked hand-in-hand with God.  Everyone has his or her own story.  Imagine yours.  I recommend writing it out if you never have.  Doing so requires you to deal with details you might be tempted to sweep under the rug.  Imagine your life story, including all the hardest of hard places.

Now, take your life story with you every time you step into the Bible.  And as you review your life story, see the story of God in the scriptures alongside it. 

Some people recommend having a life verse.  I think this can be helpful.  In your reading of scripture, find verse that sums up your life as you have walked with God, fallen away, and come back again.  This is the fifth pathway into the word, I propose.  Review your life story with scripture in view and identify a Biblical story or a verse or two that is your life verse.  And by the way, as life changes, your understanding of your life verse does too and you might even find a new life verse when you enter a new season.  That’s OK.

The 4^th Gospel testifies that the Bible is intended to draw us to God and to have life in Jesus’ name.  In John 20, Jesus appeared to the disciples.  Judas hung himself after betraying Jesus.  Thomas missed seeing Jesus.  He heard of the resurrection from those who had seen Jesus, but he refused to believe.  The Gospel that invites the reader to faith also recognizes the potential for doubt, unbelief.  Some will hear the stories of resurrection and flat-out refuse to accept that it could be true. 

John 20:21 says,

²¹ Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” ²² When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. ²³ If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

This commission of Jesus, including the forgiving and retaining of sins prompts New Testament professor Susan Hylen to ask, "What is expected of later followers of Jesus?"[ii]  The fourth gospel expects to be read by believers, not just pastors, but everyone in the church.  The fourth gospel expects us to trust the witness offered.  The fourth gospel expects us to, upon hearing the testimony, to believe in Jesus and have life in his name.  Beyond, that, we are to become the inviting voice that draws in others, doubters, skeptics, sinners, you name it.

Jesus grants his followers the authority to forgive or retain sins.  The weight of this commission can only be shouldered by Christ-followers who know their own weakness.  When we realize that we are receiving this commission because at our lowest point we were lifted up by Jesus and He is our only hope, only then, in full view of our weakness, can we receive the commission to forgive or retain sins.  Professor Hylen reminds us that in John’s Gospel, ‘sin,’ means failing to see Jesus as the Son of God and believe in him.  

If we are in Christ, then we are never inclined to want to retain anyone’s sin.  Our bent is to see people outside the faith, or those in the church, who are not walking with Jesus, turn to Him, see Him, believe, and come to life.  That’s what has happened to us and now it is what we want for others.  In Christ, having seen, we do not want to see anyone’s sin retained.  We want for others the abundant life Jesus has given to us.  We become the invitation we have answered.

This week, read the Bible.  And review your life.  Read your own autobiography as you read the Bible.  Remember who you were and who you are, where you have been and where you are today.  Let God’s word prod you to deeper faith and abundant, eternal life.  Along the way, make your life an invitation, inviting a nonbeliever to see Jesus, believe in Him, and have life in His name.   

The Bible is your entry point to life. 

Your invitation is a wake-up letting your friend know that he too is invited to enter the story of the with-God life.

AMEN

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[i] David Lose (2013), http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=2509

[ii] Susan Hylen (2013), http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1585