Misunderstandings and Misinterpretations

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
September 14, 2008

Misunderstandings and Misinterpretations
2 Corinthians 11:1-6
Luke 6:6-11

The man’s hand was withered, useless,
hanging limp by his side.
It would have been bad enough
if it had been his left hand
but it was his right hand,
the hand he would have used to feed himself,
dress himself,
guide a chisel over stone,
hammer a nail into wood,
pull the rein to guide a team of oxen.

Could he have used his left hand to do these things?
It wasn’t all that long ago,
still within the memories of some of us here,
that if we saw a baby tending to use his or her left hand
we would have quickly tried to change that behavior
and “correct” it.
The word “sinister”, with its connotations of all things evil,
comes from the Latin,
which was the language of the Romans,
that meant, “left” or “left-handed”.

This man was probably unable to work,
destined to a life of begging for food and clothing.
The Pharisees and the Scribes, those learned men
who led the religious community in Jerusalem
probably did not even see the man
as they walked to and from the Temple each day.
The man with the withered hand
was probably one of dozens, hundreds,
who walked the dusty streets of Jerusalem
who had become invisible.

But Jesus’ eyes were always open;
no one was invisible to him,
especially those who were sick, who were poor,
who were friendless,
who were on the fringes of society:
those were always the people Jesus was quickest to see.
So it is no surprise that Jesus healed the man
with the withered hand.
In the process, Jesus made him visible;
He gave him new life.

Now as we hear this story
it’s clear that it wasn’t the fact of the healing
that bothered the Pharisees;
they might have even seen it as a good thing:
one less beggar
and one more person to pay a Temple tax.

No, what concerned them was that Jesus healed the man
on the Sabbath.
That outraged them.
Surely Jesus knew his Scripture,
surely he knew his laws:
“Six days you shall labor and do all your work,
but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God;
you shall not do any work.” Exodus 20:9

What could be clearer?
Had Jesus no respect for Scripture?
Was he willing to toss Scripture aside whenever it suited him?
This was not the first time Jesus had done something on the Sabbath
that had clearly violated Scripture,
clearly had flouted the law.

For more than a thousand years,
since the days of Moses,
the leaders of the Jewish community
taught the Scriptures and added to the laws.
And every time they did so,
they built an institution that became more and more rigid,
more and more focused on rules, laws, procedures,
less and less focused on God’s mercy and justice.

And that’s what Jesus was challenging;
rules had become authority.
The leaders misunderstood the word of God.
The leaders misinterpreted the word of God.
If they misunderstood or misinterpreted
out of ignorance, that was bad enough,
but if they intentionally distorted the law
for their own purposes,
that was something that needed to be stopped.

Time and time again through the Scriptures,
God had spoken of his concern for the needy,
the outcast, the poor, the orphan, the widow.
God had spoken of his contempt for the wealthy
when they grew content with their comfortable lives,
and ignored the needs of the less affluent,
when they paid no attention to
a growing gap between rich and poor.
God had spoken of his hope for his children,
that some day they would live in peace,
that war would cease,
and all his children in every nation
would live in harmony.

None of those things mattered to the Pharisees and scribes.
Had you followed ritual?
Had you lived in compliance with the rules?
Had you done what they told you to do?
That’s what they cared about.
And the people went along,
compliant in their own ignorance.

It took the Living Word, our Lord Jesus Christ,
to correct the mistakes and the misinterpretation.
Yes, the Sabbath is a day of rest,
a day when work should not be done,
but God had graced us with the Sabbath
for the benefit of all God’s children,
to renew and restore us,
not as a ritual to be slavishly followed.
If there was a hungry child,
a sick man,
even an animal fallen into a ditch,
God’s compassion, love, and grace
would make the response obvious.
Don’t just sit there resting,
do something!

Two thousand years later,
we still struggle with how we should interpret
the word of God as it comes to us through the Bible.
That struggle is at the very heart of everything we do
in Christian Education.
From the first time we hear a Bible story,
we begin a life long journey of faith seeking understanding.
We start with simple stories:
Jesus born in the stable,
Noah building the Ark,
David confronting Goliath.

We travel farther and dig deeper.
We learn of Solomon’s wisdom
and Jonah’s fishing trip.
But we also begin to notice that some of the things
we read sound confusing, even troubling.
We love the story of Jesus born in the stable,
but why are there only two birth stories
and why are they so different?
We love the story of Noah and the Ark,
but the reason behind it,
God’s fury with his children,
is so unsettling.
Turning Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt
seemed awfully harsh.
Solomon for all his wisdom
loses his way to women and wealth.
And then there’s all that blood,
all those wars,
instructions from God to kill.

Yet still we persevere going deeper,
and we begin to notice
that passages we read in one part of the book
seem to conflict with passages we read from other parts of the book.
Still other passages offend us:
“women be silent; slaves obey your master”.

And we end up throwing our hands up in frustration,
leaving it to the clergy,
even when Paul warns us of the dangers of that.

That’s why we have Christian Education,
for every one at every age.
The more we each know,
the easier it is to discern and understand.
And the beginning of understanding as we read through
the written word that is the Bible
is to remember that the lens we should look through
as we read is the Living Word -
our Lord, Jesus Christ.

And that means we are to interpret the word
through a lens that is grace itself,
our interpretation always gracious, grace-filled,
and grace –full.
As we learn, we understand that we are called to act
called to take grace out into the world.
Classes are not cloistered settings;
Every class is both a time for learning and reflection,
and a time for preparation for service.
as we put lessons into actions.

A recent survey done among young people in this country,
shows that churches of all denominations
are not doing a very good job
of teaching a grace-full interpretation of the word of the Lord.
The survey, done by the Barna Group,
was taken among young people ages 16 to 30
and what it shows is that what
churches are preaching and teaching
has been pushing more people away from
Christianity than calling them in.

A large majority of the respondents see churches as strident,
rigid, angry, war-mongering,
judgmental, hypocritical.
more concerned with politics
and building empire
both within and outside of the church
(David Kinnamon, “Unchristian”)

While I would certainly like to think
that a person asked to reflect on Manassas Presbyterian Church
would not use these words,
the results shows how easy it is to miscommunicate
misinterpret and misunderstand the word of the Lord.

Our job in Christian education
is to help every disciple
at every age understand that
faith can feed a starving world,
that faith can cure us of our warring madness,
that faith can bring hope,
that faith can move mountains.

Our job in Christian education
is to help every disciple
at every age understand that
this faith is grace-filled faith,
gracious faith,
a fearless faith, a bold faith,
a faith that is grounded in the word of the Lord
that we find in the Bible,
a faith that is understood through the lens,
that is the Living Word, our Lord Jesus Christ.
If we do that,
then there should be no misunderstanding
and no misinterpretation.

AMEN