“What Is There To Understand?”

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

September 15, 2013

 

“What Is There To Understand?”

Selected Texts

“What is there to understand?

Just read it.

There it is in black and white.

Who wants to understand it?”

These are the words of woman named Mother Hamilton,

a woman who lived in the 19^th century,

a woman who is a colorful character from the pages of

John Steinbeck’s novel, East of Eden.

She was a woman of faith,

who lived her life by the Good Book.

“Just read it…

What is there to understand?

…who wants to understand it?”

How tempting it would be

to take this approach to the Bible!

In fact, this is a temptation we Christians

often do succumb to,

looking at the Bible as a rule book,

everything black and white,

agreeing with Mother Hamilton,

there’s no need to understand,

just accept what’s on the page

But God won’t let us take such an easy path

with the written Word.

The written Word takes work to understand;

it takes a lifetime of work.

For the written word of God we call the Bible

is a collection of books alive with the Spirit,

fresh, current,

always revealing the new, the unexpected,

if only we would dig deep enough,

if only we would read with a desire to understand.

Yes, there is much in the Bible

that seems straightforward and simple.

But we also know that there is much that is confusing.

You’ve heard me cite some of our Lord’s

most confounding words,

“If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble and sin,

cut it off and throw it away;

If your eye causes you to stumble and sin, tear it out.”

(Matthew 18:8)

Surely our Lord is not calling for a literal response to these words!

The Bible is filled not only with confusing lessons,

it is filled with passages that seem to conflict with one another.

When Mother Hamilton was asked

how she dealt with the paradoxes

that are abundant in the Bible,

her response was oh so simple:

she simply refused to admit that they were there.

Life can often be so much easier in the land of denial.

Last week we talked about the Lord’s Prayer;

We talked about the fact that there are two versions of it,

one in Matthew’s gospel, one in Luke.

We learned that they are similar in part,

and they are also different in part,

which leads to questions:

Why are they different?

What are we to do with the differences?

If all things are possible with God and for God,

surely God could have seen to it

that Matthew and Luke wrote down the same words.

It doesn’t make sense that we have two different Lord’s Prayers.

War has been very much on our minds the past couple of weeks

as the conflict in Syria has raged on.

More than 100,000 dead in the fighting;

more than a million left homeless, living as refugees;

and, most recently, 1400 killed brutally,

men, women and children,

dead from the use of chemical weapons,

poison gas;

whoever was responsible unquestionably guilty

of the most heinous crime against humanity.

But what does Scripture teach us about

how we should respond to a call to war?

Not as Americans, but as Christians,

as followers of our Lord Jesus Christ.

What are we to do when our Lord has taught us:

You have heard that it was said,

‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,

But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer.

But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek,

turn the other also.”

(Matthew 5:38-39)

What are we to do when Scripture teaches us

in both Old and New Testaments:

‘if your enemies are hungry, feed them;

if they are thirsty, give them something to drink;

(Proverbs 25:21/Romans 12:20)

What are we to do when the Commandment says

so simply and clearly: “You shall not kill.”

(Exodus 20:13)

Did God mean we should not murder,

but we may kill in other ways,

including war?

But then how do we define war?

What is acceptable as war, justified as war?

Last Wednesday our Bible Study group

began a look at the “Just War” theory,

a framework for how we should look at war as Christians,

a framework built firmly on Scripture,

a framework that is helpful

but still doesn’t make everything black and white.

“Apply your mind to instruction,” Proverbs tell us,

(Proverbs 23:12)

a reminder that for as much as any of us might know,

we still have much to learn.

Indeed, as another Proverb reminds us,

“A fool takes no pleasure in understanding,

but only in expressing personal opinion.”

(Proverbs 18:2)

There is as much of that in the Christian church

as there is in politics.

The biblical scholar and teacher Walter Brueggemann

shares his wisdom with this observation,

“The Bible always, inescapably,

outdistances our categories of understanding and explanation,

of interpretation and control.

…The Bible will not submit in any compliant way

to the accounts we prefer to give it.”

(Struggling With Scripture, 5)

We Presbyterians have always put

a great emphasis on learning,

We have a proud history of establishing schools and colleges,

places of learning,

not just about faith,

but about life – through literature, drama,

science, mathematics, languages, arts,

and sport.

Where many denominations have no particular

education requirement    for their ministers,

we Presbyterians require our ministers –

who we call teaching elders –

to go through 3 years of graduate school following college,

and then, even after being awarded a Master’s degree,

we still require ministers to demonstrate their

knowledge through ordination exams.

It is path I’ve been down,

as has Jo Ann Staebler,

and now Matt Messenger,

who has begun his journey at Union Presbyterian Seminary,

a first step on the path to ordination

as a minister, a teaching elder.

We rejoice with him

and I hope we will learn with him and from him

in the years ahead.

As Christianity grew and spread in the first few centuries

there were other faith practices that tried to draw adherents;

Christianity had competition.

Probably the best known of the other faiths was Manichaeism,

which thrived for a few centuries,

and included Augustine as a follower for a time

before he converted to Christianity.

Manichaeism attempted to reduce everything

to black and white,

good and bad,

light and dark.

Eventually it died out

because that kind of dualistic thinking

simply doesn’t work;

Mother Hamilton might have found it appealing,

but the reality is that life doesn’t work that way.

Life is complex,

often difficult

often perplexing and confusing,

Life is filled with shades of gray

as much as we might want it to be black and white.

Brian Blount, the president of Union Presbyterian Seminary,

has written,

“Christian faith,

and the biblical interpretation that goes along with it,

supports it, and directs it, is hard.

…Many want the comfort of having someone just say

forget about the contexts and the time…

forget about interpretation and understanding,

just read the words.”

(Struggling with Scripture, 67)

But, as Blount points out,

that approach would leave us still using the Bible to support slavery.

It would lead us to tell women to be silent in church,

subservient to husbands.

The written Word,

like the Living Word our Lord Jesus Christ,

like the Holy Spirit,

moves forward,

 moves from the past,

through the present

and on to and into the future.

Our task is to keep up with God’s Word,

as we read, study,

seek understanding;

calling on the Holy Spirit to open our minds and hearts

before we open the pages,

open us to transformation,

open us to new ways of thinking,

open us to the unexpected.

As we begin our new program year,

find your place in our Christian Education program.

There is no shortage of wonderful opportunities.

As just one example of learning opportunities,

if you’d been part of my Wednesday Bible Study group the last year,

you would have read the gospel of John;

read the book of Ecclesiastes;

learned about the importance of forgiving and being forgiven;

learned about prayer, including why we sometimes

find it so hard to pray;

taken a look at the beginnings of the Reformation;

and, from the comfort of Room 5 you would have toured

the Metropolitan Museum of Art,

the National Gallery of Art,

and the Cloisters Museum

and seen great devotional and religious works of art.

In the weeks ahead, we will continue our work on the Just War theory,

then turn our attention to the prophet Jeremiah;

later in the Fall we will go to the Holocaust Museum.

That’s just one group, one offering –

our Christian Education program offers much, much more.

Find your place,

find your place where you can learn, read,

study, grow,

praying with the psalmist as you go,                      

“Teach me O Lord…,

Give me understanding;

Lead me,

for your word is a lamp to my feet

and a light to my path.

(from Psalm 119).

AMEN