Heart First
The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
September 20, 2015
Heart First
Selected
Texts
“As in all the churches of the saints,
women should be silent in the churches.
For they are not permitted to speak,
but should be subordinate,
as the law also says.
If there is anything they desire to know,
let them ask their husbands at home.
For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.”
(1 Corinthians 14:34)
Thanks be to God?
“Let all who are under the yoke of slavery
regard their masters as worthy of all honor.”
(1 Timothy 6:1)
Thanks be to God?
“Let a woman learn in silence
with full submission.
I permit no woman to teach
or to have authority over a man;
she is to keep silent.”
(1 Timothy 2:11)
Thanks be to God?
“Slaves, obey your earthly masters
with fear and trembling,
in singleness of heart, as you obey Christ;
…Render service with enthusiasm…”
(Ephesians 6:5)
Thanks be to God?
Four passages from Holy
Scripture,
the New Testament;
passages from the letter
to the Corinthians,
the letters to Timothy,
the letter to the Ephesians.
We hear the words
proclaimed,
but who among us would want
to respond with,
“Thanks be to God”
when we hear the reader
say,
“The Word of the Lord.”
Yet there they are,
words from Holy Scripture:
“Women be silent,
subordinate;
Slaves be obedient,
serve with fear and
trembling.”
For centuries those
passages
were preached with
conviction;
And women kept silent,
while slaves served
obediently and fearfully.
Things have changed, of
course,
but it begs the question,
why?
Why have things changed?
The words themselves haven’t
changed;
they are still the word of
the Lord,
still part of Holy
Scripture.
It isn’t because we’ve
learned
that we’ve been translating
the Greek
from those passages all
wrong all these years,
and that they really say,
“Women: speak up, speak
out;
God gave you a voice;
speak boldly and
confidently.”
We haven’t found among the
Dead Sea Scrolls
anything that says,
“Pay no attention to those
cranky letters.
Slaves, walk away from your
servitude.
You owe obedience to no one
but the Lord God.”
The words haven’t changed.
What has changed is our
understanding.
Over the centuries we have
learned.
Over the centuries we’ve grown
in
knowledge and wisdom
in how we interpret the
Word of the Lord.
We’ve learned that women
are created
in the image of God
in the same way that men
are.
We’ve learned that slavery
is inhuman, inhumane,
No one should be
subservient,
servile, submissive.
We read the words as they
were written,
but we read them now,
today,
with different meaning,
different understanding
than how our ancestors in
faith read them
200 years ago,
500 years ago,
2000 years ago.
We’ve learned,
at least here in the
Presbyterian Church,
that the Bible isn’t to be
read literally,
as a set of legalistic
writings,
rules set in proverbial
stone.
We’ve learned to read the
written Word
as reflecting the
conditions and circumstances
of the times and places in
which the words
were written so long ago.
We’ve learned that the
written word
is a way that God reveals
himself to us,
and so we’ve learned to
read the words,
the sentences,
the stories, the parables
to see God in them,
to see God at work,
to learn about God,
to learn about God and us,
our relationship with God.
We read the words of
Scripture
not to memorize rules,
but to deepen our
understanding of God;
deepen our knowledge,
deepen our faith.
And we’ve learned that if
are
to read the written word
as a way to understand God
more completely and more
deeply,
then we need to read
Scripture
in a way that reveals love,
deepens love,
widens love, expands love,
for Scripture teaches us
that God is love.
We’ve learned that we need
to read Scripture
heart first.
It is our Lord Jesus Christ
who teaches us this,
helps us to understand
this.
Time and time again,
Jesus himself refused to
abide
by the literal word of
Scripture
when doing so would have
failed to yield
mercy, goodness,
forgiveness,
justice, love.
There are many examples of
Jesus
walking this path.
We looked at what is
probably
the most compelling example back in July,
when we looked at the story
of
the adulterous woman,
the story we find in John’s
gospel,
(John 8:1)
the story of a woman who
was guilty of adultery,
caught in the act,
and didn’t deny her guilt.
Holy Scripture was clear on
the punishment,
the penalty.
The Law of Moses, which we
also call
the Pentateuch, made it
clear that
adultery was a crime
punishable by death.
Had Jesus simply followed
Scripture,
followed the written word
as an obedient child of
God,
he would have picked up a
rock
and stoned the woman,
encouraging others to join
him,
all of them following the
words of scripture.
But of course, Jesus did no
such thing.
He acted with grace and
mercy.
He acted in a way that
widened love.
He acted heart-first.
Now in doing so,
he didn’t just breeze by
the woman’s guilt.
No, he was clear on that
too:
saying to her, “don’t do it
again.”
But he acted with love and
compassion
as he offered forgiveness.
Jesus, our Rabbi –
which is the Hebrew
word for Teacher –
helps us to
understand,
helps us to grow in
knowledge,
that we are to read
Scripture heart first.
It is how we have
come to new understanding
on controversial issues:
slavery 155 years
ago;
the role of women 50
years ago;
ordination and now
the right to marry
for gay women and
men.
There was a
fascinating article
in the New York Times
the other day about
a new play
that just opened
off Broadway,
a play entitled “The
Christians”.
It isn’t a comic
send up, like The Book of Mormon.
It is a serious look
at interpretation.
A pastor leads a
large megachurch.
He’s hugely popular,
and people come to
his church
by the thousands to
hear his mesmerizing preaching.
Among their
important beliefs is that
anyone who fails to
accept Jesus Christ
as Lord and Savior is
condemned to spend
all eternity in the
tormenting fires of hell.
The pastor has an
epiphany one day
after hearing about
a young boy
who lived in a
war-torn country
who ran into a burning
store
to save his sister
from the flames.
The boy rescued his
sister,
and got her to
safety,
but he himself died
of the burns he suffered
as he pulled his
sister out of the store.
The pastor struggled
mightily
with the idea that the
heroic young boy
would be doomed to
spend eternity in torment
because he was not a
professed Christian.
It was what the
pastor had always believed
the Bible taught.
But suddenly it made
no sense,
it made no sense if
God was and is
a God of love and
mercy.
Why would God
torture and torment anyone,
much less for all
eternity?
And so he told his
congregation
that his interpretation
of Scripture had changed,
his understanding.
The reaction from
his congregation was not good:
most reacted with
anger.
They didn’t share
their pastor’s interpretation.
They knew what the
Bible said,
what it taught.
Their pastor had to
be wrong;
he had to be
slipping down the path of heresy.
The play sounds
powerful, riveting,
putting on stage
under bright theatrical lights
how challenging interpreting
the word of the Lord
can be.
God says to us
through the prophet,
“For my thoughts are
not your thoughts,
nor are your ways my
ways, …
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher
than your ways
and my thoughts than
your thoughts.”
(Isaiah 55:8)
It is a reminder that we can never
know the mind of God.
What we can do, though, is read the Word,
listen to the Word,
and learn from the Word,
always remembering that
as we learn from the written Word,
as we interpret the written Word,
we are called to interpret through the Living Word,
the One who is grace and love.
And the One who is grace and love,
the Living Word,
will teach us that we are to read and interpret
heart first.
AMEN
posted by Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson @ 11:00 AM
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