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Sunday, September 14, 2008
If You Live in my Word , You are my Disciples
15th in a series on The Uniqueness of the Gospel of John
By Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz
John 8:31-32
31 Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, "If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free."
Next week we are handing out Bibles to our third graders—one of my favorite Sundays of the year—and we will encourage them and their parents to learn the stories in the Bible and to do what Jesus says. “Live in my Word” so we can be Jesus’ disciples.
And as we have said, almost 200 of us are starting our nine month Bible studies through the Disciple program and many others of us are in several other classes that incorporate Bible study.
During September we often recount some version of Bible stories that get it wrong and I have a new version of that today—the Bible in a nutshell written by a sixth grader:
In the beginning, which occurred near the start, there was nothing but God, darkness, and some gas. The bible says, 'The Lord thy God is one, but I think
He must be a lot older than that.
Anyway, God said, 'Give me a light!' and someone did. Then God made the world.
He split the Adam and made Eve. Adam and Eve were naked, but they weren't embarrassed because mirrors hadn't been invented yet.
Adam and Eve disobeyed God by eating one bad apple, so they were driven from the Garden of Eden. Not sure what they were driven in though, because they didn't have cars.
Adam and Eve had a son, Cain, who hated his brother as long as he was Abel.
Pretty soon all of the early people died off, except for Methuselah, who lived to be like a million or something.
One of the next important people was Noah, who was a good guy, but one of his kids was kind of a Ham. Noah built a large boat and put his family and some animals on it. He asked some other people to join him, but they said they would have to take a rain check.
After Noah came Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jacob was more famous than his brother, Esau, because Esau sold Jacob his birthmark in exchange for some pot roast. Jacob had a son named, Joseph, who wore a really loud sports coat.
Another important bible guy is Moses, whose real name was Charlton Heston. Moses led the Israel Lights out of Egypt and away from the evil Pharaoh after God sent ten plagues on Pharaoh's people. These plagues included frogs, mice, lice, bowels, and no cable.
God fed the Israel Lights every day with manicotti. Then he gave them His Top Ten Commandments. These include: don't lie, cheat, smoke, dance, or covet your neighbor's stuff.
Oh, yeah, I just thought of one more: Humor thy father and thy mother.
One of Moses' best helpers was Joshua who was the first bible guy to use spies. Joshua fought the battle of Geritol and the fence fell over on the town.
After Joshua came David. He got to be king by killing a giant with a slingshot. He had a son named, Solomon, who had about 300 wives and 500 porcupines. My teacher says he was wise, but that doesn't sound very wise to me.
After Solomon, there were a bunch of major league prophets. One of these was Jonah, who was swallowed by a big whale and then barfed up on the shore. There were also some minor league prophets, but I guess we don't have to worry about them.
After the Old Testament came the New Testament. Jesus is the star of The New. He was born in Bethlehem in a barn. (I wish I had been born in a barn, too, because my mom is always saying to me, 'Close the door! Were you born in a barn?' It would be nice to say, 'As a matter of fact, I was.')
During His life, Jesus had many arguments with sinners like the Pharisees and the Republicans.
Jesus also had twelve opossums. The worst one was Judas Asparagus. Judas was so evil that they named a terrible vegetable after him.
Jesus was a great man. He healed many leopards and even preached to some Germans on the Mount.
But the Republicans and all those guys put Jesus on trial before Pontius the Pilot. Pilot didn't stick up for Jesus. He just washed his hands instead.
Anyways, Jesus died for our sins, then came back to life again. He went up to heaven but will be back at the end of the Aluminum. His return is foretold in the book of Revolution. The difficult thing about reading that sort of satire is that so many people who have very little familiarity about the Bible don’t know enough to get the jokes. Most people have a third grade theological or Biblical education or less! That is changing in this church, but too many people have little information or false information about what is here. And one attempt to deal with that is this textbook for high school students published a couple of years ago for public school curriculum called The Bible and Its Influence. The book and the course were developed because there is such a lack of knowledge about parts of the Bible that should be well known in western culture but are not known because churches have not been doing the job of education. For instance, the image of the Good Samaritan is often used in a newspaper story about someone who helps another, but if that story is not known to a person who is uniformed about the Bible, it loses it effect.
The attempt of this public school curriculum is to provide basic biblical education in a non dogmatic way for more and more people.
Jesus urges us in the verse from John’s gospel to live in his word, to remain or abide in his word—and this is a congregation that has tried to take that seriously and to reclaim our book by actually reading our Bibles and celebrating with our third graders AND their parents as we will next week in giving them a new Bible and later on that day, holding a Bible party!
Jesus says something else in the John reading that is important. When you follow my word and my words, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. We will be finishing this series on John’s gospel next week with the verses from the last chapter and I will talk more about how I believe following Jesus gives us the best life possible, how Jesus does give us ultimate truth about God and life.
I want to look today at what it means to know the truth in our spiritual lives and in our national life right now at a pivotal time.
What are the important themes of the Bible? What is the major story? You and I have selected some of those by choosing the quotes we see around our building. We chose those on purpose, these verses from Genesis and from Micah and from Matthew’s gospel and some of the quotes in our classrooms from Psalms and the letters of Paul, and you will find the major themes and images from the Bible if you look at the dozen or so quotes around our building while you are here. It might be a good exercise for a youth group or Sunday school class to look at all the quotes.
The challenge in a divisive election year is that we are hearing again some Bible themes that are not major emphases. They were used as wedge issues in the last election but as Jim Wallis says in his book and in his time with us two weeks ago, the Bible’s major emphases are much deeper and broader that just one or two wedge issues. In fact, when we begin to look at what is actually in the Bible on one of those questions, there is more than one answer.
We will be voting in Colorado in November on a very emotional ballot measure defining when a person becomes a person. When does life begin—when does a human being become a human being? Is a sixteen cell zygote a human being? Is there such a reality as a potential human being? The Bible has more than one answer to that!
We might think of Psalm 139 that says God has known us since we were forming in our mother’s womb. Is that when a person becomes a person? But there are two other passages that offer a different perspective. In Genesis 2, when God is forming a man from the clay, when does the man become a person? It is not until the man has breath-not until God breathes into the man that he becomes a real person or “nefesh” in Hebrew. Personhood in Genesis is defined by breath. What would that say to the ballot issue this November?
And an even more disturbing answer in the Bible to ballot measure 48 is in the book of Numbers chapter 5 where it seems that God has a procedure that might end in the termination of a pregnancy. I don’t think I have ever mentioned this in a sermon before because it is so controversial and I believe is a reflection of a dangerous patriarchal culture. Look at it by the way in a NRSV translation. It is disturbing, especially if you believe that a person is a human being from the moment of conception. The Numbers passage does not support that belief.
The point is that actually reading the Bible may surprise us and that we need to know what is actually true and present before we can make a judgment. We have a right to our opinion but we do not have the right to make up our own set of facts—our own set of truths.
How important is it in an election year to know what is true/factual and what is false? Does it matter if we form an opinion or make a decision based on wrong information? How do you know in any election year what is true and not true in what candidates say? Is it important? I think so.
I am more troubled this election year than in a long time about the lack of truthfulness. I see more people than usual being willing to ignore one of the Ten Commandments about not bearing false witness. I am not the only one. One national newspaper writer said it seems that this fall there are more instances than usual of politicians just making up things about each other.
How do you know what is true and false—what sources are you using? If your favorite leader says something, do you automatically accept it? Where do you look for a fact check? Better yet, where do you get your news? Just from TV commercials? Just from John Stewart or from Rush Limbaugh or Moveon.org or just from Fox news? I hope you are using more than one perspective and more than one source because in what I am seeing so far the truth is a rare commodity. Did John McCain really crash five planes while he was in the Navy? No. Did Obama want to teach sex education classes to young children or did he support a program that will help children recognize and avoid sexual predators?
The answers I trust to those questions are on web sites like factcheck.org or politifact.com or snopes.com. They have also been addressed in the Rocky Mountain News which has a couple of reporters who write about what is factual and what is false every couple of days. Do you want to know about the tax policy or tax plans of each major candidate? I have not learned much from TV ads. I have learned from the non partisan web site for the Tax Policy Center and I commend that to you.
What do you read to learn about what is true? Fewer and fewer Americans are reading. It is particularly rare for people under 35 to be reading newspapers, I am sad to say. I was in the neighborhood Starbucks a few weeks ago an noticed one of the young baristas who came to work a few minutes early, grabbed a Denver Post and took it to the back room to catch up on the news. I commended her when she started her shift because she was taking time to read and learn—unlike other people in their twenties. I am old fashioned enough to encourage newspaper reading in my lap and on my laptop on line, and I worry if people are forming opinions based on who has the best smile or the best personality instead of who will lead our country forward in a time when 80% of Americans believe we are going the wrong direction.
What will we do about energy policy, about the housing crisis, about job losses, about war and peace? What will we do about health care—especially when graduates of medical school are avoiding becoming family physicians or internists—only 2% of graduates from 11 medical schools are choosing internal medicine. We have lots of crises happening and Tom Friedman’s new book about the global energy crisis says neither major party is taking it seriously enough!!
This is a critical juncture in our history and it will take a well informed citizenry who does what Jesus says—seeks out the truth and values the truth and listens and reads with a critical ear and eye—and then votes!
Do you know what per cent of Americans actually take the time to vote? Do you know how we compare with other democracies in the percentage of those who vote? It is dismal!! It is disgraceful! Out of 172 democracies in the world that vote, we rank 139th! (This statistic is from a 2006 study done by The Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance in Sweden.) 138 democracies in the world have a more committed voting turnout than we do! I think that is very troubling.
You shall know the truth and it will set you free Jesus says. I believe that is applicable for our spiritual life and for our national life as well. I encourage each of us these next few weeks to seek the facts, to learn what is true and not true, and to vote. We will be having voter registration tables the next two weeks on Sunday mornings in case you have not registered yet. Register. Learn. Read. Listen. Pray for our country. And then vote.
I close with the story from 1787 in Philadelphia at the closing of the Constitutional convention. The delegates had just completed their work on this magnificent Constitution which has served our country so well. Eighty one year old Ben Franklin was so crippled by his gout that he was being carried down the stairs to the crowd waiting below to learn the results of the delegates’ work. A woman in the crowd shouted out to him, “Dr. Franklin, what have you accomplished?” Ben Franklin replied, “You have a Republic now madam—if you can keep it.” If you can keep it.