Sermon for September 17, 2006

MORE THAN WORDS

By

By Rev. Cindy Bates

Scripture: Psalm 19:7-14

⁷ The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the decrees of the Lord are sure, making wise the simple; ⁸ the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is clear, enlightening the eyes; ⁹ the fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever; the ordinances of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. ¹⁰ More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey, and drippings of the honeycomb. ¹¹ Moreover by them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward. ¹² But who can detect their errors? Clear me from hidden faults. ¹³ Keep back your servant also from the insolent; do not let them have dominion over me. Then I shall be blameless, and innocent of great transgression. ¹⁴ Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.”  These are the words I say to myself, the words I pray to God, with my eyes closed and my head bowed each time I stand before you and begin a sermon.  Some of you may have wondered, “What is she doing”?  or “Why doesn’t she just begin?”  I have even been afraid that it might seem a little pious, standing before you having a private moment with God before beginning to preach.  It has become a ritual for me, a time when I really take a breath and remind myself who I am and what I am about as I say these words from today’s scripture, Psalm 19.  I actually borrowed this practice from one of my former colleagues, Kent Millard, who begins each of his sermons this way.  For me, it grounds me in a word of scripture, a reminder that it is an awesome responsibility to stand before you and presume to preach a word that might be helpful to you on this spiritual journey.  Most importantly, this prayer acknowledges that I want to speak a word of truth that will be pleasing and acceptable to God and I know of no better way of understanding what God’s truth might be than to begin with scripture, the Source Book, for our faith.

Each year, I look forward to this Sunday, when we present these Bibles to our third graders.  First of all, this is a big deal!  Even if you are not a third grader, you have to know there is much excitement and anticipation that comes with this special day.  There is a part of me that wishes we could just forget the sermon all together and sit down with the 55 plus children receiving their Bibles today and hear them talk about why they are so excited and why this moment is so important to them.  I am sure we would learn some things.  We might even be inspired or moved to reflect on how we really feel about this book.

Do you remember your first Bible?  Did you receive it in third grade or at confirmation or your first communion?  Maybe your first Bible was the one you carried down the aisle at your wedding or maybe it was one you inherited when a family member died.  Maybe your first Bible was the study Bible you recently purchased when you needed it for a class, here at St. Andrew.  We know we are a congregation of differing religious experience and tradition and therefore our exposure to Scripture has also been varied.  Our knowledge or understanding of the Bible has been shaped to a great extent by how it has been read or misread, interpreted or taken literally, used for instruction or used for condemnation, or just not used at all, by persons who have gone before us.

I know that in my own experience, we did not study the Bible together as a family and as a small child I did not go to Sunday School.  But, there was a Bible that my parents kept in the top drawer of their dresser.  It was one that had been given to Dad by the Gideons when he went off to the Korean War and I knew it had some special meaning for him but it stayed in that drawer.  And then there was that really big white Bible that Mom had purchased from a traveling salesman and it occupied a prominent place on the coffee table to somehow suggest that it was important to us, but it was never opened except to record some family event like a wedding or a funeral.  As I look back on our family’s experience, I really believe that my parents were people of faith but did not know where to begin when it came to understanding how to read or interpret the Bible for themselves so they certainly did not feel equipped to begin to help their children understand.  Maybe some of you have had a similar experience.  The Bible is an incredible, powerful resource in our life, but sometimes it can be intimidating, confusing and even overwhelming when you do not have the tools you need to begin to understand what is there.

Whether you are new to St. Andrew or have made this your church home for several decades, you know that Bible study is foundational for us.  You hear it from the pulpit. You see it in our classes and programs.  You may even feel like you get hit over the head with reminders that you need to know your Bible.  But all that urging and encouraging comes from a sincere desire for you to know the story and the stories of our faith….for you to have the understanding and the language to be able to know why you believe what you believe. The words we spoke to our children this morning from our United Methodist Book of Worship are just as important for all of us as they are for our children.  “Receive the Word of God.  Learn its stories and study its words.  Its stories belong to us all, and these words speak to us all.  They tell us who we are.  They tell us that we belong to one another, for we are the people of God.”

Even as I say these words I know to really understand and receive the Word of God is not an easy process and it is why we encourage the study of Scripture in community.  Last Sunday we began a new Sunday morning class at 11:05 called “Insights:  Bible Studies for Growing Faith.”  As we were going around the room and sharing our previous experience with Bible study we heard the wide spectrum of persons who had studied scripture pretty much all of their life and persons who came to try to figure out how to begin the study.  The over-riding sentiment, no matter what had been the individual experience, persons were there because they knew there was so much more that could be learned… not necessarily more information about what was in the Bible but how that information and those stories could affect their lives and transform their faith. 

Megan McKenna, in her Biblical study, Not Counting Women and Children has a wonderful way of explaining the richness of what our scriptures contain.  She says, “A good image of the scriptures is the Greek dessert pastry, baklava.  It is rich, about an inch thick and cut into inch squares.  It is made of thin layers of philo dough, honey, nuts, and butter pressed down and packed firmly together.  A good pastry maker packs the dough into one hundred and twenty or more layers.  And when we read the scriptures, we take one layer at a time and savor it.  Each time we eat a layer and incorporate it into our flesh and blood, we can discover another layer and eat more.  But not to swallow, digest and incorporate it into our bodies and lives means that we may keep eating the same layer, over and over again.”

If we read the Bible simply to receive information, we will discover those 66 books, written by so many authors, over a thousand year period, containing law and history, philosophy and wisdom, poetry and metaphor, letters and laments, we will feel like we are trying to digest an entire library from a variety of times and cultures and perspectives.  It can be overwhelming!  But if we approach the scriptures, not just with our minds but with our hearts, and our desire to know God, the Bible is much more than a book to inform us about faith.  It is a source to transform our faith, our stories, our lives.  I believe the Bible is so dynamic, so able to meet us where we are in our understanding, that it can speak to us as poignantly and powerfully whether we are opening its pages for the first time or have been instructed by its wisdom as long as we can remember. It is like the quote from 6^th century, Gregory the Great.  “Scripture is like a river, broad and deep, shallow enough for the lamb to go wading, but deep enough for the elephant to swim.”

My fear is that the Bible can seem so daunting, so intimidating because of the scope of its contents, persons will not even begin to see for themselves what is there.  So many people in the Christian faith rely on others to read and interpret and tell them what they should believe.  Barbara Brown Taylor, Episcopalian priest, author and college professor wrote an article for the Christian Century a few years ago talking about what she discovered about her students in a Bible survey course she was teaching.  She said, “Most of my students profess to live by the Bible without ever having read more than 50 pages of it.  Their knowledge of what is in it comes from their parents, their preachers and their Bible study leaders, as well as from movies such as Left Behind. There is no one thing that can be said about all of these interpreters, except that they all have more power than the text.”  She went on to say …. “how people read and interpret scripture is the single most important factor in how they practice their faith.”

The truth of that statement was brought home to me in two different conversations I had this week, with two persons I admire for their faith and the way they live their lives.  (I hope this won’t keep you from having random conversations with me, thinking you might show up as a sermon illustration, but I did ask their permission to share some of what they shared with me.)  The first was a conversation I had with Dolores Meader, longtime member of St. Andrew and one of the best examples of someone who authentically lives her faith that I know.  When I told Dolores what I was preaching about today she started sharing with me how often, especially in those difficult times in her life she found strength by simply recalling a passage of scripture.  Dolores would not call herself a biblical scholar but she will tell you what a sustaining, powerful affect the Bible has had on her life just being able to pull from her memory a verse, a few words that could ground her, give her an anchor when life was too difficult, too tumultuous to find her way.  The other conversation I had was with Carole Lhotka, our Executive Director, who was reflecting on the question, “How have you been transformed on your spiritual journey by being at St. Andrew?”  Carole’s response was all about how our emphasis on the study and meditation on scripture has changed how she relates to other people and how she lives her life.  I would love to hear your stories about the impact that scripture has had in your life.

In your bulletin, there is a list of passages that have been named as “some of the favorite passages” of members of our staff.  It started out as a gift to give our third graders but it became a meaningful exercise for us that we wanted to share with all of you.  Perhaps, it will be yet another encouragement, another invitation to explore for yourself what is there to be revealed.

My hope would be that as we study the scriptures together here at St. Andrew in a community that takes the Bible very seriously, but not literally, we will be invited into discovering for ourselves the relevance and power of the scriptures that will lead to discoveries about who God is and who God is calling us to be. 

As we study the scriptures together, not only for our children but for ourselves, “Let the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you. O Lord, our rock and our redeemer.”

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