Sermon for Sunday, May 20, 2007

ARE YOU ILLITERATE?

by

Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz

Scripture: Mark 12:28

²⁸ One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, "Which commandment is the first of all?" ²⁹ Jesus answered, "The first is, "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; ³⁰ you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' ³¹ The second is this, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."

  There is a joke about a Buddhist monk who approached a New York City hot dog vendor and said, “Make me one with everything.”

 When he paid for his hot dog, he asked the vendor for his change, and the vendor said, “Change must come from within.”

 The joke is not a real joke unless you know a little about Buddhism. Most of us know very little about Buddhism or about Hinduism or about Islam and other religions of the world, and the really tragic truth is that most of us know very little about our own religion. Most church members are illiterate and uninformed, and our ignorance not only prevents us from being truly educated persons, it is becoming dangerous for us in a world that is so steeped in religious issues and conflicts.

 Those last two statements are the point of a recent book by Dr. Stephen Prothero of Boston University entitled Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know And Doesn’t. Dr. Prothero says that we used to be much more familiar with our Bible and our denominational traditions than we are now. He cites some examples of how people under 35 are almost completely illiterate of issues about spirituality and faith. He tells about the on the street interviews that Jay Leno does that are so scary when we see the misinformation and innocence in so many people. In one such interview people told him that God created Eve from an apple, that Jacob gave his favorite son Joseph a new car, and that Matthew was swallowed by a whale.

 In other examples Prothero tells us that only half of American adults can name just one of the four gospels, that most Americans cannot name the first book of the Bible, that most Americans do not know that Jonah is a book in the Bible, and that ten per cent of Americans believe that Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife.

 Prothero finds the same basic illiteracy in his university students at Boston University. He gives them the survey that is in your bulletin insert and most of them fail miserably.

 How did you do on it? The four gospels are Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. There are several sacred texts of Hinduism. Perhaps the best known would be the Bhagavad Gita and the Kama Sutra. The Holy book of Islam is the Quran. When President Bush mentioned the road to Jericho he was referring to the story of the Good Samaritan. The first five books of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) are Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy (called the Pentateuch).

 The Golden Rule is – treat others the way you want to be treated—do unto others the things you want them to do for you. It is not only from Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, it is also a teaching from Rabbi Hillel and Confucius.

 What about the quote “God helps those who help themselves”? Is it in the Bible? No, it is from Poor Richard’s Almanac!

 Blessed are the poor in spirit is in the gospel of Matthew in what is called the Beatitudes—in the three chapters that comprise the Sermon on the Mount.

 You can find the Ten Commandments in more than one place in the Hebrew Bible—Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. You can look those up and see how many you got.

 The four noble truths of Buddhism are:  Life is Suffering, Suffering has an origin, Suffering can be overcome (Nirvana), and the Path to overcoming suffering is the Noble Eightfold Path.

 The seven sacraments of Catholicism are Baptism, Communion, Confession or reconciliation, Confirmation, Marriage, Ordination and Last Rites/anointing of the sick.

 The first amendment of the US Constitution says that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise of religion. The part of that amendment that is missed by people who want to bring back organized, mandatory prayer in public schools is that to mandate prayer is to establish religion, to require a religion. It is that mandated, forced religion that the English pilgrims came here to get away from!

 And Ramadan is a Muslim holiday characterized by a month of fasting.

 In Dr. Prothero’s opinion, our lack of information does not only keep us from being truly educated persons, it is becoming dangerous. He says that if the federal government and the FBI had known more about the biblical book of Revelation, they might not have blundered in dealing with David Koresh and the Branch Davidians in Waco. He says it is a grave mistake to still be sending US Ambassadors to mostly Muslim countries who have no required training in Islam—as we are apparently still doing.

 And if we know little about our own religion as well as other major religions like Islam, we wind up with what I believe is the simple headed approach we heard about in Denver last week from a radio talk show host who said he wants every Muslim in the US who holds a green card or is a naturalized citizen to wear a GPS tracking bracelet at all times.

 That point of view fits with the email I received recently that believes the goal of every Muslim is to murder infidels—people of any other religion.

 I believe those misunderstandings and prejudices based on misinformation will do our country more harm than good, and they are the problem that Dr. Prothero is concerned about.

 There are many other losses for us if we do not do something about our illiteracy and 3^rd grade Biblical education.

 Last week we heard the moving testimony of Carole Haas who is the CEO of Bridgeway ministry, a group that works with pregnant teens and young adults. It is one of the many outreach agencies you and I support through our Sunday offerings. It has served 500 young women in the past 20 years. One teenager said she came to Bridgeway with a bag and a belly but she left with a future. I was moved to hear those stories.

 But what I was struck by was Carol telling us how she started Bridgeway. She said 20 years ago she became very disturbed whenever she would read a news story about a newborn baby being found in a dumpster or about the death of a newborn. What she figured out was that her feeling of compassion and urgency was really a call from God to do something—to do something! So she responded to that call and 500 young women and 500 children are better off because she felt that call and said yes to God.

 How do we know when God is calling us to the next step of faithfulness? We can get a good idea if we are familiar with our book and with the stories in the Bible of other people being called by God and what they said to God. What stories do you remember of God calling people to fill a need and act in compassion and service?

 Certainly the story of Moses whom God approaches to go to the pharaoh and say, “Let my people go!” Does Moses sign up enthusiastically? He does what you and I do even when we really are feeling the nudges—those nudges are often a call from God. He tells God why he is absolutely the wrong choice and why God should just find someone else—like his brother Aaron who is an excellent speaker while poor little Moses, he does not talk good at all.

 How about Samuel the prophet who hears the voice of God addressing him in the quiet of the night? How about Elijah who is in a time of turmoil and distress in his life, hiding in a cave and God’s call to him comes in a still small voice. Or the prophet Isaiah who hears God calling him when he is at worship and realizes his need for mercy and then hears God asking for someone to go on God’s behalf and Isaiah says, “Here I am Lord. I will go Lord. I will hold your people in my heart.”

 See, if we know some of those stories, if we are steeped in our Book like Jesus was steeped in the Book, we will recognize when it is the voice of God calling us to the next step.

 There are so many other challenges if we remain in our ignorance and illiteracy. Four years ago on United Methodist Women’s Sunday our guest speaker was Roxane White. Roxane is one of my heroes. She is a member here. She was the Executive Director of Urban Peak the agency that serves 1000 homeless and runaway teenagers each year in Denver. Shortly after Mayor Hickenlooper was elected he wisely recruited Roxane to be the Director of Denver’s Department of Human Services where she directs the city’s response to needs of the homeless persons and of the needs of children who are hungry or have been abused.

 When she was the preacher of the morning several years ago, she spoke to us about poverty and homelessness and the needs of people who are not very able—not as able as we are. I got a really troubling response the next day from one of our families who was just very upset that we had devoted a whole sermon to talking about poor people and homeless people and needy children. They could not see why we would do that in church. I think they left the church after they sent that to me.

 But here is the challenge: we had not done a good job educating them about our faith! They apparently did not know of what is in the Bible we stand on. There are 2000 verses in the Bible about the poor, verses that encourage us to take care of the widow and the orphan and the weak and the vulnerable and the alien/stranger. We cannot avoid that mandate unless we remain illiterate about our faith.

 Because we are illiterate, we can be misled by people with a different agenda. If we don’t read our book and integrate it like the 180 Disciple graduates we will honor in two weeks, we will be misled by people with a narrow agenda. If we listen to some church leaders we might think that the only thing Jesus talked about was sexuality and reproduction. There are 2000 verses about caring for the poor; there are six references in the Bible to same sex behavior. Why do those six passages get so much attention?

 Jesus says nothing about homosexuality, he says little about marriage, and he is very concerned about people on the outside and about religious hypocrisy and about self-righteousness among clergy and lay leaders and about a lack of compassion and about empty/superficial religion. When we read our book, we find that the Jesus of the Gospels is different from the Jesus portrayed by many leaders on the TV sets, some of whom promise great financial success and worldly applause if we follow Jesus—the last promise would be quite a surprise to a couple of fellows named St. Paul and St. Peter who were poor and were killed for their passionate faith in Christ!

 If we are ignorant of our book, we miss the incredible wisdom and guidance of chapters like we read last week, I Corinthians 13 where Paul gives us all the advice we need about how to relate to our friends and family and co workers.

 If we remain illiterate we miss stories like the story of King David who was chosen by God to be king and was the smallest and least impressive of all of his older brothers. That story can comfort us when we feel small or inadequate. And the story of David and his fight with the giant Goliath-do you remember the part when King Saul tries to give David Saul’s armor to wear and David tries it on and tells Saul that it is not right for him, that he needs to do this his own way and not the way someone else might do it. That story can be helpful when a person wants you to be someone else and not be yourself.

 Our ignorance will cause us to be misled by people who tell us wrongly that we can’t believe in the Bible and believe in science also—that we have to choose between Genesis and Darwin. That is a totally false choice. If we read the first chapters of Genesis we see two different creation stories in the first two chapters that do not agree with each other in sequence of events.

 We learn in Bible study classes that those stories are not important for their geological truth but for their theological truth. We can believe that God created all that is and that it took billions of years instead of the 6000 years that some literalists wrongly claim. Incidentally, both the United Methodist Church and the Roman Catholic Church see no conflict between Genesis and the theory of evolution—you do not have to choose one or the other.

 We miss some other things if we are illiterate. We miss the words from Jesus in one of the parables we will study this summer when he says this:  our being forgiven is directly related to our being forgiving with others, and if we just want to receive grace and mercy but are not willing to extend grace and mercy, it will not work.

 And if we do not become students of our faith and our book, we miss the comforting words there; we miss the peace and assurance we find. Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted Jesus says in the Beatitudes. In this world you will have trouble Jesus says, but take courage for I have overcome the troubles of this world.

 The Lord is my—and your—shepherd, the psalmist says; there is nothing that we will need. The Lord will even walk with us through—not around but through— the valley of the shadow of death. There is nothing life can throw at us that we and God together can’t handle.

 Are you ready to claim even more of this faith and tradition? Are you willing to keep on learning and growing in your faith? Michelangelo said in his 80’s “I am still learning”. Are you still learning, or have you stopped?

 I don’t know of any other church in Methodism that does a better job than we do on helping you keep learning and growing and leaving our illiteracy behind. You can sign up in two weeks for a Disciple Bible study class. You can attend the lecture in ten days by National Geographic archeologist, Jonathan Reed. You can be in one of our book groups. You can be in a Sunday morning class.

 The resources are here. Will you make time to use them?

 Will you follow the words of Jesus when someone asks him what the most important commandment is? He adds a word to the verse he quoted from Deuteronomy. Jesus tells we are to love God with all our heart, MIND, soul and strength. That means that we will keep on learning and growing.

 Let’s sing hymn 2168 about that verse from Jesus.

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