The Challenge of the Bible

Christians tend to fall into two groups. The larger is those who don't read the Bible and the smaller is those who read the Bible inaccurately. 

The pastor recommends The Jewish Approach to God by Rabbi Neil Gillman. (It's written for Christians and I though Matt might like it.)

We know many things through science; but, science cannot show us God. 

For Paul, the Fall was turning away from true communication with God. Jesus taught knowledge of God the most important thing. But we cannot find God - God finds us. 

Jesus is God finding us. The Bible makes Jesus known. 

The first challenge the Bible presents is that it's the way we meet God. 

The second challenge the Bible presents is how to read it. 

The Bible is not an easy path to God. You have to set aside time - Bible study is not an easy fix. The meaningful things in life take time. 

The first principle of Bible reading is that we understand God by looking at Jesus. The entire Bible is about Jesus. We don't look at the violence in the Old Testament as insight into God - we start and end with Jesus - the Alpha and Omega. 

The second principle of Bible reading is that we need to know as much about what it meant to the original audience as we know about what it means to us. 

The third principle of Bible reading is that we always have the possibility of encountering God when we read it. 

The fourth principle of the Bible is that we need a plan to follow. 

Read a short passage. Put it into your own words. Journal about it. 

1 Corinthians 13 

As the pastor read this and then shared what he wrote in his own words, he said even an 100% commitment to social justice is nothing without love. This reminds me of the song, Easy to Be Hard from Hair. 

Writing prayers out is really helpful. 

If you choose to live by love, then you live into a life where you are known and completely know. 

Knowledge of the timeless grows out of understanding the timebound. 

Assignment:

Read Galatians in NIV and the Message. 

Put into your own words. 

What the Bible Is and What the Bible Isn't

"Do you read the Bible?" How? When? What? The Bible is vitally important for Christians. If we aren't engaging this book in a real way, what does that say about us?

We took a test. Although I only missed one, I discovered I know the Old Testament far more than the New Testament. Guess I know where to start reading. 

The Bible is God's written word. It is not God's direct dictation. 

Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes. - Romans 10.4

The word telos, translated culmination, means destiny. The verse basically means that following the law in faith leads to Christ. 

There was a lot of human interaction in action that led to the Old Testament. We are closer to originals with the New Testament; but, none agree entirely. The Bible also came together over a long period of time. 

Humans have had a big hand in putting the Bible together. The doctrine of the Holy Spirit is important here. The Holy Spirit moves through the people of God. The community is important. 

The Bible is time bound and timeless. We need to be able to divide the timeless from the time bound. I wonder if culture bound and cultural universal would be another way to look at it. 

The Bible is the story of God's work to establish the Kingdom. Knowledge of God is progressive - deepening as the pages turn. The Old Testament ends with unanswered questions. 

The Bible is very special and unique because the Holy Spirit worked within the Community to create it. 

As an introduction to inductive Bible study, read Luke 15.1-7, write it out in your own words, and answer:

Who is speaking?

Who is the audience?

What's the story? 

What's the point of the story?

A Theology of Salvation for Christians

We have a guest speaker, Dr. David Moore, pastor of two churches and author of Making America Great Again - Fairy Tale? Horror Story? Dream Come True? A Challenge to the Christian Community. Dr. Moore is an African American who grew up in a predominantly white church. Even today, his Oxnard congregation is a lot "browner" than his Santa Barbara congregation. 

The sermon starts with a sharing of scriptures about the last days with a bit of exegesis. How can people believe what is clearly false? How can they embrace a powerful delusion? 

Dr. Moore talked about how changing his diet was a challenge. Likewise, just as junk food can be addictive, believing certain things can be addictive and ultimately fatal. 

One of Dr. Moore's closest friends is a rabbi. They disagree on many issues, but their love surmounts their disagreements. The rabbi's congregation has visited Dr. Moore's church for two services. 

When a person carries their scars gracefully, it makes them trustworthy. 

No one's story should be wiped away. Everyone's story is important. 

The early Christians were non-violent resistors. Even in the midst of resistance, non-violence brings healing. The message of non-violent resistance to the empire appealed to non-Jews who were poor, oppressed, and had their back against the wall. 

Bayard Rustin, person who organized the 1963 March on Washington and many Freedom Rides was gay. He said, "When an individual is protesting society's refusal to acknowledge his dignity as a human being, his very act of protest confers dignity on him."

When a religion loses its ability to protest, it loses its ability to stand for the dignity of life. 

Dr. Moore went to Standing Rock. Santa Barbara stands in solidarity with Standing Rock. He told the city council that you cannot protest a system you profit from. 

Protest is dignity. The struggle is real. We told each other that in greeting because society was telling them the struggle was all in their head. 

Richard Allen was born a slave in 1760. He became a Methodist and an apostle of freedom. He purchased freedom for him and his brother and became a minister in Philadelphia. He had a mixed congregation and when whites insisted blacks sit in the back, he and his brother walked out with the black congregation. This was the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement. The black church has existed in part in opposition to the white church. 

His book's title went from Bad Religion to God's not an Asshole to the current title. Three people told him about Nehemiah 8 as a word of prophecy and that encouraged him to write the book. 

The book is his olive branch, his way of reaching out. It is his way of saying we do not want to give into exclusion. The role of the Church is to shepherd people and counsel people. The Council of Bishops for the AME Church stands in opposition to the policies of Donald Trump and sent out a statement shortly after Trump's inauguration. When Dr. Moore read this, he wanted to join the AME denomination; but, you can't always just leave. He stayed with his current denomination and vowed to stay there until they kick him out. Like Pope Francis, he wants to stay and be an agent for change. 

He doesn't believe it's the end of the world, but he does think it's the end of the world as we know it. This is not a reason to fear, it is an opportunity. 

Protest is dignity. Do not reduce it to petulance. 

Too often the Church legitimated the system it is supposed to challenge. 

We have to be a part of the world of those who are different from us. If we are part of their world, then we will never be against them. 

Peacemaking Together

We are called to be a missionary people. We are called to answer spiritual questions. People are asking different questions today. Peacemaking helps us answer contemporary questions. Peacemaking helps us be a people that are true, real, and beautiful. 

The church is the most overpromised and underdelivered product today. 

Christianity is not about what we do, it's about what we are. 

Expansive faith means that although the Bible is truth, it's not the only truth. Be open to science and art and philosophy. When we are open we build bridges to others. The Church is not a fortress we hide inside. We are called to go into the world - not to be the world but to go into the world - to connect, to love, to bring peace, to bring Christ into the world. 

The Hebrew word shalom means more that the absence of war. It is harmony, it is bringing love, light, and compassion to others. 

See people as people - do not see them as their mistakes, their sins, or their labels. 

Peacemakers are seen by the world as the children of God. How does the world see me?

The three tools of peacemaking are faith (mine is a broken hammer and some bent nails), love, and community. 

Love doesn't work as the only tool in your box. Richard Rohr says love is not love until you don't expect something back. Love is dynamic. 

You can't go backwards in life. The only way to deal with fear is to go forward into it and through it. 

Burdens should be shared. That makes them meaningful. 

What is God giving us to do as a community so that we can sow peace into the world? The mission starts with our commitment to this community. 

Spiritual Questions

One problem with sharing the faith is that evangelical Christians are answering questions no one is asking. But the Gospel is both a confrontation and an accommodation. We need to listen to the questions people are asking and see how the Gospel answers those questions. 

We need to balance confrontation and accommodation. We also need to make sure that are answers aren't seen as meaningless because they don't touch on the questions people ask. 

Every generation has different questions. Baby Boomers and those older grew up in a world where institutions were viewed as good. They live to work - career is tantamount. They underparented their children because schools did so much. They tend to be idealists and think problems should be solved. They experienced great social upheaval and they were last American generation to experience a great Christian revival (the Jesus Movement). They viewed truth as objective - there is the Truth. 

Key spiritual question: What is true?

These people are losing power in society. No longer largest cohort. 

Generation X is pessimistic rather than optimistic. These are the underparented. They do not view institutions as good. They work to live rather than live to work. They look to friends for identity - not society. First generation to experience postmodernism. They do not believe in objective truth. More comfortable with questions than answers. 

Key Question: What is real?

Millennials grew up in child-centered homes. Science and technology shaped them. They are not actually lazy. They are pragmatic and want to change the world for the better. 

Key Question: What is good?

Willing to partner with anyone, regardless of belief system, to reach their goals. 

Today's children, born after 2003, greatly influenced by the democratization of art. 

Key Question: What is beautiful?

What does the Gospel say to these questions? We need to think differently. We need to be peacemakers, carrying forward the incarceration of Christ into the world. We will measure our success, our spiritual authenticity, by how much good we bring to others. 

Three activities of peacemaking:

1. Refuse to objectify others. It is not a black-and-white world. Receive and love people regardless. Bring Christ to everyone. If we can't do this, our mission is dead in the water. 

2. Seek reconciliation. We need to be a mediating influence. What can I do to bring Christ into this place. 

3. Bring the Kingdom where it is not. If you see hungry people, violence, environmental damage, etc. - these are not of the Kingdom. 

How can we bring beauty to the world?

Art

The sermon is based on Matthew 25:14-30. We are invited to put ourselves into the story. It is the Parable of the Talents. 

Talents were worth a lot. Even one talent pretty much equals an average lifetime of earning. Looked at this way, the servant with one talent spent his lifetime of work avoiding any productive use of his talent. One translation has the master displaying disgust for the "play it safe guy who won't go out on a limb."

Not using my talents for God equals an absence of joy. We express love by using our gifts for God. 

The word talent in its present meaning came from this parable. That is way cool. 

Talent means "the natural endowments of a person." When we don't use our talents "we forfeit our own good."

God doesn't ask for more than what we are capable of doing or being. 

In the "divorce" between Catholics and Protestants, Protestants got the Bible and Catholics got everything else. We cannot lose the art - the beauty that saves the world. 

God is the Great Creator and our creativity is our imaging of God. Art is spirituality. 

Art is the expression or application of human skill and creativity. 

To create is to bring into being. 

Acting intuitively is acting on truth without conscious reasoning (instinctive). 

We are gifted with stories. We have a sacred duty to clothe the world in stories. 

Why don't we create? Fear. Creating and sharing what we create makes us vulnerable. 

Come what may, I will create today. 

Prayer is a right brain activity. It is creative. It allows God's creativity to be expressed through us. Contemplate where you allowed God's creativity to flow today and where you blocked that flow. 

"What we play is life." Louis Armstrong

Michelangelo believed every stone held a figure captive and he sent these prisoners free. When we create we set free the beauty in the world. 

We put ourselves into our art and into our story. 

The Wordless Art of Storytelling

How do you tell a story without words?Of course, given the title of the sermon, I immediately thought of dance, silent movies, charades, the movement of story. Photography and visual art sprang to mind as well; and, of course, illustration. Children's books show us how to tell a story without words.
We provide story as a subtext of life. We storify everything. Storification is what humans do - I think it is a reflection of the idea that we are made in God's image. Other species love, some better than us, but what are their stories? Do they also storify life?
Biblical stories have been extensively illustrated. That was how illiterate laity learned about God in the Middle Ages; hence, the centrality of Christian art. We largely lost that in the Reformation with the rise of sola scriptura. But, with the loss of art, we lost part of what made Christianity the "beautiful religion" to the early Russian tribes who chose to convert to Christianity because of its beauty.
Words, of course, have beauty too (I am a writer, after all); but I am with Alice in Alice's in Wonderland, who saw little use of a story without illustrations.
None of this has anything to do with the sermon - I am off on a tangent. But it's worth chasing this particular white rabbit, even if it doesn't have a pocket watch, in part because it meshes so well with the story I wrote for Tuesday.
Jesus was a god who told stories; but, Jesus also illustrated God without and beyond words.
Perhaps storifying our life becomes art when we live with intention and awareness.
"A poet is a person who takes words and does something with them, makes something personal and original out of them."
A person who tells stories with intention illustrates the nature of God.
"We are all illustrating a story, whether we know it or not." Our actions illustrate the words we use to tell the story of our life.