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More Than Human Words
Sermon by Brigid A. Boyle July 18, 2004, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill Psalm 19 1 Thessalonians 2:1-13
“Take it and read. Take it and read.” These are the words Augustine hears coming from a friend’s house as he walks through the garden in Milan, distressed, tearful and distraught. “Take it and read.” The voice was neither distinctly male nor female, but simply echoed through the woods over and over again, “Take it and read.” His countenance is instantly altered and so moving from anguish to curiosity, he wonders whether the words might be those of children playing a game, though he recalls no memory of such a game himself. As last, as he “checks his torrent of tears,” in that leap of faith which so often spring from the greatest of vulnerability, Augustine interprets the echoing words, “take it and read,” to be nothing more that a command from God to open the Scripture and read the first chapter he should find. And so he opens the Bible to the book of Romans and reads one small section in silence, “No further would I read;” he writes, “nor needed I: for instantly as the end of this sentence, by a light as it were of serenity infused into my hearts, all the darkness of doubt vanished away.” (Confessions, Book VII, XII) “Take it and read.” Most of us do not hear the words calling to us from our neighbor’s home or likely anywhere else. Yet, somehow, someway, sometime, some of us come to this book of scriptures still. Some come to know its words by way of faithful and regular reading. Some come to know its words only by hearing them read over and over of a Sunday morning. Some come to know them only as they are spoken at baptismal font, wedding altar or open grave. Some only barely know them, but either at the urging of another, or at the final failure of all other words to prove significant, we “take it and read.” These words today have not so much to do with the authority of scripture, or the inerrancy of the Bible. They have not so much to do with the historical evidence which supports the veracity of the story. These words have rather to do with what do we expect from these words, these words Paul told us were not merely human. Some expect blue prints for how we might salvage what is left of the moral fiber of the land, if we would just follow the rules. Some expect to hear helpful hints for good living, pithy sayings that will stick with us through the good days and the bad. Some expect nothing more than they might from any other that might be concluded to be too antiquated, too verbose, too historical, too unhistorical, too boring, too irrelevant, and too tedious. Some expect barely anything at all. Some, the lucky ones, have learned to expect more. At some point, in its pages, they have found words that point toward a Truth which comforts on the darkest of nights, a Way that might set the direction for everything else, and a Life that gives life. Others turn to the Scriptures because they, we, have known of those, like Augustine, for whom Scripture has been the medium through which “a light of serenity has calmed the anxious heart and dispersed all doubt.” Guardedly, we hold on to a hope that the same might happen for us, and so we pay attention to the dog eared pages of a family Bible, or the text of a certain psalm darkened by the oil from the repetitive tracing of grandmother’s finger. We notice the visible changes in a friend’s countenance after he takes it and reads. And so they hold on to the most guarded of expectations that they might find at least a morsel of the same. Still others come to the Bible because it seems the right thing to do, because that is what Christians are expected to do, right? I have told the story before of my delight as a child when I received my first Bible in the third grade. It was a beautiful Bible in which my name, spelled correctly and everything, written in calligraphy in the front cover. The minister told all of the children who had received Bibles that he often underlined parts of the Bible that had special meaning for him and that it he would love nothing more than to see some underlined passages one day in our brand new Bibles. Well, I, of course, not wanting to disappoint Rev. McFarlane (who actually will preach for us this fall) and wanting to show him how diligent and faithful reader I was, expecting him to recognize what a diligent and faithful third grader I was, went home and underlined the entire book of Genesis. All 50 chapters. It was what I thought I should do with the Bible. And then there is the voice of the psalmist, in our first test from this morning. Through the meditations of his heart, the psalmist comes to understand the Torah, the law, to be perfect, reviving the soul, making the wise simple and enlightening the eyes. Could it be true? It all sounds too nice. Certainly we expect something from scripture, hope at best, boredom at worse, but not that much. Would that we might find a word to revive our ever so tired souls. Would that there might be something, anything, that might make the wise (and so proud and even haughty) a bit more simple. Would that we might ever hope for as much, if not expect it. But so conditioned we are not to hope, not to trust. So in the habit we are of setting aside anything that might ask us to surrender our own sense of control and destiny in place of another. So fearful we are of being disappointed and so trained we are to guard ourselves against it at all costs, sometimes even at the cost of hope itself. So bruised we have become by the world’s cynicism that the notion that this old book might really have a word that speaks to our lives seems simply silly and our expectations for what might come from these printed words gets lower and lower and lower. But nevertheless, one way or the other, we gather week in and week out to hear this word read and proclaimed, and, if we are honest, we expect little more than information- a few good stories, sketchy history, and maybe some good platitudes and catchy sayings. So, my question this day, given the myriad of ways we come to scripture, or don’t come to scripture, and the reality of what we do expect, and don’t expect from scripture, has to do what we can expect from scripture. What can I expect from the book which has infused serenity and diminished doubt for so many? What might these pages have to offer to the one who is in such desperate pain and isolation? To the one who has no power? To the one who has more power than he knows what to do with? To the one who wants help so badly and to the one who doesn’t know she needs it? Beyond human words, what can we expect? Kathleen Norris tells the story of a familiar friend, Arlo, whom she and her husband once met in a local steakhouse. Arlo was an “old timer” whose work as a rancher and whose slim spending habits had made him a very wealthy man. But Arlo had recently encountered a situation in which all the money in the world wouldn’t help him; he was facing chemotherapy for an advanced, likely terminal cancer. One night, when Arlo was feeling particularly talkative, he began to tell Norris and her husband about his grandfather, a deeply religious person and, according to Arlo, “a ‘darn’ good Presbyterian.” His grandfather’s wedding present to Arlo and his wife had been a beautiful, white, leather bound Bible. The Bible spent most of its life in a box in the bedroom closet. Finally, after months of his grandfather’s questioning about the Bible, Arlo grew curious as to why the old man keep after him. “’Well,’ he said, ‘the joke was on me. I finally took that Bible out of the closet and I found that granddad had placed a twenty dollar bill at the beginning of the book of Genesis, and at the beginning of every book of the ‘darn’ thing, over thirteen hundred dollars in all. And he knew I’d never find it.” I think it safe to say that though some of us might still have a Bible or two hidden away in a closet or box, unfortunately most of us cannot expect to find such a windfall in our Bibles. Arlo’s story is a little too good to be true. But it is true that we don’t know how valuable the Bible is until we open its cover, until we take it and read. There is an extent to which we cannot imagine how rich this book really is until will flip through its pages. And, like old Arlo, we expect far less than this book has to give us. But what is it that we can expect? What might we expect to find, beyond information, beyond human words, beyond something that bores us, beyond something that only others find, what might we, if we take it and read, expect from this old, old story? I think first of the words of John Calvin, one who spent his life getting the Bible back into the hands and hearts and heads of the people. Listen in on his thoughts on scripture, “Just as bleary-eyed men and those with weak vision, if you thrust before them a most beautiful volume, even if they recognize it to be some sort of writing, yet can scarcely construe two words, but with the aid of spectacles will begin to read distinctly; so Scripture, “he continues, “gathering up the otherwise confused knowledge of God in our minds, having dispersed our dullness, shows us the true God.” Scripture is as spectacles which help us see the one true God. One of the things, then, that we can expect from scripture, if we are really to take it and read, is a change in our vision. By that I mean a change in the way we see the world around us and in the way we see the work of God in the world. We come to the Bible and we read a story, for instance, in which Jesus offers water to an outcast, and somehow, by grace, we see those on the outskirts of circles of influence, society and even the church, much differently. Somehow we understand ourselves differences. We come to the Bible and we read a story about Jesus welcoming the children and chastising those who could send them away, and somehow we are moved to make the phone call about the child whose behavior concerns us, or write the letter to the senator about the importance of funding for children’s education. We come to the Bible and read a story about Elisha healing a man with leprosy and somehow we begin to see that condemning those with HIV or AIDS or whatever the disease is something with which we cannot live and something we must change. Scripture is as spectacles that change the way we see the world. But more, for beyond, or in addition to, having our vision of the world and ourselves readjusted, corrected, what else might we expect form the Bible? It we take it and read, what else might we find? Companions. One of the greatest things, I am sure, that the Bible has to offer is a sure sense of companionship. From beginning to end, this book is full of those who know perils and pleasures of life which are startlingly similar to our own. I think of the time I have witnessed churches in periods of great struggle and conflict, and the uncanny similarity they bear to the early church. I think of standing in the gallery at meetings of our General Assembly when fierce and emotional disagreements have broken out. Words from the book of Acts seem to fit better than any I could find, “some were shouting on thing, some were shouting another, for the assembly was in confusion, and most of them did not know why they had come together.” On the one hand, of course, it is tragic that things have changed too little. On the other hand, there is great comfort to be found in reading these pages, in seeing that from the beginning, those who would work to pursue the will of God have done so arduously and sometimes, often times, conflictedly, but somehow God’s purpose still works. If the Corinthian or Ephesian or Thessalonain conflicts didn’t kill Christ’s church, then chances are that the Presbyterian ones won’t either. But we can expect to find companions even outside of church struggles. What the Bible has to tell us is that there have been times, before our own, when people, like some of us, wondered who and where God was, when they struggled to hold on to belief in a God who could heal when illness of epidemic proportion prevailed. There was a time when people doubted God’s power because so much corruption and evil was in power. We can expect to find kindred spirits who have known and felt the individual terrors that have been ours too. We can expect to find Jeremiah who, like some of us, railed at God for his seeming absence. We might find Rachel who, like some of us, wet at the death of her child and refused to be consoled, because he was no more. We might find David who knew the agony of a friendship ended, Sarah who knew what it was to be hopeless. We can expect to find those who were betrayed by the one they loved, who were hurt by the one who gave them, life. We can expect to find those who have lifted their eyes to the hills and cried out for help when there was no other help to be found. We will find those who have walked through the valley of the shadow of death and feared no evil, knowing they were not alone, but comforted by rod and staff of a gentle shepherd. All of whom give us both strength to endure and hope that we ourselves are not alone. And you know what? We never find those companions, those familiar friends, unless we take it and read … how alone we are without this book. Lastly, if we take it and read, what we can expect form the Bible is, in some sense some gracious and mysterious way which will ever allude those who see to explain it, a turning, an Augustinian transformation, perhaps, whereby the light of serenity might be infused into our hearts and the darkness of our doubt be driven away. But, there is a qualifier, for Augustine, you see, had likely read the scriptures time after time before grace intervened and the words calmed his unquiet heart. And so there is no promise that on a first read though any book, chapter or verse in the Bible, we might find ourselves made anew like Augustine. But even so, I do believe that we can expect that it will, that we should expect that it will. We can take it and read and expect that, as it was for Augustine and for so many others, the Bible might be for us a medium thorough which rest comes to “those who are weary and heavy laden,” identity comes for those who read the words, “I have called you by name, you are mine,” or hope comes for those who read, “The light shines in the darkness an the darkness will never overcome it.” “When you receive the word of God that you heard from us, you accepted is not as human words, but as what it really is, God’s word,” not human words, but God’s word. Sometimes, if our expectations are met, the random words of scriptures, by grace, becoming life changing and indeed life saving and we cannot help but keep turning the pages. What I know and believe is that such grace happens not by way of reading a series of letters strung together or hearing words spoken out loud. It comes not by way of eloquent and poetic sentences printed on a page. It comes not through the words, not through he grammar and syntax of scripture, but through the Word there revealed, Jesus Christ, in whom alone all our expectations abide. So may we, by and with God’s Spirit, take it and read. Thanks be to God. Amen. |