December 5, 2010
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
We have once again done something that we do every Sunday. We have all become attentive and silent and listened as an ancient text was read to us. Few of us ever read a book that is over 2000 years old. Our listening and attending to Scripture is one of the hallmarks of the Christian faith.
In today’s Gospel lesson (Matthew 3:1-12), when Matthew introduces Jesus as the Messiah at his baptism, he does so by remembering the ancient testimony of the prophet Isaiah. Today’s lesson from Romans tells us how Paul is encouraging a struggling early congregation by commending to them scripture. He quotes from a number of the Old Testament books or Hebrew Scriptures, the only scripture Paul knew: Psalm 18:49; Deuteronomy 32:43; Psalm 117:1; and Isaiah 11:10. This represents the breadth of the Old Testament canon.
In our daily struggles to live out the “good news” of Jesus Christ, we receive encouragement and hope from scripture.
Today is the Second Sunday of Advent. On this day, the church has traditionally focused on how Christians think. Christians think by thinking with scripture, by prayerfully and humbly allowing scripture to speak to us. As Christmas comes closer every week, we turn to the Scriptures to read the stories again. So, our sermon is a focus on the important role the Bible has in our understanding of the Christian faith in general and the Christmas story in particular.
As Baptists, we have often referred to ourselves as the “people of the book.” Unlike other denominations that can trace their origins back to a specific founder like Martin Luther for the Lutherans or John Wesley for the Methodists or John Calvin for the Presbyterians, we Baptists are rooted in the Bible. When the candidates for Baptism are approve by you today and just before they are baptized next Sunday, each of them has selected a Bible verse to be read—a verse that captures who God is in their lives. The Bible speaks in their lives.
We know the little song: The B-I-B-L-E; yes, that’s the book for me; I read and learn from the Word of God; the B-I-B-L-E.
Bible Speaks to Us
Christians believe that this ancient text, written in a time, and place, and language quite different from ours, is the vibrant, relevant, encouraging word of God for our time and place. Scripture is the gift of God’s presence. We would know nothing about Jesus if God had not given us scripture.
Christian beliefs are a product of the church’s encounter with a group of ancient writings that were compiled over a 4000-year period, none of which is younger than nearly 2000 years old. The church is sustained, encouraged, and at the same time severely criticized and challenged by the same scripture that the church produced. But it’s in scripture that we also meet Christ.
In our encounters with scripture—when it is read in a service of worship like a minute ago, when it is expounded upon in a sermon like what we are doing right now, when we study it at Bible study or at home in our personal devotions using The Secret Place—we believe we hear the voice of, we see the ways of, and we receive the guidance of—the living God.
People and communities who experienced God’s presence in vivid ways produced the Bible. Paul understood his Hebrew Scriptures now through the life and witness of Jesus Christ. Something undeniable and real had happened to God’s people and now they wanted to tell everyone the good news.
We know that not all their testimonies were uniform or rendered in the same way. In fact, some of the diversity of their testimony is a sort of proof that the events they were trying to understand were so mind-boggling and boundary breaking that they were very difficult to put into words. While we have one Good News about Jesus Christ, we have four accounts—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. When the candidates for Baptism share their faith journey with us this afternoon, they will have 6 different versions on how God’s presence is made known to them.
Bible Reading Problems
Unlike in some churches where only certain leaders interpret the Bible for everyone, Baptists believe in the “priesthood of all believers.” This means that we have the insight to all be “priests” or preachers to interpret the Bible for ourselves. This ability is often called, “soul freedom.” We are free to interpret but with the accountability of the community to which we belong. Our early Baptist leaders put an emphasis on members getting a college education so that they can read the Bible with an informed mind. Today, we still encourage people to get a good education!
Let’s face it, when we are given this much freedom to read the Bible and search the scriptures, utilizing our own reason, we end up at times to like to have it our way and not necessarily, God’s way. Sometimes we are guilty of searching scripture in order to confirm our cherished prejudices and to dodge the possibility of new light from God or the moral change of ourselves. We deflect, evade, and avoid scripture’s claim upon our lives!
When we read scripture and search for meaning, we ought to search with humility, expecting surprises in our reading and interpretation, confident that the Holy Spirit wants us to hear the Word of God that would lead us to live in vocation with God’s will.
Rather than ask of a biblical text, “Do I agree with this?” or to say, “That seems about right to me,” we ought to ask ourselves, “How would my life have to change in order to show the world that this scripture is true?” Rather than trying to have intellectual agreement, many passages of scripture are a call to conversion, an invitation to see first-hand what the grace of God can do in your life.
We go to the Bible asking ourselves, “How can this ancient text be relevant to my life?” when what we ought to be asking is, “How can I make my self-centered, constricted, unimaginative little life relevant to the claims of God in scripture?” This is the reason why we have Advent Bible studies at this time of the year—to ask ourselves how might I give my life to the claims of God in scripture?
As modern people who have been taught by our culture to stand upon the summit of human development, we think we know so much more than the ancient scriptures can teach us.
To gather here in our church, to be silent and attentive when these ancient texts are read, is to affirm that scripture is a reliable guide for our salvation, our future with God. This goes against our modern prejudices of scientific inquiry. But when we read Scripture, we look for God and listen for God with these ancient witnesses who have gone before us. We do our best to allow the various voices within the canon of Scripture to share their distinctive visions with us. If we would dare to listen, the saints will show us the way.
We know it’s wrong to lift out of context some single passage of scripture, attempting to read that passage in isolation from other relevant passages. Instead, we often read a complete section and in the message offer you the historical and cultural context in which this passage is found.
We know it’s wrong to proof-text—searching for one passage that proves your point of view or disproves your neighbor’s point of view is an abuse of scripture’s unity. All passages must be read in the context of the whole story that God is telling through scripture.
To be sure, one comes upon inconsistencies and contradictions, and confusing ideas in the Bible. But one of the things I love about scripture is that scripture has a marvelous way of arguing with itself, correcting itself, one witness giving counter testimony to another.
In the end, all scripture, Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament, points to and is to be evaluated by the supreme revelation of God—the Incarnate Word—Jesus Christ. So if we find scripture that appears to be counter to the full revelation about the truth of God that comes to us in Jesus, we are to evaluate that scripture in the light of Jesus.
Scripture is a record of a people’s determination to hear God truthfully and then to follow God faithfully. The record is in the form of a journey through many centuries. Scripture is the account of the adventure of a journey, not a report on having arrived at a destination. When we encounter inconsistencies, contradictions and confusing ideas, we tell ourselves that we are still on a journey.
It’s not a simple song that the Bible wants to teach us to sing like the B-I-B-L-E song. But rather it is a grand symphony that must be heard together with all of its highs and lows, its seemingly dissonant notes that all somehow come together and move in a definite direction. Sometime you have heard me say this before but it’s worth saying again, “We just haven’t heard the mind of Christ yet.”
Hope Today
Paul started this chapter by referring to his readers that they are strong in the faith and called them to include those who are weaker and not as mature as they are. Because Christ did this for them, they should follow Jesus’ example by meeting the needs of others.
Most of the Christians in Rome were Gentiles rather than that of Jewish background. And since they were not brought up following and knowing the Hebrew Scriptures, they thought those texts didn’t apply to them. But Paul understood that as followers of Jesus, the Roman Christians, regardless of their bloodlines or upbringing, were among the inheritors of the Scripture. He didn’t want them to be without the Bible’s guidance and inspiration; he knew their spirituality would be impoverished without it.
Paul directs them to read it by saying it was “written in former days…for our instruction.” In so doing, the scriptures might give them hope. Paul quotes from Isaiah 11:10, “The root of Jesse shall come, the one who rises to rule the Gentiles; in him the Gentiles shall hope.” The Scriptures tell us that Christ, the root of Jesse came into this world to save us, Gentiles.
Today, as 21st century Christians, we too are encouraged to have hope when the Holy Spirit speaks in scripture, often speaking to each of us in ways that are direct, personal, and challenging.
When we trust in the Bible and see that it reveals God’s revelation in the Incarnate Word, Jesus Christ, we are encouraged and freed to be his followers in our daily life. Let me close with this story of a mother with her young son.
“Last week I took my children to a restaurant. My 6-year old son asked if he could say grace. As we bowed our heads, he said, “God is good. God is great. Thank you for the food, and I would even thank you more if Mom gets us ice cream for dessert. And liberty and justice for all! Amen!”
Along with the laughter from other nearby customers, I heard a woman remark, “That’s what’s wrong with this country. Kids today don’t even know how to pray. Asking God for ice cream! Why, I never!”
Hearing this, my son burst into tears and asked me, “Did I do it wrong? Is God mad at me?”
As I held him and assured him he’d done a terrific job and God certainly wasn’t mad at him, an older gentleman approached the table. He winked at my son and said, “I happen to know that God thought that was a great prayer.”
“Really?” my son asked.
“Cross my heart,” the man replied.
Then in a theatrical whisper (Indicating the woman whose remark had started this whole thing), he said, “Too bad she never asks God for ice cream. A little ice cream is good for the soul sometimes.”
Naturally, I bought my kids ice cream at the end of the meal. My son stared at his for a moment and then did something I’ll remember for the rest of my life. He picked up his sundae and, without a word, walked over and placed it in front of the woman. With a big smile, he told her, “Here, this is for you. Ice cream is good for the soul sometimes, and my soul is good already.”
This little boy may just be beginning to read the Bible for himself. But at this point in his life, his mother and the older man are teaching him what the Bible says. This little boy is living out a life that reveals the truth of the Bible.
We can praise the Lord for the Bible tells us that when we are strong in the faith, we are to help those who are weak. We can praise the Lord because the Bible tells of the root of Jesse shall come in the Incarnate One—Jesus Christ to save us and to give us hope. We can praise the Lord for our ability to read the Scriptures for ourselves in the company and accountability of fellow learners to not ask if we agree with the biblical text according to how we view the world but rather to ask ourselves, “How would my life have to change in order to show the world that this scripture is true?”
So here we are in Advent waiting the arrival of Christ in our lives, expecting God to come to us because we can’t come to God. And one of the primary ways that God does that is in the gift of scripture.
Thanks be to God!
Let us pray.
Lord Jesus, open our hearts and minds, fill us with your revealing Spirit, so that we might hear what you want to say to us today. By the power of your Holy Spirit, enliven the ancient words of scripture to reach out to us, to convict us, to inspire us, to encourage us and so to fill us with hope that we may be more faithful in following you. Amen.