Sermon

Scripture is a gift from God to you

Scripture Text:

Psalm 119:33-40

Sermon:

I love the Bible, but I find it very hard to just read it sometimes.  I know that some of you read the bible on a daily basis, and I know that some of you know very little about the bible, and many of you are somewhere in between. But the bible belongs to all of us, and it’s one of the ways God uses to tell us about Godself.

I know some of you don’t like the Old Testament, and I know some of you don’t like Paul.  Some of you’ve said you don’t like the way God and religion are portrayed, you don’t resonate with the teachings that you’ve found there.  I can sympathize with that.  Sometimes there are things even Jesus says that I don’t like or that I wish weren’t in the bible at all.

The Episcopal Church follows the teachings of Richard Hooker, one of the first Anglican theologians, who taught that the bible isn’t the only way we know God, although it’s an important way.  We see belief as a sort of “3-legged stool,” where one leg is the bible, one leg is reason, and one leg is tradition – or the knowledge passed on to us from Christians throughout history.  I once heard someone say that Jesus is the seat of that stool, which I like!

The bible is a living document. It’s a gift to us from God, even if we struggle with it – whether the struggle is about trying to understand it, or disagreeing with parts of it, or trying to get ourselves to read it at all!  As Episcopalians, we read a lot of bible on Sundays compared to evangelical churches, but we read it a lot less during the week.

Something that I pray each week happens for you is that you listen to the bible readings and that some phrase or section jumps out for you – that something really speaks to you that week.  Now, you may or may not hear that section preached on, but each week, I believe God offers us a piece of scripture (at least one!) each week that really, deeply speaks to our lives.  And that piece of scripture is a gift for you – a word from God to you.  Listen for that word, mark it with the pencil in the chair in front of you, take your bulletin home and stick that page up on your bathroom mirror or put it on your nightstand to read when you wake up or before you go to bed.  That is a word from God for you, and during the week, I think you and God may write a sermon together about that passage that may be more relevant for your life than anything I can say.  Each week, God is trying to speak to you – and if you don’t pay attention, if you don’t hear it, or you just look to me to pick out what God is trying to say, you might miss it!  Follow the passages as they’re read, and listen for that word God is saying to you, even if you’re not sure you understand everything that’s happening in the passage.

That’s also a way to learn the bible better – to take those phrases that speak to you and look at them again during the week. Again, just on your bedside table, or on your desk at work, or somewhere where you’ll take a moment to reread it – not even the whole passage, just the once sentence that jumped out at you. Try to put those words and sentences on your heart!  People used to memorize the bible before printing presses and before many people knew how to read for just that reason – so that they would have its words close to them whenever they needed them.  That’s the other thing about the bible: every verse has been read or heard by millions of Christians and Jews over thousands of years, in all corners of the world.  They are well-used, well-loved, full words.

Psalm 119 is a psalm all about someone in love with God’s word or God’s law. If you were here last week, I joked that Psalm 119 is the teacher’s pet psalm, where the psalmist can’t stop telling God how much he or she loves following the law, doing what God tells her or him to do, and it just sounds like someone waxing poetic about how much they love being good.  But really, I think the psalmist is talking about this discipline – of learning the bible, learning God’s word and God’s commandments, living them, and making them a real part of our lives and even our bodies.

“Teach me, O Lord, the way of your statutes, and I will observe it to the end. Give me understanding, that I may keep your law and observe it with my whole heart. Lead me in the path of your commandments, for I delight in it. Turn my heart to your decrees, and not to selfish gain.”

And so, I offer this little spiritual discipline to you as a way to help God give the gift of the bible to you.  Listen each week for the words God is speaking to you.  Take home that page from your bulletin and find a way to return to that phrase during the week and listen for God in those words. Let those words work their way into your heart.  The readings we hear each week are for you.  They are gifts from God for you.

I don’t want you to think that I’m the only authority on what these passages mean or what God is trying to say to you.  Part of why is because these words are just so full and so precious, and I want you to have them change your life the way they’ve changed mine.  Part of why I’m preaching on this is because this week, I see a virtual goldmine of phrases to help you get started this week, if you want.

I’m just going to highlight a few potential life-changing scriptures for you, (although this goes against what I said earlier, that I’m not the only person who knows what God is trying to say to you.  But bear with me…!)  I just want to romance you with some of these powerful and beautiful words we heard this morning.

From the first reading, you might hear God saying to you:

“You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.

“You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the Lord your God.

Or look at the psalm.

“Turn my eyes from watching what is worthless; give me life in your ways.

Or the second reading, from Paul:

“Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?

“For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.

“…you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.

Or the Gospel.  Which is a little harder, if you ask me – but Jesus is always harder. (As a former nun once said to me, “Jesus is impossible!”)

“if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also;

“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,

“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Did any of those speak to you more powerfully than the others?  Or maybe there was another sentence entirely that you heard this morning that got your attention.  Maybe the words remind you of your own life, maybe they remind you of something in the news you can’t get off your mind, maybe they make you think of something you never thought of before.

Make the bible a part of your life – and your kids’ lives, too.  Whether your weekly bible is what you hear and read on Sundays, whether you take home a passage to read, And kids can do this exercise, too – it’s a great way to get young kids involved in the worship service, because these words and this service are for them, too.  Or maybe you read a children’s bible with our kids, or maybe you read the bible for yourself using a devotional like Forward Day-by-Day.

However you do it, for you and your kids, remember that the bible is a gift.  The bible is a way that God invites us into a relationship, a way God invites us into love and blessing, even passages we don’t agree with or we don’t understand – maybe there, God invites us into a conversation!

The bible is for you.  Receive it and let its words print themselves on your heart.

Amen.

Uploaded on February 20, 2011 in by RevHeidi

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