bibliography: notes from Revelation class; story of the exile; Cloister Walk, by Kathleen Norris; Practicing our Faith by Dorothy Bass
I want to tell you a couple of stories. The first comes from a class I am in on the Book of Revelation, where the teacher of the class invited us to - of all things - use our imaginations in reading John’s Revelation.
You see, in our world today, we have this almost innate tendency not to trust or value what isn’t supported by hard core facts & data, is observable & measurable. We at least devalue to some degree, or hold in lower esteem that which is influenced by emotion, feeling, and intuition.
So what identifies for us the way the world is made and works is based upon logic, reason, and scientific support.
Such things create for us the “images” we have of the world - the way we view life, the way we see the world woven together.
But the invitation is to move beyond that two dimensional understanding of the world to see what cannot be defined by logic, reason, written words, ink on paper, statistics, information, or observation.
Its an invitation to dream and envision what can be; to see beyond what is observable. To imagine a future that may be very different from our present.
The second story is about the Israelite people and what happened to them when their world, their empire, their identity began to crumble,
and how that relates to our emphasis on reading the Bible.
There was a time when a wondering nomad of people came to inhabit the land they gave the name of their identity and their faith. They were Israel, the land was Israel, and their faith was the worship the one true God of their patriarch, Israel.
Once settled, they asked for a king. This king now became someone who stood at the apex of the relationship between God and the people. It creates a situation that can and does have dire consequences.
The first king was Saul. He started out with good intentions and promise but he didn’t produce good results.
Then there was the beloved David who faithfully worshipped God and who built Israel into a prosperous nation, although he had his fair share of faults as well. David was followed by his son, Solomon who built a grand and glorious temple in which to worship God. He too, added to the spiraling events that led the people of Israel further and further away from a faithful life with God.
And after that, the country began to fall apart. There was discontent and distrust. There was disquiet and unrest. There was a division in leadership and so the country split into two countries with Israel to the north, and Judah to the south.
Soon, noisy neighbors all around began making trouble. The people within Israel and Judah began to lose their way. It became not an issue of being faithful anymore, but about being “successful,” I guess you could say.
Religion and faith became measurable and observable. Life became not a matter of doing the right thing, but about being right in what was done. It became a matter of manipulation of morals and actions in order to achieve certain goals.
Sometimes, being right meant being legally right, sometimes right meant being culturally relevant, and often being right in such a way had very little to do with being faithful to God’s vision for God’s people.
It wasn’t long until noisy neighbors to the north were able to use their growing might against a country that had become so self-absorbed and had gone astray. Israel, the northern country, fell to the Assyrians.
And it wasn’t long before the same thing happened to the southern country of Judah until the capital city of Jerusalem was all that was left of the Hebrew people and the Jewish faith, and eventually, that fell too. Only by this time, Assyria had come and gone and it was the Babylonians who were the invading power on Judah and Jerusalem.
Common policy in that day to keep invaded countries under the thumb of the invader, was to take key people and leaders who might, in the remotest of ways begin thinking about revolt, and move them to other occupied areas or to the invaders homeland where they could be kept subdued and be watched. Essentially it was anyone of any wealth and position, so that the only ones left in the occupied homeland were slaves and peasants to do the farming.
So it was that many Israelites found themselves carted off to the land of Babylon without a home and without security, and without key elements of their faith.
And its not until then, at this point in their history, that the Israelites in many ways began to look around, and said to themselves, “How did we get here? Where did we go wrong? How could we have let this happen?”
This is all tied up with their understanding that they had this covenant with God that as long as they remained faithful to God, God would remain faithful to them and they would keep their homeland and identity as God’s people.
Now, you might be thinking that countries come into power frequently, and invade other countries, and in all probability they would have been invaded anyway. And you may be right.
But it is also true that for many years prophetic people had been observing the goings on of the Israelite people, of their people and remarking, “You know, if you keep this up, no good can come of it, and eventually such behavior and actions will have bad results.”
And as the Israelites sat blinking, looking around in Babylon, they knew the prophets had been right. It came to be, just as the prophets had warned it would come to be, if they didn’t change their ways - not only just their ways, but more importantly, their hearts.
Its like children reaching out to touch a hot iron and we tell them not to, because they’re going to get burned. They touch it anyway, and sure enough, they get burned.
Today it might be like saying, we are better off trying to move closer to the cross and be more Christ-like rather than trying to move as far away from the cross as we can and still be inside the circle of the Christian faith - and in fact the holy habits we are looking at trying to cultivate do just that. They invite us to move closer to the cross,
because closer to the cross, life won’t be perfect, but it will definitely be safer, and more secure, and peaceful, and sustaining, and fulfilling.
Whereas, if we keep trying to move as far away from the cross as we can, before you know it, we’ve stepped outside of the Christian faith. And then the “Babylonians” (I mean that in the rhetorical sense. I’m not trying to say something about Saddam Huesain, here.) come and cart us off, and then we are miserable, and unhappy, and we’ve lost our identity, and there you go.
So why did I tell you these two stories?
Well lets start with the last one. In fact, lets pick up where we left off - with the Israelite people on the shores of the rivers of Babylon, crying for their homeland and their freedom, crying for their temple and their relationship with God.
In some ways the people finally adjusted to their situation. But there were some who continued to grieve for what was lost. And they taught that grief to their children, and their children’s children, telling themselves that if they ever got another chance, they wouldn’t make the same mistakes again. They would - at all costs - be faithful to God.
And finally, that day came. The Israelite people were allowed to return home. They rebuilt the temple and began to worship God as they had before.
And to help them remember how they got themselves into a mess, it was then that they began to write down their stories about their relationship with God.
You see, until that time, most of their faith was an oral faith. They were stories told around campfires, told in worship, handed down from generation to generation. There were some parts like some records of kings and court actions, and laws that were recorded - the observable and measurable part.
But not the rich stories of the faith and of the leaders of the faith.
It wasn’t until after the Babylonian exile that a lot of what we know of as the Bible came to be written down, when it became important to keep from making the mistakes the Israelites had made in the past.
You can see this desire to be faithful, this desire to move closer to God if not the cross in the words of the writer of our Psalm this evening. You can see the pain of writer in being separated from God, and the knowledge that it is God’s revelation that keeps us in relationship with God.
Psalm 119 is the longest song in the psalms. It consists of 22 stanzas of eight lines each.
Some people find it tedious and monotonous, and it is indeed repetitive.
Psalm 119 is an acrostic with each stanza beginning with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet.
And with the exception of 4 verses, each line within this psalm refers to one of eight different terms used to describe God’s revelation of Godself to us.
These terms include law, decrees, precepts, statutes, commands or commandments, ordinances, word, and (I like this one) promises.
The writer of our psalm knows and has learned how important it is to walk closely with God. You can feel it as we read the words.
119:10 With my whole heart I seek you; do not let me stray from your commandments.
119:11 I treasure your word in my heart, so that I may not sin against you.
119:12 Blessed are you, O LORD; teach me your statutes.
119:13 With my lips I declare all the ordinances of your mouth.
119:14 I delight in the way of your decrees as much as in all riches.
Don’t you get a sense of loving for God’s word as well as almost a sense of pain, like the word of God and God’s presence was something that was almost lost to this person?
And through the repetition of these eight terms through 176 lines that span all of the letters of the alphabet, its as if the psalm writer is saying that God’s word is all encompassing, applying to everything in the universe from A to Z.
Clinton McCann notes that God’s instruction, God’s word, applies to everything at every moment, and that apart from it, there is nothing worthy to be called life.
I believe our psalmist would agree. He doesn’t use the word Bible or even Scripture, because the word of God didn’t exist in that form then, but God’s word was certainly revealed and meant to be revered. God’s revelation came to be recorded for us in the form we call the Bible and is there for us to love, explore, follow, and apply, just as the psalmist did, to every aspect of life from A to Z.
Kathleen Norris in her book The Cloister Walk talks about the constant task of laundry in life. She notes that there is a religious element, a ritualization to laundry. It is a part of life, day in and day out and everyone, no matter who you are, has to do it.
Some of us groan over it. Some of us have specific ways we prefer it to be done. Some have rituals, some take comfort if not pleasure in the ritual. It is a common aspect of life, but even in this mundainest of tasks, there is a sense of the living God. God permiates everything we do, even our laundry. One of her friends wants the following epitath on her tombstone: At last, her laundry’s done.
In laundry and in the words of the psalm writer we how God’s word can inform and inspire every aspect of our life - from the least and most monotenous to the greatest and most exciting times of life.
That’s why I told you the second story. Now why did I tell you the first story - the one about the invitation to use our imagination?
Well, the question is this: What happens when we begin to consider reading the Bible as we make our committment this evening?
We can see it this way: The Bible is not actually one book but is 66 books divided into two parts. There are 39 smaller books in the first part, or the Old Testament and 27 books in the second part, or the New Testament.
It was written over a period of more than 1500 years by many different authors including shepherds, farmers, tent-makers, physicians, fishermen, priests, philosophers, and kings. Different parts of it are written in one of 3 different languages including Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek and includes the writings of history, prose, poetry, prophecy, and apocalyptic writings.
As we look at it, we see a book of a couple of thousand pages, depending on the print - a book of black and red ink on white paper.
We can view the Bible this way.
We can read the story of Mary and Joseph, of how Mary, pregnant with child by the Holy Spirit married Joseph, came to Bethlehem to have her baby and named him Jesus. Simple facts of a simple retelling of a simple story.
And we can see reading it as our responsibility and duty, even just as a good thing to do, but without expecting to gain much beyond the records and account - beyond the obvious, observable facts of faith.
Or we can use our imagination to see beyond the observable. We can imagine what it is like to have a revelation given to young girl by an messenger of God and what it must have cost her internally to believe in the message given her. What it must have been like in that day to find out you were pregnant out of wedlock, to know that is was by the Holy Spirit that this happened, and to be the only one in certain posession of such an incredible event.
We can imagine what it cost her to be used by God in such a way - to be the vessel that bore salvation to the world, to be the mother of a child who held the Spirit of God, and to suffer the pain of his death on the cross, to hear what the crowds cried out about him, to experience his resurrection as a mother and what that meant.
We can imagine Joseph, who heard an unbelievable story from the girl he loved - she was pregnant and had not cheated on him. We can imagine what it took for him to believe in his own right what God envisioned for his life and how God was acting in his life by making him responsible for bringing up God’s son in the world.
We can read the story of a man in the beginning of days named Noah who built boat to hold representatives of all the worlds animals during a world wide flood and see it as just that - just a story.
Or, we can imagine the life of Noah, trying to live faithfully in midst of people who didn’t at all have the faith he did, and who ridiculed his obedience. We can imagine a man with such a faith that he built a ship so large, it had a door that could not be closed by human hands. We can imagine the awesome faith in the life of one individual that believed in the power of God to have control over aspects of his life beyond his ability - to close the door - and in the face of adveristy from those around him.
We can imagine the power in a God who could destroy us so easily, and see the promise of life and love God holds for us so gently in the fragile beauty of a rainbow.
We can read the Bible as a simple collection of writings - facts and stories, ancient writings from a different time. Or we can see it as one of the ways in which God reveals Godself to us, impacting every aspect of our life in a magnanimous way.
In another chapter of her book, Kathleen talks about the paradox of the psalms, the ancient songs about God that we read from this evening. Interestingly she notes that every aspect of our life is recorded in those psalms. There is joy and thanksgiving. There is sorrow and anger. There is fear and there is comfort.
No matter what we might be feeling, we can find within the psalms, Kathleen says, holy words that echo our place in life.
It is true not only for the psalms but is true for all of God’s word. It’s one of the reasons its referred to as a living book.
Stephanie Paulsell has a story to tell about acne. She tells the story of a woman who was plagued with terrible acne as a teenager. One day, anguished as one can often be during the teenage years, she refused to leave the house because of the condition of her face.
It was her father who led her to the bathroom and asked her if he could teach her a new way to cleanse and wash her face.
He leaned over the sink, splashing water onto his face. He told his daughter, “On the first splash, say, ‘In the name of the father’; on the second, ‘in the name of the Son’; and on the third, ‘in the name of the Holy Spirit.’ Then look up into the mirror and remember that you are a child of God, full of grace and beauty.”
What happens when we do the same thing with the Bible - when instead of just “washing” with it we become awash in its reflection and see ourselves as children of God, full of grace and beauty within it’s words?
Tonight, we make commitments to read the Bible. It can be a task and a Christian duty. It can be another card with a check mark on it.
I don’t know if each of us have had the experiences of our psalm writer - experiences of fear, helplessness, vulnerability. I expect some of us have. I expect all of us will face times of trial in our life.
Our invitation, as we make these commitments, is to read the Bible in the spirit of our psalmist - not to see it as mere words or a duty, but to give ourselves permission to imagine through the words:
to see beyond the obvious and to envision what can be through God’s laws, decrees, precepts, statutes, commandments, ordinances, word, and promises.
In Jesus name, amen.
