Meeting God in the Bible

Written by Ed Kauffman

Meeting God in the Bible

September 25, 2011

II Timothy 3: 16-17

John 5: 31-47

One of the people I was privileged to learn to know in his old age was Lester Hostetler, a retired Mennonite pastor and editor of several of our hymnbooks.  He liked to relate the story of when he was in seminary back in the 20s when there was great controversy over the Bible and such words as inerrancy and verbal inspiration came into usage.  His story was that one of his classmates, who was suspicious of Lester’s orthodoxy on these matters asked him, “Do you believe Jonah was really swallowed by the whale?”  “Oh,” said Lester, “I don’t know for sure.  I guess when I get to heaven I’ll ask him.”  “But, what if he’s not in heaven,” the man challenged.  “Well then,” said Lester, “if he’s not in heaven, you ask him!”

The Bible has been the source of much debate, argument and even downright conflict since its beginning.  For some, how you view the Bible and what words you use to describe that view are all important.  Lyle Schaller, church consultant, speaks of different ways of categorizing congregations.  One of those ways is by what their emphasis is on.  Some congregations focus primarily on God in their language, hymns, etc.  Others focus primarily on Jesus, and some on the Holy Spirit. And, says Schaller, there are also congregations whose primary focus is on the Bible.  The phrase you would hear most often in those congregations is, “the Bible says.”

Clearly already in Jesus’ day one of the things he clashed with the religious leaders of his day over was how to view the Scripture.  Jesus’ Bible, the Hebrew Scriptures, consisted of the Torah or law, the Prophets, and the Writings.  And Jesus constantly seemed at odds with the Pharisees over how to interpret those Scriptures.  In fact, in the passage we read from John 5, Jesus chides them and suggests that while they are looking for eternal life in the Scriptures, they are missing what the Scriptures are pointing to, namely Jesus himself.  I think I’ve met people like that over the years myself.  We should remember that Jesus didn’t say, “The Bible is the way, the truth, and the life.”

One of the things I hear and read about these days is the fact that Biblical literacy, knowing the Bible, is at an all-time low, even among church going Christians.  I know that Goshen College, a Mennonite college in Indiana, gives all incoming freshman a general Bible knowledge test.  And the results are often disheartening.  Students don’t know if Moses came before Jesus or after, and some can’t name all four Gospels. 

And in some ways it’s not hard to see why.  During one sabbatical, I visited numerous churches and specifically wanted to visit a local congregation that was known as a Bible church.  Everyone took their Bible to church, I was told.  But I was rather appalled when I attended.  While individual verses were recited here  and there among the singing, and while the pastor pointed to Bible verses all over the Bible throughout his sermon, no place in the service was a portion of Scripture simply read in its entirety. 

Yet, as Christians, we are known as a People of the Book and the Bible is central to our faith and belief.  It is our source for knowing the story of God and God’s people through the centuries.  We affirm with Paul that the scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us.  Our Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective says in Article 4:

"We believe that all Scripture is inspired by God through the Holy Spirit for instruction in salvation and training in righteousness. We accept the Scriptures as the Word of God and as the fully reliable and trustworthy standard for Christian faith and life. We seek to understand and interpret Scripture in harmony with Jesus Christ as we are led by the Holy Spirit in the church."

 It continues: 

"We believe that God was at work through the centuries in the process by which the books of the Old and New Testaments were inspired and written. [1] Through the Holy Spirit, God moved human witnesses to write what is needed for salvation, for guidance in faith and life, and for devotion to God. [2]

We accept the Bible as the Word of God written. God has spoken in many and various ways through the prophets and apostles. [3] God has spoken above all in the living Word who became flesh and revealed the truth of God faithfully and without deception. [4] We also acknowledge the Scripture as the fully reliable and trustworthy Word of God written in human language. [5] We believe that God continues to speak through the living and written Word.[6] Because Jesus Christ is the Word become flesh, Scripture as a whole has its center and fulfillment in him. [7]

We acknowledge the Scripture as the authoritative source and standard for preaching and teaching about faith and life, for distinguishing truth from error, for discerning between good and evil, and for guiding prayer and worship. Other claims on our understanding of Christian faith and life, such as tradition, culture, experience, reason, and political powers, need to be tested and corrected by the light of Holy Scripture. [8]

The Bible is the essential book of the church. Through the Bible, the Holy Spirit nurtures the obedience of faith to Jesus Christ and guides the church in shaping its teaching, witnessing, and worship. We commit ourselves to persist and delight in reading, studying, and meditating on the Scriptures. [9] We participate in the church's task of interpreting the Bible and of discerning what God is saying in our time by examining all things in the light of Scripture. [10] Insights and understandings which we bring to the interpretation of the Scripture are to be tested in the faith community."

In the commentary on this article, the Confession make the following points:

"Since the beginning of the Anabaptist reformation in sixteenth-century Europe, Mennonites have sought to be a biblical people in ways that both borrowed from the Protestant reformation and differed from it. Mennonites have shared the traditional Protestant emphasis on the authority of Scripture for doctrine. In addition, Mennonites have underscored the following emphases:

  • the authority of Scripture for ethics, for the relation of the church to society, and for church polity.
  • the interpretation of Scripture in harmony with Jesus Christ, in the sense that his life, teachings, death, and resurrection are essential to understanding the Bible as a whole.
  • the congregation of believers as the place where individual understandings and interpretations of Scripture are to be tested.

This confessional statement assumes and affirms these emphases."

The Bible is the written story of how God’s people, the people of faith, saw God at work in the world and among themselves.  It is not a science book, for it was written in a pre-scientific age, nor is it strictly a history book, although it contains historical points of reference and a history of a particular people in a particular time and place.  It is first and foremost, a book of faith.

The 66 Books of our Bible were written by numerous authors, and display a gamut of styles and types of literature.  There are references to things so obscure that we really have no idea what they are referring to, like the Nephilim of Genesis 6.  There are portions of Scripture, for example in the prophets,  that you probably wouldn’t want your children to read, especially true if you can read them in the original Hebrew.  The English translations manage to mask some of the rather vivid language.  And certainly there are portions of Scripture that continue to cause controversy as we seek to understand what they mean for us today. 

And yet, it is through the Bible, this book written centuries ago, that we encounter God. It is our primary source for knowing how God has acted in the world and among God’s people.  It is where we encounter the people of God through the centuries as they come to understand who God is and what God desires, and it is, first and foremost, the source for learning about Jesus and his life, teachings, death and resurrection – the center of our faith.

It is through the Bible that we learn of God’s faithfulness, of God’s power, and of God’s care for creation and for God’s people.  We hear God’s people crying out to God, arguing with God, and praising God, which gives us the courage and the examples to do the same.  It is through the Bible that we experience the stories of exile and deliverance at God’s hands, that we read the prophets cries for justice to prevail and the call for God’s people to repent.

 Without this written record, we would know very little of the stories of Jesus or of his teachings. And the struggles of the early church would be lost forever.  But to encounter all that, we need to engage the Bible, read it and study it.  And there are many ways to do that.  Certainly Bible studies, whether in Sunday School or elsewhere are helpful.  I have found that the more you learn about the Bible, its context and its varieties of style, etc. the more alive it becomes.  We needn’t worry about asking the hard questions of the Bible. Those questions, asked in faith, are essential to learning from the Bible.

But we can also encounter God simply in reading the Bible.  I came to appreciate the psalms in new ways as I have had opportunity on several occasions to read the psalms with the monks at St. Johns Abbey in Minnesota, where they read 4 or 5 Psalms each morning and evening, cycling through  all 150 Psalms over the course of several weeks. Their high view of Scripture has led them to commission the St. John’s Bible, which is being produced in much the same way that Bibles were produced by monks centuries ago, on vellum, hand written by a team of calligraphers, with wonderful illuminations.  You can look at reproductions of the work here in the front. 

 I have worked to incorporate that practice of reading the Psalms into my own devotional life.  As I have noted on other occasions, the practice known as Dwelling in the Word has become a meaningful way to read scripture for me as well. 

Reading different translations and paraphrases, telling the stories of the Bible, and reading what others have said about the Bible in commentaries or on the web can also be helpful ways of encountering the God of the Bible.  But, as Jesus warned, the Scriptures are not an end in themselves, but rather point us to the one we worship, and tell us of the one who is the Living Word.  As the writer of Hebrews says, “In many and various ways God spoke to us through the prophets, but now he has spoken to us through his Son.” (Hebrews 1:1-2a)

We do not worship the Bible, but we worship the God revealed to us in the Bible.  And one of the ways we encounter that God is through our encounters with the Bible, the essential book of the church.  May we find ways of encountering both the book, and the God revealed in it.

I invite you to affirm our faith in God’s words, in the words of the Psalmist in Psalm 19.  You can find those words at number 813 in the back of the Hymnal: Worship Book, or follow them as projected on the screen.