Sunday Sermon - 27 January
I was given a Bible at my confirmation. I was around 12 or 13 years old and I sat down, opened it and began to read.
Like any book I started on page 1, The Book of Genesis. I was a good reader and was feeling so piously diligent. It started out okay, kind of interesting actually, with the creation stories, the flood, the fall, the stories of Joseph, and Egypt. Genesis was a good read. Then on to Exodus and the story of the escape from Egypt and the 10 Commandments, the Ark of the Covenant and the building of the Tabernacle, the Temple of Worship. Good, interesting stuff!
Then came Leviticus - the laws - and I started to fade. Though there were some good stories that kept me relatively engaged, I wasn’t reading it as frequently. Once I got to the Book of Numbers, that was it, I was done. Reading The Book of Numbers is basically like reading an ancient census - it’s all data. Though I can’t remember how far I got into it, I don’t think I made it to the third chapter and that was the end of my first and only intention to read the Bible from beginning to end.
What I didn’t understand at the time is that the Bible is not a book to be read from cover to cover. It is a book of books, a compilation of stories formed over more than a thousand years and meant to be read individually. Then I began to wonder - how did these books and stories become the Holy Bible?
The Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible, more appropriately called the Tanakh, is considered to have been written between 1200 - 400 BCE and it is made up of three sections:
The Law or Torah - the 1st 5 books; Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.
The Prophets - books like Joshua, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, etc. which are called Nevi’im
The Writings - books like Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Chronicles, etc. They are called the Ketuvim.
The Torah was among the earliest of the group of texts and was recognized as sacred scripture around the 5th Century BCE. The Prophets were recognized as scripture later and were edited and redacted with contributions from a variety of scholars over a lengthy period of time. It was not until around the 1st Century CE, so over 500 years later, that Jewish communities accepted the compiled texts of The Torah, The Prophets, and The Writings as the canon of the Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh, or what we Christians refer to as The Old Testament.
The New Testament
The New Testament - which includes the Gospels, Paul’s letters, other letters, and the Revelation of John - were also written throughout the 1st Century CE. Early Christian communities were also using other various texts, stories and oral accounts, some of which were not universally accepted.
It is interesting to note that it wasn’t until the 2nd and 3rd centuries that early Church leaders (like Iraneous, Tertullian and Origen) began advocating for specific texts to be universally understood as uniquely sacred scripture. It is also interesting that an early parchment, The Muratorian Fragment, circa 170 CE, is one of the earliest known documents that lists the books of our modern day New Testament.
In the year 367, Athanasius, the Bishop of Alexandria, listed the 27 New Testament books in a letter referring to them as scripture. Later in the 4th century, Jerome translated these books into the first Latin version of the Bible, the Latin Vulgate, which began the standardization of the New Testament canon for the Western Church.
There was specific criteria for the canonization (acknowledging as sacred) of certain books:
They had to be attributed to the Apostles, or at least to their closest associates (which gave them a first person connection to Jesus).
They had to be known and used in worship and teaching throughout diverse Christian communities.
They had to be consistent with the beliefs of early Christianity.
They had to be considered to have been divinely inspired and thus the authoritative word of God.
As you can see, in this very brief overview of the history of our Bible, it is clear that it has been influenced by many religious leaders, councils and communities over a very long period of time. Most importantly, it has been touched by the grace of God, shaping the religious life, theology and practice of both Judaism and Christianity, ever since.
Luke 4: 14-21: Jesus Reads Isaiah
Now that we understand a bit about the history of the Bible, let’s look at our Gospel this morning.
Jesus is now in Galilee “full of the Holy Spirit.” Word is getting out about him, he’s got a following. He arrives in his homeland of Nazareth, goes to the synagogue on the Sabbath, and reads from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. Now remember, these are the very, very early days of the canonization of scripture and the Prophets accounts were still being worked with in worship, so the sensitivities around that which is newly founded as scripture were likely high. Picture in your mind's eye Jesus reading this passage of sacred Prophecy from Isaiah, about their anticipated Messiah:
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour."
After he finishes reading it, he rolls it up, sits down and says; "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." Essentially proclaiming himself as the fulfillment of this scripture, the fulfillment of Isaiah’s newly canonized prophetic message. He’s the one they’ve been waiting for, he’s the Messiah. Jesus emphasizes the transformative power of scripture and its fulfillment in him.
And they missed it. They couldn’t grasp it. They couldn’t see him as the Messiah. Soon after he reads this passage he was driven out of town and almost killed for blasphemy.
Here’s my take on this. These passages from Isaiah were relatively newly accepted as sacred scripture by the Jewish religious leaders of the day and here comes Jesus, a person they’ve known all his life, and he proclaims he’s the Messiah?! Not possible. Why do they think it’s not possible? Because of how they read their scripture, focusing on the words and the rules, and the prophecy as a future event, without embracing the transformative power of “experiencing” scripture. They had preconceived notions of what the Messiah was supposed to be like - a royal king and saviour, not one of them, not a simple young man from their own home town of Nazareth.
Which begs a question for us today - How do you read the Bible? Do you read the Bible in order to confirm that which you think is right or to give you the answer you want? Do you read the Bible to affirm a preconceived belief or ideology?
Unfortunately, in our world today, too many people start from their own religious or ideological position and preconceived notions and then look to scripture to justify that position. I believe they are reading the Bible in the wrong direction.
First, when we read our Bible we are never alone. When we read the Bible we are in the presence of God - the Holy Spirit is with us and in us - and we must not just read the words with our eyes but listen with our hearts to God’s direction for us and allow God’s grace to touch us. This is the true power, the transformative power of holy scripture.
Now when I read the Bible, I don’t start at the beginning of a book or chapter any more. I start with prayer. I pray for my mind to stop thinking, for my subjectivity to be set aside, for the strength to deny my preconceptions of how I think things ought to be. I pray for a quiet and silent mind and then I open the book, usually at some random spot, and begin to read, slowly. I may just read a little bit, I may read a lot, depending upon where I end up. Then I stop when it feels right to stop, and again, I pause and pray for God’s words to work within me.
When we settle ourselves and read our Bible prayerfully, we are not just reading to learn about God. We are also reading to understand ourselves and our relationship with God in this world. Reading the Bible is not a one way information delivery process. Reading the Bible is a two-way dialogue between the reader and God. We read the Bible because we seek to understand ourselves and our place and purpose in the world as Christians - not to justify it.
Jesus, when reading from Isaiah, revealed who he was to his fellow Nazarenes but they weren’t open to that transformative experience. They weren’t listening for God’s grace, they were just listening to the words with a preconceived mindset of who their Messiah is and what he would be like, and they were not open to the manifestation of the sacred experience Jesus was proclaiming.
When we come to scripture, we come as we are, in our moments in life. Maybe when we’re seeking to understand our grief, when we’ve lost or are losing, a loved one. We also come to scripture In our joys, perhaps when we celebrate the birth of a child or when we find the love of our life and unite that love in marriage. We come to scripture in all those ‘in between’ moments, those human experiences between the extremes of grief and joy.
We come to scripture, just as we come before God, yearning for understanding. Not just to understand God but, ultimately and truly, to understand ourselves. To understand ourselves as human beings in relationship with God and with one another, seeking to be loved and to give love, as transformed followers of Jesus - the one we know and accept as our Messiah.
Amen.