Bible Sunday 2008
Service Date:
26 October, 2008
Matthew 22:34-46
When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?' He said to him, ‘ "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind." This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: "You shall love your neighbour as yourself." On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.'
Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them this question: ‘What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?' They said to him, ‘The son of David.' He said to them, ‘How is it then that David by the Spirit calls him Lord, saying,
"The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand,
until I put your enemies under your feet' "?
If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?' No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.
A: That's why I hate Bible study!
S: What do you hate about it?
A: Well, it's always clever people arguing over what this or that passage means. And they always seem to get so het up about it, but I don't know which side is right or why! Sometimes I don't even understand the question, let alone what the answer is. And I just feel left out of the whole conversation.
S: I see what you mean. No one wants to come to Bible study to be made to feel confused.
A: But I feel I should know my Bible, so I feel guilty too!
S: Of course, not every question has a knock-down answer. That really surprised me when I started studying the Bible at college! I thought someone would point me to the big book of answers in some library, and then I'd read all the answers and get them by heart and I'd be able to tell everyone at church. But it doesn't work like that.
A: What do you mean? Don't ministers know all the answers? You've studied the Bible long enough, surely - 7 years, wasn't it?
S: 8 years, actually. But no. I discovered there are no big books of answers. Many scholars have written many books about what the Bible means -
A: I believe you about that!
S: - but in the end everyone has to ask their own questions and then work out what answers make sense for them. That's what Jesus is doing in this reading when he's asked about the most important law. Lots of Jewish teachers in his time were asked the same question. I like Hillel's answer myself -
A: Who was Hillel when he was at home?
S: See? You can ask good questions too! Hillel was one of the most famous Jewish teachers of the day. Someone who wasn't Jewish came up and asked him to explain the whole Jewish law, the Torah, while he stood on one leg.
A: That's a bit cheeky, isn't it? If he was that famous?
S: Hillel showed what a good teacher he was, because he took the question seriously, just like in this passage Jesus is taking the lawyer seriously, whether or not he meant to show Jesus up.
A: So what was Hillel's answer, then? Did he manage to balance on one leg long enough to give it?
S: Easily! He said, ‘What is hateful to you, don't do to your neighbour.' Not so different from loving your neighbour as yourself.
A: I like that answer. But I'd never heard of Hillel before you mentioned him just now. So I still need experts like you to tell me about the Bible.
S: Now I've told you about Hillel, you can tell other people. That's the only way I learned! But there's another thing: it's not only experts who can ask good questions. Look at Jesus in our passage. He'll have read his Bible, but he's not an expert like the lawyer. But he can still stop the experts in their tracks, by asking a question no one had ever thought to ask before. And that's when even the experts can learn more - if they're willing to admit they don't know all the answers. It's a shame no one dared to ask Jesus more questions for fear of looking stupid. Just think what we could have found out about the Bible if they had done!
A: So asking questions is as important as knowing answers?
S: Asking good questions is much more important.
A: But what are good questions?
When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?' He said to him, ‘ "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind." This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: "You shall love your neighbour as yourself." On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.'
Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them this question: ‘What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?' They said to him, ‘The son of David.' He said to them, ‘How is it then that David by the Spirit calls him Lord, saying,
"The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand,
until I put your enemies under your feet' "?
If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?' No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.
A: That's why I hate Bible study!
S: What do you hate about it?
A: Well, it's always clever people arguing over what this or that passage means. And they always seem to get so het up about it, but I don't know which side is right or why! Sometimes I don't even understand the question, let alone what the answer is. And I just feel left out of the whole conversation.
S: I see what you mean. No one wants to come to Bible study to be made to feel confused.
A: But I feel I should know my Bible, so I feel guilty too!
S: Of course, not every question has a knock-down answer. That really surprised me when I started studying the Bible at college! I thought someone would point me to the big book of answers in some library, and then I'd read all the answers and get them by heart and I'd be able to tell everyone at church. But it doesn't work like that.
A: What do you mean? Don't ministers know all the answers? You've studied the Bible long enough, surely - 7 years, wasn't it?
S: 8 years, actually. But no. I discovered there are no big books of answers. Many scholars have written many books about what the Bible means -
A: I believe you about that!
S: - but in the end everyone has to ask their own questions and then work out what answers make sense for them. That's what Jesus is doing in this reading when he's asked about the most important law. Lots of Jewish teachers in his time were asked the same question. I like Hillel's answer myself -
A: Who was Hillel when he was at home?
S: See? You can ask good questions too! Hillel was one of the most famous Jewish teachers of the day. Someone who wasn't Jewish came up and asked him to explain the whole Jewish law, the Torah, while he stood on one leg.
A: That's a bit cheeky, isn't it? If he was that famous?
S: Hillel showed what a good teacher he was, because he took the question seriously, just like in this passage Jesus is taking the lawyer seriously, whether or not he meant to show Jesus up.
A: So what was Hillel's answer, then? Did he manage to balance on one leg long enough to give it?
S: Easily! He said, ‘What is hateful to you, don't do to your neighbour.' Not so different from loving your neighbour as yourself.
A: I like that answer. But I'd never heard of Hillel before you mentioned him just now. So I still need experts like you to tell me about the Bible.
S: Now I've told you about Hillel, you can tell other people. That's the only way I learned! But there's another thing: it's not only experts who can ask good questions. Look at Jesus in our passage. He'll have read his Bible, but he's not an expert like the lawyer. But he can still stop the experts in their tracks, by asking a question no one had ever thought to ask before. And that's when even the experts can learn more - if they're willing to admit they don't know all the answers. It's a shame no one dared to ask Jesus more questions for fear of looking stupid. Just think what we could have found out about the Bible if they had done!
A: So asking questions is as important as knowing answers?
S: Asking good questions is much more important.
A: But what are good questions?
Hymns:
R&S 532 was first published by the author Jack Winslow, a school chaplain, in his collection of poems A Garland of Verse in 1961. The tune Slane was first found in Patrick W. Joyce's Old Irish Folk Music and Songs of 1909, to the words ‘With my love on the road'. R&S 321 comes from the Adult School Movement, its author being for many years an Adult School lecturer, and was first printed in 1920. The tune Capel is another old folk melody, this time from England, and noted by Miss Lucy Broadwood in 1893 from some gypsies at Capel, a village near Dorking, set to the words ‘King Pharim sat a-musing'.
R&S 669 is a paraphrase of Psalm 1 by Erik Routley, written to accompany a Thai language version which appeared to the Thai melody, Sri Lampang, in Cantate Domino of 1974. Lampang is a town and province in NW Thailand; Sri means ‘majestic, splendid'.
R&S 318 by George Caird, then minister of Highgate Congregational Church, and subsequently Principal of Mansfield College, Oxford, incorporates (according to the Companion to Rejoice and Sing) no less than 17 distinct biblical quotations into the hymn. The tune Cornwall by S.S. Wesley was originally associated with the words ‘O love divine, how sweet thou art'.
R&S 319 was written in 1954 for the 150th anniversary of the British and Foreign Bible Society. The tune Regent Square, first printed in 1866, was named after Regent Square Presbyterian Church in London (recently renamed Lumos).
Sermon:
Leviticus 19:1-18The Lord spoke to Moses, saying:
Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them: You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy. You shall each revere your mother and father, and you shall keep my sabbaths: I am the Lord your God. Do not turn to idols or make cast images for yourselves: I am the Lord your God.
When you offer a sacrifice of well-being to the Lord, offer it in such a way that it is acceptable in your behalf. It shall be eaten on the same day you offer it, or on the next day; and anything left over until the third day shall be consumed in fire. If it is eaten at all on the third day, it is an abomination; it will not be acceptable. All who eat it shall be subject to punishment, because they have profaned what is holy to the Lord; and any such person shall be cut off from the people.
When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. 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.
You shall not steal; you shall not deal falsely; and you shall not lie to one another. And you shall not swear falsely by my name, profaning the name of your God: I am the Lord.
You shall not defraud your neighbour; you shall not steal; and you shall not keep for yourself the wages of a labourer until morning. You shall not revile the deaf or put a stumbling-block before the blind; you shall fear your God: I am the Lord.
You shall not render an unjust judgement; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbour. You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not profit by the blood of your neighbour: I am the Lord.
You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbour, or you will incur guilt yourself. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbour as yourself: I am the Lord.
J: You've not answered that question Aileen asked you, Sarah - what are good questions to ask in Bible study? Can you get them out of a book?
S: I don't want to give anyone the impression that you can't get any good out of books when you study the Bible. Books can give you lots of information about the history or culture of the Bible. They can give you ideas about how other people might approach a passage. But really it's down to you to ask good questions.
J: Which are...
S: I suppose there are two sorts of good question. You start off with ‘What does this mean?' And you go on to ‘So what?'
J: Can I pin you down here, Sarah. If we were looking at this passage of Leviticus...
S: That's a good idea. Let's look at this passage of Leviticus. It's chapter 19, everyone, verses 1-18.
J: You mean, do a real bit of Bible study here and now?
S: Why not?
J: Well, I suppose I have got one or two questions...
S: Fire away!
J: That's quite appropriate, really. This business about offering a sacrifice of well-being. To start with if you've sacrificed it, how come you're eating it? Do you grab it back from the priests?
S: It's a bit like our harvest festival. You offer what you have to God, and then you eat it, though the priests would certainly get their share, as they've not got land to grow crops themselves.
J: But what about burning any leftovers on the third day? Is that some sort of biblical health & safety regulations?
S: That intrigued me too. I looked it up in my commentaries, but the only thing I found was a guess that the time limit stopped people cluttering up the sanctuary for too long.
J: Doesn't sound too likely to me.
S: I agree - I'd need to dig deeper to find out more.
J: But Sarah, that's one reason why Bible study doesn't always grab me. If we did find out why the regulations are there, would it make any difference to the way we live our lives?
S: Aha - now you're asking the second sort of question: So what? And without that question, Bible study's useless.
J: That's a strong statement. Give me an example!
S: Well, you'll have noticed that some of this passage echoes the themes of the Ten Commandments.
J: I hadn't, actually, but now you mention it... so what?
S: You can look back at my sermon on the website to see what I made of the Ten Commandments a few weeks ago. Just now I'm more interested in the bits in this passage that don't tie in with the Ten Commandments. Like gleaning.
J: Sarah, you reminded us at harvest that we're not a farming congregation. What's gleaning got to do with us in 21st century Sheffield?
S: Well, I think our Friday breakfasts have a lot to do with leaving fields unharvested at the edges, or leaving a few grapes on the vine, so that people with no land or work could glean the leftovers.
J: Oh. You mean, we've got plenty of food ourselves - so we can easily offer a weekly fry-up for people who have little or nothing to eat?
S: Precisely! You see, you can make connections between now and then with the best of them.
J: And what about not keeping a labourer's wages until the morning? Is that because they earn so little they need it paid daily, not kept back by the employer so he can earn more interest on it? Sounds a little like minimum wage legislation.
S: Now you come to mention it, there was a URC directive recently from General Assembly asking churches to check they were paying their staff more than the minimum wage. And I'm glad to say our cleaner, who does an excellent job, does indeed get more than the bare minimum. We've done our Bible study!
J: I've noticed something else, too. That bit about loving your neighbour as yourself... we've just heard it from Jesus' mouth.
S: Well spotted! He knew his Bible, all right. And he didn't just know it in theory, to be able to take a test on what Leviticus says. He loved his neighbour enough to comfort those who thought they'd be outside the law forever, as well as challenging those who thought they knew God's law backwards and inside out. That's what took him to the cross.
1 Thessalonians 2:1-8
You yourselves know, brothers and sisters, that our coming to you was not in vain, but though we had already suffered and been shamefully maltreated at Philippi, as you know, we had courage in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in spite of great opposition. For our appeal does not spring from deceit or impure motives or trickery, but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the message of the gospel, even so we speak, not to please mortals, but to please God who tests our hearts. As you know and as God is our witness, we never came with words of flattery or with a pretext for greed; nor did we seek praise from mortals, whether from you or from others, though we might have made demands as apostles of Christ. But we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children. So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.
R: It's all very well, Sarah, to be talking about starter packs and minimum wages, but is it really Bible study? Surely for it to be Bible study, the discussion needs to have a spiritual dimension?
S: I'd argue that homes for the homeless and justice for the poor are deeply spiritual topics. I can give you chapter and verse! But I know what you mean. It's all too easy for activists to take a quick look at the Bible and rush off to do good things rather than getting into the habit of regular Bible reading.
R: Now you're talking. But I wonder how many of us in this church do actually read the Bible on a regular basis. Whether it's lack of time, or whether people think they don't know enough to read it -
S: I hope people realise now that the only way to know more about the Bible is to ask questions about it - and I'm certainly happy to try to answer any questions people want to ask me!
R: But that's not the whole of it, either. What I want is for people to realise they'll actually get something out of reading their Bibles. Look at this Paul fellow, for example, writing to Thessalonica. Chapter 1, verses 2 to 8. He's talking about spreading the message of the gospel, isn't he?
S: It says in verse 8, ‘So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.'
R: So he's got to know them through sharing the Gospel with them. And it sounds as though he's been very supportive to them.
S: That's his impression, anyway - though I'd love to hear what the Thessalonians thought of him!
R: Be that as it may, he says in his dealings with the church, he was like a nurse looking after her children. Not fierce and argumentative the way Paul sometimes is!
S: And your point is?
R: Well, if we're to read the Bible with one another, it's only going to work if we copy Paul and do it with love. Not blethering on for hours if we think we know what it's about. Not shutting up because we think we haven't got anything to contribute. Respecting each other, even sharing our lives with each other.
S: You do realise that people may not feel happy about sharing their lives in Bible study?
R: Why ever not? Most of us have known one another for years. We're happy talking to each other in a social setting. Why not in a Bible study group?
S: It can be a scary thing to do. There's always the danger that someone will rubbish your ideas, or tell you that you're not a proper Christian if you don't agree with them.
R: I think you're being too pessimistic, Sarah. We're not the sort of congregation to tear one another apart, for goodness sake!
S: I agree with you - but it may not be easy to speak up if you've had bad experiences in school or in Bible study in the past.
R: According to this reading, Paul was maltreated at Philippi, but he still had the courage to share the gospel with the church at Thessalonica, and his own life too. Maybe we in St Andrew's should have the courage to try sharing our insights about life and the Bible with one another.
S: That way at least we won't end up like the people who didn't dare to ask Jesus any questions, because they didn't want to look stupid, so they missed out on his wisdom!
Leviticus 19:1-18; Ps1; Matthew 22:34-46; 1 Thess alonians 2:1-8
When I was a child, I didn't know anything about the Bible. I was brought up on stories, especially because we didn't have a TV. Myths and legends of Greece and Rome - cleaned up for children to read - fairy stories, folktales, all the good children's classics of the day, but not the Bible. My parents had gone through Sunday school and church, and decided that sort of thing wasn't for them. So it wasn't for me either. We sang hymns at school and carols at Christmas, we heard Bible readings at assembly, so some of it got through. But when I came to the Bible itself, I was in my late teens, having encountered God unexpectedly and trying to make sense of it all by reading my newly acquired Bible.
I remember feeling really daunted - how would I ever understand all this mixture of stories and poetry and history and laws and letters? I envied people who had been churchgoers all their lives, who had been brought up through Sunday school to say lots of Bible verses off by heart, who knew how all the stories went and where they connected to one another.
What did I gain from starting to read the Bible as a new convert? The letters showed me there were others wrestling with how to be Christian. The poetry of the Psalms spoke to my own emotions. And gradually the stories of Jesus and the stories about Jesus made me more and more determined to follow him, and to look for him everywhere in my life, in friend and in stranger.
When I came to look at how people in churches study the Bible,
I found people get many different things out of it. Some people love finding out new information - they're good at asking the What does it mean? questions. Some people love making connections between the Bible and our lives now, to find out what God may be doing in our world today - they're good at asking the So what? kind of questions. And some people read the Bible to come closer to God, to become people of character who love God and neighbour and self through the way they live their lives - and we all need them if we're to have good study with one another, and not bore or hurt each other.
And the good news is that we can gain all these things from the Bible, and more. It's a family resource for us, a conversation between people and God which can give us hints about who we are, where we came from, where we're going. Like any family story, some of it is gruesome, some is boring and some doesn't make sense until we know the background. Not all of it is something I'm proud of. But it's our book. So whether we've been churchgoers since Sunday school - where we're now retelling the stories for the next generation - or whether we're just starting out on the Christian life, I urge you: open that book and get into that conversation. For as our psalm tells us, meditating on God's law, and indeed studying the whole Bible, especially with one another, will quench our spiritual thirst and root us in God.
