Creekside Church Sermon of April 13, 1997 "Trusted and True " Luke 24:36B-48	Rev. David Bibbee
Send this sermon to a friend

Once there was a man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among thorns, and the thorns sprang up and choked him. And he went on, and he didn't have any money, and he met the Queen of Sheba, and she gave him one thousand talents of gold and one hundred changes of rainment. He got into a chariot and drove furiously and when he was driving under a big Juniper tree, his hair got caught on a limb, and he hung there many days, and ravens brought him food to eat and water to drink, and he ate five thousand loaves of bread and two fish. One night when he was hanging there asleep, his wife, Delilah came along and cut off his hair, and he dropped, and fell on stony ground. But he got up and went on, and it began to rain, and it rained forty days and nights, and he hid himself in a cave and lived on locust and wild honey.

Then he went on until he met a servant who said, "Come, take supper at my house!" And he made an excuse and said, "No, I won't. I have married a wife and I can't go!" And the servant went out on the highway and in the hedges and compelled him to come in. After supper he went down to Jericho. When he got there he looked up and saw old Queen Jezebel sitting up high in a window. She laughed at him, and he said, "Throw her down from up there!" And they threw her down. And he said, "Throw her down again!" And they threw her down...seventy times seven, and of the fragments that remained, they picked up twelve baskets full, besides women and children, and they said, "Blessed are the peacemakers." Now whose wife do you think she will be on the judgment day?

To fully appreciate the humor of this parable, you need to recognize it as a patchwork of scripture fragments from throughout the Bible. It speaks to the problems we have of taking a story here, a verse there, a parable over there and trying to make a coherent message of it. That's why it's important to stop and ask how the Bible is the word of God, how it should and shouldn't be read.

The Bible is our source book; the story of where we're from, how we should live, and where the future is taking us. Take the Bible away and there is no compass, no knowledge of God or Jesus, and no basis for being the church.

There is no argument that the Bible holds a sacred, central, authoritative place. In the Church of the Brethren we say the Bible is our "infallible rule of faith and practice." Yet historically, whenever there has been a conflict in the church, it usually comes down to arguments over the authority and interpretation of scripture, especially around the question, "Is the Bible true?" Fundamentalist Christians say the Bible is the inerrant, infallible word of God down to every dotted i and crossed t. "EVERYTHING the Bible says, I believe and that settles it," they say. They pull out proof texts to show they are right and you are wrong. At the other end are those who say the Bible is a historically conditioned book of experiences and beliefs of people whose perceptions are different from ours, and therefore we can't always say with certainty how a particular text is authoritative in our time. How we answer the question, "Is the Bible true?" is crucial, and the answer isn't on either extreme, but somewhere in the middle. Taking the Bible seriously and understanding its truth is not easy. And we are not the first for whom it was a challenge.

You just heard Luke's story of the risen Christ appearing to his frightened disciples. He says they "disbelieved for joy." Too good to be true. Then after a fish dinner, he told how he was the fulfillment of the law, the prophets, and the psalms, the Bible of their day. He opened their minds to the scriptures.

To understand the scriptures. To open our minds to their meaning. That's why you come here. You are not interested in the preachers pet ideas. You want to know, "Is there a word from the Lord?" To understand it is a tall order because it doesn't read like a novel. It's one book made up of sixty-six books written by different people from different times with different perspectives to different audiences for different purposes. Try to read it from cover to cover without an awareness of its complexity, and you'll probably run out of gas somewhere in the middle of Exodus.

We can confidently claim the Bible is God's word and is trustworthy and true, but to appreciate what this means, let's look at truth from other types of literature.

At one of our church board retreats Father Bill Simmons said, "I'm going to tell you lots of stories that are all true...and some of them actually happened." We love to tell and hear stories because we love surprise endings, new slants on things, and resolutions we can learn from and delight in. And the truth contained in a story is bigger than mere facts.

When you go to the bookstore and pull a biography of Winston Churchill from the stacks, you trust that the author didn't simply make up stories about Churchill. You trust the stories as fact, not fraud. Next you go to the novels. When you read Huckleberry Finn, you're reading the product of Mark Twain's imagination. It really didn't happen. Because it is not factual, would you say that Twain wrote a lie? Of course not. Jim Brown likes to read westerns by Louis L'Amour. Louis L'Amour gives an accurate historical backdrop to his stories, but the characters are imaginary. We judge the truth of different styles of writing by different standards.

I began this sermon, "Once upon a time..." and you knew a story coming. If I say, "How do I love thee, let me count the ways..." you expect a poem. If I say, "Did you hear about the pastor, the priest, and rabbi playing golf?", you know a joke is coming. If I tell you about the big a fish I caught, you know it's a lie. The truth of something is a function of how it is told.

In the Bible there are very different literary styles. The Psalms are different from the parables. The prophetic works are different from the gospels and epistles and apocalyptic books like Daniel and Revelation. For example, is the creation story in Genesis true? It all depends. If you mean true from a scientific perspective, probably not. There is a big difference between the creation of the earth in six days and a process taking billions of years. If you interpret Genesis from a factual, scientific mindset, you're forcing it to say what it is not saying. Genesis isn't trying to say HOW the world was made but WHY and BY WHOM, or as someone put it, "Genesis may not be historically true, but it is eternally true."

Jesus taught by parables. Did his parables always correspond to actual events? Is the truth of the prodigal son parable to be found by going back through the withdrawal records of the Kosher Federal Bank to see how much the prodigal's portion of the inheritance amounted to? Jesus told the parable to tell us the truth about the Father God who longingly, and lovingly waits for his lost, rebellious, whipped by the world children to come home.

Compare the resurrection stories from each of the four gospels and you will see major differences. They don't agree on several details. But Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, were not as concerned as we are today with getting the fine details and chronologies precise. Years later the church didn't try to reconcile the differences because they weren't trying to prove the resurrection. They wrote to tell it. He lives. He appeared to his disciples. He broke bread with them. He opened their minds to the scriptures. Through the Holy Spirit the frightened little band became brave and bold and told the world Christ lives and the future is his and life eternal belongs to all who give their lives to him.

If you don't understand how the Bible reveals truth, you may miss the truth. We can get so caught up with what's on the surface that we never get to the meaning underneath. I found a helpful image that describes the way the Bible speaks to us. Someone said, "If you look at a window you will see fly specks, dust, and the crack where Junior's Frisbee hit it. If you look through the window you will see the world beyond." We sang this very message in our last hymn. "Beyond the sacred page, I seek thee Lord." We don't stop with the words on the page of the Bible. The page is a window through which we seek the One to whom all scripture points.

William Placher gives another wonderful image. He says the Bible is like a trusted friend. When a friend you intimately know and trust tells you a joke, you know it's a joke. You recognize when he's exaggerating or embellishing an incident. You know that when he tells you something very important, you should listen because he won't lead you the wrong way. You know when and when not to take him literally. In the same way, the Bible is a trusted friend. Sometimes the truth won't be readily apparent, but we can trust it nevertheless because in its different ways it always leads us back to God, and when we allow our lives to be shaped on God's terms, we will not be disappointed.

A major decision we all must make is what version of reality we are going to live by. Which one will help us make sense of the world and help deal with the strains and struggles we face? I remember a conversation with a mother who was distressed over what was happening to her child. For years she had ridden an emotional roller coaster, helplessly looking on as her child repeatedly was involved in self-destructive behaviors. Every option, every therapy, every intervention had been tried, and yet the pattern persisted.

"How do you make it through each episode? Where is your inspiration?" I asked. "I think of Mary, Jesus' mother." "My son came through me, but he doesn't belong to me." Mary knew what that was like. When Jesus was twelve and became lost, they found him in the temple, and when she expressed her concern he said, "I must be about my Father's business." "Has a sword pierced your soul like Simeon told Mary?" "Many times. And when I can do nothing else, I can always pray for my child. I think of what it must have been like for Mary to let Jesus go. I think of her trust in God and realize that beyond the point where I can do no more, God holds my child." The truth of the Bible became truth for this mother. It was a foundation to hold fast to.

In our gospel lesson, we find the disciples hiding, afraid of what awaited them now that they were without Jesus. Then he comes to them. Shows them his wounds. Eats a meal with them. Opens their mind to the scriptures. Charges them to spread the word. And this still happens. When you come to the Bible with open minds and searching hearts and serious study, the truth comes over you. Scared disciples become strong. A mother receives strength and hope to face an agonizing situation.

The Bible says that ever since God's good creation was broken back in Eden, He's been working to put it back together. That's what all the stories of the Bible are ultimately about. The story of the world is the same old story. Violence, hatred, brokenness, murder, racism, war, all with no end in sight. The story the Bible tells us is how God in Christ is in work to mend all this and reclaim His lost world. The story the Bible tells is how, despite the difficulties of life and our partial understandings, we can be found and can find a way.

Is the Bible true? Does Jesus continue to open our minds to its meaning? I found verses in a hymn which offer an answer:
Lord, you sometimes speak in wonders,
Lord, you sometimes speak in whispers,
Lord, you sometimes speak in silence,
Lord, you surely speak in scripture--
Lord, you always speak in Jesus.

Thanks to William Placher for his article "Trusting Scripture," which appeared in the October 11, 1995 issue of The Christian Century.

All of the sermons that have appeared in text form on our Web Site since August 1996 are available here in the On-Line version. Use the search engine below to find the sermon you want. You may search by date, sermon title, or content. The sermons are full-text searchable.

Sermon Search:



Exact phrase    All words (AND)    Any word (OR)

Top of Page