The Bible as Idol
Exodus 20: 4, 2 Corinthians 4:7
A
Sermon Preached by
University
Congregational United
Christians may not have all the answers to all the world’s questions, but we sure have a great story.
This morning we have been giving copies of that great story to our 3 year olds and 1st graders. And shortly, our families of 6th graders will be giving Bibles to their children.
But before we did that, I wanted to pause and share with you a short story of why the Bible is important to me. My story begins with a death and ends with a rebirth. And it is that story of death and resurrection that the Bible is all about.
Let us pray.
Word beyond all words. May only your word be spoken.
May only your word be heard. Amen.
When I was 11 years old, God died. It happened early one morning when I woke to the press of the mattress as my mother sat down on the edge of my bed and said, “Grammie died.”
Although I knew my grandmother was not God, my grandmother was the center of our family’s life. She, like my parents, kept me safe from harm, protected me from suffering and hurt, patched up my skinned needs, made most all things better and understandable. In many ways, my grandmother, like my parents, was my first image of God.
It is very important to have such an image of God instilled in little children, a God who like all loving parents I know, wants more than anything to keep their children safe from all harm.
But then, sometime around 11, or maybe it is a little before or a little after, something happens. A door closes and that image of God as protecting parent dies. Maybe it is when someone in your family dies, or your friend gets cancer. Maybe it when you are abused sexually or physically. Maybe it is when your parents tell you they are getting a divorce. It can happen when a tsunami or earthquake or flood shakes up your home and world. It can happen quietly or in a loud roar. But a door closes on childhood and a new door is opened.
I read once that most adults today have the faith of 13 year olds. That is, most of us have had an experience that has rocked our world as children, and our image of God has all- protecting parent has died. But we don’t know how to get a new relationship with a God big enough to meet and transform the pain in us.
Not knowing what to do, we fall back on blaming the God who died.
“Why weren’t you there?” “Why couldn’t you keep me safe?”
Not knowing how else to believe, we fall into disbelief or despair. “I no longer believe in God”.
Longing for what we have lost, we cling to the Bible like a substitute parent, saying if only you cling to this Word and believe and do everything in it everything will be alright with you and God. Many of us so-called liberal Christians have gotten very judgmental about Christians who use the Bible that way and we’ve settled instead for not learning what the Bible says.
There has to be another way.
Another way to find a God big enough to believe in when all hell breaks loose and our first image of God dies. We need to be able to find in scripture not a dead word, making of it an idol, a substitute parent, but find in it instead a Living Word that calls us into relationship with a God who can raise the dead.
A few years after my grandmother died, I read the end of the Gospel of Mark. Jesus has been killed and the women come to the tomb to anoint his body. There they are met with an angel who says, “Don’t be afraid. I know you are looking for Jesus, the one they nailed on the cross. He’s been raised up, he’s here no longer. You can see for yourselves, that the place is empty.
I had heard this story many times before but I never really “got it” before that day I read it. I got it that there was another image of God than the idealized parent who would keep me from all harm. This was the image of the God who suffers, a God who dies, a God of resurrection. And I got it that day that this God loves me, loves me more than I can ever know. And this God of resurrection needs me, needs me to play my part in pointing towards this God who brings life out of death. A God I have come to know and love in the face of Jesus who wants to be in relationship with us and transform our lives so we can become the people we are meant to be.
The God of resurrection, who brings life out of death, is a God much more powerful than most of us liberal Christians want to believe in.
The God of resurrection, who makes new paths out of what looked like dead ends, is a much more demanding God who may ask more than we liberal Christians want to give.
No, the God of resurrection is not an easy God, but a God who calls us right into places of suffering, hurt, pain and death. A God who says, “I am there with you.” And a God who beyond any control or will of our own can and does turn such dead end places into places of new life.
I believe this because I’ve seen resurrection; I’ve experienced resurrection.
But to experience resurrection, you first have to die.
You have to die to something.
Maybe it is a way of being in the world.
Maybe it is admitting you are an addict or alcoholic.
Maybe it is admitting that you have been lying and pretending to be someone you are not.
To experience resurrection, you have to die.
Which means you have to tell and face the truth.
It happened for me on a February night in 1988 when I was 26 years old.
On that stormy night, I called my parents and told them I was gay.
All hell broke loose that night and I told my parents I would fly home to see them.
On the flight home, I prayed that the plane would crash.
I couldn’t imagine facing them, seeing them.
I couldn’t imagine that anything good would come out of this time.
We had a very hard visit. Nothing was solved. Everything was not made all better. But on the plane ride home, I felt alive. More alive than I had ever felt before. I felt reborn.
Out of this place of shame, hiding and fear, I spoke the truth. I stopped lying and pretending to myself and others about who I was.
I found myself right there at the end of the Gospel of Mark, freed from the tomb the women had come to visit. Raised from the dead, as Jesus had been raised from the dead.
Several years after this visit, my parents too came to terms with what had taken me years to come to terms with. They accepted me for who I am. They too experienced a resurrection. They too experienced a dying to the old way of life as they had planned and thought and a rising to a new and richer life and relationship with me and I with them. A relationship born anew by dying to the false and old.
I hope for our kids and for all of us that we might risk believing in a God of resurrection. A God who will call us into scary places of telling the truth, speaking up, standing out, being afraid, but who will transform our stuck places into wide open places, dead end lives in lives of new promise.
The funny thing is that now having experienced and been called into relationship with the God of resurrection, I come back again to the image of God as parent. But a different kind of parent. Not one that can keep me from all harm but one who suffers with and can and desires to bring life where there was only death.
Our scripture invites us into a living relationship with this God of suffering and death and resurrection.
A God who led slaves from Egypt into freedom;
A home to Naomi and Ruth who had no home;
A God who brought Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego and Daniel safely through the fiery furnace;
A God who raised Jesus from the dead;
A God who raised the disciple Peter from fallen friend to the first leader of the church.
A God who raised me to new life.
A God who calls you and me to die and let go again and again so God’s work of resurrection may transform us and raise us into the people we are meant to be.
Resurrection happened, and it happens again and again for me.
And I believe, if it has not already, it shall happen for you.
Amen.