Listen to the Bible
(Nehemiah
8:1-12; Luke 4:14-21)
10:30 am, Sunday, Jan 27,
2013; Windsor UBC; J G White
I went to
Synagogue once. It was about 1995, in
Halifax. I wish I had a good memory for times
like that, but mostly I remember my impression of events, not the facts and
details. I do remember the Torah was
carried in, paraded in. You know what I
mean by the Torah? The scroll, the
Scripture, the Law: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.
Some Christian
traditions also do symbolic stuff with the Bible, carrying it forward, lifting
it up, the whole congregation standing when there is a reading from Matthew,
Mark, Luke or John. Some of those
ceremonies make an impression… especially if you are not accustomed to the
ritual.
Our Old
Testament story today makes an impression upon me. In the fall I drew our attention to this time
in the history of the Hebrews when they had been taken from the Holy Land into
exile, in Babylonia. Seventy years later
they got to return and rebuild. Rebuild
the city, rebuild the economy, rebuild their religion, rebuild their temple,
rebuild their Jewish society. It took a
long time. In the midst of this, the
Law, the Torah, comes to light, and, one day in about the year 444 BC, big
parts of it were read to the people. They
heard old words that were new to them.
It is a dramatic
scene, a big day. The people gather together for the written Word
of God. The Bible takes centre
stage.
All the people gathered together into the square
before the Water Gate… the priest Ezra brought the law before the
assembly, both men and women and all who could hear with understanding. (N 8:1a, 2) So they read from the book, from the law of
God, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people understood
the reading. (N8:8)
The whole Bible,
as we now have it today, belongs to no one group. It doesn’t even belong to one world religion –
ours – because the Old Testament is also Jewish scripture.
But where does
it take centre stage? Where does it draw a crowd? I don’t mean a dynamic preacher, like Graham
or Stanley or Osteen. I don’t mean a
musical performance of the Bible, like Handel’s Messiah. Simply the Bible.
For the first
time ever I attended a hockey game at the Metro Centre, last night. We were in ‘the nosebleed’ seats, at the very
top, back row V in section 40. The
Mooseheads lost. L More than ten thousand
people were in attendance. The 50/50 ticket
winner got over $16,000!
The Bible could
never draw a crowd. Could it? That is just what it did in 444 BC, in
Jerusalem. And when God brings people
together, to God’s Word, dramatic things happen. People are changed. Whole cities are changed. What would it be like if crowds from around
Hants County learned that a message from their
Creator would be shared with them? They
must not believe it is already happening.
As I read the ancient
story, I wonder how and when people seek
God’s written Word, are hungry for it.
It was the crowds who told the
scribe Ezra to bring the book of the law of Moses, which the Lord had given to
Israel. (N 8:1b) This convocation was called for by the lay people, not
organized by the priesthood. The
citizens clearly knew about the scroll, had heard it was around. They wanted to hear it! What had they been missing for several
generations?
We are seeing,
in Canada, a few generations now who do not know much of the content or the
power of this Text. Where will hunger
for this come from? There must be
glimpses given. There must be people in
the midst of them who are thrilled by the Message that’s here. There must be a bit of salt sprinkled around who
are ‘biblical’ men and women, people of the Book.
Anyone out there
enjoy lobster? I do. I like it a lot! How did I get my appetite for lobster? There was a time in my life when I had never
tasted it. I saw others enjoying it, and
longing for it, looking forward to their next lobster-boil. So, finally, I got to try it, and I liked
it! Well, even the Bible tells us to taste and see that the Lord is good;
His words are sweeter than honey. If someone sees us loving the Word, the
hunger to try it can grow.
And, when people
are hungry for a word from the Lord, they
listen intently to God’s written Word.
In Nehemiah 8 we read …and the
ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law. (N 8:3c)
Like the true hockey fans at the game last night – watching intently and
responding and cheering – the God-lovers and Bible-feasters follow closely and
deeply what is here.
Nehemiah 8
paints a picture for us. We see a moment
when people worship God, because of the
Word, and to receive the Word. That
scene from 2,450-some years ago is a great worship scene, centred on the
written-down Word of God. …and when he opened it, all the people stood
up. Then Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered,
"Amen, Amen," lifting up their hands. Then they bowed their heads and
worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground. (N 8:5b-6)
The basic ways
humans gather and worship are common throughout the millennia. Now, we Baptists here don’t get too excited –
raising our hands up, or kneeling, not to mention bowing low enough that our
faces touch the floor. When we pray we do what someone called the
Protestant slouch. And we don’t stand to
hear a reading from the Gospels, nor sing a Psalm very often. At least here we do have scripture readings;
much Baptist and evangelical worship does not even have Bible readings, save
what the preacher quotes during the sermon.
Our worship
together, centred on the Holy Bible, is something under scrutiny in our world
today. Some of the critics find what we and
other Christians do on mornings like this: boring, unimportant, outdated,
irrelevant, silly.
Here is a
worship moment… any of you recognize this?
The movie, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, is
a science-fiction comedy. In this scene,
we get a glimpse into the liturgy on a planet where the Deity sneezed the
universe into existence, and the believers await the coming of a Great
Handkerchief.
The Handkerchief is coming, beloved; let us pray the
Almighty will exhale a breath of compassion on us all.
(Leader and congregation breathe in and face upwards.)
Almighty Arkelseizure, we lift our noses, clogged and
unblown, in reverence to You. Send the
Handkerchief, O Blessed One, so that it may wipe us clean. We ask this, and all things, in Thy precious
and alliterative Name.
(The whole
congregation sneezes.) Achoo!
Bless you. (Douglas Adams)
The criticisms of
our worship and scripture can teach us. Hopefully,
we can laugh at ourselves, become humble, and learn to see what others see when
we sing and pray and preach, in real life.
When our singing and praying and preaching becomes about our real life –
God be praised – we know grace.
We visited that
scene in the Synagogue of Nazareth when Jesus was handed a scroll to read from
– the scroll of Isaiah. He read a text
he selected, and then commented on it. “You’ve just heard Scripture make history.
It came true just now in this place.” (L 4:21) Have you ever heard the
Bible read, and known, in your bones, that the words were alive, real, coming
true? It happens again and again, in the
simplest of ways.
I never shall
forget a little service at the end of a seminar in Kentville hospital, a
seminar on dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
All day had been about folk who are forgetting and loosing themselves,
wandering and shuffling around. Rev. Don
Jackson was there, part of the presentation, in a secondary stage of Alzheimer’s
himself. Then we heard these words from John 21, where the resurrected Jesus
Christ says to disciple Peter:
Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you
used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow
old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt
around you and take you where you do not wish to go." (J 21:18)
That strange
little verse spoke out to us in a new way.
The written Word of God is life-giving to people who
listen. Many
people have this feeling that the Bible condemns them. “Why read more or have it preached at me if
it will give me guilt and shame?” Yet it
is the Word of life!
When those folk,
rebuilding their lives in Jerusalem in 444 BC, heard what the Law of God said,
it must have hit them like a heavy weight, a mighty rulebook, a description of
their failures. No wonder they
wept. But now at least they knew. And it was all there, on the scrolls, to
describe their very special life and mission with Almighty God. One thing it prescribed was a festival they
were to celebrate, that very month, honouring God’s journey with their
ancestors.
So the Levites stilled all the people, saying,
"Be quiet, for this day is holy; do not be grieved." And all the
people went their way to eat and drink and to send portions and to make great
rejoicing, because they had understood the words that were declared to them. (N 8:11-12)
To understand is
to know what you can do now. Do you say:
Prayer changes things? Can we also say
the Bible changes things? Changes
attitudes, changes behaviors, changes people’s health, changes our work,
changes our pleasure, changes our plans, changes our relationships? The Word changes things.
Many of us do
not need to know more of the
Bible. As someone has said, we believers
are fat on the Word; but we are famished when it comes to living it. What we need is to do more of what we already know, from scripture. I plan to begin a small group study in
February based on a DVD of Dallas Willard and John Ortberg. (No one has signed up yet!) The teaching is
from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Do
what the Master says. We know much of
what Jesus teaches. Do it. What’s the concluding statement of Christ’s
sermon? "Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on
them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the
floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall,
because it had been founded on rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine
and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house
on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat
against that house, and it fell—and great was its fall!" (Mtt 7:24-27) Many believe, but do not act.
We listen to the
Word that comes from God. Many of us
have so much Bible in here [our brains] already. Romans 10:8 quotes Deut. 30:14 when it says, The word is near you, on your lips and in
your heart"… Listen to what you
already have.
Act upon what
you now know. To remember is not enough. To know is not enough. To learn
is not enough. To understand is not enough. To value
the message highly is not enough. To believe it is not enough. To defend
the authority of the Word is not enough.
Act on the Word. Do
it.
One – step – at
– a – time, our lives get built, by God.
This is amazing! Listen and
do. Hear and act.
This is cause for joy and
celebration!
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