It is comforting to realize
that Jesus’ disciples didn’t always understand what he was talking about. In
fact, according to the gospel of Mark, the disciples weren’t really the
brightest crayons in the pack. This morning’s text is a perfect example. When
this story takes place, Jesus has just fed four thousand people with seven
loaves of bread and a couple of fish. The disciples are now in a boat with him
travelling to the other side of the Sea of Galilee (Mark 8:14-21). On the way,
Jesus warns them to “Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod.”
But the disciples don’t understand what he means. They think that Jesus is
taking them to task because they didn’t bring along any lunch! They don’t
understand that Jesus is contrasting the power of God that just nourished so
many people with the oppressive power of the authorities of their day. Even when he tries to point them in the right
direction, they don’t get it. “Do you still not understand?” he finally asks in
frustration.
“Do you still not
understand?” It is a question that Jesus could very well ask us today. Even
people who have grown up in a Christian household and attended church all their
lives sometimes misunderstand Jesus’ message. In fact, that message is
sometimes garbled beyond recognition! Often, that confusion is because people don’t
understand the Bible. Lots of people think that it’s a book of rules that God
insists that we follow; when in reality, it is a collection of writings that
proclaim God’s love and power of liberation to all kinds of people and in all
sorts of situations, with Jesus as the climax of the story. I have to wonder
how many people these days even read the Bible. Lots of people don’t. Others
just read the parts that they like – maybe the 23rd Psalm and some
of Luke’s parables. Now, I’m not trying to beat up anybody up. We all read the
parts that we like. Some of us even have those parts memorized. (I know that I
do!) And that’s wonderful, because we can pull up those verses at the moment
that we need them! But the Bible is there to do many things: to comfort us, to
inspire us, to challenge us, and sometimes even to criticize us! And to let it
do its job fully, we have to know something about it. So this morning, I’m
going to suggest some important things that we need to remember about the Bible
if we’re going to understand it.
First of all, the Bible was
written by lots of different people over the span of about 1,000 years. That’s
a long time! The earliest book was probably written in the time of King David;
and the latest was probably written in about 100 AD. That means that even the
most recent book was written almost 2,000 years ago, and the oldest another
thousand years before that. In addition, the Bible was written in cultures that
are very unfamiliar to us. Think about the ways that we are different from our
biblical brothers and sisters. We aren’t a nation of farmers and shepherds like
Old Testament people were, scratching out a living within sight of a fortified
city where we take cover when the neighboring kingdom decides to attack. And we
don’t live under the boot of an imperial power like Rome in which only 10% of
the people have any rights. Most of us don’t really understand the times that
gave birth to our scriptures.
Making the issue even more
confusing is that different books of the Bible were written in very different
situations. Some of the scriptures were written when Israel and Judah were
independent nations ruled by kings, others were written during the Babylonian
Exile when the Israelites were prisoners in another nation, and some were written
when Rome was their imperial overlord. That’s why different books of the Bible
are written from different points of view. God’s concern for his people is
expressed in a way appropriate for the time in which it was written. The book
of Joshua, for example, takes place during the conquest of the Promised Land by
God’s people. In that text, the people of Canaan are the enemies of the
Israelites. In fact, the Israelites are told to kill all of them! But Isaiah,
which was written many years later, insists that people of all countries are God’s people; and that God cares about everyone.
You can’t reconcile those points of view, because they were written in
different times and for different sets of readers. And so, it is not enough to
claim, “The Bible says…” The Bible says all kinds of things; and some of them
simply do not apply to us. You know the saying, “The devil can quote scripture
for his own purposes.” The devil did that with Jesus in the wilderness when
Jesus was tempted (see Matthew 4 or Luke 4 for that story); and the devil still
does that, all the time! To really understand the Biblical message, it is important
to know the difference between a “proof text” and a “representative text.” A
proof text shows up only once or twice in scripture. For example, “Don’t wear
clothing woven of two kinds of material” is a proof text. (Leviticus 19:19)
Very few people pay attention to that anymore. On the other hand, just a couple
of verses away, we are told: “Don’t go about spreading slander, and don’t do
anything that endangers your neighbor’s life.” (Leviticus 19:16).That sounds a
lot like Jesus’ instruction to “Love one another as I have loved you.” That is
a representative text, and you can find variations of it in many places in the
Bible.
And Jesus can help us sort
through all of this. If you’re not sure what to believe, go to the gospels. Jesus
interprets scripture all the time! In fact, I think of Jesus as the lens
through which we see everything else in scripture. He’s like a pair of
eyeglasses. Without Jesus, everything we read is fuzzy, and we start to wonder
what is important. But when we use Jesus as our glasses, we can judge the
message of the rest of the Bible with much more faithfulness. My own rule of
thumb is that “If a text proclaims love and liberation just as Jesus did, then
I should pay attention to it.” If it doesn’t proclaim either of those things,
then I’m probably safe setting it on the back burner.
So, let’s go back to this
morning’s story. What is Jesus saying by telling the disciples to “Watch out
for the yeast of the Pharisees”? Not surprisingly, it involves the Bible. The
Pharisees interpreted the Old Testament scriptures. They were famous for
telling people to follow all the rules that are found there; and they were also
famous for holding people to their own very high standards! And what was Jesus’
opinion of them? “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees! You give a
tenth of your spices – mint, dill, and cumin – but you have neglected the more
important matters of the law – justice, mercy, and faithfulness… You blind
guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!” (Matthew 23:23-24) “Don’t
you understand?” Jesus asked his disciples. “Don’t you see what is important?”
Just a little bit of that legalism will spread through your whole life, just
like yeast spreads through a bunch of dough. It’s not important to follow every
law in the Old Testament. Jesus didn’t care about that! But it is important to love others, to know
that God loves us, and to participate
in God’s work of liberation from oppression wherever we can!
The story is told about Karl
Barth, one of the most important Christian biblical scholars of the 20th
century. During his lifetime, he authored the multi-volume Church Dogmatics, a work that influenced Christians around the
world. It is said that near the end of his career, he gave a lecture to a
packed assembly hall of his colleagues. His lecture was complicated and made
many fine distinctions. At its conclusion, all the people in his distinguished
audience honored him with a standing ovation. He then indicated that he would
answer questions. A young graduate student got up. “Dr. Barth,” he asked, “your
theology is complicated, and I had difficulty following everything you said.
Can you sum up your thinking for me in a sentence or two?” The audience
murmured in embarrassment. How could anyone expect Karl Barth to summarize the
theology that he had spent a lifetime putting together? But Barth just smiled.
Leaning towards the microphone, he said, “Of course. Jesus loves me, this I
know; for the Bible tells me so.”
That’s the message of this
whole wonderful, confusing, irritating, thought-provoking book. Jesus loves me,
this I know; for the Bible tells me so. And Jesus loves everyone else, too!
This is the message of the Gospel of John, and it’s the message of the whole
Bible, as well: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten son,
that whosoever trusts him should not perish, but have eternal life. And God
sent his son into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world might
be saved through him.” (John 3:16-17) I am absolutely convinced that, in the
end, that’s the only message that God really cares about.
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