Laying a Foundation: Study

September 16, 2007

by Dr. Charles Parker
Deuteronomy 6:1-9; 2 Timothy 3:10-17

 

I.  Introduction

 

            Today, we’re beginning a series of sermons in which I want to reflect back to you some of what I have heard you tell me in the small group sessions that we have held this summer about what makes Metropolitan Memorial UMC Metropolitan, about what are the gifts and graces that define our community. And in the coming weeks we’ll take a little time following the 11:15 a.m. service to dialogue about the sermons, so that you can tell me where I’ve heard you correctly and where incorrectly. (We’re not going to do it this morning, because we will be spending some time with Pete Steinke after the service.)  I am calling the series “Laying a Foundation,” because I hope that these dialogues will help us begin to develop a consensus about who we are as a community of faith and how our gifts and graces are leading us into the future. 

 

            The first of these sermons is on “Study,” because one of the characteristics of Metropolitan that keeps coming up in the small groups is our love of learning and desire to dig deep into subjects.  And this is a doubly appropriate place to start our series since this is the Sunday when we are giving our children their first Bibles, because it is the study of Scripture that is the hallmark of study in the church and the place that we ground all of the study that we do.

 

II. The Centrality of the Word

 

            From the very beginnings of our faith history, the study of God’s word has shaped who we are.  Jews, Christians, and Muslims are all called “people of the Book,” because our sacred texts are so central to our identity.  In our passage from Deuteronomy for today, we heard the great prayer of the Jewish people, the Shema (which means “hear” in Hebrew):  Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is Lord alone.  And the passage continues with what Jesus tells us is the greatest commandment: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.

 

            But then, as if to say, “This is how we demonstrate our love for God,” the passage moves immediately into these verses about the importance of studying the word of God: 

 

“Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. 7 Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. 8 Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, 9 and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

 

            In other words, you need to keep these words in front of you and your family all the time: when you go in an out of your doors, they should be in front of you, when you leave the house they should go with you.  Reflect on them before you fall asleep and as you prepare for your day. The words should be with us and in our minds so much that they become who we are. 

 

            In the preface to his collected sermons John Wesley, who was, of course, an incredibly well-read and well-educated man wrote "He came from heaven; He hath written it down in a book. O give me that Book! At any price, give me the Book of God. ….  here is knowledge enough for me. Let me be homo unius libri! [a man of one book]"   Wesley’s Articles of Religion for the Methodist Church assert that the “Holy Scripture contains all things necessary for salvation.”  That’s a pretty dramatic statement: all things necessary for salvation.  Which means that on a profound level all the other study that we do is extraneous -- not unimportant or unenjoyable, but unnecessary. 

 

            For those of you who are history buffs, this week in 1864, Abraham Lincoln – probably our most Biblically literate president – gave a speech here in D.C. in which he said:

 

“In regard to this Great Book, I have but to say, it is the best gift God has given to man.  All the good the Savior gave to the world was communicated through this book…All things most desirable for man's welfare, here and hereafter, are to be found portrayed in it.”

 

            So all of our forbears in the faith had this profound sense that being rooted in Scripture was a critical element of who we are.  This has always been a challenging goal, but there were certainly periods when it seems to have been easier than it is now.  When the Church of England was beginning, and few homes had their own books, by mandate every church had a copy of the King James Bible out in the sanctuary available for people to read.  In the early years of our country, if a home had a book, it was almost certain to be the Bible.  Generations of people learned to read by reading the Bible.

 

            The result of the fact that generations of people were steeped in the Scriptures is that for hundreds of years, literature, speeches, visual arts, and music were filled with both obvious and subtle allusions to Scripture, which aside from its centrality to our faith, makes Scripture important to know just to understand hundreds of years of art.

 

            Of course, that’s no longer the case and many, many theologians and church leaders have been bemoaning our biblical illiteracy in recent decades.  Stephen Prothero, chairman of the religion department at Boston University, recently wrote a book called Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know--and Doesn't, and listed some fairly alarming statistics: 

 

  • Only half of those in a national poll could name one of the four canonical Gospels
  • Only one in three knew who preached the Sermon on the Mount
  • Less than half could name the first book of the Bible
  • 75% of those polled believed that the saying "God helps those who help themselves" was in the Bible (which comes from Aesop via Ben, Franklin).

 

III. Relearning the Bible

 

            Now, we have a fairly well-educated congregation here at Metropolitan Memorial UMC.  But how do we go about deepening our study of Scripture.  Let me suggest three tools as we engage this process.

 

A. Reading the Bible: Simply reading the Bible.  Can I ask how many here have read through the entire Scripture at least once?   It’s really not as intimidating as it looks, and there is no better way to start to get comfortable with the Bible.  Walter Bruggeman, one of the greatest biblical scholars of the 20th century says that “Scripture is God’s house and God wants his children to play there.”  That’s a wonderful image: our homes are we are comfortable; we know the layout; we know where to go to find rest and food.  But when you’re just visiting a house – even if it’s a great house – you‘re never really comfortable.  You’ve always got to ask, “Excuse me, but where’s the bathroom?”  “Where would I find the kitchen?” 

 

That’s the way most folks feel about the Bible.  We know there’s some important stuff there, but we need to ask somebody else where to find it.  A tool that I have found helpful over the years is The One-Year Bible.  It lays out a nice schedule of reading, so that every day you get a couple chapters of the Hebrew Scriptures, a Psalm, some New Testament.  It’s a nice easy way of working through the text and just getting to know it a little better --making it your home.  There are other schedules for reading through Scripture, and any of them are fine; but take the time to simply read through the text of the Bible.  

 

B.    Examining the Bible:  A second way of engaging the text is to dig in and do some good research.  This is one of the things that in general we do well here at Metropolitan. We have a lot of wonderful opportunities to study Scripture, particularly a rich history of engaging in Disciple Bible Study.  We have a lot of our folks who have been through Disciple Bible Study. But from what I have heard, it’s often the same group that goes through the classes.  For those of you who haven’t done this program yet, let me strongly encourage you to take the plunge.  For those of you who have taken the class, let me encourage you to provide some leadership for one.  Our Study Committee has had a hard time finding teachers this year.  I know that it can be a little scary to put yourself out there and respond to a request to teach; but, as many of you know, when you try to teach something you learn it on a whole new level.  It’s a wonderful and exciting opportunity for serious growth.

 

C.    Praying the Bible:  Holy Scriptures are filled with wonderful prayers that model what it is like to speak to and listen to God.  The Psalms are Jesus’ prayer book, we see him turn to these over and over again throughout his ministry.  Try praying the Psalms yourself.  Let their words become your words.  Another wonderful technique for praying the Scriptures is called Lectio Divina .  I was talking with Kay Jacobi this week about the “Godly Play” training last Saturday, and she told me the teachers had a chance to spend same time doing Lectio.  And she noted that, as so often happens when we give the Holy Spirit a little elbow room, that experience on Saturday was quite wondrous and quite unexpected.

 

1.) Reading the Bible. 2.) Examining the Bible. 3.) Praying the Bible. Three ways in which to study & allow God’s Word to form & shape us.

 

IV. Conclusion

 

            Study -- and particularly the study of the Word of God -- is an essential part of who we are as a Christian community and as a Metropolitan community.  We’re going to continue exploring this idea next week when we will be very blessed to have Rabbi Joshua Siegel preaching for us and talking about the very central role that study plays in the life of the Jewish community.  For those of you who did not know, Rabbi Siegel is officially our “Conference Rabbi.”  I’m pretty sure that we’re the only Conference in our U.M. connection that has its own rabbi.  In addition to being a profound and erudite thinker, Rabbi Siegel has a great gift for helping us as Christians understand our Jewish roots.  Please make sure that you can be here.

 

            As we close, let me leave you with the admonitions that we shared with the children this morning when we gave them their Bibles. Receive the Word of God.  Learn its stories and study its words.  Its stories belong to us all, and the words speak to us all.  They tell us who we are.  They tell us that we belong to one another, for we are the people of God.

 

Amen.