“What Then Does This Text Mean?

A sermon based upon Luke 20: 1-8; 17-19

Preached by Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, 

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

10^th Sunday After Pentecost, August 13, 2017,    (Series:  Questions Jesus Asked  #8 of 12)

My mother was a seamstress.  What that means is that she sewed clothes for people.  It was something she learned from her mother, and when she retired from the cotton mill, she decided to make her money sewing for women in the community.  I especially loved it when she made cheerleading uniforms for my high school and the cheerleaders had to come to my home and try them on.

I never learned a much about sewing, but I did come across a wise saying, which comes from sewing and says: “Those who sew must first tie a knot.”  Unless you want to re-stitch that button or re-hem those pants often, you must first anchor it with a knot.  Of course, the wisdom here is more than just about sewing.  The adage also relates to life.  If you want your life to hold together, without coming unraveled with ever crisis that comes, you’d better have a ‘knot’ or an ‘anchor’ that will help you keep your bearings as an unwavering constant in your life (*This idea, and the flow of this message comes from Daniel Day's, If Jesus Isn’t the Answer…: He Sure Asks the Right Questions! (Kindle Location 831). Smyth & Helwys Publishing. Kindle Edition).  

WHAT IS WRITTEN IN THE LAW? (Luke 10:26)

For most of us that ‘knot’ has been given to us from our parents, from church, from school, or from other close relatives or other formative connections in our lives.  This is where we learned what was right and wrong, sacred or taboo.  This is where we learned to trust what was real and to figure out what isn’t.  

But at some point in our lives, these certainties and confidence have been shaken.  To keep our analogy going, we learn that other people ‘tie their knots’ very differently, or tie them ‘at different places’.  We come to realize that people out there, beyond our own tribe or family, don’t understand life the same way we have.  This can cause us to question the  ‘authority’ of some of our own upbringing and conceptions.   We wonder if we have been right to build our lives on the ‘knots’ or ‘anchors’ we were given.

Several years ago, the owner of a Concrete company in Boone, was looking after the house that my family and I were living in while on furlough from our mission work.  One day, while we were trying to get the furnace going, he was telling me about a young girl who was going off to college.  He said that her mother had come to him with great concern about whether or not she would keep her faith while away at college.  He said, “I told her that depends.  If you allowed your daughter to develop her own faith, and you didn’t force it on her, then you’ve probably nothing to worry about.  It’s her faith.   But if she only has your faith, and not her own, then I’d be real worried too.”

That was not a very professional way to approach it, but he got the point across.  Life and faith is not just about passing down knowledge, but its also about making choices.  Daily we have to make decisions about what matters, what we should or shouldn’t do, what kind of faith we have, and whether we will trust in anything at all.  If we want to have an anchor, or ‘tie a knot’ that holds together, then we must decide which voice, which teaching, or even which viewpoint we will choose to build our lives upon. Life means making a choice: You cannot, not choose.

When we lived in Germany, our own cultural and even religious choices were sometimes tested and tried.  Once, my chair of deacons in my German church recommend a campground for our family.  We wanted to experience camping in Europe, so we bought a tent and headed out.  We arrived late, quickly set up the tent and went to bed.  Early the next morning, my daughter wanted to go swimming.  We were the first ones there, but it wasn’t long until others came.  The arrived much like we did, but then everything changed.  They all went swimming with no close on whatsoever.  My German Baptist friend had no idea we didn’t also swim that way.

Now, that was literally untying a really big knot for us.  We didn’t go there again, and we never got use to this European norm.  What they called natural, we called nudity.

My point is that every culture, even Christian groups, have their own specific ways of choosing which knot will be tied tightly and which one knot will be tied loosely.  Those  German Baptists had some very specific knots they tied tightly, which we didn’t.  If you didn’t attend church for a couple of Sundays, you could be thrown out permanently.  Also, if you didn’t bring your hymnbook to church with your and you didn’t sing, or at least try to, then your faith would be questioned.  Music was how the ‘redeemed of the Lord said so’.  The point I’m making is that even within the Christian faith, not just in Germany, but in Brazil, or other countries, Christians make choices about what is most important, and what is less important.

In our text today, Jesus revealed that one tightly tied ‘knot’ that anchored his own religious upbringing, and his people, was Scripture.  Every faithful Jew believed that God had given written texts to help guide the people in making good choices and giving right shape to their ethical and religious life.  Thus, questions like “What did Moses command” (Mark 10:13), “What is written in the Law?” (Luke 10:26),  or as in our text, “What then does this text mean?” (Luke 20: 17), were very important questions for faithful people in Jesus’ day.  The way people made right choices was well established and clearly guided by God through sacred, written, texts.

That’s how it was for them, but for us not so much, and it’s also much less clear.  As Dan Day has rightly said, “For many people today its not so obvious, that Moses’ words or any ancient religious text for that matter’, could have ‘anything applicable’ to say to us.  It is bizarre, even to some of us, that what ‘was written on parchment by people living in tents, with no electricity (an no internet) living 3,000 years ago, could have anything relevant to say, let alone be authoritative.”  

Of course, Jesus, and many of us too, don't think Moses, or the Prophets, spoke only for themselves, but we actually believe, that God was speaking through them, and still can speak to us through these ancient words.  Jesus believed this too, and this is why the question, “What did Moses Command” was one of the most important than could ever have been asked in his time.  But what about our time?  What do these ancient words from ancient texts really mean for us, and for our world?  Is there anything here that really matters, and why should we still care?  

Recently, I got the Fall schedule for the local Community College in the mail.  I searched all through that paper, through all the many planned classes.   They had classes on Gardening, Agriculture, Horticulture, and even Viticulture.   They had classes on Law Enforcement, Nursing,  Firemen training, and other forms of community service.  They also trained for skills for working on Small Engines and other Mechanical fields; as well, as pastimes, like painting, music, yoga, and many others.  But no where in that magazine did they advertise any kind of course in how to read, interpret, or understand the Bible.  I know they must teach some introduction to religion course, because a friend of mine teaches it, but it wasn’t important enough to list, even in the middle of the buckle of the Bible Belt.  Can you image how less important it is elsewhere, if not here, where?

WHAT DID MOSES COMMAND? (Mark 10:13)

When in our text today, it tells us that “Jesus looked directly at them and asked, “What then is the meaning of this text… or as others translate, ‘of that which is written’,  it implied that most everyone in the culture, even without have access to a written copy of the Scriptures, knew the text Jesus was referring to.   Even though only a few had access to written texts, they still knew.  Scripture was at the heart of their daily culture, their weekly worship and their intentional upbringing.  In other words, when Jesus asked, “What Did Moses Command?”or “What did this text mean?” It meant something. 

But what exactly this text, or any text from Moses, from the Prophets, or from Psalms meant to people was never automatic, without some effort to understand.   The people had to constantly hear Scripture quoted and learn ways to interpret them.  The meaning in these ancient texts, even to them, had to be read, discussed, and filtered through an their own interpretive filters for processing.  In other words, to answer Jesus’ question, “What does this mean?” meant that you had to do your homework.  There was ‘gold’ to be mined, but you still had to mine it.

When you study how Jesus treated and interpreted Scripture, you can find a two-fold approach.  One, Jesus reverences Scripture highly, memorized it, quotes it, and uses it as an final, anchoring word, a bedrock.  A clear example is when Jesus quotes Scripture, and literally, ‘throws the book’ at the devil who is tempting him while he is in the wilderness (Matt. 4).  Jesus uses Scripture, as we should, to tie a unbreakable knot, to anchor our lives against those forces that can tempt and destroy us.

But strangely enough, even with the high view of Scripture which Jesus had, there are other times that Jesus appears to loosen the knot of Scripture, disregarding certain laws, regulations, and rules which were clearly, concretely, and most obviously written.  An most obvious one of these was how Jesus completely untied the knot about Kosher laws.  In one single statement, Jesus wipes a page from Bible, in one single statement.  If you recall, Leviticus 11 has all kinds of Kosher rules about what kinds of food are to be considered clean, and which are to be considered unclean.  Jesus show complete disregard for this entire part Moses’ law, declaring, “It’s not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth defiles (Matt. 15:11). 

In the most important words Jesus ever spoke, a collection put together in what we call ‘The Sermon on the Mount”, clearly states that ‘he did not come to abolish Scripture, but to fulfill it’ (Matt 5:21), yet Jesus clearly offers his own interpretation, which lessens some parts of Scripture, while expanding upon, even going beyond other parts.   Now, before you think you can do this own your own, anyway you wish, you’d better remember and realize that YOU ARE, OF COURSE, NOT JESUS.   And as Jesus explained, he was not trying to abolish or negate Scripture, but he interpreted Scripture in ways that helped people build upon it, and even to ‘do greater works’, which led to ‘higher’ or ‘better’ ways of living, than were imagined in the Law.

When we read Scripture, taking it seriously, but not always literally, we can also see Paul, Peter, and the church following Jesus into areas of thinking, worshiping, and believing that were never given in Scripture, and going against some things that had been clearly written.   Just as Jesus challenged his followers to go beyond Scripture’s ‘eye for eye, tooth for tooth, and to ‘love their enemies’,  Peter was challenged by the Spirit to go beyond Scripture to ‘kill and eat’ non Kosher foods, so he could welcome a believing Gentile into the faith.  Paul also went beyond established procedures when he called himself an ‘apostle’ and took the gospel straight into the Gentile world, ignoring strict rules about circumcision, teaching that the priority of the Bible is grace, not law.  Sabbath, Kosher, Circumcision, were knots that had been tied tightly, but were eventually loosed, and some completely untied, so that God’s love could be poured out to all.   We could go on, and on, but perhaps you get the point.  Perhaps you are getting the point so well, that you feel a little toward me, like they did toward Jesus, when he reinterpreted things.  But what you need to know, is that even when Jesus reinterpreted the Bible, it was still being reverenced, but constantly being reinterpreted, and fulfilled, as Jesus put it, so that love, grace and mercy, dominated its primary theme, long before the first word was ever printed on a printing press.

SEARCH THE SCRIPTURES….THEY TESTIFY OF ME.  (John 5:39).

Sometimes I still see a old Bumper sticker which says, “The Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it for me!”   While I can appreciate their enthusiasm for the Bible, what I learn from Jesus’ question put to these ‘teachers of the law’, is that God can still do new things.  As long as one sheep is still lost, nothing is settled.  As long as hate is still the norm, love needs to provide the breakthrough, not what has been said in the past. 

If we want to seriously anchor our lives in the Scriptures, in ways that makes sense, saves us, our children, and our children’s children, while making real difference in our world today, we are going to have to not only to quote Scripture, but we also need to learn how to interpret it wisely, faithfully, but also lovingly, and redemptively as well.   Isn’t this what Jesus meant when he scolded the Scribes and Pharisees, saying “Woe, to you hypocrites, for you pay your tithe…but have omitted the weightier (most important) matters of the law, judgement, mercy and faith; these ought to be done too, without neglecting either” (Matt. 23:23).  Isn’t this exactly the most important issue Jesus’ question raises for us.  How do we interpret and reinterpret Scripture, without neglecting any part of what ‘ought to be done’, especially since we are not Jesus, nor are we experts in the law?

Well, we need to say that being an ‘expert’ in the law, didn’t help them, nor does in guarantee any success at what matters most about Scripture.  Of course, there are some very basic, good, rules of Biblical interpretation that pastors, professors, and scholars learn in school, but this in no way means we will ‘get it right’, by getting to ‘what matters most’.  Right interpretation of Scripture means that we must consider needs, community, and wrestle with the text like Jacob wrestled with the angel at Jabbok.  Questions of right and wrong, and authority can never be reduced to saying words or mere rehashing them, no matter how ‘holy’ they are or seem.  Sometimes we can take Scripture at ‘face value’, but other times we need ‘fresh interpretations’. The hard work many refuse to do is to listen to the Spirit and to others too, so that we can have the wisdom to know the difference.

The need to do the hard work of ‘listening’ and ‘learning’ from God and others, is why we can’t always take the Bible literally so we CAN take it seriously.  Rachel Held Evans spent a year, as a woman, taking the Bible literally, following all the rules, commands, and customs, just as they were literally written.  She writes that this was one of the most difficult, painful, educational, and thoughtful years she had ever lived.  She also discovered that taking the Bible literally was impossible to maintain in real life.  I’m just glad she didn’t have a child that disobeyed her at the time, for she would have been instructed to literally stone her child to death.

Also, when you only take the Bible literally, but not seriously, you can make the Bible say most anything you want it to say.   I know most people think of it in an opposite way.  But when take it literally, but not seriously, you can use the Bible to get away with murder, literally.   This is exactly what King Henry the VIII did, when he ‘tied the knot’ in the Bible for his own purposes.  After his brother Arthur died, King Henry had to get the pope to allow him to marry his dead brother’s wife, Catherine.  When his marriage to Catherine still did not grant him a male heir, Henry used the text from Leviticus 20:21, which said, “If a man takes his brother’s wife in marriage, it is unclean, and they shall be childless.”  According to the Bible, so reasoned King Henry’s literalistic logic, she was a curse on his kingdom, so she had to go, that is die, like so many others.  Biology today tells us the whole problem was with Henry, not his wives.

Still today, people do all kinds of ‘shenanigans’ with the text, to prove their point, or argue the truth they want to hear or believe.  What strict literalism has done is divide Christians and split churches over fights that keep God on the sidelines of our churches, and out of our lives.  Could there be another way? The good news is that there is, and has always been a better way to find the meaning in a text without battling over for for a book.  John tells us that in Jesus, “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.” Or as Peter answered when many were leaving Jesus in the dust,  “To whom shall we go, for you have the words of eternal life.”    Or once more, as Jesus himself said, “You search the Scriptures because you think in them you have eternal life: It is they that testify about me (John 5:39).

Years ago, when some Southern Baptists were having battles over the Bible, some argued for a more literal, inerrant form of belief in the Bible, and others argued for a more serious, sincere form of belief in the truth in the Bible.  For most of the church, and the world, it was mere semantics---just arguments about words.  But this discussion became more than words, when one side gain political power and took “Jesus” out of it’s Confession of Faith, which named Him as the ‘criterion’ by which the Bible is to be interpreted’.  For without Jesus,  you can interpret the Bible any way you wish.

As I saw it then, and still see it now, Jesus is the key to interpreting the Bible, and the living Christ still leads us to discover that the greatest truth of the Bible is about God’s love.   Even that great text where Jesus says,  “I am the way, truth and the life, and no one comes to the Father, except through me” (John 14:6), becomes a word to love, rescue, and include people, not a word to hate, negate or exclude people.  Jesus is the truth, the way, and life, and the only way to the Father because Jesus is God, and God is love.  And since God is love, God did not come establish more religion, but to guide all religions to find true faith---as James, said, ‘pure religion that is undefiled is to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unspoiled from the world.” This way of love: love for neighbor and love for God, is still the only right ‘way’ Scripture is to be interpreted.   Amen.