SERMON REFLECTION: PREACH JESUS, NOT DIVERSITY OR HELL

Yesterday my heart was broken.  I heard a friend, who is a theologian, pastor, and missionary to the Church in Canada.  He shared how difficult it has been to draw Canadians to church because they associate it with "hate-filled Americans."  They hear our vocal far right who politicize their discrimination of others in the name of Christ.  To be fair, the far left often preaches Diversity while they rattle their jewels.  If in America, the Church really preached Jesus, Jesus would bring together a diversity of people and teach us to love each other.
Lord, forgive us and help us faithfully to preach Jesus.  Amen.

HOW IS THE BIBLE THE WORD OF GOD?

We have to go back to the oral cultures of the Old Testament (OT) and the New Testament (NT).  Both ancient Hebrew and Greek (languages of the OT and NT respectively) have a key word that encompasses a range of meaning (ruach and pneuma respectively): wind, breath, spirit (of life).  It makes sense.  If I am not breathing, I do not have life; and, breath feels like wind.  They are one and the same.  So, the spoken word mattered.  It came to be from one's life breath (spirit).  An oath or a curse were real.  They had a "tangibility" about them.  (A Hebrew word for "word," dabar, in a given context could even mean "matter" or "thing.")  Whether I want to believe it or not, my spoken words matter.  They can guide or misguide, support or suppress, heal or harm.

God's spoken word is obviously paramount.  In the creation account of Genesis 1, the spirit (ruach) of God was astir and God spoke order into the dimensions of chaos: darkness, the watery deep, and the formless earth -- the creational order that the spoken word continues to maintain.  (I like to think of God's word like radio waves, electromagnetic waves that once brought into existence go on forever.)  In the Gospel of John, Jesus is called the spoken word (Greek logos) of God, who was with God from the beginning and through whom all things were created, 1:1-3.  The "word of God" is substantial: "One does not live on bread alone, but upon all that comes from the mouth of God" (Deut. 8:3), or as stated by Jesus, "on every pronouncement [rema] from the mouth of God" (Matt 4:4).

So, when we think of the Bible as the word of God, we need to move beyond our western-world, modern associations of something static.  It is anything but that.  The Word of God is not ink on a page.  It is a medium through which God nurtures, guides, rebukes, and encourages.  In the well-know text, "All scripture is God-breathed..." (2Tim 3:16), the adjective "god-breathed" could be better rendered in active voice, rather than passive; that is, "God-breathing."  That is, I am convinced, how someone in an oral culture would understand it.

Lord, help me to hear you speak through your Word.  Amen.