Hilton Head Island, SC – July 30, 2023
The Chapel Without Walls
Psalm 19:7-11,14; II Timothy 3:10:17
A Sermon by John Miller
Text – All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. – II Timothy 3:16-17 (RSV)
The Bible is the most influential book in the history of the world. It also is the best seller of all time. In many respects, western civilization is based upon precepts that are first located in the Bible. It provides the foundation for both Judaism and Christianity, and millions of people for numerous generations have made it their pathway to God. Without the Bible, the world would not be a very inviting place, nor would it be as stable as it is - - - although its true stability is always in doubt, despite the Bible.
However, the Bible can be improperly used verbally to bludgeon theological enemies or even one’s family members or best friends, and that is most unfortunate. Also, it does not project one united message on every issue of concern to humanity. For one thing, it did not have one author, but many authors. Because that is the case, they did not all perceive everything in the same way. Furthermore, the thoughts of the various authors changed through the passage of the fifteen-plus centuries during which the Bible was being written. That long a span of time inevitably produced a wide range of understandings of who God is and how we are related to Him.
Nearly everyone would agree that not all the books of the Bible are of equal value. Each of us probably has a few books which appeal to us more than all the others. And within each section of scripture some books affect us more powerfully than others. The sixty-six chapters of Isaiah are of far greater consequence than the three chapters of Nahum, and the gloriously written thirteenth chapter of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians has far more influence on Christianity than the one-chapter letter of Jude.
The “begat” listings in Genesis are not too inspiring, either. The Book of Numbers is numbing in its list of numbers in the 26th chapter. It says that God commanded Moses to take a census of all the people who left Egypt with him. It tells how many families were in each of the twelve tribes of the sons of Jacob. The numbers seem inflated, and they aren’t very interesting anyway. I and II Kings and I and II Chronicles describe some stellar monarchs, but other kings merit only a short paragraph, and those mini-biographies say that many of them “did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord.” Flower the skunk in Bambi said, “If you can’t say anything nice, then don’t say anything at all.” I have forgotten many things from my early youth, but not that. It probably would have been better if the biblical biographers had left out the bad kings altogether, but they didn’t, so we’re stuck with them. The Book of Esther never once mentions God, although her story is a triumph of feminine political and personal savvy, if that’s something you favor.
How do preachers decide on what passages of scripture to use each Sunday? In what are called “the liturgical churches,” most clergy use the lectionary. The best-known examples of liturgical churches are the Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Episcopalians, and Methodists. When I was in seminary, I don’t remember that the lectionary was ever mentioned, but now many Presbyterian clergy also use it, as do other Mainline Protestants. Every Sunday of the year has a suggested Old Testament reading, a Psalm, an Epistle reading from one of the New Testament letters, and a Gospel reading or readings. There is a three-year cycle in most lectionaries, and then the process starts all over again. The rationale is that each congregation gets a well-rounded survey of the Bible over the course of time.
Hearing that explanation, I assume it is obvious to you that I am not a lectionary user. Instead, I am what is called a “topical” preacher. Often I read something in a book or magazine or the newspaper, and that reminds me of a biblical verse or episode that addresses that particular topic, so I decide to preach on it. I also will read something from the Bible, and I decide to use that as the text for a sermon. Sometimes I choose a particular subject to address, and I then find a scripture passage which refers to that topic directly or indirectly. You need to realize that this is not the recommended way for preachers to preach. It was the method used by virtually all of the preachers I heard until I became one myself, and I did what they did, because it never occurred to me to do otherwise. Besides, this old dog is not about to learn a new trick by being hemmed in by the lectionary to determine the theme of every sermon I preach.
So then: how do I choose the passages I choose? And how do you choose those passages you most prefer and remember and live by? Well, I never choose anything from the Bible that I disagree with, unless I think it needs disagreement. In other words, I preach what I believe, trying to explain why, and I don’t preach anything from the Bible that I don’t believe, nor do I usually tell you what I don’t believe. But having said that, I shall now violate what I just said, and I’ll tell you a few examples of things in the Bible that I don’t believe. I hope you don’t believe them either, although if you do, it’s okay; I won’t hold it against you.
I don’t believe the world was created in six days. I know a lot of people say that “day” in Genesis 1 and 2 means “era” or “epoch” or a “very long time.” I don’t think so. But I also think whoever they were who wrote down the two creation stories didn’t care how long it took. It was story, a religiously-motivated myth, and was not meant to give a scientific explanation of creation. I don’t believe that either Moses or God caused the waters of the Red Sea to part when Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt. If it happened, either some kind of major geological disturbance or a powerful cyclonic wind somehow parted the waters. But if it didn’t happen, that’s also okay with me, because back then people were far more ready to accept divine intervention by God or the gods than they are now, and I, for one, do not think God intervenes directly or even indirectly much at all. Still, I agree with the thrust of both creation stories, namely, that God made human beings to be the primary caretakers of His planet that we call Earth.
And so that you don’t think my unorthodoxy is limited only to the Hebrew scriptures, I also don’t believe that Jesus walked on water or turned five loaves of bread and two fish into enough food to feed five thousand people or that he talked to Moses and Elijah on the crest of a mountain somewhere in Judah. Those things could happen, I suppose, but I doubt that they did. However, those kinds of stories were more likely to draw the attention of first-century people than twenty-first-century people. But there are likely hundreds of millions of twenty-first-century people who do believe them, and I wouldn’t try to convince them otherwise, unless they tried to convince me that I had to believe them to be an acceptable Christian, or especially to be saved. Then I would go to the verbal mat, if necessary, to declare my contrary position as best I could.
Having said that, let me explain in greater detail what I mean by this sermon title, Picking and Choosing Scripture Passages. Millions of people say they believe every word of the Bible. It is understandable why they do that, but it is also intellectually disingenuous to say it. To put that thought into more ordinary words, those who say they believe that have deceived themselves. They aren’t liars, really, but they do consciously choose to deceive themselves.
I Samuel 31 says that King Saul led the Israelites into battle against the Philistines, and that the Philistines routed the Israelites. Saul asked his armor bearer to kill him with his sword, and the soldier refused, thinking he would be in big trouble, which he might well have been, if anyone else found out about it. So, I Samuel 31:4 says that Saul fell on his own sword. II Samuel 1 gives a very different account of Saul’s death. It says that David met a man who told him that the Israelites had been defeated by the Philistines, and that Saul and his son Jonathan had been killed. The man said he was an Amalekite, not an Israelite, and that Saul had asked him to kill him, lest he be taken captive by his enemies. Reluctantly the Amalekite did what Saul asked. Fortunately, David didn’t smite him dead on the spot, or at least II Samuel doesn’t state that he did.
So, if you happen to be a “Bible-believing Christian,” as virtually all fundamentalist/ biblical literalists are: who killed Saul, Saul, or an Amalekite who unfortunately happened to be passing by when a major battle was being fought on Mt. Gilboa? It doesn’t really matter one way or the other, but here’s what I think happened. Somebody (not Samuel), or a group of somebodies, wrote I Samuel. Somebody else wrote at least the first chapter of II Samuel, and he didn’t like the ending of I Samuel, so he wrote what he thought was a more appropriate beginning for II Samuel. Again, it doesn’t really matter how Saul died, or if the story is even correct in such an historically important detail. But nobody can believe every word in the Bible and believe those contradictory stories. It is intellectually impossible. And yet innumerable “evangelical Christians” insist that the Bible is inerrant and infallible. Among many other instances, I Samuel 31 and II Samuel 1 illustrate beyond a doubt that the Bible is both errant and fallible, at least there, but also in many other places.
However, that doesn’t mean the Bible is untrustworthy. And here is where I will quote Paul from our New Testament passage. “All scripture is inspired by God and profitable foe teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God” (let’s say ‘believer’ rather than to use the sexist term ‘man of God’) “may be complete, equipped for every good work” (II Timothy 3:16&17).
From that we may deduce that every word of scripture was written by a human being, not God, even though the Bible is often called “the word of God.” In our Old Testament reading from Psalm 62, it says that the “law of the Lord,” the Torah, is “more to be desired than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey, and droppings of the honeycomb” (v. 10). I believe that God did inspire every writer who had anything that was eventually included in the Bible, but it was men, not God, who wrote it. Furthermore, not every word the biblical writers wrote was inspired, because they were influenced by the times in which they lived and the beliefs which then were common, and they could present mistaken impressions, just as all of us also can do --- and do.
We all pick and choose what scripture readings we prefer: all of us. Anyone who thinks otherwise hasn’t thought about this enough. For example, I rarely preach from the Gospel of John. What John says may be theologically or Christologically true, but most of what he says Jesus said Jesus didn’t say. The “I am” passages ascribed to Jesus are notoriously suspect from a strictly historical standpoint: “I am the bread of life; I am the light of the world; I am the vine; I am the way, the truth, and the life”; (and the one that nearly drove the scribes and Pharisees into theological schizophrenia): “Before Abraham was, I am,” and the one over which I am equally frenzied: “I and the Father are one.” Surely Jesus never said any of those things. On the other hand, Christian fundamentalists and other kinds of Christians especially love all those passages, and many other such quotes which elevate Jesus to the highest level possible.
There is an old aphorism, “The devil can quote scripture for his own purposes.” I don’t believe that’s true, because I don’t believe there is a devil. Nonetheless, all of us quote scripture for our own purposes, and evangelical Christians are much better at quoting reams of scripture than are Mainline Protestant Christians or Roman Catholic Christians or any other kinds of Christians. Would that we were as familiar with the Bible as those who read it every day for several minutes or an hour or more. If that were the case, the world would either be a lot better --- or a lot worse --- than it is now.
In the end, everyone is a picker and chooser, but some are much more adept at it than others. Nevertheless we all do it, and that’s okay, and I presume it’s also okay with God. Even if we misquote or quote incorrectly unintentionally, giving an improper spin, the Bible is not only the Good Book; it’s the best book for Christians to quote. All of it is God’s word, after all, and it is profitable for teaching, for reproof, and all those other good things which somebody other than Paul wrote about. “O Word of God incarnate, O wisdom from on high.” The Bible is the book than which there is none greater, so learn to pick and choose well and wisely to the greatest effect possible.