Stephen
Terry, Director
Sharing the Word
Commentary
for the August 15, 2020 Sabbath School Lesson
"...let the one who has my
word speak it faithfully. For what has straw to do with grain?" declares the
Lord., "Is not my word like fire,"
declares the Lord, "and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?" Jeremiah
23:28b-29, NIV
What is the word of
God? If we look at it historically, it has meant different things to different
people. In the very first chapter of the Bible we are familiar with, it seems to represent God's creative power. He spoke everything
into existence in our world. By derivation then, his words are what brought
about our own existence as well. Perhaps this is another perspective on the
idea that God creates us in the womb.[i] We can see God as a chemist,
bringing together building blocks of DNA to form exactly the person he intends,
or we may see an initial creation sparking the flow of DNA through
multitudinous channels like some Rube Goldberg device until it reaches a future
incarnation as yet another human being is born. This latter perspective could
certainly help to explain the anomalies in Christ's genealogy with its
Canaanites, Moabites, adulterers, and murderers. But this might imply a
fatalistic predestination for all of us wherein we are simply victims of our
genetic heritage. While this may be true on some levels biologically, it brings
into question the idea of intentional evil, for if we are predestined to be
saved or lost, what is the point of any sort of subsequent effort to change all
of that? This appears to demand an element of
randomness, of choice, regarding our fate. This idea, too, may find support in
Christ's genealogy if we allow that what is apparently random eventually
reveals order. This is what Chaos Theory postulates. So, if there is intrinsic
order to everything, despite what appears to be almost
limitless variation, perhaps the framework for that ordered edifice may be
found in the creative word of God.
When we look at
grapevines growing with leaves in wild profusion, the verdure is impressive and
demands our admiration, but if we sweep aside some of those marvelous leaves,
we can see the sturdy arbor holding the vine with its leaves and eventually
heavy clusters of sweet grapes. The hidden order sustaining the vine serves its
purpose even when it is not immediately visible. God's word often engages us
similarly. As children we grow into adults and are shaped by a moral framework
intended to help us grow and be fruitful, a blessing to the world, just like
that grapevine. Paul, in his letter to the Roman church, went so far as to say
that we are all branches on that grapevine, some natural to the vine and some
grafted on.[ii] The same creative word
sustains us all. As we bear fruit and seed in the fruit, we make continuation possible,
carrying in that seed the creative power of that original word spoken so very
long ago.
Originally, despite
its creative intensity, man was able to receive the word directly from God. God
enjoyed that companionship, calling for man when he went walking in the Garden
of Eden. Mankind reciprocated that joy until one day, they did not and God
cried out his heartbreak, "Where are you?"[iii] Mankind had chosen to
distance himself in that relationship, and so many have struggled with
relationships ever since. We lost the sense of God's word and its reliance
about trusting relationships between man and God and between man and the rest
of mankind. Instead God's word became something external to our hearts.
Beginning with the Pentateuch, which is popularly ascribed to Moses, the word
became solid, something that could be brought out from time to time to read or
recite, but unable to escape the confines of the page to walk with mankind as
God did in Eden. Nonetheless there were still some who strove to open their
hearts to the ephemeral presence of God's living word.[iv] They sought union with the
word and not the separation from God we often call "sin." But with the word
confined to written tomes, sin has come to be identified with the breaking of
written statutes rather than that loss of relationship where it all fell apart
for us. Without the life of that relationship, sin becomes an impersonal
failing, something we succumb to and then ask for forgiveness, with little more
heart-felt involvement than paying the fine for a traffic ticket. Just as we
have difficulty seeing death on the highway as the result of our violation of
that traffic infraction, we find it difficult to see the harm to ourselves and
others from the relational heartache intrinsic to our disregard for the word
that has been handed down to us.
Christ tried to point this out when he taught about the heart issues behind the
various regulations the Jews were enforcing as commandments from God. He tried
to make clear that the letter of the law enforced with hardened hearts was
never God's intent.[v]
But even his disciples found it difficult to understand this. However, for the most
part, they were uneducated men. But those who were educated in the word were
unable to understand him as well. In Christ's day, the Bible (although it was
not called the Bible) was commonly the Septuagint, which had no New Testament
because none of that was written yet. But despite that shortfall, Jesus was
able to pull the relational import from the past and relate it to that present
with dramatic impact. In restoring life to that ancient text, he was raising
from the dead a relationship between God and man that many may have felt died
with the last of the major prophets. Spiritual life had become a meaningless
round of rituals and prayers that had little in the way of recorded results
since the time of the Maccabees with the miraculous continuation of the lamp
oil commemorated each year at Hanukkah.
One night, in a
profound confrontation between the established order represented by Nicodemus,
a member of the religious elite, the Sanhedrin, and Jesus, the relational guru,
called the Messiah by many, Jesus sought to revive in Nicodemus' heart the wind
of that Edenic relationship. He did not say, "You are a sinner and need to be
baptized!" as we so often do with our witness. He simply said that Nicodemus
needed to start life over from a different perspective. Continuing on in that
same chapter of his gospel, John points out that God, far from being the stern
judge seeking to trip us up with multitudinous, minute rules that even extended
to tithing fine herbs,[vi] God is love and does not
seek to condemn us.[vii]
John does not tell us how Nicodemus responded that night to his meeting with
Jesus. But later, after Jesus' death on the cross, Nicodemus stepped forward to
claim his body to honor it.
The question that all
of this brings up is what is the word to you? Is it simply a trove to pull
proof texts from to win theological debates? If so, how does that restore love
between mankind? Do you see it as a prop for a position more political than
spiritual? Do you see it as an opportunity to impose your religious will on
others? Lately it has become popular to share altered videos and memes to demonstrate how unchristian a leading politician or
political party may be. Sharing the word has become about demonizing others to
reveal that one's own position is obviously God's position as well. However,
the very act of doing this condemns us as choosing the position of the accuser
in the gospel of Matthew[viii]
The Bible we have
today has far more written in it than the Septuagint of Christ's time. But
without the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives to guide us in repairing
the lost relationship of Eden, it can still be simply proof-texted into a
series of dry rules intended to force us to become externally whitewashed
sepulchers[ix], empty of what the Spirit of
God brings effortlessly into our hearts. He does this with full knowledge of
who we are and what we are ready to handle. Like a skilled surgeon, he works to
excise the relational pain while damaging as little as possible of our
identity. Our uniqueness is special to him as it should be to us. The variety
of Creation, even within mankind, is astonishing. It is also informative. If
God endowed humanity, and our world, with such diversity, it implies that such
differences were essential. As we come into a growing relationship with God,
sharing love across that spectrum will come to define us more and more. When we
respond to God calling, "Where are you?" we will step from the scratchy
undergrowth of individualism to rediscover the relational beauty that God
purposed for his creation from the beginning.
