“If you are looking for verses with which to support slavery, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to abolish slavery, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to oppress women, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to liberate or honor women, you will find them.
If you are looking for reasons to wage war, you will find them. If you are looking for reasons to promote peace, you will find them. If you are looking for an out-dated, irrelevant ancient text, you will find it. If you are looking for truth, believe me, you will find it.
This is why there are times when the most instructive question to bring to the biblical text is not "what does it say?", but "what am I looking for?" I suspect Jesus knew this when he said, "ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened." If you want to do violence in this world, you will always find the weapons. If you want to heal, you will always find the balm.”
― Rachel Held Evans, A Year of Biblical Womanhood
This reading doesn’t come from the bible. It was taken from a book titled, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, by Rachel Held Evans, a young blogger and writer who died much too soon in 2019 at the age of 37. Two of her several books were New York Times best-sellers, including the one I just quoted.
I have to admit, when I first heard this book’s title, I cringed. Back in the late 70’s and early 80’s the Christian publishing world was swimming with earnest books instructing women how to be good, subservient Christian women, recognizing the husband’s role as ‘head of the family’ and keeping our silence in church matters. I hated those patronizing, dismissive, treacle-y books, and this title sounded like something written in that same line.
It isn’t.
For the past few months here – and actually a lot longer since it is a recurrent theme – we’ve been going through different readings from scripture and trying to discern which might truly be God’s words to us and which are just another human’s opinion.
I did not intend that this message should center on Rachel herself, but sometimes it can help us in our own journey to understanding when we find someone articulate who has faced the same issues.
Rachel Held Evans was born into an evangelical biblical-literalist family where every word was presented as straight from God’s mouth. She believed her family’s teachings completely until her young adult years when she began to realize that she knew real flesh and blood people who were good and kind and loved Jesus and yet were condemned by the very teachings she claimed as her own. She spent the rest of her too-brief life working to determine what she actually did believe and why. What she could claim and what she could not of all she had been raised to believe.
Is there anyone among us who has not struggled with parts of the bible that don’t at all agree with what we believe or what we can believe is the voice of God speaking?
The title of this message is “What Are We Looking For?” What is it we are expecting or hoping to find within the covers of this book? The answer there depends largely on who we believe wrote it. If you believe that every word came straight from God’s lips you are going to approach it differently than if you start out believing it is a series of stories about people’s experiences of something they believe to be God in their lives and their struggle to articulate that experience.
There are differences of opinion as to when the oldest parts of the bible were written but they were written at least 1500 years before the birth of Jesus. That’s a lot of time and a lot of opinions. Add in another 100 years to include that New Testament and understand the number of people who wrote parts of all this and we are faced with a whole lot of people, from many different backgrounds and beliefs writing over a very long time span.
It isn’t simple and it’s when we try to make it simple that we can get ourselves all tangled up in theories and confusions of all sorts. It isn’t simple at all. As Rachel says in our opening quote: If you are looking for an out-dated, irrelevant ancient text, you will find it. If you are looking for truth, believe me, you will find it.
So – how do we look at scripture when we set out to learn from it? Are we looking for reasons to put others down or an excuse to hate? Or are we looking and expecting to find a God speaking to us of love and caring? Are we looking for validation for our current actions or are we hoping to find clear directions for how we can best be part of following Jesus’ way? Can we look at a story from 2500 years ago and see that, while we might not agree with them today, they were, perhaps, trying their best in circumstances we have never had to face? Can we see how we can learn from their experience?
One more quote from Rachel -- one I have great fondness for reads like this: “I have come to regard with some suspicion those who claim that the Bible never troubles them. I can only assume this means they haven’t actually read it.” I've known some of these people.
Those of us who do read it know that we will always find stumbling places but if we come to the readings with love and humility and a true desire to learn to live as our God wants us to live – a way that benefits us all – a way that lifts up this beautiful creation God has given us – we will find the answers here – here in scripture and in our hearts where the Holy Spirit lives with and in us.
We read, we discuss, we share – and we find God with us – always -- in the words.
Amen.
I have to admit, when I first heard this book’s title, I cringed. Back in the late 70’s and early 80’s the Christian publishing world was swimming with earnest books instructing women how to be good, subservient Christian women, recognizing the husband’s role as ‘head of the family’ and keeping our silence in church matters. I hated those patronizing, dismissive, treacle-y books, and this title sounded like something written in that same line.
It isn’t.
For the past few months here – and actually a lot longer since it is a recurrent theme – we’ve been going through different readings from scripture and trying to discern which might truly be God’s words to us and which are just another human’s opinion.
I did not intend that this message should center on Rachel herself, but sometimes it can help us in our own journey to understanding when we find someone articulate who has faced the same issues.
Rachel Held Evans was born into an evangelical biblical-literalist family where every word was presented as straight from God’s mouth. She believed her family’s teachings completely until her young adult years when she began to realize that she knew real flesh and blood people who were good and kind and loved Jesus and yet were condemned by the very teachings she claimed as her own. She spent the rest of her too-brief life working to determine what she actually did believe and why. What she could claim and what she could not of all she had been raised to believe.
Is there anyone among us who has not struggled with parts of the bible that don’t at all agree with what we believe or what we can believe is the voice of God speaking?
The title of this message is “What Are We Looking For?” What is it we are expecting or hoping to find within the covers of this book? The answer there depends largely on who we believe wrote it. If you believe that every word came straight from God’s lips you are going to approach it differently than if you start out believing it is a series of stories about people’s experiences of something they believe to be God in their lives and their struggle to articulate that experience.
There are differences of opinion as to when the oldest parts of the bible were written but they were written at least 1500 years before the birth of Jesus. That’s a lot of time and a lot of opinions. Add in another 100 years to include that New Testament and understand the number of people who wrote parts of all this and we are faced with a whole lot of people, from many different backgrounds and beliefs writing over a very long time span.
It isn’t simple and it’s when we try to make it simple that we can get ourselves all tangled up in theories and confusions of all sorts. It isn’t simple at all. As Rachel says in our opening quote: If you are looking for an out-dated, irrelevant ancient text, you will find it. If you are looking for truth, believe me, you will find it.
So – how do we look at scripture when we set out to learn from it? Are we looking for reasons to put others down or an excuse to hate? Or are we looking and expecting to find a God speaking to us of love and caring? Are we looking for validation for our current actions or are we hoping to find clear directions for how we can best be part of following Jesus’ way? Can we look at a story from 2500 years ago and see that, while we might not agree with them today, they were, perhaps, trying their best in circumstances we have never had to face? Can we see how we can learn from their experience?
One more quote from Rachel -- one I have great fondness for reads like this: “I have come to regard with some suspicion those who claim that the Bible never troubles them. I can only assume this means they haven’t actually read it.” I've known some of these people.
Those of us who do read it know that we will always find stumbling places but if we come to the readings with love and humility and a true desire to learn to live as our God wants us to live – a way that benefits us all – a way that lifts up this beautiful creation God has given us – we will find the answers here – here in scripture and in our hearts where the Holy Spirit lives with and in us.
We read, we discuss, we share – and we find God with us – always -- in the words.
Amen.
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