The Monday Morning Quarterback

While I didn't preach yesterday, one of the things that Liz said in her sermon yesterday got me thinking. The focus of her sermon was, Where is God in the Bible? She said that entering the scriptures can open you up to life, or something like that. I agree that they can do that--indeed, they are intended to do that--but that we can use them to close us down to life as well. What I mean by this is that we can use scriptures in a way that create a "cognitive ghetto" to use a term that one of my seminary professors once used, living in a kind of impoverished intellectual and spiritual bubble.

On one end of the biblical spectrum are some people who believe that every word in the Bible is dictated by God and follow it with rigidity and in a way that every piece of reality must fit perfectly into the jigsaw puzzle that we call life. On the other side of the spectrum are those for whom the Bible is an interesting ancient document that doesn't have very much, really, to say to us. On the conservative side the scriptures dam God up and on the liberal side the God is almost completely leached out of the scriptures.

I believe the scriptures are intended by God to usher us into God's great story of rescue and hope, in which we live and love the creation and others in the way that they were meant to be loved. This story centers on the great redemptive act of the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus, who has ushered in the reign of God which one day will arrive in its fullness. In the meantime, we broken icons need by God's grace to be living the Jesus Creed: loving God and loving others...