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Lent
3-A
24 February 2008
Marks of a Disciple: Bible Reading
Third in a series
Some facts:
- 91% of
American households own at least one Bible.
- A
typical household owns three Bibles.
- 38%
of adults in the US read the Bible during a typical week-not
including the time they spend in worship.
- Among
Bible readers, the average amount of time spent in Bible reading
during the week is fifty-two minutes-or about ten minutes a
day.
*Michael
Foss, Power Surge, Philadelphia Augsburg-Fortress, 2000, p.
96.
We have already
made the case that disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ ought to
be diligent in prayer and regular in worship. However, a person
cannot be dedicated to prayer nor can he worship apart from the
words of worship and prayer-they come from Bible. Christians,
liberal or conservative, at some point all come back to the words
of sacred scripture for inspiration. Some use the words of the
Bible for their own prayers, and some seek the Bible's inspiration
to help them put into words their own thoughts and emotions. But
the truth is, for Jew and Christian alike, reading the Bible ought
to be at the center of faith life.
The statistics
about Bible reading are less important to me than the fact that
the disciples of Jesus need to do it. Disciples of Jesus hear,
read, and meditate upon the words of their Lord. Jesus said, "If
anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love
him, and we will come to him and make our home with him."
John 14:23 I feel a little funny being that vociferous about it.
The statistics I quoted for you earlier seem to bemoan the fact
that among those who read the Bible at all, they spend on average
only ten minutes doing it, that's okay. Ten minutes may just get
you through a parable of Jesus, or an exhortation from St. Paul.
Ten minutes with the Word can fuel a day full of prayer and good
works.
Don't let
anyone suggest that what you're doing isn't enough! Now can you
do better? Sure. We can all do with a little improvement. "If
anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love
him, and we will come to him and make our home with him."
St. Paul
argues that there can be no conversion without encountering Jesus
in the
Word. I would simply add that this is not Word in the narrow sense
of printed words; but Word in the broadest sense of God's invitation
to man in Jesus Christ.
You can encounter God in the written Word, in the Word read aloud
and preached, in the Word studied (catechism), in the Word prayed,
and in the Word made flesh by means of art or poetry.
"...faith comes from 'hearing' and hearing through the Word
of Christ." Romans 10:14-17 (ESV)
The disciples
of our Lord Jesus are a people of the Word of God. There are numerous
examples in the Bible to illustrate how important encounters with
the Word of God are. At the end of Luke the risen Jesus uses the
Old Testament scriptures to explain the Gospel.
" beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted
to them in all the
Scriptures the things concerning himself. Luke 24:27 (ESV)
Philip took the same approach with the Ethiopian in Acts 8, interpreting
the words of the prophet Isaiah as fulfilled by Jesus of Nazareth.
My favorite, St. John, pens this saying from the lips of Jesus;
"You search the Scriptures because you think that in them
you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about
me." John 5:39 (ESV)
The evangelist,
Luke, holds the Christians at Berea up as an example for us all.
In
Acts 17 (vv. 10-13) he tells us that these beautiful people have
a nobility seldom seen elsewhere. What is that nobility? Hear
it from St. Luke himself:
"Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica;
they received the Word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures
daily to see if these things were so. Many of them therefore believed,
with not a few Greek women of high standing as well as men. "
These Jewish-Christians (for lack of a better label) were eager
to hear the Gospel, and diligently checked Paul out, to make sure
that everything he said about Jesus being God's anointed messiah,
was as the Old Testament foretold.
When you make time for God's Word, and let it "dwell in you--richly"
(Col. 3:16), you are in fact making an opening in your life for
Jesus and the Spirit of God. If you do not resist the Holy Spirit,
encounters with the Word can be life changing and faith altering
experiences. I call on Isaiah here. As God's voice he declares,
"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your
ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher
than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts
than your thoughts. "For as the rain and the snow come down
from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making
it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread
to the eater, so shall my Word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that
which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent
it." Isaiah 55:8-11 (ESV)
And so, from
that first Easter day, Christians have been a people of the Word.
I correct myself, from his first sermon in the synagogue in Nazareth,
the Word of God has been the source of our life in Christ. God's
Word, as the promises of God to Israel in the Old Testament, became
flesh and blood in Jesus Christ (the Word Incarnate); Jesus fulfilled
everything God set in place for him to do. Having made the ultimate
and complete sacrifice for human sin by his death on the cross,
his disciples took the story of his victory into the four corners
of the earth-their Word is specifically called the Gospel-good
news, "the evangelion."
The Gospel-Word
calls us together as a people, the story of Jesus gives us our
identity, our strength, our peace, our joy, our confidence. On
our own power we can't do much. Empowered by Christ's Spirit,
working through the Gospel we can do all things through him who
strengthens us (Phil 4:13). The Catechism of Luther taught us
to say:
"I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength come
to Jesus Christ my Lord, or come to him, but the Holy Spirit called
me by the Gospel... In the same way he calls [together] the whole
Church on earth and preserves it with Jesus Christ in the one
true faith." Third Article of the Apostles' Creed
Prince of Peace Lutheran Church
Hamburg, NJ 07419
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