Tonight is our third Lenten Soup Supper and Discussion, and our table conversations have been about some of the difficult sayings of Jesus. We have been using a wonderful guide by theologian and New Testament scholar Dr. Amy-Jill Levine – who is also Jewish and is a professor at Emory University, and the ideas have been flowing. As people of faith, one of the worst things we can do is ignore Scriptural challenges, and we at Calvary have never, at least in my time, shied away from asking difficult questions about those difficult sayings. The 20th/21st Century church in America has, I think, done a pretty poor job of self-reflection about the Bible. We’ve either sided on inerrancy and the whole “God is in control” heresy, or we’ve run away from dealing with Scripture at all. I find neither approach satisfying nor having integrity – I want to push back and grow in my faith and understanding. And I don’t think Jesus minds some doubts and questions.
For centuries we human beings have been struggling with the balance between science and religion. We are all probably familiar with Copernicus and Galileo and the whole “the world isn’t flat and the earth goes around the sun” controversy, but the challenges of a God who is in control and a Bible that is never wrong has put science and knowledge and truth at odds with what we’ve been taught about Scripture. I believe that the anti-science agenda that has slowly been creeping into our world is part of this struggle, and the anti-intellectualism of our present age is pushing for biblical, not fact-based, education in the public square. We can appreciate the awe and wonder in the Bible as its writers marveled about a loving and beneficent God, but we can’t explain how the universe came to be in the same way.
Our congregation isn’t afraid to step into the whirlwind of controversy over the Bible, and that’s one of the things I like best about us. We aren’t afraid to say that, maybe, Jesus changed His mind – the Bible says that God does that all the time! We aren’t afraid to say that since Jesus didn’t say anything about LGBTQ people, that means that He loved them and accepted them just like He loved and accepted heterosexual people. We aren’t afraid to ask why the Gospels tell the kind-of-sort-of same stories differently, or why there are two creation stories in Genesis, or why the Apostle Paul told his conversion story in different ways three times in the Book of Acts. For people who don’t want that, there are tons of churches they can attend, but for those who are open to the challenge and wonder of a faith that pushes us, we are here – and we aren’t alone. Ask any question you want of us – we aren’t afraid to think, and we aren’t afraid to say that we don’t know. Because Jesus wasn’t either.
Prayer – Holy God, You made us with brains that want to know and grow and evolve – thank You. Amen.
Today’s art is “Building the World of Redemption” by Miriam Leah Shaw.