Amazing grace, I do believe . . .the Bible is for me.

Diverse communities of the modern era rely upon the Bible as (a) divinely inspired literature and (b) some communities believe in the stories of the Bible as literally true.

I hope to convince you that both a and b are conclusions and only in hindsight to be valued for efficacy and worth to the reader of the Bible.  Why is my offer of insight a helpful one?  Think of a preacher of the Gospel, any preacher.  Does he call the Bible the "Word of God?"  Is that not a tad presumptuous?

Why, what is to stop someone from just making stuff up and then telling folks that the words he writes down were words God told him to write down?  Absolutely nothing.  However, if he or she is struck by  lightning on the spot for his claim of authenticity, we will tend to believe he or she has been entirely discredited.  So are we suppose to believe every yokel that comes along who makes such a claim and is not struck dead on the spot?  I think not.

If you've a mind to do so, keep listening and I will give you in a manner of speaking the wherewithal to deal with charlatans and false prophets of the words of God. They are here, yes here, in the modern age just as assuredly they have always been present in every generation since the dawn of creation of humankind.  Who knows?  I may be one!  And so the question hangs in the air:  "Priest, rabbi, elder, bishop, do we all not know you to be God fearing as Abraham and know you to be persons subject to judgment for your deeds consistent with your words?"  

And so it is that each would be witness of the word of God comes to you as one who is being put to the test for the proof of his or her testimony.  The witness is living in fact and in deed the words of one who is God fearing and as one subject to the judgment of God.  The witness can be anyone!  Why, could it not be me?

What's missing here?  I think you know.  You.  You need to show up in the conversation.  Read your Bible, process its contents, listen to the learned and the God fearing who are respectful of your intellect and capacity for God as a human designed with a certain innate quality.  The quality, I believe, is reducible to words, and so here goes:  "You are an intelligent creature capable of faith and trust in God."  Abstract words and phrases are useful here too.  Some recent commentators say that we humans have been created with a capacity for relationship with God.  Believe absolutely that "you are a creature capable of faith and trust in God" and stuff will start to happen in your life.   Transformation of your life becomes your hope and absolute purposefulness in living your life becomes your limitless gift from God that can not ever be eroded or thefted from you.

God will want you like God wanted Abraham to be.  He will want you to be as follows: a person who believes in God, trusts in God, and does God's bidding even in the midst of despair and insurmountable odds and the disfavor of your fellow human beings!  Read the Book of Job; read it again.  To what purpose?  You will belong to God and God will be your God.

By becoming a reader of the Bible, you with your own reason and experience and hopefully wise counsel of family and church can honestly react to each story, especially if the story puts words into the mouth of God.  Did God really say such a thing as God is said to have said in these stories?  At some point, you will find yourself commenting in three ways: (1) bunk, (2) definitely a Godlike thing to say, or (3) I just do not honestly know and I'll just go on "hold" until I know more.

I offer you this: your comment (even if it's "bunk") tells you exactly what posture you have taken as a response to the word of  God some preacher is talking about.   You are as some other preachers like to say interacting with the "Living Word of God."  And like it or not, you are living the word of God.  That can be earthshakingly important in how you come to live as authentically as the person God created you to be.

I tell you this, because I believe it to be true:  One day, you can in all honesty say that you have had an experience of God which is your own experience and to which you too can witness to others!

Wow!  Isn't that amazing?  You will actually come to know why a believer weeps during the singing of  a hymn like "Amazing Grace."

The Bible first should be trusted as the literature of the Jewish people and honored for what it can teach about ideals which reflect upon a people and a person in their trust and reliance upon a God and two other very profound truths: (a) God keeps his promises to people; and (b) people capable of faithfulness to God are often and predominately unfaithful to God and subsequently thrown down upon the mercy of God.

What else is there?  Well, quite a bit actually.  The Gospels, Acts of the Apostles, and Epistles and even the Book of Revelations are also Jewish literature, but it's a Jewish literature that takes on the entire human race and shares the entirety of divine wisdom with all comers.  What?  What did that preacher man just say?

How did a backward, wayward, perverse Aramaic people become at times the People of God, a people which could then anticipate and receive the Son of Man (the Messiah or Promised One)?  And the story just keeps getting better and better.  For then the Messiah does come and is killed for it, and then something else happens.  He is resurrected in glory.  Then he sends some of these same Aramaic persons forth into the world at large with the Good News of Salvation for all.

This is ultimately the grand saga, is it not?  Yes, a saga, an epic of  God becoming human, suffering as a human, and dying an ignominious human death (as if a criminal among criminals though he was without blemish and innocent of sin or crime), transcending death, not to prove he was God, but to redeem us from sin and death.

You mean he failed to prove he was God, or at least the Son of God?  He already knew he was God.  He didn't have to prove anything.  Well he did have to prove one thing.  He had to prove God keeps his promises for we truly difficult ones who need God to convince us that he is the God of Love..  He had to prove God's love for each of us.  God wants us to believe that he died on the cross to redeem us from our sin, our waywardness, our perversity, and our disobedience of the will of God.

I know it has to bother you that God made you knowing that you could and would disobey him.  Why would he do that?  I  think I know.

I believe God, being God, is drawn down from his heaven into our midst, or can be drawn down into our midst, by worshipful prayer offered up by his people.  Not just any people, but by communities of believers who aspire to be the people of God.  Read Psalm 22.  Not yet, Estelle, not yet!

When you get home, go into your room, close the door, and read Psalm 22 until it brings you to tears.  If it does not do that to you or should you tell me that you did not cry, I guarantee you that one day you will read it and you will weep, and you will weep, you will weep profusely.  And you will be filled with the Holy Spirit because you will have been emptied out so that the Spirit of God can fill up your cup.  Your soul will absolutely be brim full, spilling out, every excess of the Spirit that one can imagine.

This God thing really works.  It does.  And even more profoundly, when you conform to God's expectations, you love God and you love neighbor, you actually will come to see God.  And you will see the Lord.  Not only that, but you will see the Lord even before you should die.  How is it that I can proclaim such a patently exaggerated thing?   Why indeed?

Because you will see in the face of the idiot, the prostitute, the wife abuser, the homosexual, the tax collector, the oppressed and downtrodden, the widow, the orphan, the dying, the diseased, the outcast, the stranger, the face of Our Lord Jesus Christ. This call from God, this religion, is not for sissies.

Yes, you will suffer rejection and even self-abnegation, and despair, but God will send an angel to comfort you and you will come to no harm.  What is more, you will have given life over to the greater glory and honor of the God who does want you for himself.  He will say your name and welcome you into His glory and you will say, "When, dear Lord, when?"  He will say, "When you spoke words of kindness and compassion and when you met the need of those considered the lesser in the world from which you come.  You did it to Me as I commanded you to do."

Notice how the literature of the people of God ascends to theology over time, a theology of the God  of Love in all and for all.  It becomes a story of Divine intervention to turn us heart and soul back to God, whom though  we have forsaken God, wants us for His purposes, not our own.  He appears to have gifted us with willfulness (the power to disobey God) but that same will can turn us to faith, trust, and reliance on God alone as the source of our best interest and welfare.

Start living today.  Be Abraham, Moses, Joshua, Samuel, David, Elijah, Job, Hosea.  Be the person, be the people of God.  Be Mary, John the Baptist, Peter, John, and Paul.  You will be the person, the people, that God created you to be.  You will speed the return of the Son of God in all his glory.  When this earth perishes and all we know of this world is ended, there God is and you will be there with him, safe, and in his care just as you learned to be when you walked and dwelt on the Earth.  Or you can do otherwise, but know this: you do it at your peril and to the detriment of your eternal soul.

That may seem harsh, but this God of Love is a jealous God.  This God wants you for God's purposes.  This God wants you to freely choose God as he designed you and me to do.  You can turn and walk away now, but you will be back.  You will ultimately throw yourself down on the mercy of God.  Trust that one thing you know is true.  We are not alone in the universe of science or of history.  God is not only out there, he is in here, in the human heart, and the heart does not lie except to its own detriment and brokenness.

Saturday, April 13, 2013.  Sermon notes for my readers.  Richard J. Hilber.