66 Books

 

Service of Worship

Eastern Parkway United Methodist Church

November 14, 2021

Rev. Natalie Bowerman, Pastor

 

Prelude

 

Greeting and Announcements

 

Mission Statement: We are a faith community striving to be, to nurture, and to send forth disciples of Jesus Christ.

 

Call to Worship (by the Rev. Dr. Derek C Weber):

 

Not one stone will be left on stone.
We worship our Rock and our Salvation
Beware that no one leads you astray
We worship our source of wisdom and truth
When all seems lost, this is just the beginning of the birth pangs.
We are here to worship the Word that endures and the hope that is born among us.

 

Hymn 529: How Firm a Foundation

 

Prayer of Confession:

Most holy and merciful God,
We confess to you and to one another,
that we have sinned against you
by what we have done,
and by what we have left undone.
We have not loved you with our
whole heart and mind and strength.
We have not fully loved our neighbors as ourselves.
We have not always had in us the mind of Christ.
You alone know how often we have grieved you
by wasting your gifts, by wandering from your ways.
Forgive us, we pray,
And free us from our sin.
Renew in us the grace and strength of your Holy Spirit,
for the sake of Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.

Psalter Hymnal,
Grand Rapids: CRC Publications, 1987

 

Assurance

 

Hear the Good News: As far as the East is from the West, so far has God removed our transgressions from us. In the name of Jesus we are forgiven, freed, and loved. Amen.

 

Anthem

 

Mark 13: 1-8

The Destruction of the Temple Foretold

13 As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” ² Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”

³ When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, ⁴ “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?” ⁵ Then Jesus began to say to them, “Beware that no one leads you astray. ⁶ Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’^[a] and they will lead many astray. ⁷ When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. ⁸ For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.

 

A Message

“66 Books”

 

Friends, as you can see if you’re here in person, this sermon will have a significant visual component. If you’re reading this in manuscript form or only listening to audio, you’ll have to use your imagination. Nonetheless, be blessed today.

 

The inspiration for today’s sermon came from a few different places. This is one I’ve been wanting, and planning, to preach for a while, and today felt like a good day for it. If you’ve been participating in our book study, you know that for the last three weeks we have been reading Inspired by Rachel Held Evans. She also wrote Searching for Sunday, which our book club read during Lent. Evans had a dynamic faith background, and became a prolific author, blogger, public speaker, and modern prophet before her tragic and untimely death in 2019 at the age of just 37. Raised in Tennessee, in the same town that hosted the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925, Evans grew up in a conservative, evangelical church, one that forbade women from preaching, taught the importance of the traditional family and traditional gender roles, frowned on the theory of evolution and science in general, and professed that the Bible is the literal, inerrant Word of the Divine. I have a lot more to say about that last teaching, but I’ll get back to that in a minute. When Evans was a child these beliefs all made crystal clear sense to her, and she had no reason to question them. However, as she got older, she discovered it was one thing to have a faith you *didn’t* question, and another entirely to have a faith you *couldn’t* question. And the faith of Evans’ childhood was the latter. She began to have doubts that grew louder the harder she tried to silence them. This came to a head for her as a young adult, and she reached such a crisis in her faith that she stopped going to church for a while. She ultimately made her way back as an Episcopalian.

 

In Inspired, Evans takes a close look at what the Bible had been for her as a child, and what the Bible became for her as a grown up. Now, I want to be clear about something: there’s nothing wrong with having a conservative faith. And if biblical literalism is your bag, that’s fine. It didn’t work for Rachel, though, and it is not the way I see the Bible. Biblical literalism, which Evans learned growing up, would teach us that the Bible is the direct Word of God, flawless in every detail, never swayed or influenced in any way by the people translating it, or the culture in which it was written, or the culture and beliefs of the person reading and interpreting it. It says what it says, you take it at face value, and you ask no questions.

 

And, really, that’s a legit way to read the Bible and to practice your faith in your life. But if you read the Bible that way, you’ll eventually have to reconcile that interpretation with the inevitable hard questions: When did snakes learn how to talk? How did Noah get two of every kind of animal on one boat? How could God have allowed Abraham to think he was going to sacrifice Isaac? How do we square all the violence and slavery in the Bible with our own morality? If the Gospels are like straight up history books, then how come we need 4 of them, and why are they so different? If the 2 stories about Jesus’ birth and the 4 about his death and burial are all so different, then are any of them truthful?

 

As we’ve read Inspired together, we’ve had difficult conversations about what the Bible really is. In one way, if anything, the Bible is kind of like a knit sweater with one loose thread poking out. And you’re tempted to pull it. But if you pull on that thread, the thread of your deeper and more critical questions of the Bible, are you willing to risk unraveling the whole sweater of your beliefs? I’m here to provide you a better way to look at that.

 

In addition to these questions that have been posed by our book study, we have today’s lectionary-appointed Gospel passage, from Mark. This is a haunting one, and one that is, by definition, apocalyptic. Jesus talks about the end times of the world. The suffering that will happen before the earth ceases to be. The false teachings, and the terror. Jesus also pointed to the Temple in Jerusalem. The same building they were in last week, watching people donate money. The most holy building Jesus’ disciples knew of. The house they believed God lived in. Jesus pointed to that building, one the disciples could not imagine living without, and told them—someday soon, this will be demolished.

 

Partly because we believe Mark, our evangelist, is writing about an historical event—the conquering of Jerusalem and destruction of the Temple in 66 CE—and partly because we aren’t First Century Palestinian Jews so the Temple doesn’t mean the same to us, we don’t tend to absorb how horrifying this prophesy sounds to Jesus’ disciples. The most important thing you can imagine will be destroyed someday very soon. Maybe that’s this church. Maybe that’s your house, or the place you work or go to school. Maybe it’s not a building to you, but another object that means everything to you. Your wedding pictures, your violin, the necklace that used to be your mom’s, Grandma’s sweater, your dad’s golf clubs. Something with deep history, that connects you back to generations of people who love you and made you who you are, who may no longer be here but who’s presence you feel through the physical object that reminds you of them. That object will be destroyed in violence very soon. This is the very worst news to Jesus’ disciples. Where do we find Good News in such terrible news?

 

Where this ultimately all brings me is to the fragility and impermanence of everything we make with our own hands and minds, including our own faith. Just as those stones came crashing down when Rome sacked Jerusalem in 66 CE, Evans’ entire understanding of the Bible fell to pieces when it couldn’t hold up to the stress of her unanswerable questions. When the stones of your faith start to feel shaken, and you worry that it will all fall apart, you need to remember who we really are, who God is, and why we worship. And you need to know what our scripture is, this timeless, enduring Word of the Divine.

 

Many of us grew up seeing the Bible like one concise, neatly organized book. It has a pretty cover, those thin pages, the red letters, the gold trimmed page edges, maybe even some illustrations or a dedication page. But that’s not what the Bible is. That’s what we made the Bible to be, and that’s what it is right now. In truth, the Bible is more like what I set up for you on the altar: 66 books.

 

The Bible is an anthology of 66 books written by many different people, over the course of thousands of years. There’s a huge diversity in these 66 books. These books were written in hugely different times—I have ancient Christian philosophy up here, and stuff that just came out. I have law, history, music, poetry, prophecy, and letters. I have advice from other ministers about how to be a Church. I have information on preaching and worship. I have nonfiction works, and fiction. I have books written for an elderly audience, books written for a middle aged audience, books written for a young adult audience, books written for a general audience, and books written for children. I have 3 different languages represented up here.

 

I find this visual really helpful. 66 very different books, from different authors, with different audiences, in different places, for different reasons. The biggest point I hope you might glean from all of that is this: you do not pick up the Bible as if it is all one book for one purpose. When you read the Bible, you take the care of discerning the intention of each individual book the same way you would with the 66 books up here on the altar. You don’t read The Faith We Sing the same way you read A Documentary History of Religion in America to 1877. You don’t read Caring Churches, Caring People the same way you read The Book of Discipline. And you don’t read The Story of Christianity the same way you read The Mitten.

 

You go based on the genre, the time period, what you know of the author, and any other background information is relevant. Some of these books up here are absolutely literal fact. Some of them are stories that were made up to teach you a critical moral lesson. Some of them share with you the songs of a people who love God. Some of them invoke prayer in your heart. Some of them intend to teach you how the Church should be in these days, and many of them do not. All of them were meant to be taken, if not literally, seriously.

 

And here we are in 2021. In a Methodist Church in Schenectady, New York. In case this wasn’t already well-covered territory, I received several more reminders this week about the precarious state of this particular denomination. Our DS is hosting charge conferences to work out material related to lawsuits many of our churches have been named in related to acts of sexual abuse that happened years ago at Boy Scout meetings. Every word of that sentence was awful. The  Church is preparing for a General Conference session that is still scheduled for next August but that has been moved twice, where we will vote on a protocol that will officially split the UMC, and give our more conservative friends seed money to start a new denomination. This week, the Conference began circulating surveys, asking clergy what decisions we think we might make when the Big Split finally happens. These aren’t decisions we can make lightly. We’re trying to plan for a future that we haven’t seen. We’re imagining the whole staircase when we’re only at the very foot of it. The Conference has asked ministers like me, and our lay leaders, to start conversations with out churches, and start preparing ourselves for a post-separation UMC.

 

For so long, that was an unimaginable reality. This denomination has been embroiled in heated debate over sexuality and gender identity since before I was born. But still, the UMC has always been my home. It’s the place where I put on bunny ears and pretended to be a rabbit on Noah’s ark. It’s where I colored in pictures of Jesus and used Sunday school leaflets to absorb stories like the Prodigal Son and Jesus’ advice to turn the other cheek. It’s where I put on a brown bathrobe to be one of Joseph’s brothers in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. I was Gad. It’s where I brought my very first boyfriend, this nice guy named Sean, so he could meet everyone important in my life. It’s where I learned how to pray and shared my deepest prayers. It’s where I grieved. It’s where I rejoiced. It’s where I belted out “Here I Am, Lord”. It’s where I felt a calling to the ministry and pursued it. It’s where I baptized my three children and met my closest friends. It’s where I’ve baptized your babies and committed your loved ones to the earth.

 

It’s not a physical structure, like the Temple in Jerusalem. But it’s the dearest thing in my life. And, in a sense, Jesus is talking to us like he did his disciples and he is saying, See this denomination? See its Discipline, its hymnal, its history? See these wonderful memories, and the faith that was grown here? Someday soon, it will all be tossed on the ground, and dismantled.

 

When that split finally happens maybe someone, like Mark, will respond by immediately sitting down to write a book about it. And I will value the seriousness of that story.

 

But whatever happens, no matter what the name of my denomination may be some day, no matter what building I worship in, and no matter who is around me, there are some things I know for literal fact because the Bible taught them to me—I am saved, and I am loved. Someday my Bible might look really different to me. It might have completely different binding, and there might be a whole new translation that gains favor in scholarly circles. It may have all new footnotes from new generations of believers. New pastors will preach from it and shine a light I’ve never seen on my favorite old stories. But it will be the Word. The same Hebrew prophets that inspired Jesus. The same Gospels that Martin Luther and John Calvin and John Wesley all interpreted. The same faith stories that my kids, and their kids, and their kids will learn about in Sunday School. The same Psalms we will set to beautiful choral music. Its wisdom and beauty will outlast every generation of the Christian Church. And it will continue to guide us as long as we take the time and care to read the messages those authors from ages past wanted to convey.

 

Thanks be to God.

 

Amen.

 

Hymn 534: Be Still My Soul

 

Offering, doxology, and prayer of dedication

 

Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s Prayer

 

Lord God, heavenly Father, we lift up our hearts to You in prayer, trusting in Your help:

You have promised to be our keeper – to guard our going out and coming in from this time forth and forever more, and so we ask that You would be with and uphold those who are ill. Grant them healing according to Your will.

As we look forward to the day of Christ’s return in glory, help us by Your Holy Spirit to remember Your holy law, statutes, and just decrees and walk in them according to Your will and in this way show reverence for Your holy name which You have bestowed upon us in Baptism.

We ask Your blessing upon our national economy and upon our own jobs and financial well-being. Direct the unemployed to useful labor that will provide for their needs. Lead us to be generous to those who are suffering economic hardships. Sustain in us all a strong work ethic so that so that we might provide for our families, help those in need, and give generously for the work of the church. Help us to not grow weary in doing good.

Give us an ongoing awareness that this world and the things of this world will not endure forever, but there will come a Last Day. In the midst of natural disasters and socio-economic distress and political uncertainty help us to see these events as signs of the end so that day would not catch us unaware but that instead we would recognize that our redemption is drawing near.

Bless Your church on earth. Protect us from false teachers who would deceive by Your name and lead us astray. Help us to always hold fast to the firm foundation of Your Word. In the midst of uncertain times, grant us the mouth and the wisdom to bear witness to Your Son Jesus Christ and the redemption we have in Him.

Dear heavenly Father, whatever else You see that we need—whatever is for the good of our neighbor and redounds to Your glory—we pray that You would grant to us, Your children.[1] 

Our Father, Mother, Creator God, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who have trespassed against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory forever. Amen.

 

Hymn 127: Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah

 

Benediction

Our God, our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, will guard our going out and coming in from this time on and forevermore. And as all God’s people we say together, Amen.

 

Postlude

 

All scripture comes from the New Revised Standard Version

 

 

 

 

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[1] Excerpted from a prayer written by Allan Eckert and posted on the South Texas Lutheran website, http://thesouthtexaslutheran.blogspot.ca/2010/11/general-pray-proper-28c.html. Reposted: https://re-worship.blogspot.com/2013/10/pastoral-prayer-proper-28c_13.html.