Signs Of God's Grace:
The Importance Of The Bible

Dr. James Mayfield
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

October 19, 2003

Text: II Timothy 3:16-17

The question I am going to talk about today is: What is the importance of the Bible? What is the importance of the Bible for the church, the community of faith across generations, and its importance for each of us as persons of faith?

The way I am going to deal with this question is to tell the story of my evolving relationship with the Bible across the years. The reason for beginning this way is I am convinced each of us has a relationship with the Bible that evolves across the years. So, I will begin by telling my story, not so much to tell you my story as to help you think about your own story.

Toward the end of the sermon I will make a few comments about the importance or the authority of the Bible.

How did you first begin to sense the Bible is important?

For me it began in childhood. While I do not remember our family gathering during the week to read or discuss the Bible, I knew from an early age the Bible was important because both Mother and Dad had their own Bibles and they were obviously well used, with handwritten notes and printed articles in between the pages. When I was six years old, my grandmother gave me Egermeier's Bible Story Book for Christmas, and I remember my mother reading the stories to me. As I have mentioned before, in my kindergarten Sunday school class our elderly Sunday school teacher would get on her knees to re-enact Bible stories in the sandbox that was on a low table. Clothes pins were the characters; we made the hills of Israel with sand, and we used a mirror partially buried in the sand for water. Some Sundays the mirror was the Sea of Galilee, other Sundays it was the Red Sea, or the Jordan River, or the stormy ocean where Jonah was trying to get away from God's claim on his life. I remember memorizing the 23rd Psalm, in Vacation Bible School when I was in the fourth or fifth grade.

How did the others influence your first attitude or approach to the Bible?

Probably a good an illustration of the way the adults in my family dealt with the Bible is the way they dealt with the creation story that is in the first chapter of Genesis. My parents would say: "The Bible is not a science book; it does not tell us how God created the world; what it does is tell us in beautiful words that God created all that is." When the Revised Standard Version translation of the Bible was first published in the late 1940's and early 1950's, the country was in the midst of what was called "The Red Scare." The R.S.V. was the first translation to begin to outsell the old King James Version. As a result some people were so upset by this they even imagined this new translation was some sort of Communist plot to undermine the morals of our nation. I remember Daddy laughing after an encounter with one of those folks and saying: "I suppose he thinks David and Jesus spoke King James English." By the time I graduated from high school, I knew a few Bible stories (more from my storybook than from the Bible) and I could recite the 23rd Psalm and the Lord's Prayer. The bulk of my knowledge about the birth of Jesus and the Easter story came more from church pageants than from reading the Bible.

Have you struggled and even doubted the Bible has anything to say to us today?

What Bible reading I did was inconsistent and superficial. Yet, if I had been asked: "What is the most important book ever published?" I would said: "The Bible." Nevertheless, I did not give it much attention.

As a freshman in college, I took a course studying the Bible as literature. But rather than this experience leading me to a greater appreciation of the Bible, it convinced me the Bible was irrelevant. I remember wanting the Bible to really mean something to me and being disappointed that it did not. I did not talk about this disappointment; I guess I was ashamed or embarrassed that this book so many said was great seemed irrelevant and out of date to me. So, I placed it on the shelf (both literally and figuratively) along with other souvenirs from the past. And it was not just the Bible that seemed irrelevant and meaningless to me, it was also church liturgy and church-talk. And, of course, in the confidence of my youth I was sure that if I could not understand it, the Bible and church jargon must be just so much "goble-de-gook."

I had grown up assuming life was meaningful and assuming the Bible and the church would provide me with the key to discovering that meaning. So, when I viewed both the Bible and the language of the church as more or less meaningless, I was on the edge of viewing life and my own life as more or less meaningless. My viewing the Bible and the language of the church as irrelevant to contemporary life was a significant factor (but not the only one) contributing to a crisis of faith and significant depression that I described as the loss of hope.

My greatest motivation for going to seminary was the hope of finding hope. And just as there were more factors involved in my becoming depressed than my problems with the Bible, so there were more factors involved in my recovering hope than my rediscovery of the Bible and meaning in church language. But these were significant factors.

If you went through a similar period of doubt, what was the turning point for you?

I remember when my recovery of hope began. I was reading an essay about the writings of Paul written by Rudolf Bultmann. Bultmann used the language of existentialism to reinterpret the New Testament message. As I read what he had written, I began to understand afresh and with deeper meaning what Paul meant when he used words such as "flesh," "spirit" and "hope." It was a major "aha moment" in my life.

All did not immediately become crystal clear, but I did have a toe hold, and I had hope of climbing out of the pit I had been in. I did not suddenly understand the Bible and have clarity about all it contains. But I began reading with a new kind of hope or expectation - even anticipation. And bit by bit, the scriptures began to come alive for me and the language of the church began not only to make sense but to be rich and deep with meaning. What motivated you to invest in an on-going study of the Bible? When I graduated from seminary and especially when I had to preach two different sermons every Sunday, I was placed, you might even say forced, into a discipline of Bible study that caused me to seek, not only what the Bible writers meant when they wrote, but also what relevance that writing has for us in our day.

The more I wrestled with Bible in my ongoing attempts to prepare sermons, the more I became amazed at both the depth and ageless relevance of the Bible. As I wrestled with the scriptures trying to write two sermons a week, I was, at the same time, involved as pastor with people experiencing the joys and sorrows, the elations and devastations that come with life. I began to understand the ancient declaration that the scriptures contain all things necessary for salvation - that is, all we need to be whole in the midst of whatever we are going through.

And in the process of all this, I began both to experience and understand why the Bible is not only important, but absolutely essential.

So, why is the Bible important to us? The Bible is important because it is the primary document connecting us with the fundamental story of faith. It is the story of God seeking relationship with his children who are so often rebellious, arrogant and stubborn, spiritually blind, selfish and even cruel. It is the story of divine love going to the extreme of becoming one of us so that we might be at one with God.

As we engage this fundamental story with openness, anticipation and expectation, the Holy Spirit enables us to discern what mere logic alone cannot discern, to see more than mere eyes can see, and hear more than ears can hear. And as this happens to us, we begin to experience and understand what other women and men of faith across the centuries have come to experience and understand.

Through the Bible we are met by God and we meet God. Through the Bible we are confronted by Christ and blessed by Christ. Through the Bible we are confronted with who we really are and shown who we are meant to be.

Our journey with and through the Bible is not an easy journey. It is certainly not a quick journey; but it is a journey worth taking; the truth of the matter is, it is the central journey, the essential journey for living now and from now on in harmony with God.

Let us pray:

God, thank you for the gift of the Bible. When we have put it down, motivate us to pick it up. When we have written it off, enable us to rediscover its relevance. Protect us from treating it as an icon or a good luck charm. Shove us into its story so that we will discover who you are, who we are and who we are meant to be. Motivate us to begin the never ending journey of seeking your Truth in its pages. Amen. Pastoral prayer: God, help us become aware of our blessings so that we can experience the joy of gratitude. All too much of the time, we move through our lives insensitive to your gifts. It is easy to be so absorbed in our little disappointments, our real problems and occasional tragedies that we move through our days feeling we are alone in facing what we must face. Unable to sense your presence, your grace at work in our lives, we go from duty to duty with no sense of gratitude and very little joy. God, help us. We need you to open our eyes and ears so that we can see more than eyes alone can see and hear more than ears alone can hear. Give us what we need to be aware of your grace at work in life all around us and in us. Help us be so aware of our blessings that we are able to experience the joy of gratitude, the peace and confidence that comes when we are aware we are not alone, that you are with us. Enable us to be so sensitive to our blessings that our living is marked, shaped and influenced by profound gratitude. This we pray, remembering Jesus was teaching us to trust you completely, when he taught us to pray: "Our Father ...."