Living Scripture

A Sermon preached on Lent I, March 6, 2022, at St. Augustine’s and St. Christoph

Deuteronomy 26:1-11, Romans 10:8b-13, Luke 4:1-13

When talking about the Bible, we often refer to what we call the biblical narrative. This is the idea of scripture as one overarching story of God interacting with God’s people: Salvation history is another term. The Anglican theologian Tom Wright, who I and Greg and Douglas have all been known to refer to before (more than once!), uses the analogy of Bible as a play in five acts: (1) Creation; (2) Fall; (3) Israel; (4) Jesus. We are in the fifth act with the book of Acts in the New Testament as the first scene, and other books, including the book of Revelation, giving hints as to how the play is supposed to end. 

Wright says that we should see the Bible as: “… an as yet unfinished drama, which contained its own impetus, (and) which required of the actors a responsible entering into the story as it stood, in order first to understand how the threads could appropriately be drawn together, and then to put that understanding into effect by speaking and acting with both innovation and consistency.” So Christian life is in his analogy the living out of the remaining scenes of the final act with innovation – adapting the Bible’s teaching to our context and to our situations – and consistency – while remaining true and faithful to the core message. “The Bible,” he says “is designed to function through human beings, through the church, through people who…. have their life moulded by this Spirit-inspired book.”

Wright concludes by saying “That, in fact, is (I believe) one of the reasons why God has given us so much story, so much narrative in scripture.  Story authority, as Jesus knew only too well, is the authority that really works.  Throw a rule book at people’s head, or offer them a list of doctrines, and they can duck or avoid it, or simply disagree and go away.  Tell them a story, though, and you invite them to come into a different world; you invite them to share a world-view or better still a ‘God-view’.”[1]

And that is what we see happening in the OT and Gospel passages this morning. In the reading from Deuteronomy, we hear how the Israelites are instructed to place themselves in the scriptural narrative, to put themselves in the place of their ancestors. When they bring as a sacrifice or gift some of their harvest to the temple they are told to recite, recall, and re-enact their history beginning with Abraham, the wandering Aramean, through Joseph in Egypt, Moses in the desert, and Joshua entering the promised land. By putting themselves in this story they are placing themselves in the hands of the God who sent Abraham on a journey far from home, who protected Joseph, who saved Israel from starvation, who liberated Israel from slavery and brought them to the land flowing with milk and honey. They are making that experience of complete trust in God, the experience of slavery and suffering, and the experience of liberation their own! They are sharing, in Wright’s words, a world-view or ‘God-view’ that through their own ancestral experience of exile and of living as a stranger in a strange land also serves to remind them of the common bonds of humanity, which is why they are called on to celebrate their bounty with “the aliens who reside among you.” (Deut. 26:11)

And in the passage from Luke, Jesus is also placing himself into an ancient story, though one he does not just relive, but instead changes for the better. Although our reading begins with the words “after his baptism,” it does not immediately follow that event. Between the account of Jesus’ baptism and his temptation Luke gives us a genealogy that connects Jesus to Joseph and David and Jacob and Abraham and Noah and leads all the way back to Adam, described as the first son of God.

Then, when tempted by the devil, Jesus turns to scripture when formulating his response to each of the temptations. That scripture comes from the beginning of the book of Deuteronomy: Jesus is placing himself in the story of the Exodus and of Israel’s time in the desert, which was for 40 years and not just for the 40 days Jesus spends in the wilderness. But whereas the people of Israel often succumbed to temptation and grumbled for bread, flirted with idolatry, and very often put God to the test, Jesus does not. He succeeds where Israel fails. He redeems their story.

Jesus’ time in the wilderness is a time given to him to reflect on and answer the question, what does it mean to be Son of God and Messiah? The devil’s three temptations and Jesus’ reaction to them are the means by which he answers that question. To be the Son of God and the Messiah is to use his power for others, for healing, and not for himself, and certainly not for the cheap stunt of throwing himself off the pinnacle of the temple to be rescued by God. To be the Son of God and the Messiah is not to live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. To be the Son of God and the Messiah is to worship the Lord your God and serve only him, and not the devil and certainly not a lust for power and false glory. To be the Son of God and the Messiah is not to put the Lord your God to the test, but instead to trust in God, even if that trust leads him to the cross.

If we now place ourselves in God's story, then we must truly live by the word that comes from the mouth of God, just as the living Word, Jesus did. Also quoting the Old Testament (Deut. 30:11-14), Paul tells the Christians in Rome in his letter to them that this word is not far away or unreachable, but near us, and should be on our lips and in our hearts. “Because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Romans 10:9) For just quoting scripture is not enough. In the encounter with Jesus the devil also uses the word of God and quotes from scripture, in his case Psalm 91, when he tries to persuade Jesus to test God. There are also preachers who use what we call “proof texts,” sentences taken out of context to make points that are often diametrically opposed to scripture and to the whole arc of the story. That’s why it is important to look at the whole narrative, in Wright’s words “speaking and acting with both innovation and consistency,” or as Richard Hooker, an early Anglican theologian, taught us through the lenses of tradition and reason.

The Christian year with its liturgical seasons helps us enter God’s story and Jesus’ story to learn from them. The particular focus of Lent, as a time of self-examination, reflection and repentance, is on the question what does it mean for us to be Christians? Like Jesus in the wilderness, we are often tempted to focus solely on our own needs, to desire power, authority and the false glory that the devil offers, or to put God to the test, to base our faith on the fulfilment of some need or desire of our own. Unlike Jesus, who as we are taught is without sin, we have all succumbed to one or other of these temptations and therefore need to repent.  

To be a Christian is to enter and continue the story of Jesus, the Son of God and the Messiah, and to follow his example and his way, to let God’s word guide our decisions and behaviour just as Jesus did. According to Luke (4:14) “Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee” where he began his ministry of preaching, teaching and healing. He knew what he was called to do and to be. Let us use Lent to reflect on and renew our own calling as spirit-filled followers of Christ in the world and to come out of Lent as invigorated and renewed as Jesus was after his time in the desert, and ready to go and to do what God has in store for us. Amen.

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[1] “How Can the Bible Be Authoritative?” N.T. Wright (Originally published in Vox Evangelica 1991, 21, 7–32).

Remember that you are dust

A Sermon preached on Ash Wednesday March 2, 2022 at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden

Joel 2:1 – 2, 12 – 1 7, 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10, Matthew 6:1-6,16-21

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return” is what I will say in a moment at the imposition of the ashes, that moment when we mark our foreheads with the sign of the cross. Some traditions find this ancient wording, which is taken directly from Genesis 3:19 when Adam and Eve are sent out from Eden, too stark, too final, perhaps too depressing and offer “Repent, and believe the gospel” instead. Yes, repentance and turning to the gospel are an important part of the Ash Wednesday liturgy and the sign of the cross is an outward signal that we have understood this. But the traditional admonition is still valuable and it has several layers of meaning that are worth looking at.

The first, and primary significance of the phrase we use when imposing the ashes is to remind us of our mortality, as a so-called Momento Mori. “In the midst of life we are in death” are the words of an ancient Gregorian chant. It is a reminder that we should never wait to do what the Lord requires of us, in the words of the prophet Micah: “To do justice, and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8) It is not a threat, but a call to make good use of the time that is given us.

But it also contains a warning not to put to too much stock in our worldly achievements – our wealth, goods, and power. We do not want to be like the rich fool in Luke’s parable (Luke 12:16 – 21) whose land produced so abundantly that he decides to pull down his barns and build larger ones, with the words “’Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

Secondly, this little phrase is pointing us back to our creation. It comes from Genesis, from the end of the story of Adam and Eve, a story that began when “the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.” (Genesis 2:7) The first human was created out of dust and dirt and the name Adam comes from the Hebrew Adamah meaning ground or earth. It’s a call to humility and to remember that all we have comes from God … but also that through God’s act we became more than dirt and dust. We received the breath of life, God’s Spirit within us, and that never leaves us, even when we sin and turn from God as Adam and Eve did.

Finally, and even now at the very beginning of Lent, 6 weeks before Easter, the promise of resurrection, and of new life, already shines through this phrase about our mortality. It makes me think of the beautiful Easter Hymn (#204):

Now the green blade riseth from the buried grain,

Wheat that in dark earth many days has lain;

Love lives again, that with the dead has been:

Love is come again like wheat that springeth green.

This hymn takes as its starting points the words of Jesus as recorded in the gospel of John:

“Very truly I tell you unless a grain of wheat falls into the Earth and dies, it remains just a single grain but if it dies it there’s much fruit.” (John 12:23 – 24)

The dust to which we return is the dark earth and the ground of new life. This can be understood both literally, in the sense of the promise of our own resurrection, but also metaphorically. Sometimes we must let things die before new things can grow and arise. In any case it says that the dust to which we return is not the end.

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return. Remember that this life is finite, make it a good one. Remember who made you and whose you are, repent and turn to God. Remember God’s unending and unfailing love in this life and in the next.

Amen