Pentecost 9
3 August 2025
Vineville Baptist Church
Macon, Georgia
Gregory Pope
COMMISSION: LIVING THE BIBLICAL STORY
From Creation to New Creation #12: A 90 Day Journey Through The Biblical Story
Deuteronomy 6:4-9. 2 Timothy 3.14-17
One Sunday afternoon, a pastor decided to go calling on his members in the hills of eastern Tennessee. As he entered the first house in the hollow, he was warmly welcomed. The young couple invited him to sit at the table, where there lay a large, beautiful, family Bible. It was obviously well used and deeply treasured. When the pastor called on the next house, he was curious to find a large, beautiful, family Bible that looked suspiciously like the one he had seen in the first house. As he made his way to the third home, he noticed a young boy hiding behind the trees in back of the houses running ahead of him with that very same Bible under his arms.
Oh how we want to appear to love and value the Bible! Sometimes the Bible is displayed only to impress or quoted only to manipulate. It sits on more coffee tables than coffee does. It gathers more dust than the night stand. And yet if consistently opened and faithfully read and allowed to speak, it can change the loneliest and most wayward of hearts.
- J. Jacobs was born into a Jewish family who never really practiced their faith. (Christians aren’t the only ones!) Jacobs refers to himself as an agnostic. For the purpose of writing a book, he decided to spend one full year following the Bible as literally as possible. He has published his experiences in a book entitled The Year of Living Biblically.1 It is a light-hearted read, laced with fine humor, but it becomes an experience for Jacobs that does not leave him completely unchanged. Things happened he never expected. He did not anticipate herding sheep in Israel or finding solace in prayer or confronting how absurdly flawed he was or taking refuge in the Bible and rejoicing in it. He found himself on occasion actually taking cautious baby steps of faith. At times, he said, the whole world took on a glow of sacredness and the ground felt hallowed.
As I read the book I was disappointed that I did not think of the idea first! However, judging from the reactions of his wife, my wife is glad I didn’t. When he told his wife that many of the great men of the Bible like Jacob and David and Solomon were polygamists, and that the Bible never actually forbids polygamy, and that he should probably consider it, she did not find him in the least bit humorous.
To prepare for his adventure he read the Hebrew Bible in four weeks, five hours a day, writing down every rule, guideline, suggestion, and nugget of advice he could find. He was left with a list of over 700 rules. He soon realized that all aspects of his life would be affected – the way he talks and walks, eats and bathes, dresses and hugs his wife. He did not shave his beard for a year. He followed the biblical injunction never to wear clothing made of more than one fabric. But he found it difficult to do several things the Bible commands: Like breaking a cow’s neck at the site of an unsolved murder. Or stoning rebellious children and anyone who worked on the sabbath. The best he could do without getting arrested was, when he confronted the sinners, to drop pebbles on their feet.
You may have grown up being told that if you did not read the Bible literally and follow every command equally then you did not really believe the Bible. Jacobs’ experience reveals the flaws in that argument. But what role does the Bible play in your life? What is this Book we give to our children and read week after week in worship upon which many of us seek to pattern our lives? Is it just a list of do’s and don’ts? an answer book to every question we have? Is it just ancient history and myth? Or is it capable of bringing a word from God that speaks into the depths of our lives?
To be sure, there are life-giving laws and protective commands in the Bible that are to give shape to the way we live our lives. The psalmist testifies as to how God’s word serves as a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path, and how much more God’s commands are to be desired than much fine gold. “Sweeter than honey” is how the psalmist speaks of the laws and guidance of God. But is there more to the Bible than laws and commands? Yes, much more.
There is a Story – one, beautiful, world-shaping Story – that the Bible calls us to enter. A Story we’ve spent the past three months reading, hearing, and reflecting upon in order to get a larger sense of the whole Biblical narrative. Because we need to know the whole Story to understand any part of the Story. Extracting one verse or one story without an understanding of the larger biblical narrative can lead one into dangerous waters. It is all interconnected into one Grand Story told in many voices written over a period of roughly 2000 years to specific contexts, many of them much different than our own. And yet, it is a Story that has transformed lives and continues to change hearts today.
My great-great-great-great grandfather Pope Gregory the Great of the 6th century said, “Scripture is like a river, broad and deep, shallow enough here for the lamb to go wading but deep enough there for the elephant to swim.”2 The 16th century Protestant reformer Martin Luther testified: “The Bible is alive, it speaks to me. It has feet, it runs after me. It has hands, it lays hold of me.”3 What kind of Book could do such a thing? How could a Book do such a thing?
Twentieth century theologian Karl Barth said that reading the Bible correctly is like looking out a window. As we look out the window into the world the Bible reveals we see everyone looking up into the sky shading their eyes with their hands. The people are excited. Something is happening to them. Something has captured their hearts. The people outside the window see something that’s hidden from those inside the window by the roof above the window. Barth says that when we read the Bible faithfully, we will want to race outside and join the others in what they have found. We will want to experience more than what the window can show us. Rather than simply reading the words of scripture and hearing the stories in order to extract truths or principles from them, we will want to get involved in the Story and experience the life beyond the window, the God beyond the words of Scripture.
Through its divine inspiration the Bible speaks to our lives in powerful ways. Through its beautiful and raw and honest humanity you will find that the Bible can speak to whatever you’re experiencing.
One of the reasons for this three-month journey through the Biblical Story is because this Book more than any other has the power to shape our identity as the people of God. The Bible is beneficial for individual study, and should be read by individuals. But it must be read first and foremost as the Church’s Book, as a word to God’s people in community. For the first 1500 years of the church, before the printing press, the Bible was not available to individuals. You could only hear it read in worship. As God’s gathered people we return to this Book over and over again to be reminded of who we are and what we are called to do in the world. Rather than giving us a truth to defend, the Bible issues us a challenge to live more faithfully, a Story in which we find our own lives.
We need to know this Story. It is the Story of our lives. It is the testimony of God’s people and their experience with God. It is a living testament as to how God wants to live among us today. We continue coming back to these 66 books because we have found in them the very words of life. The words of scripture, said John Calvin, “breathe something divine.” And through the divine breath, the Bible extends to us an invitation to enter into covenant with God as a part of God’s people and learn to see the world differently and live in the world differently. That’s what it means to say the Bible is inspired.
Eugene Peterson, author of the Bible translation, The Message, has written a book on the Bible entitled Eat This Book. The image is taken from the book of Revelation where John was given a scroll and told to eat it. He was told it would be bitter to the stomach, but sweet as honey in his mouth. We are fond of saying that the Bible has all the answers. But the Bible also has all the questions – many of them we would just as soon were never asked of us and some of which we will spend most of our lives doing our best to dodge. The Bible is a comforting and disturbing book. You can’t reduce it to what you can handle. You can’t domesticate it to what you are comfortable with. When John ate the scroll, it gave him a stomachache. And it wasn’t the papyrus that did it. Peterson says, “Eat this book, but have a well-stocked cupboard of Alka-Seltzer and Pepto-Bismol at hand.”4
For we do not simply learn or study or use Scripture. We digest it. We take it into our lives in such a way that it comes forth from our lives as acts of love, cups of cold water, bowls of soup, acts of mission, healing and compassion throughout the world. The words penetrate our lives causing us to paint the world with truth and beauty and goodness.5
The best proof of the Bible is not something an archaeologist will find. The best proof of Scripture’s truth, the best evidence of the resurrection and other claims of faith, is the changed lives of God’s people who embody the Biblical Story.
By entering into covenant with God through the Biblical Story: We live in the Story. We embrace the Story. That is: We see ourselves in the Garden of Eden created good in God’s image given the task to care for the earth. We see ourselves in obedience and disobedience to God. We make the journey with Abraham and Sarah departing to a land we know not. We travel with Israel through the wilderness into the Promised Land. We allow ourselves to be formed as God’s covenant people. We go with Israel into exile where our lives are uprooted and our faith is reshaped and we learn to live differently in a strange land. We are led out of seasons of exile and learn to begin life anew. God’s Messiah then comes for us to save us, to show us the heart of God, to shape us into the people of God, to restore all of creation.
The biblical invitation is to enter into a covenant relationship with God and God’s people through Jesus Christ. We live in that covenant as we live in the pages of the Bible, making the Biblical Story our own, drawing us into the living presence of God.
But how do we live into the parts of the Story that are really hard to understand? What do we do about the divinely sanctioned genocide and violence toward children? What do we do about the Bible’s refusal to condemn slavery? What do we do about the call for silent church ladies and submissive wives and stoning people to death for their sins? How do we know which commands still apply today?
Well, one important step is to interpret the written word of scripture by the living Word in Jesus. To read the Bible honestly and to live the Bible faithfully as a Christian is to read the Bible as a Story centered in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus, the One the Bible describes as “the Word of God made flesh” is for Christians the highest revelation of God and our most important interpretive guide, the standard by which we judge all of scripture. As Christians, the life and teachings of Jesus have the final word for us. As followers of Jesus we are to judge everything we do and believe and vote for according to the way of Jesus. Whatever is said about God in the Bible or elsewhere, it is crucial to ask the question: Is this the God revealed in Jesus? Is this a Christlike God? When we read any part of the Bible we need to ask if what we’re reading and how we’re interpreting rings true in light of Jesus.
When Jesus was asked “What is the greatest commandment?” he had the opportunity say, “They are all equal! None more important than the others!” But that’s not what he said. He said the greatest commandment is to: Love God with all that you are and love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments, he said, hang all the law and the prophets. (In other words, all of scripture.) The fourth century bishop of Hippo, St. Augustine, was perhaps the first to pick up on this and its implications for interpreting scripture. He said: The right interpretation of scripture always increases the love of God and the love of neighbor. Any interpretation of scripture that leads you to love God less or to act in prejudice or hate or cruelty towards another person is a wrong interpretation because it is inconsistent with the way Jesus lived and the way he read and interpreted scripture.
We must be careful not to read scripture apart from the Spirit of Christ or we will end up defending slavery and racism and genocide and all sorts of unChristlike things – often in the name of law and order. The love of God and neighbor is a wonderful interpretive guide for scripture. It is much easier to say wonderful and lofty things about the Bible. But God is not as concerned with what we say about scripture as God is our living faithfully in its Story, interpreted according to the way of Jesus.
I once heard a five-year-old girl singing: “The B-I-B-L-E. Yes, that’s the book for me.” And when she came to the part that says “I stand alone on the word of God,” she sang, “I stand around at the word of God.” That version is perhaps more true of most Christians, including myself, than the original version. Many of us stand around at the word of God. We listen to scripture, we study the Bible, we admire it and brag about it but we are fearful of acting on it. And yet the Bible instructs us in the letter of James to: “Be doers of the word, not hearers only.”
With my slight adaptation, hear these words of the great preacher Fred Craddock I shared a few months ago with our Wednesday night crowd. Craddock said: Live in the pages of this book, and it will cause you to be changed. Live in the pages of this book, and it will cause you to feel the razor’s edge of the moral demand of the Christian gospel. Live in the pages of this book, and it will cause you to empty your pockets for someone else’s children. Live in the pages of this book, and you will find words for your disbelief and feelings of godforsakenness, words for your joy and wonder, words for your praise and gratitude. Live in the pages of this book, and you will find yourself doing things you never thought you would do. Live in the pages of this book, and you will become the person God dreamed you to be.
So: Read this sacred book through the life of Christ. Live in its pages. And if you dare: Eat this book. It will be the feast of a lifetime. Just have the Alka-Selzer handy.
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- A. J. Jacobs, The Year of Living Biblically, Simon and Schuster, 2007
- Quoted in The Renovare Spiritual Formation Bible (NRSV), HarperSanFrancisco, 2005
- Quoted in The Renovare Spiritual Formation Bible (NRSV)
- Eugene Peterson, Eat This Book, Eerdmans, 2006.
- Peterson 18, 91.