Christ Lutheran Church: Welcome

Good 'Ole Number Seven - January 27, 2008

Good 'Ole Number Seven

Luke 9:44-45

January 27, 2008

Rev. Dave R. Garwick

OK - if David Lettermen can do it, than I can do it.  This morning, The Top Ten Reasons Most People Don't Study their Bible.

10.  They think it's not relevant
9.  They think it's too big
8.  They think it's boring
7.  They think it's too hard to understand
6.  They think it's nothing more than the opinions of a bunch of dead white guys
5.  They think it says a lot of stuff they don't agree with
4.  They think nobody knows what it means anyway
3.  They think it's no different than any other religion's holy book
2.  They think it contradicts itself
1.  They plan to wait till the movie comes out

Well, this morning I'm going to take an ole number........seven - the idea that the Bible is too hard to understand.

Now I LOVE trying to understand the Bible, more than just about anything else.  I LOVE books and I'm nuts about history and science and philosophy and current events.  I live in a world of abstract ideas.  It's probably a defective gene or something.  Vicki told me that this week alone I went up twenty-five points on my "dork" meter.

But I KNOW that really getting into the Bible is not normal for most people.  I hear "ole number seven" all the time;  That most people find the Bible just way too hard to understand.  I know that when it come to getting into the Bible, most people are just defeated before they even begin.  Unless you like to read and spend lots of time analyzing books and doing abstract puzzles in your head, trying to understand a lot of what the Bible is about as fun as watching paint dry.

Which is why many of you would be surprised to find our Adult Bible Studies between service fun and interesting.  We have a blast!  And sometimes we even learn something.

But here's the good news.  As much as I like trying to figure out everything in the Bible, THAT is not something Jesus told us that we have to do.  In the Bible Focus this morning, You don't HAVE to understand everything in the Bible.  "Jesus said to His disciples, 'Listen carefully to what I am about to tell  you:  The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of me.'  But they did not understand what this meant.  It was hidden from them, so that they did not grasp it, and they were afraid to ask Him about it."

When Jesus told His apostles what was going to happen to Him, this was the second time He had said this.  And still, "They did not understand what this meant."  Why?  Where they stupid or something?  I doubt it:  theses were the ones Jesus had hand-picked for the job.  Why did they still not understand?

The answer is in the very next line:  "It was hidden from them, so that they did not grasp it."  It was hidden from them.  Why would Jesus tell them something that was at the same time to be hidden from them?  Well, go back to the very first thing He told them in this story.  He did not tell them to understand Him.  He did not tell them to agree with Him.  What Jesus said was, "LISTEN carefully to what I am about to tell you."  LISTEN carefully.

In a moment we will be offered His body and blood in Holy Communion.  He does not tell us to analyze this.  He does not tell us to understand it.  He does not even tell us to like it.  What He says is simply, "DO this."

I'll tell you right now that I am sure that I do NOT understand Holy Communion.  Oh, I've thought a lot about it and I could put you to sleep with all the ideas and theories that I have about it and I could share hours and hours of the theories of two thousand years on this subject.  But I would not even begin to scratch the surface of what is really going on  there.

In fact, to be honest, I would guess that most of the things I do are things I do not come close to really understanding.  I probably do not even understand myself.  The apostle Paul admitted the same thing when he said that he did not understand why he did the bad things he knew he should not do and failed to do the good things that he knew he should do.

There are all kinds of things a responsible parent does not explain to a child, most often because the child is not capable of handling the explanation responsibly.  When it comes to the most basic mysteries of life such as birth, death, sexuality and reproduction, we are experiencing the downfall of humanity and the downfall of the Church itself because we think we now can really understand such things.  And we are messing it all up, completely turning upside down and inside out the ways that God had meant things to be.

And then thinking that we can understand these things, we think e can play God and argue and disagree with God and "read between the lines" of what God really meant to say in order to justify doing what we want to do in the first place.

Jesus does not call us to understand everything God says, but He does call us to listen carefully and then to follow Him to the cross even when, like the apostles, we do not understand.