Christ Lutheran Church: Welcome

Title

What to Do When the Word Offends

Galatians 1:6-9, Luke 4:16-30

January 24, 2009

Rev. Dave R. Garwick

This sermon is based on what happened when Jesus preached His first sermon back home in Nazareth. I remember the first sermon I preached at home. That’s something that most preachers remember. Something else I remember is that I wanted to be able to preach like Jesus. I think I may have finally gotten there.

What I mean is, considering the flack that a couple people are giving me about my sermons on leaving the ELCA, I’m beginning to identify with Jesus when HE was preaching. To make a very long story short, according to the account in this morning’s Gospel Lesson, the people in His congregation literally tried to throw Him off a cliff!

Now it didn’t start off that way. He began by reading from the Book of Isaiah. That was fine with the people. Then He recalled the story about how the prophet Elijah had miraculously provided food to a starving widow and her son. That went down real well with the congregation. In fact, they were really impressed at how gracious the words were from His lips. “Wow, isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they asked. You know, local kid does well. Very, very nice.

But then He has to go and irritate them. He tells them that back in the old days of the prophets, Elisha healed an enemy general of leprosy even though no one else in all Israel was healed of leprosy. Now He had gone and done it. He offended the people. Now they were incensed. Enraged, I tell you!

So what does a congregation do when they don’t like what the preacher is preaching? Basically, two options: accept it or reject it. They rejected it. Now there are several ways that a congregation can reject the Word of God that they don’t like. This congregation chose to toss the preacher off a cliff. Fortunately, Jesus slipped out unharmed.

But these days there are more civilized ways to reject the Word of God if it gets in the way of your agenda, your opinion, your politics. Last week a speaker from the Synod office showed us several nifty ways to deal with Scripture that appears to get in your way.

The first technique is to do really complex, exotic analyses of the ancient language to see if there are any other possible ways of interpreting it in a less inconvenient way. And sure enough, just like with English, there are a million different shades of meaning and possible meanings. She said that when you look at all the theoretical possibilities, then maybe you won’t be so sure that you really can know what it’s really talking about. The bottom line is that maybe the Greek word refers to homosexuality and maybe it doesn’t exactly say that. It’s up to you. And of course, since none of you has taken biblical Greek, you just can’t really know for sure, so that you have to keep an open mind and accept that the Bible is just not that clear.

Now, I have taken the advance course in biblical Hebrew and in biblical Greek and I can tell you that the vast majority of scholars across the globe, across all branches of Christianity and across two thousand years of study consider these alternative possibilities absolutely bizarre! With only one or two exceptions, the Lutheran churches in virtually all nations consider this total lunacy!

And these linguistic games are nothing new. I had dinner the other night with a friend who converted from Christianity to Judaism. One of the problems with Christianity and with Judaism and with Islam is that all three of us say that our way is the only way, and that really gets in the way of people getting along together. So, he was telling me that Hebrew experts have now figured out that God has always really been OK with His people worshiping lots of gods. He pointed out that in the First Commandment God said, “you shall have no others gods before Me.” You see, He wasn’t objecting to us worshiping other gods, just as long as you didn’t put any of them before Him. After all, didn’t He say that He was a jealous God?

Then our speaker explained that another thing you can do is look at the social background of the scripture that gives you problems. According to her, the writers of the New Testament did not know that there could be really responsible homosexual relationships, that the only ones they knew about were abusive relationships of rape. The idea is that when the New Testament appears to prohibit homosexuality, it might only be referring to abusive homosexuality, not the good kind that the ELCA wants to bless. The problem is, however, is that the scriptures give no hint that they are talking only about abusive sodomy. The passage she referred to from Romans 1-2 actually describes what looks like mutual relationships with no hint whatsoever of abuse. Men laying with men and women doing the same was the problem regardless of anything else.

Then our speaker suggested another way to relax such troubling passages. It refers to lots of other sins too. So, since everyone else does these other sins, then why make such a big deal about just the homosexual behavior? Kind of like, many wrongs make a right? Again, however, the passage says that God makes us aware of all these sins in order to lead us to repentance – not celebration of these sins.

So how do you decide whose interpretations are correct? After all, the bottom line of all these possible maneuvers is to keep your mind open by confusing you so that the Word of God is not clear. I recommend that you look to two things. First, look for the overwhelming consensus of experts across all time and cultures throughout Christianity. Second, heed the advice of the one you have already called to be your spiritual leader. If you cannot trust the fervent advice of your doctor, your dentist, your lawyer, your mechanic, or your pastor, then you’ve got bigger problems.

That is what the apostle Paul was getting at when he wrote these words to the new Christians in Corinth, Greece:

“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel - which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!” Galatians 1:6-9

Paul could really get wound up about this kind of stuff. A lot was at stake. A lot is still at stake.