Progressive Christianity and the Bible
Matthew 22: 34-40
A Sermon by the Reverend Odette Lockwood-Stewart
Epworth United Methodist Church, Berkeley, California 
 
What are you learning?

Someone asked me this question a few days ago.  It’s a great question.

In your work, in relationships, in your studies, in nature, in your practice, in your body, in the world, in your life– What are you learning?

When I was asked the question, I was energized by the first answer that came to me: I am learning Spanish.  I am also learning much more than that. And I know I’ve got a lot to learn!

What are you learning?

We are called to be life-long learners.  And community helps it happen.  Other hearts and minds that question, and challenge, and offer, and long for, and listen, and struggle, help us learn and grow together.

In the mid-1990s I was the United Methodist Campus Pastor at Cal. We formed a partnership with the Bay Area Haitian American Council, the Lutheran Chapel, and two ecumenical campus ministries at Stanford and UC Davis. We organized and prepared teams of students to go to Haiti to learn, to build relationships, and to come home prepared to witness to what they had experienced.  We arranged academic credit for research, students made films, supported projects, and they worked with the ti eglise movement in Haiti. Lives were changed as we learned new questions.  The project was called “Tet Ansamn,” which means “heads together” in Creole.

The Haitian people have a saying, “beyond mountains there are mountains.” The faith and resiliency of the Haitian people in the face of mountains of great suffering was a life-changing witness. The word that is written across the top of the tap tap bus in the painting on the front of your order of worship is croyance, the Creole word that means belief, faith.

January 12th’s devastating earthquake has brought to mind and heart many many people, and the challenge of mountain after mountain throughout the history of the Haitian people.

Epworth has collected and will continue to collect funds to aid the people of Haiti. (*) On the evening of February 17th, Ash Wednesday, Jerry Asheim will lead a concert to raise funds for Haiti.  Meagan Travlos will lead us in creating health kits for Haiti.  There are also beginning conversations about forming a health care/recovery work team to Haiti later in the year.  And so many questions arise.

We are a learning congregation.  We learn by questioning and we learn new questions by immersion. What are we learning?

My first year as Pastor of Epworth, I received a letter from the Rev. Jan Everhart, who teaches Hebrew Bible at Simpson College in Iowa.  She wrote,  “I hope you enjoy the congregation – there are some truly fine people there, as you know.  My family was at Epworth from the time I was in the sixth grade,...  When it came time for me to designate a church conference, it was an easy choice. Then she wrote:

We’re gearing up for school here and I look forward to my second shot at teaching Hebrew Bible to undergraduates... Actually it’s great fun to watch students actually read texts instead of relying on what they remember from Sunday School.  I get a lot of “I can’t believe this is in the Bible!”

A few years ago thirty-seven members of the Epworth community committed to reading through the Bible in one year, using the Daily Message translation and format.  The conversations and questions emerging from that experience were lively.  And I heard from more than one person, “I can’t believe this is in the Bible!”

Reading the Bible, reading the Bible with new eyes, learning to question by immersion in context and text is a spiritual adventure and challenge.

If we are to love God with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our mind, we need to know, to question, to wrestle with our sacred texts.  If we follow Christ as the living Word of God, we need to learn the texts and contexts that witness to his life and the texts in which he himself was immersed.

We are so blessed to have as members of this community, Biblical scholars such as Dr. Tat-siong Benny Liew and Dr. Steed Davidson, and a literary scholar such as Dr. Linda Rugg to help us begin, or begin again.  

This is the second year of Epworth’s four-week Winter Bible Institute which continues later this morning.  This year’s focus “Wrestling with Our Sacred Texts” is intentional ... because our relationship with Biblical texts is not to memorize fixed meanings and unchanging lessons, but rather to engage with stories and teachings whose power lies in new and renewed relationships and questions.

The late Del Brown, former Dean at Pacific School of Religion, wrote that despite what he called the “pervasive mis-use of the Bible,” it remains the fundamental source of Christian conviction and identity: (The Bible is) a book of various, sometimes conflicting, visions and teachings.  Our grounding in the Bible must be true to the Bible itself ... to the rich and powerful diversity of ancient voices.  Its authority means that we are authored by it, Dr. Brown wrote,...re-formed by its varied narratives.  To read it seriously is to accept and wrestle with the humanity of the Bible, and to believe that God enters our humanity FULLY. The Bible’s witness, in Jesus Christ, to God’s oneness with us and the entire creation is the foundation of all else that we believe.”

In Matthew chapter 22 Jesus is tested about which is the greatest commandment.  Jesus places all the law and prophets upon two fundamental commandments, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind ... and ... you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

What this means in each new time and place ... what it looks like to receive and express the power and promise of this love ... helps us learn questions to bring to the texts.

A dialogue in Progressive Christianity, states, “Being rooted in the Bible is not the same as being fixed in ones beliefs. Christians and Christianity have changed enormously throughout its history. And they are capable of great change, for one important reason: Their Bible is an historical conversation—an ongoing exploration... Anyone who takes that search seriously is drawn into the search, pulled toward the questions, and not permitted to lapse into fixed and final positions.”

Dr. Harrell Beck, Old Testament professor at Boston University School of Theology when I was a student there, would shock students each year, beginning his class by inviting students to rip the back cover off their Bibles.  God’s word is alive. Christ is the Living Word of God.

There’s hope, and there’s liberation, and there’s terror, and there’s challenge, and there’s assurance, and there’s betrayal, and there’s sustenance, and there’s rebirth ... all woven into the fabric of scripture.

Wrestling with the word ... we will learn ... and as we learn we will grow and find strength for the journey.

The most exciting question on the journey of faith isn’t “what do you believe?”  but rather, “what are you learning?”  As we wrestle with the words and witness of the Bible, we will be blessed with new life.