Word of God, Speak

By Al Butzer, January 11, 2004
1 Peter 1: 21-25

Through Jesus you have come to trust in God who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God. Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love for one another deeply from the heart. You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living enduring word of God. For all flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass, the grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord endures forever. That word is the good news that was announced to you."

I had a great discussion with a 4th grader the other day. She was telling me about how she and her Mom had taken up Al's challenge from last week. They had been going through the Bible to find the verses that described what they believed about God. As she was telling me all about it she asked: "Minister Mary, How do you decide what scripture you are going to use for the sermon?" I got all excited because she really was interested so I told her that there was something called a lectionary where for every Sunday of the year there was 4 passages selected. One from a Gospel, One from the Old Testament, A Psalm for the day and one scripture from the Epistles. (or the letters of the Bible). I read those first I said. And sometimes something in one them will jump out at me, or spark my heart. And that's the one I usually end up preaching. I love it when that happens I call it having a holy spirit moment. Other times I read the passages and I moan and groan because nothing feels that interesting. When that happens, sometimes I pick the one I LEAST want to preach, and challenge myself knowing that God has never left me without something to say and sometimes I decide not to preach any of them and choose something else based on what is happening in the congregation or in the world or in my own heart.

Well, I could tell she was understanding what I was saying but by the look in her eyes I could tell I wasn't satisfying her curiosity. She was eager to ask another question. "What do you do when you're done?"

" What?" I said.

" What do you when you're done, the Bible has to end sometime! Do you just use the sermons you've already written?"

I laughed, realizing now what she really want to know and said: "No, I would never preach the same sermon twice at least not at the same church! You see, It's like this: the Word of God is a living Word. You know it speaks to me and to you. It will never stop speaking." Blank stare. The wheels were turning she was trying to wrap her mind around what I said but she didn't get it. I could see why. I just thrown out a bunch of churchy sounding phrases that sounded good but explained nothing.

I desperately wanted to her to understand so I grabbed the Bible and turned to Luke chapter 2 and said: "Do you remember the story of when the Angel Gabriel came to Mary to tell her she was going to have the son of God and she was so happy she sang a song of praise?" Yes she said. "Do you remember last month I preached about that story and David Ranowski played the part of Gabriel?"

"Yes," she said.

"That's the 3rd time I've preached the same passage."

"Really?"

"Yeah! "

The first time I read the story to preach it I got all curious about Mary. What was it like for her to be pregnant? What did she think when she felt the baby moving. Was she scared to have God's child.? So I preached about Mary. The next time I read the story to preach it I notice that Mary kept talking about a Savior and that made me think about whether we need a savior and what is it that we need to be saved from so I preached about that. So there's three different sermons on the same scripture. So you see, the Word of God spoke to me, touched me , moved me in three different ways!" Do you understand?

"Yes, Can I ask you another question?"

" Sure," I said.

"If Jesus was 100% God and 100% human, then what does it mean when he said from the cross 'My God My God why have you forsaken me?' Was he praying to himself?"

It was a long night. Leave it to a child to call into question something that if you really think about it doesn't make sense at all. A Word that speaks? The Bible is full of things like that. Bread isn't just bread, it's living bread. When Jesus met the woman at the well he told her he'd give her not just water, but living water. In today's passage Peter calls the word of God living and enduring.

Let's take a minute to remember Peter. He was the disciple who, in the middle of the unfolding story proved himself to be quite capable of shirking his responsibilities when the going got tough. Days before Jesus was crucified, it was Peter who "followed at a distance" when Jesus was arrested….too afraid to stand up for what he believed. Peter was the one who denied Jesus three times. But by the time we get to the letters we are reading today, Peter is a changed man. Back then he had been bungling and stumbling and our Lord told him so: "Peter: You are a weak man now, but I'm going to make you a petros a rock-man. And you will be built upon the foundation of Jesus Christ who is the Rock on which the church is built. And God does. Peter is the rock. Now Peter is no longer bumbling and stumbling. Peter speaks of what he knows, he speaks of what had been spoken to him, of what he experienced in his own life. If Peter were to pick a passage that defined his theology I wouldn't be surprised if it was from today's passage. "For we are made anew through the living enduring word of God." Robert Leighton, in his book A Practical Commentary on First Peter, makes a comment that applies to Peter

"…… It is a cold and lifeless thing to speak of spiritual things on mere report; but when people can speak of them as their own-(as Peter does) -as having a share and interests in them, and some experience of their sweetness ----[then what they say is] enlivened with firm belief and ardent affection……….. ( Carl McGee Commentary on First Peter)

This is what makes Peter such a great preacher. He doesn't report, he speaks of what he knows, of what he himself has experienced through the living enduring word of God.

How can we hear in the way that Peter heard? How can we hear the Word of God speak to us? Well, you started at the right place. In Worship where the word is read and proclaimed through sermon and song and prayer. But worship is the beginning of the journey, not the only part of the journey. Let me ask you a question. Have any you ever been in a car that has a global positioning system? (Me neither). Evidently they are quite grand. I read a story of a Pastor who had two friends who were headed to a retreat center in rural Pennsylvania. Since it was not the easiest place to find, while at the airport they decided to rent a car with such a system. The "never lost" computer screen was mounted between the front seats of the car and all you had to do was follow the directions on the screen. First you had to type in your destination, then choose from four options: expressways, shortest distance, shortest time, or most scenic. They clicked on "expressways" and a pleasant female voice announced "Calculating Route" then they heard a bong, and a street grid of Philadelphia appeared on the screen and the friendly voice said: "Turn left out of the parking lot." For the next three hours they did whatever the pleasant woman told them to do. At one point they made a wrong turn into a parking lot. "Return to designated route" the nice voice insisted. Bong, Bong, Bong, return to the designate route the voice insisted until they did. They were relieved that to discover that they could not get lost. As they neared the retreat center the voice alerted them "Approaching left turn in nine miles." She repeated the alert every mile, but when she said: approaching left turn in .5 miles, the exit was clearly on the right side of the road. "There's your exit the passenger cried." "But she says it's on the left" the driver said, caught in an existential crisis. Should he trust the voice that has spoken to him from the eye in the sky or trust his own eyes. The solid concrete wall on the left finally told to trust his own eyes, he skirted across two lanes of traffic and squeaked onto the exit ramp. Both the driver and the passenger braced themselves for the bongs but the bongs never came. Nor did the voice to tell them to return to the designated route. By the time they had completed the 360 degree clover leaf they realized they were turning in the direction the voice had told them to. The satellite had simply over-looked the exit ramp.

After hearing their travel story, the pastor pointed out for Christians the stories of the Bible are our positioning system that link human life on earth to God. They are our maps. But we are busy people, she says, and studying the maps takes time. Plenty of us have been happy to subscribe to the "never lost" system that will read the maps for us. All we have to do is follow the instructions of those who have volunteered to show us the way, turning wherever they tell us to turn. Eventually, we trust, we will reach our destination. But then one day the voice says, "approaching left turn" while the exit is clearly visible on the right, and we do not know what to do.(Taylor, Barbara Brown Map Reading Christian Century March 2001)

Now, I'm NOT saying that you shouldn't trust your worship leaders. I can assure you that your worship leads faithfully prepare the songs and sermons and prayer each week. The Word of God speaks to each one of us, not just through worship leaders. To let Sunday be the only day that you dive deep into scripture means that you are missing six other opportunities to hear the Word speak. So imbedding ourselves in scripture is one way to ensure Hearing the Word Speak. When our fourth grader was lying in the bed thumbing through Bible, looking for her scripture she was in the Word. She was in the midst of the Word when she found Psalm 4: 8 I will both lie down and sleep in peace for you alone o Lord, make me lie down in safety. Perhaps the next time she is afraid at night, she'll repeat that scripture over and over again.

Word of God Speak. It can be a difficult task imbedding ourselves in scripture. Especially when we want to know with certainty….what does it mean. No simplistic view is adequate for a book that holds both history and legend, both literal and symbolic language. But to hear the Word of God speak, we must be willing to accept the difficulty of the task. We must be willing to dig, and explore, turn right and then left, look within and without. Even when there is confusion, and disagreement. You know we've had our share of disagreement even within our denomination. Preacher and writer Fred Craddock says that some people, feeling robbed because there is no guarantee of being right, are be inclined to retreat to mere recitation of scripture or to ignore the Bible altogether. To do this he says would be to "quit our jobs as partners of the Holy Spirit." So instead of a guarantee, we have some thing way better, the promise of the Spirit to lead us to truth. Partnering with the Holy Spirit. Word of God Speak.

Finally I'll end today with a note about prayer. As you sit down with your own Bible, in your own space, begin with prayer. Open yourself up to the movement of the God's Spirit in you. The sermon title today comes from a song I heard for the first time about 6 months ago. And as music often does it has touched my heart in deep places. Listen to these words:

"Word of God speak, would you poor down like rain washing my eyes to see your majesty. To be still and know, you're in this place. Please let me stay and rest in your holiness. Word of God speak." ( Mercy Me Word of God Speak)

These words have become my prayer. I hope you will imbed yourself in scripture, partner with the Holy Spirit, pray and seek till you are blessed. I hope that you have the experience of the spark of the Holy spirit bringing the word alive. Keep trying, keep looking, keep praying because the Word of God Does Speak. Just ask our 4th grader.

© Copyright, 2004, Mary Rodgers
All Rights Reserved.
Providence Presbyterian Church
Fairfax, Virginia