Matthew 5:1-2, 17-20 (GNT)
Jesus saw the crowds and went up a hill, where he sat down. His disciples gathered around him, and he began to teach them:
“Do not think that I have come to do away with the Law of Moses and the teachings of the prophets. I have not come to do away with them, but to make their teachings come true. Remember that as long as heaven and earth last, not the least point nor the smallest detail of the Law will be done away with—not until the end of all things. So then, whoever disobeys even the least important of the commandments and teaches others to do the same, will be least in the Kingdom of heaven. On the other hand, whoever obeys the Law and teaches others to do the same, will be great in the Kingdom of heaven. I tell you, then, that you will be able to enter the Kingdom of heaven only if you are more faithful than the teachers of the Law and the Pharisees in doing what God requires.
Ecclesiastes 1:1-11 (English Standard Version)
1 The words of the son of David, king in Jerusalem.
2 Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,
vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
3 What does man gain by all the toil
at which he toils under the sun?
4 A generation goes, and a generation comes,
but the earth remains forever.
5 The sun rises, and the sun goes down,
and hastens to the place where it rises.
6 The wind blows to the south
and goes around to the north;
around and around goes the wind,
and on its circuits the wind returns.
7 All streams run to the sea,
but the sea is not full;
to the place where the streams flow,
there they flow again.
8 All things are full of weariness;
a man cannot utter it;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
nor the ear filled with hearing.
9 What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun.
10 Is there a thing of which it is said,
“See, this is new”?
It has been already
in the ages before us.
11 There is no remembrance of former things,
nor will there be any remembrance
of later things yet to be
among those who come after.
Jesus saw the crowds and went up a hill, where he sat down. His disciples gathered around him, and he began to teach them:
“Do not think that I have come to do away with the Law of Moses and the teachings of the prophets. I have not come to do away with them, but to make their teachings come true. Remember that as long as heaven and earth last, not the least point nor the smallest detail of the Law will be done away with—not until the end of all things. So then, whoever disobeys even the least important of the commandments and teaches others to do the same, will be least in the Kingdom of heaven. On the other hand, whoever obeys the Law and teaches others to do the same, will be great in the Kingdom of heaven. I tell you, then, that you will be able to enter the Kingdom of heaven only if you are more faithful than the teachers of the Law and the Pharisees in doing what God requires.
Ecclesiastes 1:1-11 (English Standard Version)
1 The words of the son of David, king in Jerusalem.
2 Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,
vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
3 What does man gain by all the toil
at which he toils under the sun?
4 A generation goes, and a generation comes,
but the earth remains forever.
5 The sun rises, and the sun goes down,
and hastens to the place where it rises.
6 The wind blows to the south
and goes around to the north;
around and around goes the wind,
and on its circuits the wind returns.
7 All streams run to the sea,
but the sea is not full;
to the place where the streams flow,
there they flow again.
8 All things are full of weariness;
a man cannot utter it;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
nor the ear filled with hearing.
9 What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun.
10 Is there a thing of which it is said,
“See, this is new”?
It has been already
in the ages before us.
11 There is no remembrance of former things,
nor will there be any remembrance
of later things yet to be
among those who come after.
Let’s Look at the Bible
OK today we are going to look at the Bible. Big topic it’s going to be really fast, don’t worry, there are no tests afterward.
The Bible, our Bible is a collection of books (well, scrolls really, and some books, and some letters) – it’s a library all in one book. Our Bible doesn’t necessarily have to look the way it does – in fact it doesn’t for some people, orthodox bibles a little long, a few more books, Roman Catholic Bible you have the addition of the Apocrypha – seven books that are commonly outside the Bible.
What we call the Old Testament, also called the Hebrew Testament or the Tanakh (Tan aak) is composed of three parts: Torah (also called The Five Books of Moses), Nevi’im (Prophets), and Ketuvim (Writings). The Old Testament contains stories, law and instructions, poetry, and teachings about God and humanity. Christians tend to make more divisions: the Penteteuch – the first five Books, which include all the rules and laws and early history, basically these books are the foundational understandings of creation, the human condition and the Jewish identity – so you have all kinds of important stuff happening especially covenants between God and first Abraham, then everyone else especially Isaac, Jacob and Moses.
Then you get the Historical writings of Israel, some wisdom and Poetry writing and the major and minor prophets which have more to do with the size of the books rather than their importance as prophets.
The Old Testament developed in Hebrew over a 1500 year period and in case you think we know all there is to know, we don’t – with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls between 1947 and 1956 in Qumran near Jericho. These scrolls written in paleo-Hebrew and Aramaic, and Greek would have been hidden by the Essenes around 70 CE with the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans. The caches of texts found in caves include all kinds of literary writings including biblical texts and commentaries on the biblical texts from around 250 BCE to 70 CE. And in these records we can see that even then the Hebrew Bible was still in flux- so the order was not set nor was the text itself strictly defined, it was still being shaped by the scribes who had a very healthy respect for the traditions both oral and written. It would have been scribes who were responsible for writing down the texts1500 years starting around 1200 BCE.
When you start reading the Bible you think “Oh yeah, it’s a story; like novel it begins with creation and moves well to the Kingdom of God taking over the world in Revelation.” see start at a certain place and it continues down the road of history to some imagined future end point.”
The Bible may look like that is what it is going to do but it doesn’t work that way. It’s got problems, not just for the people in the books but for the reader.
Take Genesis, for example, right away you are confronted with contradictions – problems that continue because we are given differing versions of the same occasion: two creation stories: the first is Genesis 1:1-2:3 and then a different account in Genesis 2:4-3:24., then more contradictions occur when we look at the story of Noah and the ark in which two stories are combined. And it continues on and on; different accounts, same story! Our problem is that when we point to one particular passage and say “See there it is ; in the bible, it says….” and sometimes we proceed to make pronouncement about really important things like the nature of creation, humanity, community, family and God. Sometimes we make a pronouncement about the nature of scripture itself.
Scripture has long been held to proclaim the Word of God!
But how do we interpret such a statement. What does it mean to say this is the Word of God. For some that means that Scripture is literally true. For some it means that people who told the stories and wrote the texts, who prophesized and sang praises or collected wisdom and wrote poetry were inspired by God. For others it is just not relevant at all.
But when you are talking about people, and being human and who we are in the world and in relation to one another, maybe it does matter whether you are created by God in God’s image; male and female created together, like in Genesis 1:27 or you are created by God from the dust of the earth, and have God breathing life into man, then creating the animals and then creating woman. Maybe even if you don’t believe the story or this story (Jewish or Christian) it makes a difference how you view the world; is creation a wonder to behold and cherish; making life and creation sacred or is it all just a matter of chemistry and biology making life rather ultilitarian.
It makes a difference if God has a close relationship with people, (as in the Yahweh (Lord) source) or a more distant God who used messengers: angels and prophets communicating through visions and dreams (as in the Elolim (God) source). It makes a difference if you can have a personal relationship with God and call God Abba.
It makes a difference if God promises you land and other people are living there. Who is this God, who commands you the Israelites to kill all the inhabitants of Jericho and other cities in Canaan – men, women, children, animals and burn the towns so that you can occupy the land and you call it the Promised Land. (Joshua 6:20-24). We are still grappling with that problem today.
It makes a difference to have a covenant, and to understand how do we fulfill that covenant. as God’s faithful people, what sets us apart from all those who surround us? A covenant begun with Abraham and sealed in circumcision.
Gradually we see more and more added to what we calls laws but really they are more instructions: what to wear, what to do and not do, instructions for daily living, holy days and worship. Instructions for the priests and temple worship.
Bercause it makes a difference whether God can travel through the desert in a travelling ark of the covenant and still be present at the alter in Bethel and other places which we are told people have built alters and temples because they have encountered God in that place, or God can only be properly addressed at the Temple in Jerusalem as the Deuteronomists state in the Book of Kings.
It makes a difference to understand that the historical events on the world stage that affect you are the result not of things that you have no control over but consequences of your behaviour in your relationship with God. So Israel has a covenant with Yahweh, who has promised Israel the land of Canaan, but the promise is conditional: if the Israelites are unfaithful, they will lose the land. The Deuteronomistic history explains Israel's successes and failures as the result of faithfulness, so the destruction of the Kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians (721 BCE) and the Kingdom of Judah by the Babylonians (586) are viewed as Yahweh's punishment for continued sinfulness.
The Old Testament is not all problematic, it is rich and layered, it shows special concern for the poor, for widows and the fatherless: all Israelites are brothers and sisters, and each will answer to God for his treatment of his neighbour.
You mind be thinking this Old Testament has nothing to do with the New Testament but the Hebrew scirtures and prophetic writing are what nourished Jesus.
God’s people are waiting for a Messiah. The anointed one who will deliver them from the clutches of powerful occupying powers. Israel was waiting for the one who would come and unite Israel and Judah once again returning them to the idyllic past under King David.
And the New Testament is all about the Messiah Jesus, the anointed one, Jesus the Christ. Except this Messiah is not quite what was wanted or expected.
You probably know more about the New Testament a collection of Gospels telling about the life, ministry and death of Jesus. Acts, a history of the earliest followers of the Jesus Way, what his disciples and followers did after his death and the vision and conversion and ministry of Paul. Then, we have a bunch of letters, which Paul wrote to fledging communities of the Way. There are several other epistles written by early church leaders and the book of Revelation. But it wasn’t always that way.
In 1945, a collection of early Christian and Gnostic texts were discovered near the town of Nag Hammadi
in upper Egypt near Luxor. The 13 books or codices contained over 50 texts and give us insight into the writings both Gnostic and Christian that proliferated in the two hundred years after Jesus’ death.
We know that the New Testament probably took it final form around 400 CE but it was developing long before that. And not everything that was available was included, we have four gospels, three (Matthew, Mark and Luke) which are similar but not the same and the Gospel of John which has a very different perspective or presentation of the material of Jesus’ ministry and life and death. There are a number of other gospels and writings that were dismissed, just not used, some deemed heretical and lost – and some found at Nag Hammadi. Our New Testament is a select selection of what was available at the time.
So, remember how the Torah is full of contradictions, different stories and traditions wedded together, well, guess what? so are the gospels that we do have in the New Testament.
I would not recommend you sitting down and trying to reconcile one gospel with all the others. Just like with the stories in the Old Testament there is no neat dovetailing of the chronicle of events one after the other.
As early as 230 CE, the early church fathers – bishops who were the people who collected and used and authorized the use of texts within their regions, they are the ones who initially gave the OK to a four gospel approach. Not one authoritative gospel but four. Why? What truths could be garnered from four gospels that you couldn’t get from one, combined unified gospel that would go from John the Baptist to the Resurrection of Jesus. There was something in the diversity of texts, respect for the communities they were used in, some kernel of truth that could only be realized when studying and trying to understand all the stories.
We have some surviving letters and other writings, which give us glimpses of the developing early communities of the Jesus Way. We meet some the men and women involved in support and leadership and the problems they faced in their faith communities and in their lives.
Real people, dealing with real problems, in the context of their very real lives.
I like to think that we are called, just like with the Old Testament, like the rabbis and students studying in the in the courts of the Temple in Jerusalem, we are called to read the text and question it and sit with it, and doubt it and figure what is true for us, what resonates with our hearts and minds, what forever remains a mystery, what leads us to see the story in a whole new way, what changes the way we look at ourselves, and our world and our neighbour.
We are called to wrestle with the stories, some of which are abhorrent to us today. God has no trouble wanting to destroy Soddom and Gormorrah, God turns Lots wife into a pillar of salt, Lot throws his daughters out into the waiting arms of a mob in order to satisfy their lust and not disturb the men in the household. You understand these are not easy texts and some of them we might want to let them stay buried in the books but the task is understand what, and why, how. We are allowed to, called to, look at the stories and ask “Is this how we see life, is this the world we live in, is this right, is this how we want our world to be, is this just, is this lawful, is this the only way we can live together? These are questions for our lives, our world, now!
Remember the vanities of vanities from Ecclesiastes – “hevel” in Hebrew – not so easy translate: is it vanity at all? or can we better understand it as smoke, vapour, meaninglessness, mist, the breath you see before you for less than a second before it disappears and what does that mean when you apply it to life? Can we look at that text and compare it to looking at the Webber Telescope snapshots of the universe and us realizing we are this moment of a speck, on a speck of a planet, in the speck which is our solar system, in a speck of a galaxy, in the ever expanding universe, in something that has existed in some form for more than 13 billion years. How despairing and wonderful is that!
As a Christian, I would say, we find the best answers or maybe the best questions, in the life and ministry of Jesus in the context of the whole Bible. Jesus’ understanding of the Torah and the Prophets for his life and ministry help guide us in our understanding of the Bible, and in our lives. His relationship with Abba is our example of what our relationship with God can be like.
So what an adventure the whole Bible is for us!
What story makes God’s love real for our lives and in our lives. My hope is that you can find a story that resonates with you and your life and and that you get to sit with it and have it enter your own story in a good way.
May it be so. Amen
OK today we are going to look at the Bible. Big topic it’s going to be really fast, don’t worry, there are no tests afterward.
The Bible, our Bible is a collection of books (well, scrolls really, and some books, and some letters) – it’s a library all in one book. Our Bible doesn’t necessarily have to look the way it does – in fact it doesn’t for some people, orthodox bibles a little long, a few more books, Roman Catholic Bible you have the addition of the Apocrypha – seven books that are commonly outside the Bible.
What we call the Old Testament, also called the Hebrew Testament or the Tanakh (Tan aak) is composed of three parts: Torah (also called The Five Books of Moses), Nevi’im (Prophets), and Ketuvim (Writings). The Old Testament contains stories, law and instructions, poetry, and teachings about God and humanity. Christians tend to make more divisions: the Penteteuch – the first five Books, which include all the rules and laws and early history, basically these books are the foundational understandings of creation, the human condition and the Jewish identity – so you have all kinds of important stuff happening especially covenants between God and first Abraham, then everyone else especially Isaac, Jacob and Moses.
Then you get the Historical writings of Israel, some wisdom and Poetry writing and the major and minor prophets which have more to do with the size of the books rather than their importance as prophets.
The Old Testament developed in Hebrew over a 1500 year period and in case you think we know all there is to know, we don’t – with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls between 1947 and 1956 in Qumran near Jericho. These scrolls written in paleo-Hebrew and Aramaic, and Greek would have been hidden by the Essenes around 70 CE with the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans. The caches of texts found in caves include all kinds of literary writings including biblical texts and commentaries on the biblical texts from around 250 BCE to 70 CE. And in these records we can see that even then the Hebrew Bible was still in flux- so the order was not set nor was the text itself strictly defined, it was still being shaped by the scribes who had a very healthy respect for the traditions both oral and written. It would have been scribes who were responsible for writing down the texts1500 years starting around 1200 BCE.
When you start reading the Bible you think “Oh yeah, it’s a story; like novel it begins with creation and moves well to the Kingdom of God taking over the world in Revelation.” see start at a certain place and it continues down the road of history to some imagined future end point.”
The Bible may look like that is what it is going to do but it doesn’t work that way. It’s got problems, not just for the people in the books but for the reader.
Take Genesis, for example, right away you are confronted with contradictions – problems that continue because we are given differing versions of the same occasion: two creation stories: the first is Genesis 1:1-2:3 and then a different account in Genesis 2:4-3:24., then more contradictions occur when we look at the story of Noah and the ark in which two stories are combined. And it continues on and on; different accounts, same story! Our problem is that when we point to one particular passage and say “See there it is ; in the bible, it says….” and sometimes we proceed to make pronouncement about really important things like the nature of creation, humanity, community, family and God. Sometimes we make a pronouncement about the nature of scripture itself.
Scripture has long been held to proclaim the Word of God!
But how do we interpret such a statement. What does it mean to say this is the Word of God. For some that means that Scripture is literally true. For some it means that people who told the stories and wrote the texts, who prophesized and sang praises or collected wisdom and wrote poetry were inspired by God. For others it is just not relevant at all.
But when you are talking about people, and being human and who we are in the world and in relation to one another, maybe it does matter whether you are created by God in God’s image; male and female created together, like in Genesis 1:27 or you are created by God from the dust of the earth, and have God breathing life into man, then creating the animals and then creating woman. Maybe even if you don’t believe the story or this story (Jewish or Christian) it makes a difference how you view the world; is creation a wonder to behold and cherish; making life and creation sacred or is it all just a matter of chemistry and biology making life rather ultilitarian.
It makes a difference if God has a close relationship with people, (as in the Yahweh (Lord) source) or a more distant God who used messengers: angels and prophets communicating through visions and dreams (as in the Elolim (God) source). It makes a difference if you can have a personal relationship with God and call God Abba.
It makes a difference if God promises you land and other people are living there. Who is this God, who commands you the Israelites to kill all the inhabitants of Jericho and other cities in Canaan – men, women, children, animals and burn the towns so that you can occupy the land and you call it the Promised Land. (Joshua 6:20-24). We are still grappling with that problem today.
It makes a difference to have a covenant, and to understand how do we fulfill that covenant. as God’s faithful people, what sets us apart from all those who surround us? A covenant begun with Abraham and sealed in circumcision.
Gradually we see more and more added to what we calls laws but really they are more instructions: what to wear, what to do and not do, instructions for daily living, holy days and worship. Instructions for the priests and temple worship.
Bercause it makes a difference whether God can travel through the desert in a travelling ark of the covenant and still be present at the alter in Bethel and other places which we are told people have built alters and temples because they have encountered God in that place, or God can only be properly addressed at the Temple in Jerusalem as the Deuteronomists state in the Book of Kings.
It makes a difference to understand that the historical events on the world stage that affect you are the result not of things that you have no control over but consequences of your behaviour in your relationship with God. So Israel has a covenant with Yahweh, who has promised Israel the land of Canaan, but the promise is conditional: if the Israelites are unfaithful, they will lose the land. The Deuteronomistic history explains Israel's successes and failures as the result of faithfulness, so the destruction of the Kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians (721 BCE) and the Kingdom of Judah by the Babylonians (586) are viewed as Yahweh's punishment for continued sinfulness.
The Old Testament is not all problematic, it is rich and layered, it shows special concern for the poor, for widows and the fatherless: all Israelites are brothers and sisters, and each will answer to God for his treatment of his neighbour.
You mind be thinking this Old Testament has nothing to do with the New Testament but the Hebrew scirtures and prophetic writing are what nourished Jesus.
God’s people are waiting for a Messiah. The anointed one who will deliver them from the clutches of powerful occupying powers. Israel was waiting for the one who would come and unite Israel and Judah once again returning them to the idyllic past under King David.
And the New Testament is all about the Messiah Jesus, the anointed one, Jesus the Christ. Except this Messiah is not quite what was wanted or expected.
You probably know more about the New Testament a collection of Gospels telling about the life, ministry and death of Jesus. Acts, a history of the earliest followers of the Jesus Way, what his disciples and followers did after his death and the vision and conversion and ministry of Paul. Then, we have a bunch of letters, which Paul wrote to fledging communities of the Way. There are several other epistles written by early church leaders and the book of Revelation. But it wasn’t always that way.
In 1945, a collection of early Christian and Gnostic texts were discovered near the town of Nag Hammadi
in upper Egypt near Luxor. The 13 books or codices contained over 50 texts and give us insight into the writings both Gnostic and Christian that proliferated in the two hundred years after Jesus’ death.
We know that the New Testament probably took it final form around 400 CE but it was developing long before that. And not everything that was available was included, we have four gospels, three (Matthew, Mark and Luke) which are similar but not the same and the Gospel of John which has a very different perspective or presentation of the material of Jesus’ ministry and life and death. There are a number of other gospels and writings that were dismissed, just not used, some deemed heretical and lost – and some found at Nag Hammadi. Our New Testament is a select selection of what was available at the time.
So, remember how the Torah is full of contradictions, different stories and traditions wedded together, well, guess what? so are the gospels that we do have in the New Testament.
I would not recommend you sitting down and trying to reconcile one gospel with all the others. Just like with the stories in the Old Testament there is no neat dovetailing of the chronicle of events one after the other.
As early as 230 CE, the early church fathers – bishops who were the people who collected and used and authorized the use of texts within their regions, they are the ones who initially gave the OK to a four gospel approach. Not one authoritative gospel but four. Why? What truths could be garnered from four gospels that you couldn’t get from one, combined unified gospel that would go from John the Baptist to the Resurrection of Jesus. There was something in the diversity of texts, respect for the communities they were used in, some kernel of truth that could only be realized when studying and trying to understand all the stories.
We have some surviving letters and other writings, which give us glimpses of the developing early communities of the Jesus Way. We meet some the men and women involved in support and leadership and the problems they faced in their faith communities and in their lives.
Real people, dealing with real problems, in the context of their very real lives.
I like to think that we are called, just like with the Old Testament, like the rabbis and students studying in the in the courts of the Temple in Jerusalem, we are called to read the text and question it and sit with it, and doubt it and figure what is true for us, what resonates with our hearts and minds, what forever remains a mystery, what leads us to see the story in a whole new way, what changes the way we look at ourselves, and our world and our neighbour.
We are called to wrestle with the stories, some of which are abhorrent to us today. God has no trouble wanting to destroy Soddom and Gormorrah, God turns Lots wife into a pillar of salt, Lot throws his daughters out into the waiting arms of a mob in order to satisfy their lust and not disturb the men in the household. You understand these are not easy texts and some of them we might want to let them stay buried in the books but the task is understand what, and why, how. We are allowed to, called to, look at the stories and ask “Is this how we see life, is this the world we live in, is this right, is this how we want our world to be, is this just, is this lawful, is this the only way we can live together? These are questions for our lives, our world, now!
Remember the vanities of vanities from Ecclesiastes – “hevel” in Hebrew – not so easy translate: is it vanity at all? or can we better understand it as smoke, vapour, meaninglessness, mist, the breath you see before you for less than a second before it disappears and what does that mean when you apply it to life? Can we look at that text and compare it to looking at the Webber Telescope snapshots of the universe and us realizing we are this moment of a speck, on a speck of a planet, in the speck which is our solar system, in a speck of a galaxy, in the ever expanding universe, in something that has existed in some form for more than 13 billion years. How despairing and wonderful is that!
As a Christian, I would say, we find the best answers or maybe the best questions, in the life and ministry of Jesus in the context of the whole Bible. Jesus’ understanding of the Torah and the Prophets for his life and ministry help guide us in our understanding of the Bible, and in our lives. His relationship with Abba is our example of what our relationship with God can be like.
So what an adventure the whole Bible is for us!
What story makes God’s love real for our lives and in our lives. My hope is that you can find a story that resonates with you and your life and and that you get to sit with it and have it enter your own story in a good way.
May it be so. Amen
