Asking Hard Questions of God and the Bible

October 17, 2021 • 21st Sunday after Pentecost
Scripture Readings: Exodus 21:22-24 and Matthew 5:38-41 (NIV)
Pastor Jeff Wells

[You can view the worship video recording, including this message, at: Facebook.com/churchofthevillage/videos.]

Click HERE for a list of recommended resources about process theology
and ecological civilization.

Okay, but wait a minute, Jesus. Here you are telling people not to follow the ancient Israelite moral law about “an eye for an eye,” but elsewhere in the Gospel of Matthew, you said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come to fulfill them…. Not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.” [1] So, which is it, Jesus? 

Well, it seems to me, Jesus was actually doing  both. He was deeply rooted in the Hebrew scriptures and in the practices of the Judaism of his time. He valued and taught the Law and the Prophets, yet, he knew how important it was to not simply accept, without question, the scriptures, the theological stances, practices, and attitudes that did not serve well the Jewish people.

As we contrast the passages from the Book of Exodus and the Gospel of Matthew, we hear Jesus’ not only questioning, but turning upside down the accepted ethical standard for responding to an act of harm. Where the Books of Exodus and Leviticus taught the Israelites to “take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth,” But Jesus responded: “Do not resist an evil person…. turn the other cheek…. carry your enemy’s burden a second mile.” The Israelites borrowed the “eye for an eye” rule from much older Near East legal codes. It was a common standard in ancient societies of the time. Its intent was to promote fairness and justice in exercising punishment. Listen, an eye for an eye is better than a life for an eye. Yet, Jesus saw the need to move beyond mere “fairness” in retribution to something closer to what we call today “restorative justice,” whose goal is not only to hold persons accountable for harm, but to carry out the hard work of building or restoring broken relationships, healing communities, and reconciling enemies. 

Another important rule that Jesus often broke and encouraged others to break, when necessary, was the law on sabbath observance. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus lays his hands on a woman to heal her deformed spine. A local synagogue leader chastises him for healing on the sabbath. Jesus responds, “This woman has been suffering for eighteen years. Shouldn’t she have been released from her shackles on the Sabbath?” Another time when the disciples were picking grain from a field on the sabbath and religious leaders accused them of breaking the law, Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath.” [2]

I assert that asking hard questions of the Bible and of the theology and of God is not just an option for us. It is required of us if we are going to grow in our understanding and continue to develop a faith that is genuine and aligns with our experience of God and the world today. And, the Bible shows us that questioning and challenging and reinterpreting are very much aligned with the way Jesus carried out his ministry and that he inherited that challenging and questioning from his own religious training in Judaism.

The Bible has been used to perpetrate so much harm. Many of us were formed in faith communities that did not question such uses of the Bible and even promoted patriarchy, homophobia, transphobia, and white privilege. Some of us were traumatized by such views of the Bible, God, and faith. Yet, we know there is another way to value the Bible and to follow Jesus. 

At the start of worship, you heard a recitation of just a few of the multitude of difficult or harmful passages from the Bible that have been used to undergird harmful theologies and actions of the church and of civil society. People who claim the name of Jesus – who said or say they are “Christians” and “people of faith” – have carried out many horrific acts in the name of God and the Bible. They have slaughtered those who do not believe alike – including other Christian sects. They justified burning people at the stake. They rejected and exploited children and took them from their parents to destroy indigenous cultures. They tried to massacre or enslaved entire peoples and colonized and stole their land and resources.

There was a time in my own life when I questioned myself right out of the Christian church. I spent 16 years espousing atheism and dialectical materialism. I could not see the church or Christian faith as a vehicle for the kind of radical social change I believed the world needed. Even when I found my way back to the church, I never stopped questioning the Bible and challenging orthodox beliefs. I am thankful that God lured me to a United Methodist Church – to a denomination in which theological diversity and debate were valued, to some extent. So when I went before the Board of Ordained Ministry for examination, most of those interviewing me either tolerated or even affirmed my challenge of atonement theology and my argument that we should use “kin-dom” rather than “kingdom” – offering a non-patriarchal language and metaphor to describe God’s vision. I have struggled over the time of my ministry with how to think and talk about who Jesus is. Is he really “God”? Was he really raised from the dead? Did he actually perform miraculous healings? What does it mean to follow Jesus? My answers to those questions and others have changed significantly over the years and continue to evolve. 

We know that within the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament, there are many conflicting theologies, ethical standards, and practices. When we read and study the Bible carefully, it gives us a partial record of how the authors and their communities understood God and their relationship with God, which evolved over time. We have so much to learn from the Bible, but it is not the factual, verbally inspired revelation of God. It is a collection of histories, stories, poetry, and colloquial wisdom, full of metaphor and allegory. 

In order for the Bible to serve us today, we have to treat it as a living document and supplement it with other historical and contemporary writings that extend our understanding. The story of God’s people is still being written in our lives. It only makes sense to me that we would need to interpret, revise, and employ the Bible in new ways under new conditions and with new understanding. 

Perhaps, in some ways, it may be easier not to question but simply to accept what some religious authority says is the correct way to understand God or interpret the scriptures. Yet, I think that path is ultimately unsatisfying to most, if not all, of you, or you would not have found our way to this congregation. 

Following Jesus is not meant to be easy. It is meant to be rich and meaningful. That requires that we confront the horrible things done in the name of God and the scriptures. We have to name what needs to be named – the good, the bad, and the ugly. The history of the Church of the Village and its predecessors has leaned toward a generally progressive theology and biblical interpretation for a long time. Still, the history of Christianity is our history in a sense. We have a duty to speak against the harmful parts of our own faith tradition. So in this series, we will address patriarchy, violence, miracles, and more. 

Our task is to creatively re-imagine Christianity for this context and this moment in history. In this series and in other recent worship series, I feel like we have been doing something different than we ever have before. It’s not that we never asked questions or challenged the Bible, but we are doing it more systematically now. 

I believe God calls us to continually challenge the Bible, theology, ethics, and practice in light of what we see, feel, experience and how we relate to the world around us. We need to continually renew and re-imagined our faith in ways that are loving, healing, and life-affirming. We need to ask questions of the Bible and theology and come to new or nuanced understandings that will help us to overturn human-centered faith and build ecological civilization before it is too late. 

Some of what we question and challenge and revise may be part of the bedrock of your faith. So, this series has the potential to de-center some people. What we are striving for is to make the Church of the Village both a safe space and a brave space. Some of you have experience in other faith communities that were neither safe nor brave. In this space and this bold endeavor, we want everyone to feel safe enough and brave enough to express questions and doubts and also safe enough and brave enough to hold onto differing understandings of the Bible and theology, without judgment. 

So, I encourage you to stay as open as possible. To listen as carefully and explore as deeply as possible the difficult texts and hard questions. I appeal to you to bring your own questions and challenges and understandings. Share them with the preachers each Sunday in the breakout rooms after worship. Write them down or discuss them with members of the Worship Vision Team or with one another. This is an opportunity for us to explore together, think together, and grow together.

(c) 2021 Jeff Wells
All rights reserved.

[1] Matthew 5:17-18

[2] Mark 2:27. Priests for Equality, The Inclusive Bible (Sheed & Ward, Kindle Edition)