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Tailoring the Word

Tailoring The Word

Tailoring the Word of God

November 19, 2006

Text: 1 Kings 22:5-9, 13-18; 2 Timothy 4:3

But Jehoshaphat also said to the king of Israel, "Inquire first for the word of the LORD."6 Then the king of Israel gathered the prophets together, about four hundred of them, and said to them, "Shall I go to battle against Ramoth-gilead, or shall I refrain?" They said, "Go up; for the LORD will give it into the hand of the king."  But Jehoshaphat said, "Is there no other prophet of the LORD here of whom we may inquire?"  The king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, "There is still one other by whom we may inquire of the LORD, Micaiah son of Imlah; but I hate him, for he never prophesies anything favorable about me, but only disaster." Jehoshaphat said, "Let the king not say such a thing."  Then the king of Israel summoned an officer and said, "Bring quickly Micaiah son of Imlah." …  

The messenger who had gone to summon Micaiah said to him, "Look, the words of the prophets with one accord are favorable to the king; let your word be like the word of one of them, and speak favorably."  But Micaiah said, "As the LORD lives, whatever the LORD says to me, that I will speak."  

When he had come to the king, the king said to him, "Micaiah, shall we go to Ramoth-gilead to battle, or shall we refrain?" He answered him, "Go up and triumph; the LORD will give it into the hand of the king." But the king said to him, "How many times must I make you swear to tell me nothing but the truth in the name of the LORD?"  Then Micaiah said, "I saw all Israel scattered on the mountains, like sheep that have no shepherd; and the LORD said, 'These have no master; let each one go home in peace.'"  The king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, "Did I not tell you that he would not prophesy anything favorable about me, but only disaster?"

NRSV 

      Let’s look at the titles of some of the world’s “shortest books.” Think a little about them, and you’ll understand why they’re such short books.    

Everything Men Know about Women

George Foreman's Big Book of Baby Names

"How to Sustain a Musical Career", by Art Garfunkel

The Amish Phone Directory

The Engineer's Guide to Fashion

A Guide to Anger Management, by Bobby Knight

A Guide to Good Golf, by John Warhoover

A Guide to Healthy Eating, from the kitchens of White Castle

[adapted from R. Kwon, "World's Shortest Books," 9/9/99, jokes@eurweb.com]

      And finally, how about this one—the shortest one of all:

The Bible 

I. Well, that last one doesn’t seem right, does it? The Bible isn’t a short book. Look how big and thick it is. It spans about 1500 years of history.

      And yet, have you noticed how people treat it like it’s a short book?

      On any given night, you can turn onto the religious stations on t.v. and hear a preacher beginning conversations and sermons with the phrase, “The BIBLE says…”

      And what follows is a snippet of a verse here, a passage there.

      “The Bible says THIS about salvation…the second coming…baptism… abortion…homosexuality…wives obeying their husbands…[fill in the blank]…” A preacher like that makes it appear that the Bible says short, to-the-point, black-and-white statements about such issues. It’s as if you can cut out all these little verses and passages, paste them on a page or two, and presto! You have another one of the world’s shortest books.

      Let me let you in on a secret.

      I’ve been in this preacher game for a while, and I’ve studied and swam in the different streams of biblical interpretation.

      And I can tell you this:

      Whenever you hear someone say “the BIBLE says…” with that Southern-accent-certainty—and whenever you see that preacher waving the book around like a weapon: you can be sure more often than not that the person had her/his mind already made up before opening the Bible. And when that preacher read the Bible, the preacher was looking for just those places that seemed to support what he/she already believed.

      This is called human nature. You know as well as I that people have used the Bible to start wars, enslave people, oppress women, and abuse each other.

      This type of “tailoring” the Word of God to fit your own needs is found in the Bible itself, in today’s story.

      The king of Judah, Jehoshaphat, and the king of Israel, Ahab, are contemplating going to war against Syria. Jehoshaphat asks if the prophets have been consulted, seeking what God has to say about going to war.

      “Oh yes, 400 of them say that God will give us victory!” Ahab replies.

      “ALL the prophets have been asked?” The king of Judah wants to be sure.

      And Ahab’s reply is classic:

"There is still one other by whom we may inquire of the LORD, Micaiah… son of Imlah; but I hate him, for he never prophesies anything favorable about me, but only disaster."

      In other words, “He never says what I want him to say! He’s so stubborn! I see things one way, he sees them another. I want to live one way, he tells me to live another way. I want my life to be lived by simple truths I can write down on a single page, and he keeps telling me that truth can’t be written down so conveniently. I WANT TO GO TO WAR AGAINST SYRIA, AND I JUST KNOW MICAIAH IS GOING TO TELL ME NOT TO—YOU JUST MARK MY WORDS!”

      And sure enough, the prophet didn’t disappoint the king. He said that if they went to war, they’d lose horribly. After hearing this prophesy, Ahab turns to Jehoshaphat and says with a smirk,

"Did I not tell you that he would not prophesy anything favorable about me, but only disaster?"

      When you read the Bible as a whole—not as a “short book”—you sometimes feels like you’re talking to a Micaiah. The Bible does NOT necessarily condone the things you want. The Bible does NOT necessarily condone the attitudes you have, or the desires you protect. The Bible does NOT necessarily condone what your culture, or your parents, or your teachers, or your friends say. The Bible does NOT necessarily condense truth into black and white snippets of verse.

      The Bible will NOT tolerate being tailored—take a little here, a little there, to suit your needs.

      When you try to tailor the Word of God, you will encounter disaster. For Ahab, he went to battle, and was mortally wounded.

      For us, disaster is of a different kind. The disaster you’ll encounter when you try to make the Bible justify your attitude or lifestyle is that the voice of God grows silent. When you open this book with your mind made up, then the only thing you’ll see are black or red words against a background of white. There is no Word that encounters and enlivens.

      BUT…

      The last time I checked, you and I are not in the tailoring business.

      You and I are not to “tailor” the word of God to suit us.

      You and I are to let God’s Word tailor us—change us, redeem us, set us onto the road of faithful discipleship.

      Just look at the lives of two people who were “tailored.”

      One you’ve heard of… 

      Martin Luther.

      He had studied the Bible through the traditional lens of the Catholic Church of the 1400-1500’s. He was told what each verse meant, against the backdrop of 100’s of years of church history and tradition.

      But he knew something wasn’t right. He was following the way to salvation he’d been taught—doing “works” of penance, confession. He’d confess so much and so often that the priest who took his confession would cringe whenever he’d approach the confessional: “Oh no, here comes Luther again!”

      Yet no matter how much he tried to save himself this way, he didn’t find peace. He kept struggling. So he started reading the Bible in an honest fashion. He started reading those pages, not from assumptions of what others said about this verse or that. He started reading the Scriptures from an openness and need brought on by his questioning, his doubting, his pain.

      In the process, God spoke to him—clearly, powerfully. One day, in reading Paul’s letters to the Romans, a verse just jumped out at him, leaping from the page:

For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law. [Romans 3:28] 

      That verse jump-started his soul, changed his life. The key to salvation was not trying to earn it, perpetually running the hamster wheel of penance and confession. The key was trusting Christ, and entering a personal relationship with him.

      See what happened? Because he approached the Bible from a sense of need and openness, the living Word of God encountered him. God changed him, gave him the assurance of forgiveness he was searching for. God gave him strength to go on and challenge the corruption in the church at that time. When he was brought to a church trial on charges of heresy and told to take back—“recant”—his criticisms, he had this to say:

“Unless I am convicted by scripture and plain reason…my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise, God help me. Amen.”

      What amazing power! The Word of God for Luther was anything but silent. And what a journey it set him upon—changing the course of history.

      When you open your heart humbly as you open the pages of this book, no telling what you’ll find! You might not discover something that will change history. But you will discover God moving you deeper into the mystery of life.

      Just ask our second person…

      Barbara Brown Taylor.

      I went to seminary with Barbara. She is a well known Episcopalian priest, preacher, professor, and writer.

      A few years ago there was a controversy that threatened to divide her denomination—a controversy that still simmers. She said that people on both sides of the debate threw Scripture passages at each other.

      Wherever she went, she was asked what her position on the issue was. So, she went to the Bible. Like Luther, she read it from the framework of her own experiences and her own questions. And she heard God speaking. The Bible called her to resist getting caught up in the battle where the participants threw Bible verses at each other like spears. The Bible called her not to debate people, but to love them. Getting swept up in debating what’s “right” or “wrong” would only lead people into acting in very un-loving ways.

      She said that for her the Bible didn’t instruct her in what the “absolute” truth was on this issue. Rather, it teased her, and pushed her into embodying the Gospel in the realities of the world.

      I like what she said:

“The Bible won’t let me set up house in its pages…[The Bible] keeps evicting me, to go embody the word by living in peace and justice with my neighbors on this earth, whatever that may involve.” 

      For her the Bible seems to be a mystery book: you bring before its pages your life’s questions, experiences, hopes and dreams—and it opens up before your eyes. It gives you direction, lights up your way, then grows silent, waiting for you to continue your life’s journey.

      Your journey may be different from Barbara’s, as it may be different from mine or the person around you. But a journey it must be. When you reduce the Bible to a “short book,” you stop and pronounce your journey’s over.

      The journey for a Christian must NEVER be over.

      She concludes her reflections with these words,

“These days I guess everything sounds like a position…I do not know what is right. All I know is whom I love, and how far I have to go before there is no one left whom I do not love. If I am wrong, then I figure that the Word of God will know what to do with me. I am betting my life on that.”

--Christian Century, 10/18/2003 

      You and I are not to treat the Bible like a “paper Pope,” looking for a snippet of infallibility here or there, and condensing the Scriptures down to one or two pages.

      Rather, read the Bible in its breadth, and swim in its depths.

      The professor of preaching at the seminary Barbara and I went to was Fred Craddock. Fred once made a serious mistake: he attempted to debate a fundamentalist preacher.

      That preacher said, “The BIBLE says that ‘whoever believes and is baptized will be saved.’”

      Fred asked, “But what about the child who dies shortly after birth, without a chance to be baptized?”

      “Does the Bible say, ‘except’ the child who dies? No!”

      Fred asked, “But what about the person who doesn’t have all their mental faculties?”

      “Does the Bible say, ‘except’ such a person? No!”

      Fred said they went back and forth like that in the debate.

      At the end, he said that he wound up looking like a bleeding liberal, while the fundamentalist was “the stone statue of truth, holding up the word of Christ.”

[Craddock Stories, p. 101]

      Friends, let others “look” like they’re holding up the word of Christ.

      But for you and me—let’s follow him.