b i b l e

This is not a column about the history channel's miniseries, "The Bible" which aired in March. I commented about that in an earlier blog entry.  I shared my opinion on it. I have shared it since with people in and outside of church, who have asked me what I thought. I have a relationship with the bible. I read it. I am a Lutheran pastor, a person of faith. I hear God speak in the bible.  I hear my own story, the human story in the bible too.  I also hear both the Jewish story and the Christian story tied together by a first Century prophet named Jesus of Nazareth.  The bible says he was crucified under Pontius Pilate, died, and was buried.  On the third day he rose from the dead and appeared to his followers in and beyond Jerusalem for a period of some 40 days.  I have read the bible in many different ways; for personal faith and theological understanding; for moral guidance; for historical/literary education; for linguistic/cultural meaning; for pastoral care and counsel, for preaching and teaching; for prayer and conversation with God.  The bible is many things to me.  It is not God.  It is not perfect,but it is holy.  God's Word is heard through it.  I don't believe in biblical inerrancy.  People wrote it and translated it and rewrote it and copied it and rewrote it.  But God inspired it. It tells the world the truth about ourselves and the God who made all things by love for love.It is self-contradictory, violent, and oppressive.  It is mythological and supernatural.  It is ordinary and human.  There are universally applicable truths and there are highly contextual, culturally premodern, middle Eastern stories, norms, and values that must be understood as such.  To confuse the latter with the former has caused suffering.  It bears interpretation, to say the least.

easter

Why do you look for the living among the dead?   Why do we get stuck in bad habits and unhealthy patterns of behavior?  Why do we let nostalgia and fears hold us back from experiencing the present in its fullest?  Why do bad memories haunts us? Why do mistakes, regrets, secret sins, failures, and losses prevent us from enjoying the life God has given us?  We are haunted by pasts we cannot change and an unknown future that ends in death.  The older we get the more life is behind us.  More memories, fewer hopes.  Harder to make amends as time goes by.  Why do we look for the living among the dead?  Because we have learned what to expect.  We have learned that life is a journey from birth to death. We have learned that we cannot survive death.  It is inevitable. So we live as best we can. And along the way there is both joy and sorrow, pain and pleasure. We seek the pleasure and the joy where we can find it.  We lament “Why me?” when pain or grief overwhelm us. We swing between the pendulum, from the joy of living to the fear of dying.  We avoid the latter as much as we are able by sheltering ourselves in our small, comfortable worlds. We keep the threats at a distance, taking few risks, preferring to watch death on television as entertainment or distant news. Why do you look for the living among the dead?  Because we know that life is lived in one direction, a direction that leads to the grave. But Easter tells another story. It is the story of what happens when the sun came up. But Easter began in the hours before that…in the darkness before the dawn.