MaryBeth LaMont

The Bible says! The Bible says! Over and over, we hear this from Christians and their leadership. It is often used in a manner to cut off all further discussion or comment on some issue. What I have often noticed is when some say this the Bible does not even say or support their paraphrased quote. I remember someone telling me the Bible is against bi-racial marriage. Really? Where does the Bible say this? Where is even race of any kind mentioned?

On the other hand, there are those who dismiss the Bible as fantasy, as fairy tale, and find it irrelevant. Really? A book where there are stories of murder, lust, scheming, torture, death, evil seeming to have the upper hand? The Bible to me, at times, seems more like the front page of a newspaper (or these days news website) than fantasy or fiction.

I wonder if we approached the Bible with this question in mind, how we might see the Bible’s relevance and authority for us: “How does the Bible seem to understand human life in this world?” Might this change our perspective a bit?

Of course, we need to lift our sights quite a bit. The Bible is more than about us and our lives. It is about God and God’s record of relating to God’s people and God’s world. It is a continual saga of God hanging in there with God’s rebellious people. It is a series of stories of failure, alienation, rebellion, and redemption. Shakespeare might be able to spin better prose, but he could not improve upon many of the story lines. In fact, I tend to see the Bible as having more in common with Tom Sawyer, Catcher in the Rye, and other such books that seem to understand some aspect of human life so well.

If I were to sum up the Bible in a single word, it would be “authentic.” It is an authentic depiction of human life long ago and today. It is the Bible’s authenticity that gives the Bible its authority. It is the Bible’s depiction of human life and a God that won’t let go of that life that makes it authoritative.

The Bible is not a law book, though many laws and expectations by God for human living are in it. Neither is it a warm and fuzzy book, which we also many times like to quote, that says all will be well. It is a picture for today of how God enters into human life often and especially at its worst and works to redeem it.

The Bible says. Yes, the Bible says God is a loving God, relating to God’s rebellious people in love.

Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen, Indeed! So we say and repeat each and every Easter Sunday. We might say those three words are the ultimate Easter sermon. However, a word of caution to any of my colleagues who might read these words I am writing.

Some years ago when I was a pastor in Colorado, a Lutheran colleague of mine decided to have a rather short Easter sermon for what I recall was his second Easter with them. When it came time in the Easter Sunday worship for the sermon, he stood up, said, “Christ is Risen!” After a brief pause he then said, “Amen” and sat down. On to the hymn of the day! That was his Easter sermon.

Whatever point he was trying to make was lost on his congregation. About a year later he was no longer their pastor.

While it is certainly true those three words sum up Easter and the Christian faith, there is a bit more to say. There is a reason there is not one Easter sermon repeated yearly. There is not one life, one world that is the same each year. The sameness is worry, anxiety, joy, sin, goodness, natural beauty and natural disasters and all that human life and nature bring to the world.

Now we are dealing with Ukraine, political division that is quite frightening, on-going school shootings met with indifferent thoughts and prayers and no action, tornadoes, floods, and our own personal situations. This world and our lives could use a little rising. This world and our lives could use a little new life. I don’t know what next Easter will bring, but I don’t have to be a fortune teller to say it will bring a world and lives that need rising and new life.

So, we pastors stumble and mumble, we try our best to do something with this Easter story to bring it into the current day and present lives. We are inadequate to the task to be sure, but somehow God finds ways to use some of our efforts to shed some new light and bring some new life into dark and deadly places. This is God’s sermon each and every Easter. We might even say this is God’s sermon each and every day as God continues to break into our lives and make them new.

Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen, indeed! Amen!