Matthew 20:1-16
October 24, 2010
“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
A number of years ago there were twin brothers who both went to a good college to learn business. Both got good grades, and both were inundated with job offers upon graduation. During their senior years, both sensed a call from God to devote their lives to God in their work and lives. Both felt committed to work in business, and this call was to make their work, their earnings, and everything else part of their service to God.
The first brother heard the call and made a pledge to serve God in everything he would do throughout his life. And he did so. He became a missionary, serving God in all sorts of far-flung, and often dangerous, places. Eventually, because of his work among the poor, he was arrested, beaten, and killed.
The second brother also heard the call, but he didn’t respond so whole-heartedly. He started his own business, and was wildly successful. Unfortunately, he wasn’t always as ethical a Christian as he could have been in his business dealings. Still, he tried. He made a tremendous amount of money, and gave a little bit of it to charity when he thought about it. He lived a good life, although he had the potential to serve God in so many other ways.
When the first brother died, he appeared before Jesus, and Jesus said to him, “Well done, my good and faithful service. I gave you ten talents, and you turned them into 1000 talents. Receive your reward. Here are billion, billion talents.” To the second brother he said, “Well done, my good and faithful service. I gave you ten talents, and you turned them into twenty talents. Receive your reward. Here are billion, billion talents.”
The first brother was shocked at first to see that Jesus had rewarded the second brother the same as him. But after thinking a bit, he turned to Jesus and said, “My Lord, seeing that I served you so much during my life in comparison to my brother, and seeing that we both received the same reward in the end, if I had it all to do over again, I would have done it exactly the same. Thank you.”
I love this story because it really speaks to what I believe is the nature of grace.
It speaks to what God is like, but also to what mature love is like. And it speaks to the heart of our parable. Our parable this morning teaches a really important lesson, which is that no matter when we turn to God, God is always ready to take us in. But like everything Jesus teaches in the parables, there is more than one lesson to learn.
All of us have grown up hearing the parables of Jesus, but most of us don’t really understand the nature of the parables. Why did Jesus teach in parables, and what makes them different from stories? Parables are stories, but they are wisdom stories. Their intent is to teach people how to live more wisely in their lives. Also, parables are always based on everyday observations. When Jesus told his parables, he was telling people things based on what they saw everyday, or at least experienced often in their lives. He used farming, shepherding, weddings, the marketplace, and the Temple as his settings. If he were alive today, he might use the grocery store, the neighborhood, being stuck in traffic, or watching sports as the topics of his parables. Although we are very used to parables, the fact that we are 2000 years, and over 4000 miles separated from the setting for them makes it hard for us to really appreciate the depth of these parables. The fact is that we don’t understand ancient Middle Eastern everyday events, and that gets in the way of our understanding the parables.
This parable is teaching a lot more than meets the eye. At first glance this just seems to be a parable about the nature of getting into heaven. We think that perhaps it’s about making conversion at last minute or last minute confessions so that we can get into heaven. To understand the parable, we have to learn more about it. So to help you, let me give you the background of the parable.
The parable takes place in what was a common daily scene in ancient Middle Eastern towns. The time of year is September. How do we know? We know because the vineyard owner is looking for laborers to bring in the harvest. In ancient Middle Eastern culture, the production of wine was not only big business, but an important part of life. You see, people didn’t drink much water in those days. They drank wine. They would mix wine with water. The alcohol in the wine killed the germs in the water. No one back then considered water to be a healthy drink because it was filthy. It was clean enough to wash clothers or hands, but not to drink. But it was okay once wine was mixed with it. So the wine harvest was crucial not just to wine drinkers, but to everyday living.
There was a rush, though. Once the October rains came mold could form on the grapes and ruin the wine. So the vineyard owner had to hire enough laborers to get it all in. Typically he would go to the marketplace where the poorest of the poor would gather every morning. In many ways, these people were lower than slaves. At least slaves didn’t have to worry about where their next meal was coming from, or about having a roof over their heads. These day laborers had no steady job. They were at the mercy of landowners. Typically they were paid a daily wage that kept them at a basic subsistence level. The failure to be hired for that day could mean the difference between a man’s family eating that day or not.
So the vineyard owner would go to the marketplace and begin choosing workers at about 6 a.m. He would assess their work around 9 a.m., and if they didn’t seem to be working fast enough, he would go back to the marketplace and hire more workers. He would assess again at noon, 3 p.m., and 5 p.m. Each person he would hire would be paid a reduced rate of 4/5ths, 3/5ths, 2/5ths, and 1/5th of a daily wage. That was common business practice. The laborers would stand in the marketplace all day waiting for the vineyard owner to come back and hire them, hoping to make some money.
In our parable, the vineyard owner does everything a normal businessman does, except at the end of the day. He pays those who had worked 12 hours a day’s wage. Then he pays those who had worked 9 hours a day’s wage. He then paid those who had worked for 6 hours a day’s wage. Those who worked for 3 hours he paid a day’s wage, and those who worked one hour he paid a day’s wage. The laborers who worked 12 ours were outraged. This was so unfair! But the vineyard owner, who is now seen as somewhat of a fool—although we know him as a “holy” fool—tells the laborer, “What business of it is of yours if I pay the others a day wage? You got a day’s wage. Be happy with what you have, but also be happy for the others, too, because I was generous and they will eat well tomorrow.”
If it were to take place today, where do you think it would take place? It would probably take place in California, and the laborers would be immigrants, legal or otherwise.
Knowing all this allows the parable to come more alive. While there a many, many lessons we can draw from this parable, let me share three of them with you—three lessons that take us deeper than just lessons about making deathbed confessions.
First, this passage is a warning to Jews about the Gentiles, and to Jesus’ followers about new Christians. To the Jews, he was saying that a time was coming soon when Gentiles would join the Jews as God’s chosen people. The Jews had been God’s chosen for a long time, and they had enjoyed all of God’s benefits in God’s vineyard, God’s kingdom. But God was about to call others whom the Jews saw as unfit, and God was going to invite them into the kingdom. The Jews would complain, but God’s answer would still be, “What are you complaining about? I have given you everything you’ve deserved. I’ve treated you well. What business is it of yours if I also treat the Gentiles well?”
There is also a warning to us. There are many Christians among us who are not all that accepting of newer Christians, or at least not to newer members of our churches. I don’t think this is a problem for members of Calvin Church because we’ve always been good at integrating in members who want to be part of the life of Calvin Church. For instance, we’ve called people to be elders who have been members for 25 years, but also those who have only been members for 2 years. Length of membership and service is not a prerequisite for being a full part of Calvin Presbyterian Church. But for many, there are stepping stones and roadblocks put before people, whether it is glaring at others who might sit in our pews, or expecting newer, younger members to defer to our wishes when it comes to worship and music. I remember once hearing the member of a small church say that a particular person was not really eligible to be an elder in his church because she was still a new member—after fifteen years of being a member! The point is that we are called to celebrate the fact that God cares just as much for those who are new in our midst as about us. The warning is that we need to be just as welcoming.
Second, the parable is about God’s compassion. It tells of God’s love towards all. It doesn’t matter when we turn to God, or even that we completely turn to God. God loves us all equally. God cares for those who have been Christians for a long time, and for those who have only been Christians for a short time. All of us will receive an abundance of God’s grace because that’s the nature of God. God has so much to give, and God is willing to give it all to us. It is important for us to be ready to receive it, though. Just as the laborers had to show up in the marketplace, we need to show up to receive the abundance of grace God has to offer.
The third message is about God’s Economy. We don’t normally think about the idea that God has an economic system, but God does. We think in terms of Capitalism or Communism or socialism, but God has an economic plan that we might call Godism. Basically, it’s a free-market system based on generosity. While Capitalism is based on building profits for our own sake, God’s economy is about using profits for other people’s sake.
Our passage tells us that while God does care about harvesting grapes and producing wine, and about the wealthy vineyard owner, it also says that God cares about the impoverished day laborers. God isn’t just content to say that because they are unskilled and haven’t worked hard enough to better themselves, they deserve what they get. Jesus is saying that God cares deeply about their welfare, enough to be generous with them even when to do so seems to make God seem like a business fool.
God’s economy is one built on generosity. And it’s an economy that we are called to be part of. It means taking seriously the call to give, not just out our abundance, but out of everything we have. We are called to be generous, especially with those who are poor, hungry, homeless, and the like. We are called to hear God’s warning to us to be compassionate, and to live under God’s economy. We are called to give to the church—to be generous in supporting God’s work in the world—because God is generous with us. And we are called to live lives steeped in God’s generosity.
So, as you listen to his parable, what lessons do you hear, and are you willing to apply them to your life.
Amen.
Parable Wisdom: 1. Forgiving as We've Been Forgiven
Matthew 18:23-35
October 17, 2010
For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him; and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, ‘Pay what you owe.’ Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt. When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. Then his lord summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.
On October 2nd of 2006, something terrible happened. It was a tragedy that rocked much of Central Pennsylvania. At 10:15 a.m., a man named Charles Carl Roberts parked his pick-up at the West Nickel Mines School. This was an Amish School with a teacher and about fifteen children of all ages. Pulling out a gun, he ordered all the children, who had been outside for recess, back into the school. He then ordered a few of them to help him bring stuff into the school, such as rope, boards, nails, and other things. The teacher and some of the children took advantage of this to escape and get help. Responding to their please, the police arrived fifteen minutes later.
What Roberts did was baffling because he was known in the Amish community. He was a truck driver who picked up milk from Amish farms. He was actually somewhat well thought of. But his intentions on this day were truly evil. He had been having dreams of molesting children, and that was his intent on that day. The escape of the children and the arrival of the police at 10:45 a.m. disrupted his plans. At 11:07 a.m. he began shooting the ten children he had placed against the wall. Five died, and five were critically wounded. After shooting them, he turned the gun on himself.
His acts of violence against innocent children shocked not only the Amish community, but much of Central Pennsylvania. People were enraged. How could someone have done this? Why didn’t his family know if his intents beforehand? Why didn’t the police suspect something? People wanted answers. They wanted scapegoats.
There was also something different about this shooting that baffled people. We are used to hearing stories like this, about grieving, angry families wanting answers. But what confused people was how the Amish responded. They never got angry. Instead, they acted with love and forgiveness. Immediately the elders of the Amish community told the others that they were to forgive Roberts, and to act in a forgiving ways toward his family. They said that Roberts’ act not only tore apart Amish families, but also the Roberts family.
Within hours the Amish were visiting Roberts’ wife, children, and parents. One Amish man held Roberts’ father for an hour while he sobbed. They brought dinners over for the Roberts families. They also set up a charitable fund for the family to help them get through the bad economic times that were sure to follow. About 30 of the Amish attended Charles Roberts’ funeral, and Marie Roberts, Roberts’ wife, was one of the few outsiders invited to attend the funeral for their children. Afterwards, Marie Roberts wrote an open letter to them, saying, "Your love for our family has helped to provide the healing we so desperately need. Gifts you've given have touched our hearts in a way no words can describe. Your compassion has reached beyond our family, beyond our community, and is changing our world, and for this we sincerely thank you."
Interestingly, the non-Amish community struggled with the forgiving response of the Amish. On television, experts opined that the Amish were engaging in mass denial, repression, or some other psychological defense mechanism. No one could understand how the Amish would be so forgiving. They thought it was unhealthy. Yet when interviewed, the Amish had simple responses, including one quoting our passage for this morning.: “ So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”
They said that they were forgiving because they had been forgiven, and because a forgiving God called them to forgive. Their response to the shootings was so baffling that sociologists from local colleges came to Nickel Mines to understand more the Amish response. They wrote about their experiences in a really good book, Amish Grace. It was turned into a movie, although the movie really wasn’t very good, and didn’t reflect that accurately what these three sociologists discovered and wrote about in their book. Simply put, the Amish acted the way Jesus called us to act to all tragedies and traumas, yet people couldn’t understand. They proved that Jesus’ call to forgive could be something practical, yet people still thought they are being overly idealistic, psychologically healthy, or delusional.
Growing up somewhat near the Amish as a child, I know that they have been a misunderstood people. Still, the thing I’ve always admired about the Amish is how deeply they’ve tried to live out the Gospel no matter what. They don’t come up with the kinds of excuses we do for why we can’t follow the Gospel in everyday life. They try their best to find a way. I may not be willing to follow in their footsteps, and I may have a different understanding of the Gospel, but I will always respect their passion and commitment. They are a people who practice radical forgiveness.
I realize that we can look at the Amish and say that they really didn’t forgive because the family of Charles Roberts didn’t do anything wrong. But tell that to the hundreds of people who criticized the Amish for their forgiveness, and who obviously thought that the parents, spouse, and children should pay for Roberts’ sins. The fact is that forgiving is hard no matter who we are, or what the circumstances.
Why is forgiving so hard? It has to do with basic human biology and psychology. Whenever we are hurt badly, whether that means a physical hurt or a psychological, emotional hurt, our brains create a defensive shield to keep us from being hurt like that again. It’s a protective mechanism. We hold grudges because grudges protect us from being hurt again. And this defensive shield can do a lot of things to us. It can make us bitter as we extend our grudge to the world. It can cause us distrust all people who are potential threats. It can also make us hate others and hold onto anger. Basically, this psychological and emotional defense system does everything it can to keep us from forgiving. You see, by not forgiving we protect ourselves. When we forgive, we make ourselves vulnerable.
Unfortunately, there’s a price to pay for not forgiving. As Nelson Mandela said, after spending 24 years in prison, often being treated harshly and tortured, “Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.” God calls us to forgive because God wants us to transcend our biology, our psychology, and our resentment.
Sue Norton understood this. In January of 1990, she received terrible news at her home in Arkansas City, Kansas. Her father and his wife had been murdered in their home. A man named Robert Knighton (B.K.), all for $17.00 and an old truck, killed them in their isolated Oklahoma farmhouse. It was a brutal murder, and one that tore into Sue’s soul.
Sue says she felt "numb". She couldn’t understand why someone would want to hurt people who were old and poor. She sat through B.K.’s trial, filled with conflicted feelings. She had been deeply hurt, but she couldn’t understand the way the people attending the trial were acting. Everyone in the courtroom was consumed with hate. They all expected her to feel the same way. But she couldn’t hate the way they did because she says, "it didn’t feel good."
The last night of the trial she knew there must be another way. She couldn’t eat or sleep that night and prayed to God to help her. When morning came, she sensed God saying, "Sue, you don’t have to hate B.K., you could forgive him".
The next day, while the jury was out for deliberation, Sue got permission to visit B.K. in his holding cell. Sue said afterwards, "I was really frightened. This was my first experience in a jail. B.K. was big and tall, he was shackled and had cold steely eyes." At first B.K. refused to look at Sue. She asked him to turn around and he answered, "Why would any one want to talk to me after what I have done?" Sue replied, "I don’t know what to say to you. But I want you to know that I don’t hate you. My grandmother always taught me not to use the word hate. She taught me that we are here to love one another. If you are guilty, I forgive you.”
B.K. thought she was just playing games. He couldn’t understand how she could forgive him for such a terrible crime. Sue says, "I didn’t think of him as killer, I thought of him as a human being.” Much like the way the people of Central Pennsylvania thought of the Amish after the Nickel Mines shooting, people thought that Sue had lost her mind. Friends would step to the other side of the road to avoid her. But Sue says, "There is no way to heal and get over the trauma without forgiveness. You must forgive and forget and get on with your life. That is what Jesus would do.”
B.K. was executed in 2003, but prior to his execution, Sue often wrote to him and visited occasionally. She felt that B.K. should never leave prison, but she didn’t want him executed. She eventually became friends with B.K. and because of her love and friendship he became a devout Christian. Her forgiveness allowed some good to come out of her father’s death. As she said, "I have been able to witness to many people about Jesus and forgiveness and helped others to heal. I have brought B.K. and many other men on death row to our Lord Jesus Christ. I live in peace with my Lord!" (adapted from “Stories of Real Forgiveness,” found at http://www.catherineblountfdn.org/rsof.htm).
What Sue Norton did was hard, but it was also deeply Christian. I’m not sure we can truly call ourselves Christian if we can’t forgive experiences both big and small. The fact is that forgiving another does not mean forgetting. Instead it means giving a gift to another person despite the fact that she or he doesn’t deserve it. Forgiving is a gift of grace that we give to another person because we’ve been given it ourselves. God’s nature is to give us grace no matter what we’ve done, and so God forgives us no matter how many times we act in selfish, hurtful, or even violent ways. And God doesn’t want us to keep that grace for ourselves. God wants us to share it by being forgiving ourselves. That’s why the central word in “forgive” is give.” No one said that forgiving was easy, but Christ did say it was necessary—necessary to save your soul.
Amen.
What Does It Mean to Be Presbyterian? 4. Sola Scriptura
Mark 10:1-12
October 3, 2010
He left that place and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan. And crowds again gathered around him; and, as was his custom, he again taught them.
Some Pharisees came, and to test him they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.” But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”
Do you know what one of the toughest things for me was about going to seminary? It was learning to read the Bible properly. I had read the Bible twice from cover to cover before going to seminary, so I was at least familiar with what was in it. Of course, I did that because I had only rejoined the church eight months earlier after being away from the church for nine years. I felt biblically ignorant, so I read the Bible twice to become more familiar. I didn’t understand most of what I read, but I read it. Still, I was unprepared for what I faced in seminary.
Most pastors experience the same kind of struggles I did when they first go to seminary. Most of us have had head-spinning first years. The reason is that there are ways to read Scripture that really open it up in amazing ways, but it takes a while to learn them.
This way of reading Scripture, called the historical-critical method, involves discovering in Scripture more than just what you see at first on the page. It means reading it in depth. But more on that later. To prepare us for this kind of reading, we seminary students had to take two full years of biblical languages, meaning that we had to take a year of learning to read Greek, and then another year of learning to read Hebrew, which are the original languages of the New and Old Testaments, respectively. Then we had to take courses on the different books of the Bible, to the point at which our heads felt like exploding because of too much information.
So here’s a question for you to ponder. Why do you think it’s so important for seminary students to learn so much Bible? Almost a third of our courses were biblical courses. Why not cut back on the Bible and learn more about things like religious ideas, church administration, leadership, and things like that? Sure, the Bible is important, but shouldn’t we pastors be reading the Bible on our own anyway? Why not use our valuable time learning other things, and then devote ourselves to biblical learning either on our own or later?
The answer lies at the core of Presbyterian beliefs. Why spend so much time on scripture? The answer is because of sola scriptura. Do you know what sola scriptura means? It was one of the prominent protest phrases of the Protestant movement on the 16th century. It means, “by scripture alone.”
The leaders of the Protestant Reformation were absolutely adamant that our faith should be grounded in Scriptural guidance and nothing else. They were protesting a problem that existed in the Roman Catholic Church at the tine, the church of which they had all been raised and become members of. The Catholic Church, for almost 1000 years, had developed beliefs and traditions rooted in thinking that sometimes ran counter to Scripture. The Catholic Church had made papal and church authority equal to Scripture, and it had led to abuses that the Reformers, such as John Calvin and Martin Luther, saw as self-serving and against God.
Let me give you an example. Do you know what the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is? It’s a belief in the Roman Catholic Church that because Jesus was without sin, he could not have been conceived in a fallen and sinful womb. So the church came up with a doctrine that basically said that Mary was conceived without sin, so that she could bear Jesus without sin. This idea reflected the Catholic understanding of sex, which was that it was, by nature, sinful. So they had to come up with a way for Mary to have been conceived as humans normally are, without being subject to the sinfulness of sex. So they created the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, saying that Mary’s conception was free of flaws, mistakes, or sin. The problem is that at worst this is not a biblical idea, or at best it is an idea that stretches the Bible beyond what it actually says. This doctrine goes against Romans 3:23, which says that all people are sinful. Roman Catholics would say that it is biblical because when the angel appears to Mary and tells her that she is “full of grace,” that signifies that she was sinless. That’s a stretch. The Reformers looked at doctrines like this and said that they were human conventions, and that Christians needed to get back to a root in Scripture. Getting back to creating a church more like the original Church was a passion for the Reformers. The legacy for us is that we are called to base our beliefs on scripture alone—sola scriptura.
It’s not enough, though, just to put scripture at the center of our faith and life. There’s something else that the Reformers understood that was key. We not only have to read scripture, but we have to read it in a particular way, and if you don’t read scripture the right way, it can lead you down the wrong road. It can lead to the modern problems we have today when it comes to reading the Bible, which are the twin problems of biblical literalism and biblical anachronism.
Biblical literalism is a problem we all recognize today. It’s the tendency to read Scripture in a very literal way, in a way that treats it as though it was written 2000 years ago, placed in a time capsule, and opened today so that we can read what the ancient Christians wanted for us today. It treats the Bible as though there are no inconsistencies or difficulties in it. Biblical anachronism is the belief by some that nothing in the Bible is relevant to today. Biblical anachronists would simply say that it is an outdated, primitive book that has no bearing on today’s problems, so it should be ignored. Unfortunately, most biblical anachronists don’t know the Bible at all, so their belief is rooted in a basic ignorance of Scripture. The twin problems of literalism and anachronism comes from a deeper problem: the tendency of people to engage in eisogesis rather than exegesis.
I don’t’ mean to overload you with overly technical terms. These two terms are fairly easy to understand. Think “eisogesis” bad, “exegesis” good. What’s the difference. Eisogesis means reading into the Bible what you already believe or want to believe. You treat it as though it was written only to you, and to support what you already believe. Presbyterians stand against eisogesis, and this stand against it is the reason why Presbyterian pastors have to spend three years in seminary, with the equivalent of a full year devoted to studying the Bible, including reading it in its original Greek and Hebrew forms. We are taught to engage in exegesis.
What is exegesis? It is reading the Bible in context in order to understand what it is saying to us today. When you do exegesis, you read the Scripture in context, asking:
• Who’s the author?
• What’s the context?
• Why was it written?
• What was going on at the time?
• How does this relate to other parts of the Bible?
• How do we apply this to our situation today?
We ask deep questions of Scripture. We try to understand everything about why it was written, and what was going on at the time of its writing, so that we can understand its issues. Exegesis teaches us how to avoid misapplying and manipulating Scripture to fit our own preconceived notions. Learning to distinguish between eisogesis and exegesis is the purpose of sending all Presbyterian pastors to seminary.
This is a direct contrast to what you see among many in the nondenominational, evangelical movement. The fact is that many, many evangelical pastors (if not most) are ordained without going to seminary. They are not taught these deeper ways of reading Scripture. Since they are ordained by their own churches, rather than by a denomination with standards, many of these evangelical pastors lack biblical training, or at leat the kind we get. And of the ones who do go to seminary, many go to seminaries where they take one year of basic religious understanding, and another learning marketing, administration, and organizational skills. The result is that many of these church pastors abuse Scripture by reading into it their own agendas.
So far what I’ve talked to you about is fairly technical. Let me show you what I mean, starting with our passage today, which says, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”
On the face of this passage it seems fairly clear what Jesus is saying: You can’t get divorced, and if you do so and get married you are committing the sin of adultery. And this would be a good interpretation,… if you are doing eisogesis. If you read it deeper, you’ll find that there’s more there that you need to know to understand the passage. And it all has to do with understanding who, what, where, when. First of all, to understand the passage you have to pay attention to why Jesus says what he does. It says in the beginning of the passage that “Some Pharisees came, and to test him… The key word in this is the word “test.” Jesus knows that he is being tested, and that the question is set up to get him in trouble. If he says it is permissible to divorce, then the orthodox Jews will make trouble against him. If he says it isn’t permissible, then King Herod’s people will hear about it and possibly arrest him. You see, Herod had been divorced several times. Either way, Jesus loses.
At the same time, Jesus’ answer is a rebuke of the Pharisees. He knows that among the Pharisees, divorce is easy for men, hard for women. What do I mean? A Pharisee man could divorce his wife for any reason, including adultery. He could divorce her because he no longer liked her cooking, or she got old, or she scolds him too much, or he doesn’t like her friends. To divorce her, all he had to do was to get a writ of divorce from a rabbi, which was very easy for the right price, and then face the east while reciting three times in her presence, “I divorce thee, I divorce thee, I divorce thee.” Meanwhile, a woman could only divorce a man if he had committed adultery, which she had to prove through witnesses, or because he was engaged in a corrupt vocation such as pig farming or tanning skins, which would render the husband sinful and untouchable. So, under these conditions what Jesus said might not have been so much a barring of divorce as it was protecting women. You see, a divorced woman, if she was not taken back by her original family, would be plunged into poverty. Often she had no choice but to become a prostitute, a slave, or a beggar. Jesus is both chastising the Pharisees and protecting women.
In addition, marriage had a different foundation then than today. Back then people didn’t marry out of love. They married because of a contractual arrangement. Women were considered property of men. Marriage was a contractual agreement between families as one family gave title of their daughter to another man. These marriages were often arranged years in advance when the man and the woman were both children. Marriage was as much an economic relationship as it was anything else. This is not the case today. We marry out of love. This brings us to a question about this passage. If marriage is based on something different today, and women and men have an equal ability to live dignified lives after a divorce, does the passage still apply in the same way? I don’t know if I know the answer, but what it says is that there is more complexity to Scripture than many people think. Add into this the fact that Jesus tells us to look at the plank in our own eyes, and not the speck in others, and to not judge. How does this impact what we make of this passage?
Let me give you another passage to look at, and see if you reading it more deeply helps gain a better understanding. Look at Deuteronomy 21:18-21, where it says, “If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father and mother, who does not heed them when they discipline him, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his town at the gate of that place. They shall say to the elders of his town, “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.” Then all the men of the town shall stone him to death. So you shall purge the evil from your midst; and all Israel will hear, and be afraid.” Would we apply this passage literally today? I’m sure some of you who are parents of teens would love to ☺. But what do we make of it today? We dismiss it because we compare it to Gospel messages of Jesus, which teach us to treat children with care and love, and we recognize that Gospel trumps Deuteronomy. So we ignore this passage today.
Let me show you one more passage, and see if reading it more deeply gives you a different understanding. Look at Genesis 2, where it says, “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created. In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground; but a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground— then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.”
Seems pretty much what we’ve learned all these years. Adam is created, and we know that later he will be put to sleep, his rib taken out, and Eve will be created. This understanding of the passage leads many Christians to say that women are inferior to men because they came out of men. The problem is that they lack a deeper understanding of the passage. Let me take you in deeper.
First of all, it should not be translated as “the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground…” That’s a poor translation based on hundreds of years of eisogesis. It really should read that Adam was formed from adamah. Adamah is the dirt, and Adam comes from adamah. It would be better translated that the human was formed from the humus, or earth. The name Adam is related to adamah in the same way that human is related to humus. It is Genesis’ way of telling us that human beings are made of the earth. The reason we translate Adam as “man” is that Hebrew, much like French, Spanish, Italian, and Latin, is a gender-specific language in which all nouns are assigned a gender, even if it makes no sense to do so. Adam is a masculine noun, adamah is feminine. If we are going to translate Adam as “man,” then perhaps we should translate adamah as “mother earth,” although that wouldn’t make sense, either. The point is this first creation of God is not a man, but a human being with no gender—or better yet, both genders.
Then God breathes into the human the “breath of life.” That is a mistranslation. It should say that God breathed into the human ruach. Ruach is the Hebrew word, and it means more than just breath. It means “Spirit,” too. The passage is saying that the first human being is created from humus, but then God’s Spirit is breathed into it. It tells us that humans, unlike all other created creatures, has God’s Spirit in them, not just life.
When the whole rib incident happens, it doesn’t say that Adam goes to sleep, has the rib removed, and then Eve is created. Actually, it is that the human being is put to sleep, and two new creations are formed. Once the rib is removed, the being that was Adam becomes Ish, and the woman is named Ishah. Ish is the man, Ishah is the woman. They are connected, but they are different creatures from the original human being, Adam. The reason we call them Adam and Eve is that later, in Chapter 3, the man changes from Ish to Adam, and the woman is given the name Eve. It’s confusing, but it has to do with the fact that the Bible often puts together stories from different traditions, and then never tries to clean it all up. We try to clean it all up, but when we do we can make mistakes. This new understanding of Genesis has a huge impact. For instance, it is part of the foundation that allowed the Prebyterian Church to begin ordaining women as deacons, elders, and pastors. This understanding tells us that women and men are equals because we both come from Adam and from Adamah, and are animated by God’s Spirit. There is no distinction in God’s eyes.
How we read Scripture makes a difference. Do we read it in a deep way, or in a shallow way? I realize that in talking about all this, you may not have the tools that we pastors have been given, but there are tools out there. For one, start by reading the Bible using a study Bible. There are a lot of great study Bibles out there, and they give you this kind of information to help you. Start by reading the gospels first, and then move onto other parts of the Bible. Another thing to do is to use our church library, in our prayer room. It has great resources for you to use.
Remember that we Presbyterians are people of the Bible because we believe in the idea of sola scriptura. If you ground your life and thinking in Scripture, you will find God speaking to your mind, heart, and soul. And it can have an amazingly transforming effect on your life.
Amen.
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