C. Kutz-Marks

The Second Sermon in the Series: We Call Ourselves Disciples

Freedom of Interpretation

Philippians 2:12-13
Pentecost 18, b, Oct. 8, 2006

There was a time early in my walk as a Christian that I shuddered at the text that we just heard read for us from the Book of Philippians.  As a new Christian I had no interest in working out my own salvation, especially not with fear and trembling.  Wasn’t the whole purpose of faith to get rid of fear?   Wasn’t trembling a sign of not really finding my salvation?  Certainly there were people farther along the path of faith than I was who could give me better guidance.  Please, just tell me where salvation is and how to get there.  I’ll follow where you guide me.

That stage of faith comes to mind when I turn off MLK and drive up University Avenue each day.  I first note outside of University Avenue Church of Christ that big white banner down at street level which reads, “Alpha is here.”  It is in referring to a teaching program at the church known as the Alpha Course, which is also being used around the world.  The Alpha course is designed to teach those who know nothing of the Christian Faith its very basics.  When you're in the Alpha Course hearing this passage “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,” is no comfort all.

But move up the street another block and half here to the University Christian Church standing smack in the middle of the tradition of Alexander Campbell and Barton Stone, replete with Christians who have been through their own personal versions of the Alpha course many years earlier, and you have a different world altogether.  We ought to have a sign outside our church that reads, “Beta is here.”  Oh, you can still get in your Alpha course here, but we Disciples are pioneers at “Beta.”  We major in Beta.  Those of you who are familiar with computer software terminology will recognize that Beta software is an advancing version, new features, new power, new effectiveness.   It may have some bugs in it yet, and it's not fully tested out, not ready for everyone to use just yet, but it is moving forward.  Beta Biblical interpretation is what many here at UCC are doing.

And there's nothing new about this tendency in our church tradition.  We Disciples of Christ have always put the Bible right at the center of our thinking.  Phrases like, “No Creed but Christ” and “No book but the Bible,” and “Where the Scriptures speak, We Speak, Where the Scriptures are Silent, We are Silent,” these dot our conversations, and return us time and again to this book as the sole authoritative Word of our community.  But an often-unnoticed reality is that because we have been so freed from authoritarian church structures, there have all kinds of experiments in Bible interpretation, wide ranging points of view.
When you look back at our history as a denomination and the explosive growth of our movement in the mid 1800's:

> it wasn't because of what we were teaching about God or Jesus Christ or the Holy Spirit.
> It wasn’t because of the content of our teaching.  
> It wasn't even because the Disciples of Christ were always the very nicest people in each community.  No, the reason that our movement spread over the American frontier with such energy was because it took the power to interpret Scripture out of hands of scholars and clergy and church officials and put the authority and the responsibility in the hands and on the head of each church member.  Freedom of Interpretation, meant that within the community of faith each is finally responsible to live out Paul’s direction, to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.”

150 years ago this was a shocking development in American Christianity.  Most of the Christian population in that day would have thought investing farmers and blacksmiths and housewives with the authority to interpret God's word …was nothing short of foolhardy.  Many Christians would still think so today. 
I must tell you, that there are times when this is challenging to those of us who have spent years in theological training in seminaries in order to get some handle on this faith of ours, only to find in the pews folks who are so firm in their own perspectives, that you can't budge them.  I remember one particularly passionate sermon I delivered in Kalamazoo that didn't sit well with one of my friends there who is an active member of the congregation.  I’ll always remember Scott coming up to me after the service, giving me a big smile shaking my hand and saying, "Chuck, I disagreed with every word of your sermon today." We've joked about it ever since.  But what that empowerment of every member does in our Disciples tradition is takes some the responsibility off the shoulders of the preacher to make sure everybody's thinking is in line with the will of God as she or he understands it, and it puts that responsibility directly on the shoulders of each of you.

Again, this is the way it has been for over 150 years.  We have been consistent.  Tuesday morning and I stopped in at the Perry Casteñada Library next door to pickup Prof. Eugene Boring’s book, Disciples and the Bible.  While there, I ran across this 1888 Yearbook of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).  What it is is a listing of our churches county by county all across the USA.  The back pages also have a list of all the preachers who were available in each of those areas.  It is captivating material, but the most fascinating of all to me are the little and advertisements that are included in here to help underwrite the costs of printing the Yearbook.  To sell books aimed at congregations all across the U.S., you could advertise anything that people might be spending their money on in those days: sewing machines, hand tools, whatever, but we find here is:
> an ad for Ridpath’s Universal History: "an encyclopedia in three massive imperial octavo volumes"
>Standard Pub. Co.’s  ad for commentaries to be used in Sunday school classes; 
>an advertisement for the Oxford Teachers Bible published by Thomas Nelson and sons costing up to $16.  Can you imagine what $16 meant to someone on the American frontier in 1888?
 >The Baxter Polyglot Bible.. “These Bibles contain original references in various readings, maps, charts and 75 pages of valuable aids to the study of the bible…for students, teachers, and scholars in Sunday school.” Look at that! “Scholars” in Sunday School!  They took their study of Scripture so seriously!

What an amazing responsibility has been thrust upon us members of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) because we're given this freedom of interpretation!  I wonder if we could find a better way of emphasizing this?  We need a way of marking the huge transition from Alpha Christianity to Beta Christianity., from Christian foundations to Christian maturation.  So I’ve been thinking about how we could mark that transition in our community life. 
Now, as our children at UCC grow to a point where they are able to make their own confession of faith and to be baptized, it has been our tradition to provide them a Bible.  And that's a very appropriate gift.  It is a place for them to begin their journey into the biblical text.  But the Bible we present them is probably is far from enough.  What we're going to be expecting of these maturing Christians is a level:of self motivation, of self directed education, of community life participation now, that goes far beyond words captured in that Bible 2,000 years ago. 

Why, even that 1888 the polyglot Bible had references and readings and study aids.  I think that the Bible that we provide our young people should be a 21st century Super Bible. 

It should contain all sorts of commentaries, word studies, historical and Bible history articles.  The SuperBible should talk about the sociology of the first century and sociology of the 21st century and everything in between.  It should include the finest artistic interpretations that our faith has produced, painting, music, drama.   It should provide persuasive summaries of the live theological options open to Christians today.   It would have to be a multi-media Bible, because some of what we want them to reflect on is in movie form.  It should be able access the internet for the vast array of bible study materials there.  And, of course,  it would have to be portable enough to carry with them in order to face the challenges of each day.

We should somehow be providing in our SuperBible the tools for their ongoing development through the years.  Perhaps it would include a gift certificate for a trip to the holy lands when they reach 21 years old.  Perhaps, it will provide a reservation for a weeklong retreat at a religious retreat center in the mountains of New Mexico when they turn 30 to reflect on where and how they’ve been investing their lives in response to God’s call. And all this, is only the beginning of what we need.

But, alas, the SuperBible isn’t invented yet.  But I tell you what.  It won’t surprise me if it is a Disciples of Christ layperson who does finally bring into being, because the idea of so thoroughly engaging all forms of learning in service of faith development is a strong Disciples tenet.

Some would argue that the greatest benefit of this freedom of interpretation is that it unshackles the individual from the heavy hand of church authority.  But I would argue that the chief benefit is that it allows and encourages and even demands that each member to be sensitive enough to the presence of God in her own life, that she is able to describe the way her religious world honestly and truly, is, when it does and when it doesn’t fall in step with others say about God..  Unless your faith becomes powerfully alive for you personally, it isn’t real for you.. 

W. H. Auden, writing over 60 years penned the following facetiously in his idea of a typical Christian’s relationship to her faith, “'Of course I am a Christian. There are the Gospels to prove that Jesus existed, and the existence of the church to prove that his claim to be Christ was true. I go to church every Sunday. What it all means, I can safely leave to the theologians.' This – Auden continued- is as if a married woman were to say: 'Look at my large centrally-heated apartment, and here is my marriage license which my lawyer tells me is valid. I can't say I remember ever having met my husband personally, but what of that? The important thing is that I can put Mrs. before my name.'"

No, we Disciples have long argued that one’s religion must be personally, strongly held for it to be of any real value.  Friends, you don’t have to look very far to find where it makes an enormous difference what you believe the Bible says about the nature of God and the nature of our relationship to God. 
We have all followed with were horror the news of the murder of the Amish girls in Pennsylvania.  One news account stated, “Church members visited with the victims' families Tuesday, preparing meals and doing household chores, while Amish elders planned funerals. Sam Stoltzfus, 63, an Amish woodworker who lives a few miles away from the shooting scene, said the victims' families will be sustained by their faith. "

"We think it was God's plan and we're going to have to pick up the pieces and keep going,".  God’s plan?  It was God’s plan that innocent little girls be murdered by a madman?

Or what of the theology of Charles Roberts, the murderer?  He said that he hated himself and hated God, because of the death of his own newborn years earlier.  So Roberts believed that God was responsible for his daughter’s death?  Is his Alpha Christianity then somehow a contributor to the horror that unfolded?  What you believe about God is enormously important!

Our Christian vision must be growing; our Freedom of Interpretation must move us forward in understanding, in ever more sophisticated ways in order to deal with 21st century developments.  A friend of Becca's and mine, and Becca’s former boss, Gary Dorrien, is now the Reinhold Niebuhr Professor at Union Theological Seminary.  Gary challenges his readers to explore the options of understanding, and I quote:

"Is it possible to be a faithful Christian without believing that God
willed the annihilation of nearly the entire human race in a great flood, or that God commanded the genocidal extermination of the ancient enemies of Israel, or that God demanded the literal sacrifice of his Son as a substitutionary legal payment for sin?"

Yes, it is possible.  And some Beta Christians here have arrived at that point of view.  There are in this Sanctuary this morning many, different, some conflicting, but gloriously faithful interpretations of what the Christian Faith is all about.  And what the Principle of Freedom of Interpretation means is that we don’t always have to concur.  Groups of Christians rarely have.  What it emphasizes is ..it is centrally important is how you understand Christ.  How will you understand God's place last week in the hill country of Pennsylvania?

God grants you an enormous opportunity to fashion a faith that makes sense.  Take it.  Run with it.  Fulfill it.  In the name of the pioneer of just this kind of faith Jesus, the Christ, “work out your own salvation.”  Amen.