A Sermon by the Rev. Dr. Arthur M. Suggs
for the First Sunday of Lent, February 18, 2018

This is the first of a new series of sermons on The Good Book. Here is an excerpt from Enlightening the Eyes:

The Rev. Dr. Art Suggs begins this Lenten sermon about the origins, translations and challenges of interpreting scripture with two stories — The second story based on an awkward moment that occurred during a spiritual discussion group gathering in his backyard.

Rev. Suggs begins, though, with “a sweeping story that I’m quoting from Peter Gomes, formerly a chaplain at Harvard, who wrote a book under the title of The Good Book that I have also used as an overall name for this new series of sermons.”

The ‘sweeping story’ points to the original, admirable, virtue-centered intentions of the Puritans coming to create a ‘new model of Christianity’ in this new world.

You’ll find this ‘sweeping story’ in the full sermon (download link below), but for now, Rev. Suggs continues,

“We’re going to be looking at:

• uses and abuses of the Bible,

• the Bible and women,

• the Bible and homosexuality,

• the Bible and money (that will be interesting),

… and core principles. The series will then take us all the way through to Easter, when we’re going to look at the Bible and miracles.

Bible 101

Where should I begin? I wrestled with this because it’s logical to start at the beginning, and there are some fascinating stories about how the Bible came to be.

This is particularly true 
for the New Testament, up to the time of Constantine, when he finally pressed the bishops to get their act together and decide what’s scripture and what’s not. Constantine and the bishops did decide, and that led to the whole issue of Rome and the Middle Ages.”

In the full sermon, the Rev. Dr. Suggs shares more about how the bible came into being, and the various translations of it, about which he adds,

“Translations would be fun to go over in a sermon, but I can tell that you’ve had enough. There are great stories about translation in a different way.

For example, in Hebrew, there’s only one word for both “palace” and “temple.” Try to imagine that for a minute. To get a feeling for how closely church and state were united in ancient Hebrew culture, they didn’t even bother to have different words for the two of them.

Context was the only way that you could tell whether someone was talking about the palace or the temple.

Here’s where it gets tough if you want to know a problem in translation: That is, there is no one word for sexual deviancy. How do we translate that? Somebody came up with the term homosexuality, and that word for sexual deviancy, generalized, became very specifically “homosexuality” for centuries.

Thus, all the versions of the Bible based upon generalized sexual deviancy continued to use the word “homosexuality,” even though the deviance might actually have little or nothing to do with homosexuality.

For example, what would sexual deviancy have been in ancient Greek culture? Generally, it’s considered one of three things: Somehow or other, it was sex mixed in with violence like rape or bestiality or pedophilia. But no, it was decided that the best thing to do was just to call it homosexuality, therefore creating some of the pain and anger and hatred of the church by the homosexual community for centuries because of unwise and unthoughtful translations.

There’s great teaching about the organization of the Bible. You have the Torah and then the writings and the prophets in the Old Testament.

In the New Testament you have the gospels and then Acts, which is sort of like Volume 2 of the Gospel of Luke and written by the same person, in all probability. Then follow the Pauline Epistles, and the scribes didn’t know whether Paul wrote Hebrews or not, so they tacked Hebrews at the end of what they thought were the Pauline Epistles.

Then it was followed by the general epistles, Titus, Timothy, Peter, James, and John and their shorter letters, followed by the book of Revelations.

We also have the Apocrypha, a whole bunch of other scriptures that come from the latter years but before Christ. These were accepted by the Catholics but generally not by the Protestants. And then, of course, the Gnostic documents came to light in the 20th Century from the discoveries of the Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

What Ended My Long Love Affair 
with the Bible?

To speak personally, I have had a long love affair with the Bible. I have studied it. I have memorized many verses. I learned Greek and Hebrew, and got an A in Greek and 100 in Hebrew, meaning that I did perfectly on every homework assignment and every test. I was the only one. I bought commentaries. I have preached from the Bible faithfully for over 30 years.

One thing I haven’t mastered: Some of my fellow students told me you need to preach with one hand and hold the Bible in the other, and you must buy a very expensive, floppy, leather-bound King James Version of the Bible, and you need to be able to grab it and flip it open. You need to flip it open to the middle, and I can’t do it to save my soul because you open up to the middle, and 
then you hold it while you’re preaching, regardless what verse it opened to. I never could learn the lesson.

So I’ve had a love affair with the Bible, but the love affair actually ended due to unfaithfulness.

It was all about three forms of unfaithfulness. One had to do with women, one had to do with gays, and one had to do with slaves. It is crystal clear that the Bible treats women in a second-class way.

It is also crystal clear that the Bible believes homosexuality is a sin. There are places where the text doesn’t use the word for sexual deviancy, but they describe it. A man with a man, for example, and they condemn it.

And it was hard for me to come to this decision, but I have decided that the Bible is just plain wrong. Men and women are to be treated equally, no matter what, and this is especially true in church. Women are not to be kept silent. They are not to have to cover their heads. They are to be treated equally with men.

Science has shown in so many different ways that there is a Bell curve of different types of sexuality, not just in human beings but across the mammalian phyla. Homosexuality is found in well over 400 different versions of mammals, not just among human beings.

And so the Bible is wrong. It’s just plain wrong. I will not preach from those passages ever again.

To Be Fair, the Bible Is a Product
 of Time and Place. We Divorced,
 Nevertheless Remain Amicable

Every single culture out of which the Bible emerged — ancient Hebrew, ancient Greece, ancient Israel — was anti-woman, anti-gay, and pro-slavery. So of course, it’s going to reflect that kind of moral compass.

The Second Letter of Paul to Timothy, 3: 16-17 says:

“All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”

And I have been hit over the head whenever I have expressed my doubts with that verse. “All scripture,” it says, and it’s infuriating. It brings tears to my eyes.

Because what do you think scripture meant at the time that it was written? It meant the Torah. The first five books, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. It might have meant maybe the Prophets as well and things like the Psalms and the Proverbs, but it probably meant the Torah.

I’m being beaten over the head because I expressed doubt about a New Testament document.

In that love-affair analogy, we fell in love, 
we got married, and we had many happy years. But then there was this emerging unfaithfulness, and so we divorced but in an amicable way. We became friends, and we shall remain friends, at least from my end, to my dying day.

I look with amusement at churches in particular that like to venerate the Bible.

For example, some churches have processions in which the Bible is held high, while somebody walks around with it. There are churches that want you to stand when the gospel is read, and you can stay seated for the rest of it, 
for some reason. There are churches that emphasize the red-letter edition of the Bible because what Jesus says is more important than what other Biblical figures have to say.

There are churches that put the Bible on the communion table and show that it is precious and worthy of being on the communion table. And of course, there are some people who make sure that, in a stack of books, the Bible is always on top.

My present understanding after all these years is that the Bible is a fine tool, but like any kind of tool there are things for which it’s useful and other things for which it’s useless.

The Buddha told a story when some of his disciples wanted to venerate his words. (Find the Buddha’s story in the full version of this sermon – download below.)

I would answer, “Like a makeshift raft, the answer is yes, it does do that, not perfectly, not completely, not always reliably, but yes, it does.”

The passage that Judy Giblin read during the Lectionary was the beautiful and eloquent Psalm 19, verses 1-10 and 14.

Here, she reads again the central portion of it, verses 7 through 10:

“The law of the Lord is perfect, 
 reviving the soul;

the decrees of the Lord are sure, 
 making wise the simple;

the precepts of the Lord are right, 
 rejoicing the heart;

the commandment of the Lord is 
 clear, enlightening the eyes;

the fear of the Lord is pure, 
 enduring for ever;
the ordinances of the Lord are true 
 and righteous altogether.

More to be desired are they than 
 gold, even much fine gold;
sweeter also than honey, 
 and drippings of the honeycomb.”

Amen.

Download the full Enlightening the Eyes sermon (PDF)

** *The series title of The Good Book is borrowed from Peter Gomes’ book by the same title.
**The raft parable appears in the “Alagaddupama” Sutta of the Sutta-pitaka (Majjhima Nikaya 22).

Featured Image Credit: The Gutenberg Bible, 1455, Johann Gutenberg; Rare Books Division, the Lenox Library. Image by Kevin Eng, CC-PD Wikimedia.