A Sermon by the Rev. Dr. Arthur M. Suggs
on the Second Sunday of Lent, February 25, 2018
This is the second in the series of sermons on The Good Book.
“This is my second sermon in a series about the Bible, and today I want to look at both the use and the abuse of the Bible.”
“Early in my first pastorate, I had a best friend by the name of Greg. He was a member of my church, down in Pennsylvania, and we had a lot in common. Our wives and children were friends with each other, and he was what I would call a righteous man. He did well by his family, his business, his community, and his church.”
Greg’s home was on a hill, and it had a bay window with a view that overlooked the valley from an overstuffed chair. Given to being very devout, there he sat with his well-worn Bible as well as probably two dozen Christian books. He would spend at least half an hour every day there with his morning devotions.
During our friendship, we had dozens or perhaps a hundred, theological conversations. He was raised Catholic but sort of gave up on the strictures of that faith, moved toward Lutheranism, and later, when our paths crossed, he was Presbyterian. Finally, he went toward an independent Evangelical church.
While I knew Greg, he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. There are four variations of that disease, and his was one of the bad ones among those that eventually get you. We remained friends for many years, but the time finally came for Tracy and me to leave that little town and go to the big city of Binghamton.”
“Here, I was handed a copy of Book I of Conversations with God, and it rocked my theological world. I was never the same after having read that book, and so I was anxious to give my friend a copy of it.”
He Gave Me a Sucker Punch and Shot Back at Me: “Well, What About John 3: 16?”
“A couple years passed, and finally we went back to his house for a visit, and I gave him a copy. About a month later, when we were together again, he was not amused about the book. Evangelical Christians have a big problem with Conversations with God and A Course in Miracles and virtually all literature of that genre.”
“Using two phrases, Greg accused me first of apostasy, a technical term meaning standing away from the faith, having left the faith, and that wasn’t enough. He also accused me of being a worshiper of Satan. That was a sucker punch to our friendship. It was hard to be friends after that.”
“More years passed with very little conversation, little contact. However, our wives were still friends, and our kids were still friends with his kids, and so the day arrived when we were down there visiting again. My relationship with him was pretty chilly, but we found ourselves in his living room alone for a moment, and he began the conversation with this question, “Art, are you still preaching a false gospel?”
“At that point, there’s not much left of the friendship, and there’s nothing left to lose, so I replied, “Well, I suppose so.””
“Then we entered into yet one more theological discussion. Let me tell you a little about that because he was an avid believer in the standard doctrine that we’re all miserable sinners, we’re all doomed to hell, and Jesus, by dying on the cross, is our redemption. God accepts that 100 percent perfect sacrifice on our behalf. By believing in that, we are covered, and we’re allowed into heaven after all.”
“I admitted to Greg that I see that doctrine in the writings of Paul, for example, in the Book of Romans and the Book of Galations. I see that, I don’t argue with it. I don’t subscribe to it, I don’t believe it, but I see that it’s there in the writings of Paul.”
“However, I also remarked, I don’t see it in the Gospels. I see lots of spiritual teaching in the gospels, the Parables and so forth, but I don’t see that program of redemption, that system of substitutionary atonement leading to salvation in the Gospels.”
“He shot back at me like he was prepared for me to say that, and now he’s going to tell me the truth, so he shot back at me and asked, “What about John 3: 16?”
Featured Image Credit: A Bible handwritten in Latin, on display in Malmesbury Abbey, Wiltshire, England. The Bible was written in Belgium in 1407 AD, for reading aloud in a monastery. Photo by Adrian Pingstone. PD Wikimedia.
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
The Bible used by Abraham Lincoln for his oath of office during his first inauguration in 1861. PD image by Michaela McNichol, Library of Congress.
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.
A Bible handwritten in Latin, on display in Malmesbury Abbey, Wiltshire, England. The Bible was written in Belgium in 1407 AD, for reading aloud in a monastery. Photo by Adrian Pingstone. PD Wikimedia.
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.
Saint Paul Writing His Epistles, 16th-century painting, c1618-1620, Valentin de Boulogne, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX. PD Wikimedia.
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.
St. Peter Preaching in the Catacombs. Jan Styka, PD Wikimedia.
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.
A page from the Gutenberg bible. Scanned by Ransom Center of the University of Texas at Austin. PD Wikimedia.
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.”
** *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.
On Sunday, February 11, 2018, the Rev. Dr. Arthur Suggs continued with — as he said — “a series of sermons on primal archetypes that wind their way through the scriptures, bend their way through the world’s religions, and churn their way through our lives.
First in the series was trees, the second was mountains, the third was light, the fourth was music, and this sermon explores the archetype of water.”
The Rev. Dr. Arthur Suggs
Flying over an Archetypal Symbol, I Am Disconcerted by the Absence of Terra Firma.
I had a marvelous experience a number of years ago when a friend of mine who is a pilot had a three-day meeting in San Juan. He asked me if I could take three days and go with him. He lived in Kansas City, so he flew his four-seat airplane to the Binghamton regional airport, picked me up, and then we flew down to Miami, crossing over Washington, D.C., airspace, where I learned they’re rather picky about that.
We landed in Miami and were told we needed to pick up a little box that went at my feet, which was an inflatable life raft in case things go bad. That was at my feet as we left Miami heading for San Juan, Puerto Rico. Shortly after taking off, we flew at 7,000 feet, and the big planes were at 40,000 feet, zooming past us as we puttered along.
We were not far out, just 15 minutes out of Miami, when I fully realized there was no land in sight. Wherever I looked, there was nothing but ocean, and it stayed that way for quite a while. It was a little disconcerting being in a tiny airplane, and a little statistic came to mind — three-quarters of the earth is covered with ocean.
Suddenly, it seemed like a lot of water.
What I’m going to do is to give you two brief overviews, and then to look in detail at two passages from the Bible, which happen to say the same thing.
Two overviews first: The symbolism of water is huge.
It’s everywhere, and so what I’d like to look at is the concept of dream symbolism.
You see a waterfall, for instance, or a geyser or a river in your dreams. What does that mean? There are symbols, meanings that go with images of water. Here are a few of them:
Triple Falls, Columbia River Gorge, Oregon. Photo by Rocketstove, CC PD Wikimedia.
Symbols of Dreams About Various Kinds of Water
Ice — For example, if you dream about ice, there’s a situation in your life that’s frozen or static and needs to be thawed out.
Muddy or murky water — The situation is unclear and needs to be clarified.
Splashing water — There’s a need for arousal, for awakening.
Steam, vapor, mist, fog — Not all has been revealed; not all is known.
Ocean —A classic symbol of infinity. Either standing on a beach and looking out as far as the eye can see or flying in an airplane gazing in any direction.
Tides —Are symbolic of the natural rhythm of things. Beyond that, there’s a powerful rhythm. In other words, it’s foolish to fight against it.
Snow — Represents quiet and peace.
Flood — This is a complex image because it’s both bad and good. It means too much, to the point of danger. It means damage and loss, but it also means judgment. In addition, it means destroying in order to purify.
Spring rains — Mean warmth, growth, softening, renewal.
Lake — This is also complex. It means unrealized potential because you see only what’s on the surface, and there’s so much underneath that has yet to emerge.
Puddle — Symbolizes play, childhood, fun, carefree; go ahead and get dirty.
Cross and Church at St. Patrick’s Well, Marlfield. By Rustythedog, CC via Wikimedia.
Stream, river — Another symbol for infinity; ever flowing, never stopping.
Oasis — Water in the desert; a place of safety or refuge, away from danger.
Well — One of the most extraordinary symbols of all. Like the ocean or the stream, it’s one of the most pregnant symbols of all time. Its meaning is to go deeper to find life-giving water. Go deeper in sports, meaning to try harder. In our intellect, in our spirituality, going deeper to find nourishment, to find reward.
These are only a few examples of water symbols — 14 of them if you were counting, out of dozens and dozens.
Overview Number Two — Classic Bible Texts Concerning Water
The second overview on water is to look at these classic texts in the Bible about water, that reference water — the same profound and important things, using water as imagery. Let me give you a handful of these:
Genesis 1:1 — “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.”
Rainy Season in the Tropics, 1866, by Frederic Edwin Church, Hudson River School. PD.
This is a philosophical passage. That primal, chaotic, formless potential that God’s spirit swept over in order to begin creation. It’s a poetic way of wording it. Some of the other texts are a bit tough.
Amos 5:21 and 23-24 — Fantastic imagery but extremely judgmental. God is speaking, “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. // Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. // But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.”
Jeremiah 2:12-13 — An equally judgmental passage. “Be appalled, O heavens, at this, be shocked, be utterly desolate, says the Lord, // for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, // the fountain of living water and dug out cisterns for themselves, // cracked cisterns that can hold no water.”
John 7:37 — “On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, “Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.” ’ Now he said this about the Spirit, which they were to receive . . . .”
On the fifth Sunday after Epiphany (February 4, 2018), the Rev. Dr. Arthur Suggs continued with — as he said — “a series of sermons on primal archetypes that wind their way through the scriptures, bend their way through the world’s religions, and churn their way through our lives. First in the series was trees, the second was mountains, the third was light, today is music, and next will be water.”
Spiritual Music … the Beatles?
The Rev. Dr. Suggs started with this: “For the sermon this morning, let me begin with part of an article from about a year ago. It was strange because only after reading the article did I look at who wrote it and realized that I know him:
“As a child being raised in a troubled home, religion and spirituality were discussed about as often as we discussed opera, which was never. Music and, to a lesser degree, nature were my sole companions. Turning on the radio one day, I heard a hit song that began, ‘Help! I need somebody! Not just anybody! Help! You know I need someone! Help!’
“I was a twelve-year-old boy, and, like John Lennon, I also needed help, but I didn’t know where to turn. I did not have a girlfriend, therapist, church, or relationship with a ‘concept’ called God. So I turned to the Beatles, none of whom professed or practiced Christianity, and yet they wrote and recorded song after song that came from a place of deep spirituality.”
The Beatles arriving at John F. Kennedy International Airport, 7 February 1964. U.S. Library of Congress, Wikimedia.
“It was not Jesus, Yahweh, Sigmund Freud, Higher Power, or Jehovah that led me to hope for some ‘Help!’ It was the Beatles. George Harrison was a Hare Krishna who wrote ‘My Sweet Lord’ and ‘Give Me Love’; John Lennon penned ‘Eleanor Rig-by,’ ‘Imagine,’ and ‘Give Peace a Chance’; and Paul McCartney composed ‘Lady Madonna,’ ‘Black Bird,’ ‘Let It Be,’ and ‘Hey Jude.’”
A Powerful Link Between Music and Our Deepest Emotions, from Sadness to Joy
“There’s a link, somehow or other, between all kinds of people and their varieties of music. Many researchers have studied this phenomenon, and there’s a very powerful link between music and our deepest feelings, our deepest emotions, covering the range of emotions from sadness to joy and everything in between.”
Rev. Suggs shares examples of evocative music, from the recognizable scores of The Titanic and Schindler’s List films, including the “Hymn of the Sea” in the former and Itzhak Perlman’s violin solo in the latter – “a very simple violin piece that makes you ache inside with both sadness and beauty.”
Then a song from the Rocky III soundtrack …
“So I’m tooling down Route 17 when “Eye of the Tiger” comes on, and I crank it up loud. In my mind, I’m Rocky, defeating the enemies, unbeatable, and listening to this music.”
“Suddenly, I look down, and I’m going 95 miles an hour. A wave of panic comes over me, and I check all the mirrors, not expecting to see one cop but anticipating six cops behind me. Thankfully, there’s no cruiser, but I slow way down to a normal speed limit. How do you get so engrossed that you don’t even know you’re going 95 miles an hour? It’s amazing.”
Jimmy Hendrix, Woodstock, the “Flower Duet” from Delibes’ opera Lakmé, Eminem, Amazing Grace, praise bands, Gregorian or Taizé chant … and then some.
Rev. Suggs continued …
Everything in the Universe Vibrates in Motion with Frequency and Sound
Plato wrote: Music “gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaity to life.”
I suggest to you that it’s sort of significant for Plato to say that. Here’s the author who introduced into the world the idea of the soulness of things. “Music gives soul to the universe.”
Two observations:
There does not exist a religious tradition that does not have music integral in some way. Even the traditions based on silence (Quakers, Zen Bhuddism), chant music of some type as prelude and postlude for them. It’s found everywhere.
The other observation is one that I think we do take for granted, but it’s only things that are categorically true. There are zero exceptions to this and that is:
Everything in our universe vibrates. Every single portion of our universe is in motion with a frequency and a sound and a vibration.
The Milky Way, NASA-APOD.
EVERYTHING!
Our Milky Way goes around once every 230 million years. The Sun and our whole solar system orbit the Milky Way in 230 million years.
Our Earth circles the Sun, and we define it as a year.
Our moon circuits the Earth every 28 days.
We observe the sabbath based upon our religious traditions every seventh day.
The cycle of our day is based upon the rotation of the Earth relative to the Sun.
And so we have breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day.
We have waking and sleeping every day, and work and leisure every day.
Our hearts beat around 70 times per minute.
Our respiration is about 20 times per minute.
We can hear music from 60 hertz up to the vicinity of 20,000 hertz.
The vibration of atoms in general is 1013 hertz.
Every ray of light has a frequency to it.
Beethoven’s walk in nature, by Julius Schmid (restored by Michael Martin Sypniewski). Wikimedia.
Ludwig van Beethoven said:
“Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.
So what we do, with a combination of both art and science, is that we organize the frequencies. We manipulate and arrange the vibrations to express our grief and our joy, our sadness and our exultation, our longing and our reverence.”
Featured Image Credit: Flash Mob! HKFO performs the Beethoven “Ode to Joy” Flash Mob, Hong Kong’s largest choral-orchestral flash mob at Shatin New Town Plaza on 28 July 2013.
In this edition of the Forecaster, the Rev. Dr. Art Suggs gives a heads up on two unusual sermon series on deck. He writes:
“Sermon Series!
But there are other kinds of series as well.
We looked at mystics on and off for nearly a year a while back.
I think a fascinating series could be made of the notion “God is Still Speaking.” We could look at potential answers to the question of what God has been saying lately, and where is that communication found.
I spent a year once on“Those Famous Old Testament Stories” looking at the stories of Noah, Samson, the Tower of Babel, Jonah and the Whale, and many others. Predictably the favorite one in that series was about David and Bathsheba. Another series I enjoyed immensely was one on Jesus’ Parables. There are a lot of them, and some fantastic lessons to be learned from them.
In the Mountains, 1867, by Albert Bierstadt. {{PD}} Wikimedia.
Right now I’m doing one on some of the deep archetypal conceptsthreading their way through the entirety of the Scriptures: trees, mountains, light, music, and water. That series will take us up to but not including Lent.
Then for Lent I’m beginning a new one, and admittedly one I’m a bit nervous about. It’s about the Bible.
And the main reason I’m nervous is that I have had a love/hate relationship with the Bible for years.(I realize that I shouldn’t admit that publicly, but I would rather be honest.) It amazes me still that something containing such beauty and profundity as the Bible could at the same time be so brutal and primitive, and lend itself so easily to being weaponized.”
Rev. Dr. Suggs sums up his message with, “Wish me luck on this, please. What I will be trying to balance is the love and the hate. I will try to be fair, and perhaps even a touch reverent, but I’m also not going to go easy on it.”
“Here, I was handed a copy of Book I of Conversations with God, and it rocked my theological world. I was never the same after having read that book, and so I was anxious to give my friend a copy of it.”
