O’Connor  20^th Oct 24      John 1:1-14

“Word of God” in common understanding can lead to fundamentalism – and in theology, Jesus is the Word, can lead to disregarding the bible.

So it’s a juggling act to help us find a centre path between thinking every word in the bible is equally true and directly from God so is always true, and seeing the differences and discrepancies etc and then disregarding it as an interesting ancient fairy story.

So how do we do it?

UCA struggled to make all this real. When we read the Bible we have used the traditional response   “This is the word of the Lord – Thanks be to God”

Some have used alternatives like:

“In this is the word of the Lord”  “In this we hear the word of the Lord”

Kath Merrifield

For the word of God in Scripture.

For the word of God among us.

For the word of God within us.

Thanks be to God.

Simon Clarke

“In these words lie the seeds of our faith   - thanks be to God”.

Helen Rowe

Reader - "For these Words of Witness, and for Christ the Word”

Response - "Thanks be to God."  Brunswick Uniting Vic

Ian Robinson    Thank you God for speaking with us.

Anne Hawkins   In this may we hear God speaking to us

All ways to try to help us get our heads and hearts around the whole thing about how to hear the Bible speaking to us here and now,

Incarnation – big theologlical word.  Means God become truly human in Jesus Christ. – but there is a little more to it.  It also relates to the Bible,-  God making himself known in the history and context of the biblical world as people of faith struggled to understand who this God was and what God was saying to them in their time and place. There is then a long period of time where people of faith used these writings and others and together as a community decided which ones had the spark (?) of God’s truth in them.  And made decisions about which books would be kept and used and which discarded.  A kind of cooperative project between God and people to find God speaking in their time and place.    And there is a third part of incarnation – God become truly human in us by the power of the Spirit in us.     Def of Incarnation.  In full

This helps  - if incarnation means that God is made human in the bible – that it is a kind of cooperative effort in writing between people of faith in God searching to know God and find God in their context, history and culture, and God seeking to help us find him in our history culture and context – both individually and corporately as the church in the world.

We all know that experience of reading a passage and feeling God speaking directly to you personally.   A parishioner of mine who had had a difficult life read a psalm which talked about God’s love for the daughter of Zion.  She heard God speak to her of his love for her – she being the daughter of Zion and really knew God's love for her for the first time.   As I’ve done a bit of study on the Bible over the years I know that the daughter of Jerusalem referred to here is Jerusalem.  And that is true and what the writer intended,  but does not deny that God was reaching out to her in what she read to assure her and convince her of God’s love for her in her context and history..  

It is also true for us as the community of faith too.  In the past the church has read the bible as reinforcing the things that people wanted God to agree to by finding bits in the Bible that supported the things in our culture we wanted to hold onto – like slavery, the place of women in society, and the righteousness of war to name a few.  Other Christians also looked to the Bible to find there evidence that God was not at all happy with the status quo in society in relation to these things and God moved in people’s hearts to commit their lives to changing these things.  

So how do we discern which is which?  - back to the incarnation thing – if the incarnation is God living in Jesus - then perhaps that is a good place to start.

• How does Jesus discern? - look at where Jesus gets his inspiration from in the Old Testament?   He seems to favour the prophets over other parts.  He seems to interpret the laws as being made to make things better for people and so need to be interpreted in the ways that do make things better.  He seems to look at the scripture with love, justice and right relationship in his heart. What is life giving to the creation- to human beings and creation at his centre. 

We can follow the words of the Bible by putting our faith in Jesus the Word.  We can follow his example of discernment that puts God’s nature of love, just and right relationship as paramount when we read the words.   We can find the incarnation of God within ourselves leading us and assuring us of God’s revelation to us as we continue our journey of faith.