Many of you remember the difficult evening this past September when Bishops Curry and Gloster were here, along with members of the delegation from the Diocese of North Carolina to General Convention. It was a painful evening for all of us, but in decidedly different ways. But interestingly enough, at the middle of the pain, no matter which “side” of the issue we were on, was the Bible: the Bible as the Word of God, the Bible as authoritative, the Bible as the Book that guides our lives. For me, and perhaps for you, I will never forget the man who stood at that lectern with his beloved and well-read Bible, tearfully telling us that his homosexual son will go someday go to hell… because the Bible tells him so.

And today we started a Sunday morning adult education series on the authority of the Bible, and how that authority has been understood down through the centuries. We will be asking the questions, “What makes the Bible authoritative for us?” and “How is the Bible to be understood and interpreted?” We will, over the course of the next few weeks, look at a variety of views on interpretation – from inerrant literalism to the Bible as pure literature, with a couple of views in between those two. Whether it is a blessing or a curse, we will also talk about the fact that the Episcopal Church allows for a variety of interpretive positions, thereby making our life together as a community of Anglican Christians more, rather than less, complicated.

What got me thinking about all this in conjunction with today’s readings from the Bible is the fact that in the gospel reading from Luke, we have Jesus taking the interpretation of scripture to a whole new and completely scandalous level. In his own hometown, in the synagogue where he grew up, and in front of listeners who have known him his whole life, Jesus drops what can only be described as a biblical bombshell.

He reads familiar words – words from the prophet Isaiah. He reads from what we know in our own time as the Old Testament, but what, in his time, was the only scripture that existed. And the old words he reads from the prophet Isaiah are extremely important to all Jews, for they spoke of a time in the future when God would send a Messiah who would rescue and save the Jews. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” the ancient words read, “because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of the sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Jesus completes reading the passage and sits down and we can just about see in our mind’s eye how his family members and neighbors settle down, prepared to listen what they already think they know he will say.

At this point, it’s important to note that Jesus would have learned in synagogue school how this passage was to be correctly interpreted and understood. Jesus would be expected to recite what he had learned in synagogue school about the meaning of this passage, and his listeners would be listening to see if he got it right and to correct any mistakes he made.
But then, incredibly and unbelievably, Jesus interprets the passage not as he had been taught by the rabbi. Instead, Jesus interprets the passage out of its context in history and into the present tense. It’s me, Jesus says, - I’m the one Isaiah was talking about, I’m the one whom the Spirit has anointed, I’m the one who will bring liberation, release, and sight, and freedom. As the implications of what Jesus says sinks in, the initial positive reaction turns very sour. You will remember that in the verses following the passage we hear today, Jesus’ own neighbors are prepared to throw him off a cliff for his audacity and error in interpreting the scriptures in such an offensive and personal and, to put it bluntly, unbiblical way…

Sometimes, I think, what gets us into trouble is that we have trouble thinking of the Bible as anything other than a book. But while the Bible is a book, to be interpreted and debated and studied and appreciated and valued, the Bible points beyond itself to God and God’s purposes past, present and future, and that reality can never be truly captured, most especially not in a book.

The Bible cannot ultimately be nailed down because the Bible is only part of a story, God’s own story – a story that continues into today, and will certainly continue beyond our own time. The Bible illustrates a slice of life – a long period of years stemming from Abraham to Jesus to Paul – but the end of the Bible is not the end of the story of God.

And what Jesus did that so changed everything was that he personally intersected with scripture – with the story of God and God’s people - and gave it a whole new and different interpretation – an interpretation that affected the past, present, and future. Jesus took scripture, put himself in the middle of it, and thereby rewrote the future. In identifying himself as the promised Messiah, Jesus paved the way for a whole new Testament – a whole new story of God’s involvement with the world. There would be no new Testament without Jesus – without Jesus having had the Spirit-filled audacity to say, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

And that brings us to the reading today from 1 Corinthians – because that’s where the future that Jesus inaugurated continues. Because Jesus risked all to take the Bible and put it in real time (“Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing”), Paul is given the commission to visualize the even more audacious and scandalous future – “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.”

And that is absolutely where we come into the picture. We are the body of Christ, as different as we are individually, but rooted and related nonetheless. And as the body of Christ, we have intersected with this present time and have been given the task of putting our own God-given stamp upon it.

The Bible is a book, but it is so much more than a book. And we, learning in the Bible of our past, also learn from the Bible of our present and future commission. In a sense, we write future chapters of our Bible each day as we seek, as the body of Christ, to continue the work of love and reconciliation between all people that Christ began. “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” What Jesus began – the work of liberation, release, and sight, and freedom – we have been commissioned to continue.

The questions we find ourselves dealing with are not only “How do we interpret the Bible?” but “How are our lives and actions as the Body of Christ interpreting the story and dream of God himself?” What Jesus set into motion, we, as the Body of Christ, are called to continue.

I pray that we will continue to take the Bible seriously. I pray that we will continue to treat the Bible reverently. But I mostly pray that we will, like Jesus, be audacious and scandalous enough to find in the Bible a picture of our present work rather than a portrait of our past. I pray that we, like Jesus, will put ourselves in the center of the Bible and take it very, very personally. As Richard Foster has said, “When we come to the Bible, we come to be changed, not to amass information.” And I would add to that, that we come to the Bible seeking to be change agents – to find in scripture, as Jesus did, our commission of service. “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” May we, members all of the Body of Christ, be about the continuing business of fulfilling scripture.

Amen.