I'm sitting in a lecture that is supposed to be about Melchizedek and is instead about the archaeological and social aspects of the 2nd temple period in Jerusalem during Greco-Roman times. To say I am disappointed would be an understatement. I don't care about the subject of this lecture in the least, but here I am, sitting here attempting to comprehend the words the lecturer is speaking.
[his accent is very difficult for me to get around, I am pretty good when in personal conversation but in this environment it is proving difficult]
I sit here because someone wants to talk to me afterward, to ask me a question to be precise, I don't know what the question is but my interest is piqued so here I sit.
The previous lecture went over time so I caught the Q & A time that followed it, one of the final things that the lecturer said was that in ancient time Jewish people believed that texts could be both sacred and yet still open, so that the interpretation of a text could be considered as sacred as the actual text itself. I find that amazing and quite beautiful, I often think that we as Christians [and other religions as well for that matter] do ourselves a disservice by having a sacred book. I say this because it seems to me that we are so quick to dismiss new thoughts and papers as insignificant to what is written in the Bible, we have this belief, or at least unspoken understanding, that God stopped speaking 2000 years ago, which couldn't be further from the truth. God still speaks and has been speaking all along, but we just shut if off. But what if God wanted us to go beyond what Paul wrote? What if God wanted us to go beyond what James or John or Peter or the other authors said? After all didn't Jesus say that the things that we would do would be greater than what he did? [John 14:11-13]
We have so much more information about ourselves and our world then they did way back when [yet there are those who believe that the science of the Bible should be believed over our current understandings of the way the world works] Why shouldn't we leave room for both our knowledge and what God still has for us today? Imagine if we considered our entire knowledge base as sacred, imagine is we considered our experiences sacred, how much better would we be?
What I am suggesting is nothing new of course, their have been those who have come before me who have said this and there are people who live beside me today who have said them as well. Maybe what we need is more people to say the same things as opposed to people saying their own things. In the words of Rob Bell, everything is sacred, I just think it is time we start living that way.
Because I believe that if we started believing, really believing, that all people are sacred we would start treating each other much better. If we started believing that it is possible that God is still speaking, perhaps even speaking through people who are not Christians, we would begin to listen harder and better to what people of all creeds and religions have to say. Paul many times claims truth from other avenues as if it came from God, maybe we should be doing the same 2000 years later. If we did that, how close to God could we get? How much better would we follow? How much better might we love?
I don't know about you, but the idea that God still speaks excites me, it says to me that God is not static, and that God can't be held down, not in a box, not in a mind, certainly not in a book. God is still speaking, still moving, still expanding, and we are called to help that expansion.
Peace and Love,
Pastor K
No comments:
Post a Comment