Bible Lecture 1
With us on the way to Jericho
On the Road to Emmaus
When things go wrong it’s good to talk.
And they needed to talk.
They knew all the theory.
The Lord your God is with you, wherever you go.
But sometimes the theory isn’t enough.
And this was one of those times.
They talked as they walked. But it didn’t make them feel a lot better. So much had happened and they simply couldn’t make sense of any of it.
While they were talking and discussing trying to make sense of it all someone joined them. They should have seen who it was. But they didn’t. Their eyes were kept from recognising him.
What’s this you are talking about, what’s the discussion all about?
They stopped in their tracks.
Sadness was written all over their faces
Are you the only stranger who does not know all that’s happened in the last few days?
They couldn’t believe it. Surely everyone knew what had happened.
What things? He asked.
And then they began their tale.
And what a story it was!
They had been convinced this Jesus of Nazareth really was another Joshua – Jesus Joshua – same name after all just a different way of spelling it.
He was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people.
They couldn’t believe it when the chief priests and leaders hand ed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him.
That’s not what they had expected.
They had been convinced. He would do what Joshua had done. He would lead his people to victory over the oppressive regime of the Romans.
Oh how we had hoped! they said, we had hoped he was the one to redeem Israel , to set Israel free.
It had been three days since that execution – and they still couldn’t believe what had happened. That morning some women claimed the tomb was empty – they said they had seen a vision of angels, they said he was still alive.
Their problem was this.
Conquering heroes don’t go to their death on a cross.
Their hopes were dashed.
The stranger had been listening intently as they walked along.
But he seemed to be getting more and more irritated with what they had to say.
When he spoke he was pretty worked up
Oh how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared.
Haven’t you got it yet!
Haven’t you realised that this is what it takes to be God’s anointed one. Haven’t you got it yet? Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?
And then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, Jesus, for none other than Jesus it was, interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.
Their seven mile walk nearly over they came near to the village – it looked very much as if he was going to move on as he walked ahead of them. But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it Is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.
So he went in to stay with them.
While he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.
Then their eyes were opened and they recognised him, and he vanished from their sight.
They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”
75 Years of Preaching on the Road to Emmaus
It’s wonderful to be with you and to share in this special conference with such a wonderful theme. “The Lord your God is with you wherever you go!”
Felicity and I have known the National Association for forty years and more – my father, Reg Cleaves, was one of the founders of the Congregational Federation in the UK ,; he worked closely with the likes of Harry Butman, Henry David Gray, Mr Alexand er and many others. I was at Chiselhurst for the foundation of the International Congregational Fellowship and my wife, Felicity, came to Chicago to plan one of the early meetings. It’s great to join you now.
That story of the two on the Road to Emmaus has been an important part of my ministry. Every Easter Sunday evening (I think) my father preached on the story of the Road to Emmaus – I have taken up the tradition into my ministry and do the same. That means next year, in the year my father would have reached his 100th birthday had he not died a long time ago we will mark the 75th anniversary of that sequence of sermons.
In the face of the rise of fundamentalisms in all the major faiths a key question for us as Christians is How do we read the Bible? And in particular, how do we read the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures?
I believe it is a key passage that is of fundamental importance to us all in the 21st Century especially, it is a key passage in this conference as the keynote is such a wonderful verse taken fro the book of Joshua.
The Lord your God is with you wherever you go.
I say that because in this 21st Century there has been a resurgence of fundamentalisms across the world’s religions. It is as if in the uncertainties of this new century people have yearned for new certainties, new absolutes and they have found them in a very narrow, literal way of reading their sacred texts.
That becomes dangerous for us as Christians in some parts of the Bible particularly. Nowhere is it more dangerous than in the Books of Joshua and Judges and in some of those historical books of the Bible.
How often we have told the story of the Walls of Jericho – children walking round seven times blowing all sorts of home-made trumpets. But as an adult when I return to the text I see what is written there and as a follower of Jesus I find it profoundly disturbing to see what is written there in Joshua 6 verse 21 “Then they devoted to destruction by the edge of the sword all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep and donkeys.”
What is written in some parts of the Bible has been used over the centuries and is still used in the 21st Century to justify the mass slaughter of whole populations.
To draw on such a wonderful quotation as this from the Book of Joshua, The Lord your God is with you wherever you go, forces us to reflect on how we as Christians read the Bible, and in particular how we read the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures.
On the day of Resurrection Jesus opens up the Scriptures
Over the years as I have read and studied the Bible, the Gospels, following the new question for the Jesus of history, I have come to the conclusion that this was the key question Jesus was addressing that evening of the first Resurrection day on the Road to Emmaus with those two friends who did not at first recognise him.
They knew their Scriptures. They knew the Law, the Prophets and the Writings that make up for us our Old Testament.
And they read it in a particular way.
They were looking for a prophet who would be mighty in deed and in word. And they had found him in Jesus.
They were looking for a Messiah who would be a conquering hero in the mould of Joshua and they had found him in his name-sake Jesus.
It was NOT POSSIBLE for such a one to be put to death.
And so it was their hopes were dashed.
You’ve got it wrong.
Said Jesus.
What was it they had got wrong?
They had got wrong their reading of the Scripture.
In the couple of hours it took to get to Emmaus Jesus gave them a strategy for reading the Bible.
Beginning with Moses – the first five books of our Old Testament, and all the prophets he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.
Wouldn’t it have been wonderful to have eaves dropped on their conversation?
If we were able to do that I get the feeling that our hearts would burn within us we listened to the way he opened the Scriptures to us as well.
I have a hunch that we can. And that it seems to me is very exciting.
I have a feeling that these two and the other disciples as well, as we shall see in a later study, took what Jesus had to say to heart. And these conversations helped shape the way they read the Scriptures.
The inspiration behind the connection made between the Hebrew Scriptures and the story of Jesus in Acts and then in the letters is not so much down to the inspiration of the writers of Scripture, significant though that was, but it is down to the genius of Jesus himself and his approach to Scripture.
Indeed, I think if we pay attention closely to the Gospels there are points at which the Gospel story gives us pointers to the kind of strategy Jesus used in reading the Scriptures. And it is one that we can take on board as we seek to read the Scriptures through the eyes of Jesus.
So today I want us to discover that that God is with us wherever we go and especially with us on the Way to Jericho helping us in reading the Law, the first five books of the Bible, and giving us a strategy to help us read the Old Testament as a whole.
It was the first sermon I preached … Felicity and I grew up together in the church in Leicester where my father was minister. We belonged to a youth group and each year we took a service and one of us preached. For that first sermon I preached I took as my text a passage that remains a favourite of mine and is a favourite of so many.
Luke 10:25-37 – headed in the NRSV The Parable of the Good Samaritan.
Pause and ask people to look at Luke 10:25-37 or bring to mind what they recall of that passage headed ‘the Parable of the Good Samaritan’ and ask ‘What’s it about?’
It’s a wonderful story that works in all sorts of ways and can be put into modern dress in the most powerful of ways. It speaks to us all.
Asking Questions
Five years ago I visited the Holy Land for the first time – it was to share in a conference on Reconciliation. We met in Bethlehem , but on the Israel side of the separation barrier, the wall that separates Bethlehem from Jerusalem .
We had Christian, Jewish and Muslim speakers giving us different perspectives on the situation in the Middle East . And wonderful guides and lecturers who took us to sites that figured in the Bible Story.
We visited Capernaum and spotted the house that has Christian graffiti going back to the first century – the house that is said to have belonged to Simon Peter’s family and become the bases for Jesus’s ministry. It was convincing.
In Capernaum there is a synagogue built a couple of hundred years later. But the lecturer who was with us pointed out a stone that had a picture of the synagogue – it had clearly fallen from the synagogue building itself. But look carefully and the synagogue is on wheels. In the Old Testament the thing that is on wheels was of course the Ark of the Covenant that was brought into Jerusalem – it was as if the picture was saying God’s presence is felt not just in the Temple in Jerusalem but in the Synagogue – where people gather together for fellowship, for prayer, to break bread, and to read the Scriptures.
He suggested that it is the nature of the Jewish approach to the Scripture that you ask questions of it. That’s the Jewish way of teaching. It’s what goes on in rabbinic schools. The text will be put in front of two students and they will ask questions of each other about its meaning.
It has been the tendency in Protestant circles to seek a definitive meaning in Scripture. This is quite different from the Jewish approach – for the Jewish approach asks questions of Scripture. And it is in the questioning that the truths of Scripture emerge.
[Walter Breugemann quote - “I suggest that a Christian reading of the Old Testament requires a recovery of the Jewishness of our ways of reading the text. Whereas a recurring Christian propensity is to give closure to our readings and interpretations, it is recurringly Jewish to recognise that our readings are always provisional, because there is always another text, always another commentary, always another rabbinic midrash, that moves byeond any particular reading.” Walter Brueggemann, An Unsettling God – the Heart of the Hebrew Bible (Fortress Press, 2009),
Let’s look again at this passage.
25 Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus.
An expert in reading the Law, the first five books of the Bible - it is easy to assume he is out to trap Jesus. Might it not be that he is simply testing Jesus out. He asks questions of Jesus because that is what you do with a teacher.
‘Teacher,’ he said, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’
Note the respectful way of addressing Jesus as Teacher. And note the question – it is not – ‘what must I do to get to heaven?’
It’s a much more interesting question that has to do with the here and now as much as with the hereafter. After all you inherit something from people who have gone before you, from those who have already died.
What must I do to inherit from those who have gone before me that life that is to be lived to the full here and now and is not bounded by death but is to eternity?
Two key questions
26He said to him, ‘What is written in the law? What do you read there?’
This is so typical of Jesus.
It is also typical of the Jewish way of reading the Scriptures.
The teacher of the Law knows you get to the heart of the matter by asking questions.
Jesus responds to the questions by asking more questions in turn.
There is a tendency, not least among protestant Christians to look for a definitive meaning of Scripture, to tie down its meaning.
The Jewish way of reading Scripture is to ask questions of Scripture.
Note carefully the two questions Jesus asks.
What is written in the law – is from Genesis 1;1 to Deuteronomy 34:12
Those are all the words that are written there. And there were those among the Jewish people who were focused on all the words.
But then Jesus asks a second question
what do you read there?
What is the nub of the matter? What is the heart of the matter?
Some Jewish people might have responded by talking of purity of race, keeping ritually clean, doing the right thing to the last detail
But this teacher of the Law makes a very Jewish response and goes to the nub of the matter. This is a classic Jewish understand ing
27He answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.’ 28And he said to him, ‘You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.’
Jesus is with this particular teacher of the Law – this is the way to sum the law up – that’s what you read there.
Love for God and love for neighbour.
He does not say do this and then you will get to heaven.
Do this and you will live, you will have life to the full – that life that is not bounded by death but is to eternity.
But the questioning is not over.
29 But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbour?’
Then Jesus does something else that is profoundly Jewish – he tells a story in order to explain the meaning of the biblical text that’s being discussed – the Law. He offers a midrash on the text.
A midrash on ‘the Law’ – a story to tell
But the story Jesus tells is for some ways of Jewish thinking deeply shocking and disturbing.
It is particularly disturbing for the strand s of Jewishness that want to adhere to every word of the Books of the Law and shape their whole lives by them. It is deeply shocking to those who adhere to the letter.
30Jesus replied, ‘A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho
And it really is downhill – less than 20 miles dropping from 2,800 feet above sea level to 1500 feet below sea level!
We can modernise the story – punk rockers back in the 80’s I seem to remember. But doing that misses the profound point here. And side tracks us … unless we are very careful.
The priest is part of the Temple infrastructure which in many ways Jesus finds offensive – focus on the temple as the place of God’s presence and the detail of ritual, ritual cleanliness becomes all important.
And when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. 32So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.
A Levite – is also tied up with the Temple , with the Jewish hierarchy that is in Jesus day caught up with the Herodian dynasty and all its compromises with the Roman occupying power. Maybe they too have a particular way of reading the Bible that places the emphasis on ritual cleanliness.
3But a Samaritan while travelling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity.
It is so easy for us to read the story as if Jews and Samaritans were bitter enemies. That in a sense is to miss the point. There are still a hand ful of Samaritans left in the Palestinian town of Nablus . Some suggest the Samaritans were the descendants of those who had returned from the exile in Assyria that had happened to the Northern Kingdom of Israel, often known as Samaria . The Samaritans had then own version of the Law, the Torah, which they honoured and which for them made up the entirety of their Scriptures. At their return and ever since they had been rejected by the people of Judea and the Southern Kingdom who experienced a later exile to Babylon from which they had returned to Jerusalem .
It is not so much the enmity between Jews and Samaritans that is at issue here, as the thought that the Samaritan with a different version of the text could arrive at the correct reading of the Law, while the Priest and the Levite part of the Judean hierarchy sustaining the Jerusalem temple could not get it.
34He went to him and band aged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. 35The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, “Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.”
The story over, there is one more question to ask.
36Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hand s of the robbers?’
That’s tantamount to asking which of these three had read the Law in the right way?
37He said, ‘The one who showed him mercy.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do likewise.’
Powerful stuff in all sorts of settings.
Despised Samaritan?
Try seeing it as a glimpse of this strategy for reading the bible that is so important to Jesus and what happens?
While it is important to ask what is written in the Law? The all important question to ask is ‘what do you read there?
Testing the theory out
Now we can test this theory out.
The books of the law are very explicit about not touching someone suffering from leprosy – and Jesus touches them
About a woman who whether at menstruation or through haemorrhaging is not to be touched – and Jesus is touched by the woman with the issue of blood and goes so far as to call her Daughter.
And the women caught in adultery. The letter of the law says she is to be stoned to death. And Jesus gives her the opportunity for a new start.
Mathew 5 – you have heard it said .. .but I say to you
I think we have in this passage a strong indication of the strategy Jesus invites us to adopt in reading the books of the Law.
Be very wary when someone builds a whole edifice of Christian doctrine or of Christian practice on isolated verses from the Books of the Law.
A strategy for reading the Bible
To read the Bible in the 21st Century we need to read it through the eyes of Jesus with a questioning mind that is alert to the ever present possibility that the Lord has yet more light and truth to break forth from his word.
How do we read the Old Testament?
Remember the questions Jesus asked of the expert in the Law.
What is written in the Law?
What do you read there?
Remember the response Jesus accepted
Love God
Love your neighbour
Remember the story Jesus told and don’t limit who your neighbour is
It is when we seek the presence of Jesus and as it were allow him to open the scriptures to us that we shall find the Scriptures speak to us the Word of God for this time and for the future that lies ahead of us. And we shall also discover as did those two on the Road to Emmaus that we are not alone in grappling with the problems of the world for in Jesus we may be sure the Lord our God is with us wherever we go.
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