Download EVERYONE A THEOLOGIAN September 15

EVERYONE A THEOLOGIAN –
Psalm 8:1, 3-6; Mark 12: 28-30; James 1:5-6; Galatians 5:14
The Rev. Dr. Richard W. Reifsnyder
1st Presbyterian Church
Winchester, VA
September 15, 2013
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all
your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.
Mark 12: 30
For a year or so I've had a Peanuts cartoon on my office door. Lucy and Linus are watching the rain
come down, and Lucy says, "boy, look at it rain. What if it floods the whole world?" Linus responds, "It will
never do that. In the 9th chapter of Genesis God promised Noah it would never happen again and the sign of
that promise is the rainbow." Lucy gets a smile on her face and says, "Wow, that takes a load off my mind."
To which Linus, ever the wise philosopher replies, "Sound theology has a way of doing that."
I want to talk about theology this morning, and suggest its importance for people of faith. The term
itself can be off-putting for some, for its sounds abstract, intellectual, remote, when what most of us want is
personal, relational, practical religion. Something inspiring, uplifting to get me through the week.
But if we
think of theology, which literally means the "study of God" as that which helps us understand God better we
will find, like Lucy, it can bring comfort and help with the challenge of everyday living.
In his classic work Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis says he rejected the advice of those who said ‘the
ordinary reader does not want Theology; give him plain practical religion’. With his characteristic acerbic wit,
Lewis responded, "I do not think the ordinary reader is such a fool. I think anyone who wants to think about
God at all would like to have the clearest and most accurate ideas about Him which are available. You are not
children: why should you be treated like children?"
I want to talk of theology today because in requesting ideas for sermons this year, several of you asked
for it, not in so many words, but in essence. A number of sermon suggestions indicate you look for the church
to give you guidance in how to think—theologically about the changes going on all around us. One person put
it this way "it is said that nothing is constant but change. But how much of it and what kind of change do we
as Christians accept, tolerate, reject or resist." Another person wanted to know how we balance "progressive
change" with "conserving tradition," since both are important. A lengthy request came from someone who is
deeply convinced that Christ expects us to engage our world, with all its complications. When we deal with
the hot bottom topics of the day,I fears too many Christians simply come "with our own biases…by which we
filter current events, but these may or may not be biblically based." I don't want my minister to "take a
particular position on these difficult issues about which our society debates, but help us think about them in
what might be termed a Christian way" How can we analyze things like the Defense of Marriage Act or
Obamacare or the conflict in the middle east in "broader terms than politically conservative or liberal?" How
A Thought Upon Entering:
do we as Christians think about things like "intolerance" or the value of compromise when it's important to
Everyone has warned me not to tell you what I am going to tell
you in this last book. They all say ‘the ordinary reader does not
want Theology; give him plain practical religion’. I have rejected
their advice. I do not think the ordinary reader is such a fool.
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maintain principles?
These are not easy questions to answer in 20 minutes, but do hear what they are asking? Don't
presume to give us the answers, the "right" Christian response. People generally get irritated if you do, at least
if it isn't their position. But help us to think theologically, to be better biblical theologians whose attitudes and
convictions are shaped by Jesus in ways which transcend our tendency to fit our religious convictions into our
already set perspectives.
It is a good challenge. Karl Barth, the 20th c. most important theologian, said years ago that the task of
preaching involved keeping the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in another. We have to update the
image, since fewer get their news from newspaper. Keep your Bible app open and your internet explorer right
at hand—or something like that. Barth was reflecting the Reformed/Presbyterian conviction that God is
deeply interested in this world, and we're expected to keep wrestling with how we live out the gospel in an
ever changing world.
It is one of the glories of being created in God's image that we're expected to think deeply about life,
with thinking about God as essential to who we are. Created a little lower than the angels, we're to love God
with heart, soul, MIND, and strength. And we Presbyterians take that mind portion very seriously. If anyone
lacks wisdom—and who doesn't in this complex world—ask God, who gives to all generously and
ungrudgingly, we read in James. With characteristic overconfidence on the role of the mind, G. K.
Chesterton, British apologist for the faith stated "theology is simply that part of religion that requires brains."
My conviction is that everyone is a theologian. It's an extension of the Protestant principle shaped
during the Reformation, which stressed the importance of putting the Bible in the hands of the people. Instead
of assuming only the expert, the priests and scholars, could understand scripture rightly, the church began
breathing with the confidence that ordinary people could read and think and know for themselves. Everyone a
Bible student, everyone a theologian.
Now of course, at one level that is simply an empirical statement. Everyone of you has a theology, has
ideas and understandings of God. So to be more precise, I guess I want to ask you not just to be a theologian,
but to be "a good theologian," for as Linus put it is "sound theology" gives comfort. Because there is bad
theological, uninformed theology, destructive theology, which is little more than an extension of our political
or social or economic or gender biases.
Let me give you an example of "bad theology." The Passion play in Oberammergau has been put on
in that small German town one a decade for more than 400 years, in celebration of the town's being spared the
plague. What fascinated me most when I saw the play in 2000 was how the text was rewritten to reflect the
context and concerns of particular time periods. The gospel story, drawn from the Bible, was basically the
same, but it made all the difference what was highlighted or overlooked. And for many years, the play
reflected an anti-Semitic bias. Though it is clear Jesus was executed by the Romans, the play emphasized
more and more the role of the Jews as killers of Christ, having the Jewish crowds shout "his blood be on our
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hands" again and again, having the costumes of the Sanhedrin look almost demonic, with the headgear having
little horns. By the time Hitler saw the 400th anniversary edition in 1934, he lavished effusive praise on the
play, because 'never has the menace of Jewry been so convincingly portrayed as in this presentation... There
one sees in Pontius Pilate a Roman racially and intellectually so superior…to the whole mire and muck of
Jewry." That's bad theology, which had destructive consequences.
For better or worse, I tend to see things historically. And that serves me in two ways. On the one
hand it is remarkable to me to see how this gospel shaped in such a different time and place has spoken
directly and powerfully to people in ever changing circumstances. The good news has taken on new forms
throughout the centuries and been kept alive and fresh. It is a great source of hope that God's truth keeps
speaking to new generations. On the other hand, the study of history also makes realize that the church has
sometimes gotten it wrong and taken positions from which we've had to back pedal. For example, a century
ago, the crusade for prohibition energized the best minds, and was believed by some to be THE most important
Christian distinctive, the litmus test on whether one was a real believer or not.
Few would say that now, even
those who for valuable reasons still want to emphasize the value of temperance. Or this example. An elderly
man in my first congregation, believed the Christian church would stand or fall on the practice of Sabbath
keeping, which to him meant no commercial or recreational transactions whatsoever. He would pick up his
Sunday paper outside the drug store, but wouldn't pay for it till Monday so he wouldn't violate the command.
Such practice seems legalistic in the extreme to some of us. Theology, biblical theology, doesn't remain static.
We not dealing with the specifics of theological response to our challenging issues—we'll do some of
that this year, but rather to highlight the importance of theology to your faith and the church's task. Let me
offer three simple challenges.
1st ) Accept this role of being a theologian, and work to be a "sound one." Don't be a lazy Christian
who settles for "feel good" religion. Know that we are charged to "always be ready to give an answer to
everyone that asks you the reason for the hope that is within you." And not to do this glibly, or without
understanding the complexity of the world in which we live. If we are to be able to enter into effective
communication about the issues that challenge and trouble our world, we need to understand the "facts," to
take seriously the data about the environment or the politics of the middle eastern peoples or the nuances of
Islam, or the dilemmas of end of life health care issues, or science of sexual practice. Our theology transcends
that knowledge, but to do good theology, we need to draw on data from the Bible and evidence from the
world, in confidence that all truth is God's truth.
2nd ) Grapple with the larger thrust of Scripture's message and do not just focus on individual verses.
At various points in the church certain issues become a kind of litmus test for fidelity to God and the
scriptures. I mentioned prohibition. But when that happens, there are often two ways of coming at the
Christian response. Take, for example slavery 150 years ago. Defenders of the institution pointed to more
than 100 verses in scripture which seemed to permit or regulate slavery, while abolitionist preachers argued
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that those verses reflected the times in which the Bible was written and did not reflect God's everlasting
endorsement of slavery. They argued that there were weightier scriptures on justice, mercy, and love, that
superseded those specific verses and pushed the church in the direction of opposing slavery. Abraham Lincoln
acknowledged that folks in the north and south were serious minded Christians who read the same Bible and
prayed to the same God. Yet he said they came up with different readings which couldn't both be right.
Lincoln, of course, adopted the position of taking the broader reading. And now virtually no one would
defend the institution of slavery biblically. But this is why Christians on all sides on the tough hot bottom
issues-- like homosexuality, and abortion, and gun control-- will assert their dependence on the Bible and yet
come out differently. We need to acknowledge that our biases can shape whether we come out on the
narrowcast or the broadcast read of Scripture. The task of doing theology involves more than simply proof
texting verses as an interpretive principle. As is often pointed out, you can argue almost anything from the
Bible if you simply take isolated verses out of context. But neither can we simple ignore those tough verses
we'd rather avoid because they don't fit our preferred position.
3rd) The New Testament sets forth as an overarching rule of interpretation what it calls the "rule of
love." The whole law is summed up in Jesus' teaching and his twofold command to love God and love
neighbor as yourself. "Love is a slippery word and we talk of loving everything from pepperoni pizza to a new
pair of jeans. But still, it is the norm of the kingdom of God, and thus is the norm by which all the moral and
ethical complexities of our world must ultimately be measured. We'll keep defining and redefining what love
means, not according to the norms of the media, but according to the teaching of scripture. We Presbyterians
sometime have a tendency to over think, which is why this rule of love is so important. As we try to figure
out what God would have us say and do in this time with these tough divisive hot button issues, we need to
come coming back to core questions, "does it serve the upbuilding of God's family and mark an extension of
God's love and human love?" Religion which is filled with intolerance, or hatred or operates out of fear surely
doesn't measure up to this central rule of the law of love.
So my invitation is simple. Become a biblical theologian—and not just any theologian, but a sound
one. We Presbyterians may be a small band, but perhaps one of our signature contributions to the larger
church is our attentiveness to a thinking faith which connects us to our ever changing world and deepens our
understanding of God and his will.
THANKS BE TO GOD WHO GIVES US THE VICTORY THROUGH JESUS CHRIST!
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