Pentecost Twenty-one

October 18 Pentecost 20, Proper 24 | Exodus 33:12-23, Psalm 99, 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10, Matthew 22:15-22 | Pastor Evan S. McClanahan |

I want to tell you a story about survival. No, it is not the story of a man in the wilderness, fighting off Grizzles and eating berries, though such men are admirable. It’s not the story of reality show winner. No, it is the story of the scriptures, of God’s Word. We take it for granted that we have access to this Word now in virtually any language, at any time, at no cost, even on some extremely early manuscripts going back centuries!

But it is the case that the survival of the scriptures is nothing short of amazing. From the earliest days, the mere writing of the scriptures would have been a challenge. Pens and paper were not just lying about. Writing could only be done by the educated and that was once vellum and ink were acquired. Fragile copies would have been handed down from generation to generation, and great care was made to make exact copies, especially of our Old Testament texts in Hebrew. If you have ever tried to copy something in handwriting word for word, you know it is not nearly as easy as it sounds.

In the Bible itself we find evidence that the scriptures were lost at one point. King Josiah actually finds several chapters of Deuteronomy that had been lost while the Temple is undergoing some renovations. This leads Josiah to institute strict reforms for the worship of Yahweh. It is hard to believe that 14 chapters of Deuteronomy were almost lost! But they survived. I will only mention the incredible discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the 1940s, found by accident by a shepherd. These ancient documents include much of the Old Testament and they demonstrate that the Old Testament as we have it was virtually unchanged for a thousand years.

The New Testament documents were written in quite a different fashion. They were written by a minority group in a hostile world. The documents are not necessarily the prophetic recordings of God’s direct words, but they are letters and gospels that were passed around to different degrees and to the entire known world within centuries. Their vast distribution and the copying that ensued has provided us assurance that we do possess the autographs – that is, the original words – written by Mark, Matthew, John, Paul, Peter, and others. They have been preserved by the very method of their copying and distribution.

But they only survived because diligent monks across the continent of Europe went through the trouble to copy and safely store them. (Storage is not as easy as it sounds, either!) There is one famous story of a 19th-century Bible scholar named Constantin (von) Tischendorf who discovered the oldest and most complete copy of the Bible. It is called Codex Sinaiticus and by the time Tischendorf discovered it at St. Catherine’s Monastery at Mount Sinai, he found that some of its pages were actually being used to start fires! If the story is to be believed, he literally rescued a 4^th century copy of the Bible from being fire starter.

Through travel, prosecution, weather, storms, the difficulties of writing itself and even spiritual battles like unbelief or ignorance, the scriptures were preserved. They survived like no other ancient documents have and now we have them at our fingertips, at a moment’s notice.

But it is not just that the words and pages have survived that is so remarkable. It is that the meaning of these words have survived; that is what is most important. The Christian message has spread, like leaven in a lump of dough, throughout the world. Yes, of course, by reading the surviving texts, but also believing and defending what they say. For just because we have the words does not mean we rightly understand them. Indeed, in our own day, even as we are surrounded by the Bible in every possible form and Bible scholars to boot, the plain meaning of the Bible is missed time and time again.

In Christian history, we see men and women who heroically worked for the Bible’s survival. Of course, there are the big names, the heroes: Athanasius, Augustine, Huss, and Luther. But 99.9% of the Bible survival is due to the anonymous mothers, fathers, pastors, and deacons who, through the centuries, taught the Bible stories to their children and flocks. You can have all the great people of history you want, but if followers of Jesus do not tell the next generation about him, all of their work will be for naught.

Indeed, sometimes it is the experts who have made the transmission and survival of the scriptures and their meaning the hardest! In Luther’s day, it was the Church that promoted false teachings. In our own day, Bible scholars can be the most dangerous people of all, for their expertise is assumed but all they really want to do is develop some novel teaching never-before promoted. Listen to these fascinating words by Soren Kierkegaard, a Lutheran philosopher who perfectly understood the danger of Bible scholarship:

“The matter is quite simple. The bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly…Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close.”[1]

He is exactly right. In Luther’s day, Reformation was needed because the Church had monopolistically schemed to distort the clear teachings of the Bible. In our own day, it just might be the experts.

You see I agree with the pietists like Kirkegaard: the Bible is actually pretty easy to understand. The message is clear and consistent. We were created good, but we fell into sin. The evidence for that is all around us, and within us. God became flesh, took on the sins of the world, and through repentance and faith, we are offered the grace of God. That grace frees us, declares us innocent, offers us peace with God. And upon receiving Christ through the power of the Spirit, we seek to live for God and honor Christ as our Lord. No one, no thing, no idol, no unbiblical desire can compete with Jesus, whose clear teachings have heroically survived since the days he walked the earth.

Because the Church was the dominant institution in Luther’s Day, it was the Church that needed to be Reformed, to be reminded of the scriptures. Luther contributed mightily to the survival of the scriptures. What Luther did was take the truth that was never completely lost, the germ of yeast that always remained in the dough, and he grew it. The Word survived.

Now, the Church has far less influence. We face a tidal wave of an unchurched, un-discipled, uninterested generation. There are no silver bullets to change their mind or get their interest. Only the Spirit of God can do that. And so it may be that we will face unusual times in the years ahead, with fewer disciples of Jesus defending a way of life over and against more of those who could care less. But the Word will survive. It always has.

If there is one takeaway this Reformation Sunday, I want it to be this: God’s will is never thwarted. His Word will never disappear. Indeed, there could be a revival at any time. His Word has survived for millennia and the clear meaning of the Word has also survived. And this is the message that we share with those we know: that though we fall short of God’s glory, God loves us, and has given his Son to die for us, and because of what he has done, promises us the forgiveness of sins and everlasting life. Teach that message to your children and grandchildren. Share it with your neighbors. For so long as the Word survives, the truth survives. And so long as truth survives, we have hope. Amen.

First Lutheran, Houston

Pastor Evan S. McClanahan

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/160312-the-matter-is-quite-simple-the-bible-is-very-easy