THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH:
One of the major difficulties that most people have in reading the Bible is learning to recognize and differentiate the two levels/views in which most of scripture is written. The most obvious and easiest level for us to recognize is the historical or physical narrative. It’s the first thing that you see when you open the bible. The words are there on its’ pages for all to see and read. The meaning or understanding would seem to be clear and simple. The second level is a bit more difficult and elusive. It’s the level of the symbolic or spiritual and frequently informs how we interpret and understand the historical. The two most common errors that people make when they read the bible are: 1) to read it literally; i.e. this is what it says and this is what it must mean; and 2) to read scripture from a 21th century perspective; i.e. with a world view that would be totally foreign to Jesus’ generation. (e.g. the earth is flat verses the world is round; or the sun revolves around the earth rather than the earth around the sun.) Most people of Jesus day couldn’t begin to understand or comprehend the kind of world in which we live. That’s one of the reasons why Jesus spoke to them most often in parables and metaphors common to their experience. Jesus spent the major portion of his ministry trying to lift people’s sights from physical world to the spiritual plane. He told them to: “Labor not for the food that perishes; but for the food that leads to eternal life.” “Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” Throughout his ministry Jesus tried to admonish his followers to look beyond the common ordinary things of this life to that which lies beyond. “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat nor about your body, what you shall put on. For life is more than food and the body more than clothing. Moreover, your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. In 21st Century parlance we would say don’t get so caught up in the task of making a living that we forget how to live. That admonition still applies to us today. We really don’t begin to live until we confront and accept the reality of our own death. When that happens, we begin to appreciate what a gift life is and why we sometimes call it the present. Enjoy the gift while you can because you never know when it will be taken away.
The Rev. Lee H. Wesley-Interim Pastor |