Now you have observed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, my persecutions, and my suffering the things that happened to me in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra. What persecutions I endured! Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them. Indeed, all who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. But wicked people and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving others and being deceived. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.
In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I solemnly urge you: proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching. For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.
As for you, always be sober, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, carry out your ministry fully.
Quick, what’s the #1 bestselling book right now? I know that during the summer it was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. But what do you think it is now? There are a lot of popular books out right now. If you are really astute you might guess that it is the novel Playing for Pizza by John Grisham, or I Am American (And So Can You!) by Stephen Colbert. Those would be great guesses, but they would be wrong.
Would it surprise you to know that the #1 bestselling book isn’t on the bestseller list at all? It’s not on the list because each year it is #1, and to keep it at #1 would sort of be redundant. So the bestseller lists no longer list it. What book am I talking about? The Bible. Each year, year in and year out, the Bible outsells every other book.
Why do you think the Bible outsells every other book year after year? Why is it that year after year, decade after decade, generation after generation, century after century, millennium after millennium, the Bible still has the power to transform lives? And why is it that, given these facts, so many people in our culture both ignore the Bible as a source of truth, and as a guide to God? I hear people in our culture, many of who have never actually read much of the Bible, denigrate it as irrelevant, old, and full of judgment and criticism. They believe that it comes from an ignorant time and place and can’t speak to our culture today. As a result, they don’t realize just how much the Bible does speak to our time and age. Part of the problem is that so many of them are seeking for answers in so many places that they ignore this source of wisdome that has given answers to thousands of different cultures, in thousands of different contexts, for thousands of years.
It has become more and more popular today to reject the Bible and Christianity, and instead to say that “I am spiritual, not religious.” Whenever I hear someone say that, what I hear them actually saying is that they aren’t interested in growing spiritually, because to grow spiritually you have to learn. What I hear them saying is that they want to grow spiritually, but they only want to do so by reading stuff that appeals to them—stuff that is tailor made for them. They don’t want to work at it by grappling through concepts and ideas that are hard to grasp, but once grasped lead to depth and light. As a result, they don’t want to learn the stuff that might led them to become transformed.
These people often get caught up in the false wisdom of our culture that says that to be spiritual we have to have an ABC faith. What do I mean by an ABC faith? It stands for Anything But Christianity. These are people who will listen to anything as long as it isn’t Christian. They believe that if it is Christian, it is wrong by nature, and so while they say they have an open mind, it’s closed off to Christianity’s wisdom and connection with God.
Most of these ABC people are reacting, in many cases, to those Christians who have an NBC faith (do you see where I’m going here?). An NBC faith is a Nothing But Christianity faith. You know all too well these Christians. They glibly say that if a person is not Christian, then she or he is not saved and is going to Hell. They teach that there is no faith other than Christianity, and that all who seek God through Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, and any other faith, are damned. For them there is nothing but Christianity.
I think that both of those kinds of faiths have problems. Personally, I have a CBS faith. That means that I am Christian But Seeking. I am firmly planted in the Christian faith. I have given myself to Christ, and I try to be continually open to the Holy Spirit. At the same time, I recognize that God is not limited by one religious perspective, and so I try to become open to God as God speaks to me through everything, even the voices of those who aren’t Christian. I am Christian, but that never leads me to quit seeking. I try to seek God’s voice and presence all the time, which means that I try to keep learning all the time.
Unfortunately, people with an ABC faith misunderstand something that is essential to Christianity. To be Christian means to become a disciple of Christ, which means to learn. To see why I am saying this, all you have to do is to look at the word “disciple.” It comes from the Latin root, discipuli, which means “student.” Jesus’ disciples were students of Jesus, immersing themselves in all that they could learn about growing in God and living according to God’s ways. And we are called to be Christ’s students, too.
In fact, the whole Presbyterian faith is set up to form people as disciples. We’ve lost a bit of this emphasis on teaching and learning over the years, but it’s still there. For instance, back in the day we used to call both elders and pastors “elders.” The lay elders were called “ruling elders.” Pastors were called “teaching elders.” Today we might say that I work and meet with people in my office, but not too long ago the pastor’s office was called a “study.” The idea was that the pastor’s role was to spend time each week and each day in study, praying and reflecting over scripture, spiritual works, and theology, so that the pastor could teach laity how to grow closer to God. In fact, if you look at the robes I wear on Sunday morning, they reflect my teaching role. Look at the robes that Catholic priest wear. They are liturgical vestments that reflect the fact that a priest mediates between the people and Christ. My robe, and the robes of all Presbyterian pastors, are academic robes. They symbolize our teaching. In fact the three stripes on the sleeves of my robes are doctoral stripes that show that I am a doctor. And do you know what the Greek root word of doctor, or dokein, means? It means to be a “teacher,” so that a doctor is a teacher. The idea of the pastor being an administrator, counselor, and visitor came later. I think those other roles are important, but it is easy to forget that above all I am called to be a teacher. You are called to be disciples.
So what is it that we Christians are supposed to learn? The Buddhists have a state of mind, a state of being, that they try to reach through their prayer and study: enlightenment. Christianity also has a state of being that we are supposed to reach. Do you know what it is? It is wisdom, and wisdom only comes from learning. And in Christianity there are basically three sources of learning: learning from study, learning from experience, and learning from reflection.
Let’s start with learning from study. The fact is that if you want to grow spiritually, you have to spend time in study. I don’t necessarily mean that you have to take a course, although we certainly offer courses that will help you to grow spiritually. I also don’t mean that you have to spend all your time in a library, surrounded by books. What I mean is that we need to take some time on a regular basis to read scripture and devotional, spiritual books, articles, and other such things. Even getting back to the Bible, I’m amazed at how powerful just learning what the Bible says can be. Too few of us actually read scripture, especially not on a regular basis, possibly because parts of it are hard to understand. Despite it’s difficulty, there are so many parts that if we read and study them deeply can transform every part of our lives.
William Barclay, the great Scottish biblical scholar, talks about this. He tells about a man he knows, Signor Antonio of Minas, Brazil, who cultivated a hatred for Christianity over his lifetime. At one point Antonio decided to ritualize his contempt for Christianity by buying a Bible and burning it in the fireplace. He built the fire, and then threw the Bible on it. But it didn’t burn. So he pulled it out and opened it, hoping that the open pages would burn. As he stared at the Bible on the flames, it was open to the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew. He began reading the first few lines. There was something captivating about them. And so he read on. Then he pulled the Bible out of the fire, brushed the embers off, and continued to read. The words stirred something in his soul. Throughout the night he read, moving from Matthew to Luke to Mark to John. By morning he put the book down and said, “Now I believe.”
The Bible has the power to transform, but it requires reading and studying. It’s not only reading Bible that matters, but reading anything devoted to God.
Christian learning also means learning from experience. Christianity is a faith that calls people to study, but it also calls people into an experience of God that leads to maturity. One of my biggest frustrations as a pastor, counselor, and person is being with people who won’t learn from their experiences. I see it all the time. There are so many people who struggle in their lives, and continue to have one bad experience after another. But then they never change. They keep doing the same things over and over again, taking the same shortcuts, engaging in the same troubling behavior, and following the same path, never learning, never growing, never finding a different way. I heard once that the definition of crazy is doing same thing over and over, and expecting different results each time.
Christianity teaches that we need to learn from our experiences. We need to look for and listen for God’s guidance and voice in our experiences as God uses them to lead us in new ways of living.
Finally, we are called to learn wisdom is through reflection. This is a fancy way of saying that we need to learn through thinking about what we’ve studied and experienced. All of us learn in life, but there’s a difference between the kind of learning we do because we are growing up, and the kind of learning that leads to wisdom. Reflection leads us to wisdom as we seek what God has to teach us from our study and our experience.
So, what is reflection? Reflection is a prayerful meditation on life. When we reflect, we look at ourselves, and what we’ve learned, with God, asking God to guide us to the right lessons. We bring reflection to bear on our study and experiences, asking God to show us God’s way. And so we study, but we pray in the midst of study, seeking God’s wisdom. And we go through experiences, and take time to think about them and reflect on them, asking God to show us what we need to learn through them. When we learn through reflection, we bring together what we’ve learned through study and experience as we bring both under God’s guidance.
Ultimately learning is key in Christianity because it is through learning that we grow, and through learning that we become the people God wants us to be.
Amen.
