I know most of you have seen or at least heard about this. The commedian Jay Leno often takes the streets to interview passersby on various topics, to see how much they know about, e.g., American history or current events, or about some other important topic. On occasion he has broached the subject of biblical literacy. The results of these interviews are sadly predictable. They usually reveal an amazing amount of ignorance. They are meant to be funny, but when I see them I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. We can name all 4 of the Beatles, but can’t come up with the name of even one of the 12 apostles. We may be able to name one of the commandments, or not, and many of us aren’t sure even how many there of them there actually are. “Are there 12?” Well, we could go on.

Whether these people ever had or ever will have anything to do with the church is a side issue here, because the Bible is so much a part of our secular history, litgerature, and culture. How can anyone understand Shakespeare or Lincoln without a working knowledge of the Bible? Every American of whatever faith needs to know the Bible’s phrases and stories in order to understand who we are as a people.

How much more important, and critical it is for us know the Bible, because for Chrisians the Bible is Holy Scripture. The problem of biblical illiteracy is grave and serious when people raised in the church display little working knowledge of their own Scriptures. Ironically, often the same people in the churches who are ignorant about the contents of Scripture are often the same ones who can be the most dogmatic about what they think or assume is there, dogmatic about what they think is central to the Bible and what they judge to be peripheral, dogmatic about what they claim should apply only to an ancient people and what should apply to us now. Carefully reading, digesting, contemplating and studying the Bible, allowing the Scriptures to speak to us rather than importing our prejudices and prior understandings that confirm our preconceived notions, that task should be our priority. But it is also a venture and a risk, because any effort to be seriously attentive to what the Bible has to tell and teach us can be as sobering an expreience as it can be enlightening, as provacative and challenging of our assumptions, opinions and presuppositions as it can be comforting and liberating.

So the first task is to allow the Scriptures to speak, to listen to what the Scriptures actually say. The second task is to evaluate everything else on the basis of what we have heard, learned and discovered in Scripture. In the Formula of Concord [Epitome 1, 8], one of our Lutheran confessions, this point is made strongly and clearly. The Formula maintains that “We believe, teach, and confess that the only rule and guiding principle according to which all teachings and teachers are to be evaluated and judged are the prophetic and apostolic writings of the Old and New Testaments alone”; and it says further that “Holy Scripture alone remains the only judge, rule, and guiding principle, according to which, as the only touchstone, all teachings should and must be recognized and judged.” The Scriptures, in other words, are the final authority when it comes to what we believe and teach.

In the book of Nehemiah, the scribe and priest Ezra brought the law before the people of Israel, who were gathered together before the Water Gate in Jerusalem to hear the reading of the law. The text says that “the ears of all the people were attentive.” The people then prounouced their “Amen, Amen,” endorsing and confirming and making their own what was being read to them. They lifted up their hands in prayer and worship and bowed their heads with their faces to the ground when they heard the law. And they wept, presumably because they were mourning the fact that the Scriptures had been absent from them for so long.

We too, as the people of God, are gathered around the word. We are gathered around the word by the Holy Spirit, so that the word may shape and determine our identity and our self-understanding. That word is our guiding principle, rule and norm. We allow that word to inform our faith, to set our direction through this life, to fill our hope, and to rule our thoughts, minds, words and actions. That word is rooted in the story of God’s devotion to his people Israel, a story that is at the heart of the story of creation itself and its history from its beginning to the establishment of God new creation. That word speaks of God’s election of Israel to be his special people, of the law he gives to them, of the challenges, opportunities and demands he sets before them, of the kings he gives to rule over them, of the temple he establishes in order to dwell among them, of the Messiah he promises to give them, and of our Lord’s victory over sin, death, and the power of the devil for them, a victory that God works through them and their crucified Redeemer for the sake of the whole world.

We too, like the people of Israel at the Water Gate, ought to stend before that word eagerly and attentively taking in every syllable, lifting our hands in worship and bowing our heads in devotion and prayer, weeping because of our past failures to take the Scriptures as seriously as they demand and require.

We especially, of all people, should do this, because the word and promise of Scripture has been fulfilled in our hearing. Christ is the fulfillment of Scripture’s lessons, promises, and hopes. When we ignore, slight, bypasss or make unwarranted assumptions about Scripture, we ignore, slight, bypass, and make unwarranted assumptions about Christ.

According to Luke’s gospel, Jesus begins his public minstry in the Galilee. In Nazareth, Jesus’ home town, he reads a passage in the synagogue from the prophet Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upn me, because he has annointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Jesus then rolls up the scroll and sits down, and says to all who were gathered there to hear the word of God, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Jesus thus proclaims himself to be the content, the manifestation, and the final fulfillment of all that Israel’s Scriptures reveal, teach and proclaim.

In letting Scripture be our guide, judge, rule and norm, our light and our life, we open ourselves to Christ, and to the direction and promptings of the Holy Spirit through whom we receive new life, a new purpose, and a new understanding of ourselves, the world, and God. Scripture is not something we can refashion, reshape, take for granted, misinterpret, adulterate, or presume to know more than it does. We owe Scripture our undivided attention, reverence, and obedience. We owe that to Scripture because our salvation, and indeed the salvation of the whole world, stands or falls with it, because Scripture, as Luther pointed out, represents the bands of cloth in which the Christ child is wrapped, the manger in which he is laid. Scripture is thus the first and final witness to Christ, the living Word of God, the Word made flesh that has come to dwell among us. Without that witness we are always in danger of losing or forgetting Christ, and therefore of losing or forfeiting our salvation.

Make a resolve to gather around the word regularly. Don’t let the opportunities to hear, reflect on and study God’s Word pass you by as if those opportunities were merely options, so that your voice will sing along with that of the Psalmist’s: “The teaching of the Lord is perfect and revives the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure and gives wisdom to the simple. The statues of the Lord are just and rejoice the heart; the commandment of the Lord is clear and gives light to the eyes.”

-Amen-