Primary Scripture: John 5:39–40
Supporting Scriptures: 2 Timothy 3:14–17; Luke 24:13–35; Acts 10:9–16, 34–35; 2 Corinthians 3:6; Micah 6:8

“You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf. Yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” — John 5:39–40

Introduction: When the Bible Becomes an Idol

I love the Bible.

Precisely because I love it, I refuse to pretend it is something it is not.

The Bible is not God.

The Bible is not Jesus.

The Bible did not descend from heaven already typeset, indexed, leather-bound, and printed with the words of Jesus conveniently colored red.

It is a library.

A strange, beautiful, troubling, contradictory, holy library.

It contains poetry and propaganda.

Wisdom and warfare.

Lament and law.

Myth and memory.

Gospels and genealogies.

Love songs and apocalypse.

Stories of liberation—and passages that have been used to justify oppression.

Sometimes Scripture whispers:

“Love your neighbor.”

Sometimes it shouts:

“Let justice roll down like waters.”

Sometimes it asks:

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

And sometimes it contains words that should make morally awake readers deeply uncomfortable.

The question is not whether we can make all of these voices sound identical.

We cannot.

The question is whether we can love Scripture enough to wrestle with it.

Perhaps faithfulness to the Bible sometimes requires disagreeing with the Bible.

That sounds scandalous.

But the Bible itself does it.

And Jesus does it too.

I. The Bible Is a Library, Not a Monologue

Many Christians were taught to speak about “what the Bible says” as though Scripture were one person speaking with one voice.

But Scripture developed across centuries.

Its books emerged from different historical circumstances and communities.

Different writers possessed different theological perspectives.

Ecclesiastes does not sound like Proverbs.

Job argues with simplistic ideas about suffering found elsewhere.

Chronicles retells Israel’s history differently from Samuel and Kings.

The four Gospels tell the story of Jesus differently.

Paul and James emphasize faith and works differently.

Revelation sounds nothing like Ruth.

This diversity need not destroy faith.

Perhaps it can deepen it.

The Bible is not a theological instruction manual.

It is more like a centuries-long argument around a sacred table.

People wrestle with God.

With suffering.

With empire.

With justice.

With death.

With hope.

With one another.

And somehow the argument itself becomes Scripture.

II. Jacob Wrestled With God

The biblical tradition begins with wrestling.

Jacob encounters the mysterious stranger beside the Jabbok River and wrestles until morning.

Afterward he receives a new name:

Israel.

The name is traditionally associated with striving or wrestling with God.

Think about that.

The people of Scripture are named for wrestling.

Not unquestioning obedience.

Not intellectual certainty.

Wrestling.

Perhaps biblical faith has always contained argument.

Abraham argues.

Moses argues.

Job argues.

The prophets argue.

The psalmists argue.

Jesus argues.

Paul argues.

The Bible does not hide these arguments.

It canonizes them.

Maybe God is less frightened by our questions than religious institutions sometimes are.

III. Jesus Reinterprets Scripture

Jesus himself does not simply quote Scripture and say:

“That settles it.”

In the Sermon on the Mount he repeatedly says:

“You have heard that it was said…”

and then:

“But I say to you…”

Jesus receives tradition and interprets it.

Sometimes radically.

Consider:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, do not resist an evildoer [in kind].”

Or:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies.”

Jesus is not practicing flat literalism.

He is discerning where Scripture is pointing.

Toward greater love.

Toward deeper mercy.

Toward reconciliation.

Toward fuller life.

Perhaps Jesus gives us permission to ask of every biblical interpretation:

Where does this lead?

Does it produce love?

Does it produce justice?

Does it produce mercy?

Does it produce liberation?

Or does it produce cruelty?

IV. Scripture Can Be Used Against God

That may sound impossible.

But consider the temptation story.

The devil quotes Scripture.

That should permanently destroy the argument that quoting a Bible verse automatically settles a moral question.

Jesus and the tempter both know Scripture.

The disagreement concerns how Scripture should be interpreted.

Biblical literacy alone is insufficient.

You can memorize Scripture and still miss its heart.

History proves this.

Christians quoted Scripture to defend slavery.

Christians quoted Scripture to oppose abolition.

Christians quoted Scripture to defend segregation.

Christians quoted Scripture to oppose civil rights.

Christians have quoted Scripture to subordinate women.

Christians have quoted Scripture against LGBTQ people.

Christians have quoted Scripture to justify colonialism.

And other Christians have opened the same Bible and discovered liberation.

The question has never merely been:

“Do you believe the Bible?”

The deeper question is:

“What kind of human being is your reading of the Bible creating?”

V. The Letter and the Spirit

Paul writes:

“The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.”

Whatever else Paul meant in his original context, Christians should hear the warning.

Words can become weapons.

A verse detached from context can become a stone.

A doctrine can become a prison.

A religious tradition can become an excuse not to love.

Jesus repeatedly encounters religious interpretations that place rules above people.

When challenged because his disciples pluck grain on the Sabbath, Jesus responds:

“The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath.”

That is an extraordinary hermeneutical principle.

Religious structures exist to serve life.

Life does not exist to serve religious structures.

When interpretation destroys people, something has gone wrong.

VI. Historical-Critical Scholarship Is Not the Enemy

Some Christians fear biblical scholarship because they believe historical criticism destroys faith.

I think the opposite can happen.

Scholarship can liberate Scripture from impossible expectations.

Once we stop demanding that every biblical writer possess identical theology, modern scientific knowledge, perfect historical precision and twenty-first-century moral awareness, the Bible becomes far more interesting.

We can ask:

Who wrote this?

When?

For whom?

What political situation shaped it?

What literary genre is this?

What problem was the writer addressing?

How did later communities reinterpret earlier traditions?

These questions do not dishonor Scripture.

They take Scripture seriously enough to understand it.

Marcus Borg often encouraged Christians to move beyond a literal-factual approach toward historical and metaphorical readings of Scripture.

A story need not be a newspaper report to tell truth.

Poetry tells truth.

Parables tell truth.

Myths tell truth.

Symbols tell truth.

Jesus himself taught constantly through fictional stories.

Nobody asks for the Good Samaritan’s birth certificate.

The truth of the parable does not depend upon whether the Samaritan literally existed.

Its truth happens when somebody becomes a neighbor.

VII. The Word of God Is Not a Book

Christians frequently call the Bible “the Word of God.”

But the New Testament gives that title somewhere else.

John begins:

“In the beginning was the Word.”

And then:

“The Word became flesh.”

Not paper.

Not ink.

Flesh.

For Christianity, the fullest revelation of God is not a book.

It is a life.

Jesus.

And even here we must be careful.

The point is not merely that Jesus possessed perfect information about God.

Jesus embodies a way.

Compassion.

Hospitality.

Forgiveness.

Justice.

Table fellowship.

Solidarity with people at the margins.

Resistance to domination.

If our interpretation of Scripture makes us less like that Jesus, perhaps we have misunderstood Scripture.

VIII. Caputo: The Word as Event

Here John D. Caputo gives us another possibility.

What if the “Word of God” is not primarily information sent down from heaven?

What if it is an event?

A call.

An insistence.

Something trying to happen through words.

When Scripture says:

“Let justice roll down like waters,”

perhaps the divine event is not merely the sentence.

It is justice insisting upon us through the sentence.

When Jesus says:

“Love your enemies,”

the sacred event is not simply preserving the quotation.

Love is calling us beyond retaliation.

When the prophets defend widows, orphans and immigrants, something insists:

Make room.

The words become sacred when the event they carry begins happening.

A Bible sitting unopened on an altar changes nothing.

A Bible quoted without love may change things for the worse.

The Word becomes flesh when justice becomes action.

IX. God Does Not Exist in the Footnotes

Caputo’s provocative claim that “God does not exist; God insists” can illuminate Scripture.

The Bible does not need to function as evidence proving a supernatural object called God.

Instead, the name of God may carry an insistence.

Justice insists.

Mercy insists.

Hospitality insists.

Forgiveness insists.

The impossible possibility of peace insists.

The Bible becomes one historical place where human beings have heard, resisted, distorted, rediscovered and answered that call.

This means Scripture is simultaneously human and sacred.

Human enough to contain prejudice.

Sacred enough to challenge prejudice.

Human enough to reflect ancient cultures.

Sacred enough to call cultures beyond themselves.

Human enough to argue.

Sacred enough to keep the argument open.

X. Peter’s Bible Had to Become Bigger

Acts 10 contains one of Scripture’s greatest stories of theological transformation.

Peter has a vision involving foods forbidden by Torah.

He hears:

“What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”

Then Peter meets Cornelius, a Gentile.

Suddenly Peter realizes that the vision is not merely about food.

His entire religious map is expanding.

He says:

“I truly understand that God shows no partiality.”

Peter does not abandon his tradition.

His understanding of the tradition grows.

Something larger breaks through.

This is revelation as continuing transformation.

Sometimes faithfulness means realizing that yesterday’s interpretation cannot contain tomorrow’s compassion.

XI. The Bible and LGBTQ People

This matters enormously when Christians interpret Scripture concerning LGBTQ people.

A handful of ancient texts have been made to carry enormous weight.

But responsible interpretation asks historical questions.

What did ancient writers understand about sexuality?

Did they possess modern concepts of sexual orientation or gender identity?

What social practices were actually being addressed?

How do these passages relate to the broader biblical trajectory toward justice, covenant, dignity and love?

And perhaps most importantly:

What fruit does our interpretation produce?

Jesus says:

“You will know them by their fruits.”

If an interpretation consistently produces shame, despair, family rejection, spiritual trauma and exclusion, Christians should at least possess enough humility to reconsider whether we have understood correctly.

The Bible should not become a weapon against people Jesus would have invited to dinner.

XII. Religious Pluralism and Scripture

There is another idol we must surrender:

the idea that God has spoken only through our library.

If God is the call toward truth, beauty, compassion, justice and fuller life, why should we imagine that call has sounded only within Christianity?

The Hebrew prophets heard it.

Jesus heard it.

The apostles heard it.

But perhaps the Buddha heard something of compassion’s call.

Perhaps Muslim mystics heard something of divine love.

Perhaps Hindu sages heard something of sacred unity.

Perhaps Indigenous peoples heard something Christians desperately need to relearn about relationship with Earth.

Perhaps atheistic humanists hear justice calling without using the word God at all.

Religious pluralism does not require pretending every tradition teaches the same thing.

They clearly do not.

It means approaching our neighbors with enough humility to say:

Perhaps you have heard something I need to hear.

XIII. Scripture After Certainty

Many people fear that once biblical inerrancy disappears, nothing remains.

But perhaps what disappears is not Scripture.

Perhaps what disappears is certainty.

And certainty was never the same thing as faith.

Paul Tillich famously argued that doubt belongs within genuine faith rather than simply standing outside it.

Faith does not mean possessing perfect answers.

Faith means entrusting ourselves to what ultimately matters even while uncertainty remains.

You can say:

“I do not know exactly how this text originated.”

And still listen.

“I disagree morally with this passage.”

And still wrestle.

“I don’t know whether this story happened exactly as written.”

And still discover truth within it.

“I don’t know exactly what God means.”

And still answer the call of love.

That may be a more mature faith than pretending certainty we do not possess.

XIV. The Road to Emmaus

Luke tells us about two disciples walking toward Emmaus after Jesus’ death.

They are confused.

Their theology has collapsed.

They thought Jesus would redeem Israel.

Instead he was crucified.

Then a stranger joins them.

They talk.

They reinterpret Scripture.

And eventually they sit at a table.

Luke says:

“He took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.”

Then:

“their eyes were opened.”

Notice where recognition happens.

Not during a doctrinal examination.

Not during an argument about biblical inerrancy.

At a table.

In broken bread.

Hospitality becomes revelation.

Perhaps Scripture finally points beyond itself.

Toward the table.

Toward the stranger.

Toward community.

Toward life.

Conclusion: Do Not Worship the Map

Scripture is a map.

A witness.

A library.

A conversation.

A collection of communities remembering encounters with Mystery.

But the map is not the territory.

The menu is not the meal.

The Bible is not God.

And perhaps the Bible itself has been trying to tell us this.

Jesus says:

“You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life… Yet you refuse to come to me to have life.”

There it is.

You can know the verses and miss the life.

You can defend the book and ignore the neighbor.

You can memorize doctrine and overlook the stranger.

You can quote Jesus while refusing to follow him.

So read Scripture.

Study it deeply.

Learn its history.

Question it.

Argue with it.

Love it.

Laugh with it.

Cry with it.

Wrestle with it until morning.

But never turn it into an idol.

Because somewhere beneath the words something is insisting.

Justice.

Mercy.

Hospitality.

Liberation.

Forgiveness.

Compassion.

A fuller life for everyone.

The sacred call does not say:

“Protect every sentence from questions.”

It says:

“Come and follow.”

Feed someone.

Welcome someone.

Liberate someone.

Forgive someone.

Defend someone.

Listen to someone outside your tradition.

Protect the Earth.

Break bread with strangers.

Build communities where people can breathe.

And perhaps then something extraordinary happens.

The Word leaves the page.

The Word becomes flesh.

Not because we finally interpreted every verse correctly.

But because love happened.

Justice happened.

Mercy happened.

Hospitality happened.

God happened.

The event occurred.

The promise found somewhere to land.

And the ancient words became living words again.

Do justice.

Love mercy.

Walk humbly.

Especially that last one.

Walk humbly.

Because none of us possesses God.

None of us possesses truth completely.

None of us has finished interpreting.

We are pilgrims.

Still reading.

Still questioning.

Still becoming.

Still listening for the call beneath the words.

And still discovering that the purpose of Scripture was never merely to give us a book we could defend.

It was to help form a people capable of love.

May we become those people.

Amen.