Second Sunday in Lent Year A

Mary Holmen

It happened to a family in Illinois. The eight-year-old daughter was diagnosed with a serious blood disease, for which she needed a transfusion. The search began for a donor with the same blood type, but no match was found. As the girl weakened, the search intensified, but still no donor was found. Then, it was discovered that her six-year-old brother shared the same rare blood type as his sister. The mother, their minister, and the doctor sat down with the boy and asked him if he would donate his blood to save his sister’s life. To their surprise, he didn’t answer right away. He wanted some time to think about it. After a few days, the boy went to his mother and said yes, he would do it.

The next day the doctor brought both children into the clinic and placed them on cots side by side. He wanted them to see how one was helping the other. First he withdrew a half-pint of blood from the boy. Then he moved over to his sister’s cot and inserted the needle into her arm, so the brother could see the effect. In a few minutes, colour began to flood back into the girl’s cheeks.

Then the boy motioned to the doctor to come over. He wanted to ask a question very quietly. “Will I start to die right away?” he asked. You see, six-year-olds are very concrete thinkers. When he was asked to donate his blood to save his sister, his six-year-old mind understood the process literally. He thought they meant all of it. That’s why he needed some time to think about it. Then, he gave what is in the heart of every human being to give when we are truly connected.

“A Brother’s Sacrifice”, collected in Soul Food by Jack Kornfield and Christina Feldman

Last week, our study Making Sense of Scripture looked at the Bible as story – a collection of stories that tell us about God and about ourselves, our identity in relationship to God. Our first reading today, the call of Abraham to leave his country and move to a new land, is the beginning of the story of God’s choice of a people to be God’s unique means of revealing God to the world and so to be a blessing to all the families of the earth.

This week, our study is looking at the question, “Is the Bible true?” Personally, I don’t find this a helpful question. Why? Because it sets up a dichotomy. Either something is true, or it is not true and therefore false. If it’s true, then I have to believe it, and if it’s not true, I don’t have to believe it and I’m free to reject it. We’re used to evaluating truth by what we can measure, touch, weigh, or duplicate in an experiment – in other words, we equate truth with verifiable facts. But the Bible is not a book of facts. I think behind the question “Is the Bible true?” is another question – “Did it really happen this way?” But again, that is not a helpful question. Why? Because then we have to deal with different versions of the same “event”.

For instance, the first two chapters of Genesis contain not one, but two creation stories. In the first story, the earth is a formless void, and the Spirit of God blows across the watery waste. God creates light, separates the dry land from the seas, and creates, in order, plants, trees, the sun, moon, and stars, fish and sea creatures and birds, and animals. Last of all, God creates human beings, male and female together. In the second creation story, there isn’t a watery abyss at all. In fact, it’s rather dry, with only a spring keeping the earth moist. The human being is created first – but only the man. Then God plants a garden in Eden and places the man in it to take care of it. Then God creates all the animals and birds, in an unsuccessful attempt to find a suitable partner for the man. Finally, God creates woman to be the man’s helper and companion.

So which of these stories is true? If we ask, “Did it really happen this way?”, then one of the stories must be true and the other must be false. But which one? How do we tell the difference? Which one should we believe and which one should we reject as untrue? And that is only one of the discrepancies in the Bible. Clearly, we’re on an unfruitful path here. It’s a path that will only get us bogged down in contradictions that are impossible to reconcile.

Instead of asking “Is the Bible true?”, I think it’s much more helpful to ask “How is the Bible true?”, or “What truths does the Bible convey?” First of all, we need to recognize that there are different kinds of truth. For example:

• 2 + 2 = 4 is a mathematical truth. All of the theorems that you memorized in geometry class (and likely promptly forgot) are mathematical truths.
• “In fourteen hundred and ninety two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue” is a historical truth. So are the date of Confederation and the date of Manitoba’s entry into Confederation.
• “Winnipeg is located at 49 degrees fifty-three minutes north latitude and ninety-seven degrees ten minutes west longitude” is a geographical truth.
• E = mc² is a truth of physics. So is the statement “You can neither create nor destroy matter.”

Actually, it would be more accurate to describe these statements as facts rather than truths. You can look them up in an encyclopedia or on Google – a great resource for facts but not so great on truth. But what about “My family loves me”? That is a truth about relationships. What about “Jesus loves me, this I know”? That is also a truth about relationship – the relationship between Jesus and me. Can I measure or weigh or touch it, or conduct an experiment to determine if it’s factual? No. Is it true? I believe and hope it is.

John 3:16 is perhaps the greatest statement of spiritual truth there is – “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him may not perish, but may have eternal life.” Nicodemus doesn’t get it. He’s in the world of verifiable facts. When Jesus tells him he must be born from above or born again (the same word with perhaps two different meanings), Nicodemus takes him literally. How can a person enter the mother’s womb a second time and be born again? And when Jesus tries to take him into the realm of Spirit, Nicodemus just gives up: “How can these things be?” Jesus is talking about supreme spiritual realities, “heavenly things”. He suggests that a teacher of Israel ought to understand these things.

We do this text a disservice if we stop reading at verse 16. It goes on to say, “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” Contrary to all our anxieties and fears and projections about a vengeful, angry, punishing God, we find in these words a God who is not interested in condemnation, but in saving every person, every thing, the whole world. Jesus looks toward the cross. Just as the serpent was lifted up in the wilderness, and the people who had been bitten were healed, so the Son of Man must be lifted up for the eternal healing of all who put their faith in him. Belief is not simply assenting to facts. It is a decision, a commitment to put our trust in the one who reveals God as the source of healing and salvation.

How is the Bible true? What truth does the Bible convey? It tells us that self-giving, sacrificial love is the engine that drives the cosmos – the universe and everything in it. It is that love that prompted a little boy to offer his life’s blood to save his sister. It is that love that sent Jesus to the cross to offer himself, body and blood , to make us whole, to make us one with God. It is that love that touches us here, as we receive Christ, body and blood. It is that love that inspires us to follow the pattern of Christ in self-giving and service to God’s creation and all its inhabitants. What is the truth of Christ? “Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” As we follow Jesus on the way of the cross, may this truth be our guide and our rule. Amen.