FINDING THE WORD
TERENCE E. JOHNSON

I occasionally wonder, “Have we lost a sense of God’s word?” Do we hear, in any appreciable and significant way, the word of God in our time? in our lives? in our churches? Of course, the Bible is still a basic resource book for sermons, church school classes, and other church-related activities. But is this really significant to us? Does it have anything to do with what we do most of the time?

Until we come to grips with some dynamic concept of the word of God speaking to us, we shall be an anachronism in society, a cultural parenthesis.

The Bible clearly does not speak to many people today—in and out of the Church. Reacting against literalism, many reject it altogether. It is unfortunate that often our attitudes prohibit honest, searching people from discovering the relevance and vitality of the biblical witness. Perhaps we are sometimes afraid to approach the scriptures with sheer honesty. Perhaps we feel that our ideas will seem untenable (or even foolish) when exposed to an intelligent reading of scripture.

Yet there must be in the fellowship of the Church a context within which the continuing quest for truth and meaning can be experienced. In fact, the Church itself must be a part of that quest! To recover its sense of identity and mission, it must turn again to the biblical witness. A part of the whole Church’s ministry, as well as the preacher’s, was stated well by Harold Martin in Post magazine:

. . . to make the Scriptures meaningful to individual men and women whose inner resources have been drained away by the emptiness and shallowness of their daily lives. (April 24, 1965, p. 22)

The “word of God” for our time will be a fresh and contemporary word; it may be different than that to which our Fathers responded in the original Restoration movements and in the first half of the twentieth century. The climate of our age compels us to seek interpretive biblical bases for our life and mission as a “people of God.” For example, we are beginning to see that the eighth century Ethical Prophets are particularly relevant to our ministry today. And other biblical emphases come to light out of our search to find God’s word in the midst of crucial concerns. But we must cast off the shackles of nineteenth-century interpretations and see that the scriptures speak with freshness to the ‘60’s.

The Bible must come alive for us! It is the charter of our Christian beginnings. It is the charter of our freedom. It reveals the heart, the very center, of the thrust of our mission. It relates to our concerns and problems and needs and desires. Increasingly, people—as they cast off the shackles of tradition—are discovering that the Bible is not out of date, and that it casts fresh light on their own situations.

We can see ourselves, our churches, our society’s struggles in the Bible. Ernest Harrison of Canada suggests that once a person is “permitted” to read the Bible freely,

he has on his hands a pulsing, living reality; not just a pious collection of religious lore, but a reality which moves beyond the bounds of the Church or the Faith. For we are in the presence of a surge of human love and beauty, cruelty and dismay, close relations and cruel separations, the force of the sexual act and the fear which pervades it, the magnificence of God and His meanness, His fierce truth and the petty acts of which He Himself repents, thoughtless giving and divine taking, soaring wisdom and pedestrian drivel, rounded organ music and shrill pipe, high philosophy and dogged literalism, heavy restrictions and unremitting freedoms, wit and boredom, priest and prophet faith and unfaith—life itself. (The Restless Church, p. 29)

True, it takes some insight and imagination and faith; but if we do not approach the Bible with these prerequisites, we shall continue to be tied to the pier of obsolescence and irrelevancy. As a people of God we dare not! We must pull up the anchor, let our sails be filled with the winds of the spirit, and move into adventurous (and sometimes tumultuous) seas of God.

The Bible can become extremely relevant for out time (and sometimes painfully relevant) . Yet we of a “people of the Book” tradition are too often carrying the cumbersome prohibitions and interpretations that make the Bible an object of worship or a proof-texting collection to win arguments. We must learn to see the scripture in its historical context and then creatively relate it to our current age.

Amos’ situation can be a very incisive “word of God” today. But if we merely use the fifth chapter to condemn the use of instrumental music in worship, we have not only become totally irrelevant to our society and our age, but have been guilty of profound irresponsibility in our use of the text!

The “creation theology” of Genesis can become a very meaningful context describing the creative one-God whose nature was sublimely and beautifully affirmed, and a significant theological concept of the active, dynamic God who is constantly involved in creation. But if we use Genesis 1 to engage in scientific harangues about the number of twenty-four hour periods during creation, we miss the point and again misuse the Bible which is not a text book on science.

The Bible’s message can illumine our minds—if we allow it to speak to us! It can teach us that God’s word—present in scripture, present in many and sometimes unusual ways—is “living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword . . . , discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12).

Amos 8:11-14 describes a great famine: the loss of God’s word. The prophet predicted that in the fact of God’s silence men would realize their need: their need for the prophetic word. In desperation they would seek ”from sea to sea, they shall run to and fro, from the north to the east, seeking the Word of the Lord.” Perhaps our question today is: Shall our experience be the loss of God’s word? shall we be able to discern and interpret the prophetic word?

Living in a time of outward prosperity and a time of social injustices (similar to the time of Amos), we must hear the prophetic word. There is a vital prophetic voice in the Church today. We often squelch it. We frighten our ministers into subjection and they’re in “fear and trembling” when they prepare even the mildest sermons with prophetic proclamations. (After all, who controls the money with which the preachers and their families are clothed and fed?)

There is a vital prophetic voice in the world of the arts today. We don’t usually squelch this: we are oblivious to it! We act as if it didn’t exist! Yet the writings of novelists and playwrights, the music of composers, and paintings of artists are speaking to our age, are relating to society the problems and concerns that are real in our lives—the problems and concerns which the Church must confront.

The prophetic voice can be heard in many unlikely places today; the word of God is being translated into many expressions. Yet we are too prone to place our fallible judgments on an infallible God. We act as if we fully know where He is, when He speaks, how He speaks, and to whom He speaks! But God is far beyond our proscriptions. Thomas à Kempis, in his “Of Reading the Holy Scriptures,” said, “God speaks to us in many ways.” The Christian’s faith is in a presence alive and at work in creation and recreation, renewing His world.

The word to the Pilgrim Fathers when they departed Holland is appropriate for us: The Lord hath more light and truth yet to break forth out of his holy word.

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Terrence Johnson is minister to the Valley Forge Church of Christ, Valley Forge, Pa.