Velvet Elvis

A sermon preached at Faith Episcopal Church, October 2, 2005.

I have a new favorite book – it’s called Velvet Elvis. You’ll understand the title by the time I’m done. As excited as I got about Marcus Borg’s The Heart of Christianity, I couldn’t put this down and all I could think about was sharing it with you. The author is Rob Bell, a former rock musician. He’s the pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Mars Hill is young, born in 1999. Begun with house church meetings and Bible study Rob and his wife and team held their breath on the first Sunday as they waited to see how many people would come to the school gymnasium they were renting. They had done no advertising, had no signage – only a dream and a prayer. Needless to say, they were gratifyingly stunned when 1000 people showed up for their worship gathering. The church now has 10,000 members.

Those big numbers do not appeal to me – as I know they don’t appeal to lots of you and they are not why I’m so excited about this. What I find hopeful in all of this is that people are flocking to hear the way Rob Bell approaches the Bible and Christian life. This is not a church that is growing thanks to a surface level, literal reading of the scripture. Their website says this – “We believe the Bible to be the voices of many who have come before us, inspired by God to pass along their poems, stories, accounts and letters of response and relationship with each other and the living God” In this short book, Bell packed more good, tantalizing information about the Bible than anything I’ve ever encountered. His grasp of Jesus’ Jewishness and the reality of the Roman Empire in his life and the life of the young church put my seminary educated self to shame.

Along with Marcus Borg, this way of understanding of the Bible and Christian life is that of always being made new – fresh perspectives shake the established way of thinking and being and people are continually inspired. Life in God is a process, not meant to stay the same while never letting go of the roots. Calcifying the Bible into a set of facts and dearly held assumptions is spiritual negligence as far as I’m concerned. As time passes, people and culture change, the Bible reveals something new about itself – the stories in the Bible are our stories, meaning newer and deeper things each time we wrestle with them.

Paul said it today in his letter to the Philippians. “I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us then who are mature be of the same mind, and if you think differently about anything, this too God will reveal to you.” This statement to me says that faith is a relationship and what we know at any point in time is not all there is to know. That’s the exciting part of the walking along the way – the view looks different as the path turns and rises and falls. From far away you can discern patterns and designs made by how things relate to each other, up close you see little things, details you never noticed before.

Now I’m not completely clear about how 1000 people found out about Mars Hill for their first Sunday. I’m fairly convinced that it had to do with coming together around the Bible – something that has not been a raging part of the Episcopal tradition. Why is that? Partly (I think) is because of our strong roots in the Catholic tradition that kept the Bible somewhat out of reach. I still have Catholic friends who are closet Bible owners because they were brought up to believe that the church told them what they needed to know. The Anglican tradition has incorporated scripture into our liturgy and sometimes we think that that is enough. Well, I will tell you it’s not. As Anglican Christians, we need to engage the Bible more than we do. You can be an American without knowing what’s in the Constitution, but it’s not a good idea. Just the other day, an official representative of our government stated on a diplomatic mission that “even our Constitution says “one nation under God.” Actually it doesn’t, that in the pledge of allegiance. Ignorance of your foundation can set you back.

The Bible is the Word of God. That doesn’t mean that it is the “words” of God. It’s not divine dictation. The Greek word logos is indeed translated “word” but it means much more than that. “Idea” is a better way to think of it. If we approach the Bible as the ideas of God as told through stories and writings, we can approach it in such a way that it can inform our lives. Rob Bell spent his entire first year teaching the book of Leviticus which is not exactly a rousing adventure story and the church kept growing. The reason it kept growing is that Bell helped people see that the basic ideas of their religion as presented in the Bible are about their lives. He says it in a straight forward way;; “The Bible is not pieces of information about God and Jesus and whatever else we take and apply to situation as we would a cookbook or an instruction manual. And while I’m at it, let’s make a group decision to drop once and for all the Bible-as-owner’s-manual metaphor. It’s terrible, it really is. When was the last time you red the owner’s manual for your toaster. Do you fine it remotely inspiring or meaningful? You only refer to it when something’s wrong with your toaster. You use it to fix the problem, and then you put it away.” I really like this guy!

One particular lesson that Rob Bell teaches well is from our Gospel reading a couple of weeks ago about interpreting the scripture in new ways. You remember Jesus saying to Peter, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” This is really an important point in understanding the life of the Bible. Rabbis have historically been called upon to interpret scripture for their communities. The idea of binding and loosing was to determine which previous teachings would be maintained, held in place – a process called binding. A new teaching was proclaimed with the formulaic phrase “You have heard it said….but I tell you….” This new interpretation was allowed, given the proper authority of the teacher, in the process called loosing. I think of it as setting a bit of scripture free extending the boundaries to encompass new meaning. The history of our faith is full of decisions to loosen the words of the Bible to be heard in new ways. My ordination was the product of long debate over reinterpretation of comments in Paul’s letters, the historically male rabbinate and priesthood, and even the idea of full ownership of the image of God. A new definition of priest was let loose.

The people of God make decisions all the time about what scripture says and how they order their common life. It’s growth and change. Any time we think we can nail scripture to the floor and keep the interpretation safe and comfortable it’s because we think we can do the same to God. We can’t and we shouldn’t want to because when you do that all you manage to do is to declare the mystery solved. And where would we be without mystery. Here’s how that sounds in Rob Bell’s words in Velvet Elvis. These are words I want us to take to heart as we contemplate this time of new beginning for Faith….

At this point, the first page of Velvet Elvis was read. However, the Vicar would never infringe on the copyrights of Pastor Bell, so - go buy Velvet Elvis! as well as Marcus Borg's The Heart of Christianity.