Many have said that since the Bible is a holy book, a sacred book, then it must be infallible, unchanging, perfectly clear, and inerrant - for all time for all people. They say that it is the business of Christians to believe the Bible, every single word of it, because, they say, God wrote it. This point of view does not admit to any need for interpretation . . . "The Bible says what it means, and means what it says," they solemnly intone, and that's all there is to it.

In our series that we are calling You're Kidding . . . THAT'S in the Bible?! we have been lifting up some obscure and strange passages of this "holy book" to say that no, the Bible whatever else it is it NOT the simple, clear, unchanging Word of God, cover-to-cover that many say it is, that is to be obeyed by all. It is a book of wonders, surely, and one through which the living Word of God can and does speak. But there are many passages that everybody including the most Fundamentalist of Christians simply ignores, or by convoluted arguments insist how they can "believe" it, but not follow it.

No more so perhaps than in some of the strange laws, rules, and commands buried in the books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus. Here we have the religious and civil law of ancient Hebrew society. Here are rules that cover everything from how to carry out proper animal sacrifices - their religion was certainly by our standards a primitive one, with animals slain, their blood flung upon the congregation - to rules about business and agriculture, to what to do about diseases and what you can eat and not eat - shrimp and pork is out, you know - to sexual mores, to - and we WON'T be going into this area at all, you'll be glad to know, ?bodily discharges.' Let's look at some of these laws, all (according to the text) given by God, commanded by God.

Here's one I like a lot, but no one pays any attention to these days:
"When a man is newly married, he shall not go out with the army or be charged with any related duty. He shall be free at home one year, to be happy with the wife whom he has married." (Deuteronomy 24:5, NRSV)

Wouldn't that wreak havor for troop deployments! Wouldn't that increase the number of weddings! A year's honeymoon . . . not a bad idea! But we don't follow that any more, do we.

Here's another rule, seldom observed today by the best of Christians:

"You shall not withhold the wages of poor and needy laborers, whether Israelites or aliens . . . . You shall pay them their wages daily before sunset, because they are poor and their livelihood depends on them; otherwise they might cry to the Lord against you, and you would incur guilt." (Deuteronomy 24:1415, NRSV)

Don't say, I'll pay you in two weeks! Pay them today! They need the money today! God cares about the poor, and knows that too many employers are tempted to take advantage of their workers. But of course this would not be practical today, would it.

We'll see more of God's concern for the poor in a passage from Leviticus. But here's something less inviting. Flogging.

"Suppose two persons have a dispute and go to court, and the judges decide between them, declaring one to be in the right and the other to be in the wrong. If the one in the wrong deserves to be flogged, the judge shall make that person lie down and be beaten in his presence with the number of lashes proportionate to the offense. Forty lashes may be given but not more." (Deuteronomy 25:1-3, NRSV)

The death penalty is meted out for lots of things in the ancient Hebrew law. Murder (Num. 35:15ff), adultery (Lev 20:10), kidnaping (Ex 21:16), cursing one's parents, hitting one's parents (Ex 21:15,17), rape (Dt 22:25), witchcraft (Ex 22:18), disobeying a minister (Dt 17:12), rebellious sons who don't obey their parents (Dt 21:18f) - all these are to be put to death, by stoning, mostly - you know, that's when you get a gang of people and give them stones, and tell them to throw them at the offender until they're dead. There's a practice to be proud of!!

Happily we have left all that behind. There are other practices too - commanded by God, supposedly, that we pay no attention to. Like the practice of the year of sabbatical leave - for everyone! Did you know that God told his people to take the entire seventh year off? Farm for six years, save up enough for the seventh, and take a sabbatical year from your work! The whole nation!

Not only that, after seven cycles of this sabbatical year - every 50th year - seven times seven, forty-nine - then came the year of Jubilee! Not only did the whole nation take the year off, but in the year of Jubilee any land that had changed hands was returned to the original owner. You had to sell land because of some hard times? Every 50 years all land went back to the first owner. Can you imagine what that would do to our economic system? I don't hear "Bible believing" people wanting to legislate Jubilee!

The Bible is an odd mixture of customs, laws, commands many of which are locked in time in a culture so far from ours that we would never imagine going back. But mixed in are some wonderful practices and principles as well.   To illustrate this I want us to quickly look at Leviticus chapter 19.
 
9 When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field; . 10 You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the Lord your God.

"But," you say. I planted; I tended the field; it's my land; I did the work. Don't I get to harvest it all?" "No, you don't," says God. Leave the edges of the field for the poor among you. Leave some grapes on the vine for poor to gather."

Doesn't seem fair. But God, it seems, cares about the poor. The passage goes on.

13 You shall not defraud your neighbor; you shall not steal; and you shall not keep for yourself the wages of a laborer until morning. (We heard that command in Deuteronomy, didn't we.) 15 You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbor.

All good principles about right living. Then a pair of commands that seem so obvious that one wonders why God had to tell the Israelites this!

14 You shall not revile the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind; you shall fear your God: I am the Lord.
Don't make fun of deaf people! And don't put things in the way of the blind!

 How can you argue with that? And then listen this -

18 You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.

You've heard that before. When Jesus was asked what was the greatest of all the laws, he quoted this very verse: Love your neighbor as yourself.

And then we go right back to some strange things, to us - commands surely confined to another time, another people:
19 You shall not let your animals breed with a different kind; you shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed; nor shall you put on a garment made of two different materials.

And then this one that I like the older I get:

32 You shall rise before the aged, and defer to the old.

Finally for today, a command that I do not hear being raised up in our national debate about immigration.

33 When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien.
34 The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, - not just your neighbor! - for you were aliens [once] in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.

One could go on and on through pages and pages finding both the very odd and even repulsive commands of God, side by side with the timeless truths of not just our faith but of many others.

It is a complex, ancient, profound and perplexing book, this Bible. And for us Christians it all leads up to, and culminates in a ritual that is both profoundly simple, and deeply mysterious. Here we remember the man Jesus who lived among us, told us to love our neighbor as our self, and gave himself for us to exemplify the love of God. Here in Bread and Juice we say that God in present with us, as though Jesus himself were here. "This is my body," he said, not explaining what he meant. "Do this in remembrance of me," he said, adding another command to the Bible - one that we can easily carry out, but one whose meaning we can contemplate for a lifetime.

Here in this simple ritual we rejoice that our relationship with God is not dependent upon our understanding the laws and ways of God - still less dependent that we have kept those laws, obeyed those commands. For here we simply receive in a morsel of bread, a thimble full of juice, the very grace of God.

For in the end it is not so much what we believe in our heads - certainly not what we believe about the Bible - but what we live in our hearts, and in our world. Let us use this time of celebrating the Lord's Supper to remember the One who graciously invites us here - Jesus who told us that all of the law and the prophets, all of the commands and laws of God, can be summed up in just two commandments, That you love God with all your heart, and your neighbor as yourself. Our faith is not a faith of keeping obscure rules, observing outdated and meaningless rituals, being meticulously "religious." Our faith is one of glad and grateful acceptance of God's grace, and joyful sharing that grace with our world.
And I'm not kidding, either. THAT'S in the Bible!