Five chapters a week.  That’s all it takes to read the entire New Testament in one year.  Last Sunday I explained how Lima is embarking on this scripture quest this year to a group of young people from our church.  I told them, all we have to do is read five chapters a week, and by the end of the year, we will have read the entire New Testament, which is the primary source of knowledge we have about Jesus and our faith.  I told them, I think this is both important and do-able.  They agreed.  Then I asked, what are the odds that people in the congregation will participate?  What are the odds of people from Lima reading five chapters a week?

Usually I am overly optimistic and tend to assume positive results.  Several months ago when we first decided on this New Testament reading plan for 2023 I thought, this is a great idea, everyone will love it!  But for some reason last week I was feeling cynical, so I put the odds at one in ten.  For every ten people in our congregation who are of the age to read well, I told this group of young people, ONE of them might actually read five chapters a week, most weeks this year.  Did that feel right to them?

They thought about it and said, no, not one in ten.  One in eight!

I think they meant that to be comforting, as in, Pastor Dorry, you will see more people than you think participate in the reading program. I wonder, though, how that feels to you.  Are you comforted by the idea that one in eight, not one in ten, of your church family members, might read the entire New Testament this year?  What do YOU think the odds are?  All the people we reach online and in person, what are the odds that any of them will, most weeks, sit down and read five chapters of scripture?  I really do hope they are much greater than one in eight!

I must confess that, over the years of being a pastor, some years I have spent more time in scripture than others.  I tend to read more scripture if I am part of a structured study.  So I am really excited about the structure of five chapters a week, and I am confident that, by doing it as group, more of us will read.  And reading is important, because the Bible is one of the main sources of information we have about God and how to live out our faith.  Reading scripture is one of the proven METHODS we have for faith formation.  And remember, as Methodists we love our spiritual formation methods!

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, called these spiritual formation methods “means of grace”.  They are ways God’s grace comes to us.  Ways the Holy Spirit shows us the truth, comforts us, challenges us, and equips us.  In addition to studying scripture, the means of grace include things like participating in worship, prayer, taking communion, helping others, giving our gifts, and participating in what John Wesley called “holy conferencing”—having conversations with others about what we are experiencing and learning.  Here at Lima, we offer opportunities to practice all of these means of grace.  No doubt, each of us finds some more stimulating than others.  But all of us can avail ourselves of more of God’s grace by participating in every means of grace we can, and who doesn’t need more grace?

Well, actually, I think if we really dug deep down, most of us would see within ourselves that we only want a certain portion of grace.  Yes, we want to be blessed.  We want to be comforted, we want to be assured—but we rarely want to be changed.  That’s why I think there is so much resistance to reading scripture.  That’s why I think the young people put the odds at one in eight of us actually reading the New Testament this year.  Because human nature resists change.  And change, transformation, maturity, growth—these are the inevitable outcomes of opening ourselves completely to God’s grace.

In reading Matthew chapters six through ten this week, I was surprised at how many times Jesus touches on this idea that we want God’s grace—but not too much!  For instance, Jesus said in Matthew 7:21, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.  Is Jesus saying that some people who profess to follow him—even if they do great works–their hearts aren’t really in it?  They call Jesus Lord.  But they are not really interested in forgiving as Jesus forgave, and serving as Jesus served, and giving as Jesus gave.  They are really interested in taking for themselves, not offering themselves to God.

This week I heard a news article being talked about on the radio, about how often people lie on their resumes when job hunting.  One in eight people surveyed admitted to lying on their resume.  And the most frequent thing lied about?  People lied about how interested they are in the job.  In second and third place, were lying about experience and qualifications, which makes sense.  If you’re going to lie, lie to make yourself look like a better applicant.  But I was surprised to hear that people lie about how interested they are in the job.  If you’re not interested, why apply?  What a waste, to go through the motions of applying for a job you don’t really want.

I might not have paid much attention to the news article, since I do not have a resume, I am not looking for a job, and I’m not looking to hire anyone right now.  But when they said, “one in eight,” that caught my attention because of what the group I was with on Sunday said about one in eight people from Lima reading their Bibles this year.  And that got me to wondering, if to a certain extent, we are guilty of lying on our resumes so to speak.  We say we are interested in following Jesus.  We wear the name of Christ.  But how completely do we want to live in the light?

In Matthew 7:13-14 Jesus said, “Enter through the narrow gate.  For wide is the gate and broad the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.  But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few will find it.”  Over and over again in these chapters of Matthew, Jesus gives warnings to those who think they are on the straight and narrow—but maybe they are not.  That’s why we chose as our memory verse for this month Matthew 6:22-23, “The eye is the lamp of the body.  If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light.  But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.  If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!”

Memories of Christmas Eve are fresh in our minds.  What a beautiful sight, to see the light pass from person to person until the whole sanctuary was filled!  But side by side with the comforting, inspiring, assuring pictures we have of God’s grace as shown in Jesus are challenging and convicting words.  Words Jesus had for the religious elite in his day, and words that we must take to heart as well.  Are we lying on our resumes?  Do we want to be seen as being more interested in following Christ than we really are?  Are we content with letting darkness into our lives instead of letting in God’s light?

Ultimately, it’s not how much of God’s word that we read and hear that matters, it’s how much of it we apply to our lives.  Jesus drew a comparison between the wise person who builds their house upon the rock, and the fool who builds his or her house on sand.  The difference between the wise person and the foolish person is not how much they heard, but how much they put into practice.  Maybe we are resistant to reading our Bibles because we unconsciously think, if we don’t hear more of God’s word, we won’t be held accountable for putting it into practice!

This reminds me of one of my friends who said, if you never take a COVID test, you will never have to tell anyone you have COVID!  We laugh at that, but also recoil because we know, the person who hasn’t taken the COVID test could potentially be putting many others at risk.  And the same is true for us if we don’t study scripture. We are not only missing out on God’s grace for our lives, we are missing out on God’s wisdom for how we are to live out our faith.  And by following our wisdom instead of God’s, we are damaging the Kingdom of God that Jesus wants to build in and through us.

This week I received paperwork for our ministry candidates who are coming before the Board of Ordained Ministry for commissioning and ordination.  Our sister in Christ, Pastor Karen, is among these candidates, and I ask you to be in prayer for her and all the candidates as we approach their interviews in early February.  One of the questions we ask of all candidates is to explain the Wesleyan Quadrilateral, which is basically a theological chart that depicts how United Methodists live out their faith in the world.  We call it the Wesleyan Quadrilateral because the ideas come from the foundation John Wesley laid for the Methodist denomination, and quadrilateral because it has four components.

The Board of Ordained Ministry is looking to be sure each candidate can explain that as Methodists, we have four sources of truth that inform our faith:  scripture, tradition, reason, and experience.  The Methodist church places primary emphasis on scripture.  We believe God speaks to us through the scriptures, and they contain all that is necessary for salvation.  But unlike some other faith traditions, we do not believe God only speaks through scripture.  We believe God speaks to us through church tradition, and our faith can be informed by things like the ancient creeds, and the liturgical year, and other traditions of our faith.  We believe God speaks to us through reason, and the use of science and study can help us understand God’s work in the world.  We believe pursuing truth through critical thinking and intellectual rigor are holy works.

We also believe God speaks to us through experience.  John and Charles Wesley both had experiences where they felt their hearts “strangely warmed” as John wrote.  Experiences where they were touched, moved, changed by God’s Spirit. This is a common phenomenon amongst Methodists.  Just this week one of our church members told me about how going on a trip changed her, how God met her in a beautiful place and healed her soul.  We can experience God in creation, in singing, in poetry, in art, in adventure, in service, in communion, in silence, in praise.  Maybe we can even experience God once in a great while by hearing a sermon!

Will Willimon, who is a retired United Methodist bishop and professor at Duke Seminary wrote about preaching, “Sometimes a word is heard. Someone is challenged all the way to the tip of the soul; the world is torn apart and reconstructed in such a way that that person can only turn around and be converted or else live embarrassingly out of step with the way he or she clearly sees the world to be.”  I believe this phenomenon, of a word being heard, can happen in all kinds of places.  In preaching, hopefully yes.  That’s why I keep doing it, week in and week out. But also in reading scripture.  In holy conferencing.  In rest.  In service.

The thing is, though, we are more likely to hear a word from God if we are priming our pumps.  If we are wetting our appetites.  If we are creating an environment for our souls that allows God’s word, however it comes to us, to be like a diva star—shining in a way to gets our attention and calls us to move in a new direction.

Reading scripture is not the only method we Methodists have for spiritual growth.  But it is a primary component in our faith.  And so I hope you will join, however many others from Lima, in reading five chapters a week, reading the entire New Testament in a year.  And if you don’t want to do that, I hope you will take some time and simply read Matthew chapter 7.  Ask yourself the hard questions about why you are resisting the light of God coming into your world through holy scripture.  Is it because you already know all there is to know?  I am sure that isn’t it.  Are you really building your house on solid ground?  Are you really entering through the narrow gate?  Are you lying on your resume about how much you want this job, of being a Christian?

Besides not wanting to change, the only reason I can think of for not reading the New Testament this year is that not everyone likes to read.  Guess what?  You can find audio recordings of people reading the New Testament aloud on YouTube!  You can listen while you drive, or do dishes, or walk on your treadmill!  You can do this!  Lima, we can do this!  Let’s not let 2023 be a year of one in eight.  Let’s make 2023 a year of every one of us looking to Jesus in every way we can.  Let’s be a people of wisdom, building our houses on solid ground.  Amen.