by Nadia Bolz-Weber
Epistle Reading: Hebrews 4:12-16
For Sunday, October 14, 2012 Year B—Ordinary 28
Lutherans don’t show up to church carrying their Bibles. At first I thought this was weird because in the fundamentalist church in which I was raised, we brought our Bibles to church, boy howdy!
As a matter of fact, if you were a particularly righteous woman, you might carry your Bible in a quaintly quilted Bible cover with a lacy handle – not unlike a Laura Ingles Wilder handbag. I remember my father’s Bible being clothed in a zippable leather cover complete with an inlay of a sword on the front. When we’d be late for church and my Dad couldn’t find his Bible, he’d yell “Has anyone seen my sword?” 
What Was He/She Thinking?
I didn’t give it much thought at the time, but now it kind of feels a bit Knights Templar for my taste. But this marshal/militaristic use of the language comes less from the text and more from ourselves. When the writer of Hebrews put pen to paper to correspond with other Christians in another town and wrote that the Word of God is sharper than a two-edged sword, what was the writer referring to? What was the Word of God in this case? That very letter he or she was writing?
Many would say so today but I doubt it was true for the writer at the time. If anything that would take a bit of hubris. I mean, hopefully I would never write a post for The Hardest Question in which I spoke of the “Word of God” and by “Word of God” I of course meant this very post which might later be bound into a book with other people’s posts and then become an even more potent, definitive, “Word of God.” Period.
Would the Real Word of God Please Stand Up?
We are so used to the idea that the Word of God means the Bible, but what if the Word of God was Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh? And then what if subsequently the Word of God was whenever Christ was proclaimed and what if then finally the Word of God was the way in which this same Jesus Christ is revealed in our holy scriptures? How then would this change our reading of texts like this one from Hebrews? And how then would the way in which we wield it change?
When it is the Bible and not Jesus Christ that is seen as The Word of God a couple things can happen: 1.We make the Bible the 4th person of the Trinity and 2. We make it a weapon in our own hands.
Bible as Weapon
Here’s the reason this is something to pay attention to—when we assume that the Bible is the Word of God and thus the Bible is a sword: it is then used as such. The Bible had been the weapon of choice in the spiritual gladiatorial arena of my youth—wielded with intent and precision against women with gifts for preaching or gay folks who loved Jesus.
The Bible can cut deeply while the one holding it can claim with impunity that “this is from God.” Because if God wrote the Bible (a preposterous idea) then any verse in the Bible that is used to exclude, shame, harm or injure another person is not only done in the name of God, it is done out of love and concern for the other person.
I had been that person on several occasions, who laid spiritually bleeding on the ground, while the nice well-meaning and concerned Christians stood above me smiled in condescension, so pleased with themselves that they had “spoken the truth in love.”
Hardest Question
So how does our reading of these texts change when instead of The Bible, we assume The Word of God is the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ?
Then our text says “Indeed, Jesus Christ is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until he divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And before him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account.”
Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber is the founding pastor of House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver, Colorado. Nobody really believes she’s an ordained pastor in the ELCA. Maybe it’s the sleeve tattoos or the fact that she swears like a truck driver. Either way…she’s fine with it. Nadia lives in Denver with her family of four. She is the author of Salvation on the Small Screen? 24 Hours of Christian Television (Seabury, 2008) and blogs at www.sarcasticlutheran.com and www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber . Connect with Nadia’s latest project, animate | FAITH, by going to http://www.facebook.com/AnimateSeries
