from James 1
• Life is like a journey. Cliché, sure, but life demands examination, and life is big enough that we sometimes have to compare it to other things to understand it better, get a taste of it. One time Jesus sent disciples out with nothing but the clothes on their backs. At the end of the gospel of Mark, instructs them to go on ahead to Galilee, where Jesus goes before them. End of Matthew, instructs to go, make disciples, baptize, teach, and he will be with us. Last week we repeated God will not abandon, well it bears repeating today, as God equips and empowers us for the journey of life.
• So on the journey of life what are some of the tools we have?
• Scripture. (hold up my Bible, which is pocket sized so I can take it with me... covered with duct tape... filled with notes... The best color for a bible is read) Scripture. First and foremost. Our primary resource. The witness of God’s redemptive love come to fulfillment in JC. The Bible is the Church’s book for use in the community of prayer and faith. It is a living thing (wonderful words of life) and while its parts can and must be studied it is to be studied as a whole. (human teeth)
The Bible is testimony to what God has done, and invitation to interact, to respond. It is God-inspired and useful for teaching and training in righteousness (2 Tim 3:16).
In the Bible we find our identity, we find purpose and meaning. We find all things necessary for salvation in scripture, and there is no ingredient for salvation that is not found therein.
• What’s another tool in here? I have a flashlight to help me examine scripture, to shed light on, to illuminate. The way I interpret scripture is informed by the way those who have gone before me have interpreted scripture – I don’t have to start from scratch, but I can build on my spiritual parents, stand on their shoulders. We call this tradition. What my forefathers and mothers taught, what teachers and theologians have wrestled with for generations, even what the earliest generations of Christians believed, these things are the tradition that shed light on scripture (which is primary. Scripture, illumined by tradition).
• There’s another tool in here for the journey, a pair of boots. You know the bit about if a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one to hear it does it make a sound? If living scripture is left on a coffee table does it live? As scripture is illumined by tradition, in the journey of life scripture is vivified in experience, trying it out, stretching it, hitting the road. Look at that passage from James – we are to be not only hearers but doers; the foundation of faith in action is scripture put into practice in your personal experience.
• And you gotta ask if it all makes sense, if it fits (in this backpack), if it’s reasonable. God gave us brains not just to tell our hearts to pump and our feet to move but to examine and evaluate events in our lives. We use reason to look at situations, to look at tradition and experience, to look at scripture and its teachings.
• These four things – Scripture (first), illuminated by tradition, vivified in personal experience, confirmed by reason – form what’s known as the Wesleyan quadrilateral (from the teachings of John Wesley), and are tools that we have to examine and evaluate everything we come across on the journey. Armed with these tools (and the Holy Spirit, can I get an amen) we’re equipped to address things in our lives like death, life, growth, grief, change.
• Something happen? What’s scripture say about it? What have other believers throughout history taught about it? Can I live with it? Does it make sense?
Wesley believed that the living core of the Christian faith was revealed in Scripture, illumined by tradition, vivified in personal experience, and confirmed by reason. Scripture [however] is primary, revealing the Word of God 'so far as it is necessary for our salvation.'
Wesley saw the Quadrilateral not merely as prescriptive of how one should form their theology, but also as descriptive of how almost anyone does form theology.
Prayer that God’s word would be living in us as we live and grow in faith and action. Every Day.
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