Today I’m going to talk about the Bible.
This is the last
Sunday in October, which General Synod has designated as Bible Sunday. It gives
us an opportunity to celebrate and reflect on what we sometimes call the Good
Book.
But the Bible is more
than just a book - it is in fact an extraordinary library of books.
The books of what we
call the Old Testament are a record of how the ancient Hebrews - the children
of Israel – developed over many centuries their beliefs in one great God JHWH.
We find in them a strange mixture of origin myths, history, poetry, philosophy
and theology. Why should these records of a small, weak nation more than 2000
years ago still be important to Christians today? Because they provide the
background and context in which Jesus and his disciples thought and talked
about their God, who is also our God. The New Testament would be unintelligible
without the Old Testament.
The New Testament
tells us in the Gospels about Jesus, whom we call Lord and believe to be God’s
Son. It tells us of his teaching about God as Father, God’s outpouring Love and
the power of God’s Spirit. And in Acts and the Epistles we get an insight into
how Jesus’s small band of followers was inspired to bring their faith in him to
the world, from which we too take inspiration.
Without both sections
of the library, we could not be Christians. The scriptures anchor us to our
faith. They allow us always to return to the safe harbour of Jesus’s teaching.
Without them we would be adrift, bobbing about in chaotic seas of speculation,
by turns wrong-headed or ineffectually well meaning. This is why the Bible is
such a precious gift.
Christians often call the Bible the Word of God.
The word of God has
meant different things to different people at different times, as the 3 readings
set for today illustrate.
For Ezra and the
people who gathered in the square before the Watergate in the 1st
reading (Nehemiah 8:1-6), set in the 5th Century BC, the word of God
meant ‘the
book of the law of Moses, which the Lord had given to Israel’ – that
is the Pentateuch, the first 5 books of the Old Testament.
By the time of Jesus
the Jewish people had come to see the word of God in the later books of the Old
Testament too.
Paul, writing 500
years after Ezra and a generation after Jesus’s death, identifies the word of
God with the words of Jesus Christ. In our 2nd reading (Colossians3:12-17) Paul prays for the Colossians, ‘Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly’,
because, as he has written earlier in the letter, ‘in (Christ) the whole fullness of (God)
dwells bodily’ (Colossians 2.9).
So does Matthew in the
Gospel reading (Matthew: 24:30-35), writing perhaps 20 years after Paul. He
believes that Jesus who called himself the Son of Man was truly the Son of God,
and Jesus’s words are God’s words: ‘Heaven and
earth will pass away’, says Jesus, ‘but my words will not pass away’.
And they have not, thanks to Matthew and the other Gospel writers.
For Paul and Matthew
holy scripture would have meant the Old Testament. The New Testament wasn’t assembled
and put together until long after their deaths. So they could not have seen the
Bible as we have received it as the word of God.
Some Christians
believe the Bible is ‘inerrant’, meaning that every single word is God’s plain
truth, never to be questioned. They believe that in some sense God has dictated
the words to those who wrote the different books, and that God has ensured that
no errors or omissions have been introduced over the millennia that they have
been copied and translated. I can’t and don’t believe that myself. I fear their
belief is dangerous, likely to lead them
to misunderstand God’s word, and so not to behave as God wants them to.
But I do I suggest
that we can and should believe that the Bible we have inherited is inspired by
God’s Holy Spirit, even if mediated through fallible human authors.
We can hear
the authentic word of God in it - provided
we read it through the lenses of reason and tradition – as that great Anglican
theologian Hooker put it. To which I myself would add the lens of experience – our
own experience of the love of Christ working in our hearts, and that of God’s
continuing self-revelation through his glorious creation.
But rather than listen to me talking about the
Bible, surely we should be listening to what the Bible has to say to us.
Let me tease out some
of the word of God that I hear in Paul’s words to the Colossians - I think they
are particularly relevant to us today in this parish.
Paul has been warning
the Colossian Christians not to be beguiled by false teachings, which have
caused divisions among them. In his Gospel, John tells us Jesus prayed to his
Father that his disciples may be one as he and the Father are one (John 17:21).
But it is a sad fact that from the earliest times Christians have found it
difficult to agree and easy to fight each other. Today, Christ’s Church is
splintered. The splintered churches are divided into competing parties – as our
Church of Ireland is on some matters. And our parishes are all too often
divided by personal disputes, as we know only too well.
Now Paul urges the
Colossians to come together. ‘Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which
indeed you were called in one body’, he says, because you are all ‘God’s chosen
ones, holy and beloved’. In our heart of hearts we know we are chosen
and loved by God too, don’t we? And our experience of God’s amazing, bountiful
grace, as shown for instance in the harvest we’ve been enjoying, confirms it.
So let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts too.
But holiness – that's
difficult, isn’t it? The holy, Christ-like qualities of ‘compassion, kindness, humility, meekness
and patience’ don’t fall on us like rain at our baptism or
confirmation, drenching us to the core once and for all. We have to work at them continually. We have to consciously
put them on every day, and wear them like clothes. Above all, says Paul, we
must ‘clothe (ourselves)
with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony’.
We know, don’t we,
that Jesus calls us to ‘turn the other cheek’, to bear with one another and
forgive those who hurt us: ‘just as the Lord has forgiven (us), so (we) also must
forgive’, as Paul says. If ‘the word of Christ dwells in (us) richly’, as
Paul prays it will for the Colossians, then we will ‘teach and admonish one another in all
wisdom’ – that means, I think, we are to use our God-given common sense when we
engage with those with whom we have fallen out or disagree, not let our feelings rule us.
Through it all, says
Paul, we should always strive to be joyful. A smile on our face makes us feel
better and that will help us be better – it will make others feel better too,
and perhaps that will help them be better. And it is easier to be joyful if our
heart sings – when we worship let us sing out our gratitude to God who has
graciously given us so much.
And finally, says Paul,
as Christians, ‘whatever
(we) do in word or deed’, we must do ‘in the
name of the Lord Jesus’.
These are words of God that I hear in St Paul’s words to the Colossians.
Let me finish with a prayer that the peace of
Christ may rule in our hearts, as Paul prayed it would in the hearts of the
Colossians.
O God, our loving
Father,
Lead us from
division to unity, from falsehood to truth.
Lead us from fear
to trust, from hate to love.
Let peace fill our
hearts, our parish, our church, our world.
Let us dream
together, pray together, work together,
to build God’s
Kingdom of peace and justice for all.
In Jesus name we
pray. Amen
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