Today
is Bible Sunday…when we are invited to focus afresh on the gift
that is Scripture. And there’s a particular power in celebrating
that gift today, Reformation Sunday, when we look back 500 years at
the moment when an obscure German monk and academic began something
that was to shake the world,
as he nailed a document to the door of a small German church.
At
the time, nobody could have foreseen what would follow, but the
reverberations of Martin Luther’s hammer were to be felt across the
Church, and across the world. The Protestant Reformation altered
nations, shaped politics, provoked wars, and led to innovations in
science, industry, economics, and medicine. It gave us Bach chorales
and the Protestant work ethic, but so much more, the Reformation
provided a much-needed corrective to a Church that had lost its way
amid its own excesses, and, by placing the Bible in the hands of
anyone who wanted to read it, gave ordinary baptized Christians the
responsibility for their own faith.
Sola
Scriptura was the cry then– Scripture alone. This was to be the
single authority from which Christians were to work out their own
salvation, in fear and trembling. They were no longer to outsource
their theology to priestly experts, but to read God’s word for
themselves...and to allow it to change them.
Of
course, this gift was not the only outcome of the Reformation...As in
most revolutions, people got hurt. Feelings ran so high that
hundreds died, acclaimed as martyrs by one faction or the other, and
the enmity between Protestants and Catholics endured for centuries.
Today, though, there is repentence on both sides. “We
have to say that breaking up the western church was not a gift to the
church," says the Rev. Elizabeth Eaton, presiding bishop of
the Evangelical
Lutheran Church in America
while one American RC bishop announced "Catholics
should do penance for setting the stage for the [division],"
And
what about us, as members of the church of England, both Catholic and
Reformed. We remain rooted in the traditions of the Fathers, our
ordained ministry linking us in a chain that leads back to the moment
when Jesus said to Cephas “You are Peter and on this rock I will
build my Church” - and yet celebrate the priesthood of all
believers and welcome all comers to explore Scripture for themselves,
to hear God speaking to them in words that are both ancient and
absolutely contemporary. At its best, Anglicanism might seem to be
one of the most positive fruits of the Reformation, founded on
tradition AND Scripture, on reason AND experience.
Which
brings us to M, who will be baptized into God’s Church in
just a little while. This is her heritage...not just the blood of the
martyrs and the passionate lifelong search for God’s truth but the
gift of Scripture itself, to guide her on life’s journey...
But
hold on. What kind of gift is this? On a bad day, some might see the
Bible as rather a white elephant, an outmoded piece of cultural and
social history that shackles Christians so that they are unable to
move forward to encounter God in the world today. Of course, that’s
not my view, though I do worry that too often well-meaning Christians
fall into the trap of asking the Bible to be something it really is
not...and that can be decidedly unhelpful. The Bible is a GUIDE but
not a detailed instruction manual. There’s work for us to do as we
relate to it, and we must never, in reading it, suspend our common
sense, leave our brains packed neatly in tissue paper and expect the
Bible to make all our decisions for us. That way lies the sad tale of
the apocryphal Christian who, seeking guidance,closed his eyes,opened
his Bible, and let his finger land at random on the page…only to
read
“Judas
went and hanged himself”, followed closely by “Go and do
likewise” and “What you do, do quickly”
It’s
a good story….and a good illustration of the sort of abuse that the
Bible can be subject to. The Bible was never
intended as a fail-safe rule book, or a kind of detailed
route-planner to lead us safely through life if we only pay obedient
attention to every word within its covers. We were never expected to
follow its words mindlessly – but to enter into a relationship with
the text, allowing what we read and hear to act on us as we mark,
learn and inwardly digest.
That’s
the key. The Bible is not simply the story of people who lived long
ago and far away. It is OUR story too. This library of ancient texts
tells us the story of a people’s relationship with God…. And like
any good story, this one evolved with the telling, gaining meaning as
it impacted the lives of those who spoke and those who listened, til
those meanings became part of the story themselves. That’s still
how it works for us. We read of the struggles, disasters and
misbehaviours of others and their story becomes a lens through which
we can interpret our own lives and see, again and again, how God’s
love remains constant. The bible is history – HIS story, the story
of God’s love and justice and mercy, God’s ways, purposes,
promises and victory. Everything, whether narrative or poetry, fable
or rules, reflects this, a ollection of writings made both before and
after Christ, which point us to God. A set of writings which
considers God’s dealings with humanity in the past and his
revelation of himself in Jesus.
Those
who’ve listened to my preaching over the past 3 years will know
that one of my very favourite questions is
“Where
are YOU in the story?”
That,
for me, is the key to a relationship with the Bible.
To
remember that those women and men, prophets, shepherds, slaves,
fishermen and kings, were living in a very different context, but
with the same struggles, hopes and fears that we all carry day by
day...so that in their stories and their experiences of God we can
find wisdom, comfort and strength ourselves.
The
Bible is God’s word – but God did not just tell
us of God’s ways..God SHOWS us always and above all, through God’s
LIVING WORD made flesh, Jesus Christ our Lord.
God’s
words, written and lived are a love-letter from God to God’s
people...to you and me, and today especially to M as she joins
the household of faith.
“Let
the word of Christ dwell in you richly” said Paul to the
Colossians...and that’s my hope and prayer for each of us today.
that we should love the Bible and make it our own, giving it our best
attention, wrestling with it for a blessing time and again.
Let’s
not be afraid to get things wrong, for errors are part of learning.
The
Bible needs us, if it is to have any existence beyond the sterility
of the page.
We
need the Bible, if we are to gain insights into the ways of God for
it is a book that will lead us to God and help us to engage with God
in bringing in His kingdom.
The
great theologian, Karl Barth, was once asked to sum up all he had
learned in a lifetime of study. His response was to sing, very
gently, a song that I, like him, learned in early childhood
Jesus
loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.
Holy
wisdom, Holy word,
A
gift, to be savoured and celebrated, laden with the love of God.
For
the Word of the Lord, Thanks be to God!
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