Last Sunday after Trinity

Bible Sunday 2 Timothy 3.14-4.5; John 5.36-47

Whenever people asked me recently where I was going or where I'd been for my holiday and I said 'Patmos', their responses and especially their facial expressions, gave away that they either hadn't read the last book of the Bible or they hadn't remembered one of the details they'd read. So, I usually followed up my one word answer with 'the place that St. John was exiled when he wrote Revelation'. It was quite funny really because I sometimes find myself caught out in the same sort of way showing that my knowledge of the Bible leaves something to be desired. Bible study groups can be interesting places, watching people trying to hide their ignorance of it in different ways. But the Bible is a big book, indeed, it's lots of books all between two covers, and knowing it in the same way as memorising things like dates, and kings and queens of England is pretty pointless anyway. Our reading of it and our study of it certainly needs to be more and very much more than that.

Somebody once said to me that the Bible is the most bought and least read of books. Where they'd picked that up from I don't know but that's another piece of ill conceived trivia. The Bible, together with the other great Holy books of the world is probably one of the very few books that's read every day all over the world. And I'd go so far as to say that there's a sense in which it's probably being read continuously as the world spins on its axis and day gives way to night and back to day again. But I think it is true that while a great majority of the population knows of the Bible's existence, relatively few understand what it's really all about and how it's best read. There's not a great deal of understanding, certainly of those outside the Church, of what it is, how it was put together and how we should approach it. And because of that, many, many people even in the Church, seem to be a little if not very, afraid of it. It seems to me that because they are not Bible 'scholars' or learned critics, they feel it's not for them to have an opinion about what they read so they leave it up to others to do the work for them. So, I'd just like to say a couple of things about how I think it's best to come to the Bible in this day and age and it's a way that I think has been true since the Church began.

In this 21st century world, we are deluged by and are drowning in information, in the written word especially. We have books, magazines, newspapers, tv, radio, computers, ipods, mobile phones, the internet. Every minute of every day and night we have immediate access to just about any piece of information its possible to have. At one time, a household might proudly display the family encyclopedia of maybe up to 30 volumes containing a world of information. With Yahoo, Google and Wikipedia, so much more is available, a veritable universe worth of information. It's no wonder the Bible gets lost in all of that. And because it gets lost, then its voice becomes overwhelmed by all this other information. One of the responses to that is that the Bible is now available in lots of different versions made to appeal to every age group of boys and girls, men and women, as if through all these different versions, it will make its voice heard much more. I'm not so sure it works like that, so that, when we come to church and hear the Bible read, it can be so much more 'noise' to add to the noise we hear in the world outside the Church.

Contrast that with the world 2,000 years ago, without all the technology we have now and without the access to printed material we have now. I wonder if we can imagine what the people felt like, many of whom may not have been able to read, who listened to the Hebrew scriptures in the synagogue or listened in the Christian Church gatherings, to one of the apostles' letters or the gospel writings. I wonder how different their response was to ours? One can only imagine but I guess that they would be much more attentive, coming with more of a sense of inquiry and wonder at what they were hearing? St. Paul writes to his pupil Timothy that scripture is 'inspired by God'. He had that sense about scripture that elevated far above all the other information he gathered from day to day. And St. Paul was a learned man, a Pharisee and a Roman citizen, well used to dealing with information. And he wanted Jesus' disciples to treat scripture in the same way. What he's saying in actual fact is that when they listen to scripture being read, it's as if God himself is speaking to them, and so what they hear of it is God 'teaching, reproving, correcting and training them for righteousness', as he say; the end being that they may be 'proficient, equipped for every good work.' So St. Paul says that when they hear scripture its God himself speaking to them. And that's how we ourselves should come to the scriptures today. And that should form our attitude to the scriptures as we listen.

When we read the gospel we take the book in procession into the midst of the people, usually, as if Jesus himself we in the midst of us teaching us. You'll notice in some churches people turn to face the gospel, just as you would turn to someone speaking to you. Again, this acknowledges Christ himself speaking to us through the gospel. And our attitude to what we hear is reflected in the gospel acclamation before it where we say Alleluia! - Praise God! for what we are hearing. This is how we are meant to come to the scriptures, to hear God speaking to us and to learn from Him and in the process be raised up and our lives changed. That's why we call the Scriptures the Word of God. God speaks and creation happens, things change.

And just a word about how we set about getting meaning from the scriptures and how we set about understanding them. In this day and age we believe it's good to decide for ourselves, to have our own opinions and points of view about everything. And this includes the Bible. The history is too long to go into but we must remember that we can't come to the Bible like that. It's not for each person to have his or her own interpretation. Its in this respect that the Bible has probably been most abused in the past. We need to remember always that it was the Church that put what's called the Canon of the Bible together. The Church decided, in its early years, what writings at the time were truly inspired by God and should be put in the collection of books that has been handed down to us. And just as the Church put the Bible together, it's for the Church to interpret the Bible, its for the Church to be the final arbiter on what it means and teaches. Where the Church is concerned, you can't make it up as you wish. There has to be some foundation of understanding. St. Vincent of Lerins, in the 5th century says that 'Every care should be taken to hold fast to what has been believed everywhere, always, and by all.' He said this in relation to the faith and teaching of the Church and that faith and teaching is based on what the Church understands from God's Word written.

So on this Bible Sunday maybe we can come to the Bible afresh particularly each Sunday as we come to worship. Maybe we can come with a greater sense of anticipation and attention so that we might all the more hear God speaking to us. And to listen more to what the Church has to say about God's Word, the more to build our faith in and knowledge of the living God.