Today is Bible Sunday, a day in our church calendar set aside to celebrate our scriptures and perhaps reflect a little upon their importance in our own lives. We’ve had two examples in our readings this morning of how and why this collection of writings is still important when so many say otherwise.
In Isaiah we have this wonderful invitation to the abundant life God has to offer us, an invitation which lets us know that everyone has a seat at the table, that God’s deepest wish is to feed and nourish us in such a way that we live the most fulfilling lives we can.
In the reading from John, Jesus reminds us that by reading and understanding scripture we know God by understanding God’s relationship with humanity and woven throughout them is the knowledge of who Jesus is, the living and breathing Word of God.
Rev. Janet Morely writes “There’s a well-known saying whose author I haven’t succeeded in tracking down. The internet claims it is by either Karl Barth or an anonymous African woman. ‘There are plenty of other books I can read – but the bible is the only book that reads me.’ …the bible can pose questions it is going to take a lifetime for me to answer, if I ever do. [the Isaiah reading asks of us] What exactly does nourish and satisfy my heart?”
What I find most remarkable about the bible is the sheer breadth of the writings it contains. I truly believe is reflects almost all of human experience: love, betrayal, politics, spirituality, poetry, sexuality, family life, nature, law, wisdom, myth, lament, correspondence…and all bridging about 1000 years of human history- that’s truly remarkable.
So I feel the worst, most disrespectful thing we can ever do is take these writings at face value. We say at the end of our readings “this is the word of the Lord” but that’s never sat well with me. We can’t ignore the human factor; scripture can be God inspired and Spirit breathed but was still written by men- almost exclusively male- at a particular point in time for a particular purpose. It’s the humanity of the bible that I believe makes it come to life.
It contradicts itself in places as we do, lets us know its ok to debate these things and that we can see things from many angles- why else include a gospel narrative from four perspectives? Or include lament psalms where the writer is raging at God’s perceived abandonment?
The bible shows us even chosen people are flawed and get it wrong- David, Solomon, Moses, the disciples…they all show us their worst, warts and all traits but God chooses and uses them anyway, again showing that we each have a place at the table.
Taking scripture at face value, as inerrant and literal truth is a very modern concept, born out of a backlash to enlightenment thinking in the 19th century and pushing this agenda has led to what I feel is the rejection of The Bible as a source of wisdom and nourishment.
When something is peddled as literal truth it’s the agenda of those setting what those absolute truths are which get taught. The Isaiah reading reminds us that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts and God’s ways are not our ways, but as humans we repeatedly fall into the trap of forgetting we’re the ones made in God’s image, not the other way round. If we are preaching the bible literally and have fixed an idea of God made in our own image we preach a narrow gospel and a narrow God.
And indeed the bible has inexcusably been used to control, punish and traumatise. And this still goes on today.
Whilst we aren’t innocent of this, the joy of our Anglican tradition is allowing scripture to live and breathe and take its place in relationship with our tradition and with our ever-changing world.
Whilst training for ministry I spent several months on placement at St Peter’s House, the Manchester University chaplaincy and church. At the end of bible readings instead of “this is the word of the Lord” they posed the question “what does this mean for us today?”. This has become my own question whenever I’m preparing a sermon or trying to discern the value of any portion of scripture, and I guess it’s a question that today we might ask of the whole Bible; what does this mean for us today?
Is it something that will entice us to pull up a seat at the table, something that can nourish and satisfy us?
For me, as with so many matters of faith, it becomes about relationship. I see the Old Testament as the documentation of humanity’s relationship with God in all it’s up and downs, our repeated turning away from God and God’s constancy, never abandoning us no matter how many times we fail, mess up or turn away. God always loves us through whatever we throw God’s way.
The New Testament documents God living amongst us in the person of Jesus in order to help us better understand who God is; to enable us to deepen and continue that relationship of love. It’s a record of how we tried to interpret what we learned from that experience.
Through all of this collection of writings, I think the overall purpose or meaning or intention is to have a document which, in a messy and human way because the human factor makes it messy, because we’re messy, a document which is hoping to teach us how to love as God loves, that asks the big questions of us – reads us – in order to draw us to the invitation of abundant life and help us take our seat at the table.
Inspired, nourished and well fed.
Based upon:
Isaiah 55:1-11
An Invitation to Abundant Life
Ho, everyone who thirsts,
come to the waters;
and you that have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price.
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
and your labour for that which does not satisfy?
Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good,
and delight yourselves in rich food.
Incline your ear, and come to me;
listen, so that you may live.
I will make with you an everlasting covenant,
my steadfast, sure love for David.
See, I made him a witness to the peoples,
a leader and commander for the peoples.
See, you shall call nations that you do not know,
and nations that do not know you shall run to you,
because of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel,
for he has glorified you.
Seek the Lord while he may be found,
call upon him while he is near;
let the wicked forsake their way,
and the unrighteous their thoughts;
let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them,
and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
and do not return there until they have watered the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.
John 5.36b-end
But I have a testimony greater than John’s. The works that the Father has given me to complete, the very works that I am doing, testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me. And the Father who sent me has himself testified on my behalf. You have never heard his voice or seen his form, and you do not have his word abiding in you, because you do not believe him whom he has sent.
‘You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf. Yet you refuse to come to me to have life. I do not accept glory from human beings. But I know that you do not have the love of God in you. I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; if another comes in his own name, you will accept him. How can you believe when you accept glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the one who alone is God? Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; your accuser is Moses, on whom you have set your hope. If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But if you do not believe what he wrote, how will you believe what I say?’
