This is the text of a sermon given on October 24th, Bible Sunday. As we weren't able to livestream that day I thought it might be of interest to our more distant audience!

A bit of history. I found myself wondering why exactly we celebrate Bible Sunday on the last Sunday after Trinity, until I unearthed some information on the Bible Society website. It all goes back to the 1549 Book of Common Prayer, and that stirring prayer Archbishop Cranmer wrote for the Second Sunday of Advent – which is in fact the Collect we’ve used today. About ‘hearing, reading, marking, learning and inwardly digesting’ Holy Scripture, so that we ‘may embrace and forever hold fast the hope of everlasting life’, which we’ve been given through Jesus Christ. More of that later.

The ‘British and Foreign Bible Society’, founded in 1804, came to mark the 2^nd Sunday of Advent as Bible Sunday, and used it as a fundraiser for their work, with a special celebration in 1938, to mark the 400^th anniversary of a decree which had made the Bible accessible to every person and every parish in England. This was when Thomas Cromwell, as Henry VIII’s ‘Vice-Regent in Spirituals’ (wonderful title!), ordered that a copy of the Bible was to be available in all churches by 1 November 1538, All Saints’ Day. It’s perhaps this event which explains why we now celebrate Bible Sunday on the Last Sunday of Trinity, in the week before All Saints.

Phew. So now we know roughly why today. Cromwell’s decree reflected the theology of the Reformation, which aimed to return to a simpler relationship between the individual and God, uncluttered by saints, priestly hierarchies and all the paraphernalia of the Roman Catholic church. It was crucial that each individual could encounter the word of God for themselves, without the mediation of a third party. Conviction and faith were to be a matter of individual assent, every Christian a member of the ‘priesthood of all believers’.

This poses an important question – namely how we can know what to believe. God is God, mysterious, infinite and unknowable. And how can we know God, if God doesn’t choose to reveal Godself in some way? The traditional answer to this is that there are two principal ways in which God has made Godself known: through Holy Scripture, and in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Through words; and in the Word.

Modern Biblical scholarship is clear that what the Bible offers us is ‘progressive revelation’. Human understanding of God has developed over the centuries, and the God of the Old Testament is rather different from the God we encounter in the New Testament – certainly less unpredictable and irascible. And while the earlier books of the Old Testament might seem to suggest at times that God can sanction such atrocities as incest and rape, the writings of the prophets speak out forcefully against such brutality.

So divine revelation has taken place over many, many years – the first books of the Bible have been dated to the 8^th century BCE, but of course they collect together stories and insights which are much older than this. The last books of the Old Testament were written in the century before the birth of Christ, and the gospels and letters which make up the New Testament were collected in the hundred years or so after Christ’s death.

Just as importantly, the Bible collects together documents of all kinds, written by all kinds of people. There are myths, histories and poems, collections of epigrams and accounts of visions, early attempts at biography, letters. And their authors are a motley bunch: priests, kings and commoners. What this underlines for me is that God has revealed Godself through humanity as a whole, not through one or two privileged individuals. People with something important to say about their understanding of God have made their insights known, and other people have thought what they said important enough to read and keep. The characters of the different writers come through in what they say and the way they say it, and we learn to read with this in mind, recognizing that no one contributor has a monopoly on the truth. This seems to echo that idea of the ‘priesthood of all believers’. It’s also profoundly incarnational – not primarily an objective truth, but the truth of God as recognised by those whom God has touched.

And speaking of incarnation – the second way in which Christians believe God has revealed Godself in the world is in the person and the example of Jesus Christ, God’s Almighty Word. What that means is that if we contemplate Christ, we come to understand the nature of God. And as Holy Scripture and Jesus Christ are both forms of revelation, it follows that they will be consistent with one another, so that Scripture also points to and reflects the person of Jesus. Week by week Christians learn how the Old Testament interacts with the New, how their truths are interwoven into a broader understanding. That’s why Cranmer’s collect can start by talking about Scripture and finish with the claim that ‘through the comfort of your holy word we may embrace and for ever hold fast the hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ’.

Appropriately enough we hear of this joyful encounter with the Word in the beautiful passage from Isaiah which was our Old Testament reading today (Isaiah 55:1-11) – the word sown by God which is like rain falling on the earth to enable growth and fullness and plenty. And in our Psalm, which describes God’s law as more desirable than fine gold, sweeter than honey as it drips from the honeycomb (Psalm 19:7-14). Our gospel passage from John (Jn 5:36b -end) speaks into the second form of revelation, Jesus as the Word of God, explaining how in his very person he reflects the nature of God.

It’s Paul’s epistle to Timothy, however, which to my mind poses the greatest challenge (2 Tim. 3:14-4:5). ‘All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness’, he says – and I find myself taking a step backwards. ‘Proclaim the message, whether the time is favourable or unfavourable, convince, rebuke and encourage.’ This doesn’t feel like my kind of Christianity (except for the reference to encouragement) – and yet I immediately wonder whether I am one of those people Paul refers to with ‘itching ears’, who will ‘accumulate teachers to suit their own desires’.

It’s certainly true that it’s only too easy to pick out the bits of the Bible we like best, to keep returning to those while ignoring the ones that seem to challenge us. Why else, I wonder, do people obsess about the very few things Jesus had to say about sex and marriage, and yet completely ignore the very many uncomfortable things he says about wealth and poverty? On the other hand, Christianity wouldn’t be good news at all if we didn’t glory in those passages that offer us affirmation and encouragement, hope and reassurance.

I find a partial answer in the tradition of the lectionary, an ancient way of ordering the church year through liturgical seasons with particular, associated readings. The Anglican lectionary, which we use here at St Mary’s, works in a three-year cycle and aims to cover just about the whole Bible in that time (if you include weekdays as well). It obliges us to read, consider – and yes, preach on – parts of the Bible we find difficult, challenging, sometimes even incomprehensible. And in this way it models an approach we can take as individuals, namely an approach of honesty and integrity towards Scripture. So that if we read something we don’t like very much, we still give it house room, while we consider what it might be saying to us, and why. I don’t like that passage from Timothy very much; I don’t want to be the kind of Christian who corrects and reproves other people and won’t stop until they’re beaten into submission. But I do want to be the kind of Christian who has the courage of my convictions, and is prepared to enter into dialogue and discussion, to defend my point of view using evidence and not just emotional assertions.

I also want to be the kind of Christian who is prepared to grow; and that’s not going to happen unless I am willing to be challenged, willing to hear difficult things and wonder if they might be true. There is no point in learning about the nature of God unless we are going to let that knowledge change us, bringing us closer to what God wants us to be. And no point in celebrating Bible Sunday unless we are going to engage with the Bible, reading, marking, learning and inwardly digesting even the most chewy bits!