Last Sunday after Trinity
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Readings: Isaiah 45: 22-25 and Luke 4: 16-24
The term ‘bible-basher’ is not generally used in a complimentary sense. Whether it’s a lone voice on a street corner, or somebody who has in some way adopted a superior or pious way of demonstrating their Christian belief – they are generally given a wide berth. Some people would class all Christians as ‘bible-bashers’ in a rather derogatory way, but, ironically, many Christians are not bible-bashers and have only a limited knowledge of the scriptures. One of the most celebrated bible-bashers in modern time was, I suppose Dot Cotton, alias the late June Brown, the laundrette manager of Walford in EastEnders – always ready with a bible text for every drama and crisis that beset the characters in that long-running soap. Actually, her words were usually more respected than derided.
Today, in the modern lectionary, is known as the Last Sunday after Trinity, but it has also been kept as Bible Sunday, the idea no doubt originating from the words of the Collect: ‘Blessed Lord, who caused all holy scriptures to be written for our learning; help us so to hear them, to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them, that through patience, and 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.’
So, as one writer says, this is an opportunity to celebrate the presence of the scriptures in all humanity; a message for the whole of humankind. The bible is one of the greatest pieces of our Christian heritage, and we also see it as one of the most significant pieces of literature. You’ll know that if you’re chosen to appear on Desert Island Discs, you are permitted to take the bible and the complete works of Shakespeare with you. So much of the bible has been taken into everyday usage. I’m sure people don’t realise that some of the many phrases they use each day originate from the scriptures, such as; ‘How are the mighty fallen’; to ‘escape by the skin of one’s teeth’; to ‘set one’s house in order’; ‘a leopard can’t change his spots’; and ‘the writing is on the wall.’
But of course the believer isn’t just concerned with literary excellence, nor just thankful for warming phrases that have passed into everyday usage. We see the scriptures as the word of God. A lay reader at one of my previous churches used to say that we wouldn’t have Christian faith if it wasn’t for the bible. But I’m not sure that is the whole story. The idea of the ‘word’ in both Old and New Testaments encompasses something more than what is found set down on the printed page, or reverently copied onto scroll or parchment in days gone by. St John’s gospel begins with the truth ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’ We see Jesus as the embodiment of the Word. The Word existed and was active before anything was written.
The power of the Word is made clear in the short passage from Isaiah this morning. The whole of chapter 45 is a declaration of God’s sovereign power over all the nations. The people the prophet wrote to were either in exile, or had returned from exile, as a result of the Babylonian captivity. But that empire was waning, and now the Lord was appointing the Persian king Cyrus, as an instrument to restore Israel’s glory. Today’s verses start with a royal summons, “Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other.” And then we have this declaration about the strength of the word, which is not a written word, but an edict: power emanating from God’s very being. “From my mouth has gone forth in righteousness a word that shall not return.” We’re reminded of the account of creation in Genesis 1, where God said ‘Let there be light’ as the starting point of the created world. That which God speaks is that which brings it into being.
Haydn’s Creation includes that glorious chorus ‘The heavens are telling the glory of God’, words from Psalm 19, which we used earlier. One day pours out its song to another, and one night unfolds knowledge to another. Yet, the psalmist says, neither the day nor the night have speech or language, but their sound has gone out into all lands, and their words to the ends of the world. So, again, we get the idea of the word of God as being an active force, not something just appearing on the written page. Indeed, we use the expression ‘I give you my word….’ – an assurance that is to do with much more than words, but an expression of our integrity.
Now biblical texts are capable of being interpreted in many different ways. For instance, Bishop Christopher Herbert reflects on that verse from the Isaiah passage “Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth.” He says, ‘This is not a voice that is heard among the self-fulfilment gurus, nor is it a voice that finds any space in social media, where personal virtue is constantly proclaimed. The question is ‘saved from what?’ To which the answer is ‘saved from our own innate wickedness, to be un-twisted, to be straightened out, re-formed, made whole.” He points out that the prophet speaking in Isaiah 45 was growing up amongst a people who thought of themselves as ‘chosen’, separated out, special. But he was proclaiming the universal nature of the divine. God was offering to all humankind the deep beauties of his very nature, a nature that takes evil to itself, through death on a cross, and works to redeem it into love.
The start of that very special divine ministry is heralded in the passage from Luke’s gospel this morning. Jesus speaks in the synagogue of his home town. Now notice that Jesus is handed the scroll and given a text to read. Any distinguished person present might have been invited to do the same; there were no worries then about the appointment of ‘authorised lay ministers’ or the like. Yes, there were rabbis, but ordinary members of the congregation read the scriptures and offered their reflections, and then there would be general discussion. So the people who listened to Jesus in the synagogue would not have been surprised that he used the occasion to explore a novel interpretation of the text. Both Jews and Christians view biblical texts as being capable of many interpretations. The difference in Jesus’ case, of course, was that he interpreted that scripture as being about his own mission. Up to that point, says Luke, Jesus was well spoken of, but by the end of the chapter, the people were so infuriated at what he was saying, that he was, in effect, claiming to be the Messiah, that they wanted to throw him off a cliff at the edge of the town. That seemed to be because he was complimenting the Gentiles, later on in the chapter; but he had also castigated the locals when he said “No prophet is accepted in his home town.”
We, too, read the bible in this double way – of then and now, if you like. Any scriptural text has meaning in its ‘historical-grammatical’ sense, in other words, what it was intended to say in its place and time. But we also view texts in the light of faith; and we see Old Testament writings as somehow pointing to Jesus.
It seems no accident that this opening speech in the gospel for today, giving us Jesus’ manifesto, if you like, is about bringing good news to the poor, and letting the oppressed go free. ‘Release to the captives’ reminds us that every fifty years there was the year of ‘jubilee’, in which, in an ideal Israel which never was, all debts would be cancelled and all slaves set free. This was the vision for the Jubilee 2000 campaign twenty-five years ago, which pressed for the cancellation of the debts which cripple the poorest countries. Judge for yourselves how well that went. But there again, we had something which was put in place in Old Testament times and recorded in scripture being interpreted afresh many centuries on.
May we allow the word of God as we read it and hear it to challenge us, week by week; so that we are given to good works and change people’s lives, one by one; and come to understand that God’s word continues to sound forth and achieve its purpose; which is the saving of the world through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, the living Word.