Readings: Colossians 3.12-17; Matthew 24.30-35
What has the Bible ever done for us? To coin a famous phrase!
Today is designated Bible Sunday in the Church’s year.
The day when we reflect on the gift to us of God’s revealed Word.
So what has the Bible ever done for us?
A great deal as it happens – though what the Bible has given us
has become so embedded in our society,
it can tend to pass over our heads exactly from where
the thinking behind our hard won freedoms have come!
The former chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, has written
a great tome in defence of religion: The Great Partnership.
In it he has a lot to say about all that the Hebrew Scriptures
offer the world! For indeed, these texts have given us:
the seven day week and a day of rest;
the notion of human responsibility to take care for one another –
especially those less fortunate – basis of the welfare state no less!
Universal education for all classes –
even if originally it was only for the boys!
And a radical resistance to any notion of superstition:
we are not the victims of a multitude of capricious gods who will wreck
our endeavours if we have not accorded them due obeisance.
Any such notion is turned on its head!
Rather, it is God who cares for us, provides for us –
not we who need to take care of and ‘feed’ so to speak,
those various ancient gods and goddesses to keep them sweet.
Our sacrifice of worship is measured in our commitment to right living
and our repentance when we fail. Our worship is not a bribe
to persuade God to bless us. It is the expression of relationship with God,
and our gratitude for God’s blessings already poured out upon us!
We know all this through our Bibles. But as we are well aware
from our gospel readings through Matthew this autumn,
the Bible is not an easy read!
A surface reading will not impart the gospel to us!
God’s Good News – for this is what the word ‘gospel’ means,
the good news that we are created by God,
and unconditionally loved by God.
One of our young people, for A level RE was required
to read through John’s gospel in one session!
To her horror, she found the Jesus presented there deeply unattractive!
The highly self-assured and self-assertive figure she found in John
did not at all, match the Jesus she thought she knew, and loved!
And no, we will not find in John’s gospel the Jesus we are to imitate!
In John’s gospel we have the assertion and assurance
of Jesus’ divine authority as Christ and Saviour – very God.
The Bible will surely be misunderstood
when we read parts of it as stand alone texts.
Read Mark’s gospel alongside that of John,
and we find a far more earthy account of Jesus’ life and ministry!
A real man we can relate to. A Saviour who is passionately ‘for us’.
As Sean has discovered on his spiritual journey.
All of us, on a convoluted journey filled with both highs and lows,
the story we find in the gospels, the man we find in the gospels,
has profoundly touched the lives of so many.
We welcome you Sean this morning, a delight to celebrate your baptism!
If the Hebrew Bible reveals to us a loving Creator
intimately involved with his creation, the Christian Testament
tells of the depth of God’s grace which surrounds us –
revealed in the love which takes Christ to the cross.
Tells us that there is nothing, nothing at all in our lives
that can carry us beyond the grace of God.
Nothing in our lives that God cannot, will not, redeem.
We would know nothing of all this without the record
of God’s relationship with his people found in the Bible.
The inspired record of many different writers, each struggling
with the circumstances of their lives – both personal and political!
Wrestling both alone and together in deep prayer
to discern the meaning of the events which enveloped them.
Sometimes angry with God. Or God angry with them.
Sometimes limited in understanding, getting it wrong even.
Then the Psalms cry out our anguish – and assure us God is near.
Subtle and elegant stories ask questions, point to new horizons.
Then there are texts which contradict each other. Texts we disagree with.
And the wisdom of the wise to be passed from generation to generation.
And last but far from least, in the scrolls of those thirty-nine books
of the Hebrew Bible, profound celebration of life – and love.
Followed in our Bible by a working out in the Christian Testament,
what these themes mean in practice: those beautiful words
from the Letter to the Colossians Helen has just read for us:
clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility. with love …
And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.
Today we give thanks for this ancient text which will never cease
to inspire, annoy and delight us. Transform our thinking and our lives.
We will never run out of new understanding to be found within its pages!
And this includes theologians!
Remembering always that it is not the book that we follow,
rather the man, the God, revealed in its pages,
in such new ways of thinking!
Our gospel this morning from Matthew speaks to Jesus’ followers
in their new and devastating situation
of the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70.
Speaks words of consolation and encouragement
for those who had escaped:
the tribes shall cease from their mayhem and warfare –
when the Son of Man appears in heaven.
The leaves on the figtree, harbinger of hope, of fruitfulness to come.
Hold onto this hope, Jesus tells Matthew’s Church,
for my words will not pass away!
Those words of God’s merciful forgiveness and love,
the call to forgive and love one another.
Jesus’ assertion that the last shall be first, and the first last,
have indeed transformed the world.
Today we face again, profound tragedy in God’s Holy Land.
That extreme fear and hunger which drives men and women
to commit the cruellist atrocity.
To refuse the justice God calls us each to pursue.
For through the prophet Isaiah God declares:
“My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher
than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts….” Isaiah 55.8 and 9
Beyond the restraining of evil, revealed in the biblical text,
the Justice of God which protects the powerless – without retribution.
The Justice which can only be justice
when it is laced through to its core with mercy.
Mercy informed by understanding. For all parties involved.
The Justice which can only be justice
when it is laced through with compassion.
The Justice which can only be justice
when we hold in our hearts for each other,
the grace God holds out to each one of us.
The Hebrew Bible, foundation text for the Christian Testament,
and both foundational texts behind the Koran and quoted within it.
These texts of the prophet Isaiah deep in the heart of the man Jesus
who went on to expound them thus
in his Sermon on the Mount: Mt 5.43-47
‘You have heard that it was said,
“You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.”
But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven;
for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good,
and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.
For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?
Do not even the tax-collectors do the same?
And if you greet only your brothers and sisters,
what more are you doing than others?
Sean, it is this demanding faith into which you are to be now baptised.
I promise you, it is worth the challenge! Amen.