Readings: Wisdom 3. 1-9, Psalm: 24. 1-6, Revelation 21. 1-6a, John 11. 32-44
One of the more curious stories about St Francis of Assisi concerns his habit of rescuing scraps of paper in the street. He did so because he was concerned that they might have come from a bible or contain words used in the Bible. He knew his scriptures well – the rule he eventually wrote for his followers is made up of a wide range of texts from Scripture. He was one of the many, many saints whose lives were dedicated to trying to live the gospel for his or her time; and to live the gospel you have to know the gospel. You have to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest all scripture as the collect for last Sunday said. You have to let the word of God dwell in you richly as we heard at evensong last Sunday. It is not inappropriate that the last Sunday before the feast of All Saints is otherwise called Bible Sunday.
‘Write this for these words are trustworthy and true.’ So God speaks to the author of the book of Revelation, but at this point in the book these words seem a little odd. They are followed by God also saying ‘It is done.’ His instruction to write is not the introduction to a piece of dictation; it is rather retrospective; you have seen and heard all this, now write it down. And we might imagine in the space between the two sentences John does so. And yet it might seem to the reader it would have been better to have had these words of God at the beginning. If they were at the beginning of the text, the author would be saying to us; what you are about to hear is ratified by God, he told me to write it. But that is not the way the revelation of God works. First and foremost comes the human experience of God as felt by all those who authored Scripture; the experiences and observations, the words and thoughts coming and going in their minds and imaginations, which were then shared with others through the spoken word and the written page. And reading these pages we ponder their meaning and try to apply it to our own situation. And then at the end we are invited to believe that all that we have heard is indeed ‘trustworthy and true.’
It is all too easy to doubt that, however. A recent survey says that 40% of young people believe Jesus was a myth. And perhaps when we read scripture we are often inclined to agree with Mark Twain when he said, ‘Most people are bothered by those passages in scripture which they cannot understand; but as for me, I always noticed that the passages in Scripture which trouble me most are those that I do understand.’
These words are trustworthy and true; in what sense trustworthy, in what sense true? We live in a culture which in one way or another has done us a lot of harm. We live in a culture which has been sold the myth that scientific materialism and its understanding of what is true and reasonable is the only way to look at the world. Of course scientific method has been extraordinarily successful, but it is disastrously diminishing of human life if we take it as the whole truth.
There are people in laboratories trying to prove that everything they think and do and feel and imagine is materially generated. Now it may be all right to know that what I felt like for breakfast was a result of the chemistry and electrical activity and genes and whatever in my brain; but it is it really helpful to my growth as a human being to know that my response to Beethoven, or Tintoretto, or the life story of a saint or the thought of a great philosopher, or the needs of someone dying is produced in exactly the same way? The idea that there can be a comprehensive foundation to all thought and experience in a materially based universal rationality is as much a myth as Father Christmas.
These words are trustworthy and true; in what sense trustworthy, in what sense true? Well we will probably always go on wanting to know what may be historically true about the Bible and in some areas we can be more certain than others. We will also go on being perhaps a little suspicious of some stories; whose power is best served by this story and the way in which it is told? That can be a healthy Christian question as much now in our society, as it can be in reading some parts of the Bible. But there are far more important ways to approach the truth and trustworthiness of scripture. Does the pondering of this text make for a holy life? Do these words have it in them to produce saints? The men and women of the past may have read and believed their scriptures in very different ways to our reading and yet, many of them lived lives which we would recognise as saintly.
We will of course have our own view about saintliness. Each age produces its own kind of saints just as each age produces its own kind of celebrities. St Francis was very unlike Cardinal Newman. And each age can discover things about the saints which might shock them. Indeed we can discover things which shock us about people whom we have taken to be saintly in our own lifetimes. And so even though there were some great saints who spent part of their lives on top of pillars it’s important not to put the saints on pedestals. It is wrong to imagine the saints don’t have to struggle with all the things you don’t like struggling with. The saints have tempers and sexual urges and material desires just as much as anyone else. Saintly people know they are sinners and wrestle with their sinfulness, and their saintliness emerges like a glorious accident, though it is not accidental to God. And their reading of scripture keeps them wrestling.
Does the church of our day manifest enough gloriously accidental saintliness? I’m not sure but if we would like there to be more perhaps we should all be doing more creative Bible reading – allowing the word of God to dwell in us richly. That’s why this Advent I’m hoping we can start a congregational wide pattern of Bible reading – but more of that anon.