Bible Sunday

 

Bible Sunday 2021

 

Isaiah 55.1-11, John 5.36b-47

 

When my children were at primary school, there was one part of the curriculum which always struck me as particularly humane. “What did you do at school today?” I would ask. Often the answer was “nothing”, of course, but sometimes they would say “oh, we had ERIC today”.

ERIC – who was Eric? Some new teacher? It took me ages to discover that it stood for “Everyone Reading In Class”. It was basically a session where each child got out a book and read silently to themselves. Frankly it would have been my idea of heaven, and I think my children felt the same way.

 

Today is Bible Sunday, and there’s a bit of me that wonders whether, rather than me blathering on, I shouldn’t just declare this to be an ERIC day – Everyone Reading In Church (whether you are in the Church building or sharing in Church online through the podcast). I wonder whether I should tell you to open a Bible and just sit and read it for 10 minutes or so. It would be a lot less work than writing a sermon.

 

But the problem with ERIC is that though it might be my idea of heaven, it’s might be your idea of hell. I know it was for some children, especially those who struggled with reading, or just didn’t like sitting still. And if reading a story book is a challenge, then reading the Bible can feel like a much greater one. It’s not the same as getting lost in a page-turning whodunnit or a romance. It isn’t one book, for a start. It’s a whole library of different sorts of books, written over many hundreds of years by many different people, covering many different genres – history, poetry, prophecy, myth, proverbs, letters. Some of them are far more difficult to get our heads around than others. It was produced in cultures very different from our own by people with different assumptions and agendas. Sometimes it is quite baffling, and brutal. And it doesn’t help that often we just hear little snippets of it in church, without any context. How can we even begin to make sense of it?

 

Another barrier to reading the Bible can be the worry that we might not understand it correctly. After all, it’s holy writ, the word of God, somehow different and sacred, we think. What if we get it wrong? Perhaps we’d better leave it to the experts, just in case.

 

We might worry too, that people will think we’ve turned into religious extremists – Bible bashers – that we’ve surrendered our critical faculties to some Bronze Age mumbo jumbo.

 

As someone who’s had a lifelong love of the Bible, I’m passionate about helping people to get beyond those worries, though. I’m no fundamentalist or Biblical literalist, but I’ve found time and time again that God speaks to me through these ancient words, not necessarily because those who wrote them had a hotline to God, but because they were willing to struggle honestly with their experiences, with themselves, and with God too sometimes. I may not always come to the same conclusions they did, but their stories help me to see my own story more clearly, and so be aware of God’s Holy Spirit at work here and now. Of course, the Bible can be misused, and misunderstood, but the answer to that isn’t to keep it firmly closed and locked away, but to open it up and dive in, letting it become our book, our territory, our pathway into the heart of God.

 

Here at Seal, as well as in Sunday worship and in the private, individual Bible reading we do, we chew over the Bible together in our monthly Good Book Club - a Bible discussion group I run on the first Wednesday morning of each month, and in our Zoom Church sessions, and in home groups - let me know if you’d like to be part of one, or start a new one with some friends. In these groups we aren’t looking to find the “right” answers from an expert. Everyone brings their own insights, and they’re all valuable. Often it’s the questions we ask rather than the answers we give that open up the Bible most effectively, the doubts rather than the faith. It genuinely doesn’t matter whether you are an old hand or coming to it brand new. Some of the most profound insights I’ve had into the Bible have come to me from children; their reactions make me see stories that I am over-familiar with in a completely new way.

It’s when God’s story and our stories intertwine that we really start to hear what we need to hear, as God’s word becomes flesh in us, together.

 

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus makes that point to the religious experts who come to him. It’s all very well reading the ancient words of Moses in their sacred scrolls, but if they can’t recognise the Word of God in flesh and blood, standing in front of them, living out the love that the ancient scriptures call them to, then they haven’t understood what they’re reading, he tells them. If what we read doesn’t lead us to become more loving, more whole, and bring wholeness to others too, then we’re missing the point.

 

So how do we get started, and how do we make sure that we’re reading the Bible in a way that is life-giving, for us and for others?

 

I read a very helpful book earlier this week – I’ll put it at the back of church after this morning’s service. It’s called “How to eat bread”, but don’t worry; I’m not about to give up the day job and go into catering. The bread it refers to is the spiritual food we get from the scriptures. The subtitle is  “21 nourishing ways to read the Bible”. For the author, Miranda Threlfall-Holmes, the Bible is like bread, something essential, a staple food, but it’s endlessly versatile too. Bread comes in many forms; brown , white , wholemeal, granary, French, flatbread, naan, rye… the list goes on and on. And there’s so much you can do with it. You can mop up your gravy with it, toast it, make sandwiches with it… You can even spread Marmite on it, though I can’t imagine why you’d want to… And if it goes stale, well, there’s bread and butter pudding. You get the point.

 

Reading the Bible can be done in just as many ways. Some of those ways are academic, and maybe a bit specialised; reading it in the original languages, investigating its historical and geographical context, pulling it apart and analysing it. Those things are important. We need that sort of scholarship and attention to detail.  But we can also use our imagination to read the Bible, whoever we are. We can imagine we are part of the stories it tells. We can play with it, act it out, mull over individual words and phrases that strike us in it, draw it, paint it, embroider it. We can notice who speaks and who is silent, who’s included and who’s left out of the stories we read. We can look at it from the perspective of people very different from us, too, and be enlightened by that.

 

Miranda Threlfall-Holmes tells the story of a Biblical scholar, Mark Allen Powell, who read Jesus’ well-known parable of the Prodigal Son to three different groups, one in America, one in Russia and one in Tanzania. He asked them all the same question. Why did the prodigal son end up so poor and so desperate, longing to eat the food he was feeding to the pigs? The Americans said that it was because he’d wasted his money; it was his fault. The Russians said that it was because there was a famine in the land; he couldn’t have done anything about it. The Tanzanians said that it was because no one in his new land, where he was a stranger, offered him hospitality or help. The same story; three radically different interpretations, reflecting the backgrounds, the experiences and the unconscious biases of the hearers. Each view was valid, but very revealing, and brought the story to life in a new way.

 

So, on this Bible Sunday, as on every other day of the year, even though I haven’t declared this to be an ERIC day, I hope we’ll find time to open the book, so that we do have “Everyone Reading in Church,” or at home, or on the train, or anywhere else you happen to be, and that we’ll have the confidence to bring ourselves to it, just as we are. If you’d like help in getting started, there’s plenty of it around. The leaflet I’ve given you today has ideas and resources in it. There are more at the back of church and in this week’s newsletter. And there are the home groups and other activities I mentioned earlier too. However we do it, I hope that we’ll continue to open the book, open our minds, open our ears, and open our hearts to the God who still longs to speak to us.  Amen  

...and again...Trinity 20

 

Trinity 20 2021

 

Two of Jesus’ closest disciples, James and John, come to him asking to sit on thrones on his right and his left when he comes into his kingdom, to be his right- and left-hand men. Jesus tells them that it’s not about thrones; it’s about serving others…

 

If you’ve been following the Gospel readings over recent weeks, all taken from chapters 9 and 10 of Mark’s Gospel, you may have noticed a certain sameness about the messages they’ve contained. They’ve all been stories about greatness and littleness, pride and humility, as Jesus has told his followers time and time again that it’s the “little ones” who are first in the queue in God’s eyes, whether those “little ones” are children or anyone else who is vulnerable and looked down on by the world; but time after time it goes in one ear and out of the other for the disciples.

 

If it all starts to feel a bit repetitive, I think that’s the point. Mark means us to notice the repetition. When will the disciples get it? When will they finally understand? They seem completely unable to imagine a world other than the one they live in, where might is right, and the strong always end up on top.

 

To make it worse, in these chapters Jesus tells them no fewer than three times that he is heading for arrest and crucifixion. He makes it very clear that their fantasies of power and glory are not going to materialise. But the more often he tells them, the more elaborate and entrenched those fantasies become. That’s probably no coincidence. Arguing about who gets the best seats is a great way of taking their mind off the thought of crosses and suffering.  

 

It would be quite understandable if Jesus had washed his hands of them completely at this point, but he doesn’t, and he won’t. Patiently, he explains it all over again. God isn’t playing power games, like the Roman Empire or King Herod. He isn’t planning to replace one set of tyrannical rulers with another. They won’t start really to understand how different God’s view of the world is until after the crucifixion and the resurrection, though, as they try to work out what those events meant.

 

Jesus’ execution should have been the final blow to any idea they might have had that he could be God’s chosen one. It very nearly was. The disciples were terrified and downcast when it happened. They just wanted to slink back to their old lives and forget about it all. But then Jesus rose again, and they started to see that the upside down world he’d been preaching about really was of God. On the cross, Jesus had become one of those humiliated “little ones” himself, helpless and vulnerable, and yet, through his resurrection, God declared that he’d been at work in this brokenness and disgrace. Those who’d condemned him to death, who abused him or colluded with his abuse, treated Jesus as less than nothing, rubbish to be discarded, but in God’s eyes he was everything, the one who opened the gateway to new life for us all.

 

These repeated stories of the disciples’ bumpy road to understanding were vital to Mark’s telling of the story because he knew the people he was writing for needed to hear them. Mark’s Gospel was written a few decades after the events they describe, for an early Christian community which was struggling to live out Jesus’ message in a world full of challenges. Sometimes they got it right; sometimes they got it wrong. It was important for them to know that those first disciples had been just as flawed, but that Jesus had stuck with them anyway.

 

We’re no different. We hurt one another, throw our weight around, collude with the power-hungry world around us. But God sticks with us and still wants to work through us anyway, calling us patiently, repeatedly, to learn and change, to find that resurrection life which transforms us and spills over to those around us. And just as he did with those first disciples, he sticks with us until we get it – probably not perfectly this side of heaven, but at least in part. And as he walks beside us on that bumpy road to growth, Jesus himself shows us how those changes can start to happen.

 

Today’s reading from the letter to the Hebrews isn’t easy to understand,. There are a lot of rabbit holes we could disappear down – who is Melchizedek? What are these Temple rituals the author writes about? But there isn’t really time for that, and I’m not sure you’d thank me for wandering down those byways either. 

 

There’s one verse which it is worth us spending some time on today, though, in the light of today’s Gospel passage. “Although Jesus was a Son,” says the writer of the letter, “he learned obedience through what he suffered; and having been made perfect he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.”

 

Please note, before I go any further with this, that it doesn’t say “God sent Jesus suffering to teach him a lesson…” God does not send us suffering to teach us things. If he did, he would be a monster. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t learn things from the troubles that come our way, just as we can learn from the good things. It doesn’t mean we can’t find gifts within them which we might not have found any other way. We can learn from anything – good or bad – and that is what we are called to do.

 

How do we do that? Hebrews tells us that obedience is the key. “Jesus learned obedience through what he suffered.” That might sound a bit grim. Obedience, to us, often implies mindlessly following orders, doing what you’re told without asking why or answering back. Obedience is what you teach dogs, so they will come when you whistle. We are rightly wary of expecting it from humans, though. But this isn’t really what the Greek word translated obedience here means.  

 

The word is “hupakuo” . “Akuo” means to listen or to hear – we get the word acoustic from it. The “hup” at the beginning of the word means under or beneath. It intensifies the idea. It’s about really listening or hearing. We know what it feels like when someone’s really listening to us. When someone really listens, they take time to receive and ponder what we’re saying, getting under the skin of our words to find out what’s beneath the surface. We probably also know what it feels like when we’re not being listened to, when the listener is full of their own agenda, just using the time to think up their own clever response. They are never going to be affected or changed by what they hear – and maybe they prefer it that way. The good listener, though, knows that what they hear might knock them off course completely, that they might learn something they don’t know.

 

Listening well isn’t just something we need to do to other people, though. We also need to listen to ourselves well, and to the situations around us, not instantly labelling feelings or circumstances good or bad, but looking out for the gifts in them, believing that we might find God at work in them, however unlikely that might look.

 

What happens to that verse from Hebrews, if we substitute “listen well” for the word “obedience”. Let’s try it. “Although Jesus was a Son, he learned to listen well through what he suffered and became the source of eternal salvation for all who listen well to him.” It feels quite different, doesn’t it?

 

In our Gospel reading, and all the others we’ve heard in recent weeks, we meet disciples who were struggling to learn to listen well. They had to learn to listen well to Jesus, to listen well to the things that happened to him, to listen well to themselves and to their own reactions. They had to learn to listen well to the painful things as well as the joyful ones, to listen well for the still, small voice of God in littleness and brokenness and failure, rather than just paying attention to the trumpet calls of worldly power and success. Mark tells us how they got it wrong again and again, until we are fed up with it, because he knew that his community, and those who would come after them – that’s us – would get it wrong just as often. But the good news is that Jesus doesn’t give up on us, any more than he did on them.

 

May we listen well today, to our own hearts, to one another, to all that happens to us and around us, and to God, who faithfully sticks with us, listening well to us, throughout it all.

Amen

Relationships

 

Mark 10.2-16, Genesis 2.18-24

They are great these sort of questions aren’t they, the type that you might expect to hear in parliament or the courtroom. The person asking already knows what reply they are hoping for and in this case it was intended to trap Jesus and catch him out.

‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?’

The question about marriage has been carefully composed, if he gives the answer that the Pharisees are hoping for he’ll be in serious trouble with the religious institutions.

As a preacher it would be nice to ignore awkward subjects like divorce and just focus on Jesus telling the disciples off for keeping little children from him.

Yet it’s a subject that has grown in prominence since the Pandemic with divorce rates soaring as couples were confined to each other’s company for unnaturally long periods of time in lockdown and in many cases prevented from returning to their places of work even when they wanted to, due to concerns around spreading the virus.

We probably all know people who are going through divorce, have been divorced or are contemplating divorce and know that it can range from a bitter and painful process to an inevitable failure where surprisingly often the couple get along much better just being friends once they get out from being under each others feet on a daily basis.

Our personal experience of divorce will inevitably affect how we hear and react to this reading and what we may think of the preacher’s comments. Human love for others remains a mysterious concept that can’t be pinned down, sometimes it will last a lifetime and sometimes it struggles to endure.

It’s really not something I feel comfortable or particularly qualified to talk publicly about but then Jesus is good at putting us in the position where we have to wrestle with something to which there are no neat answers, and where there may even be the potential to upset people . As we consider his own comments we might feel that this is something he could also be accused of.

In this case the pharisees are trying to get Jesus into the sort of trouble that John the Baptist had with king Herod who needed his wife to divorce before he could marry her. They weren’t really interested in his wisdom and guidance on the subject at all they just wanted to see whether he would also lose his head over this, in every sense of the phrase.

Out in the open with the crowd Jesus refers the pharisees back to Moses to answer their question, it seems that Moses allows for divorce if necessary. Then he quotes Genesis and explains how the wonderful possibility that two people can come together as one, is a gift from God. He’s clearly careful about what he says in public. He shifts the focus from legalities to encouraging thought about what marriage is supposed to be according to God.

Back in the relative safety of the house he seems harsher, perhaps he feels safe aiming his comments at Herod among those he trusts. No doubt his words about divorce and adultery have been quoted and misused over time to control a partner seeking divorce or to humiliate them when they do so, surely this can never have been Jesus’ intention. We are certain that he could never wish people loved by God to be trapped in abusive, dangerous or unhealthy relationships. Perhaps there is a sad acknowledgement that the Israelites in Moses day struggled to achieve their potential in Gods eyes just as generations have done ever since.

There’s certainly no place for those with long marriages to be smug. Every marriage is imperfect and many seriously malfunction and fail to live up to God’s ideal even when they endure. At their worst some are a microcosm for much that is wrong in our world. We also recognise that many who never formally marry can also have loving, stable and valuable relationships.

It’s really not straightforward at all is it. I heard of one couple which argued so much that they made each other’s life a misery, finally the man told his wife to pack her bags and go. As she was leaving he shouted down the driveway ‘I hope that you suffer for the rest of your life’. The woman turned around confused and said ‘ so you want me to stay now’?

Joking aside we can be confident that Jesus wants us all to look beyond an arrangement that simply complies with the law to something much deeper.  Perhaps he speaks in a harsher tone to his disciples as they know that his is a message of love and forgiveness despite our shortcomings, that he understands mankind’s many weaknesses and that perfection is not achievable this side of God’s kingdom.

Jesus would have been acutely aware of the imbalance of power in first century marriage and we need to guard against seeing what he said through 21^st century eyes.

In more recent times many view marriage in terms of legal rights that are created and financial entitlements. One accountant of a certain age even used to encourage his clients to get married at the start of a new financial year in order to maximise the tax benefits of doing so, an incentive long since dispensed with by HMRC ! Then there’s a whole industry in prenuptial agreements, ‘just in case’ you understand darling!

To hear Jesus’ words in context we need to remind ourselves that women were powerless in a marriage, sometimes caught in a legally binding contract with no rights whatsoever and facing absolute destitution should a man choose to divorce her. Unquestionably an incredibly unjust balance of power.

So the fact that Jesus talks of divorce for men and women in an equal way would have been shocking to many hearing his words. What on earth could he be advocating, surely not equality and protection for the vulnerable and powerless when relationships break down?

There’s another point in today’s readings which is really all about thriving alongside others.

Many will know from personal experience that when we lose someone we love we often appreciate more than ever what we have lost and it becomes apparent how much more complete we were with them around. When relationships do work out it’s clear how we often flourish and achieve much more than we can alone.

Genesis reminds us that God wants us to be in relationship with at least one other person we can rely upon and share with to the extent that we are not lonely. Not everyone will want another go at marriage or any form of partnership after a divorce or loss, not everyone will meet a life partner at all, but with real friends, family, people that care about them there’s still the opportunity for us to thrive as God intends.

In our Genesis reading God observes, “It’s not good that the man should be alone”.

So for this single human God creates “a helper as his partner.” Now a lot of men might automatically think well that’s really handy, someone to find his fig leaf when he can’t remember where he’s left it, pick fruit and light a fire maybe. Who knows, one day such a person might even evolve to load dishwashers and use vacuum cleaners!

But again equality is at the heart of God’s actions. In the Old Testament ‘a helper’ could be equal or even superior to the person they are helping. Numerous times God himself is described as a helper, particularly in the Psalms.

Psalm 54.4…But surely, God is my helper; the Lord is the upholder of my life.

I subscribe to the view that the fundamental question that needs to be considered today is, what does God think makes any relationship valuable?

It may be true that you don’t have to go to church to be a Christian but there is certainly a lot to be gained by being part of a church community whether in person or even online. There is more to be learned and achieved together when we are part of a community founded upon the love of God, also it’s a lot easier and more fun to move massive pews around the church together than to leave an individual to struggle alone.

There’s also an increased possibility that the couple, the friends, the group or community start looking beyond themselves. Together they are stronger as they support and care for each other, more interested in and able to look out for those who are not so fortunate. Surely these are exactly the relationships that have real value in God’s eyes and this where our focus should rest.

Amen

Kevin Bright

3^rd October 2021