Sunday 25th October 2020 - Bible Sunday

Sermon for Bible Sunday – October 25^th, 2020

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

Or

And the spechis of my mouth schulen be, that tho plese; and the thenkynge of myn herte euere in thi siyt. Lord, myn helpere; and myn ayenbiere.

Those words are all from Psalm 19, verse 14, which I sometimes use as an opening prayer when preaching.

The second version is from the Wycliffe Bible, the first ever English Bible, written in 1384. Wycliffe translated his work from the Latin Vulgate Bible, written in the fourth century and accepted by the catholic church as the official version of the Latin Bible until 1979.

Our local Bible hero, William Tyndale, believed to have been born in Melksham Court in Stinchcombe, translated the Bible from the original Hebrew and Greek, not Latin, but didn’t actually translate the psalms.

And today, there are 450 versions of the Bible in English alone, and all major languages have translations, but the Bible isn’t available everywhere in every language, so Bible Sunday is an annual day, to help the Bible Society promote their work to bring the Bible to everyone who may want to read it.

It also gives us a chance to reflect on the importance and the meaning of the word of God.

If we ask ourselves, “what is the Bible,” we may get a variety of answers. An answer I like, is that the Bible points us towards God’s love, embodied in Jesus.

However, if we were to ask early Christians about the Bible they wouldn’t know what we were talking about, they would know about the Torah, the scriptures and scrolls which make up the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, which is the original Old Testament, which is also the all of comprised literature for the Jewish people, although there are differences in the order of books and which are included.

I’m afraid I occasionally tend to disappear down int a labyrinth of information with topics like this, for example, the word Bible, is from the Greek word biblia, meaning, book, so, the Bible, is, ‘the Book’, but the word Biblia, comes from the Roman name for the port town, Byblos, in modern day Palestine, which is known to be oldest occupied town in the world, since at least 5000 BC, and was the primary town for importing papyrus, for book making, into the Roman empire from Egypt.

Even in the first century, Scriptures and scrolls were read publicly all the time, but the Word of God was never restricted to just what was written on the page, the Word of God would also include, “the interpretation”. Which it does today, whenever the Bible is read in church, someone will do their best to interpret the text in a sermon. 

The New Testament as we know it was known as the Holy Scriptures and by the second century, the Old and New Testaments were combined and were both the Holy Scriptures of God.

The church continued to debate in councils which books should be included in the Bible and by the fourth century, the books included are more or less the same as today.

It was only in the 13^th century, that the Bible was divided into chapters and in the 16^th century verse numbers were also added and it wasn’t until later in the 16^th century that a decision was finally made on the New Testament contents.

This sort of background is useful, because it’s a healthy reminder that that the Bible wasn’t fixed in tablets of stone on day one.

It’s important to know that the Bible is a series of books and they were written by different people, for different reasons and to different audiences.

There are books of law, history, prophecy, myth, doctrine, poetry, parables, letters and more, and while the writers were human and were influenced by the world around them, they were also people of faith, inspired by God to document what they believed in.

So, the Bible is clearly not a list of rules to follow, and a literal reading of any of the text is fraught with difficulties, for example are shellfish and mixed-fibre clothes really no longer acceptable?

This is why the need for interpretation continues, the writers didn’t know what society would look like today, how could they?

God may know, but technology, culture and society have changed in the last two thousand years, how can we understand without some interpretation, without people studying and applying reason and tradition and faith to the written word of God, can we start to see how God and the Bible are relevant to today.

And since the printing press meant we could access the Bible in more languages, Biblical Scholarship, particularly from the 19^th century onwards has opened the pages of scripture even further, and new ancient texts have been discovered as well.

Our current Bible is sourced from hundreds if not thousands of different textual sources, words have been pored over for many years to bring fresh understanding to a text many had believed to be set in stone.

We don’t know who wrote the letter to the Hebrews in the New Testament, but they were probably right, when they wrote:

“the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

Bear in mind of course that even this was written before a word of the Gospels as we know them had been penned.

It is possible to study the Bible in a purely academic way, but that is not for us, neither is it simply a big book to wave to prove that we are better than our neighbour.

The Bible is a symbol of our faith, like the cross, but we need to be careful not to forget who God is.

We don’t worship the Bible, although almost all our worship contains words from scripture, it is merely part of the pathway to God, and an approach I like take, is how does the word of God, lead me to the love of God? What is the spirit saying to the church today?

The Bible is fundamental to faith, but even more so, is Jesus, God and the Holy Spirit, we worship God because God loves us, wants us to be reconciled to him, forgiven, redeemed and brought to eternal life in this kingdom and the next. The Bible points us towards God’s love.

Jesus commands us to love our neighbours as ourselves, and as St Paul says today in this beautiful passage from his letter to Colossae, ¹⁴Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

Jesus knew the Hebrew Bible intimately, he quoted from it often, which was important to ensure his followers knew that his God, was the same God they already knew.

The Bible and its words permeate through our culture, it is a text formulated and interpreted by countless believers in countless situations. It is amazing how the Bible does indeed become living and active.

The Bible points us to Jesus and to God and I commend it to you, over the years, I’ve read some of the Bible, but sometimes just the parts set for the day or for a Sunday, so about a month ago, I started one of those, read the Bible in a year plans, it let me choose a start date and I’m already a bit behind, but I’ll keep going because it feels like I’m getting to know not just God, but the countless believers before me who have also read the same words, my faith has been built on theirs.

We are led to the love of God, which the Bible continues to do today, it leads us to Jesus and to God’s love for all of humanity and creation.

So, on this Bible Sunday, let us give thanks for God’s word living and breathing through us for the text is nothing without the believer.

Amen.

Preached on Zoom for St George, Presided as well at St Cyr

Colossians 3: 12-17

12 As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. ¹³Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord^* has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. ¹⁴Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. ¹⁵And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body.

And be thankful. ¹⁶Let the word of Christ^* dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God.^* 17And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Matthew 24:30-35

³⁰Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see “the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven” with power and great glory. ³¹And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.

‘From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. ³³So also, when you see all these things, you know that he^* is near, at the very gates. ³⁴Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. ³⁵Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.