The Last Sunday After Trinity Trinity

The Sermon for the 10.00am Eucharist at St Bene’t’s

on 29 October 2023, The Last Sunday after Trinity

The Reverend Dr James Gardom

It is Bible Sunday. For once I shall be speaking about the Bible rather than preaching from the Bible.

The bible is honoured within St Bene’t’s and is read frequently. In the evening the officiant reads, and very often takes up the themes of the reading in the prayers. At the daily communion there are two readings, and sometimes three, with a brief reflection on Tuesdays. In the Sunday services we have one or two readings from the Lectern, often very movingly read. The psalm is sung. The Gospel is acclaimed, and at 10am processed and proclaimed from the middle of the Church. So the Bible is honoured in the church, and its holiness is upheld.

I think we need to ask ourselves “How do we read the Bible”. At this moment we need to ask, “How do we read the Bible, while Israel grieves and fights, and while Gaza starves and burns”. Because The Psalms, the books of Dt and Joshua, of Chronicles and Kings are full of stories and prayers about violence and land, about strangers and neighbours, about exclusion and inclusion which should really disturb us Nor is it only Holy Land and the Old Testament that cause us difficulties. Our evening prayer readings this week have been from 1 Timothy, and I have listened to faithful and honoured members of this congregation reading out reflections on the place of women in Church, and in society, which neither they nor I believe, and which we know to have been powerfully used through the years for the oppression of women.

How do we read the Bible so that it can be Holy and life giving? It is important to realise that we are not the first people to face this question – it has been with Christians from the very beginning.

Our Gospel story is very specifically a couple of disputes between Jesus and his contemporaries about the meaning of the Hebrew Bible. The Epistle to the Hebrews, among other NT books, is a complex reflection about the relationship between the revelation in the Hebrew Bible and the new revelation in Christ. St John Chrysostom, the great Patristic preacher, wrote sermon after sermon in which he interpreted the Hebrew Bible through the lens of Christ, for his congregation in Constantinople in the late 4th Century. It is important also to realise that everyone who reads the bible brings to it an interpretative framework. Even those who believe that they are putting themselves under the authority of the Bible as God’s Word, infallibly transcribed and wholly without error, are in fact making decisions – prioritising, for example, the Gospel stories over the regulations of Leviticus and the lists in Number. Prioritising, very often, the social conservatism of I&II Timothy over the radicalism of Luke or the subversiveness of James. And yet, within all this, it is crucial, even as we find we have to make a choice about how to understand the Bible, that we nevertheless put ourselves under its authority. It is the Holy book – filled with a wisdom not our own, and we must listen and learn.

So, how do we read the Bible in these dark and difficult times? Some suggestions.

We need to read with Christ. Chrysostom is right, that we must read them in the light of Christ. The Hebrew scriptures, our OT, were known to Jesus, and his understanding of them, his choice and prioritisation, are authoritative for us. The drive for inclusion, The focus on love and sacrifice, the prioritisation of the poor and the marginal, the conquest of sin and death – these are where we start, whether we are reading Dt or Ruth or Jonah or Timothy or Revelation.

Secondly, We need to read with context. A verse only makes sense in the context of its paragraph, a paragraph only makes sense in the context of its chapter, and a chapter only makes sense in the context of its book. Most of the Epistle to the Romans, for example, is incomprehensible if you are unaware of the community to which Paul is writing, and the complexities of his relationship to it.

Thirdly, This means, for us,  that we need to read with commentaries. I would feel uncomfortable about saying this to almost any other congregation, but I think I can say to it to St Bene’t’s – for this is for us a matter as serious as any other in our lives, and we need to come to it as adults, with all the intelligence and responsibility that we can muster, and not as infants, in the hope that someone will simply provide and we simply consume.

Reading with Christ, reading with context, reading with commentaries will ground our reading of the Bible within a great tradition, and will introduce us to voices that are present in the Bible but which only become apparent when we listen to them attentively. The voices of those who first thought to collect and write down the stories and the songs, the prophecies and the laws. The voices of those who collected them, often as a response to disaster. The voices of those who through the ages repeated them, copied them from worn out scrolls onto fresh parchment, who prayed them and taught them. The voices of those who down the ages have thought about and preached from them.

And, For me the holiness of the Bible is the holiness of these voices. I recognise in them the same love of God that I recognise in my fellow Christians in St Bene’t’s. The same love I found in those who have taught me the faith, and in those who have inspired me. It is their Love and their relationship with God that I am listening to, as much as anything else.

So, for example, I find that the author of Timothy is filled with the Love of God and with a deep concern for his young friend Timothy, and for the new ministry Timothy is taking up. The love is holy and authoritative for me. The understanding of the place of women is not. In grieving, and reading the bible, and listening to the news with dread, I find that many of the OT authors are reflecting from exile on the collapse of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and seeking to understand how God’s faithfulness is shown when all around him experience this as the defeat of Yahweh. That longing and commitment is holy and authoritative for me. The permanent sacred geography of the Promised land in Dt. is not.  As people who have walked alongside Christ in his last days each Lent, we may find ourselves reluctant to offer our support and to join our hearts in anger with those on either side who sustain their power by organising the killing of the innocent, by stoking anger.

And within this there is the mystery of the holiness and power of the Bible. For me this is a practical empirical matter. I preach from the bible week by week, and the lectionary means that I do not choose the passages that I use. The interaction with the scriptures, the attempt to let them speak, repeatedly requires and enables me to say things I would never dare to say on my own authority.

For many of us this is also a matter of our own experience. The spirit speaks to us through our bible reading and in our bible reading groups, and challenges us in ways we did not expect and cannot control. But the bible speaks to us in ways that are appropriate to us – and here as educated and literate adults, as Christians and people of conscience, it requires not less than our full attention and engagement to perceive how we, in our time, can be faithful to the voice of God.

Read with care, Read with Love and with Christ, Read with intelligence and with help, read with friends, with the Church, Read and the Bible will be for you Holy and lifegiving.

Thanks be to God for the gift of His Holy Word.