In his final service with us, Canon Colin Williams discusses books, the Bible as a collection of books, and the importance of reflection on what the scriptures teach us.
If you would like to listen to Canon Colin’s sermon please click the following link: (Please note the text may differ slightly from time to time).
Planes are on my mind at the moment. Because after today, I’m being traded in for a new model. Tomorrow, I fly back to Manchester. I flew here and I’ll fly back on Jet2. How much hold luggage allowance is locked in my brain? How much?
Yes, that’s right. Fairly generous allowance compared with others. But for me coming here for 8 weeks it was potentially a bit of a problem. Not because of
limits to the clothing I can bring – because here I have had ready access to a washing machine so I didn’t need to bring too many clothes with me. I could just keep on washing what I needed. Not because of cosmetic or cleaning materials – because I knew that I could buy all that I needed her. Not because of finding room for a hair dryer – not a problem for me.
No for me here for 8 weeks the problem was books. Now had I known that Holy Trinity is in possession of an extensive library then it wouldn’t have seemed so much a problem. But knowing that I would be here for 8 weeks I needed to be sure that I had enough reading material here with me. And if I’d loaded 8 weeks worth of reading into my suitcase then that would have taken up a considerable proportion of my 22kg allowance.
Well, in fact, the solution was at hand. Here it is. I got out my Kindle – and loaded it up with enough reading material to last me probably 8 months not just 8 weeks. I’ve been using Kindles for quite a few years. And if I look back in what’s there online then I find a huge variety of material – books about the English Civil War, a big book about the early years of the Beatles, a book by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, that was a great help to me as I prepared to preach at Easter a few years ago, lots and lots of novels of various shapes and sizes and subjects, a couple of them in the German language – the list goes on and on. My Kindle is a rag bag of
written material of various sizes and subject matter and styles – all gathered together on the same hard disc and material.
Given that today is Bible Sunday, you may have already begun to guess where this is heading.
We speak of the Bible as one book – it all exists under one cover. But in reality, it is a collection of written material written over a period of 700 years or so.
Rather like my Kindle, there is a whole variety of material. Books that purport to be historical accounts. A major book of poetry. A collection of letters. A travel account for the apostle Paul. Books of laws and regulations. And supreme among them of course the Gospels which enable us to have an insight into the life and teaching and victory over death of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Throughout the history of the Church, there have been battles over what material the Bible should contain. In the early days of the Church, there was a vast array of material that lay claim to be seen as canonical. It took the Church at least a few centuries to come to some sort of basic mind as to what should be the definitive texts to be included in the definitive Bible.
But still, the arguments went on. As late as the 16th century, the great Reformer Martin Luther was arguing that the letter of St. James which quite often we hear readings from on a Sunday morning should lose its place within the Bible. And there is a whole collection of books called the Apocrypha which in the Roman Catholic way of doing things is seen as an acceptable supplement to the actual Bible, with readings commonly used in worship – but which in non-Roman Catholic churches such as ourselves is looked at more skeptically.
So what are we to make of it all? Perhaps Paul put it best in what he wrote to his friend Timothy. “From childhood, you have known the sacred writings that
are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness”. And a few decades after Paul had written those words to Timothy, St. John in writing his Gospel, recorded Jesus saying words which complemented what Paul had written to Timothy “You search the scriptures because you believe that in it you have eternal life, and it is they that testify on my behalf.”
The scriptures are important to us because they remind us that as members of the family of Christ, we are a people with a back story. We do not exist in a
vacuum. In the pages of the Bible, we discover that those who went before us went through all that we go through. But they felt so strongly that in their lives
and experiences, God was at work
And they deliberately recorded it so that there could be an explicit recording that, in all that they and the community and nation of which they were a part went through, God, God was somehow present, God was somehow at work.
And so we discover in the earlier pages of the Bible that his people discovered in their own lives and in their own history, that if they had eyes to see him and ears to listen to him then God was at work, leading them, guiding them, consoling them, inspiring them. And We discover in the words of the Psalms that individuals on whom life weighed heavily commonly discerned God strengthening and supporting them at the darkest moments of their lives: If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me and the light around me become night, even the darkness is not dark to you I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up from the desolate pit out of the miry bog and set my feet upon a rock making my steps secure.
And of course, supremely in the Gospels, we discover that in Jesus Christ there is victory over sin and death and from all that assails us. The Gospels, are a great gift to us so that we can discover that in Jesus Christ day after day new starts and new hope and healing and holiness are ours to take hold of. Jesus reassures us that he has come so that we might have life and life in all its fullness.
So the Bible is a great gift to us from our ancestors in the faith enabling us to discover again and again that life lived with God and life lived in His Son Jesus Christ is life worth living indeed, life which is indeed life which is fuller and richer than anything which we can achieve through our own striving. But still, there is so much of it. How can we begin to come to terms with engaging with our Bibles again and again.
Well, I commend to you the words of Thomas Cranmer, the first person to be Archbishop of Canterbury within the Church of England after the moment almost 500 years ago when the Church of England separated itself from the Church of Rome.
One of his great achievements was to compose the first version of the Book of Common Prayer, a collection of services for the newly independent Church of England. 500 years on, a lot of the prayers which he wrote then have survived to find their way into our modern collection of material for worship.
Among them is the prayer which is provided for us as our Collect in our worship on this Bible Sunday, in which we are called to read, learn, and inwardly digest all that we find in the Holy Scripture. An encouragement to us to let the words of Scripture come alive in our minds and hearts. To read from the Bible regularly as part of our regular routine.
Given that all who come here are given a printed version of what is read in church, not just giving the sheet away at the end of the service, taking the sheet home with us. Reading from it daily throughout the week following. Reflecting on what we read there. Reading it. Marking it. Asking ourselves what it has to say in our lives. And more than that – inwardly digesting it. Staying with particular words and particular phrases. Letting them come to dwell deep within us. The words in the Psalms lend themselves especially to that sort of inward digestion. So from this week’s Psalm maybe especially for example :
The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul, or ‘the commandment of the Lord is pure and gives light to the eyes’. Repeating them in our minds and hearts so that they can become part of us and we can call them back when we need their support in future times.
So give thanks today for our Bibles. Let them be living documents, documents that can open the door for us to the things of heaven, to the richness of life
which is ours to claim in Christ Jesus.
Amen
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