First preached as a sermon at Croydon Minster at Choral Evensong, Fourth Sunday of Easter.
‘Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures…’
(Luke 24.45)
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If the
church is to have a future it has to open up. As I suggested at Easter, a
church community that is locked in and introspective is doomed, whereas a church
that unbolts and opens up has the chance to become, in Christ’s words at the
end of the second lesson, ‘witnesses of these things [ the things about Jesus
Christ]… and to be clothed with power’ (Luke
24.48, 49)
A refrain
running through the gospels is about opening up.
At
Jesus’ baptism the heavens were opened.
He
opened the ears of the deaf (Mark 7.34)
and the eyes of the blind (John 9.1-12
passim).
At his
resurrection the tomb was both empty and open.
After
his resurrection he opens up minds. From our second lesson, again, ‘Then he
opened their minds to understand the scriptures…’ and on the Road to Emmaus it
was after Jesus has opened up the scriptures to two bewildered disciples that
we read, ‘then their eyes were opened…’ (Luke
24.31)
‘Then
he opened their minds to the scriptures…’ One of my great sadnesses is that
much of the treasure of the church has remained locked up. I don’t mean
glittering, gilt chalices or mediaeval manuscripts, I mean the gift of the Word
of God, witnessed to in the scriptures.
This
was a treasure the early Bible translators wanted to open up to people in all
languages. St Jerome for example translated scripture from the Hebrew and Greek
into the, then, universal language of Latin. Even before the Reformation
translations were being made in the vernacular, the common tongue by the likes
of John Wycliffe in the fourteenth century, and then in the sixteenth century
by William Tyndale. Later Bible translation has opened up this treasure in
almost every written language.
The
challenge for us today is how we understand and handle the scriptures and open
up the treasures of the gospel to our contemporary world.
The
Bible is available but what does it mean for people?
As has
been widely suggested, we live in ‘a disenchanted age’.[1]
In such an age it is often assumed that someone who has a holy text or sacred
scripture is either delusional – “how can they believe all that ancient rubbish
from a superstitious era?” - stupid – “what’s all that rubbish about angels,
creation etc?” - or dangerous – “their
books tell them to stone adulterers and gay people”.
Where
does one start with that?
One of
the most helpful books I have read in a long time is by the theologian Walter
Moberly. It’s called The Bible in a
Disenchanted Age: The Enduring Possibility of Christian Faith.
Moberly
has made the study of the scriptures his lifetime passion and helps us to
interrogate what scripture really is.
Why does
anyone bother to read scripture? Why do people who have never read it feel free
to opine about it? Why do we read it in church, actually at every act of
worship ever offered?
Some
see the Bible as good for historical knowledge, a classic text, albeit one
amongst many, and a key to understanding western civilisation, culture,
literature and art. That is a very western centred idea, of course, and also
begs the question why bother with the Bible any more than say, the Greek Myths
or the works of Shakespeare.
Others
see the Bible as a means to wisdom and the knowledge of God and that it is when
it is Scripture.
It is
not contradictory to hold both views: knowledge of the Bible does open up many
cultural avenues, as well as being a resource for faith, but as Moberly says
‘the distinction is real, since the Bible, approached as Scripture, is not only
a text in a class or perhaps an exhibit on display but belongs also in the life
of Christians as a fundamental resource for understanding the realities of God
and of life’.[2]
The
problems come when we detach scripture from a living tradition and human reason
and when we detach the Bible from the Living Word of God, Jesus Christ. It is
an enduring question about which came first the bible or the church, and which
carries greater authority, the Bible or the Church. It’s perhaps as futile as
asking whether the chicken preceded the egg or vice versa.
A
sixteenth century Vicar of Croydon, Rowland Philips, was being interrogated by
Archbishop Thomas Cranmer (probably just next door in the Old Palace) on just this question and was asked, ‘whether the
apostles preached to the gentiles that which the evangelists wrote?’ In other
words did the apostles, the early church, have a Bible from which they preached?
Philips answered that ‘the evangelists wrote what the apostles preached’.[3]
In other words, the proclamation preceded its writing down.
I hold
to Philips view. That said: it matters little which preceded which because what
matters is fidelity to Christ. The Bible never describes itself as the ‘Word of
God’ but it does describe Jesus Christ as the ‘Word of God’.
‘Then
he opened their minds to understand the scriptures…’
The proclamation of the Resurrection precedes the written text. All
scripture is to be read in the light of the Word of God, Jesus Christ, for
Christ, who in the power of the Holy Spirit, it is who opens up the words on
the page, such that they become the ‘lively oracles of God’ (cf Acts 7.37, 38).
May
God’s holy word be ‘a lantern unto our feet and a light unto our paths, (Psalm 119.105) and may it be ‘sweeter
than honey unto my mouth’ (Ps 119.103).
[1]
R W L Moberly The Bible in a Disenchanted
Age: The Enduring Possibility of Christian Faith.
[2]
Moberly, p. 172.
[3]
Peter Marshall, Heretics and Believers: A
History of the English Reformation. p. 257.
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