Word of God: Scripture fulfilled

Nehemiah 8.2-4a, 5-6, 8-10 ‘They read from the book of the Law, and gave the meaning.’

1 Corinthians 12.12-14,27 ‘You are the body of Christ and individually members of it.’

Luke 1.1-4; 4.14-21 ‘Today this Scripture has been fulfilled’

 

‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’

 

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Scripture is fulfilled; fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ.

 

Scripture, in the words of the letter to the Hebrews, is ‘living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword’. (Hebrews 4.12)

 

The fundamental conviction of the Church is that the Bible, our Holy Scripture, the Word of God, is central to the Christian life and to Christian worship: it is alive and active; feeding us, challenging us, inspiring us, guiding us on the way of holiness.

 

The Bible is the guarantee and witness that the living God binds your life and my life into the unfolding story of creation and covenant and redemption.

 

And Jesus says, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing’.

 

This tells us something really important about the logic of Biblical Christianity worth considering today.

 

In the synagogue in Nazareth, we are given a key, the key to unlocking the scriptures.

 

The key is Jesus Christ, the Anointed One of God, the one who declares, ‘Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’ (Luke 4.21)

 

He is the key and the fulfilment of scripture, he is the Living Word.

 

The Church reads scripture always in the light of the Crucified and Risen Lord.

 

We see that at Easter, when a great series of reading from the Old Testament is read: promises and pledges, good in themselves, yet waiting to be fulfilled for all humanity in Christ.

 

We see it in the story of the Ethiopian Eunuch in the Acts of the Apostles, St Luke’s second volume (Acts 8.26-40).

 

This is when an important official of the Queen of Ethiopia is on a journey reading a passage where Isaiah is talking about a servant who will suffer for the life of others (Acts 8.32-33).

 

The Ethiopian asks the Apostle St Philip, ‘who is the prophet talking about? Is it about him or about someone else?’ (Acts 8.34).

 

In response, ‘Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told [the Ethiopian man] the good news about Jesus’. (Acts 8.35 quoting Isaiah 53.7,8)

 

Philip has used the key!

 

Scripture opens up in relation to who Jesus Christ is.

 

Sadly, the Bible is seen by many today as either irrelevant to life, a remote document of the past or perhaps as a text to be dissected and analysed.

 

That is fine as far as it goes - great for a literature student and it can give some insights - but it does not treat the Bible as the fulfilled Holy Scripture that it is, a living and active, converting, inspiring word, burning with God’s love and presence and holiness.

 

Analysing the Bible as literature is just dull, and doesn’t do justice to the power of scripture.

 

Can you imagine if Jesus stood up in the synagogue that Sabbath day and read that stunning piece of Isaiah and declared:

 

Today you have heard a text that is from Trito-Isaiah, which is chapters 56-66 of so-called Isaiah, composed after the exile in Babylon, not to be confused with Proto-Isaiah (chapters 1–39) written in the 8^th century BC; or Deutero-Isaiah, which is chapters 40–55, and is the work of an anonymous 6th-century BC author writing during the Exile. It deals with the power dynamics of what politics should look like when exiles return home.

 

Now that may be academically accurate: but it’s word not made flesh.

 

It attempts to rob the text of its power: no action of the anointing Spirit, no good news to the poor, no liberty for captives or oppressed people, no recovery of sight for the blind, no jubilee.

 

That takes us back to the key.

 

For Jesus picks up the scroll, unrolls it, reads the text, sits down and declares, ‘today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing’.

 

The Spirit of the Lord is upon him,

    because God has anointed him

    to proclaim good news to the poor.

God has sent Jesus to proclaim liberty to the captives

    and recovering of sight to the blind,

    to set at liberty those who are oppressed,

to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour, the jubilee.

 

What we seek and find in the scriptures is a living encounter with Jesus Christ, the Word made Flesh, that is a way that avoids fundamentalism and liberal scepticism.

 

We know the dangers of fundamentalism when it comes to the Bible and we should also know the perils of how the Bible is treated by many even in churches today.

 

The trouble is that both the fundamentalist and the liberal takes the Bible literally but not seriously: it suits both to do that; one so as to overclaim what the text says and the other so as to underplay it.

 

The absence of dinosaurs in the Bible makes the fundamentalist say that dinosaurs are made up: that’s taking scripture literally but not seriously.

 

The absence of dinosaurs in the Bible makes the liberal say that the Bible is limited and not applicable today: that’s taking scripture literally but not seriously.

 

The Bible is sacred word not scientific text book; it is of human authorship but divinely inspired.

 

The tradition of the Church is to take the Bible totally seriously, but not literally, in every aspect of what we read; it feeds and inspires the living faith of the Christian.

 

Read the Bible, mark it, learn it, inwardly digest it!

 

We do this in personal reading of the Bible: at the very least check out the readings for the coming Sunday each week, or get Bible reading notes.

 

We do this too as we come together to worship and hear ‘the word of the Lord’ because we come to meet Jesus.

 

Our text today was from the beginning of St Luke’s Gospel, and at the end his gospel the power of the Bible proclaimed in the Eucharist is affirmed

 

Two disciples walk along the road to Emmaus, they are joined by the Crucified and Risen Jesus, yet they fail to recognise him.

 

They start talking about Jesus, to Jesus, and, as they walk along, we read that, ‘beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, Jesus interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself’. (Luke 24.27)

 

At journey’s end they break bread together and they recognise Jesus.

 

As he went from their sight they said to each other, ‘Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?’ (Luke 24.32).

 

May our hearts be set on fire through the scriptures, may our ears tingle with eagerness to hear them, may we be set free by the one they proclaim and may we say with the psalmist:

 

How sweet are your words to my taste,

sweeter than honey to my mouth!

(Psalm 119.103)