Transformation and inspiration - Bible Sunday 2019

Today is Bible Sunday – the day when we are especially called to give thanks for the word of God and the day perhaps to ask ourselves whether we know it well enough and whether we really try to know it… 

As you will probably know the bible remains the best sellingbook in the world, also the most stolen book in the worldstrangely ! An incredible 100 million copies are sold each year in all kinds of forms, including now of course ‘Apps’ for telephones so that it can be carried around even more easily than ever before. I don’t even know how many languages I could name, but it would certainly be nowhere near 500 but the bible has been translated into over 500 languages… 

There is an incredible passion for this book – up until recently I was the Chaplain to the Ospreys Rugby Region and was able to give out copies of the New Testament and Psalms made available by the Gideons. Logo’s of the team were put on the front as they have been for a number of sports teams and it’s wonderful to see how keen people are to receive copies… 

Something like 300 copies have been given out to the various players, coaches and officials at different levels and ages, both male and female and to the wheelchair rugby team as well. These bibles have been put in the hands of people, some of whom are not church goers or who wouldn’t describe themselves as Christians, but the words are powerful and questions often follow from people who are genuinely interested… 

And yet for us as Christians we can sometimes be a little lethargic in our reading and study of the bible – we might describe it as a manual for life and some have given their lives in centuries past to ensure that we can read it and yet we often ignore it... 

But the bible is about transformation – it is about revealing God’s plan for the world and his love for each one of us. It contains history and poetry and law and accounts of incredible miracles and lives changed – and we too are to expect transformation as we study God’s word… 

And our readings today help us to think more about this… The Book of Isaiah contains some incredible prophetic messages – especially messages about Jesus written some 700 years before he was born, but this morning’s short passage (45:22-25) is about the strength, the power and the love of God and about his will and purpose for us, that we should ‘turn to him and be saved’… 

Our psalm is part of Psalm 119 (129-136), the longest psalm in the bible. It’s a psalm where we’re called to think about God’s law and his promises and we’re to look at his amazing works revealed to us in the beauty, variety and vastness of creation…

At the moment so much in our society seems to be about mistrust and fairly open division and hostility – every time we turn on the news we’re confronted it seems with huge rows and all too often personal insults as well, and what a contrast we are provided with in this psalm, where we are encouraged to meditate on God’s law, his word and his promises and on those same things I mentioned earlier, God’s strength, his power and his love as well as his ability to offer salvation. 

Over and over again in this psalm there is mention made of God’s word and it’s worth remembering the efforts people made to learn that word in those days. There weren’t individual copies available and many of the people couldn’t read anyway, so people learnt vast portions of scripture, ready to quote it and ready to live by it, because that’s what happens when we truly begin to learn more of the bible – it becomes ingrained in us and it begins to change us. 

Someone whose life was incredibly changed and which we read about in the bible was Paul or Saul as he had previously been known. Transformed from a fierce opponent of Christians into one of the great evangelists, Paul was writing to the church in Rome in the passage we heard (15:1-6) and he was addressing the challenge of scripture not always being easy and not always saying what it wants us to say… 

And it is true that scripture was not written just for us – whilst we sometimes read it with our own cultures eyes this was a book written for a much wider audience – a book for all of humanity. Sometimes it won’t say what we want it to, sometimes it will make it clear that being a Christian and preaching a Christian message won’t always be easy, but the challenges remind us that our lives are inter connected with one another so often, and also with people who we may never meet or know.  How we treat others will clearly have an effect on them and then on others, but it may also affect us too.

The scriptures were given to us to explain something of God’s work in the past, his presence with us now and his plan for the future. When Paul wrote to the Romans it was with the knowledge of older scriptures, it was with the laws of God and history and tradition in his mind, but it was also with a relationship with Jesus which had changed him and continued to change him day by day… 

God wants us to look at what he did in the past, he wants us to reflect on what he is doing now and what he has promised for the future and he wants us to consider the question, ‘What does he want of me ?’

In this short part of the letter to the Romans, Paul gives 2 examples of answers. The first is to ‘live in harmony with one another’ and the second is to ‘Glorify God.’ If we can do those things we’ll be going in the right direction of God’s hopes and plans for us, but even those 2 things, we will know, are not easy !

Moving on to the gospel reading (Luke 4:16-24) we heard of Jesus speaking in the synagogue – it wasn’t unusual for teachers to speak in the synagogue and we’re told that Jesus attended this place in Nazareth as a matter of custom, but this time as he spoke he quoted some words written by Isaiah – more great prophecy but this time he was describing a whole new age, an age in which some incredible promises would be delivered – release to captives, sight for the blind, freedom for those who were oppressed and a promise of a year of the Lord’s favour – meaning the cancelling of debts, the restoration of property which had been lost and a release for those in slavery.

This was a whole new life and as Jesus finished reading he dropped the incredible bombshell, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing’.  

What a claim ! But it was Jesus’ claim. 

You can imagine the shock and even the outrage of the listeners and you can understand the reason why Jesus went on to say that a prophet is often not listened to in his own town… 

Often we make church very polite and dignified. We make it all very proper. There’s nothing wrong with that as long as we’re not complacent enough to forget that our faith is about revolution and transformation – world revolution and individual transformation… 

Living out our faith won’t always be easy – it wasn’t for Jesus, but today in a society which is pretty alien to much of what the Christian message is about, it is needed. The Bible offers us a message of love for God and love for one another. It tests us with challenges to love our enemies and to preach the gospel wherever we are, but over and over again we are reminded of God’s love for us and the strength he offers to us… 

In a society where so many people seem to be thinking of themselves and their own status, it tells us to look out for those in most need. This week we heard of the tragedy of 39 people found dead in the back of a lorry, and the bible offers a vision of a world where there will be no refugees, nobody running away from danger. 

The bible will offer us real challenges – but as we immerse ourselves in it, we learn more of God’s character and his ways and his will for us and how he can help us to be the people he wants us to be… 

If you haven’t spent time reading it for a while or if you’ve never read it or heard it outside of church, go home and have a look – maybe get some bible reading notes to help, and begin or begin again or continue to get closer to God, seeking his transformation and inspiration… Amen