Bible Sunday

As a child, attitudes towards your parents tend to change fairly dramatically. There are those early years when you place complete trust in them, crying for them whenever you’re upset or hungry, or wanting anything at all. Any problem if it comes can be sorted out by your parents ! And then you get a little bit older and start to disagree over certain things – perhaps you want more pocket money, or perhaps you want to stay out longer than they think you should, and things don’t seem so good. The wonderful infallible parents of your early childhood seem to be replaced by hopelessly out of touch old people !

But hopefully that stage doesn’t last too long either, and gradually you come around once again to recognising that whilst they’re not infallible, they are wise, and seeking to do the right thing for those they care about.

And in many ways this relationship with parents can mirror that of our relationship with the Bible. In Sunday School perhaps you were taught lots of stories from the Bible, you sang songs about them and acted out dramas and so on… But when we grew a little bit older, we grew thoroughly bored with it. Perhaps our friends told us that it had been 'disproved' by science, and that the Ten Commandments were a waste of time. Increasingly we discovered parts of the Bible that we found difficulty in coming to terms with, and gradually we began to put the book back on the shelf and ignore it.

Today is Bible Sunday and Bible Sunday prompts the question: did we ever get the Bible off the shelf again, or is it still there ? Have we blown off the dust and read it once more? Have we grown into that maturity ourselves whereby we can see the Bible as a friend, as a story of divine wisdom and human experience, as something to respect and to rely upon?

Because the huge sadness is that the Bible in the Western World at least is being read less and less by Christians today. And that is a tragedy. For although it does not give us, and it doesn’t pretend to, the latest scientific knowledge and technical data, it does offer us timeless and changeless insights into what it means to be a human being, and of God's way of relating to us.

People still love and hate today with the same passions as they did in the days of Noah. We still suffer anguish and know heartache just like the psalmist. We still know pain and fear and happiness and hope, just as the people did when they gathered around Jesus. And God still loves us and cherishes us, weeps for us, sits with us in our sorrows and enters into our joys, as he did throughout all the biblical centuries.

During the Coronation Service, immediately after the Queen had been crowned by the Archbishop of Canterbury, The Moderator of the Church of Scotland presented a copy of the Bible to The Queen and said: ‘Receive this Book, the most valuable thing this world affords.’

Today as we think of Bible Sunday we are challenged to ask ourselves if we understand those words… ‘The most valuable thing this world affords.’

It is valuable because it is inspired by God – some translations of the Bible use the words ‘God breathed.’ It is God speaking to each one of us as individuals personally. He used all kinds of different writers from all kinds of backgrounds as channels for his word, and even they sometimes interpreted the words themselves differently. Some people have suggested that whilst the Bible does not always contain the authentic words of Jesus, it does contain the authentic voice of Jesus, because it is transmitting his message of love and salvation through to us. There may be many different styles, but there is only one message.

And the Bible is valuable because it is useful. St Augustine called it ‘Our letter from home’, and others have described it as a manual for life. It isn’t to be confused with a book of poetry, or fairy stories – it is a book about reality, about pain and suffering, about wars, about peace, and about everlasting joys found in God. It is a book of huge relevance for today…

There was once a rather pompous man who introduced himself as a tree expert. Someone replied, ‘Well so is a monkey!’ Some may study trees but the monkey lives in trees, and so we need to ‘live’ in our Bibles, reading them, studying them, praying about them and talking about them.

It is a book to be read regularly to motivate, to inspire and challenge us and to arm us for the battle of spreading the gospel message throughout our land. But it won’t always be easy to read the Bible – when I was first in College we were told we had to say Morning and Evening Prayer each day, even on our own, and I hated it – I was bored by it, and found little point. When I discussed this with an elderly retired Priest, he told me that he had regularly had the same problems.

But he told me that we may not always feel motivated, and we may find every excuse not to do it. But unless we build in a disciplined spiritual habit here, we are risking our spiritual fitness. There is no short cut, no instant solution for spiritual maturity. It requires discipline. And one of them is a regular, prayerful engagement with the Bible.

I’ll finish with this story. During the reign of terror under Nicolai Ceaucescu in Romania, frequent raids were carried out on the homes of Christians. In one of these raids, an Eastern Orthodox Christian called Stephen had his house turned over and books, including an English translation of the Bible, were removed. It was the loss of the Bible that hurt him most. He said, ‘Without a Bible, you are not a man.’ That was the value that he placed on it.

In a place where the Bible is so freely available with all kinds of translations to help us, and Bible reading notes, and Bible studies, may we never take it for granted, and never forget the importance and value of the word of God. AMEN