Reflection from Sunday 23rd January
This morning we have heard three of the scripture readings for the third Sunday of Epiphany, and on Wednesday evening, the parish council reflected on the fourth reading, which is from Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth, chapter 12 – the one where he talks about the church as the body of Christ.
Taken all together, these texts offer us a very full sense of how people of faith engage with and reflect on scripture.
Nehemiah says more than once that men, women and those with understanding – presumably meaning older children – were present for the reading of the books of Moses – basically the first five books of our Bible.
In verses not included in our reading today, we’re told there were others standing alongside Ezra the scribe, who explained and interpreted the text for those who were listening.
This detail is significant, though, because this story of the reading of the Law comes after the exile, when several generations had been born and raised in Babylon and now ‘returned’ to Jerusalem.
There’s every chance that not much in those stories of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob, Rachel and Leah made sense to the experience of those who had lived in exile for so long.
These were people whose habits, rhythms and norms of faith had been lost…..and their land, their sense of place – of connection and belonging had been displaced.
So here we learn that the book of the Law is read for the whole community, as a way of returning them to their identity.
The scripture is read in a very inclusive gathering which will not be the norm once the temple is rebuilt and men only are allowed into the inner rooms of learning.
We learn that the text is explained and interpreted into the context of the people listening – it is not fixed in its meaning and significance – because it has both only when it is in dialogue with the community who listen, engage and respond.
And they do engage and respond.
They engage with their whole being – mind, body and heart – by standing, by attending to what they hear and by being moved to tears by the stories.
And the priests, seeing how moved the people are, tell them to go and eat and drink – to celebrate and feast – and to share with those who do not have the means to feast.
These people hear with their whole selves and respond with their whole selves.
Let’s just pause for a moment and consider how we engage with scripture.
It’s not very whole body, is it? It’s quite heady, I would say.
What do you think we might be missing?
Also, it’s quite personal, isn’t it, the way we engage with scripture?
We have a lot of emphasis on our personal understanding and our personal response, but we don’t have so much emphasis on a corporate response – one that flows out to touch others.
Or perhaps that’s not quite right….we have a sense that this ought to happen, but aside from evangelism rallies and Alpha courses we aren’t really sure how to let our whole being response flow to others.
I am not criticising those things, but I am interested in teasing out some of that fuzziness, some of the hidden, underlying beliefs about how God works in our lives and how our faith touches the lives of others.
We can make a start by becoming aware of what we assume is supposed to happen and who is supposed to be doing what…
And that brings us to consider the psalm where the singer names and praises all the different aspects of just how this engaging dialogue and flow with scripture enriches a life – reviving, making wise, delighting and enlightening.
Are those sounding appealing to you? Reviving, delighting, making wise and enlightening….
It’s been a long and hard couple of years and we are not out of the woods yet.
We have had to dig deep into our inner resources to manage so much isolation, frustration, adaptation and limitations.
I am weary, and I am well resourced.
I know that others have had far more grief and loss, far more uncertainty and deprivation than I have…I think we are all in need of some reviving and delighting – and a bit of making wise never goes amiss!
These scriptures seem to be telling us that it’s possible for our engagement and response to scripture, both personally and in community, to be a resource revive, delight and make wise – all of which flows out to touch other lives…
I am sure this isn’t news for you – but again, it depends a lot on what you think is supposed to happen when you engage with scripture and who is supposed to be doing what.
So lastly let’s consider how Jesus engages with scripture in the synagogue in his home town of Nazareth.
He has been out and about healing, teaching and preaching and people are speaking well of him – they are amazed at how he moves, holds, teaches and speaks with authority.
On the sabbath, he takes up the role of a scribe, of one who reads, wrestles to understand, and then explains the scriptures to the gathered community so that they too can engage and respond their way to understanding.
We are told that he is handed a scroll and he finds the place where it is written…and then he reads.
But.
What he reads isn’t taken straight from the scroll.
Isaiah 61v 1-2 actually says this:
The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken-hearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and release to the prisoners;
2 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour,
and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn;
There are some small but significant differences there. It looks very like Jesus was interpreting the scripture to reflect his understanding of God’s mission – God’s work in the world.
He adds in the part about recovery of sight for the blind – a key theme for the always looking but never seeing religious leaders.
He omits the part about a day of vengeance. Just leaves it out.
He brings good news to the poor – this is an economic evolution as well as a spiritual one.
And this good news is not just personal. It is corporate – it flows out to all aspects of the creation.
So, it’s good news for everyone, because we can be poor in many ways.
When I was the chaplain at St Cuthbert’s it was easy to look at the stream of very expensive cars lining up at home time and think that there were no poor to offer good news to there.
But I remember one of the girls being asked if she’d had a good weekend and she said not really, no. She’d spent the weekend at home with her slightly older teenaged. brother while her parents were away at a party in Queenstown. For the weekend.
When I was training for ministry, an older minister told me that often when visiting his parishioners who were dealing with a relationship problem or a health issue, he found it was unhelpful to ask how they were praying about it.
Because the truth was that their prayer lives were impoverished and they were embarrassed to admit it.
Instead, they relied on a weekly injection of spiritual input to prop up the lack of their own vital connection with God.
He did not say this with judgement, but with compassion. All the same, it seems like there was some unhelpful assumptions about who is supposed to be doing what.
We can also experience oppression in many ways…the pressures of our culture to look a certain way, to have certain things, to prosper within a narrow definition of success….
Even those who are advantaged can find their very privilege itself can become oppressive, that power can be a trap that dehumanises us even while we are complicit in dehumanising others.
It would be easy – too easy, I think – to suggest that the answer to these issues is to read the bible more or better.
To pray more, or better.
Or to pray and have faith that God will favour you and fix all the outstanding issues that you feel powerless to change.
But I don’t believe there are easy answers in the journey of faith. I don’t believe there are short cuts to finding your way to the fullness of life that our faith offers.
I am convinced, though, that we cannot live in the flashy radiant delight of the soul’s first encounter with Spirit. We cannot hope to recapture this moment and recreate it over and over each week.
The experience of conversion nudges us into the long, deep and wide journey of the soul…
We are nudged into the daily practise of pausing and prayer, into a personal engagement with scripture that prompts us to let our response flow and touch others with the goodness of God’s love.
We are sometimes tripped into this by outside forces, we are sometimes following our deep desire for God, and for a lot of the journey we are just faithfully keeping hold of a regular rhythm of inner connecting.
There are dramatic moments of insight and of healing on this journey, but mostly it is a slow and steady journey that – to our surprise – gently leads us into freedom, fullness, refreshment and restoration.
There are some good questions to ponder and talk over here… we are eager to returning to gathering because we are better together and because we need each other – that’s just how we’re made.
So how can our gathering together become a resource for our living, and nurture the daily rhythms and practices of ‘pause-engage-respond’ that flow out beyond the personal and lead us deeper, wider and wiser?
Outside forces are tripping us into recognising the need for something more vital and revitalising – I don’t think this is a new need. Our declining congregations indicate that it’s been coming on for a while.
I hope that as a community we will feel and follow that deep desire for God, and as we engage, so love will grow here.
