Sermon: The God of Steadfastness and Encouragement

May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus, so that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

What is the stream in which the elephant may swim and the lamb may wade ? It is the description Pope Gregory I gave to the Bible. He saw the Bible as being a means of unity among people, a way of coming together to know God. S.Paul thought the same. About the scriptures which existed in his time, roughly equivalent to what we now call the Old Testament, he wrote, Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope. Then he went on,  May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus, so that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

First he speaks of the scriptures, then immediately of living in harmony with one another. The one is to promote the other. Most people will say, That's not our experience. The Bible is often a cause of division. One group interpret it in one way and set up a Church based upon that tradition of interpretation. Another group understand the Bible in another way and constitute their own community witnessing to their own view. Where is the harmony in that ? The elephants have picked up the lambs in their trunks and thrown them out of the stream. The lambs have found another stream miles away from the elephants. 

This comes about when readers of the Bible fail to appreciate its riches and potential which were expressed clearly by John Robinson - not the famous Bishop of Woolwich but Pastor John Robinson, minister to the English congregation at Leiden in 1620 - There is no 'final' interpretation of Holy Writ. Let us be certain, brethren, that the Lord hath more truth and light yet to break forth out of His Holy Word 

So that is one way in which the Bible, the instrument by which God desires to bring harmony to his Church, becomes instead a means of division. The other is, treating the Bible as a book of rules by which we are to live our lives. Cardinal John Henry Newman was not often wrong, but he was mistaken when he said,  I read my Bible to know what people ought to do and my newspaper to know what they are doing. The Bible does not always show us what to do. Sometimes it presents us with opinions and conduct which we are warned not to imitate. When people say that they find parts of the Bible difficult, even unchristian, this is usually because they are mixing up what Christians are warned by the Bible not to do with what we are encouraged by the Bible to try to do. There is a long tradition of biblical interpretation which helps us to tell the difference, but it will often happen that different readers see different aspects of the vision of truth, which need to be shared in harmony and not thrown around in an atmosphere of division. At a meeting last week to honour the 250th anniversary of William Blake the Archbishop of Canterbury quoted Blake's words, The Whole Bible is filled with Imaginations and Visions from End to End & not with Moral virtues, and went on to suggest that the Bible is a landscape rather than a set of rules.

The Bible does not stand on its own. Private reading of the Bible, like private prayer, is essential for each of us, but there is more to Christian faith than private devotion. If by sharing our insights about the Bible with one another we learn from each other and so come to live in harmony, this is expressed in worship. As Paul writes, Live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus, so that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

And when we learn from each other, share our insights about the Bible with each other, and glorify God with one voice, there is a further prize to be had, the prize of hope. By steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope. 

Why are so many people pessimistic about the future of the world or even just the future of the country ? Because all they can see is disunity between nations, disharmony between groups of people in the country. Where there is disharmony there is depression. Where there is harmony there is hope. That is why Paul claims that the same scriptures which, properly understood, can bring us into harmony can also give us hope. 

He means hope, not only for the good health of our society, not only for the future of the world, but eternal hope. Through the scriptures and through our united worship we are brought into union with God, a union which can never be broken, a hope which will never fade.