Sermon for the Last Sunday after Trinity

Bible Sunday

Some years ago a survey was taken in the United States asking people if they ‘believed the Bible’—-whatever that means, exactly. It was something like 75, 80%. People were then asked if they had actually read the Bible. Only 20% or so said, ‘yes.’

Although statistics around this topic are notoriously difficult to determine, it seems that only roughly half of Americans now regularly read the Bible—that is, they engage with the Bible on their own, not including at a church service, with some frequency. In the Church of England, this practice seems to have fallen off quite alarmingly—figures from a year ago indicate that sixty per cent of self-declared Church members admit that they never read the Bible. On both sides of the Atlantic, then, there is much enthusiasm to share regarding the benefits of reading this venerable and under-rated Book!

Listen to what non-readers are missing:

Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Psalm 37

Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.

Isaiah 43

For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth.

Job 19

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Matthew 5

Where your treasure is, there will your heart be, also.

Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air…….

Matthew 6

Faith, hope, and love abide, but the greatest of these is love….

I Corinthians

There is everything in the library of books that is the Bible: beautiful words—-of consolation, of healing, of hope: words of reflection, of admonition. Words of prophecy and of fulfillment. There is poetry, song, history, testimony to truth. In Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, practical wisdom to live by:

For everything there is a season….

Ecclesiastes 3, made familiar in the song of the late 50s by Pete Seeger.

There is also much humour, often overlooked:

As a door turns on its hinges, so does a lazy person in bed.

Proverbs 26

It is impossible to hold up enough, and often enough, the degree to which our culture is permeated by the words and images of the Bible. Shakespeare, Milton, Samuel Johnson, many others—-the creators of our extraordinary literary heritage were deeply imbued with the language of the Biblical texts. How is the Bible present, today—-here and now?

At the Tate Britain on Friday I attempted to see the current exhibition of William Blake’s work: but I failed to take it all in—-there is so much of it, in so many different forms—there is room after room of the outpouring of his art. Blake, born in 1757, was a poet, painter, printmaker, mystic, visionary, prophet, idealist, social reformer. The Bible was an early and profound influence on Blake and remained a source of inspiration throughout his life. Among other marvels, early on in the rooms there are three beautiful watercolours of Joseph revealing himself to his brothers. Blake made twenty-two astounding engraved illustrations of the book of Job, some of which are here. Blake’s own life was full of struggle and sacrifice, though blessed by his extraordinary wife Catherine, who worked alongside him and made his achievements possible. The nature of his struggle and sacrifice, refracted through these Biblical images, stands as one of the finest achievements of the human imagination pondering our relation to God. But if you haven’t read your Bible you could easily become disoriented by this Blakean profusion!

In the exhibition of Gauguin's portraits, now at the National Gallery, two of the most striking self-portraits are titled Christ in the Garden of Olives and Self-Portrait near Golgotha. Gauguin quite unashamedly identified himself with Christ: he considered himself equally misunderstood and suffering.

Edward Elgar’s great choral work, The Apostles, from 1903, was performed at the Royal Festival Hall last evening. A second great oratorio, The Kingdom, followed it three years later. Born in 1857, Elgar was largely self-taught as a composer. His father owned a piano store in Worcester. Elgar struggled for many years to become recognised as a composer of international stature—-he had to contend against class consciousness—-his wife, who never lost faith in him, had been opposed in her marriage to him by the snobbery of her relatives, who thought she was marrying beneath her—-Elgar also contended with prejudice against Roman Catholics, the apathy of critics, and opposition from the musical establishment of his day. He suffered from discouragement and sometimes despair from setback after setback. These two great works, The Apostles, and The Kingdom, come out of the New Testament, obviously. It is good to know the story.

One of my favorite authors (should I say, one of everybody’s favorite authors) is Jane Austen, who lived within the lifetime of Blake, twenty years younger, but dying at the age of only 41, in 1817. I am just re-reading one of her six great novels, Mansfield Park. Jane Austen was the daughter of an Anglican clergyman, a kind and upright and affectionate father of eight children and conscientious rector of two parishes. Jane grew up hearing the Bible read, reading it herself, knowing it intimately. The depiction of Christian faith in her novels is oblique, but necessary to any understanding of the moral framework out of which she wrote. The theme of all her novels is that we are changed by suffering—we become worthy of one another and of our calling as Christians through what we come to understand about life. Elizabeth in Pride & Prejudice, Emma in Emma—all her major characters—come to know themselves through this inevitable and necessary encounter with suffering. Happy marriages at the end are not achieved without great cost!

Art, music, literature… how is it possible to grasp the best of what we have inherited in our culture, the culture of our time, without knowing what is rooted in our inheritance of the Bible?

I think it is not possible.

So, the seemingly obvious encouragement of this sermon is to get your Bible out and read it! Put the ‘Church of England Daily Prayer’ app on your phone and immerse yourself, one or two or three times a day, in the beautifully fashioned words of scripture that form a chain of readings for all the year. Read in private, read on the Underground, read in a coffee shop. If you are in a book club, propose the book of Isaiah—perfect for Advent. Then follow with the Gospel of John. Why not? I can promise you that they can hold their own against some of the contemporary novels being written today. Come to the Bible study at St. George’s on every other Wednesday. It is on the book of Job this autumn, and the book of Job is all about the problem of suffering. If you have questions about suffering, this is the place to ask them! The clergy, and your fellow readers, are here to engage with you in all your questions! Or just open your Bible and read it. One book at a time. Skip around as you choose —-take notes about what strikes you as interesting, as troubling. Make relations between what you read and what you experience, in an art gallery, in your life.

In a culture of excess, where suffering is often concealed and often not acknowledged, even to ourselves, it is sometimes through art, and music, and literature that we confront the nature of suffering and its meaning.

But it is above all in the Bible, where the record of God’s encounter with humankind has afforded a challenge and a solace to many through these successive ages that we come to grips with what life is all about. There is revealed to us the nature of the God who never wills suffering, but who sent his own Son to suffer with us, to show us that suffering is not the worst evil. We are changed by what we read and by how we allow ourselves to be changed by the inevitable suffering that will surely come to us in this life. Our faithful reading of the Bible can help us to understand the meaning of suffering—-and even to embrace it. Like Jane Austen herself, and her heroines, we, also, can become more worthy of our Christian calling and of one another by the strength and serenity with which we meet the suffering that life brings us.

I would like to conclude with lines from one of Jane Austen’s own prayers….

Above all other blessing oh! God, for ourselves and our fellow-creatures, we implore thee to quicken our sense of thy mercy in the redemption of the world, of the value of that holy religion in which we have been brought up, that we may not, by our own neglect, throw away the salvation thou has given us, nor be Christians only in name. Hear us almighty God, for his sake who has redeemed us,

Amen.

The Revd Dana English

October 27, 2019