Cathedral Bible Sunday Last Sunday after Trinity, 29 October 2023
God’s Word Today
Today is Bible Sunday. We celebrate God’s word in Holy Scriptures. That we may hear, read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them. And that through the comfort of God’s holy word, we may embrace and for ever hold fast the hope of everlasting life.
Biblical literacy and intelligent reading are crucial for making new disciples in the 21st century. And for an accessible message in the public square. But it’s hard, as culturally in the UK the Bible has become marginalised. The Open the Book programme in schools aims to reverse this.
Many Christians don’t read the Bible extensively or deeply. We hear it read in church services in bite sized pieces. If we attend church intermittently the choice of readings can seem a lucky dip.
Exploring as much of the Bible as possible is a challenge. The 1662 Book of Common Prayer devised a scheme for Sundays, based on the calendar year and familiar to many generations of Anglicans. Using all 150 Psalms each month is a mainstay of cathedral liturgy.
Last century, a desire to modernise worship and energise Bible usage in worship and in small group study led to a variety of lectionaries based on cycles of more than a year. The Alternative Service Book in use from 1980-2000 had a two-year cycle, with some clever pairing of readings, which stimulated a generation of clergy.
The now familiar Common Lectionary is widely used ecumenically, and in the Church of England since 2000, supports Common Worship.
The lectionary framework is built upon a three-year Sunday cycle, A-B-C, reading the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke in turn, with St John’s Gospel spread across the other three years. Each year begins on Advent Sunday. So, we are now concluding Year A with St Matthew and will shortly begin Year B using St Mark.
Personally, I find not having a fourth year based on the Gospel of John disappointing. His rich arrangement of theological themes and drama deserves our full attention.
Each Sunday the gospel is accompanied by a reading from the Hebrew Scripture (Old Testament) and a reading from the Christian Scriptures (New Testament); and there is a Psalm. The selections are seasonal, continuous, or thematic.
How are we to read the Bible today? Professor John Barton, the eminent Oxford biblical scholar and priest and I were contemporaries at school, travelling daily on the London Underground. He has likened the Tube Challenge, where the aim is to pass through every station on the Underground in a single day, to trying to read the Bible from beginning to end. Not a great idea. As teenagers neither of us managed it.
In an article for the Roman Catholic weekly The Tablet, [12 October 2019] Professor Barton recommends starting with St Paul’s Letter to the Galatians because it summarises the Christian Gospel: Christ died to take away sin, and rose from the dead, and salvation lies in faith in him and membership of his Church, and in living a moral and upright life. In the first century AD, Galatians tackles hotly disputed theological and social questions.
My choice would be St Mark’s Gospel. Just 22 pages of a 1200-page Bible, it is readable in one sitting. It presents Jesus with unquestionable directness. You may have heard the impressive recitation by the actor Alec McCowan, debuted in Newcastle in 1978. He recalls that,
”I started learning little passages to see if it would come alive, and instantly realized it was absolutely right. The style had a blunt, astringent quality which suited me. And it was a Gospel of action not teaching, one which had plenty of episodes and dwelt on none for too long.”
Next, I might go for Acts of the Apostles which characterises the first Christian communities. It has it all: mission and growth, setbacks, good and bad behaviour, doubt and disputation in the public square. Letters to the Corinthians likewise portray the new faith finding its identity in a cosmopolitan world.
If you are keen, look online for schemes which read the New Testament over the 365 days of a year. I completed it once with some parishioners.
As for the Old Testament, its sheer size is daunting. Professor Barton recommends the books of Samuel as starting point, as one might read a novel. The style appears strange, but its content is all too familiar, concerning human foibles and the effects of wrongdoing in families. Like the TV drama Succession.
I warm to his next suggestion which is the Wisdom books: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job and Ecclesiasticus. Here we find ideas about the human person in any time and place, mostly presented not as divine revelation, but as a reflection on humanity in the context of God’s providence.
Leaving aside the professor’s play list, what about today’s readings? Can you quite remember them?
It would help if we had the readings printed in full on the Order of Service, specific to each Sunday. Our passage from Paul’s Letter to the Thessalonians, is apt: Christians are charged to share the gospel of God.
Leviticus is not a London Underground station on which to be stranded and appears infrequently in the lectionary. This morning, echoes of the Ten Commandments resonate with our Matthew Gospel concerning Jesus and the greatest commandment – not to take vengeance or bear grudges, but to love your neighbour as yourself. You may recall that Luke’s version of this passage adds the parable of the Good Samaritan to answer the supplementary question, well, who is my neighbour?
Finally, Psalm 1: the way of the wicked is doomed, but the righteous are blessed and their delight is in the law of the Lord. Beautifully sung by our visiting choir. Psalms are best savoured individually.
Bible Sunday on the Last Sunday after Trinity is a turning point, moving us into the Kingdom Season. And as the nights draw in, the gift of God’s word remains a lantern to our feet, a light upon our paths, and a strength to our lives. Keep reading!
Rt Revd Nigel Peyton, Assistant Bishop, Diocese of Lincoln