A sermon from prison for Bible Sunday

The crossing of the Red Sea: a summary of Exodus Chapters 13 and 14 to illustrate a point.

 

When the Pharaoh and his servants were told that the people of Israel had fled, they said, “What is this we have done, that we have let Israel go from serving us?”  So the Pharaoh made ready his chariot and took his army with him, and took six hundred chosen chariots and all the other chariots of Egypt with officers over all of them. The Egyptians pursued them, all Pharaoh's horses and chariots and his horsemen and his army, and overtook them encamped at the sea.
And the people of Israel cried out to the Lord.  And Moses said to the people, “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again.  The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.”
The Lord said to Moses, “Tell the people of Israel to go forward.  Lift up your staff, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it, that the people of Israel may go through the sea on dry ground.  And I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they shall go in after them, all his host, his chariots, and his horsemen.  And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord.”

Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided.  And the people of Israel went into the midst of the sea on dry ground, the waters being a wall to them on their right hand and on their left.  The Egyptians pursued and went in after them into the midst of the sea, all Pharaoh's horses, his chariots, and his horsemen.  And the Lord looked down on the Egyptian forces and threw them into a panic, clogging their chariot wheels so that they drove heavily.

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the sea, that the water may come back upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots, and upon their horsemen.”  So Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to its normal course.  The waters returned and covered the chariots and the horsemen; of all the host of Pharaoh that had followed them into the sea, not one of them remained.

A story is told of a young couple who went on honeymoon and due to a flight delay arrived at their hotel in the early hours of the morning. When they eventually woke they complained to the manager that their room was ridiculously small, had no windows and was furnished by a single bed settee. Having booked a honeymoon suite they’d been given a box room.

The manager accompanied them upstairs and asked if they had noticed the double doors, which the couple assumed was a wardrobe. He opened them to reveal a sumptuous room complete with four‐poster bed, a balcony with a sea view, flowers and bottle of champagne in an ice bucket. The couple had spent their wedding night in the hall of the best suite in the best hotel in the country.

I start with that story because we can have a very similar experience with the Bible if we’ve never sat down and read it properly. We might have experienced a few of the stories or books but never explored beyond what were the Sunday-school stories we were taught when we were young. We haven’t discovered the treasures of the whole of scripture - of this book which sits on many of our shelves.

Today is Bible Sunday: who knew? We hear from the Bible every week and then someone like me stands at the front and talks about one of the passages - and I know that some of you read it in private. I also suspect that because of the difference in the number of Bibles we give out and the number of guys who actually come to chapel that some alternative use is found for the pages – but that’s another story!

I’ll let you into a secret: very often when I look at the passage I’ve to prepare for a sermon, I sit at my computer and think, “Dear God, what on earth am I to make of this?”  Is it supposed to be easy? Yes …. sometimes, but sometimes we need to struggle with difficult ideas or how are we to mature and develop as Christian men?

But today is one of those days in the church calendar when people like me have the option to move away from the set readings and talk about something else: on this occasion, the Bible - and what it actually means to us.

One of the funny things about the Bible is that it’s the most published, printed and bought book in the history of literature but the chances of you finding someone who’s actually read it are pretty limited. I often get asked if I’ve read it and I’m never really sure what to answer: I suspect the answer is “No” if I’m being asked whether I’ve sat down and read it from start to finish, which is how you normally read a book isn’t it? Well, not this book! Why not? Any ideas?

I think what we need to remember is that the Bible is both a book and not a book. Yes, it’s a book in this form, the way it’s printed but it’s actually a mini library: it contains sixty six separate books, thirty nine in the Old Testament and twenty seven in the New Testament. When you choose a book you don’t start at the first book on the top of the first shelf of the first bookcase and work through every book until you reach the last book on the bottom shelf of the last bookcase – even if there were only sixty six books.

So, here’s the question: when you go to the library, how do you choose a book?

*Someone recommends an author. I’ve just read a book by an author called Con Iggulden, recommended by a lad on C Wing. I would never have chosen it myself but I enjoyed it and I’d read more of his in the future because of that recommendation. So when someone like Fr. Roger or Sr. Pat or Claire or I say to you, “Do you know, because of what we’ve been talking about you could read …. for argument’s sake …. this passage in John’s Gospel: it has some answers to what we’ve been talking about.” that’s a recommendation and a way into reading scripture.

*I’m a great fan of crime novels so when I’m in the library or a bookshop that’s the section I go to first. Now that’s what called a genre – a style of writing. Can you think of any others?

Sci-fi, romance, historical fiction, drama, poetry, fantasy, horror, comedy – and they’re all from the fiction range. What about those who like non-fiction? Biographies, autobiographies, history, study guides, text books and so on. The Bible’s like that: it has genre – different styles of writing -  and it helps to know what style one of the sixty six is before you start reading it. I don’t like sci-fi: I wouldn’t deliberately choose to read that style of book, but again, if my friend on C Wing recommended one, I’d give it a go. For me, the Bible’s a bit like that. I’m not a great fan of the Old Testament but there are occasions when I’ll need to read parts of it but I wouldn’t pick it up and open a page at random and dive in. I need to know what it is that I’m reading or I run the risk of not getting anything out of the experience. So, what are the genres – styles of writing - in the Bible?

Well, there’s poetry, myth, history, law, wisdom, letters, autobiographies and prophecy. The Gospels are autobiographies, the life of Jesus written by other people. If I want to know about Jesus that’s where I look. I don’t look in Genesis. That would be a complete waste of time. If I’m interested in the finer points of the law of the ancient Jews – and I’m really not - I’d look in the book of Leviticus. If I wanted to know about advice on Christian living I’d look in the letters of St. Paul. If I wanted some wise sayings I’d look at Proverbs. If I wanted some poetry I’d look at The Psalms. If I was interested in the history of the Early Church I’d look in the book of Acts or if I was interested in the history of the Jewish people I’d read the books of Kings or Judges.

Now there are a couple of genres that need explaining a bit more:

* Prophecy: this doesn’t mean telling the future. It’s about people speaking the word of God to their own generation – telling it like it is even if that made them unpopular. They tend to be, “This is what you’re doing wrong. This is what God wants from you.” conversations.

*Myth: whenever I mention myth some people get a bit uncomfortable because they think myth means fairy stories. No, religious myth is a proper style of writing. Religious myth is a way of explaining deep truths in a simple way: it’s not the details in the story which are important but the underlying message. Take the creation stories as an example of religious myth. If you could get a Tardis and go back to visit the ancient Hebrews, you’d struggle to explain the creation of the world to them in modern scientific terms. They’d have had no understanding of the Big Bang or Evolution which we tend to take for granted. Modern Christians have no problem with those ideas because they see God as the trigger for the Big Bang and the manager of the Evolution that followed it. A simpler people needed a simpler explanation and so this picture story developed to help them to understand their conviction that there was a God who was responsible for the universe and all that is it. The Myth stories of the Book of Genesis aren’t intended to be historical or scientific records but they are intended to put God right in the centre of the creative process as the one who set it all going.

Those Christians who take the creation stories literally and those who see them as religious myth aren’t so far apart because the outcome is the same: God is the creative force in the universe. We come to the same conclusion but by different routes.

And that leads us neatly on to the idea of how we read and understand the Bible. We all know - or know of - people who take the Bible as literal truth. We call them Literalists. If you’re a Literalist, you tend to believe that every word in the Bible IS the direct word of God revealed to people down the ages and recorded exactly as God wanted it in every word and punctuation point and that it should be applied in its entirety in each new age.

A second group you might call Biblical Conservatives: they also believe that the Bible IS the word of God but that those who wrote it were influenced by their own backgrounds and cultures in the way that they wrote things down and put their own Interpretations and ideas into their writing. That means that today we have to look carefully to see whether we are the real audience for a particular passage but the stories remain very important as lessons about how God dealt with his people down the ages.

The third group we might call Biblical Liberals because they see the Bible, not so much as the word of God but CONTAINING it so that each new generation needs to recognise that many passages were written at a very different time and place to where we are now. Those Christians tend to be a bit less interested in passages that clearly make little or no sense in today’s world but they are still committed to trying to understand God’s message for them today.

Take this reading as an example: (The crossing of the Red Sea: Exodus 13/14) When you heard it how did you understand it?

Did you think that the events happened exactly as they were described? That Moses actually called upon God to part the waters? Each time, God responded by physically separating the water with dry land under foot. This was a real, miraculous events which happened at a specific time and location. If we were there with a camera, we could have recorded the miracle. God temporarily suspended normal physical laws, such as gravity, and the ability of the sea bed to absorb water. The Bible is recording real miracles. God was in control.

If so, you are probably a Biblical Literalist.

Did you think that it was possible that this miracle didn’t occur in the way the Bible describes? The story may well have been mythical. That is, it contained important religious ideas, but described events that never actually happened. If the waters really did separate, the event must have been caused by natural forces. Perhaps a strong wind drove the Red Sea away from its normal shoreline. Perhaps an unusual tide temporarily disturbed the water or maybe the River Jordan became clogged and stopped its flow to the sea for a few hours.  Anyway, the people of Israel escaped so God was in control and that’s the key point of the story.

If so, you are probably a Biblical Conservative.

Did you think that it’s a great story and would make a film with fabulous special effects but it’s most likely that it never happened at all? Whether these events happened or not was not important. The story showed how God continued to work through various heroes and prophets to shape the lives of the people of Israel.

If so, you are probably a Biblical Liberal.

In the end, does it matter? What have the three ways of understanding the story got in common? That God was in control of the situation. I mention this because from time to time I talk to people who worry that they aren’t “real” Christians because they don’t - can’t – read the Bible in the same way that others do. That isn’t true. We are all unique and our brains work in different ways: understanding the Bible is not a one-size-fits-all exercise.

What’s important is that we engage our brains when we hear Bible passages read and don’t let them wash over us as too hard or too familiar, “Oh, I know that story, I don’t need to concentrate.” We need to see that in some way the Bible passages present us with a glimpse of God and how he deals with us. If we do that rather than worrying about how literally true the story is without recognising the religious truth, we encounter God in a way that is unique to us whether we are Literalist, Conservative or Liberal. The Bible is a channel for the word of God, which comes to us as we hear it, read it and discuss it. Through these sixty six books and their very different styles, written by a wide range of people over a long time-frame and from many different backgrounds, we’re drawn into an encounter with God. We’re involved in a story, drawn into the company of those who worked out their relationship with God in teaching and instruction, in praise, in celebration, in thanksgiving and in reflecting upon life in God’s world.

When we read, we walk alongside those who worked out their relationship with God through making laws and telling stories, in writing the history of their people, and in writings that came from their understanding of life in God’s world, and through confronting disaster and suffering with faith and hope and trust in God and his promises.

It’s in such ways, when hearing the Scriptures in worship in church, or as we read them in the silence of our own prayers and meditation, that God reaches out to us and touches us, delivers us, consoles us, renews and enlivens our hope, vanquishes any sense of ultimate fear, blesses us as his own and journeys with each one of us on our pilgrimage of faith.

Amen