Bible Sunday
by Revd Chrys M Tremththanmor
The following comes from a Catholic primary school.
Children were asked questions about the Old and New Testaments. They have not
been retouched or corrected.
* Adam and
Eve were created from an apple tree. Noah's wife was called Joan of Ark. Noah
built an ark, which the animals come on to in pears.
* The Jews
were a proud people and throughout history they had trouble with the
unsympathetic Genitals.
* The
seventh commandment is thou shalt not admit adultery.
* Solomon,
one of David's sons, had 300 wives and 700 porcupines.
* When Mary
heard that she was the mother of Jesus, she sang the
Magna
Carta.
* Jesus was
born because Mary had an immaculate contraption.
* Jesus
enunciated the Golden Rule, which says to do one to others before they do one to you. He also explained, "a
man doth not live by sweat alone."
* The people
who followed the lord were called the 12 decibels. The epistles were the wives
of the apostles.
* St. Paul
cavorted to Christianity. He preached holy acrimony, which is another name for marriage.
* Christians
have only one spouse. This is called monotony.
This Sunday is Bible Sunday.
Churches are encouraged to remember the importance of the Bible for our
corporate and personal spiritual lives. I know that we hear snippits of the
Bible every Sunday in church, and occasionally the sermon might even bear some
resemblance to the Bible passage. We all live in hope.
Those snippits can be
helpful. Over time we can build up a picture of God, and how he works with
people. In the Hebrew scriptures, which we commonly call the Old Testament, we
learn that God is the source of all creation and considers it to be ‘good.’ God
makes and keeps promises, as we hear in the story of Noah, the Great Flood, and
the rainbow. God rescues his people from slavery, as when he inspired Moses to
take the Israelites out of Egypt. God will feed and protect his people, as he
did for the Israelites in the wilderness.
In the New Testament we learn
that God’s love is so great that he is willing to die for our healing and
salvation. And he continues to inspire his people through the Holy Spirit, sent
onto the disciples at Pentecost.
The Bible tells us what God
is like. God is constant in his love for us, regardless of what we do. For some
reason, humans matter to him, so much that he wishes to have a relationship
with us.
The Bible also tells us what
we humans are like. The scriptures pull no punches. We humans easily turn away
from God. We forget him, put ourselves first, and forget that all our true joy
comes from knowing him.
But as I said earlier, all
this comes to us in snippits, if we rely on only hearing the Bible in church
services. Snippits are not a real meal. To only snack on the Bible is to miss
out on so much of what God would like us to hear. We could even end up giving
odd answers like those children I quoted at the start.
As Christians, hoping to grow
in our relationship with God, I think it’s really important to read entire
chunks of the Bible. To have that full meal instead of a snack.
For example, read the book of
Hosea. Do you know the story of this Old Testament book? The prophet Hosea is
told by God to marry a prostitute, and to take her back time and again after
she has been unfaithful to her husband. God compares her unfaithfulness to her
husband to the unfaithfulness of his people to their God. ‘They have played the
whore, forsaking their God.’
Yet the compassion of God also shines through this book. Through
the prophet Hosea God also says,
When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my
son.
The more I called them,
the more they
went from me;
they kept sacrificing to the Baals,
and offering
incense to idols.
Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk,
I took them up
in my arms;
but they did
not know that I healed them.
I led them with cords of human kindness,
with bands of
love.
I was to them like those
who lift
infants to their cheeks.
I bent down to them and fed them.
But as much as I love the book of Hosea, as
much as I love the suffering servant songs in Isaiah, as much as I thrill to
Psalm 139, I have a confession to make. I struggle with some
of the darker passages, which are uncomfortable to read. What about Lot and his
two daughters? After Lot’s wife is turned to a pillar of salt, his daughters
get Lot drunk and then have sex with him, in order that they might have his
children and so the family line won’t end. For some reason, preachers never
seem to tackle that passage.
And the Psalms are also full
of uncomfortable bits. What about Psalm 137, written after the Israelites had
been exiled to Babylon? Who can read this without wincing?
O daughter Babylon, you devastator!
Happy shall
they be who pay you back for what you have done to us!
Happy shall they be who take your little ones
and dash them against the rock!
Parts of the Bible also
support the ownership of slaves, and state that I, as a woman, should not be
standing here preaching to you. Parts of the Bible say that I am sinning when I
wear fleeces (made of mixed fibres).
But to focus on good or on
uncomfortable bits is to once again be reducing the Bible to snippits. To
really do the Bible justice we need to read it all. We need to give time to
chewing over the scriptures, deciding for ourselves what God might be trying to
tell us through the writings of our predecessors in the faith.
We also need to recognise
that the Bible was written by many different people, in a time long before our
own. We no longer worry about keeping the Jewish dietary laws, we no longer
condone slavery, women are ordained as priests, and we no longer stone
adulterers.
But it’s only by knowing the
Bible in its entirety that we can avoid the danger of picking the best bits,
condemning the nasty bits, or seeking to support our own opinions by quoting
verses out of context. To read the whole Bible, instead of snippits, takes
discipline, and time, and can be unsettling.
But ultimately, making the
Bible part of our lives is very rewarding. Church services become more
meaningful as we recognise the tradition behind the words we use in the
liturgy, and build upon this tradition for ourselves. The Bible is a living
Word, which can take life through us as we absorb it for ourselves.
To read the Bible for ourselves is like looking up the map for our own journey, rather than trusting somebody else’s memory to do it for us. And ultimately it is far more reliable, as we learn from the Bible for ourselves how to chart the journeys of our lives. Amen.