‘An adventure, a wrestling match and a feast’: what are these words describing, do you think?  The biblical scholar Paula Gooder, currently Canon Chancellor at St Paul’s Cathedral, uses this vivid language about reading the Bible.   And not only is engaging with Scripture ‘an adventure, a wrestling match and a feast’, afterwards, she says, ‘you will never be the same again’.  Is your experience of reading the Bible, I wonder, captured by these words?   

Paula Gooder wrote in such terms for the introduction to a book by her opposite number at Derby Cathedral, Simon Taylor.  The book’s title is How to Read the Bible (without switching off your brain), and Taylor is engagingly honest about the fact that reading the Bible, assuming we do, is often far from easy.  Alongside the uplifting passages, of which there are many, from, say, Paul’s hymn to love in 1 Corinthians 13, to the parable of the good Samaritan in the tenth chapter of Luke’s Gospel, readers also encounter the dull, the bemusing, the apparently irrelevant, and indeed the morally questionable (for example slavery, polygamy and violence).

And yet it is the experience of Christians down the centuries that nonetheless, God really does speak to us, address us, through the words of Scripture.   But something is asked of us in the process: note the second of Gooder’s three descriptors: ‘wrestling’, which is in itself a biblical image. In Genesis chapter 32, Jacob wrestles with an angel at Peniel, all night long.  At the end of the wrestling he is blessed, and indeed receives a new name.   In a different but related way, on the road to Emmaus as described in chapter 24 of Luke’s Gospel, two disciples tell a stranger of their sadness and perplexity at recent events in Jerusalem. The stranger then opens up the Scriptures to them so effectively they are able to recognize him as the risen Christ, and they are filled with hope. 

Wrestling, sadness, perplexity: this is the background to our first reading from Nehemiah.  The people of Israel have returned from exile in Babylon to their decimated homeland.   They have since experienced hardship, poverty and discouragement.   The eponymous Nehemiah’s role is to lead the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem, a huge step forward for their physical safety.  Our reading, however, focusses on the role of Ezra the priest and scribe.  If the people of Israel, in their hardship, had been hoping for God to speak through a pillar of fire or with a thundering voice from the mountain, as had happened in the days of Exodus, nothing so dramatic happens here.  All Ezra does is read from a book.  Actually, that’s not entirely true, because as with the Emmaus road disciples, interpretation has a key role to play, so that the people of Israel are enabled to understand what it is they are hearing.

And the people, far from being disappointed, are attentive – riveted, in fact.   They weep, and they rejoice; they listen for hour upon hour, and then they go away to eat and drink, not neglecting to share with those who have little.   For this is not any old book, but a book through which God addresses them, and tells them who are they are; where they have come from, and where they are going.   And a book that resources them for the journey, telling them they are not abandoned by God, and they have a hopeful future. 

We too live in times of perplexity, sadness and hardship.   And just as this has enabled a reappreciation of many things: the National Health Service, the natural world, the importance of friendship, community and small acts of kindness, so it might lead us to a reappreciation of what one writer has called ‘The Book of Strange New Things’ – the Bible. 

The current pandemic has led many to describe these times as ‘unprecedented’, but it could also be said that current circumstances are simply reminding us of what is always the case:  human life is characterized by vulnerability and uncertainty.   Most of the time we prefer not to dwell on this, and indeed invest a lot of effort in persuading ourselves otherwise.  That’s harder to do at the moment, which makes it easier to see ourselves in those people listening attentively to Ezra, very conscious of vulnerability and suffering, and so ready to hear words of life and hope.   The first disciples of Jesus, living in an occupied and militarized land, were similarly hungry for the words of Jesus; words of such weight and value that, to quote the final sentence of today’s Gospel, they will never pass away.   Indeed, two thousand years later, they are still nourishing us today. 

So what better time to spend more time with your Bible.  Or indeed to join our newly begun Bible discussion group, meeting on Thursday evenings via the wonders of Zoom, and which this week will continue to ponder the opening chapter of John’s Gospel, which tells of the Word made flesh in Jesus Christ, bringing life and light.  And of that same Jesus inviting each of us to share in what, later in the same Gospel, he calls ‘life in all its fullness’: the adventure of following him, and becoming more like him in love, compassion and generosity.  As Gooder says, we will never be the same again.   

In this morning’s reading from Matthew’s Gospel, Christ speaks of the end times, of God’s future.  But to sustain us until then, he has left us his word.  A word to be pondered, preached and proclaimed.   A word to strengthen the spirit, and kindle hope.  And a word, as in our first reading, to be accompanied by feasting; just as in this Eucharist we share in the sacramental presence of Christ in the breaking of bread. 

‘An adventure, a wrestling match and a feast, ‘you will never be the same again’ – these words of Paula Gooder, as we have seen, speak not only of reading the Bible, but of the whole experience of Christian discipleship.   A way of living in which we are nourished by the presence of Christ both in word and sacrament, in which we find resources sufficient to sustain us through times of vulnerability and uncertainty such as these.   For whatever is to come, these words will never pass away: and to jump to the final words of Matthew’s Gospel, Christ promises to be ‘with [us] always, to the end of the age.’  AMEN