Martin Forrest

The lectionary offers us four passages from the Bible today and I’d like to say a very brief word about each of them. But before I do, I want to mention three historical figures and their very different approaches to books and reading.

The first is St.Francis of Assisi who, like most people of his day, was illiterate, or more or less illiterate, and who apparently knew only a handful of Bible passages, maybe as few as a dozen. Besides that, he believed that books only separated and divided people, especially Christians, who, he thought, should be less concerned about the meaning of words and more focussed on actually following Jesus.

And so the respect in which Francis is still held, across the Christian Church, comes not from the breadth of his knowledge of Scripture, but from his deep understanding of the few passages he did know.

And today you can see Francis’ point when many of us feel profoundly worn out by the strident arguments of those who know the Bible well, but who insist that their way of reading it is the only way to read it so that their opinions are unarguably correct. And I suspect, to be honest, that at least some of those who claim to venerate the Word of God more faithfully than many of the rest of us, do not read it with an entirely open mind.

In fact, I fear that some of the most vociferous voices in the Church today actually belong, although they don’t know it, to the Adolf Hitler School of Reading. Hitler was in his early 20s when he decided that his ideas were fully formed and from that point on he only read books that confirmed the opinions that he already held.

This isn’t, of course, the way to have a reasonable debate with anyone and it’s sad when anyone in the Church is as dogmatic as this about their own opinions.

Personally I would rather belong to the Mahatma Gandhi School of Reading. Gandhi was once asked if he could name the best book he’d ever read. His reply was that he had actually read very few books in the course of his life, but all the ones he had read were good ones.

I wish I could say that. But I think Francis would have related to what Gandhi said and would probably have given a very similar answer if he’d been asked to state his favourite Bible passage. Francis managed to live his entire holy life untroubled by the kind of commandments and abominations so precious to some Christians today, and he concentrated instead on imitating the remarkable, unconditional, sacrificial love he saw in Jesus his Saviour.

So if we were like Francis, and we only knew a few passages of Scripture, and if the only passages we knew were the four readings given to us today by the lectionary, I think we could well say, like Gandhi, that the only readings we knew were good ones. And this would help us do what Francis did, and not get bogged down in controversy and interpretation, and not read these words simply to confirm our own prejudices. And it would allow these readings to inspire us to follow Jesus more closely and more faithfully.

So this morning I’m going to look at these passages, and even pluck verses from them, as if these were the only words God has ever spoken to his people. And I’m going to suggest to you that the essence and the beauty of God’s Word are amply, and perhaps even fully expressed in these four passages. If you were on Desert Island Discs and you weren’t allowed a whole Bible, but only four passages from it, you could do a lot worse than to choose today’s four readings.

The most central of the readings is, of course, the account of a famous conversation Jesus once had with a Jewish scribe. In these words Jesus defined the essence of true religion: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength’ and ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’

Of course, Jesus was quoting here the old Jewish law, and these are words that even today build bridges with Jews and people from other religions too, who, like Jesus, also recognise the law of love as the commandment greater than all others.

Our three historical figures were all well aware of these words. Hitler despised them, Gandhi adored them and St.Francis lived his whole life as if God had said nothing else to us.

The Letter to the Hebrews might not be among your first choices as a Desert Island book, and its arguments can be alien and difficult for us to follow. But we’re offered some words from it today, and if you read them carefully they are glorious words, four verses which effectively sum up all the Letter has to say in thirteen chapters.

These words ask us to consider what has been accomplished by the life and sacrifice of Jesus.

Everything that human religion was ever trying to do, all the sacrifices people made and all the pleading they offered to try and curry favour with a God who seemed so far away, all that this was trying to do has now been achieved by Christ.

There is no need now for the blood of bulls and goats. Christ has made the only sacrifice that counts. And in place of all the elaborate uncertainty of human religion, we are left with the simple beauty of this Eucharist, this privilege we’ve been given of sharing in Christ’s sacrifice and keeping it alive and real and present to us in bread and wine.

But above all, Hebrews tells us, we should know that our sins are forgiven. God is with us. God is on our side. We are now free to get on with life, to serve the living God in faithfulness and love.

And in case we’re unclear about the wider implications of this gift, we have today’s Psalm, 146, reminding us that this faith we’ve been given and this path we’re asked to follow have real consequences.

God is with us. God will help us. We should not put our trust in human leaders because no human being can save us. Jesus himself warned us about those who portray themselves as ‘Friends of the People.’ In the end, we can’t trust them, as we usually discover.

But this Psalm tells us we can put ‘our hope in the Lord our God, who made heaven and earth...who keeps faith for ever; who executes justice for the oppressed; who gives food to the hungry.’

Here again is the essence of true religion: faith in a God whose love can be trusted, whose loves reaches us and way beyond us to the world’s poorest and most oppressed people, a love we’re called to share in practical, everyday ways.

And then, into our laps today, has fallen the Book of Ruth, the story of the faithfulness of a foreign woman to the God and the people of Israel.

This is, in many ways, a minor book of the Old Testament. But it contains, in its first chapter, some of the most beautful words ever written about human faithfulness, words that, in the light of today’s other readings, speak to us in a most profound way about the faithfulness God rejoices to see in his people.

So when Ruth insists on returning to Israel, a country she has never been to, with her Jewish mother-in-law, Ruth says these words:

‘Don't ask me to leave you! Let me go with you. Wherever you go, I will go; wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. Wherever you die, I will die, and that is where I will be buried. May the Lord's worst punishment come upon me if I let anything but death separate me from you!’

It’s hard to believe that these words were written as long ago as they were - maybe about 3000 years ago - and long before Jesus himself.

But at a time when the arguments of militant atheists can shake not only those on the fringes of faith, but also those of us who like to think of ourselves as being educated and rational as well as people of faith, I find that these are words that keep me clinging to Jesus and to him alone above all the thinkers, philosophers and leaders the world has ever produced.

You know in the end, I can’t prove that God exists. I can’t prove that the sacrifice of Jesus means that our sins are forgiven and God is on our side. I can’t prove that a Christ-like way of living and loving is better than any other way. But I believe it. And I would believe it if the four passages of Scripture the lectionary has given us today were the only parts of the Bible I knew.

I have seen in Jesus the only leader I deem worth following. I have found in him the only teacher I agree with wholeheartedly and the only Saviour I can have real faith in. And I am happy to stake my life on him, to hitch my wagon to his, to put all my eggs in his basket, whatever way you want to put it.

And I can’t prove, either, that he has risen from the dead or that we will rise with him. But I believe that too. And even if he didn’t, I am still happy to follow him. Even just in today’s four passages, Jesus has taught me, like he taught Gandhi, the essence of true religion. He has shown me, as he showed St.Francis, a way of life greater than any other and, with Ruth, the meaning and beauty of faithfulness. So even in death, wherever Jesus has gone, I am happy to go there with him, be that to oblivion, to the gates of hell or to the beauty of heaven.

And so the words of Ruth, I find, are my words to the Jesus I love, the Jesus to whom I am thirled as much as Ruth was to her mother-in-law: Lord, wherever you go, I will go; wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. Amen.