“Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given 0us in our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”
Do you recognize this collect? If we had been following the collects in the Book of Common Prayer, we would have heard it on the next to last Sunday of the Church year. Because we are experimenting with an extended Advent season, we heard a new collect written for the second Sunday of extended Advent. However, in the former Book of Common Prayer, the 1928 Prayer Book, this prayer was heard today, i.e., what would have been the second Sunday of Advent. As a prayer, it actually dates back to 1549 and our very first Book of Common Prayer. It reminds us that study of Scripture must be an integral and ongoing part of our lives, so that we may truly understand what God has done and continues to do for us.
It’s not surprising that the church heard this collect on the second Sunday of Advent. As a prayer, it reflects the first words of the portion of Paul’s letter to the Roman Christians that we just heard: “Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope.” The “scriptures,” that Paul mentions were the Hebrew Scriptures, since Paul’s letters antedate all the Gospels, and since the writings that we now call the New Testament were declared canonical, i.e., appropriate for followers of Jesus to hear and study, only in the fourth century. Here Paul is at the end of his letter. In his final exhortation to the Christians in Rome, Paul reminds them that, through Christ, the gentiles are now included in the covenants and promises that God made to Israel. More important, he tells them that diligent study of Scripture will enable them to maintain their hope of Christ’s coming, as they work out their differences and learn how to live in harmony with one another.
Paul challenges the Roman Christians to remember their scriptures by embedding references to those very scriptures in his exhortation. The “steadfastness” which he commends to them alludes to the endurance of Christ, especially his endurance of insults, shame, and death. In alluding to Christ’s endurance, Paul echoes Ps. 69:9, a verse that for Christians describes Jesus’ travail: “It is zeal for your house that has consumed me; the insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.” To emphasize God’s inclusion of the gentiles in God’s promises, Paul alludes to Psalm 18:50: “For this I will extol you, O Lord, among the nations, and sing praises to your name.” He also quotes Psalm 117:1 “Praise the Lord, all you nations! Extol him, all you peoples!” Finally, Paul quotes the end of the passage from Isaiah which we just heard: “On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.”
Paul’s insistence on the importance of the Hebrew Scriptures is echoed in the Gospel of Matthew. This Gospel was written after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 AD and was most likely composed for a community of Jewish Christians. So it highlights the Jewish origin and identity of Jesus and his earliest followers. For Matthew, Jesus is God’s anointed. He is a teacher as exalted and as authoritative as Moses, who was considered to be the author of the Hebrew Law.
What is more important, Matthew takes great pains to show that Jesus is the fulfillment of both the law and the prophets, and that in him all of God’s promises are fulfilled. To drive home his point, Matthew opens his account of Jesus’ life with a genealogy that firmly establishes Jesus as one of David’s descendants, i.e., from the “stump of Jesse,” i.e., David’s father. Thereafter, he either directly quotes from the Hebrew Scriptures or alludes to passages from Scripture. In the twelve verses we just heard, Matthew has embedded references to Abraham, and to the prophets Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Zechariah. Here are a few examples. He alludes to the prophet Isaiah to characterize John the Baptizer: “A voice cries out: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.’” With John’s ascetic lifestyle, wearing camel’s hair and eating honey, the evangelist alludes to Elijah’s way of life. His calling the Pharisees and Sadducees a “brood of vipers” is an indirect allusion to the passage from Isaiah we heard today, in which the asp and the adder were seen as former enemies of human beings. At the end of the passage, the “chaff,” an image for the destruction of the wicked in fire, is a recurring image in the Hebrew Scriptures.
Paul of Tarsus knew the Scriptures. The writer of the Gospel according to Matthew knew the Scriptures intimately. Do we? Do we have any sense of the historical contexts of our various books of Scripture? Have we encountered Jesus’ own understanding of his mission, as the Gospels characterize it? Do we know why the four Gospels are different? Do we know what the content of our hope as Christians really is? This Advent our Scripture readings have been suggesting what the reign of God might be like. Do we have any clearer picture of the “reign of God” or the “Kingdom of Heaven,” that has now come near us? Do we know what Scripture has to tell us about living together in harmony? Do we have any clues about the contents of the Scriptures of other faith communities besides our own?
Scott Gunn, the editor of Forward Day by Day, tells us that a “recent study revealed that Episcopalians are about the most spiritually content people around.” For Gunn, this is not good news. People who are spiritually healthy, he suggests, are not content with what they learned of God in confirmation class, especially when that event was decades ago. Rather, he tells us, “People who are spiritually healthy want to grow and learn, to always look for the next step in their journey.” That includes us. You say you’ve already read the Bible from cover to cover? You say you’ve been going to church as long as you can remember, and you’ve heard these passages from Scripture hundreds of times? Scott Gunn reminds us – and I would strongly second his observation – that “every time I study any passage in the scriptures, even one I’ve read dozens of times, I grow and learn.”
Advent – especially this extended Advent season -- is a time a think about the promises and prophecies that God has made to us and to all people, prophecies we hear first in the Hebrew Scriptures, prophecies that are restated in the Christian Scriptures, and prophecies that have parallels in the Scriptures of almost every other major faith tradition. Advent is a time to wonder whether and when the peaceable kingdom Isaiah describes will come to pass. Advent is a time to ask what the one more powerful than John the Baptizer will be like. Advent is a time to wonder how the Scriptures of other faith communities describe God’s promises about the future of history. Our understandings of Jesus, God, and the future of humanity should change and evolve as a result of our life experiences. Ideally, Advent is a time to take stock, and to see whether we are growing in an appreciation of God’s love and mercy, towards ourselves and towards all people. Advent is a time to make a fresh start and a new commitment, a commitment to renewing our cooperation with God and to hearing again what God is telling us through sacred texts.
So here’s my invitation to you: find a time and a way to grow in your understanding of Scripture. Can you find a regular time to read reflectively some part of the Bible – even a few verses at a time? Forward Day by Day is a good place to start – and it’s even available on line if you don’t take one of the paper copies we order for the parish. Or try reading a few verses contemplatively, then journaling about what they mean for your life. How about reviving the Wednesday evening Bible study that Deacon Carolyn was leading? If you would like a good commentary on the Bible, A.J. or I would be happy to suggest one. Are you interested in learning more about the parallels and differences between our faith and those of other faith communities? There are tons of good books on those subjects, as well as many different web sites.
Of course, studying Scripture is not an end in itself. We don’t get special treatment or brownie points from God because we can quote Scripture. The Sadducees could quote the Torah, and the Pharisees knew both the Torah and other writings. Even the devil could quote Scripture!
So here’s the good news. Our Scriptures are a gift from God! They were written, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, to reinforce our trust in God. They equip us to live holy lives and to share the good news with others. Most important, they enable us to give voice to the hopes we have for God’s future. May God enable us to “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest” our scriptures, and may the Word that we hear become flesh in us.
