A
homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given
at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon,
Illinois, on Sunday, November 18, 2012.
“THE
GIFT OF GOD’S HOLY WORD”
(Homily text: The
Collect of the Day)
This morning, I’d like to do
something a little differently in our homily:
I’d like to focus in on God’s holy Word, the Holy Scriptures, the
Bible. We’ve just concluded the first
part of our basic Bible series entitled “Step by Step into the Bible” this past
Tuesday (it will resume in January).
As a result, the topic of the Bible
is very much in my mind these days.
As our text this morning, I’d like
to make use of the excellent Collect of the Day for this, the Twenty Fifth Sunday
after Pentecost (Proper 28).[1] The prayer’s text reads:
“Blessed Lord, who hast caused all
holy Scriptures to be written for our learning:
Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark and inwardly digest
them; that, by patience and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace and ever
hold fast the blessed hope of eternal life, which thou hast given us in our
Savior Jesus Christ; who liveth and
reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”
Using this Collect as our guide,
let’s proceed through its main points, one by one, in the order in which we
find them in the prayer itself.
Scripture’s
origins: The Collect makes clear
that God is the originator of holy Scripture.
The Collect puts it this way:
“Blessed Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures….” In our Step by Step classes these past weeks,
we noted that the Bible has a divine thread and a human thread, which are
wrapped around each other much like the shape of DNA. But, we also noted, that because God is the
inspiration for the writing of the Bible, it is the divine thread that
predominates. The human thread consists
of the images and experiences of the human authors, who often make use of
images and ideas of the culture and the time in which they lived to convey the
timeless truths of God.
Learning: The Collect reminds us that the holy
Scriptures exist in order that we may learn the truths of God. Learning, as we will come to understand as
the Collect’s text unfolds, entails much more than simply knowing about God in
the mental or academic sense. Learning
involves not only receiving the Word with our ears, eyes and minds, but with
our understanding. Read on for an explanation
of this inward movement into the very core and depth of our being.
Hearing: The Collect reminds us that, in many cases,
hearing the Word of God written is the first way we encounter it. Certainly, in times past, including in the
biblical era and in the life of the early Church, that was the most common way
of encountering the Bible: People heard
it read aloud in Church or when believers gathered. Since – until the 15th century
anyway – there was very little opportunity to actually read a text, because mass
production of Bibles was impossible before Gutenberg’s invention of the
printing press, hearing the Bible read aloud was meant to inform the listener,
and to serve as a tool for memorizing the Bible (or at least portions of it).
Reading: At times, I think we fail to appreciate the
worth of having the Scriptures in printed form.
I would wager a guess that most of us not only have at least one Bible
in our homes, but we probably have many.
And, most likely, we probably have a goodly number of different
translations, as well, ranging from the stately and majestic Authorized (King
James) Version, to the paraphrase which is known as “The Message”. So, we have the text itself in front of us. One consequence of having access to the
actual text in printed form is that memorization has become less common. Furthermore, we also have a text which is
divided into chapters and verses (a 16th century development), which
allows us to find a given verse or passage easily. Concordances which list key words in the text
also assist us to find the same word in its usage elsewhere in Scripture. The bottom line is that we have a lot of
tools to assist us in our reading and studying of holy Scripture these days,
tools that weren’t available in earlier times.
Marking: The verb “mark” in the Collect doesn’t refer
to marking up the text with a highlighter or with a pen. It refers to the inward movement of the text
into our minds, first of all, but then into the very core of our being. To “mark” in this sense entails a careful
reading of the text, sometimes over and over again, so as to capture the
details which a brief, cursory reading would miss. In the case of our Lord’s parables, for
example, such a repeated reading would be very important, for the Lord is a
master storyteller, whose teachings are full of nuance and fine detail that
shouldn’t be missed.
Inwardly
digesting: Here, the Collect asks
God to enable us to fully incorporate the meaning of the text, and of God’s
will for our lives, into the very depths of our being. In our last Step by Step class earlier this
week, we noted that the reading and study of the Bible isn’t meant to be a
mental, academic exercise alone. Engaging
God through the pages of His Word is meant to shape our thinking, to inform and
to feed our souls, and to affect and purify our actions. The way we put it in our class was to say
that our engagement with God through His Word is meant to affect our minds, our
bodies and our spirits. Since we human
beings are holistic creatures, what affects one area of our being also affects
all the other areas of it, as well. This
is the biblical view of the human creation, which stands in opposition to the
secular conception of it, a view that says that the mind is separate from the
body, and from the spirit, as well.
Now, where is all this study and
inward movement of God’s truth meant to lead?
The Collect answers that
question. It asks that, with God’s help,
we may “embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of eternal life.” That is the goal of every Christian
believer’s walk with God: That our walk
in this life is meant to be lived in the full sight and the full expectation of
the life of the world to come, a life that will be lived out directly in God’s
presence. That eternal life is made
possible, as the Collect says, by the gift of our Savior Jesus Christ.
Psalm 119: 105 reads, “Your word is
a lantern to my feet, and a light upon my path.”[2] Indeed, the light of God’s Word enables us to
confidently walk the path of this life without stumbling and without straying
off that path. The light of God’s Word
will also lead us home once this life is over and gone, when we stand in God’s
presence and gaze upon His glory.
Thanks be to God, the giver of His
only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ, who is also the giver of the gift of His holy
Word, written.
AMEN.
