When I was at Junior School I remember John Garnett telling our teacher that he had just completed a reading of the entire Bible.  He was quite smug about it and I suppose for an eleven year old boy it was quite an achievement.  But then, John was the class swot.  Not to be outdone, I decided that I also would read the Bible from cover to cover.  I set off eagerly through the pages of Genesis and Exodus and all went well until I got to Leviticus when, sadly, I abandoned the project.

I thought about this on Friday when a Reader friend of mine came to see me. For some months he has been reading the Bible from beginning to end.  He has been doing  it slowly and by last Friday he had  reached Isaiah.  Well, that’s a lot further than Leviticus.

It’s good to set yourself a goal. I have set myself one this Lent.  I am going to read a 2 volume book by the late Jesuit Biblical Scholar, Raymond E Brown – called The Death of the Messiah  - a commentary on the four Passion narratives of the Gospel writers.  I dare say that I shall be peppering my sermons with learned quotes before too long!  There are just over 1,500 pages to get through so it shouldn’t be too difficult. It’s only 42 pages a day!  Of course, I have to read them meaningfully because Fr. Brown is dealing with the most sacred text of the entire Bible. I must therefore read the Passion narratives alongside the commentary and hopefully, as with all good Bible Study, it should lead to prayer.  The Bible, after all, is a meditation on the mighty acts of God in his dealings with His people. It is therefore the story of a relationship and especially, on God’s part, this is a relationship of Love.

When we read the Bible and especially when we pray its pages we enter into that loving relationship.  As Christians, we are part of the story and it remains a continuous story of God’s Love Affair with His people – with us.   

We don’t read the Bible in order to chuck quotes at others, still less to prove some argument or opinion we hold – though sadly the Bible has been used and continues to be used by people in just such a way.

The Orthodox writer, Kallistos Ware once wrote that:

The real purpose of Bible Study is to feed our love for Christ, to kindle our hearts into prayer and to provide us with guidance for our personal life. The study of words should give place to an immediate dialogue with the living Word himself  - with God, with Jesus Christ.

To be reminded that the sacred words of the Bible lead us into an encounter with Christ is very important. We are in relationship with a Living God, and not just a book. An Orthodox Saint, St Tikhon, said that

Whenever you read the Gospel, Christ himself is speaking to you.  And while you read, you are praying and talking to him.

This conversation must never be rushed.  A friend of mine once said that we should read the Bible in digestible bits rather than indigestible chunks.  Modern translations of the Bible helpfully divide the text up into sections rather than chapters and one section can be enough to feed our praying.   Just a few verses read each morning can feed our thoughts and prayers for the day.  Often it has an uncanny knack of acting like a magnet. Experiences in our day can find a new meaning because of what we have read.  If we re-read the passage at the end of the day we can reflect upon what we have learned about God, about His World and about ourselves.

I said earlier that it is good to set oneself goals.  The important thing is that these goals must be achievable or else we might become discouraged.  My goal at the age of eleven was too high for me to reach.  I became so discouraged that I never read the Bible again until I was about 17.  I don’t know what targets you have set yourself this Lent but it really is important that you can reach them.  A good goal might be to take one of the Gospels and read it prayerfully and slowly throughout Lent with the aim of reaching the Passion during Holy week.  This is an achievable goal.

Perhaps we might be helped to keep things in perspective by something a famous Welsh Saint said on his death bed.   Today, had the 1^st Sunday of Lent not taken precedence we would have been keeping St. David’s Day.  He was one of Wales’s greatest saints  and is rightly the Patron Saint of that Nation.  His love for God and God’s people is legendary. Those who wrote of him after his death spoke of his deep devotion to God and also of his compassion for others.  His care of orphans, widows, the needy and the sick and those who needed love was never simply a physical caring.  He knew it was just as important to feed the soul.  He fed them, of course, with the Word of God for like all Welsh Holy people of his time, he was brought up in a monastery which set great store by holy learning of the sacred text of the Bible – a holy learning which brought him into a deep and personal relationship with Christ.  His subsequent action for the well-being of others stemmed from this living relationship which began in an encounter with God’s Holy Word.

How he might help us today is in a little piece of advice he gave to his religious community when he lay dying on March 1^st 589. This is what he said:

“brothers and sisters, be happy and keep your faith and your belief, and do the little things that you have heard and seen me do.”

It seems to me that this is not only good advice, it is also something we can take to heart as a goal for Lent.  To be happy in the Lord is to keep our faith no matter what threatens it.  Sometimes it is hard to keep faith in our darkened world with all its manifestations of wickedness, distress and pain.   It is tempting at such a time to give up on God because we fail to see him at work in our world.  I suspect that no one knows this more than Jesus himself who prepared for his ministry of loving the world into His Father’s Kingdom by that testing time in the wilderness – the time of which St. Mark refers to with characteristic brevity in our Gospel this morning.  We have to turn to Matthew and Luke’s version of this event to get the details but for Mark it is enough to say that he was tempted by Satan.  He was put to the test.  His own faith was surely tried.  In a weakened state from fasting he was, at one level, easy prey but he remained steadfast.  He kept his faith and belief in His Father and in his Father’s plan for him.

Keeping Faith and Belief may seem obvious to us.  Of course that is what is required of us but in so many ways we are under attack to do just the opposite.  The Bible is full of people who failed to do that but it is also full of people who were quite remarkable in their steadfastness to God in the face of adversity.  Just reading about them can give us confidence and a strengthening of resolve because, in truth, most of them were ordinary people – but with the difference that they were ordinary people whose hearts God had touched.

St. David was one of those and he spoke from his heart.  It is, however, the second part of his advice that can be a big help to us.

Do those little things that you have heard and seen me do.

It is little things in our faith and church life that build up our faith and bring us real joy.  Of course we love it when there are what might be called religious highs – when, perhaps an act of worship explodes in a tremendous feeling of being lifted up.  It happens in our human relationships when acquaintances become friends and friends deepen their love for each other.  There are high spots when all defences and barriers go down and we are suddenly caught up in a relationship which reaches a new level, a new depth, a new height.  This happens when we fall in love for example but that explosion of love is sustained not by lots of highs but in the ordinariness of simply being together.  It’s the little things which really develop our relationships and sustains them – the everyday conversations and simple sharings, the being together.

So it is with our relationship with God.  We can take part in soul-exploding worship; or we can stand on a kind of mountain top and find everything breathtaking.  God knows that we need such moments which are Conversion moments when everything between God and ourselves is amazing.  But we can’t sustain our relationship with God through emotional highs.  It’s in the little everyday things – the simple prayer, the quiet brooding over scripture, the faithful receiving of the sacrament, the little acts of quiet service we do for others, the small gestures of smiles and encouragement – that we keep God at the centre of our lives.

These are the things that really build up our faith.  These are truly the things that build us up as a Church.  St. Teresa of Avila spoke of God walking among the pots and pans  - in other words in the ordinary everyday things of our lives.  Her namesake, Teresa of Calcutta, spoke of doing Little things but with a great love.  Both these holy women understood precisely what St. David meant by Little things.

So this Lent I suggest that you become more attentive to these little things of your relationship with God.  They are what will bring us a quiet joy but also, of course, they build up until they are great things.   

The thing about our Lord’s time in the wilderness is that though he was tempted by Satan, this took up a very little of his 40 days there.  Most of the time was spent in being alone with His Father – as they attended to the little things which bound them together in the deepest of all loving relationships.  What followed however was the greatest thing – the proclaiming of the Good News of God.

If we spend  time this Lent on the Little things of our faith, then it is not only possible that we shall be ready to proclaim the Good News of the Risen Christ of Easter – we shall be compelled to do it.

That’s a good and quite achievable Lenten goal.