Today is Bible Sunday so I’ll start with a little Question?  When did you last read your Bible?  It’s a pertinent question because a recent survey, published in July this year, discovered that though 79% of those questioned said that they owned a Bible, few could tell you a great deal about what’s in it.

The survey was carried out by members of St. John’s College in the University of Durham.  900 people from both faith and non-faith backgrounds, were randomly selected from streets and shopping centres throughout Britain. 

The survey revealed some startling facts.  For example: 62% didn’t know the Parable of the Prodigal Son; 40% didn’t know that the giving of Christmas gifts is based on the visit of the wise men to Jesus; one respondent said that David and Goliath was the name of a ship whilst another thought that Daniel surviving being thrown in the lion’s den was the subject of the musical, The Lion King.  33% of those under 45 knew nothing about the Feeding of the 5,000 and 60% were ignorant of the story of the Good Samaritan.  Even Churchgoers amongst those surveyed showed a lack of biblical knowledge.  72% of those knew nothing about the Daniel story and 57% were unable to talk accurately about Jesus stilling the storm on the Sea of Galilee.

The Revd Brian Brown, a Methodist Minister who led the survey said that

we can no longer take it for granted that Bible stories which are part of our national heritage, and many assumed are learned from the cradle, are known by the majority.

All was not doom and gloom. Significantly 70% could talk about Judas and 75% actually owned a Bible and 33% of those said it was significant in their lives.  Many turned to the Bible in times of personal crisis for support and guidance.

I am sure that if we conducted a similar survey here this morning there would be much better results!  I hope though that we might not give answers like the boy who once joined a Bible Study Group at his church and was asked how old Jesus was when he died.  ‘Four months’ came back the reply – WHAT? said the leader.  Four months, the boy repeated. “He was born at Christmas in December and died at Easter in April.”

At least one of our number is well versed in Holy Scriptures because that claim was made for her during the Licensing service of Readers in Chelmsford Cathedral.  Diana promised that she would be diligent in prayer and in reading Holy Scriptures and she also promised to be faithful in the preaching of the word.  Which was precisely what Paul urged of Timothy in today’s Epistle when he asked him to Proclaim the message.

Whenever a minister receives the authority of the Church of England to minister in Christ’s name, they are given a Bible, as Diana was and as I was at my ordination.  The Bible is a symbol of that authority.  The authority rests not on being given any superiority or status but in the privilege which is given to remind all of us of the life-changing power of Scripture.  This life-changing power is, of course, the power of Christ and God’s grace which comes to us through the Holy Word of God.

As Diana begins to minister amongst us, all that she will do – in teaching, preaching, pastoring and praying and leading worship - will stem from that same power and grace because yesterday she was enlisted in a new and dynamic way of sharing with Christ in his salvation of the world – of sharing his Word of Loving us into the Kingdom.   Rightly has Scripture been described as God’s Love-letter to humanity.  It is this Love of God, seen chiefly at work in Jesus which is the message we are to proclaim.

It is, of course, a privilege which can be daunting but actually it is also exciting because it is God-led and God inspired or to put it another way – God breathes his Spirit on those whom he calls to ministry and sets them apart NOT from the people but For them in order to help all of us to grow into Christ and become Christ-like.  Christ-like lives are always lives that go back to the Bible for their inspiration so that all of us become people on whom God’s Spirit has been breathed.  Ministers are not given to us so that we can be let off the hook. They are there to remind us of our own joyful obligation to make Jesus Christ the centre of our lives and, in those very lives, to Proclaim Him.  He is the Message we are to take to all with whom we have dealings in daily life.

In today’s Gospel Jesus accuses those who opposed him of searching the Scriptures but failed to understand that they spoke about Him.  All Scripture leads us to our Lord.  As the great teacher of the Orthodox Church, Bishop Kallistos Ware puts it:

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 in our personal life. The study of words should give place to an immediate dialogue with the living Word himself  because whenever you read Scripture, and particularly the Gospel, Christ himself is speaking to you and while you read, you are praying and talking with him.

This encounter with Christ at the heart of our Bible reading is what feeds us to proclaim the message - for how can we tell of someone we do not know?  How can we convince others of the importance of Jesus Christ to our lives if we ignore what he has to tell us and what he has to show us through Holy Scripture. 

But this knowing is not a factual thing – we can learn a lot about people without ever knowing them.  In this age of the Internet it is not difficult  to research the lives of others. I can recite a lot of facts about William Shakespeare but unless I go to the theatre and engage with his plays, I shall never really understand him.  Similarly, I can probably tell you something about Mozart or Bach but unless I hear their music and let it enter my soul, they will be empty facts.  There is a world of difference between knowing about someone and actually knowing them.  We need to read the Gospels and the writings about Jesus and actually engage with Him through those words if we are to develop a relationship with him that will indeed be life-changing. 

We can be helped in this by simply praying over the Gospel and the other writings of the Bible.  And there is a great deal of difference between reading the Bible and praying it.  An image I like is that of brooding over  Scripture – pondering its meaning so that it  seeps into our soul.  If the Bible is to reveal God’s word to you, then it must be treated with reverence.  We are to read it slowly and prayerfully for only then can it enter your heart. When it enters your heart it becomes something we live by.  It allows God to speak to us.  This is the ultimate purpose of sitting down with the Bible.

We are not to quarry it for quotable quotes which we can then chuck at others.  Still less is it to be used to bolster our arguments with others. So often Scripture is used as a weapon with which to beat others into submission or worse, to condemn them.  God didn’t go to all this trouble to write, through his human agents, his love-letter to us in order that we can use it for self-righteous judgement of others.  He wrote it so that he can enter into a living and loving relationship with us.

It’s like receiving a letter from a cherished friend not an e-mail from a disgruntled and angry complainant.  Now that we have resorted to emails we have entered into the age of instant communication which can be thoughtless and even hurtful.

Last week I took a funeral of a lady who loved computers and even emails but she also wrote letters to her grandson regularly because she wanted him to know what getting a real letter feels like. She spent time over them and  put a lot of herself in them.  That’s what God does through Scripture – He writes us a real letter  which we can read and re-read to discover the depth of its meaning.

The Scriptures, as our Collect reminds us are written for our learning and so we must read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them if we are to understand what God is saying to us about what we must do; how we must live our lives; and learn about who we are to become.  If we are to really believe in Jesus and proclaim Him as the Message of God’s loving salvation to others then we have to let it change us because only then can we be living witnesses to us.

This is something I hope Diana will help us with but we must not leave it all up to her or any minister.  We all have a responsibility.  We have all been commissioned to proclaim God’s Word – we all have God’s authority to do that. And, as always, it starts with ourselves.

There was a boy who went to stay with his grandfather.  He noticed that every morning when his grandfather got up he would sit at the table and read his Bible.

“What good does reading the Bible do?” the boy asked. “When I read the Bible I don’t understand it and forget it as soon as I close the book.”

His grandfather  was putting coal on the stove and he suggested that the boy take the coal basket down to the river and bring it back full of fresh water.  The boy did as he was told but by the time he got back to the house, all the water had leaked out of the basket.

“You’ll have to do it faster next time.”

The boy filled the basket and ran back faster but the same thing happened. All the water leaked out.

“Why don’t I use a bucket?” the boy asked. “I don’t want a bucket of water – I want a basketful.”

The boy tried and tried but in the end he told his grandfather that it was useless.

“So you think it’s useless! Look in the basket.”

The boy looked in and realized it was different. Instead of a dirty old coal basket, it was clean.

“And that’s what happens when you read the Bible” said his grandfather, “You might not understand or even remember what you have read but it will change you from the inside -  out.”

That’s what the Bible does. It changes us and slowly transforms us and renews us until we are different – we are more like Christ – and people will notice the difference. You can count on it!