SPEAKER_00: As soon as you open the contents page of a Bible, you will see that this book is a book of books.
SPEAKER_00: It contains 66 books in the Old and New Testament, in the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: And those books are written in a series of different genres and literatures.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible contains mythic history, it contains poetry, it contains wise sayings, eyewitness accounts, letters, epistles, and historic documents.
SPEAKER_00: It's written by forty different human authors in three languages, two main languages, and three if you're going to be pedantic.
SPEAKER_00: And it took roughly fifteen hundred years for the human authors to put this book together and ultimately compile it.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, Christians have always believed that through this book there is one divine author who is telling a single unified narrative that leads to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It's a narrative that starts in Genesis with the story of creation and finishes in Revelation with the new creation of heaven and earth.
SPEAKER_00: And the climax of that story is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Everything is either leading up to the life of Jesus or reflecting on the ramifications of Jesus' life.
SPEAKER_00: So this is a diverse book and it's a unified book.
SPEAKER_00: I wonder how would you evidence that claim?
SPEAKER_00: If someone said to you, This book is diverse and unified, how might you go about saying whether you agree with that or not?
SPEAKER_00: Well, let me suggest that one of the ways you could is by looking at the way the book references itself and cross-references itself from one verse to another, quoting other bits of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: If you're familiar with the internet, you might have noticed as you've been surfing on different web pages these words or phrases in blue that are underlined.
SPEAKER_00: That's called a hyperlink.
SPEAKER_00: And you could say that the Bible is one of the first hyperlinked books.
SPEAKER_00: A book where if you were to click on one word, you would see all the other places where other authors in the other parts of the scriptures are talking about and referencing those ideas.
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you a visual image of what that might look like.
SPEAKER_00: In this infographic, you can see all the different places where the Bible references itself.
SPEAKER_00: You've got the verses along the bottom, and then all of these links are the ways in which the different verses are talking about other verses in the book.
SPEAKER_00: This image will be at the back, and I'd love you to have a look at it over coffee after the service.
SPEAKER_00: But we also have a good example of that in our gospel reading today.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus and the Pharisees are debating with one another who is the Messiah?
SPEAKER_00: What is the Messiah like?
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus doesn't just tell them, he quotes the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: And you'll notice in your service sheet it's indented slightly differently because Jesus quotes Psalm 110 in answering the Pharisees' question.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't just say, This is the Messiah, or this is who I am, or this is what the Messiah is going to be like.
SPEAKER_00: He references the Old Testament, and now a link has been forged so that Psalm 110 is influencing our reading of Matthew 22 and vice versa.
SPEAKER_00: You see, in the old in the first century, the Jewish consciousness had been shaped by these stories that they told one another about King David and about Isaiah and about the prophets and about uh the judges, about the patriarchs.
SPEAKER_00: These stories were uh embedded in the Jewish community and created these archetypes.
SPEAKER_00: And so the Jews knew that the Messiah would be like the son of David, would be like King David.
SPEAKER_00: And so the hope for a Messiah was first that literally he would be able to trace his lineage back to the person of King David, but also that he would be like him in really important ways, that he would lead God's people, that he would do battle with and be victorious over God's enemies.
SPEAKER_00: And so the m the Pharisees and the Sadducees are debating with Jesus who is the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says he's going to be like King David, the son of David.
SPEAKER_00: But in their debate, Jesus is saying that the title of the son of David is inadequate to describe the Messiah, that the Messiah is going to be like King David and be more than just David's son.
SPEAKER_00: He's also going to be David's Lord.
SPEAKER_00: So King David becomes an archetype or a category in the Jewish consciousness, and Jesus steps into that archetype and fulfills it and reshapes it around himself and expands it beyond what you might have thought at first.
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus is a Messiah like the Son of David.
SPEAKER_00: But when he has victory over his enemies, he does it by yielding himself to their injustice.
SPEAKER_00: And he wears a crown like King David, but it's a crown of thorns.
SPEAKER_00: And a sword is wielded like King David's sword, but that sword pierces Jesus' side.
SPEAKER_00: So he is a king, enthroned, but enthroned on a cross.
SPEAKER_00: This is one of the great joys of reading the scriptures, is burrowing down into these cross references, clicking on the hyperlinks to see where the scripture is talking to itself and creating more information than if it just told us straightforwardly about how Jesus inhabits and reshapes the storyline of the Hebrew Scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: So that's the first way you'd like us to think about what the Bible is and how the Bible works.
SPEAKER_00: That it's a unified story that leads to Jesus, a book of great diversity telling a single narrative.
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you a second option that might be helpful.
SPEAKER_00: It's very tempting when looking at any book for us as modern Westerners to think that's going to contain information.
SPEAKER_00: And I need to open the book, discover the information, close the book, and be done with it.
SPEAKER_00: That's what 99% of the books that you and I read do.
SPEAKER_00: They convey information.
SPEAKER_00: We download it and then we move on.
SPEAKER_00: But that is not the way the Bibles are meant to be read, I suggest.
SPEAKER_00: Another way of thinking about them is that they are ancient meditation literature.
SPEAKER_00: They're to be read again and again, pondered and considered over many years.
SPEAKER_00: And what we discover, miraculously, is that the scriptures grow with us.
SPEAKER_00: And as we grow old, the scriptures are transformed and teach us new things year after year.
SPEAKER_00: As we're heading into Advent, let me take a uh an example from Christmas.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure many of us have had the experience of seeing things new year after year in the nativity scene, in the Christmas story.
SPEAKER_00: I wonder if the story of Jesus being born in a manger took on fresh meaning for you the first time you became a parent or a grandparent.
SPEAKER_00: I wonder if the story of the shepherds felt different to you once you moved to a more rural part of the country and started to get a better understanding of what it is to live in an agrarian society.
SPEAKER_00: This is what happens when we read and read again, slowly digesting the scriptures over years.
SPEAKER_00: I know that for Hannah and I, when we this time last year heard the story of Mary and Joseph having to travel to Bethlehem heavily pregnant, while Hannah was herself heavily pregnant, it re made us think again about what that story means.
SPEAKER_00: Or as Paul puts it in our New Testament reading set for today, in Colossians, he invites us to let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.
SPEAKER_00: Dwell in you richly.
SPEAKER_00: These are not words used to describe downloading content.
SPEAKER_00: They're better described imagining the experience of inhabiting and living with someone or something.
SPEAKER_00: You dwell richly when you're enjoying a slow meal or going for a long walk.
SPEAKER_00: This should be our our relationship with the scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: Like an old friend who we've known for many years, who continues to surprise us and challenge us, as all the best old friends do.
SPEAKER_00: So, suggesting two ways of understanding the scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: Firstly, as a unified story that leads to Jesus, secondly, as ancient meditation literature to be read again and again to discover new things in them.
SPEAKER_00: Neither of these ideas are mine.
SPEAKER_00: They come from an online resource called the Bible Project that I'm a really big fan of.
SPEAKER_00: I found it so helpful in uh recommending this both to people who have never read the Bible before and to people who have been reading it for decades.
SPEAKER_00: It's a charity based in America in Portland, Oregon.
SPEAKER_00: And the Bible Project creates explainer videos, podcasts, articles, and other educational resources to help make the Bible and the biblical story accessible to everyone around the world.
SPEAKER_00: I have another prop to show you.
SPEAKER_00: This is a coffee table book that I bought here actually at a bookstand we had a few months ago.
SPEAKER_00: Please do pray for Hannah because I'm forever coming home with more books like this that she has to put up with.
SPEAKER_00: This is going to be at the back of church.
SPEAKER_00: You'll be able to, again, look at it over coffee hour.
SPEAKER_00: Uh it just gives an idea of what the Bible projects do, and they're really helpful.
SPEAKER_00: So I hope that has given you two fresh ways of thinking about this book that we know and love, that we read week in, week out, but a new way of imagining how you might, as the words of the collect say, hear, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.
SPEAKER_00: Would that be how we think of this book and how it shapes and changes our lives?
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.