Breathed

Luke 16 was an interesting challenge for us all last week. Preparing to preach on the Parable of the Dishonest Manager I became quickly aware that the noted scholars were pretty conflicted, that the text was avoided and on first reading I didn’t really like the parable—not a good place to find yourself as a disciple of Jesus; albeit a non-perfect one. Turning to one of the authorities on Middle Eastern Culture and poetry I soon found myself wishing that I hadn’t dropped Aramaic at school; or R.S. for that matter. (I dropped R.S. because Mr Lomax wore corduroy; it seemed a oddly substantial reason at the time, and because Music was the alternative.) What surprised me though was you lot,  because so many of you could recite verbatim the Good Samaritan or the Prodigal Son, but were saying things like ‘I had no idea that there was a Luke 16 between Luke 15 and Luke 17’, ‘I’ve never heard a sermon on this in all my 93 years’ or ‘is there any chance we could rewrite this bit?’ 

Sometimes we get lost in texts; whenever I read John 1 at Advent or Christmas I always feel that I am walking into something far greater than Malmesbury Abbey, or myself. Sometimes we get really annoyed by texts; Jephthah is one of my favourite pieces of music, but one of my least favourite passages in the Bible (Judges 11.) And sometimes, like Luke 16, we feel the distance of 2000 years and a very distant culture, and we wrestle together with it.  But however we receive a word of scripture, perhaps the key is humility. What we have in front of us is, yes, written by ancient hands, but breathed by God; and in that breathing each human being that connects with it has the potential for transformation—learning, correcting, inspiring, equipping.

So we’ll finish our journey in Luke next month and then in Advent we’ll prepare for Christmas with texts from the Old Testament and Matthew. Then in 2014 as a community it’s a year with St John—John’s gospel, John’s letters and Revelation. And as we look at the words on the paper this is the question—are we reading it, or is it reading us?