Delivered on Sunday 05 December 2010 in St George's Chapel

How do you read the Bible? I am not asking how often you read the Bible or which parts of the Bible you read but quite specifically 'How do you read the Bible?' You may think this a daft question. What do you mean How do I read the Bible? I open it up I look at the words and I read them. It really couldn't get any simpler. It's just a matter of using a skill I learnt in my very first years at school, all those classes on reading and writing. And if that is the way you're thinking I know just what you mean but I also know that things are a great deal more complicated than they appear at first sight.
At some point towards the end of the eighteenth century people started asking penetrating questions about how the Bible was to be read. I suppose those questions were born out of a new-found confidence in human ability. Scholars and public intellectuals who were well versed in new philosophical methods, and aware of the significant progress made in understanding the ways of nature, now had the confidence to ask new and probing questions of the Bible. Had you asked our question of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge he would have answered "I read the Bible like I read any other book." His answer speaks not only of the sheer mechanics of reading - the recognition of letters and words - but also the freedom with which he was willing to approach the text. Earlier generations - respectfully regarding the Bible as in some way divinely inspired - would have been cautious about dealing with the sacred text like any other book. Not so Coleridge. If I can critically read Chaucer's Canterbury Tales why not also the Bible?
So, from soil such as this, grew a whole new way of reading the Bible. For shorthand - or at least what passes as shorthand in the academic community - it is known as the historical-critical method. It is a way of reading the Bible that tries to recreate the history behind the text. Who wrote the text? For whom was the text written? What was going on when the text was written? To explain a little more, let me use the historical-critical method to read the passage we heard this morning from Isaiah. We begin by thinking about the author, Isaiah. Now here we have to exercise a little bit of caution because the book of Isaiah covers a long period of history; far too long to be the prophetic speech of any one man. In all likelihood, says the scholar, there were probably three Isaiah's involved and our verses were written by the man we now fondly call 'First Isaiah'. In this short passage First Isaiah is speaking to the people of Jerusalem about a vision he has been given for their King. The people are in the middle of a difficult political situation with the powerful Assyrians threatening their borders. In order to help his people God will grant King Ahaz a long list of David-like qualities. Ahaz will have a spirit of wisdom, be a sound judge, look after the poor, and so on. King Ahaz will bring new stability - in fact idyllic stability - to Judah and Jerusalem. Read from this perspective Isaiah 11 is an ancient political manifesto.
As readings go this is perfectly sound but it is not satisfactory. It might be all well and good for the university professor but it just won't do in the context of the Church. It was Karl Barth, the great Swiss theologian, who first had the courage to point this out. Barth had been a great devotee and practitioner of the historical-critical method until he found himself, in the early twentieth century, serving as pastor to a mining village called Safenwil. Week by week as he sat preparing his sermons, the task of writing became harder and harder. He had all the tools of the historical-critical method at his disposal - a sound knowledge of Hebrew and Greek, a grounding in the ancient history of the Ancient Near East, and a solid grasp of contemporary scholarship - but what had all that to do with the lives of the people who came to sit in his pews. What had King Ahaz to do with the miner? The historical-critical method is a bit like examining a wonderful Steinway piano and knowing exactly how it was made, how the strings have been tuned, how the wood has been treated but never actually playing the instrument.
So if the historical critical method is not our solution how then should we read the Bible? Let me tell you about an alternative method. This reading is not so much interested in the history behind the text; it takes the view that the text of the Bible is as it is and we need to read it as a whole. So whenever you try to read a particular passage you do it in the light of the entire text of Scripture. That was more or less the way the early Church read the Bible and was the way the writers of the New Testament read the books of the Old Testament. Let us apply the method to the passage from Isaiah. Supporters of this method will not disagree with the historical critical scholars about Isaiah himself. They admit that there are many hands behind the various sections but they go on to suggest that the book has had an editor who put the whole thing together. There is a shape to the whole book, one that speaks of judgement, punishment, and forgiveness. Isaiah ultimately is about God's people being loved into a new existence. That is exactly the tone of our passage - a new existence where the wolf will down with the lamb. And when that vision alongside the account of John the Baptist preaching judgement and repentance, you realise that Isaiah is not talking about the upcoming event of Christmas but about the second coming, the final judgement, and the final healing of the world. The attributes that once may been spoken about Ahaz will be only truly revealed in the risen Christ's second coming.
I think this way of reading is more satisfactory, certainly more satisfactory for the Church but it is still what I call a 'clever' reading. It is a different kind of 'clever' to that used in the historical critical method. It does not depend quite so much on one's knowledge of Hebrew or history, but it does rely on a thorough knowledge of the text and a creative ability to read texts in the light other texts. It is, without doubt, still a 'clever' reading.
Last Sunday week I went to preach at a service of Evensong in Cambridge. The texts were beautifully read by two current students. And I preached one of those sermons that sound something like this: 'you might well think the text means this but I say unto you that it means something else entirely'. To be fair I think my reading of the text was reasonable. But as I was leaving a tall fellow with a long white beard came up to speak to me. He said: 'Thank you very much for your sermon. You know people like me, we know a great deal about our chosen subjects but we need people like you to show us what the Bible means'. He meant his words kindly but I was mortified. The word of God must not - absolutely must not - be captured and contained by cleverness. The Collect for today makes it clear that the word of God is for each one of us. In fact it gives us precise instructions. How should we read the Scriptures? Hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them. Note the groupings. The secondary process is one of reading, marking, learning, inwardly digesting. That is what you do after you have heard the Scriptures. The writer of the Collect knows that you will read the Bible at home but it is when you come together in worship that you hear the Scriptures publicly proclaimed. It is then that you listen. Listen with all your might. The reader interprets the Scriptures and God speaks through those Scriptures to do who listen. So, what did you hear? When you heard those verses read from Isaiah what did you hear? What was God saying to you? ... What was God saying to you?
Even Coleridge with whom we began recognised that there is a power in the words of the Bible that exceeds that of other books. He wrote:
In the Bible there is more that finds me than I have experienced in all other books together ... the words of the Bible find me at greater depths of my being, and that whatever finds me brings with it an irresistible evidence of its having proceeded from the Holy Spirit.
Coleridge is quite right. But we can and should go further. The words of the Bible do find me at greater depths of my being precisely because they point me to the reality that is God, and draw me in that strange new world where God's sovereignty is crystal clear, and where I am loved - loved as I am, warts and all, loved into a new existence or, as the Collect has it, the blessed hope of everlasting life.