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Today’s collect, which prays that we may “hear, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest” the sacred scriptures, reveals the love affair with the Bible which the English people enjoyed during the 16th century, as well as the unparalleled skill of Thomas Cranmer in turning scripture into liturgy. Cranmer incorporates into his collect Paul’s aspiration that “through patience and comfort of the scriptures we might have hope” (Romans 15:4).

Today’s gospel, with its reference to signs in the sun, moon, and stars and the roaring of the sea (Luke 21:25), comes from the Lucan apocalypse. The dominance of the apocalyptic thinking that accompanied the beginnings of Christianity has reappeared, for example, in Hal Lindsay’s Late Great Planet Earth and the amazingly popular “Left Behind” series.

The vision of the shattering of the world, followed by its reconstitution, is, from a psychological perspective, the momentous event of the coming of God into conscious realization. During the past year we have experienced many natural disasters: the Boxing Day tsunami, the hurricanes in the American southland, and the earthquakes in Southeast Asia.

But these disasters did not bring about the end of the world, and Jesus’ prophecy that the end would come during his own generation (Luke 21:32) remained unfulfilled, although the destruction of Jerusalem would change the world of Judaism irrevocably.

On the other hand, Jesus’ prophecy that his words would never pass away (v. 33) surely has been fulfilled. One day when I was walking along Bloor Street, I passed a sandwich board which directed me to a nearby church with the slogan “Not liturgical but Biblical praise and worship.”

For me as an Anglican such a disjunction is simply meaningless, since in our traditional worship Bible and liturgy fit together so smoothly. In our worship it is not some discourse about scripture which is central but rather scripture itself. Indeed, one could almost say that the Book of Common Prayer is scripture arranged for liturgical use.

For Paul, though scripture was written in the past, it has meaning in the present: “Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our instruction” (Romans 15:4). For Paul, as for Judaism today, text and personal experience are not two autonomous domains. On the contrary, they are reciprocally enlightening: even as the immediate event helps make the age-old text intelligible, so, in turn, the text reveals the fundamental significance of the recent event or experience.

Today we live in a vastly different world from that of the English Reformers. Approaches to the Bible have emerged which they would have had trouble understanding or accepting. Nevertheless, I believe that their love for the Bible is still possible for us today. Now that the Bible’s sinister role in promoting religious discord and fanaticism has been universally discredited, it can regain its proper function in the cure of souls.

December 4, 2005

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