A Homily for the Second Sunday in Advent

Whatsoever things were written afore time were written for our learning,

that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.

—Romans 15:4

The second Sunday in Advent is known to Anglicans as “Bible Sunday.”

When Archbishop Cranmer compiled the first Book of Common Prayer, in 1549, he retained with very few exceptions the propers (the collects, Epistles, and Gospels) for Sundays and holydays as they had been customarily used in England and the Western Church throughout the middle ages. One of the few exceptions was this Sunday, the second Sunday in Advent. For this Sunday, the Archbishop composed a new collect, taking its theme from the Epistle lesson.

We prayed this morning, as Anglican Christians have prayed on this Sunday for more than 450 years, that we “may in such wise hear [the Scriptures], read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of [God’s] holy Word, we may embrace, and ever hold fast, the blessed hope of everlasting life.”

In our prayer, we did not ask God to make us hear, read, mark, learn, or digest the Scriptures. We told God that we would do that. What we asked was that he would give us grace so that when we do those things, the Scriptures will have the effect on our lives that Saint Paul, in his letter to the Romans, said that Scripture is meant to have: that is, that they will give us hope.

What did we tell God that we would do?

Hear. In the first place, we hear the Scriptures; and we hear the Scriptures in Church. All, or almost all, of the Bible was written to be read aloud in the assembly of the people.

The Bible is the Church’s book. The Old Testament belonged to the Hebrew church; the whole of Scripture, Old Testament and New Testament, belongs to the Christian Church. Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the Bible was written by the Church and for the Church.

The Torah was (and is still) read in the synagogues on the Sabbath, once through each year, beginning and ending on the octave of the feast of Tabernacles. The prophets were also read in the synagogue: when Jesus preached in the synagogue of his home town, Nazareth, he was handed the scroll of Isaiah to read. And the Church continues the practice of the synagogue.

The Gospels were written in the first place to be read when the Church assembled to celebrate the Eucharist, as a way of collectively recalling the life and teachings of Jesus. And the Epistles were written to be read in the churches in various places to instruct, and to encourage, and to scold, and to correct the members of the congregation. Today, nearly two thousand years later, whenever and wherever the Church assembles, the Gospels and Epistles are read, for the very same reasons they were originally written and read.

Read. Although Scripture is intended, first of all, to be read in public, when the Church is assembled, that is certainly not the only time that Scripture should be read. For one thing, there is occasion to read only a very small part of Scripture during Church services. According to our own customs here in this parish, we hear only a very few passages of the Old Testament, and there are a great many parts even of the New Testament that are not included in the lectionary for Mass on Sundays and holy days.

Saint Paul tells us that the whole of Scripture was written for our instruction. And if we are to have a sense of the whole of Scripture, we must read the Bible privately as well as hear it read in Church.

It used to be customary, and may still be in some places, for every family to have a family Bible. Usually it was a very large volume, perhaps as large as the one on the lectern here in the church. The book was kept in a very prominent place, usually in the living room or parlor. It played an important part in the life of a family: births, baptisms, marriages, and deaths were recorded in its margins. Flowers from bridal bouquets and funeral wreaths were pressed between its pages. Its very presence was an important aspect of family life.

But such a book is not well suited to regular reading. Neither is the typical presentation Bible, given at baptisms or confirmations, printed in small type on very thin pages. In addition to the family Bible and the Bibles presented to us on special occasions, we should each have a copy of Scripture for reading and study. It should be a copy that we do not mind scuffing and dog-earring the pages of and occasionally underlining. And it should probably be in a reliable modern translation, such as the New English Bible or the New Jerusalem Bible, rather than the venerable seventeenth century translation that we use in Church.

And we need a reading plan. Anyone who picks up the Bible with the intention of reading it from front to back, as one would read a novel, is probably making a mistake. One would find Genesis and Exodus to be page-turners: hard to put down. Creation, Adam and Eve, Noah and the Flood, the call of Abraham, the sacrifice of Isaac, Jacob’s wrestling with an angel, Josephs adventures in Egypt, Moses’s leading the people out of Egypt, and so forth. But somewhere in the book of Numbers, which recounts a census of the tribes of Israel, name by name and household by household, one might very easily lose interest.

One plan that recommends itself is the lectionary for daily Matins and Evensong, in the Prayer Book. The lectionary scheme guides one through most of the Old Testament and all of the New Testament, and the scheme is linked to the liturgical year.

Mark. To say that we “mark” Holy Scripture is not to say that we use colored pens to highlight favorite (or difficult) passages.

To mark means to pay attention. It is easy to read almost anything without paying attention, whether it is the daily newspaper, or a textbook, or a letter, or the owner’s manual for some expensive piece of equipment. We must take care that we do not so carelessly read Holy Scripture.

The sixteen century religious leader Ignatius Loyola taught his followers to imagine that they are present at the events they read about in Scripture. He referred particularly to events in the life of Jesus, but one could do the same with other parts of the Bible as well. What would it have been like to have been a shepherd in the fields near Bethlehem in the very early hours of Christmas morning, or to have been in the crowd that followed Jesus along the way of the cross on Good Friday? What would one have heard, and seen, and smelled?

Learn. If we are to obtain the benefits commended by Saint Paul and that we pray for in today’s collect, we need to learn Scripture. That does not mean to learn about Scripture, although it probably would do us no harm to know when the various books were written, and in what place, and in what language, and to know what else was going on at the same time.

But, to learn the Scriptures means to study them, and to try to understand them. If we are to derive benefit from our reading of Scripture, our reading must not be casual, but purposeful. The Benedictines teach, and have taught for hundreds and hundreds of years, what they call “divine reading.” When one opens the Bible to read, he begins with a prayer that God will open his mind and heart to the meaning of what he is about to read; and then, as he concludes his reading of each passage, he pauses to meditate silently upon what he has read. There may be other techniques that will work as well, but that is the traditional approach to learning Scripture.

Inwardly digest. Finally, we must inwardly digest Scripture. We must make what we have heard, and read, and marked, and learned a part of our lives.

The reward of properly hearing, reading, marking, learning, and inwardly digesting Holy Scripture is that, through patience and the comfort of Scripture, we shall have blessed hope. And what that means is well illustrated by this morning’s Gospel lesson.

Anticipating the last things, our Lord said to his disciples that “there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; men's hearts failing them for fear.” This is how the day of the Lord will appear to those who do not have the comfort of the Scriptures: it will be evoke distress and perplexity, people will be so stricken with fear that their hearts will fail them. They will not understand what is going on, and they will react with dread.

But it shall not be so for those who know the Scriptures. If we have heard, read, marked, learned, and inwardly digested the Scriptures, then we will have the blessed hope of everlasting life. And so, “when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.”

Church of Saint Mary Magdalene

Orange, California

4 December 2005

List of the deacon’s homilies.