Colossians 3:12-17. Matthew 24:30-35
A Word That Never Grows Old
I wonder how many of us have a Bible at home?
Perhaps it sits on a bookshelf, beside the bed, or in a drawer somewhere. Perhaps it was given to us at our confirmation, our wedding, or when we were children. Some of us might even have several copies, in different translations, with different covers and different amounts of dust on them!
And I wonder how often we actually open them?
Now, don't worry, I'm not going to ask for a show of hands! But today, on Bible Sunday, it's worth asking ourselves an important question: What place does the Bible really have in our lives?
Is it simply a book we perhaps think about after church on Sundays? Is it a book we turn to when life gets difficult? Or is it something more than that? Could it be one of the most important gifts God has given us for living our lives today?
Our two readings help us understand why the Bible matters, not simply as an ancient book, but as God's living word for the world in which we find ourselves.
We live in a world where information is available at the touch of a button. If we want to know something, we ask Google. If we want directions, we follow a satnav. If we want an opinion, we can find thousands of them on social media before we've even finished our cup of tea!
We are surrounded by voices telling us what to think, what to buy, what to believe and even what we ought to look like. And yet, for all this information, it can be surprisingly difficult to know how to live.
How do we respond when someone has hurt us? How do we cope when the future feels uncertain? How do we find hope when the news seems full of conflict, suffering and division? How do we know what is right when the world around us seems to disagree about almost everything?
The Bible doesn't give us a simple answer to every question we might ask. It isn't an instruction manual in which we can look up the answer to every situation we encounter.
But it does give us something much more valuable: wisdom, perspective, truth and a relationship with the God who knows us and loves us.
The Bible was written over many centuries, in very different circumstances from our own. Its writers knew about war, injustice, family tensions, illness, grief, betrayal, fear and uncertainty. They knew what it was to wonder where God was when life became difficult.
In other words, although the world has changed enormously, human beings haven't changed quite as much as we might imagine.
We still struggle with many of the same things. We still long to be loved, to belong, to be forgiven and to know that our lives matter.
And into all of that, the Bible speaks.
Not because every page is easy to understand, or because every passage gives us an immediate answer, but because through Scripture we encounter the story of God's love for humanity, revealed most fully in Jesus Christ.
In our reading from Colossians, Paul gives us some wonderfully practical advice.
He tells us to clothe ourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. He encourages us to forgive one another and, above all, to put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.
Now, if you think about it, this is a rather good list of things to wear!
We spend time choosing what to put on each morning. We think about the weather, what we're doing, who we're meeting and whether something is suitable for the occasion.
But Paul reminds us that there are other things we need to put on each day: compassion, kindness, patience and love.
And I suspect that, like me, you sometimes find that these are much harder to put on than a coat!
It's easy to be patient when everything is going well. It's harder when someone is driving too slowly in front of us, when the queue at the supermarket isn't moving, or when somebody presses exactly the wrong button in a conversation.
It's easy to talk about forgiveness in church. It's much harder when somebody has genuinely hurt us.
It's easy to say that we believe in kindness. It's harder when we're tired, worried, or simply don't feel like being kind.
This is where the Bible becomes so important. It doesn't just tell us what we ought to believe; it challenges us to consider how we live.
Paul's words remind us that following Jesus isn't simply about attending worship, saying prayers or knowing the right answers. It's about allowing the love of Christ to shape our everyday behaviour.
What difference does our faith make to the way we speak to our family? To the way we treat our neighbours? To the way we respond to someone whose opinions are different from our own? To the way we treat someone who can do absolutely nothing for us in return? These are the places where our faith becomes visible.
And notice that Paul doesn't tell us to manufacture all these qualities through sheer determination. He tells us to let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts and to let the word of Christ dwell in us richly.
In other words, we allow God's word to take root in us, to shape our thinking, to challenge our attitudes and to influence our choices.
The Bible is not simply something we read. It is something we should allow to read us.
Sometimes we may open Scripture and find comfort. Sometimes we find encouragement. And sometimes we find a passage that makes us distinctly uncomfortable because it exposes something in our lives that needs to change. Sometimes it may leave us with more questions than answers!
God's word doesn't challenge us because God wants to catch us out. It challenges us because God loves us and wants us to become the people he created us to be.
And we don't have to get everything right overnight. We grow gradually, learning, stumbling, being forgiven and beginning again. That is part of what it means to follow Jesus.
Our reading from Matthew brings us to another important truth.
Jesus speaks of dramatic events: the sun being darkened, the powers of heaven being shaken, and the Son of Man coming in glory. These are powerful images of a world turned upside down.
We might not always know exactly how to interpret every detail of this passage, but its message is clear: the world as we know it is not permanent, and God has not abandoned his purposes for creation.
Then Jesus says something remarkable:
"Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away."
Think about that for a moment. So much in our lives change.
The places we know change. Our families change. Our health changes. The world we grew up in changes. Things we once took for granted may no longer be there.
We have only to look at the news to see how quickly the world can change. Wars erupt, political leaders come and go, economies rise and fall, and technologies that seemed unimaginable a few years ago become part of everyday life.
Sometimes change brings exciting opportunities. At other times it leaves us feeling unsettled, anxious or unsure where we belong.
And perhaps some of us are experiencing changes in our own lives that nobody else can see: worries about family, concerns about health, the loss of someone we love, or questions about what the future holds.
Jesus doesn't promise that life will always be easy. He doesn't promise that we will never experience sorrow or uncertainty. But he does point us towards something that lasts. His words endure.
The promises of God do not depend on the latest headlines, the state of the economy, or whether we happen to be having a good week.
The Bible reminds us that God's love is not fragile, that his faithfulness does not disappear when life becomes difficult, and that death and suffering will not have the final word.
This is not an invitation to ignore the problems of the world. Quite the opposite. It gives us the courage to face them.
Because if we believe that God is faithful, we can work for peace even when there is conflict. We can practise kindness even when others are unkind. We can offer hope even when the future is uncertain.
We can do these things because our hope rests not on the belief that everything will turn out exactly as we wish, but on the God who holds the future in his hands.
Jesus' words are a reminder that, amid all the things that change, we can build our lives on something trustworthy.
So, what can the Bible give us?
- It can give us guidance when we don't know which way to turn.
- It can give us comfort when we are grieving or afraid.
- It can give us wisdom when we face difficult decisions.
- It can give us hope when the world seems dark.
- It can give us courage to stand up for what is right.
- And it can teach us love: not simply the comfortable kind of love that is easy to offer to people we like, but the generous, forgiving, practical love that Jesus shows us.
Most importantly, through its witness to Jesus Christ, Scripture helps us discover who God is and who we are called to become.
But a Bible gathering dust on a shelf cannot do much for us!
We have to open it. We have to read it, think about it, pray with it and allow it to speak into our lives.
And we don't have to start with a grand plan to read the whole Bible in a year. That can be a wonderful discipline, but if it feels overwhelming, start small.
Read a few verses from a Gospel. Spend a little time with a Psalm. Take one sentence from Paul's letters and ask yourself what it might mean for you today.
Perhaps ask three simple questions:
What is this passage telling me about God?
What is it showing me about myself or the world around me?
And what might God be inviting me to do differently today?
You might not always find an immediate answer. Sometimes a passage will stay with you for days. Sometimes you will read something familiar and suddenly see it in a new light.
And sometimes you will simply need to sit quietly with the words and let them remind you that you are loved by God.
That is time well spent.
The Bible is not simply an ancient book to be admired, defended or kept safely on a shelf. It is a gift from God, drawing us into his story, pointing us towards Christ and helping us live faithfully in the world today.
So perhaps this Bible Sunday, we might make a simple commitment.
Let's open our Bibles a little more often. Let's listen to what God might be saying to us through them. And let's be willing to put those words into practice, one ordinary day at a time.
For the world around us will continue to change. Our circumstances will change. We will change. But the words of Jesus remain.
And as we allow those words to shape our lives, may we become people who carry his compassion into a hurting world, his peace into places of conflict, his kindness into moments of frustration, and his hope into places of despair.
"Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly."
May that be our prayer, not just on Bible Sunday, but every day of our lives.
Amen.