Tag: scripture

Bible Sunday hymn (reposted as it’s almost Bible Sunday)

church resources, hymns

I once commented to someone much smarter than me that there aren’t huge numbers of hymns about the Bible – they replied that this was because our faith is in the Word more than it is in the word – in other words, hymns are songs of praise and our praise is directed at God rather than at the scriptures themselves.

Having said that, one still needs hymns for Bible Sunday (last after Trinity, I think) so if you find yourself flicking through a hymn book and not quite finding anything, there is this:

A hymn for Bible Sunday.
Tune: Regent Square, or other compatible 878787 tunes.

Word of life! Such transformation!
bringing light to darkest space;
loving mother of creation,
forging life in every place.
Shine that light on every nation,
gather us in your embrace.

Word of truth! You spoke though history,
prophets knew you as their friend;
As you shared with earth the mystery
of your love that knows no end.
Yet your fullest glory must be
More than words can comprehend.

Word made flesh! You came to meet us,
pitched your tent among our own,
Born on earth so heaven could greet us:
God in human heart and bone.
Teach us, lead us, tend us, feed us
with the life that’s yours alone.

Words of scripture, here you teach us,
All you speak is here received.
Shared by print and voice to reach us:
written, read and now believed;
Speak again to all and  each, as
faith is grown and life is lived.

Resources for Bible Sunday

church resources

I thought I’d write up some ideas for All Age activities on Bible Sunday, in case they are useful.

1. Bible Timeline

You will need: washing line, clothespegs, and a whole bunch of pictures of bible stories (mix of Old and New Testament, ideally covering as much of the bible as possible, creation to Revelation) – if you like, also print out some bible verses or passages.  It’s not too hard to find suitable pictures by searching google images or similar. It works best if you laminate your printouts, so that you can use them again. Before the service, leave all the laminated pictures and bible verses around the church.

Introduce the idea that we often hear Bible stories on their own, but we don’t get many chances to look at the big story.  Get out the washing line and pegs – and ask for two people to hold the ends of the line.  Ask people to look at any pictures and verses that they find near them, and try and work out where on the Bible timeline they might go – establish which end of the washing line is creation, and which is revelation, then invite people to come forward and peg their picture or verse to the line. Chaos may ensue, but that’s OK – you can wander up and down the line pointing out some of the stories, wondering aloud about the order etc.

Have a look together at the finished timeline, and pose this question: if this were a song, and all the different pictures were the verses of the song, what sort of thing would you expect to find in the chorus?  Is there something that ties together all these different stories? Are there some key words or images that we’d expect to find in the chorus?  Ask for suggestions.  If you have someone poetic in the congregation (or if you’re good with words) you could have a go at writing a chorus – perhaps to a well known hymn tune, or set people the challenge of writing one after the service.

If you can display your timeline somewhere in church after the service, people who come in will be able to see it, enjoy it, and interact with it. You could leave the question there too, on a large piece of paper with a pen next to it, and invite anyone who comes by to add their suggestions for what they think should be in the chorus.

2. Scrapbook

Before the service, get hold of enough pens and coloured paper (approximately A6 size) for everyone in the congregation. You will also need a scrapbook (big enough to hold all the papers) and some glue, and someone who is willing to help stick paper into the scrapbook during the service after the talk.

Start by telling everyone what your favourite bible story is, and why – or it could be just a favourite verse. If you remember how you first heard or read that story, you can tell that, too – it might be that you remember it from a children’s bible, or it may be something that became important to you later in life.

Invite everyone to write on their piece of paper their favourite verse, or draw a picture of their favourite bible story. If they want to add a note about why it’s important to them that would be great, but they don’t have to. While everyone is busy drawing and writing, you could ask if anyone wants to share aloud what they’ve chosen.

Remind everyone that the stories in the Bible are meant for telling, for sharing, and if a story or a verse has been important to us, then it might be good for someone else, too.  Collect the papers, and ask your helper to stick all the pictures and verses into the scrapbook, so that it is ready for the end of the service. At the end of the service, just before the final blessing, hold up the scrap book and offer all that it contains to God, with this or another suitable prayer:

Father God,
you spoke your word to make the world,
you spoke your word to your prophets to guide us,
you spoke your word in scripture, to tell the story of your love,
and you gave us your living Word, Jesus Christ.
Bless us in our hearing and reading,
bless us in our writing and drawing,
bless us in our telling and sharing,
and may our work today be a blessing
to ourselves, to one another, and to all we meet. Amen.

Display the bible at the back of the church, near the door, and encourage everyone to look at it and enjoy it over coffee, or as they leave.

3. Story swap

You will need: small pieces of paper, as in the scrap book activity (approximately A6 size), and pens – enough for everyone in the congregation.

In this activity, you can encourage everyone to draw or write their favourite bible story or verse on their paper, as in the scrapbook activity above. But instead of collecting the papers and sticking them in the scrapbook, ask everyone to stand up, if they’re able, and move around the church so that they can start swapping their papers around.  As they swap papers with someone, encourage them to share why that verse or story is important to them. Everyone should end up with a different piece of paper from the one they started with – this is theirs to take home.

Wonder together about the variety of stories, wisdom, law, poetry etc that there is in the bible – and how parts of the bible may fill us with hope, or comfort, while others are challenging.  Wonder about how the Bible and shaped us, and taught us, and how we in turn shape and teach others in the words and images that mean most to us.

You may also wish to encourage people to take their new piece of paper home, and give it to someone who wasn’t at church, telling them the story that is depicted on it, or sharing the verse written on it. Or, they could put it somewhere prominent at home – on a notice board, or mantle piece, or stuck to the fridge with a magnet.

(The aim of this activity is to encourage the congregation to feel more confident about sharing something of their faith).

4. Bible Sunday Hymn

For anyone who missed it last year, here’s a hymn for Bible Sunday.
Usual rules apply: help yourself, no need for CCLI etc.
Tune: Regent Square, or other compatible 878787 tunes.

Word of life! Such transformation!
bringing light to darkest space;
loving mother of creation,
forging life in every place.
Shine that light on every nation,
gather us in your embrace.

Word of truth! You spoke though history,
prophets knew you as their friend;
As you shared with earth the mystery
of your love that knows no end.
Yet your fullest glory must be
More than words can comprehend.

Word made flesh! You came to meet us,
pitched your tent among our own,
Born on earth so heaven could greet us:
God in human heart and bone.
Teach us, lead us, tend us, feed us
with the life that’s yours alone.

Words of scripture, here you teach us,
All you speak is here received.
Shared by print and voice to reach us:
written, read and now believed;
Speak again to all and  each, as
faith is grown and life is lived.

What do those words look like in real life?

sermons

A sermon for Epiphany 4 (C) 2013: Luke 4.14-21 & 1 Cor 12

I wonder how many of us have ever had that feeling after reading or hearing a Bible passage, that it was ‘all about me’ – you know, that feeling that it was somehow either fate or God’s plan that that particular reading was read on that particular day, with you sitting there hearing it, and realising how much it applied to you? That it challenged you in just the way you needed to be challenged? That it brought you the exact words of comfort that you most needed to hear? That it gave you that bit of guidance that set you on the path that God had in mind for you? Often it’s bible passages that are very familiar to us that can strike us differently and unexpectedly at such moments. We may have heard a verse a hundred times, but the hundred and first time  it hits us between the eyes, and we think, ‘That verse was written for me, today.’

Jesus must have had that feeling a lot. While he was in the wilderness he had relied hugely on scripture – as a witness to God’s enduring love and faithfulness – to withstand the temptations of the Devil.  Now, he’s back in civilisation, in fact, he’s back in his home town, and it’s another well-known passage from the Hebrew Bible that happens to be set for that day, and Jesus is the one whose turn it is to read.

Jesus is full of the Holy Spirit – still from his baptism, and then again from his wilderness experience. And he reads Isaiah’s words ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me’ and knows at once that this passage doesn’t just feel like it’s written for him. It really is for him, and about him.  It’s another of those moments (and those moments are now coming thick and fast in Jesus’ life) when his sense of identity as the Messiah is deepened, strengthened, broadened.  Those words from Isaiah are for him. They are part of what will help him set the agenda for the next three years  – for the whole of his earthly ministry.

So what Isaiah goes on to write next is of crucial importance, because it’s Jesus’ manifesto, it’s his vocation.  He is to be one who brings good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and freedom for the oppressed, and who is to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.

So, Jesus reads the words of Isaiah, and already as he reads it seems as if some of the congregation realise that there is more going on here – that this is more than just another reading, this is something else. He confirms it – his first sermon begins by telling the people that Isaiah’s prophecy is now being fulfilled . In him.  No wonder all their eyes are fixed on him.

These are the words that turn Jesus turns from carpenter’s son to Rabbi, from local boy to itinerant preacher and healer, from ordinary man to Son of Man. These are the words that set him on his way. These are the words that must have reminded him, again and again, of the nature of his calling: freedom, healing, the favour of the Lord, good news…. These are the words that come to life in Jesus’ own life, and these are the words that he uses to start his work of transforming the world. It was as if he said to the people gathered in that Nazareth synagogue, “You’re about to see what Isaiah’s words look like in real life.”

It seems right that Jesus’s ministry begins in his own home town, especially since Nazareth wasn’t a particularly important or nice town, it was no Jerusalem, it had no track record of producing great leaders and teachers. It was ordinariness itself.  It is in keeping with the God who chose to become a human being that he also chose to set out the manifesto of the Messiah in a downmarket provincial town, and that the people who heard it were just those faithful gathered that particular Sabbath.

There are Nazareths all over the world. Certainly all over England. Ordinary places, full of ordinary people, who know that all the exciting things happen Somewhere Else, and who do not expect the Messiah to appear in their midst.  If that’s us, then this gospel reading should stir us up a bit.  Especially if we put it together with today’s epistle, which speaks of the church as the Body of Christ.

Why? Because in the gospel reading we start to see the first stage of Jesus’ transformation – the body of Christ gradually turns from being the physical body of a carpenters’ son and eventually becomes the metaphorical worldwide body of the church, who meets in Christ’s name and undertakes to continue his work.  There is absolutely continuity between the work of God that Jesus started and the work of God that we are supposed to be doing, right now. If Isaiah has set out Jesus’ manifesto, then he’s also set out ours.

And that’s another reason why it’s good that all this happened in Nazareth.  Because Nazareth is here. It’s Huntingdon, it’s St Neots.  It’s all the places that most people would say probably aren’t the centre of the universe.  An ordinary place is where Jesus started his work, and this ordinary place is where we are to begin our work.

Jesus went out from that place and spent three years seeking out those who needed healing, three years proclaiming the good news, three years helping people find freedom from the many things that were oppressing them, and ultimately on the cross, enacted the good news of the sacrificial love of God in his own body, experiencing death so that we could might never be captive to it again.

But it starts here.  In the place that we are. In these familiar streets, with these familiar people.  So it is also our calling to proclaim the good news we have heard, and not only that but to live it out, as Jesus did. To be people, and to be a church, which will bring healing, peace and reconciliation, that will fight for justice and freedom for those who are oppressed in any way, or held captive by their own condition or by the actions of others, that will show by how we live that this is the year of the Lord’s favour, that God’s love for the world is real and active, and that his blessings are manifold.  We, too, need to show the world what Isaiah’s words look like in real life.

This is what it means to be the Body of Christ.  No less. But crucially it is by being who we are, in our ordinary situations, that we can do this best.  Jesus’  manifesto was made public in the most ordinary place. So, in whatever ordinary places we find ourselves today and tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year, let us pray that God would help us to see how we might be the Body of Christ and continue Christ’s work of transformation, healing, renewal and love in our ordinary corner of the world. For when we do that, there are no ordinary places, and there are no ordinary people.