Sunday 27/10/24

Bible Sunday

John 5:36b-end     Isaiah 55:1-11

How much more evidence do you need?  We might have heard this in a detective series on television or read it in a book.  In crime novels and their filmed renditions, there is often a mistake made about the identity of the criminal at first.  Only towards the end, of course, it becomes clear who really did it, after quite a few red herrings.  Some detectives are very keen to get the ‘obvious’ person convicted, disregarding the evidence, or seeing it where it is not.  It’s all about the evidence, and it can be misleading.  In the ancient world, it was much the same.  Then, what was needed most, was witnesses.  As long as you had those, you would be alright, from the point of view of both parties.  Sadly enough, even in our own generation mistakes have been made and justice has not been served.  We have to deal with that time and again; the recent Post Office scandal is a case in point.  Where does that take us, then, in the light of today’s readings and today being Bible Sunday? 

Bible Sunday is the last Sunday in October, when we remember how the Church began to change during the Reformation.  Martin Luther, who nailed his Ninety Five Theses to a church door, was an instigator of reform and, greatly influenced by other biblical scholars all over Europe, paved part of the way towards a new understanding of salvation.  Sola Fide, by faith alone.  Luther challenged the prevailing doctrine that a person could earn or pay for their place in heaven, or even pay for the sins of dead loved ones to be forgiven.  His search through Scripture convinced him that forgiveness is God’s alone to grant, and our salvation is personal, based on faith, not on works.  As Paul writes in Ephesians 2: ‘For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.’  (Eph.2:8-10).

It is faith, then, that inspires good works, not our faith depending on good works; a marked difference.  And the evidence for that new understanding of salvation is found in Scripture, in the Bible as it has been handed down to us.  The problem that Luther and his contemporaries wrestled with was not new; it was the same idea that Jesus himself was confronted with in his dealings with the Pharisees and Teachers of the Law.  At the beginning of John chapter 5, Jesus healed a man on the Sabbath and was criticised for that.  What follows is Jesus’ teaching in a statement that could read like a ‘witness for the defence’ in a court of law.  He sets out the reason for his works of healing, his authority from the Father, and the testimony or evidence backed up by the Scriptures.  He mentions John the Baptist, who gave evidence in testifying to Jesus as the Son of God, but also takes it further back than that, to ‘the works that the Father has given [him] to complete’ and which testify on Jesus’ behalf.  Jesus does not claim it all for himself; rather, he is asking the people to look for the evidence.  It is all there, he says, just look and see!  John the Baptist had pointed to Jesus and was preparing the way for him.  But there is much more evidence than John.  There is the evidence of the Father.  As Jesus says, ‘the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise.’ (John 5:19).  If the people believe in God, then, surely, they should be able to see the evidence of who Jesus is in what he is doing?  This raises another question: do they really know God?  If not, how much more evidence do they need?  And what about us; we have the Bible, the testimony of countless believers in the Church, and the gift of the Holy Spirit.  Are we truly seeing where our salvation comes from and clinging to the truth that gives us life?  Amen.