That we might have hope

 

I have been drawn into the Epistle set for those who observed last Sunday as Bible Sunday. 

Perhaps the most predictable choice of Epistle was set last year in our three year cycle of readings: ‘all scripture is inspired [God-breathed] and is useful for teaching’ (2 Timothy 3.16).  The purpose being ‘that everyone who belongs to God may be equipped for good works’ (3.17).  A preacher’s temptation might be to seek to express what it is about scripture which gives it authority, and which should provoke action.

But this year we were offered ‘by encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope’ (Romans 15.4), a focus on us as being what is inspired by it, something which elicits hope.  Authority not found by theory (there is even the possibility of some idolatry of the Bible in that?) but verified by grace discovered in engagement with it.

And the verse nests in the middle of Paul wrestling with living together with those specific aspects of whose theology and practice we are sure is wrong: ‘put up with the failings of the weak’, ‘not to please ourselves’, ‘for the good purpose of building up the neighbour’ (15.1,2).  The set passage doesn’t finish ‘so that we may glorify God’ but ‘live in harmony with one another so that we may with one voice glorify God’ (15.6).

We happen to be (once more, still) in the middle of church dispute, and I happen to have also been rediscovering Simon Tugwell’s Ways of Imperfection: Christianity has to be a disappointment, precisely because it is not a mechanism for accomplishing all our human ambitions and aspirations... necessarily involving a remaking of our hopes.

Meanwhile, late October is the time for Christmas decoration to go up on Steep Hill.