However, tomorrow [29 September 2002] sees the launch of National Bible week and, given this happy coincidence of dates, it is about the Bible I want to speak. What it has to say has a bearing on very many things that perplex us. What I want to argue is that its needful truth will be best perceived, and least error-prone when it is studied by Christians together across our church and denominational boundaries.

The Bible is still, even in the 21st Century, a world best seller. It is a single volume containing an apparently modest enough library of 66 books of all sorts of religious genres. It has been translated into hundreds of languages, and is available in many, many versions; it is on nearly all our shelves at home and most bookshops. The distribution is already in place it s here with us, and its importance is being rediscovered all over the place, but what are we doing with it? How are we using it? Are we using it at all?

The written Word of God, the Bible, is an unbelievably precious resource to us, and very significantly, the scriptures are the common text of all Christian people, whether denominational or not; a wonderful point of unity and inspiration to us all. It is firmly embedded in culture and real history (just as we are), and it can thus be read like any other book; but it has a power intrinsic to it that means we should read it like no other book. It is truly alive and active, and, read the right way, it reads us as we read it. I have been thinking recently that in some ways it is like a modern car wing mirror with a lens that reveals what is in our blind spot.

There s power here of an extraordinary sort; properly understood the scriptures are profoundly disturbing (as well as comforting) and are an astonishing repository of the wisdom of God - and we need them as much as ever in changing times. And the scale of its story is extraordinary too - beginning and ending with universal statements of God in Genesis and Revelation. Yet, on the way, it touches with a Divine awareness the most recognisable, ordinary life. It may not always speak direct answers to contemporary issues, but it certainly gives us the frame of reference that we need. Truly, it brings the God question, the God reality, into the world.

What a remarkable thing in such a divided Christendom never mind a multicultural world - to have a common text, speaking of God! In our inventive desire to fix things by our own effort and imagination, have we missed the primary importance of this? Surely we should be doing all we can to read the scriptures together across our denominational boundaries? As it happens, in the forthcoming Bible Week, the four main denominational Christian leaders, all from the North Mayo/West Sligo area, but from different backgrounds and traditions, will share from a deep conviction that the bible is the inspired Word of God; each of us having been personally but differently moved by the truth that it contains. 

But why the bible? Again and again, stumbling through dark and intractable problems, we wish someone could shine a light on them. And yet even then the answer is not simple and straightforward - scripture, like evening light on a hillside, reveals even more humps and hollows than we knew were there. But at least we can see the whole landscape, and we shall have our understanding broadened, and discuss and operate in visible light. The Word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path.

But I fancy that some might want to stop me here and say: It s not a simple as that. Surely the bible can be used to prove almost anything you want, surely it has been used to justify manifest wrongdoing? What about interpretation? Is it not best left well alone? My point is that, in the face of wrong use, we have two more or less logical options; one might indeed be to leave well alone, but only in the absence of the other - which is to study it together. The great wisdom of the bible needs to be understood in community where there will be different points of view on the same writing. This makes some logical sense; it is the writing of communities, and it speaks of a communal God, Father, Son and Holy Sprit. This is not to say that we cannot study it on our own, of course we can and should but not in complete isolation. The greatest safeguard against misuse is the community of faith; this can and must be pan-denominational. And I say it again - everything we need is already in place.

And what of using texts at random, of text bullets and battles, where people choose the line that best fits their thinking? Well, let me tell you a story. A week ago there was an odder-than-usual photograph of me in a newspaper. A friend, understating madly, said the photo was less than flattering. I'll say! I looked like a horse baring his teeth and trying to reach an apple. And yet it must have been exactly how I looked at that moment for 1/125th of a second, seen quite literally in a flash. The camera doesn't lie for the moment! A longer exposure might have been truer, but more blurred; a portrait most accurate of all. Just so with scripture, which paints a portrait of God and his creation, and especially of our Lord Jesus Christ. The danger of taking texts in isolation is the danger of a short shutter speed photograph: it tells the truth but it lies at the same time. Truly to be handled with care! And I trust that my community of friends might come to my rescue and say he doesn't really look like that! There it is again the whole picture, and the whole community will together get closest to telling the whole truth. A text without a context is a pretext. A single viewpoint is just that one single viewpoint on a whole truth.

For it is truth that we are looking for in such a rapidly changing world of many half-truths. Revealed truth in the bible it is most certainly there, but is contained in a whole ecology of writings poetry, history, prophecy, parable, moral teaching distillations of faith that has been lived and tested, documented and passed on. Our task is to immerse ourselves in this great bible story, or drama as it has been called, and to work out our own act in our own time but always firmly based on what has gone before. And we have it on our doorstep, in one volume, in our own language, and we need to look at it together. Notice that I am not speaking about straying from orthodoxy, but of going deeper within it. We have capped too many wells, or have portrayed them in a shallow way when in fact they are very deep. So many adults have abandoned them, wandering sadly away, hunting for something to slake the thirst. We do not have to do this it is all in place, under our feet. 

There is wisdom tradition within Anglicanism that has stood us well over many years; scripture, reason and tradition bringing all to bear on our experience in changing times, and at its best giving scope for a courteous evolution of our understanding of God and his purposes for the world. I have been very happy with this and yet maybe too happy; I wonder whether the flaw is that it is so distinctively Anglican. Are there other viewpoints that can only be found in the meeting of denominations? I am still haunted by the vision of Pentecost where the Holy Spirit is only poured out when there is a gathering of all nations; what might come of a gathering of denominations under scripture? Might this be the most likely route to resolve our differences? 

Let us do what we can together. If we cannot yet share the Eucharist, let us share the Scriptures. Indeed, we often speak of Word and Sacrament as if they were somehow separate. But is not the sort of sharing of the scriptures I have been speaking of, sacramental in itself? God s people gather, and then Word is taken, broken open, shared, received in faith and inwardly digested. And we go out transformed. 

The word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account. Hebrews 4:12-13 New International Version