Reflection for Lent III

By Rev’d. Allison Dean

In this week’s gospel reading from John 2 we have the scene of Jesus overturning the tables of the money changers, angry at how the temple was being used/treated. The Jews asked him what authority he had for doing that and he replied, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” They thought he meant the building in which they worshipped. But what he meant was his body. This probably caused some confusion. But verse 22 tells us, “After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.”

Usually, we focus our attention on Jesus’ anger at what was happening in the house of the Lord. But as I read the passage this past week my mind was drawn towards the end of that account. Namely that the writer tells us that “They believed the scripture”.

And a question then formed and has been on mind ever since: do we believe the scripture?

In Anglican services we read at least three or four pieces of scripture in every service, and more than that if we include the quotations and paraphrases that form parts of our liturgies.

In addition to what we hear and read in our services, many of us do some sort of Bible reading on our own, or through our church Bible Study sessions. That you are reading this reflection says that you have some level of interest in the things of God and can therefore be assumed to be familiar with at least parts of the Bible.

But do we believe the scripture?

This is an important question because if we believe God’s revelation to us in the words of holy scripture, then our life as Christians should reflect that. To believe the words of scripture is to have demands placed upon us, demands that call for us to be impacted and changed by the scriptures.

If we believe what Genesis tells us about the creation of the world, that God created it and saw it was good, that he made humankind in his image and made us stewards of his creation, doesn’t that mean we ought to look after God’s wonderful creation? Not littering, not contaminating the water supply, not overfishing, not cutting down trees unnecessarily, and on and on we could go.

It was the belief in what the scripture tells us about God’s great power in delivering his people from bondage in Egypt that gave our enslaved ancestors the strength and confidence to endure. They believed the word of God and so knew that their God, who was and is the same yesterday, today, and forever, could and would deliver them even as he had delivered his people before.

John’s account of the gospel tells us that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Paul writes to the Philippians that though Jesus was in the form of God he humbled himself and became one of us. What a blessed comfort it is to believe, to know, that God has walked where we walk, that he is with us in such a real way through all the changing scenes of life.

To understand why the world is so full of pain, hatred, death, we need only look to the scriptures which tell us that we are sinners. And that apart from God we cannot even know what is right, much less do it.

It is also the scriptures which reveal to us that in and through Jesus there is another life beyond this one to which the faithful can look with great joy and hope. As Lazarus lies dead in the tomb Jesus says to Martha that he is the resurrection and the life, and whoever lives and believes in him shall never die. Only scripture could reveal such a wonderfully strange and unexpected reality to us.

Scripture is the story of God. It is a story which speaks of God’s action in the world and our place within that story. How can we make more time in our lives to read, reflect on, and be shaped by what we read in the Bible? Or as one of our oldest collects calls us, to ‘hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them.

The children’s song says, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”

Do we believe the scripture?