Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity, 2009

Series: Duties of the Laity in the ACNA, Part 2

The Rev. Jerry Kistler

St. Stephen’s Reformed Episcopal Church

Montrose, Colorado

“To Regularly Read and Study Holy Scripture and the Doctrine of the Church”

Last week I reminded you that this past June the Reformed Episcopal Church became one of the founding members of the new coming-together of orthodox Anglicans called The Anglican Church in North America, or the ACNA. And we began to ask the question, What does this mean for you, the laity, as you sit in the pews and as you live out your daily lives? We went to the canons of the new province to find the answer. And there we read the outline of what is expected of every member of the ACNA – the ten duties of the laity which the ACNA regards as normative for all who would identify themselves as biblically faithful Anglican Christians.

Then I led you through the biblical basis for the first of these duties, which is “To worship God, the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit, every Lord’s Day in a Church unless reasonably prevented.” And we saw how this duty is nothing new, but comes down to us as part of God’s ten-part outline of the duties of His people - His Ten Commandments – and the Fourth Commandment in particular: To “remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.” We saw how Jesus fulfilled the law of the Sabbath by opening up to us, by his death and resurrection, our eternal rest, and how we Christians now keep the Sabbath by coming to the Lord’s house on the Lord’s day to partake of our rest by partaking of Christ in the Lord’s Supper.

And so now today I’d like us to continue through the series and to work through the second of the ten duties the ACNA identities as sort of the minimum standard of what it means to be a biblical orthodox Anglican. If we are truly going to be biblically orthodox, then the second duty is fairly self-evident, and that is: “To engage regularly in the reading and study of Holy Scripture and the Doctrine of the Church as found in Article I of the Constitution of this Church.”

Why is reading the Bible so important? That really is the bottom-line question to this duty, isn’t it? Why do we read the Bible? And why should we go the further step of studying the Bible? Is it so we can learn a lot of stuff about God? Is it so we can learn what God wants us to do? Is it to find examples in the lives of the Old and New Testament saints of how we can live holy lives? Is it so we can be reminded of what Jesus did to save us from our sin so we can grow in our faith? Well, the answer, of course is, Yes. These are all reasons why we read the Bible. They’re all important reasons why we read the Bible, and why we need to continue to read the Bible. We should never come to the place where we think we know the Bible so well that we don’t need to read it anymore.

But reading the Bible is more than just coming to know what it says. Reading the Bible is more than just learning from it, however important that might be. You see, in each of the reasons for reading the Bible I’ve just listed the Bible is still conceived of as something that’s sort of outside of us – external to us - teaching us things. The Bible does more than just teach us things. I’ve talked before about the sacramental nature of God’s Word. Well, again what do I mean by that? What do we mean by this word “sacrament”? In its most basic sense a sacrament is an outward, physical thing – water, bread and wine, a book – that gives us an inward, spiritual thing. The Bible does more that just tell us things; it gives us what it tells. As I’ve said many times before, the whole Bible is about Jesus. From Genesis to Revelation, it’s all about Jesus. But you see the Bible doesn’t just tell us about Jesus; it gives us Jesus. That’s the sense in which the Bible, too, is sacramental.

Let me see if I can flesh this out for you. Remember how Jesus said, “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit, for without Me you can do nothing.” You remember He said that. Well let’s just think through that horticultural image of the vine and the branches in terms of the sacraments. The key idea is the idea of being in Christ and He in us. So I don’t think it’s too difficult for us to conceptualize baptism as the means by which we were originally grafted into Christ – we the dead, lifeless branches – dead in trespasses and sins, says St. Paul – were grafted into the Living Vine, and His new resurrected life, in a sense, passed into us, and were given new life as well. We were made alive together with Him, says St. Paul (Eph. 2:5). That’s what we call regeneration, or the new birth. Okay?

But Jesus says we must abide in him; we must continue to live in Him. “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.” So we can also conceptualize the Holy Communion as the way we branches continue draw life from the Vine, being continually nurtured and fed by His Life – His body and blood – which we take into ourselves. Right?

But reading and studying the Scriptures is the sacramental way that we branches are more and more transformed to reflect the character of the Vine. Our lives become more like His life, and we begin to produce the fruit of His life in our lives - He is us and we in Him.

So again, as the Bible doesn’t just tell us about Jesus, but gives us Jesus, by reading and studying the Holy Scriptures we begin to conform to the image of Christ. Or put another way, Christ is formed in us.

You know, both Paul and James in the New Testament speak about reading the Scriptures as sort of like looking into a magic mirror - a mirror in which we see our true selves, our true humanity, who we were truly meant to be, because, again, on every page we see Jesus. But instead of the image in this mirror changing to reflect us – which is what a normal mirror does – as we continue to look into this mirror, and as we look ever more deeply into this mirror, we begin to change to reflect the image we see.

Sounds like an episode of the Twilight Zone, doesn’t it? But that’s what these writers say. St. Paul says, “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory” (2 Cor. 3:18). That’s why we read the Bible. And that’s why we must continue to read the Bible, and read it faithfully ever day. And not just to read it in such a way that we just sort of do our time in the Word, but that we allow the Word to form us – by meditating upon the Word, and studying the Word, and bringing it into our hearts and not just sort of in one ear and out the other. That’s the difference in being a doer of the Word and not just a hearer. St. James also uses the analogy of the mirror. He says, “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only… For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who see his natural face in a mirror,… but then goes away, and immediately forgets the true reflection of himself” (Jam. 1:22-24).

You see, we read and study the Word of God, the Bible, to see our true selves in the face of Jesus, and to be conformed to His image. But that’s true of the Church’s doctrine as well. The Church’s doctrine is just a way of organizing the teaching of the Bible so we can understand what all the various passages say on a particular topic. So studying theology is just another way for the Bible to form you and shape you to reflect Christ. Some of the most profound moments of spiritual growth in my life – life-changing moments – came while I was over my books – while I was studying my theology texts. It’s something we need to not leave off.

So reading and studying the Bible, and even studying the doctrine of our church – it’s another important duty for as Christians, never-mind the Anglican part. But just as we saw last week that our duty to come to the Lord’s house on the Lord’s day to receive the Lord’s Supper is no duty at all, but our greatest privilege, so reading and studying the Bible and the doctrine is just another privileged way we have of participating in the Gospel – Christ being formed in us, and we in Him. If we thing the sacraments are important to our lives, let’s not forget come frequently and regularly to this one as well – the Word Inscripturated which give us the Word Incarnate. +