This week we're taking a break from the regular lectionary as we mark Bible Sunday, and our readings are Nehemiah 8:1-11 and Luke 4:16-21.  This week you actually get four readings for the price of two, because both passages recount the public reading of the scriptures, or, in the case of Nehemiah, documents that would come to be included in the scriptures.  It's a little strange to read the Bible talking about people reading what we've come to know as the Bible - it doesn't happen all that often, and very often when we think it does we've gotten ourselves in a bit of a twist (yes, I'm looking at you Hebrews 4:12).

The key thing here, though, is that these passages talk about scripture being read, not just about scripture.  Specifically read with the intention of engaging and understanding it - in Nehemiah we're told that a bunch of people with Biblical names 'the Levites, helped the people to understand the law, while the people remained in their places. So they read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.'

In the reading from Luke we find every eye in the synagogue on Jesus after he finishes reading, waiting for him to tell them what it means.  There seems to be something very important here about reading in community - in balancing with others our understandings, and interpretations; in listening to those who have spent lifetimes in study, but accepting no single voice as a final authority.  That's wise to do because this treasure we've inherited is brave powerful stuff, capable of great blessing, but also great harm.

I remember someone once saying of scripture that we should only ever open it with the expectation of being changed by it, and shouldn't shut it until we have been.  That's a challenging thought, and perhaps it's a little daunting.  It might be a wonderful ideal - but we all know that some days the simplest things reveal to us the heart of God, and on others the deepest striving seems to draw us no closer.  Nonetheless I believe that it is an expectation, a hope, that we can carry.   That thirst seems to be present in the people we encounter in these readings - a thirst to delve into the mysteries of God, to be changed by Him in some way for the better.

And that thirst is met.  In Nehemiah we watch as the awareness and understanding blossoms in the hearts of those listening, and they are moved to tears as they realise how far they have drifted from the ways of God, and how deeply they desire to return.  In Luke we hear the incredible declaration from Jesus that the ancient desire captured in the prophecy of Isaiah to be reconciled with God, to receive and know his favour is being fulfilled in that very moment.  This should be spine-tingling stuff!  Lives are being changed, expectations fulfilled, God encountered!

If we want to experience the same, it is precisely in that word 'encounter' that the key here lies, and in remembering Who it is, and not what it is, we wish to encounter.  At the end of the day the book we know as the Bible is just that - a book.  It can be studied as history, art, and literature.  It can be chipped away at in daily disciplines, and ticked off in boxes as books or sections have been read.  None of that will make all that much difference to us, beyond being better read and perhaps some bragging rights.

If we want to unlock for ourselves the life changing power of Scripture we need to recognise that Scripture itself doesn't have that power; but it is a potent conduit to the true Power, to God himself.  The Word is never constrained in words, but does - often and powerfully - reveal himself through them; and the words of our ancestors, the lives, deaths, reflections, poems, and letters of those who have struggled with the faith before us do seem to hold a particular authority and anointing, a way of opening ourselves to that revelation, that nothing else seems to.

So this Bible Sunday I encourage you wholeheartedly to get that dusty tome down off the shelf, to dive into it and see what treasures it holds - and to do so with the expectation of life changing encounter; but to do so by first opening yourself to the transformative power of God himself, and opening yourself to the community of faith that walks behind you, beside you, and before you.