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“No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.” So says Samuel Johnson – which led me to reflect, when I came across his words the other day, that I have spent much of my life writing for very little money indeed. No one writes on Matthew, Paul, or knotty problems like sin or salvation in the expectation of striking it rich. And yet write we do, everyone who preaches, everyone who teaches, everyone who would be a student or scholar or pastor for Christ.
And it is not easy. I have to gird my loins every day to face the blank page. It takes hours, not just of writing, but of reading, research, coming to understand an area and the conversations—old and new—around it, living with ideas in your head and problems on the page, recalcitrant arguments, escaping logic; it takes hours, days, weeks, months…years. Sometimes, writing doth murder sleep.
Why? Why do I do it?
I do it because I love the Scriptures and I love the Christ they speak.
As I come to retirement, I am overcome with wonder that I have been able to spend my life teaching, preaching, learning, writing the Word, this word of the Scriptures, this Word that is Christ with us, this word in which the hand of God reaches out to touch our lives.
There is a striking bas-relief of the four evangelists in the ancient abbey church of Mont-St-Michel. All of them sit, quill in hand, writing the gospel. Writing! Writing is their work of proclamation, their service for Christ.
St Matthew sits, pen poised, a look of great concentration on his face. Beside him a small angel, cloak caught up in his hand as if he has run to Matthew’s side, holds out an inkpot. Matthew’s finger touches the angel’s head. The sixteenth-century church’s point is clear: this gospel of Jesus Christ is the Word of God.
John tells us the same thing:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (John 1:1 NRSV)
The Word was God. From all time it has been this way. He has given Himself to us as Word, and in the Scriptures we know Him. He has given Himself to us as this Word, this Jesus, my Lord and my God, this Bible that speaks of Him.
Matthew needs the angel. He cannot write without him; that is why the angel has run to his side. Matthew plants his finger on the angel’s head so that his word may be heaven’s word, so that his hand may be guided by God, so that he may speak the One who is the Word.
In churches throughout Europe, the our evangelists with their symbols stand, over the church door, in stained glass, forming the four legs of the altar. In the Founders’ Chapel at Wycliffe, they look down on us from the cross. That is how important our Scriptures are. The Gospels in their symbols are emblazoned in our chapel on the cross.
It is as if to say that there is no worship, there is no faith, there is no joy in Christ except in the word that is His Word. Except His Word be ours. Christ and the Word, together.
Christ the Word, Christ as Word, Christ given to us in the Scriptures: this has been my joy.
It never fails to amaze me that after some 40 years of preaching I find the Scriptures still speaking to me afresh each time I preach! Each time I teach, new riches of the Word, students’ eyes opening my own; Scripture bouncing off itself to reveal connections previously unseen, hidden depths. It cannot be plumbed, our Bible, our Christ.
And it continues. What a gift I am being given, again, in this retirement that now comes to me. The Scriptures and my pen…and no interruptions!
Wycliffe puts Scripture first – and not only in the Chapel. It is our first principle: The sufficiency and supremacy of Holy Scripture as the rule of faith. Scripture is the sine qua non, the foundation, the heart of all our gospel work. This is our work, our trust, our sacred trust: to read the Bible faithfully, to stand under it, never to squeeze and stomp it into the mould of our own day, of our own desires, but always to seek to know our day and ourselves through the Bible, in the light that the Word alone can cast, the light that is Christ. It is the gift we have been given.
There is no greater gift. To live one’s life in obedience to the Word; to speak the Word—wonderful mystery, to speak the Word! It is a work like no other, because in it there is Christ. In it there is Christ and His great grace.
It is Christ I have found in our Scriptures. It is Christ I seek now, again, as I go from here into the new life He has for me, this life of the Scriptures and my pen.
Thank you, Wycliffe! Thank you, my Christ.
