“Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: help us so to hear them, to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them that, through patience and the comfort of your holy word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ; who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.“

This is the appointed prayer for today, ‘Bible Sunday’. When Thomas Cranmer wrote this one sentence prayer, around four hundred years ago, he ought to have felt like a traveller who has succeeded in stuffing more into a suitcase than a suitcase is designed to carry. Success in having left nothing out is counter-balanced by the effort required to carry it.

There is so much in this one sentence that it is hard to follow. It is as if one opens an overpacked suitcase and can’t focus on any one object because everything falls out in a heap. The phrase which falls out of the sentence and catches my attention this morning is “hold fast [to]… the hope of everlasting life”.

If you had asked me why anyone should bother to read the Bible, before pondering this prayer I suspect I might have come up with such reasons as “to get to know what God is like” or, “To know Jesus Christ better”. This prayer brings into focus another reason ‘so that I may hold onto the hope of everlasting life.’ Holding onto hope whilst adjusting to the uncertainties of the Covid world in the shadow of climate change is challenging. Without hope, our zest for life quickly dulls and eventually withers altogether. Sustaining hope is essential to healthy living. What we hope for and what we place our hope in matters. Get these things wrong and disillusion and despondency follow. “Hope” is so valuable and attractive that we sometimes slip into the habit of talking about it as if it is self-standing rather than asking ourselves what/who we are hoping in and what we are hoping for.

How often, if at all, do we even think about the hope of everlasting life? When you have toothache, it is hard to think about anything other than the tooth that is aching. When all news channels are saturated by the coverage of the pandemic and our day to day life is forced into strange patterns, it requires a deliberate effort to make ourselves think past the virus and focus upon the hope of everlasting life. This is a very timely prayer. What are we hoping for? If our hope is in economic success or enduring good health then the pandemic must surely make us think twice. But what if our hope is ultimately in what comes after this life? What sort of re-orientation of our thoughts is needed to allow us to give pre-eminence to this hope?

The second thing that caught me by surprise in this prayer is the word ‘patience’. What has that got to do with the reading of scripture and holding onto the hope of everlasting life? Quite a lot, I realise, once it has been pointed out to me. Cranmer’s prayer is targeted at the way in which we read scripture […help us so to hear them…]. This is addressing not so much our method of reading scripture as our attitude towards the scriptures. I sometimes read scripture attentively, distractedly, casually, critically, carelessly, carefully etc but never would I have thought of describing myself as reading scripture ‘patiently’. Patience is required; I see that now. There is so much that is not immediately apparent. There is so much that is a mystery. There are so many truths that slowly unfold so that patience is indeed needed. One of today’s appointed readings is Psalm 119:9-16 which includes these words

“11  I have stored up your word in my heart,

that I might not sin against you…..

15  I will meditate on your precepts

and fix my eyes on your ways.

16  I will delight in your statutes;

I will not forget your word.”

This suggests that David was in the habit of bringing scripture to mind and letting it permeate his thinking. It suggests a patience with scripture; a willingness to accept that it might not be immediately clear how it is intended to be interpreted and applied by us in 2020 and that we should not be too hasty in applying the parts we think we understand or too hasty in ignoring the parts we don’t presently understand.

The third and final item to fall out of this suitcase addresses the question of who we place our hope in. This prayer includes all three members of the Trinity. It is addressed to God the Father and its grounds for hope rest upon the person of Jesus Christ and the author’s certainty that He is alive, that He reigns and that He, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, is eternal—i.e. unchanging, come what may.

This prayer may be antiquated but remains potent.