Bible ready: 2 Timothy 2:8-14.

Message.

I wonder if you know what the institutions I’m about to name all have in common, apart from being ancient and situated in the southern half of England: Wimborne Minster in Dorset, St Wulfram’s church in Grantham, Merton College in Oxford and Wells Cathedral? It’s this: they all have chained libraries – that is, medieval libraries where some, at least, of the books are attached to their shelves by a ringlet and a chain. This is done is a way which allows the books to be consulted but not to be taken away. I deliberately didn’t mention the largest and most famous chained library as that would have given the game away – it’s the one at Hereford Cathedral. This apparently contains about 1,500 books, dating from around 800AD to the early nineteenth century, including 227 medieval manuscripts. They are still read by scholars who come from all over the world to study them.

So why did libraries chain up their books? After all, it must be a bit of a fiddle to read a chained book! I imagine that some people think that the chaining was done because the monks and scholars wanted their books to remain secret; but the real reason is much more prosaic. For before Gutenberg invented the modern printing press in the 1450s, there were only two ways of producing a book. One was to laboriously carve out all the text and illustrations – in reverse – onto a block of wood which could then be used to print multiple copies; the other was to copy the book out by hand: some monasteries had scriptoria set aside for this very purpose. Both methods made books expensive and rare, so librarians wanted to their precious tomes from being stolen.

Mind you, chains weren’t the only tool that libraries used to deter theft. Sometimes books had curses written into them. Here’s one from a 12^th century Bible now held by the British Library. It says, “If anyone take away this book, let him die the death – let him be fried in a pan – let the falling sickness and fever crush him – let him be broken on the wheel – and hanged. Amen”. Another says, “If anyone should steal this book, let him know that on the Day of Judgement the most sainted martyr himself will be the accuser against him before the face of our Lord Jesus Christ”. Yet another goes: “Steal not this book my honest friend, for fear the gallows should be your end; and when you die the Lord will say, “So where’s the book you stole away?” – although that last one might actually a Victorian ditty designed to scare children! I have to say that all these punishments sound more terrifying than the prospect of a small fine for returning one’s book a few days late!

All that takes us to Paul and his second letter to Timothy. I know that there are some scholars who wonder if Paul really did write it, but I’m happy to take it at face value. So here we have the aged apostle, tired, lonely, locked up in prison (not for the first time) and wondering if he will soon be thrown to the lions in the arena, writing words of advice and encouragement to his young colleague. Paul loves Timothy as a son in the faith and has marked him out as his successor, but he’s worried: is he too timid to lead the churches forward once Paul has gone, too meek to make his mark? Paul isn’t sure; but he has no choice as he is chained up like a common criminal. However, and as he says to Timothy, God’s word is not in chains, it is still powerful and free.

Before we start thinking about why Paul said this and what he meant, I’d like to take you on a journey through some Bible texts which talk about God and his word. The first comes at the very beginning of the Bible, when God says, “Let there be light” – and there is. I accept of course that the ancients had no idea of science or evolution; what they did understand was the creative power of God’s word. And in this first chapter God speaks again and again, creating the universe from nothing. As the hymn says, “At his voice creation sprang at once to sight”. The grandeur, the divinity, the creativity of God lie behind his word.

Here are a couple more verses from the Old Testament. First we have the prophet Isaiah who said, “As the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth. It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it”. And here, using more dramatic language, is Jeremiah: “’Is not my word like fire,’ declares the Lord, ‘and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?’” – two metaphors in one verse!

Turning now to the New Testament, we have the people’s reaction to Jesus’ words in Luke 4: “All the people were amazed and said to each other, ‘What words these are! With authority and power he orders the impure spirits and they come out!’” The letter to the Hebrews includes these famous words: “The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart”. Finally, and highly relevant to today’s text, we have Jesus telling his disciples: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them … and teaching them. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Evangelism is done in the power of God’s word.

So how might God’s word be chained? I’m going to suggest two answers. The more obvious one is that it’s chained – unable to do its work – if it isn’t openly proclaimed. As Paul said in his letter to the Romans, faith comes from hearing God’s message, passed on by people preaching it. However people can’t respond to that message if they haven’t heard it; they won’t hear it if it isn’t proclaimed; and that proclamation won’t happen if the Church keeps God’s message to itself – or, I might add, thinks that the task of preaching the Gospel is the job of ministers and evangelists alone. Paul could rejoice that God’s word was unchained because he knew he wasn’t the only person preaching it; although he himself was imprisoned and silenced, possibly permanently, he knew that others who, even as he was writing, were carrying on the task: Timothy himself, Onesiphorus and other unnamed “faithful men”.

It wasn’t easy to preach the Christian Gospel in Paul’s day: not only were some people suspicious of this unfamiliar new religion, there were also the physical constraints of communication. Although the Roman Empire was, for its day, well-connected, it obviously didn’t have national newspapers, television, radio or social media. On the other hand, I suspect that news spread fast in local communities via simple word-of-mouth, especially in places where life was predictable and “nothing much happened” – the arrival of an evangelistic team would, I think, draw a crowd in a way which doesn’t happen today. (In passing, I’m reminded of Sr. Silva, an elderly man when I knew him, who’d been a Presbyterian evangelist in rural Portugal in the 1930s. He and his companion had no trouble in gathering listeners when they spoke in what were very isolated towns and villages; however the opposition encouraged by the local Mayor, Catholic priest and school teacher was strong and could include not just rotten tomatoes and fruit being thrown but also stones. God’s word was being let loose and provoked a furious reaction in these highly traditional communities).

The situation today is very different to Paul’s. Our problem is that we can speak freely – but our voice is sidelined, mocked or drowned out by others; it’s very hard to be heard. This isn’t just a problem for the churches: just the other day I read a newspaper article saying how hard it is to get children to watch good TV programmes because they switch on their tablets, watch something that’s basically rubbish, and are then led by algorithms to more of the same, or worse. So, although the BBC still makes “Blue Peter”, most children are never going to know about it, let alone watch it. We’ve said that God’s word is sharper than a sword: but how will it cut through this undergrowth and get a hearing? Perhaps the best way for it to be unchained is simply for ordinary Christians to “gossip the Gospel”, sharing their experience of God.

There is, I think another and less obvious way for God’s word to be chained. It’s one which, curiously, is most likely to be carried out by people who take the Bible very seriously. It’s this: we can chain the Bible with doctrine, we can imprison it with rigid interpretation, we can tie it down with theology, we can shackle it by looking too closely at the details of the text and missing its broader sweep, we can rob it of its power by treating it simply as a textbook of rules rather than as God’s dynamic word of life.

I must be careful here: I’m not saying that theology and doctrine are bad, I’m not saying that we ride roughshod over traditional under-standings of the Bible, I’m not saying that taking time to study its text is a waste of time – not at all. Many Christians have lamentably little knowledge of what the Bible says, they’re limited to a few stories or psalms, they’ve not really worked out what they’ve believed. I believe that they are weaker Christians as a result.

What I am saying is this: it’s all too easy to restrict or box up or – yes! – chain God’s word to a set of rigid, narrow and inflexible views. You can get weighty tomes of what is called “Systematic Theology” which try to organise everything the Bible says about God or humanity of creation or salvation or ethics or whatever; those books can be useful but they must never be allowed to take the place of God’s word, nor of his Spirit who interprets it and, I believe, often wants to give us fresh insights into our faith. Yes, we believe in the faith that’s been handed down from the earliest times; but, just as Jesus did, we need to hear it in the context of today. God’s word is alive, always seeking to break any chain we may use to restrain it.

And, at the end of the day, it is Jesus that – or should I say ‘who’? – we are wanting to set free. We’re not proclaiming doctrine or theology, we’re not proclaiming our church’s tradition, we’re not even (dare I say it?) even proclaiming the Bible. No: we are proclaiming Jesus, a person rather than an abstract idea, the living Word of God, who wants to leap from the pages of our holy book and run freely into the world. “Remember Jesus”, says Paul; that is what any preacher, evangelist, Sunday School teacher or ordinary Christian must always do.

The great Baptist preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon allegedly said that God’s word is like a lion which cannot be caged. In fact he never used those exact words, but here’s one example of what he did say: “The Word of God can take care of itself, and will do so if we preach it, and cease defending it. See you that lion? They have caged him for his preservation; shut him up behind iron bars to secure him from his foes! See how a band of armed men have gathered together to protect the lion. What a clatter they make with their swords and spears! These mighty men are intent upon defending a lion. O fools, and slow of heart! Open that door! Let the lord of the forest come forth free. Who will dare to encounter him? What does he want with your guardian care? Let the pure gospel go forth in all its lion-like majesty, and it will soon clear its own way and free itself of its adversaries”.

Can we – will we – uncage or unchain God’s word? I hope that we will!