“Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing”: why we read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the Scriptures
At Parish Communion on the Fifth Sunday before Advent, Bible Sunday 26.10.25 Luke 4:16-21 “He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him.” [1] Across the globe on this Sunday, in a vast array of languages, Christians of all the various traditions are doing what we have just done - reading the Scriptures. Indeed, it is what The King and the Pope did on Thursday past, when they shared in prayer, a wonderful sign of Christian unity. Reading the Scriptures is what Christians do when we gather for public worship. And it is what we have done across the centuries. One of the earliest descriptions of Christian worship outside the New Testament was written by a Christian thinker called Justin, around the year 150AD - just over a century after the death and resurrection of Jesus, and perhaps about 70 years after the last books of the New Testament had been written. This is how Justin begins his description of Christian worship: “On the day called Sunday there is a ga...