The Bible as Story

Here are the notes for the sermon I delivered today at Bellingham Covenant Church. Again, these are just the notes, so they may seem cryptic at times.

(Hebrews 1:1-2, Acts 17:22-33)

Intro: This short sermon series (three weeks) draws on the book “The Blue Parakeet” by Scot McKnight. The title comes from a bird that he saw in his backyard one day… …he calls “blue parakeet passages” the parts of the Bible that we are uncomfortable with and don’t know what to do with.

Today’s sermon is about how to read the Bible in the right way so there aren’t passages that we ignore because we’re uncomfortable with them. The best way to do this is to see the Bible as Story.

The Big Story: Creation (Genesis 1-2), Crack-up (Genesis 3-11), Covenant Community (Genesis 12-Malachi), Christ Redeems (Matthew-Revelation 20), Consummation (Revelation 21-22).

Reading the Bible as a Story is difficult, because it means that we need to know the Bible. It has to be in our bones. It has to shape our imaginations, and how we see the world. But that’s hard, and Scot McKnight in his book points out five shortcuts we take around reading the Bible as Story:

1. the Bible as Lawbook: People come to the Bible saying, “Just tell me what to do.” The Bible does have laws in it, but when you treat the Bible as lawbook only, you distort it. Laws are ALWAYS in context. They are expressions of how the people of God are to live at a particular time in history. Examples: Exodus 20:2 – “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.” Matthew 5:1-2 “His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them.”

2. the Bible as Catalogue of Blessings and Promises – When you read the Bible as catalogue of blessings and promises, there are a lot of passages that are useless, like Job or Ecclesiastes or anything about exile. Or anything in the New Testament about persecution. When we treat the Bible as a catalogue of blessings and promises, we don’t know what to do when life gets rough.

3. the Bible as Rorschach Inkblots – The Rorschach test is a series of inkblots, where the psychologist asks you what you see. When we read the Bible like this, we see what is in our head. Republicans think Jesus is a Republican. Democrats think Jesus is a Democrat. We see what we want to see, and ignore everything else. People who read the Bible like this open the Bible and say, “Tell me I’m OK.” They don’t want to be challenged. But the Bible should challenge us.

4. the Bible as a Puzzle – These people cut out certain verses and organize them in stacks. In the end, the Bible doesn’t have to be read, because they already know what it says. If you read the Bible like this, you end up having to bend over backwards to explain away passages that don’t fit in with your puzzle. These people put the Bible in a cage.

5. the Bible through the eyes of a Maestro – There are two main maestros in the Bible: Jesus and Paul. The Reformers read everything in the light of what Paul said. Martin Luther wanted to cut James out of the Bible because he was reading the whole Bible through what Paul said. We have to embrace each biblical author in order to get a sense of the whole Story. Each biblical author told his part of the story in his day in his way, and we need to listen to each of them to get a sense of what the Story is about.

We just read two passages that show the Bible is a story.

The first one is the author of the letter to the Hebrews saying that God speaks in various days in various ways. He spoke in Moses’ days in Moses’ ways, in David’s days in David’s ways, and so on.

The Bible is a big Story, but in every age there are different expressions of it. It is a Big Story made up of little stories. God always speaks in a way that people can understand. Now God speaks to us in our day in ways that we can understand. He’s not too proud to come down to our level; he has never been too proud to do this.

The key to these stories is Jesus. He is the ultimate revealing of what God is like.

The second passage we read is Paul telling the Story to one group of people – non-Jews in Athens – in a way that they can understand.

The next time you read the book of Acts, focus on all the different sermons. You will see that Peter, Stephen, Philip and Paul preach basically the same story, but they tell a slightly different version every time so that the people they are speaking to can understand it. When Peter speaks to Jews, he draws on the Jewish scriptures (our Old Testament) to show that Jesus is the Messiah prophesied in those scriptures.

Here, when Paul talks to Greeks, he quotes Greek poets in verse 28. But he’s not saying, “What you believe is OK.” He speaks to people in a way that they can understand, but he challenges them by criticizing their idolatry and talking about Jesus’ resurrection.

These two passages (and many others!) show what reading the Bible as Story is all about. It is about understanding that the Bible is a Big Story that is made up of little stories held together by that Big Story. And the only way to make sense of the blue parakeets (the passages that we don’t understand or that make us uncomfortable) is to set each in the context of the Big Story.

In closing, I want you to take away a few points about seeing the Bible as a Story:

1. In order to know the Bible’s story, you need to spend time with the Bible. No Shortcuts! Otherwise it won’t make sense, and there will be blue parakeets flying all over the place.

Example: Scholars say that the book of Revelation contains over 500 allusions to the Old Testament, and not one of them is a direct quote. It never says, “Isaiah said this,” or “The Psalms said that.” John assumed that his audience would get his references. If we don’t know the Bible, including the Old Testament, we won’t understand how each book fits into the whole.

You can read through the Bible in a year if you read about four chapters a day, or in two years if you read two chapters a day. Study Bibles are very helpful for background information.

2. The Story continues. The last two chapters of the Bible, Revelation 21-22, tell about the end of history, and we’re not there yet. That means the church is part of the Story, and you and I are part of the Story.

If we want to make sense of our stories, we need to know the Big Story. When we know the Big Story, we will be better able to understand how our stories fit in.

The Story continues in the church. “Sola scriptura” doesn’t mean we should only have the Bible. It means that the Bible trumps tradition and can correct it. If we act like we are the first people to ever be able to read it correctly, we have made a mistake. This is how cults get founded.

3. When we share the Story with others, we need to do our best to tell the story in a way that people can understand.

Peter spoke to Jews one way in Acts 2, and Paul spoke to Greeks a different way in Acts 17. And they both told the story differently from the way the Old Testament prophets told it. They were telling the same story, but in different ways so that different people could understand it.

Telling the story so people can understand it does not mean that we take the plot out of the story. We need to say, “Your story gets some things right, but here’s a story that gets everything right.” This is offensive to some people. We should be humble and say something like, “There are some things I don’t know about the Bible’s Story, but what I do know is true.”

When we share the Story with other people, we need to listen to them and do our best to figure out what parts of the Story will grab them. In all this, we trust the Holy Spirit to open people’s hearts. We can’t do that. All we can do is tell the story the best way we know how: as the story of God’s rescue mission to save a hurting and broken world.

Driving Again

This summer has been great. Since I stopped driving a school bus for the summer in late June, I’ve devoted more time to reading, working at the church more, and wedding planning. School started again last Wednesday, and despite the fact that I won’t have time to do those other things as much, it is good to get back to work.

One major change from last spring is that I am now working much more than I did at the end of the school year last year. When I was hired on as a bus driver in April, I got the route that nobody else wanted: a 4.25-hour route where I was only driving elementary school kids to school. Most other routes have a high school/middle school route in addition to elementary, which kicks them up quite a bit in hours.

There was some shuffling that went on this summer, though. Because of budget cuts, three routes were eliminated. This would have put me and the others at the bottom of the food chain in jeopardy, except for the fact that four drivers left, three of them through retirement. The day before school started, all the bus drivers got together in a room, and when the “bidding” process was over, someone had taken my 4.25-hour route (which had jumped up to 5 hours over the summer because it was combined with another route). That was the bad news. But the good news is that instead I took a 6.25-hour route. And not only that, but it is the same route that I drove for five months last school year as a substitute – so I know most of the kids already. Despite the fact that it is a longer route than my former route, nobody wanted it because it mostly picks up kids from the “projects” (subsidized housing) on a nearby Indian reservation. Because of that, it has a bad reputation with the other bus drivers. And honestly, the elementary kids on the route can be a little wild – mostly, I think, because some of them don’t have a lot of structure and parental supervision. But the middle school and high school kids are no worse, behavior-wise, than any other route. So, despite the fact that I have to get up at 5:30 in the morning, I’m satisfied with where things sit. With a wedding coming up, I can use all the extra cash I can get.

August 2009: Books Read

1. Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: Moving From Affluence to Generosity by Ronald J. Sider. This book came out in 1977, and is regarded by many as a “classic.” The version I read was the fifth edition, updated in (I think) 2004.

The book comes in four parts: the first part depicts the state of the world today, in which there are billions of poor people and millions of affluent people who could help. The second part shares a biblical perspective on poverty and possessions. The third attempts to answer the question, “What causes poverty?” And the fourth shares practical steps that Christians in rich countries can follow to both simplify their own lives and make wise contributions to making the world a more just and fair place.

This was a challenging book for me. Although I don’t think of myself as affluent, I certainly live in an affluent part of the world and enjoy many more conveniences than those people who have to live on a few dollars a day. The main things that I got out of this book were 1) practical tips on living more simply, while simultaneously fostering community, and 2) a greater understanding of the economics of poverty. Lack of understanding the latter, I think, is a major obstacle that keeps Christians from helping the poor. We think that the foreign aid rich countries give to poor countries is a lot, but most actually give less than 1 percent of their GNP in foreign aid – and much of this aid is tied to their own foreign policy interests. We think that this aid is more than enough to make up for inequalities caused by things like tariffs and the abusive practices of some multi-national corporations, but it is not. This is definitely a book that all Christians in wealthy nations should read. Even if not everyone agrees with Sider’s practical proposals, the problem of poverty is something that all Christians – if they are reading their Bibles and are genuinely seeking to be more like Jesus – are called to address.

2. Praying With the Church: Following Jesus Daily, Hourly, Today by Scot McKnight. McKnight was raised in a Christian tradition that had no use for daily set prayers, but as an adult he has come to appreciate and even love them. Like McKnight, I was raised in a Christian tradition that did not have set prayers (though we did recite the Lord’s Prayer and the “Gloria Patri” every week in church). As an adult, I have been more and more interested in the practice of daily prayer times as I have come to understand how deep they go in the Christian tradition.

McKnight’s book is a quick read and it comes in two parts: the first deals with Jesus’ own use of set prayers (Jews of his time recited prayers daily, and what we call the “Lord’s Prayer” is Jesus teaching his disciples something to pray every day). The second part serves as an introduction to four prayer books: the Orthodox Manual of Eastern Orthodox Prayers, the Roman Catholic Liturgy of the Hours, the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, and Phyllis Tickle’s modern ecumenical Divine Hours. I would recommend this book to anyone who, like me, wants to have a richer prayer life and who is less familiar with the tradition of set prayers and how to use a prayer book.

3. The Ascent of a Leader: How Ordinary Relationships Develop Extraordinary Character and Influence by Bill Thrall, Bruce McNichol and Ken McElrath. Throughout my time in graduate school, I felt that it was more important to spend my time reading deep theology books than leadership books. But as I grow closer to (hopefully) taking on more leadership in a church setting, and as I become more aware that it is rarely bad theology that gets pastors kicked out of churches, I’ve become more interested in leadership literature. Earlier this year I read Now, Discover Your Strengths, and I’ve just recently completed The Ascent of a Leader.

The “ascent” the authors talk about is climbing the “character ladder” rather than the “capacity ladder.” The capacity ladder is what leaders are able to do on their own, and it comes with four rungs: discover what I can do, develop my capacities, acquire a title or position and attain individual potential. Climbing up just this kind of ladder can lead to loneliness and failure. Rather, spurred on by environments and relationships of grace, leaders should climb the character ladder: trust God and others, choose vulnerability, align with truth, pay the price and discover destiny. Once you start to climb the character ladder, you can integrate it with the capacity ladder, “leveraging our capacities far beyond what we could have accomplished without character” (143). I found this book to be a good reminder of how important character is in everyday life.

4. The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible by Scot McKnight. I’d heard a lot about this little book in recent months, and when I was at the Covenant’s annual meeting in Portland this summer, I was able to pick it up. The title comes from a time when McKnight was sitting in his backyard and saw a strange blue bird that he had never seen before. Turns out it was a parakeet that had escaped from someone’s cage. The “blue parakeets” of the title are “oddities in the Bible that we prefer to cage and silence rather than to permit into our sacred mental gardens” (208). Issues like Sabbath, foot washing, tithing and women in ministry are blue parakeets that many of us don’t quite know what to do with: do we try to retrieve all practices from biblical times? Do we try to retrieve only what we can salvage for our day and our culture? Do we read through tradition? Or do we read in dialogue with tradition? McKnight counsels us to read the Bible as a Story. We should read this Story in order to get to know the God behind it. And we should discern through God’s Spirit and in the context of our community how to continue living that Story in our own day. McKnight provides an example of discernment in the issue of women in ministry.

This is a wonderful book, and I hope it finds its way into the hands of lots of people. All Christians interpret the Bible in some way, but there are so few books for a popular audience on how to best interpret it. As a result, many are left thinking that the way their pastor or their immediate community interprets the Bible is self-evidently the only way. This is unfortunate.

This isn’t a perfect book, by any means. Since it is short, and meant for a popular audience, McKnight ends up dealing with some complicated issues very briefly. As a result, I doubt whether he will convince many people who, for example, are thoroughly antagonistic to women’s ordination. But since the book is for a popular audience, and no popular book can deal with these issues in great detail, I still highly recommend it.

5. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. I have never seen the movie version of this book, and I was surprised on reading it to find that Scarlett O’Hara is one of the more malevolent and despicable literary protagonists I have ever read about – and I have read Anna Karenina. Like Anna Karenina, the real hero of this book is someone besides the main character: in Anna Karenina it is Levin (who, I’ve heard, Tolstoy modeled after himself), and in Gone With the Wind, it seems to me that the heroine is really Melanie Wilkes. But in both books, the intended hero is far overshadowed by protagonists who are such finely written, true-to-life characters that, despite their badness, they steal the show. It’s a great credit to Margaret Mitchell that she could create such a believable character as Scarlett – even if she is so believable that I genuinely didn’t like her.

6. The Theology of the Book of Revelation by Richard Bauckham. We have been reading through the book of Revelation in our Bible study, and I have taken it on myself to do background reading and lead the discussion. Part of that background reading has been this fantastic little book (it’s only 169 pages). Bauckham, who retired a couple of years ago from being Professor of New Testament at St. Andrews, digs into the theological content of Revelation and finds that it has perhaps the most developed trinitarian theology in the New Testament. He doesn’t spend a lot of time criticizing various interpretations of the book, but it’s clear that he doesn’t think futurist or historicist interpretations do a very good job of making sense of the imagery in the book. This is a dense little book, and it doesn’t move chronologically through the text. For those who want to read it, I’d recommend reading Revelation first to get a sense of it, then read this book, and then go back and read Revelation again with new eyes.