On October 10 of last year, I began
reading through the Bible. I read The Message, an English version
translated by Eugene Peterson. He said his
intent was to translate the Bible into “American English.” Read The
Message and you will realize how quickly language shifts. What he calls “American English” is very much
20th century “American.” A few phrases and idioms are out of
vogue. Even so it is a delightful
translation and I read all the way through by the end of the year.
Not everyone would want to do
that. Not everyone has the freedom. That’s a lot of scripture in a short time,
but not as short a period when author Margaret Feinberg read through the entire
Bible during the 40 days of Lent last year.
Why would she or I or anyone try to
digest the entirety of scripture this way?
In such large chunks, it is hard to narrow in and meditate on specific
ideas in the Bible. What is the benefit
of this approach to reading?
It helped me condition my thinking
according to the world of the Bible. I felt the story. The journey through 1st and 2nd
Kings alone is exhausting and painful.
Over and over the kings of Judah and Israel worship false gods, ignore
the prophets of the one true God, exploit the people, and find themselves at
the mercy of foreign monarchs who abuse without restraint. By the end of 2nd Kings, the reader
is depressed.
But then, exile comes as the last
King, Zedekiah, is blinded and led off to slavery in Babylon. And then, we see God’s people in Babylon and
Persia and we realize God is there too.
Even as the layers of disobedience pile up, God never leaves. Esther, Nehemiah, Daniel, and Ezekiel show
God’s faithfulness and grace as second chances are given over and over. Reading through it all gives the reader the
arc of the story, a sense of God as God moves with humanity through the eras of
history.
Another book I read in 2013 is The Book of God: The Bible as a Novel. Wangerin is extremely creative in his
telling of the stories of scripture. Max
Lucado too is an author who brings passion to his depictions of the Bible
narratives.
I am recommending as a pathway into
the Bible that we read it as a great story.
Ignore chapter and verse and simply get into the story. A translation like The Message may facilitate this.
So too might a novelization like the writings of Wangerin or Lucado, to
name just two of many outstanding writers who reflect on scripture. This year I am going to go through the Contemporary English Version. Like The
Message it is in language patterns similar to our every day speech. I won’t cram it in in less than 3 months like
in 2013. I’ll read a chunk, leave it,
then go back to it. For me, the exercise
is a way to live in the story world.
This approach to the Bible as story
helped me tremendously in reading Nehemiah.
Nehemiah is situated in the time of exile. Israel has fallen to Babylon. Then Babylon falls to Persia and the
Israelite slaves go from one master to another.
Yet all is not lost.
We see in the Bible the Jewish people
cling fiercely to their role as God’s chosen even when they appear utterly
defeated. Other ancients assumed when
they were defeated that the gods of their conquerors were superior to their own
gods. Not Israel. No matter what happened, Israel claimed the
uniqueness and superiority of Yahweh as the only God.
In
the book of Genesis, Israelite Joseph, son of Jacob is a slave who rises from
death row to become governor. He runs
the empire and through his divinely inspired wisdom the Egyptians survive the
famine. Similarly, Daniel rises in
Persia to great authority, a slave ruling over the nation. Nehemiah, also in Persia, becomes the
cupbearer to the King.
This slave from Jerusalem is so
important that the Persian emperor a man with enormous responsibilities pays
attention to Nehemiah’s emotions. Nehemiah
receives reports that Jerusalem, the city of David, lies in ruins. He is overcome with depression and the king
takes note of his sadness. The king
grants Nehemiah permission to leave his service as cupbearer, travel to Jerusalem,
and rebuild the city.
By the time we arrive at the book of Nehemiah,
chapters 8 and 9, the priest, Ezra, has come from Persia, to join the
rebuilding effort. Israel will not be
the people of God without worship and not just any offering to the Lord, but
proper worship. This is crucial to know
in the story world of Bible. Worship
matters. The identity of the great “I
AM,” Yahweh, the God of Abraham, demands that worship be at the core of who
Israel is.
With this sense of story, we realize
what is happening when we open Nehemiah 8 and see Ezra addressing the nation as
they gather. They are starting
over. After slavery, after the
destruction of the temple and the city, they once again gather, turn their
hearts to God, and worship. We would not
get all the undertones of the story by just opening up Nehemiah and beginning
our reading at chapter 8, verse 1.
British preacher Peter Mead says, “I often ponder the fact that the Bible men
and women whom I most aspire to be like are not those with a ready quiver full
of pithy proof-texts, but those who know the God of the Bible because they are
washed in the Bible as a whole, book by book.”[i] Are we so washed in the Bible so that we get
a sense of what God is doing both in the Bible story we are reading and in our
lives as we read? Or do we just whip a
verse or there with no connection to all God is doing in history. Dangling Bible verses quoted out of context
do a disservice to God. When we quote
without a sense of story, we deceive ourselves into thinking we are being
Biblical when in fact we’re just self-righteously drawing to our own abilities
to memorize. Quoting is fine and is
good, but only when it is connected to story – God’s and ours.
In
Nehemiah 8, worship stands as the highpoint marking the moment the nation
re-forms as God’s people. In the center
of the worship is the Torah, the law, the word.
Torah is the content of the first five books of the Old Testament. It is what God gave Moses on Mt. Sinai as God
called his people out of Egypt in the Exodus.
Before they could go to the Promised Land, they had to understand
God. The Torah is creation, 10
commandments, the story of deliverance, and the review in Deuteronomy, the
entire law revisited to prepare the nation to enter the land.
Nehemiah
8:3 reports that the people, men, women, and children, stood at the Water Gate in
Jerusalem while the priest Ezra read. I
thought about having us all stand throughout the sermon this morning. They stood there from early morning to
midday, maybe as long as 4 hours without sitting. They stood and listened as Ezra read and
explained the Torah.
It had been so
long since the people of Israel lived in the land and live in the word that
many had even forgotten the language.
They needed priests to translate Ezra’s teaching from Hebrew into
Aramaic (8:7-8). But they patiently
endured the lengthy session because they could not think of anything that
mattered as much as being in the word.
Their return to God would be founded upon the word. The Torah was how God communicated and on it
they would stand.
Walter
Brueggemann comments that “remapping and reconstruction becomes the ongoing
work of Judaism. It is clear,” he
writes, “the work of Judaism is always postexilic [after fall in sin and
restoration by grace] and is always on the horizon of Yahweh’s gathering,
healing, forgiving, loving propensity.”[ii] In our lives as followers of Jesus, we
remember that he is the Jewish Messiah and that in Him, as we read in Romans;
we are grafted into the people of God. But
this is only so because of what Jesus accomplished on the cross. Our story cannot be told without the cross
and the resurrection. Israel had to
begin with Torah and continuously return to Torah. We have to begin with the Gospel and
continuously return to it. This ongoing
work of reconstruction is ours as we commit ourselves to repentance (turning
from our sins), receiving forgiveness, and giving it. As the New Testament puts it, the Gospel is
new wine and we are new creations.
In
Nehemiah 8, when the law was being read during that four-hour stretch, people
began weeping. They were overcome by
their own guilt. However, the governor,
Nehemiah, and the priest, Ezra, stopped the lamentations. The people felt their sin, the weight of it,
the filth of it, but Ezra and Nehemiah wanted to introduce a new emotion –
joy. We weep in sin because we are cut
off from God. We grieve our sins because
sin rips us away from the good that God created us to be. We become something less than fully
human. At the cross, Jesus took it all
on himself. In Him, in the waters of
baptism, the sins are washed away. Isaiah
61:3 – He gives beauty for Ashes, gladness instead of mourning.
Nehemiah
8:10: “This is a special day for the Lord your God. So don’t be sad and don’t cry. Enjoy your good food and wine and share some
with those who don’t have anything. …
This is a special day for the Lord, and he will make you happy and strong. This is a sacred day, so don’t worry or
mourn” (8:10b-12).
A
few weeks ago, we talked about the sin cycle that is so prevalent in the book
of Judges. The people worship other gods
and fall away from the Lord. The Lord
gets angry. The people fall into
domination at the hands of cruel invaders.
The people cry out and the Lord responds by sending a hero, a
judge. Through the judges, the Lord
brings salvation. After the salvation,
the people live in peace, joy, and faithfulness. This is bliss until they forget and in
disobedience, they abandon the Lord and it starts all over.
Nehemiah
lies within the story of this cycle of sin, fall, and deliverance. Chapter 8, verse 1, the deliverance has
come. Ezra stands and reads the word
because the story is important and nothing can happen between God and the
people until they locate themselves within it.
They hear and they realize their place and they weep.
Sin. Restoration.
And
then, as Ezra and Nehemiah insist, not weeping, but rejoicing. God has given the word, which speaks who He
is and it – the word – is able to hold us up and make us new.
To be human is to live with our own
failures. Dreams die.
It does not mean we die with
them. It may feel that way. But no.
We can’t wallow in sorrow because a story is beneath us and around us
and the God of that story lifts us. Fallen, we rise because he raises us. When
we start again, after the fall-out and deep pain has infected our souls, we
stand on the Gospel. We stand on the
truth that God spoke to the world through Israel, and then again through His
son our Savior Jesus. The Bible draws us
to Jesus and Jesus lifts us to our feet.
Failure is not the end of our story. We belong to Jesus, risen one. Because of Him, the sin cycle is broken and
in all circumstances, we have joy.
AMEN
[i]
Peter Mead (2014), Sermon Central website - http://www.sermoncentral.com/pastors-preaching-articles/peter-mead-why-bible-reading-is-down-at-your-church-1801.asp?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=scnewsletter&utm_content=SC+Update+20140130
[ii]
Brueggemann (1997) Theology of the Old
Testament, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, p.444.
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