Sunday, February 21, 2010

Making Wise The Simple

Professor Goldingay uses the text Making Wise the Simple by Johanna W.H. Van Wijk-Bos, and the small portion of it I have read so far as been extremely profound and has really aided in teaching different insights of the Torah.

"The use of the so-called Ecumenical Lectionary in many congregations illustrates this customary devaluing of the largest part of the Bible. Old Testament passages are served up in a fragmented fashion, subordinated to the agenda of the Christian year, and either trumped by New Testmant selections or interpreted as merely a prelude to them."

"Having lost their moorings in the Torah, churchgoers at best assume the central tenets of faith and practice, as love of God and neighbor, to belong mainly to the prophetic critique of biblical Israel's shortcomings, or to have been invented by Jesus and his followers."

"In order to become reacquainted and reengaged with the Bible, it is important to establish and evaluate the distance between us and the text, between our world and that world."

Most of our sermons and our focus are on Jesus and clearly this is with reason, but how can we expect to understand Jesus if we fail to see him as a faithful Jew. To take that further, we must understand that the Torah would have been written on His heart and would greatly shape the way He would look at the world. The holy and perfect teaching and law of the Torah would be central to Christ's purpose in continuing what God had started from the beginning. What God began in Exodus 19 in calling Israel to live and become a blessing to the world was carried through with Jesus' message and purpose as well.

What a shame that we don't take the time in our lectionary and sermons for these texts which undergird that which we do teach every week. We seem to be teaching this message that has no solid foundation and miss out on the richness that is found in the Hebrew Bible.

It is hard to know what to do, however, because it seems that this meaning is not readily available for the common laymen and if it wasn't for my renewed interest and vigor for the Bible by these different authors I would certainly continue being in the dark. I am only now discovering that there is so much to the Scriptures, and it truly has been a blessing to uncover the utter depth that is found there. My increased awe and wonder of the Bible has done the same for how I interpret God.

So much to keep learning...
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1 comment:

  1. AnonymousFebruary 22, 2010 at 3:22 PM

    JD - Blessings to you in your studies. You hit the nail on the head (or Goldingay does) in highlighting the utter failure of the church to proclaim the full and robust story that makes Jesus' death and resurrection make any sense.

    The reality is that spurring pastors on to preach out of the Old Testament will do little good unless our theological understanding is broad enough to keep the Old Testament - Intratestament - and New Testament together in one grand narrative. When we begin, as you say, to understand Jesus as a 1st century Jew, then we can begin to understand everlasting covenant and fulfillment of law rather than banishment of it.

    Luckily, there are people like N.T. Wright to walk with us in rediscovering the depth of God's inspiration in Scripture as the unfolding of God's plan -- not merely a plan, a screw up, discarding that plan, and starting again.

    Until we begin to see that this is not only the way we understand Jesus but also Paul, we will continue to either neglect the Old Testament as archaic has-been material, or use it for our purposes of condemnation.

    Again, blessings with you in this study JD.

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