Welcome to this weeks blog for those reading this live! We are meeting at the Crescent Club at 7:30pm but also there is an opportunity to meet beforehand to share in a Holy Week reflection that is 7:15pm Cullercoats Bay for Signs of Wonder. If you are reading this because google has brought you here then enjoy and leave a comment.
Here we are at an interlude in the book.
An opportunity to take stock and consolidate all that has gone before and get ready for what is to come.
So let’s get started.
Lots of us like a good book. We read the words and create an imaginative world in which the characters exist. We play with the accent they have and the clothes they wear and everything else about them. Even if you just read books on history or science you will probably try to visualise what was or is going on in what is described in the pages. The problem we all have is when they make a film or tv series of our favourite book. Why? Because it isn’t how we imagined it. Someone has reimagined the words and produce what they feel is an accurate portrayal of what was written. Some times they get it absolutely right and other times they mess it up (I’m looking at you Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 2)!
Pete Enn’s writes in this chapter about the process of reimagining that takes place in the Bible and still takes place today. As I read the chapter again there were things that jumped out that made me rethink things and challenged my image of God. It is a natural and ongoing process and has happened since the very beginning. This reimagining is right there in the text we have. God is described as a rock, rescuer, shepherd, potter, gardener, rabbi, king, ruler, vineyard owner etc etc. Why? Because these were all images people could relate to and helped them express something of who God was to them.
When Jesus turned up that happened again because Jesus threw some huge theological stumbling blocks in the way that the gospel writers and Paul had to try and get their head around. Jesus wasn’t what anyone had imagined the Messiah would be like so they had to connect the actual Messiah with the scripture they had and the stories they knew. So Matthew pints Jesus in the mood of Moses and David for his Jewish audience but then leads them on into Isaiah and elsewhere. Luke present him to gentiles and emphasis this in the stories he tells and John does something different that speaks to the audience he has in mind. Paul spends ALOT of time arguing with religious leaders to connect this new way of life in Jesus to the Old Testament so their is continuity in what God is doing. And we are called to do the same. In fact we do it all the time.
Google the word Jesus and click on the image tab. You will have pages and pages of images of Jesus. Black Jesus, Republican Jesus, NRA Jesus, Gay Jesus, Icon Jesus, White Jesus, Palestine Jesus, Cool Jesus, you get the picture Jesus.
Every time we speak of God we are offering an interpretation, an image, a glimpse of something we understand or believe about God.
Every time we speak of Jesus we are offering an interpretation, an image, a glimpse of something we understand or believe about God.
Pete (or at least my interpretation of what he is saying) points out that the Bible should be our second port of call in the journey of knowing God and following Jesus. That actually we should do as the writers of the Bible did. Experience God and sense his directing and then root that in what has been written in the past. His example is around refugees – we see the plight of refugees and are moved by the sense of desperation and need and we are moved to do something. We pick up our Bible and read about how Jesus was a refugee once, about how God tells his people to welcome the foreigner. We link our experience with scripture and then tell people that God is a God who loves and cares for refugees and that as followers of God we should do likewise.
This is the process of the people of God since the beginning. Experience God – Put God into words – experience God – try and link God to what has been said about God in the past – experience God – find new words to describe God.
And we all get to be involved in this reimagining as a holy, sacred right of those seeking to follow in the way of Jesus.
Questions
How can we be part of the process of putting our experience of God in to words?
Photo by Victor : https://www.pexels.com/photo/opened-book-448835/
Has been a part of BeachcomberFX since his arrival in the North East in 2014. He is well travelled (at least in the UK) having lived in Manchester, Nottingham, Derbyshire, Southport, Doncaster, Berwick and Edinburgh. Supporter of Newcastle United, will watch any sport.