Hi folks, we are back at the Crescent Club in the upstairs room overlooking the seafront on Sunday night from 7.30. You would be very welcome to join us.
This week we are back exploring the Bible. This week’s chapter is titled Everything Changes.
First of all in this chapter Pete explains that the bible is a ‘story’ of how the people of God experience the highs and lows of life, including the many crises that they faced, the bible in some ways he suggests is way for them to process and get off their chest the various things that have happened to them and the way they felt God worked with them in their journey. Pete says:
“after everything we have gone through we want to share our story. For the Judahites this became the Old Testament of course things had been written down before, tales told story’s developed but now was the time to put it all together “.
We will come back to this later.
Pete Enns then focuses on passages in the Bible that have been re-interpreted, he firstly reflects on the story of Jonah… the one where he is swallowed by a big fish! The story goes that God tells Jonah to go to Nineveh and the people of Assyria and tell them to repent! Jonah doesn’t want to do it, it has to be said it would be like going and knocking on Stalin or Hitlers door…… Or in our case maybe Putin’s door… and telling them to repent for what they were doing!!
There is a frustrating question here about why would God want the Assyrians , their armies and King to repent anyway, surely they should be brought to justice!! Anyway Jonah wanted nothing to do with these folks, so he ran away, got on a boat, was thrown off the boat and swallowed by a big fish – so Jonah reconsiders and gets spewed out onto the shore and does as he was told! Of course the king and the people repent, all good! In some ways this echoes the words of Jesus about loving your enemies! It’s a tough one I know!
But then if we turn to another prophet, the book of Nahum, we read another story about Nineveh. Here we see that God hates the people of Nineveh! Nahum celebrates their downfall! And he interprets it as an act of God! In chapter 3:19 Nahum talking about the people of Nineveh says…
“There is no assuaging your hurt, your wound is mortal. All who hear the news about you clap their hands over you. For who has ever escaped your endless cruelty?”
Jonah and Nahum clearly see the way God deals with the people of Nineveh differently… You know why? They were both written at different times under different circumstance… Nahum lived at the time of the fall of Nineveh, and interpreted the fall of Nineveh as an act of God. Meanwhile Pete Enns explains that Jonah tells the story perhaps generations later, and isn’t interested in telling the event as it actually happened, but rather he re-tells it with extra detail, like a big fish, Pete suggests that this then is a parable to help the people at the time re imagine God and that maybe God is bigger than they thought.
So where are we going? Ultimately Pete wants us to see that stories are told and retold in different ways in the bible to different people and to different places depending on the context of the time and so the bible doesn’t just stand still in the era it was written in.
So back to where we started, we love to tell our story of the things that happened to us, and so I wonder how we may embellish our stories for the people we are speaking to. put a funny crack in there, about a big fish maybe. All of this is about reinterpreting things for our time.
Some Questions:
What’s your favourite story either film, book, poem or something else?
What would you call your own biography?
Is there a historical event (either on the world stage or in your family) that you can think of that has been told differently as time has gone on?
Is there a Bible story that you would want to see told with a modern twist?
Is there a danger that we retell stories so they say what we want them to?
How can we tell stories today that speak of God at work in our lives?
Peace, Rob
Rob Wylie is the founder of BeachcomberFX and guides its leadership team. He has worked in the North East for over 20 years and has vast experience from various roles he has held. He has a passion for Fresh Expressions of Church and Pioneer Ministry as well as beer, beaches and Miniature Schnauzers.
