I’m sure that all of you know if you ask me a question about the Biblical text, you had better settle in for a lengthy answer. This is because A. I love talking about the Biblical text and B. Because there really aren’t any short answers to a book that is thousands of years old, involves people and cultures and languages which are not our own, and usually shares its insights in rather lengthy narrative stories.
Long detailed stories of heroes and heroines; long detailed stories about our failures in loving and serving God; long detailed stories about God’s faithfulness to us in spite of ourselves.
Long, detailed stories.
These don’t often jive with our modern culture of quick, fast, and in a hurry. Remember though: The Bible was written by and for an audience that didn’t have fast food, iPads, or home delivery. These were people for whom long, detailed stories were a way to learn and be engaged with their story and culture as God’s people. Long detailed stories, like the ones we read in the Bible, were originally told orally and passed on from generation to generation. These stories helped people to understand who they were, whose they were, and to try to make sense out of what God was doing in their midst.
These stories were truly democratic: they were meant for every man, woman, and child living in the territory of Israel. These stories were never limited only to the “holy men” of religious life. All of the texts of Scripture were meant for every person to read and understand and make use and sense out of. Not only would people listen to these narratives as they were told, they would then discuss them and share them and reflect on them.
Just imagine: All the stories and texts we read and hear have been read and heard for thousands upon thousands of years (the oldest portions of the Bible most likely are about 5,000 years old). The stories we hear and cherish and treasure today are the same ones our ancestors and their ancestors and their ancestors’ ancestors’ ancestors heard.
So, why this quick lesson on Biblical transmission and lengthy stories?
Quite simply, all this month, we’re going to imbibe in some of the Bible’s longest stories. We’re going to sit at the feet of the author(s) of John’s Gospel and hear lengthy tales from beginning to end. We’re not going to take bits and pieces and try to make something out of them. Instead, we’re going to join the ancient tradition of hearing lengthy narratives and chew on them.
Each week will be a new story; not new to you, I’m sure, but new in the sense that we’re going to read and reflect and think about the entire story. We’re not going to break it up over multiple weeks or simply take the high parts. Instead, I’m going to ask you to remove your need for quick, fast, and in a hurry stories and allow instead the whole text to soak into your bones. Close your eyes if it helps; listen deeply. Take each word, each verse, each stanza. Picture the scene; listen to the voices of the different people in each story. Allow these ancient words to be modern words for you.
Here’s the schedule for this month (if you’d like to read ahead):
March 5: John 3:1-7 (Jesus and Nicodemus)
March 12: John 4:5-42 (Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well)
March 19: John 9:1-41 (Jesus and the man born blind)
March 26: Ezekiel 37:1-14; John 11:1-45 (Ezekiel and the valley of dry bones/Jesus and Lazarus)
Remember that all through Lent we’re looking and listening for the Image of God as it appears in the text. Each week will be a surprising expression of this sacred image showing up, of course in Jesus, but also in these most unlikely of characters and situations.
I pray that this month we all have a renewed sense of powerful narratives that pull us into God’s bigger narrative of love, mercy, redemption, and grace