Where are we going?

 So we're beginning a new Bible Reading journey, and the aim is to read the Bible as it wants to be read.

Rather than dividing the Bible up into chapters and verses, the aim is to pay attention to the literary units that it consists of. So for instance, the book of Genesis has 50 chapters, but there are 4 main sections, which BibleProject call movements.

Genesis 1-11 - Creation, and the downward spiral of human choice

Genesis 12-23 - The story of Abraham

Genesis 24-36 - the stories of Isaac and Jacob

Genesis 37-50 - the story of Joseph

We will be concentrating on the first movement, and reading Genesis 1-11.

First I'll read chapters 1-4, and make some comments on each, then go back over what we've read, and look for an important theme. This might make your eyes pop - it did for me when I read one particular verse in a whole new way.

So in my next post, it'll be the first Creation story: Genesis 1:1-2:3. Why not go away and read it now, then catch up with me in my next post.

Reading the Bible with BibleProject

 Hello!

It's me again, popping up after one of my lengthy gaps. 

At the start of 2022, I'm going to be blogging about the Bible again. Yes I know.

But this time it's different - not just my random thoughts, but my thoughts about what the folks at BibleProject make of this book that I love so much.

I've been a fan of their output for years, and now they've launched an app to help people learn to read the Bible the way it wants to be read.

That's my take on what they're up to. Theirs is to say that the Bible is "A unified story that leads to Jesus." But what I've found in recent years, largely thanks to them, is that the Bible's wonderful appeal isn't just some kind of magic, or the mysterious operation of the Holy Spirit (which sometimes we Christians treat in the same way, but that's another story!) but a product of its very careful, intentional design.

I learned years ago at theological college that the Bible loves to refer to itself, and that the footnotes at the bottom of the page are really worth looking at, but I never knew what to do with this knowledge until recently.

The aim of the app is to read the Bible as its creators wanted it to be read, not how we usually read it. We like to break it up into tiny chunks, and overlook the big picture. Or we go to it for answers to "what should I do?" sorts of questions. 

But what if actually there are a series of skills that the Bible would love to teach us, that will let us read its pages with much deeper understanding?

You can join me on a journey to see if it's true. Download the app for yourself, or visit bibleproject.com and let the team speak for themselves.

Completion, fulfilment or ending?

I'm trying to understand Jesus' attitude to the Law.
Matthew portrays Jesus as a new Moses, and Moses' great gift to Israel was the Law.
So what is Jesus doing? Is he bringing a new Law? Is he getting rid of Law altogether? What respect does he have for that most fundamental and precious part of Jewish life, the thing that made them distinct from every other people?
It's captured in one Greek word, plerosai.
Jesus says, "Don't think that I've come to abolish the Law & the Prophets. I haven't come to abolish them, I've come to plerosai them."
The word means "to fill," and is usually translated "fulfil." I haven't come to abolish the law, I've come to fulfil it. So does that mean we should still keep the law?
When you are filling a pot with water, you carry on pouring until it is full, then you stop.
So shall we stop keeping the law?

Perhaps the question should be, what are we keeping it for?
Jesus was emphatic in saying that the law will not pass away. He goes on to say repeatedly, "You have heard it was said, 'Do this,' but I say to you, 'Do that.'" Where 'that' is even harder and more stringent than 'this.'
So he is raising the bar.
Jesus seems to be asking for more than basic obedience, more than doing "just enough." Speed limits are imposed on drivers as a safety measure, and simply not breaking the speed limit doesn't necessarily mean you are driving safely. If you drive along at 29 miles per hour, but with your eyes closed, you might be keeping the letter of the law in terms of not breaking the speed limit, but you are not keeping the spirit of the law which is to encourage you to drive safely.
On the other hand, Jesus seems to be implying that just the letter of the law won't do. So if you even think about speeding, one day a telepathic speed camera might hand you a summons.
How can anybody keep laws this stringent?
Maybe that's the point.
As Jesus says - "Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the pharisees ... you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven."

Don't rely on keeping the law to fit you for heaven. We are going to need something else entirely to make us acceptable in God's eyes.
Something, or someone else.

The sermon on the Mount - what actually is it?

So Matthew presents us with a block of teaching from Jesus as if it were a sermon.
ALERT! ALERT! Heresy coming!
Does that mean that I think Jesus didn't *actually* preach it all as one sermon?
Well, no, not necessarily. I think Jesus had a body of teaching that he delivered many times over, varying what he was saying each day, depending on the context, how well the crowd was listening, what people said to him in response, and so on.
What he didn't do, I'm pretty certain, was only say these things once, one one single occasion, just as Matthew wrote it all down.
Why do I think that? Well, most obviously because Luke's gospel also contains a lot of this material, but subtly different and in something of a different order, and says that Jesus said it on another occasion. (Not up a mountain, but on a "level place.") Mark has bits of this stuff as well, but not all collected together in one lump.
I also think this way because I'm a preacher myself, and I can't imagine preparing all this wonderful material and only delivering it once. I'm always recycling ideas, saying the same things over and over again in different ways, chopping and changing each week, depending on my audience and their reactions. My long suffering congregation know only too well that I have my favourite sayings, which crop up again and again.

So why does Matthew give it to us like this? One reason is it suits his purpose. He wants to present Jesus as a new Moses. New and improved. Just as Moses went up a mountain and came down with some instructions from God for the people to follow, so Jesus teaches from a mountain and gives people new and improved instructions to follow.
Several times over, Jesus says "You have heard it was said..." and then quotes Moses, then goes on to say, "well I say to you..." and gives a new commandment, a harder command.
New and improved. Right.
And here's another reason. It's good to have it all together. Like a manifesto, or indeed like a sermon, it's good to have the whole of Jesus' key teaching laid out like this, ripe to remember. Ready to land on our ears and filter into our hearts.
So I'm looking forward to committing it to memory. I don't think it will be too hard. There are a number of features that I expect will help. It has a rhythm and a cadence that is easy to assimilate. It works by constructing opposing pairs: "Do this ... don't do that." "People used to think this, but I'm telling you that." It has vivid pictures: salt, light, planks sticking out of your eye and houses built on sand falling with a crash. Jesus didn't say it like that to help me memorise it, he said it like that to prevent his hearers forgetting what he said, and so imitating the foolish builder themselves.
With God's help, I pray that my learning will make me wise.

Authority

I've now got the first 16 verses of the Sermon on the Mount under my belt. Long way to go, I know, but it's a start.
What comes next is a whole series of "improvements" that Jesus offers to the law that Jewish people lived by.
If I was to stand up and say "I think we need to change the law," then people would rightly reply "Who gives you the right?"
But Jesus just assumed that he had the right to tinker with the law. What he actually thought he was doing to the law is a very interesting question and I'll talk about it another day, but for now, this is the question in my mind.
Jesus, who gives you the right?
I headed this post with a picture of a traffic policeman, because this is the best illustration I can think of to explain how Jesus was operating.
That cop doesn't have the power to stop the traffic. If a car kept going, the bobby would be knocked clean out of the way. But when a police officer in uniform stands in front of a vehicle and holds up her hand, the traffic comes to a halt.
Why? How?
If it's not power that does it, what is it?
It's authority.
Right at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew has this comment:
When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.
If Jesus is the new Moses, he is better than the original, because Moses was just the messenger. Jesus has authority to make new law.

Can I cope with this?

I've given myself a "Mount"ain to climb. The Sermon on the Mount is 2400 words, over three chapters of Matthew's gospel. Lent is 6 weeks' long, so that's half a chapter a week. Shouldn't be too hard, but I've got a full time, demanding job, that needs a lot of memory work too.
The other day for instance, I spent the morning with 30 or so parents, grandparents and childminders, slowly getting to know their stories and learning not just their names, but their children's names as well. Then in the afternoon I visited a care home, where I met 12 new people, so that's 12 names to learn, along with some basic details about each one. In the evening I visited a family to plan their elderly father's funeral with them, listening to them telling me the story of his nearly 90 years of life. Next week it will be my job to tell his story to everyone who comes to his funeral - no one in the family wants the pressure of standing up on an emotional day and trying to do it themselves. I'll have to sum up a full and fruitful life in 5 minutes.

Can I cope with another memory task as well? I'm giving my hippocampus a bit of a workout this Lent. Maybe the exercise will do it good, that's what I'm hoping.
So far I've learnt the easy bit - the first part of the sermon, the Beatitudes, which couldn't have been designed better for easy memorising.
The rest of chapter 5 is more challenging, consisting as it does of more technical discussions about the Law, and what Jesus' attitude towards it is, and what ours should be. The helpful thing is Jesus repeating the same structure six times over, as he tackles six different subjects: murder, adultery, divorce, oaths, revenge and enemies. The hard thing is that what he says varies subtly with each section.
Linking these 6 discussions on aspects of law-keeping to the Beatitiudes there are two other sections - one on salt and light, the other introducing and summarising Jesus' attitude to the Law - he's not here to abolish it, but to fulfil it. Or to bring it to completion, to a finish. A very interesting word is used there, and I might talk about that next time.

The Big Structure of the Sermon on the Mount

Some of the advice I received about memorising a long speech was to understand the structure. What are the main sections? How does the meaning flow from one to the next?
So here's an attempt to analyse the Sermon on the Mount.
I've broken it down into five sections: how to be blessed, how to obey, how to live, how to think and how to choose. All together, it looks like this.

Sermon on the Mount

1. God’s people – how to be blessed
   1. The Beatitudes
   2. Salt & Light
2. What about the law? - how to obey
   1. The fulfilment of the law
   2. Murder
   3. Adultery
   4. Divorce
   5. Oaths
   6. Eye for eye
   7. Love for enemies
3. Acts of piety – how to live
   1. Giving to the needy
   2. Prayer
   3. Fasting
4. State of mind – how to think
   1. Treasure in heaven
   2. Do not worry
   3. Judging others
   4. Ask, seek, knock
5. Opposites – how to choose
   1. The narrow & wide gates
   2. True & false prophets
   3. True & false disciples
   4. Wise & foolish builders

My hope is that if I understand the way the sermon is constructed, I'll be able to move from one section to the next more easily.