Is it OK to major on the Bible books and passages "that do it for us"?

I suppose it depends on your view of the Bible, what it is, who it is for, where it is from, how it came to us, and what we are supposed to do with it. I'm not sure how many times I've read all of the Bible. I suppose there are stones left unturned in some of the darker corners of the Old Testament, but not many. But I've been reading the Bible every day for 56 years, and for most of those years preached every week once, twice, even three times a week for some of those years.

Not every day, but several hours a week I've taken spade and pickaxe, fork and rake, and I've worked the exegetical soil until most of the textual garden has a reasonable tilth. In other words, exegesis of a text is an exercise in cultivation, preparing and maintaining fertile soil, fertilised (with manure), supplemented with humus. Seeds of thought are sown, the harvest of the work is the fruit of the Spirit and the growth in whatever wisdom the grace of God can smuggle past our assumed cleverness, which is another phrase for pride!

Like everyone else I have favourite corners and patches of this large variegated garden. The more technical term for this dubious practice of having preferences for certain parts of a Bible we are supposed to think comprehensively authoritative, is having a canon within the canon - favourite verses, chapters, books we go back to, often to the neglect of other chunks we can't get on with. Come on, every reader of the Bible however conscientious, risks losing their footing in Leviticus, or even losing their way in Numbers, like those first pilgrims stumbling towards the promised land.

So, confession time. My favourite chunks of text; my canon within the canon; the parts of the Bible that for me reach the parts other parts of the Bible more often than not don't reach. Oh, there are surprises, beams of light, food for the soul, a slap in the face, a hefty shove in the right direction, and these can come from the most unexpected texts. But more often there are corners and plots of text that unfailingly do it for us, connect with those deep and not always understood longings and prayers and anxieties and hopes that are part  of the life we bring to the text, wanting to hear God's voice speaking the right words from the Word. 

The Gospel of John is an obviously treasured text, of which more another time. Psalms, all of them, but several of them known by heart because in them deep speaks to deep. Ruth and Jonah, two very old stories that reverberate down the centuries and hammer at the doors of our prejudices and contented exclusions. 

Then there's the Sermon on the Mount, the radical realism of Jesus the King proclaiming the reign of a different kind of Kingdom. From all of Paul, my favourites have long been the Prison Epistles, the Colossian Christ 'making peace by the blood of the cross'; the Ephesian Christ, Lord of the Church and "breaking down dividing walls of hostility"; the Christ of Philippians, the divine love of the Son spiralling downwards from equality with God to the form of a human slave, now exalted in the power of resurrection and promised life.

Oh, and Isaiah 40-55, that chunk of text the critics call Deutero-Isaiah, with some of the most fabulous poetry used to vision-cast even more fabulous promises of streams in our cultural deserts, peace between weapons manufacturers who agree to reconfigure their production lines and produce ploughs instead, deserts blooming with new possibilities for beauty, truth and goodness.

And, of course, the three Gospels, Synoptics we call them, three perspectives on Jesus because one viewpoint could never capture the glory and the grace of the Word of Creation become flesh and living amongst us. The parables and the healings, the arguments and the parties, dumb disciples and amazed crowds. And at the centre of each telling of this story of divine love let loose, a carpenter teacher, showing us what compassion looks like, and anger at cruelty and unjust systems, and ways of thinking about God that dismantles our fears and reconstructs the foundations of what a human life can be.

And at the end of all four Gospels, the cross, and our struggle to find words that describe it - horror, tragedy, judicial murder, deterrent of all dissent from empire. In historical terms, perhaps that lethal word, 'deterrent', whether the Roman military machine crushing any refusal of its authority, or the religious obsession with controlling the sacred to the point where even when confronted and contradicted by divine goodness personified, they (and sometimes we) don't see it.

And each Gospel ends, not with the end, but with a new beginning, which we call resurrection, the triumph of life over death, love over hate, hope over despair, and light over darkness - "the light shines in the darkness and the darkness comprehendeth it not."

Such is my canon within the canon, my favourite plots in the garden of the biblical text, the corners I've worked to a fine tilth where seeds grow, flowers bloom, fruit is there year round. That doesn't mean neglecting the rest - the Apocalypse which power washes lazy imaginations encrusted with far too much accumulated normality; Acts of the Apostles as a permanent reminder of the Church as Spirit filled and impelled communities of grace and forgiveness, a Church animated by the restless energy of young life let loose in a world too preoccupied with power, profit and status.

Genesis that sweeping saga of creation and fall, promises made and broken, and the journeys of those who would learn to call God the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the God of Joseph and his brothers and his amazing technicolour dreamcoat. Exodus the most filmed book in the Old Testament from eminently solemn The Ten Commandments, to the Dreamworks version Prince of Egypt, to  Exodus. Gods and Kings; the book itself is the identity conferring text for the people of Israel, and woven boldly throughout the Hebrew Bible's narratives, prophecies and Psalms.

My point in this long biblical catalogue of good bits, is that, one way or another, these texts that make up the Bible can be quite risky to take seriously. But it's worth the risk. In a world as broken as ours now seems to be, we need some of Isaiah's vision of streams in the desert. We could do with Ruth telling us how migrants ought to be treated. And the divine compassion and resistance to all that dehumanises and diminishes people that we encounter in Jesus in the Gospels, aye, we need a complete re-education in compassion and neighbour love, the cruelties of sin and the healing of forgiveness. And much more. Go read your Bible, find the good bits, and stay with them till they stay with you. 

 

Comments

[Dave Summers]

"... the Apocalypse which power washes lazy imaginations encrusted with far too much accumulated normality" - I'm keeping a note of that line.
This was a great, sweeping celebration of favourite bits of the Bible. Could you do a similarly broad post sometime (and apologies if there's already one I've missed in your archive) on the parts that seem more barren or take more digging, where the treasure is buried deeper?