Yesterday I wrote about how challenging it can be to read and glean meaning from the Bible. That should not surprise us – what we call “the Bible,” as though it were one document, is in fact 66 different pieces of literature in many different styles – sagas, histories, novelettes, law codes, poetry, drama, prophetic utterance, apocalyptic vision, correspondence, treatises, authored by hundreds of people over hundreds of years, often attempting to encapsulate oral traditions dating back thousands of years… How can anyone glean meaning from that?
We cannot read the Bible without interpreting it. Before we even start, we encounter the interpretations of those who first wrote down the oral stories, those who selected and shaped the writings, those who decided which writings had authority for the religious community, and finally the translators, with their own theological lenses, who choose what words to use, and where to place the commas when the original languages lack punctuation. And we bring to the reading of scripture our own ideas, histories, traditions, mood and life circumstances on any given day we choose to open that book.
Scripture is never fixed in meaning. It is always being interpreted and re-interpreted – and according to the Gospel writers, Jesus was not shy about telling his followers how they should understand it: Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.”
The conviction that Jesus was the Messiah, and that the way the prophets wrote about the coming Messiah foretold the events of Jesus’ birth, life, death and resurrection, was introduced early into the Christian communities’ self-understanding. While some read the prophets, especially the “suffering servant” sections of Isaiah, and come away with different interpretations (for Jews, of course, these prophecies were not fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth), Christ-followers read the scriptures through the views expressed in the documents of the New Testament.
This interpretation offered by Jesus is one with an ongoing life. It does more than look backward – it lays out the community’s mission going forward: to proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins in Jesus’ name to all nations. The belief that, in Christ, God’s long plan of salvation was revealed, matters for Christ followers today as it did for the original disciples. Proclaiming that Jesus was the Anointed One foretold by the prophets, whose death effected forgiveness for all humanity, is something that offers life. We are in the business of offering life in Jesus’ name.
It is fashionable in some Christian circles to de-emphasize belief and focus more on spiritual practice, asserting that Christian life is less about truth claims and more about how we access the Holy. While spiritual practice is where we live, let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater. At best, our spiritual practice and our ministry grows out of our conviction that Christ was who he said he was.
For me, his interpretation, even if conveyed through the fallible conduits of gospel writers, scribes, editors and translators, has primacy. This risen Christ is the Truth. I want to be about the mission of offering life in his name.
No comments:
Post a Comment