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Chapter 1.
Introduction
This study began as regular work within a local church and its community. It took its first form in Sunday worship. Worship is where each week our lives and work are brought into intentional interaction with our faith and with the Bible text that feeds our faith.
Worship is where Life and Faith Interact
As Christians within our community, we ask questions of our faith and we bring our concerns with us to Sunday worship in the hope that we will receive some kind of divine insight. This is faith's way in Christian congregations wherever they are located. This has been the life of faith for peoples of faith throughout the centuries.
- Can our faith heritage offer resources for life in the world we encounter today?
- Are there life-enhancing points of connection between the issues we face and the ancient texts of traditional faith?
We keep asking these questions and, so long as our worship gives at least some specific answers to the issues we're facing, the general answer to these questions is "yes". Engaging with the Bible can and does give us food for thought and resources for living. Engaging with the Bible can be for us a conversation that includes God, a conversation in which we get to hear God speaking to us.
So join us if you will on this journey that began in a particular district and worship place. It is a place where we pit our lives against the biblical text that propels our faith, where we ask that text to speak in God's voice words of comfort and insight, courage and encouragement for our situation. We are persistent in both wanting to deal with our concerns and in being convinced that the Bible does have something to say. But we're also unsure of how we can know what it is saying, given the differences it contains, in time and space, in culture, in knowledge, in way of life. We're not experts in the field of biblical scholarship, but we need to have ways to draw on insights from studies into the history, rhetoric, context and themes of the Bible's many texts. Our local situation with its distinctive concerns remains our primary focus, but the wider world of scholars promises the benefit of greater breadth of perspective and depth of understanding. Bible reading needs to be a form of Action-Reflection, starting with the practical life we're living, reflecting on it, asking questions and getting information from elsewhere, then leading back to action with a renewed sense of purpose.
But is there a problem here? This process calls for interaction between the University and the local church, but is that feasible?
- What do biblical scholarship and a local congregation have to do with each other?
- Don't they live in different worlds?
The work of scholars can seem alien with its technical language and the precision of its arguments. Abstract theory appears to be a million miles away off from the pressing concerns of daily existence. The impression among many of the faithful of the church is that, even though these people may be experts in speaking about the Bible, what they are saying is simply irrelevant, at which point the conversation closes (and shrewd clergy keep quiet about their academic interests). What is more, even if preachers do mine the relevance within scholarly research, they may question the value of presenting interpretations of texts so different from traditional understanding that they cause uproar among faithful listeners. Perhaps there is a separate category called 'simple faith' or 'practical faith', with which scholarship has little contact. But to top it all there is this question: have local preachers any chance of keeping up with constantly changing biblical research?
But even if we didn't bother with the views of experts in the biblical field, major questions for weekly worship would remain.
- What is the best way to interpret texts to be read in congregational worship?
- How does one decide?
- What counts as a reliable guide for faithful reading?
There is such an enormous choice of resources available, through church denominational agencies, para-church groups, internet sites and book retailers, for example, that it is not clear how one is to choose among these and choose well. Maybe it is a case of following instinct or theological preference or what seems to suit one's congregation. As a person who regularly leads Sunday worship, I am concerned that it might be simply my preferences, my theology that dictates the direction of biblical interpretation. Even the possibility that it is the preferences or theology of our group alarms me. How can we follow Christ when we are using ourselves as the guide?
So…
- What does one say week by week at church and say it with integrity?
- Where are we to find the best words to express insight and perspective, comfort and challenge for the faithful followers of the Christian way who come looking for something to help them?
For people at worship clearly seek some kind of signpost, or lighthouse, or even just a glimpse in imagination of the horizon of hope their faith promises them.
So to this issue:
Why Use the Old Testament in Christian Worship?
I have heard both sides of the coin on this issue:
'What we need is more attention given to the Old Testament readings in the lectionary' and
'There is too much emphasis on the Old Testament in the church nowadays'.
Some Responses:
- Discoveries made in relation to the Old Testament in terms of how we read texts will be relevant to whatever Bible, or part of the Bible, we read. The Old Testament offers territory aplenty in which to hone our God-listening skills.
- The Old Testament helps develop the discipline of respecting a text in its differences and its difficulties. In contrast, the New Testament presents the core of the Christian faith by containing the stories and proclamation of Christ that are agreed to be definitive and united. It can give the impression of immediate access to truth about Christ, without a need to dig deeper. But that leaves out the crucial question of faith - who is this Christ for those who read the text and for how they live their lives. With the New Testament, the temptation for Christians is to read it too simply or too dogmatically. With the Old Testament, there are other people who read the same or similar texts as their own holy book. To expect an Old Testament text to speak transparently and definitively in Christian terms amounts to disparaging the people who read it in a different way. The existence of Judaism reminds us that the Bible is many books and these books contain the stories of different peoples. There are many stories and many threads of stories, and they are so diverse that they are sometimes conflicting. When we read these texts we cannot expect them to speak without variation or ambiguity and we would do well to approach the New Testament with similar openness and readiness to grapple with the depths within the text and let ourselves be surprised by God.
- Put simply, the God of the Old Testament is the God of Jesus Christ. Its stories reveal the God Jesus pledged his life and loyalty to. He loved this God who is presented through such a variety of threads of memory that they are sometimes at odds with one another. He could love and trust a God whose holiness means God is always one step ahead of characterisation, who is slow to anger yet gets very fired up over injustice and wrongdoing, who is filled with compassion yet ensures the consequences hit home to wrongdoers. Following Jesus means we cannot gloss over these conflicting realities in his God. Indeed the same ambiguities and conflicts are present in the New Testament God, the God shown to us in the shape of Christ. The New Testament witness to the life of Jesus is also multi-threaded and involves a compilation of diverse memories. Christian proclamation about Jesus contains the same ambivalences: peace and justice, compassion and righteousness, welcome and judgment. Christians can learn from the Old Testament how to hear God's word in the midst of the differing voices and perspectives contained also in the New Testament, and therefore know Christ better.
So
keep it whole and keep it holy
It is a pluralistic world we live in now: many peoples, cultures, faiths, world-views. On the one side there's the trap of treating differences as cause to be at odds: 'us' and 'them', each using the other to identify what they stand for and stand against. Such is a polarised society. On the other side there's the trap of treating differences as reason to retreat into one's own space, with family or 'like' group, and having as little as possible to do with others. Such is a fragmented society.
But we don't have to fall into these traps. Like the Bible, society contains different strands and perspectives. Like the Bible, society can hold these together without losing strength. Indeed each gains strength from the diversity. This is the "wholeness" of each, and the holiness of allowing the whole to remain intact.
Being brave and engaging with it on its terms as well as our own. Like any good conversation between people who respect each other as is where is.
For all communities tackling the realities of pluralism and learning to live in multi-cultural respect for one another, the Bible is both a minefield to tread carefully through and a treasure trove to mine.
And there is one text in particular that provides an ideal example: Genesis 4.