‘Do you remember how our hearts were burning inside us, as he talked to us on the road, as he opened up the Bible for us?’ Instead of translating the Greek Graphe with the usual phrase ‘the Scriptures’, Tom Wright’s translation of Luke 24:32 in The New Testament for Everyone alludes to the Greek phrase ta biblia, ‘the books’, an expression Hellenistic Jews used to describe their sacred books several centuries before the time of Jesus. This is the origin of the English word ‘Bible’. (The Christian scriptures were referred to in Greek as Ta Biblia as early as c. 223 AD.)
Three big stories
In The Heart of Christianity. Rediscovering a Life of Faith (at p. 177), Marcus J. Borg writes: ‘strikingly, but not surprisingly, the New Testament understandings of Jesus correlate with the macro-stories of the Hebrew Bible. The story of Jesus thus becomes a story of salvation.’ This is only one way, among many others, of reading the Bible holistically, but it is worth seeing how this might work. What are the the big stories of the Hebrew Scriptures that are echoed in the New Testament? Borg describes three of the big stories as a ‘pastoral tool kit’, each one addressing a different dimension of the human condition.
1. For some of us the need is liberation.
The story of the exodus from Egypt is seminal to the Hebrew people and is echoed throughout the Psalms. The human problem is akin to the bondage and slavery suffered by the Israelites in Egypt. Pharoah was a real historical figure but is also a metaphor for what keeps us in bondage. It is a life of powerlessness and victimization. Exodus, liberation, the way out of Egypt is the solution, but not the end of the story, because the Israelites wander in the wilderness for 40 years.
In the New Testament, the metaphorical equivalent of the exodus story is Jesus’ gospel of liberation, the story of the one who has come to set the captives free. It is centred on Jesus’ announcement of the Jubilee in Luke ch. 4: ‘the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” ’ Much of this gospel of liberation is announced in Jesus’ teaching in the sermon on the Mount. It is radical stuff. It is what life would be like on earth if God were king and the rulers of the world were not. In God’s kingdom, in contrast to the real kingdoms then in existence, and the real states in existence now, there would, for example, be enough bread for all.
2. For others of us, the need is homecoming.
The story of the Israelites’ exile in Babylon in the sixth century BCE is well known because of Psalm 137: ‘By the waters of Babylon – there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps. For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’ How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither!’ The Babylonian captivity is a story of separation and alienation both psychological and spiritual, which is only overcome with the right of return granted by King Darius and the reconnection with God through the rebuilding of the Temple. For the early followers of Jesus, the new faith was ‘the way’. The gospel story of his life, death and resurrection is about homecoming. Our salvation is about homecoming, it is about turning to God in repentance (metanoia); it is about an open heart; we see anew with ‘the eyes of our hearts enlightened’ (Ephesians 1:18).
Among Jesus’ stories the one that captures this transformation or homecoming most readily is the parable of the return of the Prodigal Son, the subject of a superb extended meditation by Henri J. M. Nouwen. He writes of ‘the mystery that Jesus himself became the prodigal son for our sake. He left the house of his heavenly Father, came to a foreign country, gave away all that he had, and returned through his cross to his Father’s home. All of this he did, not as a rebellious son, but as the obedient son, sent out to bring home all the lost children of God. Jesus, who told the story to those who criticized him for associating with sinners, himself lived the long and painful journey that he describes.’
3. For yet others among us the need is for acceptance and forgiveness. For the people of Israel, it is through the Temple rites that forgiveness from God is obtained. The Temple had been destroyed at the time of the Babylonian captivity. The rebuilding of the temple occurs immediately on the return of the people from exile: ‘who is left among you that saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Is it not in your sight as nothing?’ (Haggai 2:3). The splendour of the rebuilt Temple shall be greater than formerly, God proclaims (Haggai 2:9). The temple claimed a monopoly on the personal access to God. For Christians, Jesus died for our sins. God provides the perfect sacrifice in the form of a perfect human being, Jesus. From now on forgiveness is possible for those who believe that Jesus died for our sins. Since Jesus is the sacrifice for sin (or as the Book of Common Prayer has it, the ‘propitiation’ or atonement for our sin), the temple’s claim to a monopoly on forgiveness and access to God is shattered. That Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world is a subversion of the Jewish sacrificial system. Jesus is at once the fulfilment of the ‘law and the prophets’ (Matt. 5:17) and also the overturning of these things.
The Christian Life as a Journey Beneath their differences, Borg contends that these three stories all provide a central image of the Christian life as a journey whose central quality is a deepening and transforming relationship with God. All three are stories of suffering and of human beings distanced from God. They portray God as intimately involved with human life. They say there is a power that wills our liberation, there is a light shining in the darkness that invites us home from exile; there is a loving presence that accepts us as we are, even when we do not realize this. They are all stories of hope. Their consistent message is that God does not will our present condition, but wills something very different for us. All three ‘big stories’ speak about new beginnings brought about by God for us.
