Introducing Advent and Christmas 2011
Introducing the special seasonal readings
Most of the time during the Read the Bible schedule, we read Biblical books more or less in their entirety and in order. But during Advent and Christmas, special attention is given to seasonally appropriate themes and passages. So starting with December 20th, we’ll abandon the more orderly approach to follow a theme. Here are some of the themes we’ll visit:
· The selections from the gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John will contain some perspectives on Jesus' birth, some elements of which you may recognize from traditional Christmas nativity scenes.
· The readings from other New Testament books reflect on Jesus and his purpose on earth.
· The special Old Testament readings for Advent can be a bit more difficult to deal with. Obviously, the Old Testament was written before Jesus was born, so what can they help us understand about him during this season? The key to understanding these readings is recognizing that Old Testament prophets would occasionally get a glimpse of a future where God would come to earth to alter the course of history on earth. Today we can see how some of their prophecies anticipated a person in the lineage of King David who would fill that role. For example, take the following verses from the selections leading up to Christmas day:
Zephaniah 3:15
And the Lord himself, the King of Israel,
will live among you!
Isaiah 59:20
"The Redeemer will come to Jerusalem
to buy back those in Israel
who have turned from their sins,"
says the Lord.
Both of these speak generally about Jesus' arrival and mission, even though the authors didn't know anything about him.
Introducing the PsalmsThe Psalms are the Bible’s model prayers. About half of them are written by the famous king David, as well known as a musician and worshipper as he was as a warrior and giant-slayer. There’s a psalm for almost every occasion we’re likely to experience in life. In the Psalms, we find beautiful songs of praise, testimonies to God’s goodness, pleas for help, and questions asked when things don’t work out as they’re supposed to. The Psalms are really meant to be prayed—sung even—rather than just read. I find that I get the most out of them when I adopt them as my own, praying them as my own prayers. I tend to pray them verbatim—doing so aloud and with gusto whenever possible seems to improve the experience immensely—but I know other people who use them as jumping off points into further prayer in their own words. You might even want to try occasionally reading a psalm aloud together with someone else. Take turns reading stanzas aloud. At the end of the psalm—or in the middle of longer psalms—you could jump off-book to pray further about the ways the psalm connects to your own current life circumstances.
If you’re like me, praying two common types of psalms might initially make you a bit uncomfortable:
· Extravagant claims of righteousness—occasionally, I find myself gulping when, aloud and with gusto, I end up praying something like, ‘I have led a blameless life; I have trusted in the Lord and have not faltered’ (Psalm 26:1). I wonder if the proverbial lightning will strike me down. Despite the fears of divine punishment, a few things have kept me praying these absurd boasts:
o First of all, I’ve noticed that my praying of these psalms take on a tone of aspiration: it makes me want to be the kind of person who can pray those things without blushing. That seems like a pretty good result to me.
o Secondly, I get the feeling that the psalmist doesn’t mean that he has never made any mistakes. I think what he’s saying is that he has never abandoned God. That’s still a pretty gutsy thing to say, but it’s not quite a claim to perfection. While the ‘not faltering’ thing still kind of trips me up, I think I can honestly say that ever since I met God I’ve taken my relationship with God seriously.
o Thirdly, I have a growing suspicion that these extravagant claims to righteousness have less to do with my moral report card, as it were, and more to do with how God sees me. I noticed that sometimes in the same psalm the author will ask for God’s forgiveness and will make one of these audacious claims to utter blamelessness. Once he’s confessed and been forgiven, it’s as if he never even took a mis-step. Perhaps these psalms are saying that, because of God’s goodness, we can be certain that God likes us, sees the best in us, and wants the best for us. If that’s the case—and I’m beginning to believe it is—then we can pray those crazy things with confidence and excitement.
· Calls for violent retribution—some of the psalms seem like they’re more suited to a Quentin Tarantino movie than to the Bible. While I sometimes still find myself a little squeamish at the sheer bloodthirstiness of some of these ‘crush my enemy’ psalms, I’ve been surprised to find them among the most helpful psalms to pray, for a few reasons:
o They help me prepare for the difficulties of the day—if I start the day with one of these psalms, it reminds me that not everything is going to go my way. I can prepare myself, and ask for God’s help in facing the difficulties that are sure to come;
o It’s a faithful and non-violent way to vent—it’s extremely liberating to unabashedly express just how I feel about the people who treat me poorly and unfairly. But in the end, it’s harmless. I’m expressing it to God, not letting it leak out in my interactions with people. I express my anger and my desire for revenge; then I leave it in God’s hands to protect me and to vindicate me when appropriate. Once I’ve expressed my feelings and left action in God’s hands, I can much more easily let it go;
o I primarily focus the prayers on my true enemies—the New Testament author Paul tells us that our real enemies aren’t other people, but destructive spiritual forces whose entire purpose is to do us harm (Ephesians 6:12). I have no problem praying that these enemies die a gruesome death.
Introducing Amos
The book of Amos is the record of the prophet Amos' messages to the kingdom of Israel around 750 BC. At that time, both of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah were experiencing a time of great prosperity. One of the results of this prosperity was a widening gap between the rich and the poor. As a prophet, Amos felt his mission was to speak on God's behalf a warning about this social injustice and to urge his audience to reconsider their relationship with God.
There are a couple of interesting things you'll encounter as you read Amos. First, he lived in the southern kingdom of Judah, but was called to deliver his message in the northern kingdom of Israel. Second, he denies being a real prophet! How do you think Amos felt about his message if he was willing to travel so far away from home to deliver it? And what do you think about his denial of being a prophet?
Introducing Haggai & Zechariah
If you've joined us from the previous season of daily readings, you'll remember that Ezra and Nehemiah (other figures from the Old Testament) were instrumental in rebuilding the city wall and temple in Jerusalem after the Israelites had been conquered and exiled by the Babylonian empire. Haggai and Zechariah were prophets during this same time near 520 BC. Their primary prophetic message from God was to encourage the recently restored Israelites in rebuilding the temple where they worshiped God.
Lately we've also covered much of the New Testament book of Revelation, chock full of strange and cryptic visions about the future. You may notice that Zechariah's writings have the same sort of flavor, known as "apocalyptic" writing in ancient literature. How do you think the ancient Israelites may have been inspired by these visions? Do you find any inspiration in them?
Introducing 2 Peter & Jude
The books of 2 Peter and Jude are short letters to early followers of Jesus meant to help them grow in their faith. Unlike many of the New Testament letters written by Paul to specific churches, these letters seem to have been written to no one in particular. There is some division among modern scholars about the true authorship of these two books. 2 Peter claims to have been written by the apostle Peter, one of the main characters in the gospels. Jude claims to have been written by a "brother of James", who has been thought to be the brother of Jesus. Division over the authorship aside, it's clear that 2 Peter and Jude share a lot of material, and one was most likely used as a source for the other.
An issue dealt with in both 2 Peter and Jude is the recognition and combat of false teaching (which is to say: at odds with what was known about Jesus' teaching). As you read these books, look for ways the author suggests one can spot a false teacher. Why would spotting these false teachers be so important for Peter’s and Jude’s first readers? How about for you?
Introducing Revelation
Revelation is a collection of visions seen by John, one of Jesus’ twelve apostles. They’re written in a genre, called ‘apocalyptic,’ that was apparently very popular at the time but has now become extinct. Apocalyptic writing is very stylized. Two prominent features of apocalypse are visions of fantastical creatures and the symbolic use of numbers. The best we can tell, certain numbers and images had standard, well-known interpretations; but we’ve lost the keys to interpreting them. So, this most popular of the biblical genres has become perhaps the most difficult to understand for modern readers. I often liken Revelation and other apocalyptic literature (like parts of Zechariah, from our Old Testament readings) to comic books: easy to read if you know the conventions, but pretty confusing if the style is unfamiliar. I think Revelation can still be worthwhile to read, and even pretty entertaining, if we simply acknowledge that some of the code is lost to us. The over-the-top imagery is quite engaging, and I think it’s possible to get a decent (but not exact) picture of what’s being described by considering what impressions the images evoke and by seeing how an image is used over the course of the book. It’s almost certainly a lost cause to spend any time at all trying to figure out what the various numbers mean, apart from the vaguest of impressions.
Almost everyone agrees that parts of Revelation refer to current events at the time of John’s writing and that parts of it refer to the end of time or to the distant future. People disagree about which parts refer to John’s time and which refer to the future. In getting the most out of my reading of Revelation, I try to avoid the temptation to map it to our own current events. Instead, I try first to ask the question, ‘What would John’s original readers have gotten from this?’ Then, I try to translate that message into a more timeless truth, which I can apply to my own life.
Introducing Titus
Titus, like 2 Peter and Jude, was written not to a church, but to individual people. Paul had left his younger ministry partner Titus behind in Crete. His task was to select and train a group of leaders for the new churches they had started there. This letter contains Paul’s follow-up instructions, probably based on some questions Titus had sent to him.
In applying the lessons of these letters to our lives, it’s helpful to recognize that Paul is writing to specific people with specific questions and problems. It’s not always possible or beneficial to apply Paul’s instructions without some interpretation. A helpful sequence of questions for me is,
1. What problem or question is Paul addressing?
2. What is his answer to his audience?
3. What’s the general principle behind his answer?
4. Are there circumstances in my life where that principle would apply?
5. What would it look like for me to take Paul’s advice?
Introducing the Gospel of Matthew
Matthew, also known as Levi, was one of Jesus’ twelve apostles. Before becoming a follower of Jesus, Matthew was a collector of taxes for the Romans. It’s hard for us to understand just how unpopular that would have made him: first of all, he was collecting taxes; secondly, it was taxes for an unpopular foreign government; and thirdly, tax collectors at the time were famously corrupt. Perhaps the closest thing we have nowadays is a mobster running a protection racket. So, Matthew goes from being completely outside of ‘decent society,’ to being one of the closest disciples of the new rabbi Jesus, to writing one of Jesus’ biographies.
Matthew uses the earlier and shorter Gospel of Mark as a sort of outline for his story: the plot of the gospel of Matthew follows Mark very closely, and often they even have very similar wording for a story. But Matthew then supplements Mark’s story with significant additions. Matthew includes a far greater amount of Jesus’ teaching, and—interestingly for someone who would have spent much of his life on the outs with his fellow Jews—a particular emphasis on Jesus as the fulfillment of Jewish prophecies. Matthew, like Mark, places a lot of attention on the theme of the kingdom of God (although Matthew calls it ‘the kingdom of heaven,’ following the Jewish tradition of avoiding saying ‘God’ as much as possible). Whereas Mark demonstrates the kingdom of God through Jesus’ actions, Matthew illustrates the kingdom of heaven through Jesus’ teaching, and particularly his parables. It’s worth paying attention to the way Matthew fills out the picture of the kingdom of heaven over the course of his story.
