Book Intros
Introducing the special, seasonal readings
Epiphany (January 6th) is the day we remember the Magi who traveled from distant lands to do honor to the child Jesus, and Ash Wednesday (February 17th) is a day of repentance. So, the readings on and around Epiphany temporarily break from the flow to instead address the theme, ‘All the Nations of the World’; and the readings on and around Ash Wednesday address the themes of sinfulness and repentance.
Introducing the Psalms
The 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 Genesis
The name Genesis comes from the Greek for, ‘In the beginning,’ the first words in the book. And that’s what the book is about: the beginning of the world, of human civilization, and of God’s relationship with humanity. One biblical commentator, David Atkinson, calls Genesis an ‘overture to the rest of the Bible.’ It’s like a miniature introduction to the whole story of God, introducing every theme that the rest of the Bible will elaborate on.
The book of Genesis, and particularly the first chapter of Genesis, has gained some cultural currency recently in big debates about the place of Creationism and Evolutionism in school curriculums. For what it’s worth, I simply don’t think that this very ancient story is very well-suited to addressing specific modern scientific ideas, like the Big Bang Theory. Rather, it’s a story about the primary questions of existence; it both fits well into its ancient Near Eastern cultural context, and at the same time transcends that context in amazing ways. Let’s do our best to read Genesis on its own terms—and then apply it to the context of our modern lives.
It’s true that, as we read this story, we will encounter some things that will be foreign to us, a talking animal and a 900-year old man being just two examples. There are some unavoidable mysteries in Genesis, things that are difficult to grasp with our modern minds and experience of the world. Even more remarkable, though, than these places of dissonance between our worldview and the worldview of Genesis, are the points of connection. The people in Genesis seem to live in a much different world than ours, but I think we’ll probably be surprised to find how similar to us the people themselves are. They face the same problems, challenges, and opportunities as we do—and in very similar ways. As we see how God interacts with these people, ancient in their context but recognizable in their humanity, I believe we’ll learn a lot about ourselves, God, and the world.
Introducing Hebrews
This book is unusual in that we don't really know who the author was, but know it was not Paul, the author of most of the other letters in the New Testament. Hebrews doesn't exactly follow the pattern of a typical letter, either. It's clear, however, that Hebrews was written primarily to new followers of Jesus of Jewish heritage who were familiar with the Old Testament. The author makes a sustained case that Jesus is the fulfillment of everything the Old Testament predicted and looked forward to.
Introducing the Gospel According to John
The book of John is the last of the four gospels. Authorship is traditionally credited to John, one of Jesus’ twelve closest followers, known as the apostles (the ‘sent ones’). He refers to himself in the gospel as ‘the disciple Jesus loved.’ This is probably both a mark of humility—not wanting to refer to himself by name—and of the deep affection that he felt from Jesus and for Jesus. The book is dated at 70 AD which means that it was written later in John's life, about 30 years after Jesus died and later than the other three gospels.
John's perspective on the life of Jesus is notably different from those of the other three gospels (called the ‘synoptic’—Greek for ‘seen together’—gospels). There are some differences in the timeline of events, for example the duration of Jesus' ministry, the overlapping of his ministry with John the Baptist, and the number of trips he made to Jerusalem. In the synoptic gospels, Jesus is betrayed by Judas, but in John, Jesus identifies himself for arrest. Only John contains the stories of turning water to wine at a wedding and the resurrection of Lazarus.
John's gospel contains more monologue and dialogue from Jesus with fewer miracles. The miracles he performs in John are perceived less as demonstrations of power and more as signs of things to come; in other words, the symbolic meaning of the miracles is given more prominence in John’s gospels than in the others. While John’s gospel contains, in general, fewer miracles, in these Epiphany readings, we’ll actually focus on miracles in John. How do people respond to Jesus’ miracles in John? And what’s the deeper significance John draws from them?
