HELLO!

I hope to see some of you at our daytime faith study, Wednesday November 4^th at 11 am in the Sams Room. This is the second of three sessions (this study is monthly) based on the book What Is the Bible by bestselling author Rob Bell. There is no expectation for you to have read the book, I offer a summary at the beginning of each session, or to have attended our last session in early October. So if you have time and interest in this important topic, please join us. Lots of room for you…

This second session will be based on Bell’s Part 2, The Nature of That Something. The Older Testament and the ancient world in general focused on floods as a metaphor for divine judgement, when “the people” had made a mess of things. What would come from the flood would be a new beginning, a covenant between God and God’s people on the basis of a commitment to be better, to do better. Rainbows and oaths would be the end result. If one takes these stories literally, there is a sense of “who did this” or “who is to blame”. Christians can look to their own time and in moments of natural disasters, blame people for God’s wrath. Bell asks us to consider that God in the Older Testament and Jesus in the Newer one, focus their attention of care for those who are most vulnerable, the very people Christian fundamentalists today will call out for blame in disasters. Instead, what those who take the Bible seriously, but not literally, identify in these floods is how the selfish and narrow behaviour of God’s people were called out as contrary to God’s purpose in community. The covenant, the call to be and do better, the oath and the rainbow, are all reminders of accountability, reconciliation and new life.

When Kim and I were young(ish) parents we loved the Veggie Tale version of Jonah’s story. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZ-dfmnjITo Bell reminds us the heart of this moral tale, that a prophet does not want to warn his enemies of impending doom. The story is less about a whale (it is in fact a larger fish, not a whale) swallowing a man, it is about a prophet who does not want to share life altering news with his enemies. God has other ideas, and the story itself points to God’s love, for all.

There is also a chapter about violence in the Bible (not just the Older Testament, think Book of Revelations). Bell acknowledges the Bible does offer some barbaric language around killing one’s enemies. Again, he asserts this is part and parcel of the culture of this time and place but unlike that reality the Bible also includes references to care for widows, the poor, the stranger, the alien. Mixed in what we would call tribal sectarian rivalries are words of hope for those who would typically be marginalized and left out. Bell ends this section quoting Paul’s letter to the Ephesians chapter 3, “to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

In the final portion of Part 2 there are these words, “Why, in a culture that had such little regard for the witness of women, would you tell all of these Gospel stories that hinge to a large degree on the witness of women?” And “why aren’t there any clear denunciations of polygamy or slavery?” Bell answers his own question, “Because whatever divine you find in the Bible, you find the divine through and in the human, not around it”. I look forward to our conversation on Wednesday morning.

Peace, Kevin