4… GOING ON A BIT FURTHER

 
From time to time you'll find me referring to God as 'Yahweh', abbreviated YHWH. Some versions do this too. Once misread and misunderstood as 'Jehovah', Yahweh is the name God reveals to Moses [EX 3:1-6, 14, & 6:2+]. So far as we can tell it means 'I AM WHO I AM', or words to that effect, perhaps even, 'I MYSELF AM BEING’.

In the very first verse of the very first book of the Hebrew Scriptures, Genesis, the Book of Beginnings, God reveals Himself  [1] as the Creator of the Universe, and its Great Poet and Storyteller too. Telling it all, telling us all into being. Long before the written word, God-stories are passed down verbally. Sometimes in verse, sometimes set to music by bards (like David, of whom more later) they tell us more and more about God and, unwittingly, the human story-tellers too.[2] Just as God eventually reveals His  name to Moses [EX 3:1-6, 14, & 6:2-7] Christians believe God later reveals Himself completely in Jesus & the stories about Him. Hebrew and Christian stories belong together. In them both God beckons us on to new beginnings.[3]  Perhaps this is the place to say that the early God-stories and modern scientific explanations of how things came into being need not be enemies, just complementary ways of understanding the whole Truth. It might help, too, to bear in mind that as we look at the earliest stories in Gen Chs. 1-11 they are set in times before history as we know it. Not till Gen 12 do we move into a time frame we can date with some confidence.

B.T.L.T.L. is neither an academic, scholarly, nor technically theological work. Simply an attempt by a long-time parish priest to encourage himself and us all to look at things that matter in new and living ways! A final word of warning: God stories don't sit well with or in the clutches of literalists. We mustn’t try to shut God up in His own Book, a Book that’s supposed to help set us free! Literalism kills God-stories – and God - dead in the water! On land, too! Stories need to stay as alive and kicking as YHWH God is! So let's make a start. After all every story has a beginning, a Genesis but that’s another story! (And it starts: In the beginning…)

 
NOTES:
            [1]  Till we find a gender-free pronoun for God, I’ll stick with ‘Him’ but italicise it. God is neither male nor female, but Spirit. We may think of God as Father, Mother, or Parent, but God, the Source of all Being is beyond describing in gender-oriented terms. Some prefer to think of God as the ‘Source of all Being’ and leave it at that. [2] Though all these stories are born from the heart of YHWH God, they are told into our midst by human story-tellers, known or unknown, moved by Him. (Though in some cases it may seem legitimate to doubt that!) We owe these storytellers, poets, troubadours, prophets, teachers, historians, law-makers, saints, or sinners, a debt of gratitude! [3] Stories are often better told or read aloud. Some parts of the Scriptures including the Psalms and similar passages in the O.T. as well as some early Christian hymns from the N.T. are better sung or chanted, to God, to others, even to ourselves!

 [4] If you reach the point of needing more learned teaching on the Scriptures than this small work offers, ask someone you trust for help in finding that.

3…GETTING STARTED

If you can confidently open a Bible & find a passage you want to look up, this posting’s not for you. Skip it, but hopefully rejoin us for No.4. Otherwise, read on, do.

[1] If you don’t have a Bible, obtain a copy of say, the Revised Standard Version or the New Jerusalem Bible. Get good sized print on sensible paper & with Notes.

a) Forget about page numbers. What matters is this: Bible references are always given in the order:  Book, Chapter, Verse.

b) What’s the Name of the Book we're looking for? If we know whether it's in the Jewish Older (O.T.) or Christian Newer Testament (N.T.) that’s a help, but not essential. Bibles have an Index at the beginning.

c) What’s the number of the Chapter in the book we’re looking for? Then, d) What’s the number of the Verse within that Chapter?

e) Practise looking up <Genesis Chapter 11, Verse 4>. Then try <Exodus Chapter 2 Verses 1-4>. (We usually abbreviate names of books to GEN or GN, EX, etc. See your  Index.  Sometimes the system extends further by the use of, say, (a), (b), (c), etc after a verse, meaning the 1^st, 2^nd, or 3^rd part of the verse.

[2] Not all churches agree on which books are Scripture & which are not. A collection of books known as the 'Apocrypha' (from the Greek word for 'hidden') is sometimes omitted, printed within the O.T., or between the O.T. & N.T.      

[3] Every copy of the Scriptures is a translation from the original languages they were written in. Each is known as a 'Version', e.g. Revised Standard, New Jerusalem, King James & so on. Most of what we now have available in print (or online!) stems from telling by word of mouth long before being committed to any written form. Apart from a few small sections, the O.T. was written in Hebrew, & books of the N. T. in Greek, a common language of the Mediterranean world in those days. As Jesus Himself spoke a Middle Eastern language, Aramaic, early Christians had to explain   their teachings about Him in common language. Later, as the Church became centred more & more on Rome, Latin became the language of the Scriptures for most of the Western world. Over the centuries story-tellers, translators, & editors have differed over what makes better sense (or in some cases, what better suits their cause!) But first we need to ‘get the hang of’ looking up references! 

[4] Each Book of the Bible has its own name. When more than one Book has the same basic name they’re distinguished by placing a number before the name of such Books. In the O.T., to take the Books of Kings, we find the first is (logically enough) called 1 Kings, & the second, 2 Kings! Similarly, in the N.T. three letters by a writer called John are called 1JN, 2JN, and 3JN, none of which is to be confused with the Gospel of John! As mentioned in e) above, Book names are usually abbreviated in references & indices. There may be slight variations, but it's usually obvious which book is meant. The Index should be our first port of call if we need help to find a particular Book. But that’s another story…

Imagine

2…IMAGINE

As well as being Jesus' physical forbears, the Hebrews and their Scriptures in which they reveal so much of themselves – sometimes more of themselves than their God -   are Jesus’ spiritual forbears, and therefore ours, too. Their Hebrew Bible, our O.T. is recommended reading if we're to understand the world into which and the people from whom Jesus springs and an indispensable introduction to His life and the Gospels that record Him for us. In similar fashion we can then better read the rest of the N.T. if we read it as an extension of the Gospels as the Gospels are, in Christian eyes, an extension from the O.T. Everyone and everything’s connected to everyone and everything else when it comes to both Scripture and life. To go a little further down that same track of building on what goes before like the Prophets, Jesus himself, and then his followers do, British Rabbi Lionel Blue encourages us to identify ‘small s' scriptures' of our own, on-going chapters drawn from experiences of daily life to look at in the light of the received Scriptures. [1]. 

If Faith and Imagination are inextricably related as many believe [2] together they can  bring us alive to the Scriptures and the Scriptures alive to us. As we recognize our-selves in their stories. Try thinking of the characters in them as our own spiritual 'rellies' if not strictly speaking physical ones. Don’t recognize the shape of a chin? A nose? Or an ear? Then what about their same strengths and weaknesses, their same foibles? Or the similar skeletons to the ones in our own cupboards? Or the same good, bad, and indifferent judgements we make?

Let’s not think about these old 'rellies' of ours as just names set in type in a book; even The Book! Actually, Books, a whole library of them! Nor figures sculpted in stone or bronze, painted on walls or canvases, illuminated in manuscripts, cut from stained glass and set into church windows. Our Forbears in Faith live on as Real People so long as we keep telling their stories. They are of the earth, earthy, as the second version of the creation tales [GEN 2:7] spells out poetically, though not always of heaven, heavenly.  (I’ll bracket key scriptural references like this [ ] from now on. See Blog 3 for more about how to use Bible references if you need help in this.

Armed with the same gifts of creative imagination God gives those who come alive to ‘Him’ in these stories from of old we are capable of making great leaps of faith in our day like the best of them make by God's grace in theirs. Try thinking of their God stories, those records of the spiritual journeys they make in their day, as a kind of spiritual GPS for us in our day. [3]

Godly Imagination is long overdue recognition as a 'Gift of the Spirit' even if Blessed Paul (whose sandals I readily admit I’m not fit to untie!) didn't have the imagination to include it in his great lists. But that’s another story…

[1] Day Trips to Eternity, D.L.T., London, 1987, p.xiv. [2] e.g. Fr. Matthew Fox and Bp. John V. Taylor. [3] We owe them all, story-tellers, poets, troubadours, prophets, teachers, historians, law-makers, saints, and sinners a great debt. 

1. Where I'm Coming From

Bringing The Living To Life (BTLTL) is a working title for a series of blogs on reading the Scriptures imaginatively. When I was a young child I began kindergarten at a Methodist Sunday School down the street. The only family connection with Methodism I know of is that two of my maternal great-grandparents are buried in the ‘Primitive Methodist’ section of a country cemetery! Perhaps it was simply that my loving parents, both products of ‘mixed’ marriages, thought, like so many others, it might be good for me and give me a basic religious background rather than just a blank! But within a year or two of my beginning there, the church of which the S.S. was part was torn down! Had I been more aware than we normally are at that age, I might have asked one of those deep questions of life: ‘What did I do to cause that?’

Soon after, we moved house and again I was sent to another nearby Methodist S. S.  When we moved again (W.W.2 was raging by now, and there was a lot of moving going on) I was sent to yet another S.S. only to find, puzzlingly, that it was my original one re-built on a new site! Its resurrection there played its part in my own journey of being brought to life.

Each of those three churches with its S.S. symbolises change and challenge in life.  Church No.1 moved to what was seen to be more fruitful ground. Church No.2 was found to be surplus to the needs of the new Uniting Church and taken over by another denomination. No.3 (No.1 resurrected) too was found to be surplus to the U.C’s  needs and became a mosque! Moving on can have surprising consequences! 

 I’ll always be grateful to those good Methodists and their S.Ss. for giving me a sound grounding in biblical stories. Though I now understand many of them differently from the face-value approach I took as a young child, these are the stories I have grown up with and grown into and hope to explore in BTLTL. They represent a stage I’ve now reached in understanding key parts of the Scriptures, starting  with the Hebrew 'Older Testament' (O.T.). I am still finding new life in the stories, as I believe anyone can. Even those who don’t know the stories at all, or only vaguely remember them, as well as those to whom they’re long 'dead and buried' or simply in the 'too hard basket' is welcome to take the risk of opening those graves or baskets, and give the stories a chance to live again. Church Home Groups and ‘Bible Study’ groups may also find seeds of new life in them.  

The title ‘Bringing The Living To Life’ comes from Charles Causley's 'Ballad of the Breadman' [1] in which he imaginatively distils the essence of Jesus. Causley invites us to look at Jesus more imaginatively than we often do, so we, too, become as fully alive to God as Jesus is. I take him to be not too subtly suggesting Jesus raising Lazarus from death in the Christian 'Newer Testament' (N.T.) is a sign it might be easier for God to bring the physically dead to life than some living spiritually dead! So BTLTL aims at bringing those Hebrew people of old and their Scriptures to life and us with them. But that’s another story…

1] 'The Sun Dancing', ed. Charles Causley, Kestrel, Harmondsworth, England, 1982 p.132.

1. WHERE  I’M COMING FROM

Bringing The Living To Life (BTLTL) is a working title for a series of blogs on reading the Scriptures imaginatively. When I was a young child I began kindergarten at a Methodist Sunday School down the street. The only family connection with Methodism I know of is that two of my maternal great-grandparents are buried in the ‘Primitive Methodist’ section of a country cemetery! Perhaps it was simply that my loving parents, both products of ‘mixed’ marriages, thought, like so many others, it might be good for me and give me a basic religious background rather than just a blank! But within a year or two of my beginning there, the church of which the S.S. was part was torn down! Had I been more aware than we normally are at that age, I might have asked one of those deep questions of life: ‘What did I do to cause that?’

Soon after, we moved house and again I was sent to another nearby Methodist S. S.  When we moved again (W.W.2 was raging by now, and there was a lot of moving going on) I was sent to yet another S.S. only to find, puzzlingly, that it was my original one re-built on a new site! Its resurrection there played its part in my own journey of being brought to life.

Each of those three churches with its S.S. symbolises change and challenge in life.  Church No.1 moved to what was seen to be more fruitful ground. Church No.2 was found to be surplus to the needs of the new Uniting Church and taken over by another denomination. No.3 (No.1 resurrected) too was found to be surplus to the U.C’s  needs and became a mosque! Moving on can have surprising consequences! 

 I’ll always be grateful to those good Methodists and their S.Ss. for giving me a sound grounding in biblical stories. Though I now understand many of them differently from the face-value approach I took as a young child, these are the stories I have grown up with and grown into and hope to explore in BTLTL. They represent a stage I’ve now reached in understanding key parts of the Scriptures, starting  with the Hebrew 'Older Testament' (O.T.). I am still finding new life in the stories, as I believe anyone can. Even those who don’t know the stories at all, or only vaguely remember them, as well as those to whom they’re long 'dead and buried' or simply in the 'too hard basket' is welcome to take the risk of opening those graves or baskets, and give the stories a chance to live again. Church Home Groups and ‘Bible Study’ groups may also find seeds of new life in them.  

The title ‘Bringing The Living To Life’ comes from Charles Causley's 'Ballad of the Breadman' [1] in which he imaginatively distils the essence of Jesus. Causley invites us to look at Jesus more imaginatively than we often do, so we, too, become as fully alive to God as Jesus is. I take him to be not too subtly suggesting Jesus raising Lazarus from death in the Christian 'Newer Testament' (N.T.) is a sign it might be easier for God to bring the physically dead to life than some living spiritually dead! So BTLTL aims at bringing those Hebrew people of old and their Scriptures to life and us with them. But that’s another story…

1] 'The Sun Dancing', ed. Charles Causley, Kestrel, Harmondsworth, England, 1982 p.132.