Sunday Worship 22 June | A Scenic Route Through the Old Testament

Psalm 119:1-8, 89-96, 196-76

Blessed are those whose ways are blameless,

    who walk according to the law of the Lord.

Blessed are those who keep his statutes

    and seek him with all their heart—

they do no wrong

    but follow his ways.

You have laid down precepts

    that are to be fully obeyed.

Oh, that my ways were steadfast

    in obeying your decrees!

Then I would not be put to shame

    when I consider all your commands.

I will praise you with an upright heart

    as I learn your righteous laws.

I will obey your decrees;

    do not utterly forsake me.

Your word, Lord, is eternal;

    it stands firm in the heavens.

Your faithfulness continues through all generations;

    you established the earth, and it endures.

Your laws endure to this day,

    for all things serve you.

If your law had not been my delight,

    I would have perished in my affliction.

I will never forget your precepts,

    for by them you have preserved my life.

Save me, for I am yours;

    I have sought out your precepts.

The wicked are waiting to destroy me,

    but I will ponder your statutes.

To all perfection I see a limit,

    but your commands are boundless.

May my cry come before you, Lord;

    give me understanding according to your word.

May my supplication come before you;

    deliver me according to your promise.

May my lips overflow with praise,

    for you teach me your decrees.

May my tongue sing of your word,

    for all your commands are righteous.

May your hand be ready to help me,

    for I have chosen your precepts.

I long for your salvation, Lord,

    and your law gives me delight.

Let me live that I may praise you,

    and may your laws sustain me.

I have strayed like a lost sheep.

    Seek your servant,

    for I have not forgotten your commands.

Some of you will remember that at one of our church meetings last year, we spent some time thinking about what we wanted to reflect on together in our services. From the suggestions that were put forward came our summer series looking at what Christianity says about various topical issues, our autumn series on Revelation, and our Lent series on creation. Another suggestion was that we look more at the Old Testament, and so that's what we're coming to now. We made a tentative start at the beginning of the year with our series ‘What Kind of Book?’, taking an overview of the various genres in scripture, and considering some different ways in which we might approach these sacred texts, whose praise the psalmist sings. 

That is all still on the blog if you want to catch up or refresh your memory, but there are a couple of points it may be helpful to repeat. First of all, a note about language, because there is some debate as to whether or not ‘the Old Testament’ is the most appropriate designation for the collection of books that make up the first part of the Christian Bible. This comes in part from a concern that the name gives the impression that the text is entirely outdated or obsolete, but I have always understood it as meaning simply that these are the scriptures that came first, and that is the sense in which I continue to use it. There is also a concern that it overwrites the Jewish origin of the texts, but the church didn’t simply tack Christian writings on to the end of Jewish scriptures. It developed its own canon using all of the material at its disposal, so the Old Testament differs from the Hebrew Bible in both content and structure, and different naming conventions help maintain that distinction. It is of course right that we honour the history of the texts and the fact that they are still the holy scriptures of another faith, which will not always read them the same way we do, but I think we can also recognise that they have been part of our own tradition for two thousand years now, and we have our own relationship to them. So I will use ‘the Old Testament’ when referring to the first part of the Christian Bible, and ‘the Hebrew Bible’ when speaking of the Jewish canon.

Second, I suggested during that earlier series that the Bible might be understood as myth, not in the sense that it is a work of fantasy or imagination, but in the sense that it reveals deep and universal truths and finds its meaning in something more significant than simple historical accuracy. Reading the Bible as myth can help us to understand apparent contradictions as narrative techniques, which may prove to be a far more productive approach than one which seeks to treat the Bible as a primarily historical document. It may seem radical, but in fact biblical inerrancy is a relatively late concept, which came about as a kind of hardening of the religious position in response to the Enlightenment. I am aware that the word ‘myth’ comes with a lot of baggage, and it may not be helpful for everyone, but the point is to suggest that the Bible is the story of the relationship between God and God’s people, as told by those people in the way that best captured the beauty and the mystery of their experience, and that its real meaning lies in what it says about the nature of God and what it means to live in the world. Our task then is to take the scriptures seriously, even where we do not take them literally, and to be open to experiencing beauty and mystery for ourselves.

So that is some of the groundwork we have already laid. I confess I have hesitated to come to a significant study of the Old Testament. I have read it and I have studied it and I have preached on it, but Old Testament scholarship is not my specialism, and I have been unsure as to what approach to take. Until this week I picked up a book that has been gathering dust on my shelf for some time. In ‘The Old Testament is Dying’, Brent Stawn argues that the Old Testament is like a language that is falling out of use, so that we no longer speak it well if at all. It is perhaps not surprising that the church should focus on the New Testament, because that is where we find Jesus, but that doesn't mean that the Old Testament has ceased to be a resource for life and faith, and so Strawn recommends that it be revived through greater use. I will be honest and tell you I haven't read the entire book, but one section that did catch my interest was an analysis of the late Walter Brueggeman’s preaching.

Brueggeman was one of the most respected Old Testament theologians of recent times, and yet less than 10% of his sermons were based exclusively on the Old Testament. Only slightly more were based entirely on the New Testament, while the overwhelming majority were preached from both testaments. That suggests to me that the best way we can get to grips with the Old Testament, and what it means to us now in the light of Jesus, is to read it often and to read it alongside the New Testament. And so after next week's cafe church, we will be following the lectionary, which each week offers readings from the Old Testament, the Psalms, the Gospels and the New Testament. We may not use every reading every week, and I'm not sure yet how long we will stick with the lectionary for, but I hope it will get us into some good habits, and encourage us to engage more regularly and more deeply with a breadth of scripture.

So that is where we are heading, but for the rest of this morning, I want to lay some more groundwork, by summarising some other reading I did this week. ‘A Scenic Route Through the Old Testament’ by Alec Motyer begins by breaking the Old Testament down into five chunks, which he calls family, nation, monarchy, return and exile. For completeness, I have added a sixth at the start, which I have called origins. Let's take a look at each of them together now:

• Origins covers the first eleven chapters of Genesis, from the creation to the flood and on to the Tower of Babel. We could summarise this as saying the world is created and people start to make things for themselves, setting the scene for all that is to come.

• Family takes us from Abraham through Isaac to Jacob and his twelve sons. God promises Abraham the whole world will be blessed through his family, so even though the focus seems to narrow down to a few households, God still has all people in view.

• Nation covers the exodus and the conquest and the early days in Canaan. The family has become so big they have become their own nation although their founding is not easy. We have to be particularly careful with these texts which are so easily misused in modern geopolitics.

• Monarchy sees the reigns of Saul and David and Solomon, and the division into two kingdoms. God does not think the monarchy is a good idea but lets the people make their own mistakes, and there are plenty of those with a mix of good and bad kings.

• Exile has the nation conquered by Babylon, and a significant number of the population taken away to live there. We have some stories from exile, such as that of Daniel of the lions’ den fame, but mostly we have prophets like Ezekiel trying to make sense of what has happened.

• Return sees the people released from Babylon to restore the city and temple. Again we have stories like that of Nehemiah, who was responsible for the rebuilding of Jerusalem, but also prophets such as Zechariah encouraging the people to rebuild on a foundation of faithfulness.

That is a fairly straightforward route through the Old Testament, but Motyer’s book does offer a series of daily readings which make it more scenic, if you would like to make that journey for yourself. With a narrative outline in place, Motyer proceeds to mix his metaphors, as the rest of the book is mostly based on what he calls the six voices of the Old Testament. These are the voice of history, the voice of religion, the voice of worship, the voice of prophecy, the voice of wisdom, and the voice of God. Again, let's take a look at each of these in turn:

• Motyer asserts that Old Testament history is reliable. I wonder what he would make of my ideas about myth, although he does acknowledge some contradictions which raise questions about accuracy, and I think there is an implied caveat that what this really means is that it is as reliable as any other history. That is because like any other history it is selective, and in the case of scripture, it is shaped by a focus on God and what it means to live well as the people of God. It's also worth remembering here that history is a modern category, with the Hebrew Bible designated as Law and Prophets and Writings. That says to me that the greater concern was for ‘how we say we live’, ‘how we should live’, and ‘how we think about the way we live’, rather than ‘how we actually lived’.

• When it comes to Old Testament religion, Motyer describes the sacrificial system as its beating heart, but it was another phrase in this chapter that grabbed me. He talks about the way God lived in a tent when the people were living in tents, and then he paraphrases a line from one of the Psalms as “if you’re camping, I want to camp too”. That on its own is just glorious, but it reminded me that there is a line in the prologue to the fourth gospel which is often translated as something like “the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us”, but which could be translated more literally as “the Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us”. God has always been camping with God's people, and while that happened in a new way in Jesus, seeing that continuity is really important for how we read the Old Testament.

• In talking about Old Testament worship, which seems to be distinguished from religion as being personal rather than corporate, Motyer focuses on the Psalms, and seems most taken by their realism. They contain despair and sadness and rage, and they contain joy and exuberance and hope. They face up to the awfulness of life, and then in the teeth of that they assert the faithfulness of God. They give us permission to express all of our feelings before God, and they give us words with which to do that when we struggle to find words of our own. If the Psalms are a blueprint not just for Old Testament worship but for true worship, then perhaps the most important thing they have to teach us is that true worship is authentic. Which now I come to think of it, is just what Jesus told the woman at the well.

• Old Testament prophecy is primarily truth telling not foretelling. There are points where the prophets talk about what is to come, but there is always a sense that this is what will happen if the people continue as they are, and we see from Jonah’s experience in Nineveh that disaster can be averted and prophecies are not always fulfilled. The prophets spoke into their particular contexts, but there are threads that run through them. Motyer identifies the holiness of God, the anticipated oneness of all people, the hopefulness that is grounded in the promised Messiah, and the forgiveness that will bring salvation. These are threads that run throughout the New Testament too, except that we see that hopefulness being realised in Christ.

• Old Testament wisdom is concerned with true human life as advised in Proverbs, unexplained suffering as explored in Job, futility as expressed in Ecclesiastes, and love as celebrated in Song of Songs. In the Hebrew Bible, these books are all captured under the title of Writings, which is so vague it might as well be called Miscellaneous, but I do think there is something rather wonderful about the way the scriptures have space for such human concerns and experiences. The whole of life is found in God’s word, because God is to be found in the whole of life.

• And so of course throughout the whole of scriptures, we find the voice of God. And while I have spoken about Old Testament history and Old Testament religion and so on, I won’t now speak about Old Testament God, because there is no distinction. God is the same yesterday and today and forever. There are different ways of understanding what that means, and for me it means that the essence of God is eternal and faithful. The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love. That was true in the beginning, is now, and shall be forever. And yet even if God does not change, our understanding of God does, and so Motyer speaks of the progressive or cumulative revelation of God. 

Ultimately, that is why engagement with the Old Testament is still so vital to our faith. We know more about God through Jesus, but that doesn’t mean we should lose or forget what we learnt about God through Abraham or David or the prophets. So as we seek to engage more regularly and more deeply with the Old Testament, may we read with open hands and open hearts, and may the Spirit who leads us into all truth, bring new wisdom from ancient words.