THE Book of all Books
The definition of a “classic book” is twofold: the reader is changed by it with every reading; and as the reader changes and grows, the book speaks to him in his changed state. The Bible, as a living and active divisor, as diagnostic, as lamp, as hammer, and as revelation, is the most classic book of all. The riches of the Word of God blow me away, year after year, decade after decade. The more I read it, the more I want to read it and learn, to dissect its words and phrases, to understand the original context and language, to observe the meta-themes. It is the book of books and is it The Book among books.
In 2021 I’m reading through the whole Bible using a plan with accompanying podcast called The Bible Recap. I glanced at the header for today’s reading which included Exodus 20, when God gives Moses and his people the Law. More than once so far this year, I’ve started my morning time of solitude (after a glass of water and some mobility stretching) being led to another part of the Bible related to the one in the plan. Sometimes it’s a parable, sometimes a chapter of prophecy, and other times a New Testament letter. Today, the Holy Spirit hyperlink took me to Hebrews 10.
On Memorization
Hebrews 10 was the first chapter of the Bible I ever memorized. Before that, I had memorized little coffee-cup and dagger-in-hand single verses, that were plucked from their context and used for my own “personal walk with Jesus.” But the longer I walked with Jesus, and the more I read and memorized, the more the Word of God dwelled and churned alive in me, ready to saturate my thinking if I let it. So this morning, the Spirit used that memorization I had done sixteen years ago (!) to take me on an alley detour through Hebrews.
I started out with a question, as I knew we were going to receive the Ten Commandments in today’s reading: “God, show me more about the role of the law. What did Jesus mean when he the author of Hebrews said, ‘he sets aside the first to establish the second?'”
Whole Books of the Bible in Community
A decade ago, I was in a small group who studied entire books of the Bible together. No facilitator, no other guide but the Holy Spirit and our own attentiveness and preparation to be moved, both in our individual reading time and our group time. There were so many questions and so much we wrestled through together (I Corinthians was a particular favorite). After we all came out of that study, we felt a different kind of unity. A unity of experience and belief.
If you’ve ever been shaped by reading aloud or watching a movie (it is called a MOVIE because it’s designed to MOVE the audience) with someone you love, you now have a common set of images, sounds, words, on which to draw. You’ve experienced something together. The Bible shapes in much the same way. Instead of recognizing lines from movies, we recognize themes from the Word. Instead of quoting them, we quote scripture that has far more power to change a life than any movie.
And if someone ever asks that churchy ice breaker question, “What is your favorite book of the Bible?” I’ll usually come back to a book memorized from and studied in community that has changed the way I think over and over. Absolute favorites don’t really exist, but in the moment, there is usually one book shaping me actively. Every book of God’s Word plays its role in the family of my mind, like children gathered around the dinner table actually sharing a single conversation.
The Word of God is a way to draw near to God, and the constructive effect of memorizing, reading and wrestling in community, and asking God himself in solitude is mind blowing. You ought to try it if you haven’t already!
The Nuance of God’s Answers
So this morning, I asked God a question.
I asked him, “what the first thing was and what the second thing was that Isaiah and Jesus were talking about” in Hebrews 10?
There are some questions I’ve asked God on repeat, and sometimes the answers are a little different than the last time I asked the exact same question. Just like the classic book, right? Beautiful, alive, universal. And just like I don’t question the consistency of scripture as I honor it above my own perspective, I also don’t question those little differences I hear.
When you were two or three years old, you might have learned that water boils in a pot when it gets really hot. When you were eight, someone explained to you that water boils at 100 C. Still later, you learned that this boiling temperature is only true at sea level, standard pressure. The world is full of nuance, and slightly varied answers for different times even for simple things like boiling water is completely appropriate. As we grow in words, in understanding, we are able to receive increasingly abstracted ideas and assumptions.
Today, the answer to the question
about the first and second thing was “law” and “grace.” As in, Romans 6 — whereby God’s people were subject to the law for any bearable access to God, now we are under and subject to a fuller grace. What a peculiar thing! How did law and grace differ from one another? What happened at the cross and the resurrection that moved us from law to grace? Oh there is so much there. I let my mind meander about God’s chosen people who started as a stream from a biological family (but included servants who were marked with circumcision) and after Christ, were marked instead with baptism and the Holy Spirit, unto all people, Gentiles included. I jotted down a few notes from my worshipful bunny trail, and waited. I asked more specifically, “What did it mean for Jesus to set aside the law and establish grace?”
And I saw an infant in an incubator.
I saw gloved hands reaching through those circular, gloved openings to hold a tiny, helpless infant. The gloves were a barrier. Clunky and incomplete. But in the same way, the law was the way God was able to get close to his people. They were rebellious, stained, and unable to bear his holiness. Closeness was impossible, but made *almost* possible by the law. Just like the law allowed partial access to his people, the gloves and equipment allowed partial access from the heart of the father to the baby he longs to hold. Better than nothing, but definitely not the fullness of a skin-to-skin nap.
They missed the desire of the Father to hold the baby and opted for the tidy counterfeit of bronzing and cherishing empty gloves.
Now, it would be foolish to get all hung up about the incubator and to worship and follow IT instead of focusing on the relationship between the father and the baby inside. But (especially if you have privilege, like I do) we can tend toward that, like the Pharisees did. They missed the desire of the Father to hold the baby and opted for the tidy counterfeit of bronzing and cherishing the empty gloves.
So we won’t get stuck on the incubator.
Draw near, because we can.
When Jesus set aside the law to fulfill it (Matthew 5), he did not debase the value of the incubator to the father or the baby. Without the box, the warmer, and the gloves, there was no way for the Father to be close to his child. Instead, he established a new covenant in his blood. At the cross, Jesus set aside the need for the incubator by giving his elect our own life and lungs. His sacrifice gives us access to the closeness the baby needs and the father wants. The cross displaced God’s wrath toward our sin sickness, and implants in the people of the Way a desire to be with Him and the very ability to receive and recognize his love.
I’ve always appreciated how every little thing is a pointer to God and his ways, even the hard things, like preemie babies in incubators. These visions always make me long for fullness, for seeing him face to face, not through a mask or a piece of plexiglass or as through a glass dimly. Now I know a teeny tiny bit, and barely in part; but then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known by the Father’s desirous love.
Thank you to SilentObserver for the photo “Pasha in incubator with blue light,” licensed under CC BY 2.0.