Several years ago, I was working with a pastor on an upcoming message. He was teaching on Luke 17:11-19, the story of the ten lepers, and I was providing research on the passage. I sent him my work, we discussed what we both saw, and he went and wrote his message. Then, the following Tuesday, he texted me — he wanted to teach on the same passage again. There was more he hadn’t been able to cover and he wanted to revisit it. So I went to work, sent him a brief, etc.
The next Tuesday, I got the same text — he was going to teach on the story again. He still felt that there was more to be pulled out of the passage. It happened again the next week too. I think he ended up spending four, maybe five weeks on that one story. By the fourth week, I was convinced there was nothing left in that story for me to find. I don’t mean I was an expert or anything, I just felt exhausted by trying to do comprehensive research on the same nine verses over and over. It’s not like I was mailing it in the first couple of weeks!
What I discovered, though, was that there was always more to find. By the third and fourth weeks, I was noticing connections that hadn’t occurred to me before. I was asking questions I hadn’t thought to ask. The insights I had during the latter weeks weren’t necessarily world-shaking, but they opened up that story (and others it was connected to) in unexpected ways.
The Bible is not a unique book in this sense. When we reread books or rewatch movies or TV shows, we see things we missed the first time around. We might have new insights into what the author is doing or notice some interesting subtleties in an actor’s performance. On the other hand, given what Christians believe about the Bible, it does mean that it is uniquely important for us to devote ourselves to careful and regular reading. There is always more for us to find.
I was reminded of this over the weekend. As Dad has mentioned in previous posts, right now we’re reading through Thomas Mann’s Joseph and His Brothers. It’s a novel in four parts and it has been quite the project. I’ve loved Thomas Mann since college and I was looking forward to seeing what he pulled out of the Joseph story. His perspective was clearly influenced by the scholarship of the time (the books were published in the 1930’s), which meant a healthy skepticism about people and events as they are portrayed in Scripture, but this actually enabled him to chart a path between simply rewriting the Biblical account and complete fantasy.
Mann had, I think, a really intuitive understanding of who Joseph might have been as a person and so his portrayal feels very much alive and faithful, even where it deviates or invents. The narrative freedom he enjoys enables him to make connections and draw parallels that had never occurred to me. I knew that Joseph’s path foreshadowed Jesus’s in many ways, but Mann draws that out more explicitly than any sermon I’ve ever heard, and that helped me notice other things. For example, when Joseph’s brothers are traveling back to tell Jacob (also called Israel) that he is alive, I suddenly saw the parallel with the disciples at the beginning of Acts: Just as in Genesis, eleven sons of Israel have been tasked with telling Israel that the son who was thought to have died is in fact alive, and has been given great power, even sitting at the right hand of the ultimate king.
I love seeing things like that. If I am going to notice them, however, I have to stop thinking I have the stories in the Bible figured out. In Matthew 13:54-58 we read about Jesus returning to his hometown of Nazareth to teach:
and coming to his hometown he taught them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished, and said, “Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?” And they took offense at him. But Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household.” And he did not do many mighty works there, because of their unbelief.
Nazareth sounds like a lot of small towns, where sometimes there is resentment towards those who leave and become successful. “What, Nazareth wasn’t good enough for you? Who do you think you are? We remember the time you go lost at the Temple Jesus, and worried your mom. You’re not better than us.”
We read that Jesus could not perform the same kinds of works in Nazareth as he did elsewhere, “because of their unbelief.” But why didn’t they believe? Because they thought they had Jesus figured out. They thought they knew him and it really bothered them that he came back and presumed to teach them. It’s just Jesus — nothing to see here.
I think we do the same thing with Jesus and with the Bible. We think we know God, we think we know what he wants and how he works. We think we know the stories in the Bible. When we think we’ve figured something or someone out, we lose interest. There is always more to discover, more to learn. We all get offended when someone thinks they have us all figured out. Why would it be any different in our relationship with God? We should approach him, and his Word, as though we’ve only scratched the surface.
No comment at this time, as I have to re-read your thought provoking message, thanks, Jack
Another excellent and insightful message. Jesus used parables to allow for His deep and somewhat abstract messages to keep unfolding in ever increasing ways. What one parable meant to me when I was 16 may mean something quite different to me now that I'm much older. The seed takes root and keeps growing. Insights keep emerging.
"For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face."
"Father forgive them for they know not what they do."
We don't know what we don't know and have to keep pressing forward toward the mark.
It makes for an interesting life. Never a dull moment, that's for sure.