an old book

"For he delivers the needy when he calls, 

the poor and him who has no helper.

He has pity on the weak and the needy, 

and saves the lives of the needy. 

From oppression and violence he redeems their life, 

and precious is their blood in his sight." 

- Psalm 72

So this past Sunday United Life took a look at the genealogy of Jesus found at the beginning of the Gospel According to Matthew. One point that I tried to make during the sermon was the connection that Jesus' family history is ours as well, as Paul argues in his letter to the Galatians ("And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring...", chapter 3, verse 29). If this is so, then this says something about the way we approach the Old Testament. 

I think that we're taught (whether we've grown up in the church or not) to see the Old Testament a few different ways. If we grew up in the church, we associate it with Sunday School, seeing its stories as spiritual Aesop's fables, complete with misdeeds, mistakes, and morals. Or we might see it as a big book of nice quotes, grabbing the verses that sound reassuring and writing them in greeting cards while skimming over the awkward ones. 

Alternatively, if you grew up never setting foot in the church, you still ran into its influence: Noah's Ark could be anything from a waterpark in Wisconsin to a comedy routine by Bill Cosby to a 1992 NES release. I'm not sure, in that case, what kind of picture you would have after all of that, but my guess is that the Old Testament might look like a collection of myths akin to the ancient Greek and Roman tales, except that many still take them literally today. 

Yet if, as followers of Christ, we are adopted into his family, then the Old Testament is none of the aforementioned things. It is instead something much simpler, but much more profound. It is the story of God, a picture assembled as a mosaic, each piece involving the experiences of regular people much like ourselves. People, in fact, not only like us, but who really are us: our adopted family. Their dilemmas our dilemmas, their epiphanies our epiphanies, their confessions our confessions. Seen in this light, something like the above passage from Psalm 72 takes on new meaning. It wasn't composed in a vacuum, it was written by a real person. In fact, more than just any person, it was written by one of your adopted ancestors, whose spiritual legacy you have inherited, whose name you now carry. 

One thing I love to do when I'm with family is to ask them to tell me stories. I think this has something to do with the fact that my grandfather and I were so close when I was a young boy, yet he died before I got to hear him tell me any stories. As I grew older I realized what a large hole this left, and I've been trying to catch up ever since. Now when we get the chance to be together, I try to ask the generation above me to give me their stories, my family history. 

This is what we already have in the text of the Old Testament: our family's history, the stories of people who are a part of our story. In it we sometimes find narratives, complete with a beginning, conflict, and resolution. Other times we find collections of songs, poems, or prayers, composed straight from the heart. Everytime we find our family, engaged with God, engaged with real life. So let me encourage you to open to it, and delve deeply into your story.