I just listened to Len’s Sweet’s Napkin Scribbles (see below) about leaving his Bible behind on a recent trip to West Virginia. It reminded me of the time that I was leaving for a church service years ago and put my Bible on the trunk of the car while helping the kids inside. When I arrived at the church facility, my Bible was gone. I remembered what I had done and retraced my journey but did not find it. It was an interesting loss. It was the Bible that I had used all the way through seminary, with its notes and all. I looked for it along the journey route for several weeks, even looking on occasion, a year of so later. I called all the churches in the neighborhood, thinking some Good Samaritan may have found it and turned it to the church’s lost and found.

Like Len, I have wondered over the years if the church has left behind its use of the Bible which has casued the culture to leave the Bible out of its reading. I hear conversations from time to time about the Bible, usually a small discourse on a verse (versitis) or two or a tip of the hat by a small reading. The story of Scripture should impregnate our lives but that is difficult when the churches we attend leave out this important ingredient of being a Christ-follower. When a church leaves the Bible behind, it is not long before its congregants will also leave it behind. When the congregants leave the Bible behind they won’t be able to learn its Story and the sure results is that they won’t live its Story. Well, at least that’s my opinion.

What if John when he was writing his Gospel was saying by his opening words, “In the beginning,” that his book was a Genesis 1 sorta thing, a rewriting of the story of Genesis 1 with a new Adam (although he doesn’t use the term). What if we read John in that way? Of course, Genesis 1 is about creation given to us in an account of “days” not necessarily twenty-four hour days. On the sixth day, God created humankind in his image. In John’s Gospel on the sixth day, Jesus appears before Pilate and Pilate says, “Behold the man.” Could we understand that as John’s way of saying here is the true human being giving his life for the world God created. Remember, at the conclusion of the sixth day in Genesis, God finished all the work of creation. On the cross Jesus says, “It is finished!” On the seventh day God rested. In the tomb on the sixth day Jesus rested from all the work of recreation.

O Sabbath rest by Calvary,
     O calm of tomb below,
Where the grave-clothes and the spices
     cradle him we did not know!
Rest you well, beloved Jesus,
     Caesar’s Lord and Israel’s King,
In the brooding of the Spirit,
     in the darkness of the spring. (N. T. Wright)

On the first day of the new week, resurrection, a new creation.

What if we read John and understood John that way and became part of that story instead of the story that so many of us find ourselves living in.

What if…