When I was on retreat at Mucknell Abbey at the beginning of December, Fr Stuart Burns recommended a book I hadn’t heard of before: David F. Ford’s The Gospel of John: A Theological Commentary. It promises to be an excellent read, touching on many of the themes I now realise I need to pursue about John’s Gospel. Ford urges that the Church and the world need a new ‘Johannine Renaissance’, rediscovering, or more deeply discovering, Who Jesus is, and Why Jesus Now?
Among so many passages I want to reflect on and remember, today I made a note of this:
“The Psalms are the part of the Bible that probably is most fully part of Christian (and Jewish) personal and community prayer and worship, most committed to memory, most set to music, most important in shaping the imagination. They take up into poetry and worship leading themes of Israel’s Scriptures and the main elements of its faith and practice — creation, patriarchs, the exodus, the law, prophecy, wisdom. Both Jesus and John were, clearly, steeped in the psalms, and continually reading the psalms in conversation with the Gospels deepens understanding and nourishes fuller faith, further following, and richer worship.”
Yes! And I wonder, then, why the Psalms are so routinely omitted from much (I’m tempted to say, most) of contemporary worship? Dare I say, especially in ‘Evangelical’ churches? In the days when I used to think it was the Evangelical wing of the Church that I felt most at home in, I firmly believed it was the Bible, and its authority, which were the features that attracted me. Since that time I’ve come to believe that, in fact, the major weakness of ‘Evangelical’ churches is that they are so unbiblical. Instead of proclaiming what the Bible says, they are more likely to proclaim what the preacher, or their favourite church leader, says the Bible says. They’ll hammer home the parts that say what they want the Bible to say, while ignoring the parts of the Bible which contradict their favourite message.
David Ford’s commentary is honest about the apparent contradictions and different viewpoints, for example in the ways the Bible has often been used to preach a ‘supersessionist’ message, and contempt for Judaism. The remedy is to stay with that question of Who Jesus is, until we fully understand what it means that Jesus shows us, and leads us into relationship with, a God who is for all people, and for all creation.
Godspelled 