In On the Joke of the Bible
Why we can't get the New Testament without the Old.
Carolyn Arends | In the June 2012 issues of Christianity Today, posted online 07/02/2012
My kids finally saw The Princess Bride,
a movie their dad and I have loved since our college days. There is
something wonderful about watching your favorite people watch one of
your favorite films. In this case, the added bonus was observing the
light come into their eyes as they discovered the origin of several
quirky things their parents routinely say. "Hey!" they shouted with a
shock of recognition when Westley first said, "As you wish"—a line
they've heard their father utter hundreds of times. Vizzini's
"Inconceivable!" produced a similar response. By the time we got to the
ROUS (Rodents of Unusual Size), our kids were grinning with the
particular delight of cracking a previously mystifying code. They were
in on the joke, and they liked it.
Language is much more than grammar and syntax. It is
layer upon layer of collective memory and shared meaning, so that simple
phrases like, "Houston, we have a problem," "Et tu, Brute?,"
"Remember the Alamo," or even "Yada, yada, yada" can carry worlds of
meaning. You can't master a dialect without also learning the culture in
which it is embedded.
In my quest to learn the "Gospel Language," I have often
been oblivious to the shared experience assumed by the biblical
writers. Jesus and his earliest followers were Jews; they held in their
collective memory a particular story of a particular people, loaded
with mutually understood points of reference. When I've read the New
Testament only dimly aware of the symbolic world of the Old Testament,
I've barely skimmed the surface of an ocean of meaning.
Certainly, I've grasped that Jesus' choice of 12
disciples has something to do with Yahweh's calling of the 12 tribes of
Israel. But until recently, I remained oblivious to the way his baptism
and desert temptation evoke the foundational story of the Israelite
Exodus through Red Sea waters and into the wilderness. I've been duly
impressed with the Lord's ability to command the stormy waters to be
still (Matt. 8:26-27), but I've missed the Israelite shock at this man
from Nazareth doing something that, according to the Hebrew Scriptures, only Yahweh can do.
And although I've understood some of the significance of Jesus'
transfiguration right before the eyes of Peter, James, and John, I've
forgotten that the Israelites had been waiting since the Exile for the
Shekinah—the visible glory of the Lord—to return.
Maybe the most significant reference I've missed has to do with Jesus' final words on the cross. That awful cry—My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?—has
haunted my struggle to understand exactly what transpired (Matt.
27:46; Mark 15:34). Was Jesus, for a devastating moment, utterly alone
and without hope? How that cry is processed has all sorts of
implications for theology—not least for the way we conceive of the
Atonement and of the relationality of God's triunity. More personally,
it shapes the way I perceive my own experiences of abandonment.
I've known, in a vague way, that with his cry Jesus was
quoting the beginning of Psalm 22, a passage so familiar to his friends
that to utter the first line would have been tantamount to reciting
the entire thing. Psalm 22 is an anguished prayer of David, spoken as a
godly sufferer awaiting deliverance. It's the most frequently quoted
Psalm in the New Testament. And its parallels to the Crucifixion are
chilling:
A band of evil men has encircled me,
they have pierced my hands and my feet.
I can count all my bones;
people stare and gloat over me.
They divide my garments among them
And cast lots for my clothing. (vv. 16b-18, NIV 1984)
they have pierced my hands and my feet.
I can count all my bones;
people stare and gloat over me.
They divide my garments among them
And cast lots for my clothing. (vv. 16b-18, NIV 1984)
The psalm is so shot through with suffering, it's hard
to imagine any more appropriate reference Jesus could have made. But
it's essential to know that the only thing in Psalm 22 that runs as
deeply and vividly as the speaker's pain is his unshakable hope:
You who fear the Lord, praise him! …
For he has not despised or disdained
the suffering of the afflicted one;
he has not hidden his face from him
but has listened to his cry for help. (vv. 23a, 24, NIV 1984)
For he has not despised or disdained
the suffering of the afflicted one;
he has not hidden his face from him
but has listened to his cry for help. (vv. 23a, 24, NIV 1984)
Both Matthew and Mark note that some of the onlookers misunderstood Jesus' cry, mishearing the Aramaic word for "my God"—Eloi—as Elijah. I wonder if, in including that detail, they aren't cautioning us to pay attention to exactly what Jesus is saying.
The Cross is a mystery, and no human should expect to
understand it fully. But if we want to be conversant in the language of
the gospel, we need to be able to say at least this: At Calvary, Jesus
felt the deepest level of anguish ever known, and yet he could still,
in his Psalm 22 declaration, point to the presence, faithfulness, and
anticipated deliverance of his Father—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob, and the God of our salvation.
Copyright © 2012 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.
Posts
