There is a rather trite and irritating little rule used by evangelicals, mainly, when studying passages from the Pauline epistles. This rule stipulates that wherever the word “therefore” is used, the reader should immediately ask the question: what is the therefore there for? It may be a hackneyed old soundbite, but it acts as a useful reminder to establish a verse in its textual context before deriving a meaning.

I wish that at the beginning of Matthew’s gospel there was a big fat “THEREFORE” as a preface to the story of Jesus. Perhaps then more of us would recognize the crucial importance of the historical and spiritual context into which Jesus stepped, outlined in the Old Testament.

The Old Testament has been presented in rather distorted, anecdotal forms by Sunday School teaching and school assemblies. The stories of Noah and his Ark, Jonah and his Whale and David and Goliath occupy a place in our childhood memories alongside Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, or Jack and the Beanstalk. These were packaged and conveyed as little more than jolly little fables; albeit without the obvious moral value of those of Aesop or even Beatrix Potter. This anthology of children’s myths is not the version of the Old Testament I wish to promote here: I am talking Leviticus, Job, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations — even the worst psychedelic excesses of Ezekiel.

This is wonderful, colourful stuff — and central to a full appreciation of the exquisite symphony of God’s purposes working through human history. And it forcibly reminds us of the importance of the Jews to the story of Christ. For a Jew, the very description ‘Old Testament’ is an insult, implying that Christianity has superseded and usurped their cherished spiritual heritage; consigning it to a sort of nursing home for outmoded faiths. In fact, as Paul reminds the Gentile believers in the book of Romans, we are grafted into that heritage — more a blood transfusion than an organ transplant — for God, in His wisdom, revealed himself first to one nation.

The Old Testament remains, however, a foreshadowing of the possibility of universal salvation in Christ. In God’s first covenant with man, he judged a whole community as if it bore a single identity and character. This seems a confusing and apparently unjust relationship to an individualist mindset, but a brief observation of the behaviour of our campus geese will demonstrate the tendency of groups to take on collective formations.

Through his covenant relationship with this community, Israel, based on the contemporary model of alliances between rich and benevolent nations and their needy, destitute neighbours; God consistently reveals a character that is unimpeachably faithful, deeply compassionate, unerringly wise and which longs for relationship with his people. He protects Israel, delivers her from slavery, gives her land and prosperity. Israel’s own part in the covenant, however, constantly grieves him because they so often miss the point. Again and again he urges them to stop just bringing sacrifices, singing songs and swinging incense — but instead to exercise justice and mercy and to return to him as their first love. But Israel is unfaithful, and while often upholding the letter of the covenant law, consistently breaks its spirit.

The natural justice of God demands that he bring punishment upon his people, because that was in the terms of the covenant (see Genesis 15–17). But there is another way. Which is for a perfect sacrifice to be made, according to the Jewish traditions of atonement — a righteous man on behalf of an unrighteous nation. God himself, therefore, steps down and becomes man in the form of Jesus of Nazareth — and a new covenant is made which does indeed supersede the former one. Yet it happens in absolute continuity, the cross makes perfect sense only in the context of the story of God and the Jews, and their notions of covenant and sacrifice. When it does start to make sense to you, it is profoundly stirring, inspiring and consuming — more than that, it is life-transforming.

You can read the whole story for yourselves; some of it will be familiar, much not. The generic diversity of the books of the Old Testament mean that it will not read like an academic history; but let that encourage rather than discourage you! The Hebrews were concerned with a far more important kind of truth than the forensic empiricism of our chroniclers. Truth is presented in poetry, proverb and even (dare I say it) myth; as well as in historical narratives which are as thematic as they are chronological. If, with a suspension of cultural and intellectual narrowness, you can get past the fact that there are two creation stories and that Isaiah might have been written by his wife, seventeen prophets and a rabbit; you will discover the unfolding of a divine mystery and may well, in the process, discover God.

Sarah Trethewey

Christis: You are the weakest link. Goodbye.