The Five Act Play

"Imagine that a Shakespearian play is discovered for the first time but most of the fifth act is missing. The decision to stage the play is made. The first four acts and the remnant of the fifth act are given to well-trained and experienced Shakespearian actors who immerse themselves both in the first part of the play and in the culture and time of Shakespeare. They are told to work out the concluding fifth act for themselves.

This conclusion must be both consistent and innovative. It must be consistent with the first part of the play. The actors must immerse themselves in full sympathy in the unfinished drama. The first four acts would contain its own cumulative forward movement that would demand that the play be concluded in a way consistent and fitting with that impetus. Yet an appropriate conclusion would not mean a simple repetition or imitation of the earlier acts. The actors would carry forward the logic of the play in a creative improvisation. Such an improvisation would be an authentic conclusion if it were coherent with the earlier acts.

This metaphor provides a specific analogy for how the biblical story might function authoritatively to shape the life of the believing community. Wright sees the biblical story as consisting of four acts - creation, fall, Israel, Jesus - plus the first scene of the fifth act that narrates the beginning of the church's mission. Furthermore this fifth act offers hints at how the play is to end. Thus the church's life is lived out consistent with the forward impetus of the first acts and moving toward and anticipating the intended conclusion. The first scene of act five, the church's story, begins to draw out and implement the significance of the first four acts, especially act four. The church continues today to do the same in fresh and creative ways in new cultural situations. This requires a patient examination and thorough immersion in what act four is all about, how act four is to be understood in light of acts one through three, and how the first scene of act five faithfully carries forward act four."

Michael W. Goheen expounding one of Tom Wright's ideas in Reading the Bible as One Story

A story of two gardens

I've been thinking recently that the story of the bible is in many ways a story of two gardens.

In the first garden (Genesis 3) we find a man and a woman playing the blame game and going through the pain of dislocation from the one who gives meaning to their lives. They are sent out of the garden disgraced and disillusioned.

In the second garden (John 20) we find a man and a woman. But this man treats the woman very differently. He wipes away her tears, removes her shame and restores her to her purpose. She is sent from the garden rejoicing. Go and tell of the victory... sing Miriam sing... God has made a way through the sea, the time of slavery is over!

It's not surprising that the apostle Paul calls this man in the second garden the 'last Adam'.

Going deeper

Following my post yesterday about the Black Box I was encouraged to come across this from Tom Wright in his devotional commentary on Ephesians (4:17-24):
"You won't understand where behaviour comes from unless you understand the state of heart and mind. And you won't change the behaviour unless you change the heart and mind. This isn't what many people today expect to hear. There is a persistent untruth which has made its way into the popular imagination in our day: that Christianity means closing off your mind, ceasing all serious thought, and living in a shallow fantasy world divorced from the solid truths of 'real life'... But the truth is that genuine Christianity opens the mind so that it can grasp truth at deeper and deeper levels. This isn't a matter of university degrees and paper qualifications, helpful though they may be. It's a matter of the heart and mind being open to the even wider range of insight and imagination that comes with 'learning the king'."

Health and Faith

Continuing the theme of 'what is faith' I have another illustration to present - I have to thank Tom Wright for this one. During part 4 of his 'Future of the People of God' talks (back in 2004) he drops in a thought to assist the communication of his views on the authority of scripture, I'd like to reappropriate and expand on that thought just a little...

Think about the concept of health. Is health something that you can ever possess ultimately and irrevocably? You certainly can't possess it as a commodity or an object - you can't buy it or sell it or give it or steal it. You can't even be prescribed health by a doctor - the best they can give you is a drug which may or may not improve your health if you take it according to the instructions. And in all these ways and many more health is a lot like faith. There are ways we can live our lives to improve our health, environments that will work for or against our health, things we can consume which will either help or hinder our health. I don't think I need to push the point do I?

So, to bring this in to land, you may have experienced some mysterious moment when faith was given to you as a gift from God. Or you may have been fortunate enough to have grown up in a relational context where your faith was cultivated almost without your knowledge of the process happening. However you came to a first awareness of your faith, thereafter you have a responsibility to look after and 'work out' that faith. This is why I believe we need new forms of church that are based around a concept more akin to a gym than a cafeteria. In this new model of church our involvement will be more about getting stretched rather than getting fed. Is anybody up for that?