The Bible is a love story of God and his people. While it is simple and clear there are also problematic issues because this love absorbs human frailty and sin covering centuries.
The creation accounts in Genesis are written in their own symbolic and narrative style. They contain complex insights about the human experience and our historical reality. They portray the human venture based on three fundamental and deeply connected relationships as essential to the human experience. These relationships are with God, our neighbor and creation. The Genesis account relates a basic brokenness in these three links to reality. The sin of Adam and Eve, our first parents, set the pattern. We follow it as we place ourselves rather than God at the center of all reality. Our sinful condition makes us resist the call to acknowledge the constraints of being creatures.
While the Bible is the story of salvation, the consequences of sin are at the center of the story in Genesis’ first eleven chapters. They lay out the need for salvation. Cain and Abel, Noah and the Ark, the Tower of Babel and, of course, Adam and Eve and the apple are examples of humankind’s pulling away from God. God’s instruction “to have dominion over all the earth” (Gen 1:28) is mangled in our selfish patterns of behavior. God also told us to “till it and keep it.” (Gen 2:15) Our failure on both accounts has severely disrupted the balance between God, humanity and creation. This rupture is expressed in our time in wars, violence, abuse, neglect of the most vulnerable and the continuing violation of nature.
Pope Francis described this sin that places ourselves at the center in today’s historical experience as “practical relativism.” He defines this practical relativism as follows: “When human beings place themselves at the center, they give absolute priority to immediate convenience and all else becomes relative.”
This relativism, a powerful and pervasive expression of sin in our day, leads to the exploitation and neglect of others at all levels. People are reduced to objects. Abuse of others, economically, racially and sexually, is a natural consequence of this mentality. We see all of this expressed in the invisible forces of the market, in human trafficking, in organized crime, in malignant consumerism, in the drug trade, unrelenting racism and sexism and in the rampant misuse of the land and the sea and air, flora and fauna. All these destructive forces flow from a false vision and denial of God’s mandate in Genesis.
In chapter twelve of Genesis with the call and promise made to Abraham, we begin a journey. This passage of two thousand years will lead to Jesus and the salvation of all humankind. What follows in these twenty centuries of history of Abraham’s family is an evolution. This is a story of the ever-expanding development of the promise to Abraham in the history of the Jewish people and their experience of God. That Salvation History leading from Abraham to Jesus is an epic struggle of sin and grace.
In its broadest sweep, the story flows in a time-frame across the centuries from Abraham to Moses to David, moving to the prophets and climaxing in Jesus. Throughout, there is a continual expression of God’s faithfulness and human ambivalence. The story moves from the promise to Abraham, destined to become the father of a great nation, to Moses liberating the people on the way to the Promised Land. The era of David and the kings introduces the idea of hope for God’s final intervention in the person of the Messiah. The enlightenment of the prophets’ message expands and deepens this hope. Along the way, we are gifted with the collective wisdom of the people in other books, especially in the psalms. Each expression of the story draws us deeper into the mystery of this ever-active, always loving and saving God.
Throughout this journey of Abraham’s family evolving into the Jewish people, the hope of the promise advances in spite of consistent and profound infidelities against the Law of the Covenant. Likewise, there is a slow but steady growth in the communal understanding of who God is and what God wants. Many centuries after Abraham, the people came to the deepest truth of all: there is only one God, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob.
The entire thrust of the movement of this Salvation History leads to Jesus, the Word of God. In Jesus, we have the fullness of God’s revelation. We have the invitation to enter into the Mystery of Love reflected in the beautiful harmony between the Jewish Scriptures and the great event of Christ crucified and Christ risen. The fullness of God’s grace and truth is revealed in Jesus in the abandonment and utter poverty of the Cross. Here we encounter the ultimate truth of God, a God of saving love and mercy. This story is elaborated in the New Testament.
The Story of Salvation Leads to Prayer
The Exodus was the centerpiece of this journey for God’s people. This was the liberation from slavery in Egypt. It included the passage through the desert and the entry into the Promised Land. In this experience, the people saw the clearest and most forceful expressions of God’s saving presence. The singular power of this experience guided the people down through the centuries of an often-torturous history. Again, and again, the children of Abraham reflected on the faithfulness of God who set them free. They found strength and fortitude in encountering the revelation of this God of the Exodus in their constantly troubled plight.
In the Christian era it was the death and resurrection of Jesus that anchored the community in faith through the storms of history. This ultimate expression of God’s saving love has become the gateway to the new day, the New Exodus, in Christian history. We see in it the continual opening to hope, no matter how dark and stinging the ravages of life may be.
The central point of the story of salvation in the Bible is this. The message, in all its breadth and depth, comes from the people’s experience of the saving power of God who is active in their lives and their history. The Bible teaches us that the same God of the Chosen People is in our life. The word in the Bible gives us the light that enables us to encounter, understand, and embrace the reality of God’s continuing presence in our life. We are invited to participate in the call and promise today. Deep personal prayer is the special avenue to encounter this saving God today. This is our pilgrimage through history to the kingdom of God. The gift of God’s word in the revelation of the Bible is always a call to new life and new horizons.
