”Grasp a hold of that Big Picture!”
We have come to the end of four nights of superb and stretching Bible teaching from Dr Iain Provan, Marshall Sheppard Professor of Biblical Studies at Regent College, Vancouver.
Bishop Harold thanked Iain for his challenging talks which prompted many of us to critically re–examine some of the assumptions we hold about Scripture.
He said: “Iain’s in–depth look at the ‘Big Picture’ of the Bible was particularly challenging because in our own minds and in our own spirituality many of us have bought into a very small picture that might be based on some things that are incomplete. I thank God for Iain’s intellect and ability and for his ministry among us this week.”
Taking as his theme “The Big Picture: Reading the Bible for All That’s There,” Iain shared, as promised, one of his passions – “to get all of God’s people reading all of God’s Word and understanding it as one Great Story in which we are supposed to live our lives.”
His final exhortation to us was: “Grasp a hold of that Big Picture!! Read your Scriptures within its frame!! For if it is really true that I can only answer the question “What am I to do?” if I can answer the prior question “Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?” – well then, here in Holy Scripture is the Story of all stories. Read yourself into it!! And then you will know who you are, and you will know what you are here to do.”
We were also delighted to have the Kerygma Good News Choir with us, led by Musical Director, Lorna Palmer. Saturday 19 November is a date for your diary when the cross–community choir will have another Celebration Praise Concert in Newry Cathedral.
It was also the night to announce next year’s Bible Week speaker as Bishop Greg Venables. Bishop Greg is much in demand as a Bible teacher and is a leading theological conservative in global Anglicanism. He and his wife Sylvia have been missionaries in South America for almost 40 years and he has been bishop of Southern Argentina since 2002. Read more here.
View some Bible Week photos in our galleries.
Below is a brief summary of Iain’s Friday evening talk: A Holy People: God Call. Please take the opportunity to listen to it again or for the first time by downloading the audio here.
Iain began by posing the question: If this biblical story is indeed the True Story about reality, how are we supposed to live? Who are we, and what are we here for, in this story?
First and foremost, we are the image–bearers of God. We are here to govern creation justly, to look after it well and to live rightly with God and our neighbour. We are also tasked with calling others to do the same – to repent of their sins, and having received God’s forgiveness, to play the role in the Great Story for which they were first designed.
Iain went on to describe the godly, holy path that we are called to walk upon as we wait for the full coming of God’s kingdom in the future. It is:
The Path of Resistance: Biblical faith urges us to resist to evil, but it does so with a clear–eyed realism about the prospects of success in the short term.
The Path of Patient Endurance: It is because resistance to evil often itself meets resistance that Scripture so often urges to be patient in pursuing the right path while enduring suffering.
The Path of Prayer: The holy path through life is not to be walked alone. It can be walked only with God in conversation with him. I am not to pray instead of acting for good in the world, I am, however, to pray in recognition (among other things) of the extent to which evil forces currently have the upper hand. Indeed, I am to pray recognising that I myself need to be saved from these forces.
The Path of Compassion: The biblical response to evil and suffering is not only personal but also interpersonal—and indeed costly. I am to join God in showing compassion to my neighbour.
The Path of Hope: I am to hope for relief from my suffering; for the victory of good over evil and to dare to hope that what is bad in the world can somehow be turned to good. Such hope is not misplaced, from a biblical point of view.
Iain concluded:
There is no fatalism in the biblical perspective; there is, indeed, a pronounced opposition to fatalism. To be a holy person is to be an activist and an optimist. And in neither case is this because we have a naïve belief in our own ability, left to ourselves, to change the world. In both cases, it is because we believe in the God in whom we believe.
The ethics and the politics arise directly from the cosmology, and the theology, and the anthropology. Who is God, really? He is one who is active in the world in pursuit of what is good – and so should his image–bearers be. This same God is bringing and will bring the story in which we find ourselves to a place in which we all live happily ever after – which is surely a cause for optimistic engagement with the world.
Passivity and pessimism are not godly. The Big Picture requires something better of all of us – if we really do believe in the God who has revealed himself to us in it, and not in some other god after all.
Next year’s Bible Week is from Tuesday 29 August– Friday 1 September 2017. Save the date!