Last Tuesday night between 11pm and midnight I found myself reading aloud from the book of Leviticus, as part of the URC Yorkshire Synod's Big Bible Read. On Wednesday evening at church, it was the end of 1 and the beginning of 2 Samuel that a few of us read together. And it was instructive on both occasions to remember some of the parts of the Bible we don't generally read out in church.
Leviticus was all about regulations: how the priests should offer what sacrifices (lovely for a vegetarian to read!); who and what should be considered unclean under what circumstances and for how long. It reminded me of more than usually complicated committee minutes. Samuel was all about national and international politics: who fought whom, who won, how the losers died (horribly), who took responsibility and who evaded it. It reminded me of recent news reports from all around the globe.
So if people ask me about the relevance of the Bible today, I have little difficulty in pointing out similarities between then and now. My difficulty - and maybe yours too - lies more in explaining to anyone for whom this is not holy scripture how God comes into all this. Do we say that God is a parliamentarian, for whom regulations are paramount? Do we say that God is a general, who wants to win at all costs? Do we fling up our hands in horror, say weakly, 'Well, it was all a very long time ago and people think differently now' and change the subject? Or, if not, how should we deal with the scriptures which, our tradition says, are our highest authority for belief and action?
There's no hard and fast answer to this. One of the reasons I keep urging people to read the Bible for themselves (by the way, if you do, and you're fed up of me telling you, please have a word with me!) is that our tradition holds that everyone has the responsibility to ask their own questions and come to their own conclusions about their faith and its consequences for daily life.
On the other hand, we're not left totally at sea. We know the Bible was written by human beings who tried, as we do, to discern from their limited point of view (and often in retrospect) what God was saying in their situation. But we also believe God's Spirit was at work within them, looking in troubled times for justice, mercy and humility before God. So in the Levitical regulations about leprosy, we find not only a way for those afflicted by the disease to return to community life once they are healed, but also the acknowledgment that not everyone can afford a major sacrifice of thanksgiving for healing, so some will not be asked to give so much. And in the midst of warfare and blood feuds, we find the prophet Nathan given the courage by God to call David to account for his adultery with Bathsheba and her husband's murder - as well as the king's acknowledgment of guilt.
Soon we will be looking for God's presence within the torture and judicial murder of Jesus - both scripture and history. And if we have no practice at looking for God in the terrible and confusing parts of the Bible we tend not to read out in church, we run the danger of missing the hope that comes from Jesus' resurrection, hope which I believe is to be found not only in the Bible's pages but in our mixed-up world too.