Searching for the ecology of the gospel accounts

When I originally planned my trip to Ghost Ranch in New Mexico it was to attend a week-long course in coming to grips with who Jesus is to each person. Due to lack of enrollment the course was cancelled. I could have taken a refund and paid out $125 to Alaska Airlines to redeposit the airline miles. Instead I opted to continue the trip with a slightly different objective.

One of my objectives became to read through all four gospels. Not study them, but to just read them. In Christian circles that I grew up in, and probably is many others, Bible reading and Bible study are essentially synonymous. A person reads a small section of the text and studies it, whether it is for theology or for devotional purposes. I can’t recall ever encountering suggestions to just read it without any other motivation.

The other objective became to contemplate the definition of “gospel.” I think that too often, the gospel is defined in terms of Pauline writings. And/Or it is defined primarily in terms of the crucifixion, and in the process reducing the value of the rest of Jesus’ story. The common definition for the gospel is the means through which salvation is afforded to sinners, or some variant of this. Components might include steps to salvation, a “sinner’s prayer”, theories of atonement, discussions about justification and sanctification, and so on.

These two objectives came together during my time of retreat. My larger objective became a search for what the gospel writers intended when they each wrote their “Gospel according to…” I wanted to discover the forest of the gospel, rather than get sidetracked by the individual trees. I wanted to see the topography of each of the paintings of the gospel. I wanted to feel the contours and textures. I wanted to actively sense the nuances of each author’s take on what the gospel meant to him.

I read through the gospel accounts during a span of about three days, during each of their morning and evening periods. I read them in the Common English Bible translation, a translation involving around 120 scholars and whose intent was to render the biblical text into present-day common English syntax. I resisted the temptation to refer to lexicons, concordances, dictionaries, and commentaries. I wasn’t reading to study. I was reading to simply read. They were probably originally read aloud in one extended sitting. That’s kind of what I wanted to emulate, though I chose to not read it aloud.

During the course of my reading, it was fascinating to recognize the different emphases of each of the Synoptic gospels. I recognized the differences in ordering of stories and teachings, differences in what was included or not in each, and the huge difference between the Synoptics and John.

I found that for which I was seeking. I found the forest of each gospel. In the Synoptics, the gospel is that the Kingdom of God/Heaven has arrived through Jesus. Each writer has his own spin on this theme, but it is all about the Kingdom. In John the gospel is that Life has come to be offered abundantly to all who choose to accept it. At least that is what I took away from my time of reading.

I would like to encourage Christians to take the time to set aside Bible study for a few moments and take some time to just read some of these narrative books in their entirety as a work of literature. Take time to discover the forest. Discover the ecology of the work. Only then will the individual trees make sense as they were meant to be.