Sean Gladding - The Story of God, the Story of Us

Commit this story to memory. Tell it to your kids. Let it direct your life.

Jonathan Wilson-hartgrove

G e t t i n G L o s t a n d F o u n d i n t h e B i B L e

Praise for The Story of God, the Story of Us

Join me in a journey in which faith and reason are made delectable through story. It is a book to be read and read, alone and with others who thirst for the truth in love.

ReveRend dR. John Smith, president, Gods Squad CMC, and founder, Concern Australia

Why another book about the Bible? We dont need just another book

... but we need this one. Sean enables us to enter the Grand Story by using story and dialogue as effective communication. His style and language make his message easily accessible, enabling us to experience the great movements of the Story, and thats a redemptive dynamic. An added dimension for me is that I know the author, and he lives the Story. TheStory of God, the Story of Us makes the Story real for the reader.

maxie dunnam, chancellor, Asbury Theological Seminary

I love it when someone tells a story that we can get lost in, a story that sparks our imagination and connects the dots. Sean Gladding is a great storyteller who draws us into a story of which we have heard bits and pieces. As the story unfolds we realize it is our storyyours and mine

and we are a part of something much bigger than ourselves. And the story is not over, and its not just a story after all...

Steven G. W. mooRe, executive director, The M. J. Murdock Charitable Trust

In The Story of God, the Story of Us Sean Gladding takes the reader on an imaginative and fresh stroll through the Scriptures. Reeling in distant theological and historical abstractions, Sean makes the whole of the Bible intimate and readable. Parlanced in an accessible, down-to-earth renarration of the Scriptures, Sean fuses biblical tradition with captivating story, compelling dialogue and nuanced reflection.

ChRiStopheR L. heueRtz, international director, Word Made Flesh, author of Simple Spirituality and coauthor of Friendship at the Margins Story of God.indb 1

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Sean invites us to find ourselves in Scripture. He points us back to the Story. Its not a new story; in fact, it is as old as humanity itself. But it is still very much our story, showing us what we already know and feel: that we, like the Israelites, and like all of creation, are in exile, longing for redemption, in search of the promised land. Sean invites us to see that this Story, Gods Story, is our story.

tRaviS Reed, founder, The Work of the People (www.theworkofthepeople.com)

It is only the person who is long in the study of the Scriptures, and in the contemplation of God through them, who may be granted the capacity in the Spirit to experience the Scriptures freshly, with more of the Light shining in the words and the spaces between them. And if that person is Sean Gladding, then he might write in such a way that a reader is startled at how much he or she missed when studying the same biblical passages.

In the classic spiritual tradition of the application of the senses way of reading the Scriptures, Gladding shows us how freshly to see, to hear, to taste and to touch each biblical scene.

FR. RiCk Ganz, S.J., Marylhurst University, Oregon Story of God.indb 2

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GET TInG LoST and Found In THE BIBLE

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InterVarsity Press

P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426

World Wide Web: www.ivpress.com

E-mail: email@ivpress.com

2010 by Sean Gladding

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without writtenpermission from InterVarsity Press.

InterVarsity Press is the book-publishing division of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, amovement of students and faculty active on campus at hundreds of universities, colleges andschools of nursing in the United States of America, and a member movement of the InternationalFellowship of Evangelical Students. For information about local and regional activities, writePublic Relations Dept., InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, 6400 Schroeder Rd., P.O. Box7895, Madison, WI 53707-7895, or visit the IVCF website at .

All Old Testament quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are adapted from the New American Standard Bible , copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by TheLockman Foundation. Used by permission.

New Testament quotations, unless otherwise noted, are adapted from The Message. Copyright

1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.

All rights reserved.

Design: Cindy Kiple

Images: Yvan Dub/iStockphoto

ISBN 978-0-8308-6803-2

ISBN 978-0-8308-3632-1

Dedicated to the two communities within which The Story of God, the Story of Us took shape: Mercy Street

at Chapelwood U.M.C.

Houston, Texas

Communality

Lexington, Kentucky

And to Mary Fisher, mentor and friend

who teaches and lives the Story

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Contents

Preface / 9

Sleeve Notes / 14

1 Creation /17

2 Catastrophe / 31

3 Covenant / 47

4 Community (Part One): Exodus / 65

5 Community (Part Two): Sinai / 81

6 Conquest / 101

7 Crown / 115

8 Conceit / 133

Interlude / 153

9 Christ / 155

10 Cross / 177

11 Church / 199

12 Consummation / 219

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Postscript to the Reader / 237

Sources and References / 239

Suggested Scripture Readings / 244

Select Bibliography / 247

Users Guide / 249

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Preface

With the sheer volume of books about the Bible, why write another one? And one with the admittedly audacious title The Story ofGod, the Story of Us? The simplest answer is that it was a task my best friend gave me in 2000, when I was interning with him in the community he pastored. I want you to write and teach a Bible study for people who have never read the Biblesomething that gives the big picture.

That internship lasted eight weeks, and so of necessity the study was eight weeks long. Given that short length of time, the focus of the study became the big story of Scripturea concept I had recently been discussing with a professor in graduate school.

For many years I had read and studied the Bible, usually in small chunks here and there (mostly in the New Testament). Seated in church buildings, I had heard and believed theological abstractions about God that made sense in isolation from each other, but rarely was time given to try to tie them together. Perhaps the most blatant example of this was the claim that God is unchanging alongside the claim that the God of the Old Testament is a god of law, whereas the God of the New Testament is a god of grace (or, as my friend Matt puts it, The God of the New Testament obviously went through an anger-management program).