Last Essay on Biblical Expositions

When I finished teaching at a law school in Dec. 2006, I decided it would be good for me to return to my biblical roots and write several expositions each week on the various lectionary passages. As you probably know, I have a ministry degree from a theological seminary as well as a Ph. D. in Early Christianity. So, I would be "coming home" in a way, even though I had returned to some Biblical writing after a hiatus from 1996-2004 through my book on Job (A Hard-Fought Hope, Upper Room Books (2004)) and the hundreds of essays on this site on the Book of Job.

So I wrote to Jenee Woodard, editor of textweek.com, a prominent lectionary resource page, to see if she would be willing to link my essays to her page. She graciously responded right away saying that she would, and for more than a year my essays were featured on the "text week" web site. It really was a dream come true. I would exposit Scripture weekly, which would keep me in the Greek and Hebrew, and Jenee would connect me with thousands of readers who used her page as a resource to prepare for Sunday morning.

I was one of the first, I believe, who regulary "blogged" or posted essays on the lectionary passages. Of course there have been lectionary expositions in books available for many years, but few had exploited the medium of the web to post fresh essays or even provide exegetical guides to the texts by the end of 2006. So, I had a rather wide open field for my ideas.

Things Change

But as 2007 went along and turned into 2008, more and more people began to write essays on the lectionary texts. In addition, pay sites sprang up like weeds on the Midwest plains, and they often were able to secure the services of prominent preachers or teachers in theological seminaries to write for them. Since most pastors have a "continuing education" or "discretionary fund" budget, they could easily tap into this resource without money really coming out of their own pockets. Because of the proliferation of other essay writers, too, my "hits" went down pretty dramatically. I don't begrudge anyone in this regard; indeed, I am happy with the fact that others are laboring in the vineyard, so to speak. I am happy any time people have good resources to help them prepare for worship.

But before I "sign off" on my biblical essays, I would like to make two kinds of comments. First, for the record, is my ability, shown repeatedly in the past, to "anticipate the market," and get into it ahead of others. My "problem" in this, however, is that I never get into the "market" to make money; I always have done so to expand people's thinking--for free. Three examples will suffice. I first began writing about the importance of our understanding Islam when I was an editiorial writer at the Oregonian in summer 1985. Some specialists had already made the point; but the popular press wouldn't pick up on this until after the Gulf War in 1991. Second, when I wrote my book on the death penalty in Oregon in 1999 (published 2001), I used an argument supporting abolition of the penalty that was roundly rejected by opponents at the time but has now been made the centerpiece of the abolition movement (the costs of enforcing the death penalty). Then there was my engagement in senior spelling bees and publishing essays on words a few years before the adult spelling bee "craze" began a few years ago (it may have crested by now). In addition, I like to think that my way of presenting essays on this site--short pieces targeted to specific themes--will anticipate learning modes of the next few decades.

As others picked up "my" themes, I felt vindicated rather than jealous--even though some of those who picked up on the ideas seemed to know how to milk publicity far better than I did. I think one of the next "big ideas" will be the influence of law on the autism movement. Law will enter both in the specific areas, e.g., dealing with insurance reimbursement for treatments for autism, but also increasingly in reconceptualizing how the legal system looks at people with this disease/disability.

A Few Parting Thoughts

So, I may have written my last Scriptural expositions for a long time--maybe even for the rest of my life. I am very proud of many of the essays here; I think I have let the text "play" with me and I with the text in illuminating fashion. And I frankly will miss not turning to the Greek and Hebrew texts several times each week. So, just as Edward Gibbon, after twenty years of writing The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire felt like bidding his "friend" a hearty farewell while pondering human follies and mortality among some ruins in Rome, so I bid farewell to this life of mine, which began in the late 1960s when I first embraced Christian faith through Evangelical Protestantism in CA. In its place, and this is my second point from above, I will be doing two things: (1) memorizing and writing on Paradise Lost by John Milton; and (2) writing on the issue of autism and especially some ways that my legal training may be able to help families with children with autism. The Scriptures remain as wonderful and as timely to our age as ever before; the need for imaginative and thoughtful preachers is as great as ever before, but I am not in that number now. I earn no money from it, nor do I maintain a regular connection with a company of preachers that would justify my continuing my expositions.

Thanks to you, my readers, who have often encouraged me in this task and were kind enough to say that you profited from my work. I am humbled and grateful. You do an important thing in preaching and teaching the Scriptures. The Scriptures are no so fully embedded in my mind and heart that I wil always be "speaking" words of Scripture. But now I want to add words of Milton, Shakespeare, Dante and others to this poetic chorus.

Blessings to you!

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