1 of 3
Let me get my complaints out of the way up front. At first I didn't like the way Eugene Peterson paraphrased John 1:14 in The Message: "The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood." It was catchy, "moved into the neighborhood," but I thought it bordered on cutesy. I thought Peterson should have stayed with something like the more traditional "dwelling." (It could be worse: I know someone who would have liked "zip code.") Also, I still think there are way too many hyphens in the book. Since I'm looking at the prologue to John's gospel right now, I can tell you that there are 14 hyphens in the first 18 verses, from "Life-light" to "one-of-a-kind god-expression."
OK, those are my complaints. That's as tough as I can get with Eugene Peterson's wonderful paraphrase. The problem with me reviewing anything he has written is that I want to be like him when I grow up, and I am almost 60 and running out of time. I'm in danger of becoming a Peterson-toady. See what I mean? Now I'm using hyphens with abandon.
One could do worse than emulate Eugene Peterson. His 35 years as a pastor have honed and polished an ability to boil a thing down to its essence, to really get it right, with a few vivid words. This art is apparent in his pithy and memorable renderings of Scripture, but also in the brief book introductions he wrote for The Message, which alone are worth the price of the book. Each one is a theological and devotional gem.
Thus Matthew is introduced through the lens of the genealogy that opens the gospel. Effortlessly, without pedantry and faithful to the author's intent, Peterson shows that the long list of names should be pondered as a key to the meaning of both the gospel and the Gospel:
The story of Jesus doesn't begin with Jesus. God had been at work for a long time. Salvation, which is the main business of Jesus, is an old business. Jesus is the coming together in final form of themes and energies and movements that had been set in motion before the foundation of the world.
This insight isn't new to Peterson, but he delivers it with a clarity and grace that make it come alive:
Matthew tells the story in such a way that not only is everything previous to us completed in Jesus; we are completed in Jesus. Every day we wake up in the middle of something that is already going on, that has been going on for a long time: genealogy and geology, history and culture, the cosmos—God. We are neither accidental nor incidental to the story. We get orientation, briefing, background, reassurance.
Peterson does this kind of thing again and again, from Song of Songs to Romans to Revelation. One
doesn't come by such art quickly. What so feeds and pleases in these introductions is the fruit of the long years of a pastor's study, reflection, and labor to show his congregation that "Every part of Scripture is God-breathed and useful one way or other—showing us truth, exposing our rebellion, correcting our mistakes, training us to live God's way. Through the Word, we are put together and shaped up for the tasks God has for us" (2 Tim. 3:16-17). In The Message, Peterson hasn't essentially done anything other than what he did for all those years in the pastorate. He has merely expanded the size of his congregation to include the rest of us. Thank you, pastor.
But as valuable as the introductions are, The Message must ultimately be judged by its treatment of the biblical text. A friend of mine likes The Message, but with some reservations. "It just doesn't sound like the Bible," he says. I agree. And maybe that is just the point: that the Bible as it was written didn't sound like the Bible either.
share this page
RSS Feed
