Jim Jordan once pointed out that good books create their own readers. He pointed out that The Name of the Rose made you into the kind of reader you needed to be to care about the ending. He read through the book and couldn’t put it down at the ending. A friend of his skipped the middle and found the ending stupid.
I’m trying to figure out how to present the concept of “saints” and thus holiness and sanctuary access in a commentary on Ephesians. I preached on Ephesians 1 saying that we Christians are “throne room people” who have “sanctuary access.” I gave some explanations and reviewed the holiness stories going back to Sinai and the Tabernacle.
But I was really assuming and able to assume a Biblically literate audience. Thinking this from an unbelievers or neophytes perspective, how do I do this without seeming to be stacking metaphors or images that don’t have a concrete meaning?
Don’t know if this post makes much sense. Just thinking out loud (except that really means, thinking in print).
I didn’t understand any of this post, but I will check out Name of the Rose.
That is probably not your fault.
When I think of “access” all I can think of these days is politicians, bureaucrats, mob bosses and maybe some celebrities. None of those are really inspiring. Maybe venture capitalists? There’s a possible angle there of them disdaining the riffraff but truly desiring to work with the worthy. Someone like Paul Graham, maybe; he is idolized in the techie startup world.
Maybe you just have to spend a lot more time making a king seem majestic and holy, in order to first create a desire to serve that king. Tolkien somehow accomplished that with Aragorn — I remember feeling that he truly deserved to be king and that I would be most glad to have him as my king. I didn’t have a great sense that access to him was no small thing, but I think Tolkien was simply unconcerned to highlight that contrast.
I don’t know – by the end of it, when you get to see Aragorn in his rightful place, I think there’s some sense of the privilege it was to be in his company all along, wouldn’t you say?
It makes you wonder whether Jesus’ disciples had much appreciation for the access that they had during his ministry; now and again (certainly at the Transfiguration) they kind of got it, but it doesn’t seem to have really sunk in until after the Resurrection, you know?