Eat this Book

In the beginning: A song about Jesus,

Felt boards, Moses, plagues and Sinai,

Children's church, costumes, Israel is a stage,

Sunday school lessons and a sponge for a brain,

Then came the questions- what is the Book is saying?

Metaphor, story, history, fact?

Narrative, allusion, typology, interpretive act?

Did the patriarchs live? Did the chabod come down?

Is the Torah composite or God's great monolith?

Read the Bible again for the first time,

Took Borg's advice, devoured Crossan once more,

Beat Empire with God,

Beat God with Dawkins,

Beat the Bible with Source, Form, Redaction, History,

Literary- modern, postmodern, post-structural, post-colonial, post-everything,

Beat myself over the head with Spinoza, Reimarus, Strauss, Schliermacher, Schweitzer, Wellhausen, Kasemann, this man and that man,

When will this end?

Niebuhr made me doubt, Barth made me hope,

Tillich gave me the courage to be and Moltmann gave me all,

Commentaries, dictionaries and lexicons,

Excursus, prolegomena, hermeneutic,

Waddell's Spirit gave way to Fiorenza's suspicion and Bultmann's doubt,

And in the end that's all I could ever hope to have,

No more song, only text,

Only confusion, and a mind that never rests.