After the Last Page

You may have noticed how often they argue with each other. Joshua says the whole land was taken, and Joshua says it was not. Kings praises a massacre, and Hosea condemns it. Deuteronomy shuts the Moabite out forever, and Ruth makes a Moabite the great-grandmother of David. Proverbs says the good prosper, and Job and Ecclesiastes say look around you. Isaiah beats swords into plowshares, and Joel beats them back into swords. The book of Jonah pleads for Nineveh, and Nahum dances on its grave.

My people kept all of it. They did not throw out the books that disagreed. They put them on the same shelf, sometimes on the same scroll, and read them aloud side by side. That was not a weakness in my scriptures. It was a way of teaching. Truth was something you argued your way toward together, not something handed down without question.

You may also have noticed the things that never change, from the first book to the last. God hears the slave. God defends the widow, the orphan and the stranger. God wants the worker paid before sunset and the poor man’s cloak given back before night. God would rather have justice than sacrifice and mercy than ritual. God is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abundant in loving kindness.

That is what I learned from these books. When I stood up in the synagogue at Nazareth, I did not bring anything new. I unrolled an old scroll, found my place and read it. Good news to the poor. Release to the captives. The year of the Lord’s favor.

My Bible, in the order my people came to keep it, ended with a foreign king saying go up. Yours ends with a promise that Elijah would come and turn the hearts of the fathers to the children. Either way, the last page was not an ending. It was a door left open.