How do we read the Gospels? If we expect to be bored by reading the gospels then it is likely we have never learned how to read them aright. The following is a short explanation as to why the Gospels should be approached with the expectation that they can, and will, excite our imaginations and move us in the deepest ways possible, no matter how many times we have read them before. Kind of like your favorite “classic” that you keep returning to. (How many times have you read it now?)
David Tracy defined a classic as a text which so discloses a compelling truth about our lives that we cannot deny it some kind of normative status. These texts produce a disclosure of reality which ‘surprises, provokes, challenges, shocks and eventually transforms us’ (1981: 108). Religious classics like the fourth gospel also produce these kinds of reactions. Such texts have a disclosive power. They shock us into recognizing our finitude, our mortality, our sinfulness, our rage for order. They awaken wonder, trust, loyalty justice, love or faith (1981: 164). However, such responses are only elicited in readers who approach such classics as literature. To use Martin Buber’s terminology, there must be an I-Thou relationship with the gospel, not an I-It divorce. – Mark W.G. Stibbe, John’s Gospel, (Routledge, 1994), 70.
