My complaints about exegetes. . .

The historic divisions of theology into exegetical (what the Bible says), historical (how the faith has been practiced), systematic (how we organize it), and practical (worship, preaching, etc.) once dominated the landscape of seminaries.  They did when I was in seminary.  Most seminarians were enthralled by the exegetes.  They wanted to know what the Bible says.  They gravitated to the idea that there were principles of Biblical interpretation and methodologies to explain every hidden text and make it plain.  For a very brief time, it was my preoccupation as well.  Now, well, not so much.

The reality is that I don't pay a whole lot of attention to exegetes or exegetical theology or commentaries.  I have given most of my commentaries and exegetical texts away and could not for the life of me come up with principles of Biblical interpretation.  The real reason is that little of this seemed to matter when it came to preaching -- to actually writing a sermon and delivering it to the people of God.  There is not a shortage of information but there is something lacking in focus.  While the exegete insists upon context, it is a more local context than I am comfortable with.  What is missing so often is the greater context.

There is only ONE story in Scripture.  Only one.  Not many or even a few.  Only one.  The story of the Bible is that God made us for Himself, the people in which He took His great pleasure, until we were lost to Him by our own willfulness, marked for death, and unable to do anything about it.  So God determined to make us His own again, His Son willingly offered to go and bring us back home -- though it cost Him suffering and death to accomplish it.  Now God delivers this life to us, releasing us from sin's captivity and death's domain, that we might be His own, live under Him in His Kingdom now and eternally.  This is the reason why we have every book in the Bible, every chapter in every book, and ever verse in every chapter. 

Instead, even conservative and well-meaning exegetes often get lost in the weeds and fail to see the forest for the trees.  That is certainly what went wrong in a very large way in the advent of the higher critical movement that seems preoccupied with details and ignorant of the real story of the Scriptures.  But it is no less true of what often passes for Bible study.  We are not here for the curious, the odd, the hidden, and the interesting details but for Christ.  It is His story and we have been made a part of His story by baptism and faith for the purpose of living as His own now until we are His eternally in the great consummation.  Everything until that grand day of Christ in glory, judgment, and heavenly places is but rehearsal.  Every Sunday is but a rehearsal for the eternal.  Every sermon puts us back into the story after the world has worked to dislodge this story are replace with somebody else's story or even our own presumed story.

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.  Ephesians 2:1-10

I fear that some exegetes can explain everything except what the Bible's big story really is.  If that is the case, they have failed us and rendered to the Church the cruelest gift of all -- the Word without its author and speaker and power.