Blue Parakeets?? What is this new series all about? Tonight we started this new series about Blue Parakeets and the subtitle of the series hints to the purpose these messages: Being Surprised by Scripture.
The seed thought for this series comes from a book by a bible scholar by the name of Scot McKnight who relates this experience in his book titled Blue Parakeets. One day he was watching birds out his back window and noticed a blue bird, among the others, in his backyard and did not recognize it. He asked himself, "what is that? It's not a blue bird, or a robin, and certainly not a sparrow. What is it?" He observed as the other normal backyard birds were terrified of the new strange bird, avoided it, and flew away from it. Finally, he realized that it was a loose pet, a neighbor's blue parakeet.
Again, what in the world does this have to do with us? Or the Bible? Or God? Blue Parakeets are an analogy for reading the Bible. Have you ever read the Bible and went, "huh?!?" "Did God really do that?" "Did Jesus really say that?" "That's unbelievable!!" These are the moments when we are shocked, surprised, and jolted awake by the Word of God and its demands - and our concepts of God are blown away. These Scriptures are the Blue Parakeets we see as we look into the Word of God. They say things about God and ourselves that we find difficult and awkward. They make demands on us that we find very hard and perhaps impossible. These Scriptures may be simple on the surface, but very difficult to accept.
The Bible tells us in some places that we should expect this, that God's Word is simple but deep at the same time--easy and hard (2 Peter 3:14-18). John 6:22-71 has Jesus teaching hard stuff, stuff so difficult that many responded by saying, "this is a hard saying, who can listen to it?" That is an example within Scripture itself of a blue parakeet - turning worldviews upside-down, smashing preconceived notions of Jesus, an extraordinary, radical statement of truth. So, some people left Jesus and other stayed. So we need to be careful readers of the Bible because it is God's Word and it tells God's own Story--a story that He has put us in and in which we live our lives - and it doesn't always fit our notions of how God should work and what He is like. But God's Word not our opinions is what matters most.
Our plan for this series is to examine a number of difficult passages of Scripture. Our purpose is to learn to let Scripture speak freshly, wildly, and radically for itself and into our lives rather than putting God and the Bible into our box of preconceived ideas. The ultimate goal of this series is for you to see yourself within the story world of God's Word.
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