Why Knowing the Ending Changes How We Read Scripture

As we enter a new Advent season, I had the joy of sitting down with, Rev. Dr. Anna Carter Florence, the Peter Marshall Professor of Preaching at Columbia Theological Seminary. Anna has a gift for inviting us to hear Scripture with fresh ears. In this brief conversation, she helps us name something that is true yet often unspoken: none of us reads Scripture with a blank slate.

In this clip, Anna reflects on her high school English teacher who always gave away the endings of books, not to spoil them, but to teach her students to pay attention to how a story unfolds. That practice, Anna suggests, mirrors the way Christians engage Scripture: we read knowing the ending, and that knowledge changes everything.

Her reflections became a touchstone for her Advent sermon, “Reading Our Story Backwards,” drawing from Matthew 24 to remind us that the God who redeems the world is already writing the ending. And knowing that ending shapes how we live through the middle.

Full Transcript

Rev. Dr. Katie Givens Kime
So as one who? I confess, I avoid previews, I avoid trailers, I avoid spoilers, even about shows. I'm never going to see the story of your high school teacher who always gave away the ending of books so that her students could read backwards.

I mean, I had a moment of indignity, I have to admit, but it's so true. And it's a reminder of how hard it is to read Scripture with any sort of presupposed blank slate. So could you say more about how reading backwards and remembering that we are inevitably reading backwards can help us better engage the text?

Rev. Dr. Anna Carter Florence
It's a great question, and I'll just add, you know, she kind of spoiled me. I actually now really love to know how things turn out like beforehand.

It's like I drank the kool-aid or something. And particularly with a film, I really, I mean, sometimes it's fun to watch it play out. But I don't mind if I know the ending because I'm really interested in how they get there, I get that.

Rev. Dr. Katie Givens Kime
I liked it, and the second time I do realize that, the second time I'm like, Oh, now it's a whole new thing, so I get that, yeah.

Rev. Dr. Anna Carter Florence
So how does it help? I mean, I think there are some dangers in that. We can read with so much foreknowledge that we're not surprised anymore by what we're reading. But I also think, you know, to read Genesis, knowing that Exodus is coming, to read Exodus, knowing that Leviticus is coming, and the wandering.

I mean to read these things knowing that they're part of a sequence.

And that the people of God are trying to tell their story. In a certain way, that it's important to them, that it's shaped in a certain way, that, to me, feels important.

Reflection

Advent invites us to look forward—and backward—at the same time. We know the ending: God redeems, restores, and renews. And as Anna reminds us, that ending is not meant to remove surprise from Scripture, but instead to deepen our engagement.

Reading “backwards” means trusting that every moment in the story is illuminated by the final promise. It also means remembering that God’s people have always told their stories in sequence, in pattern, in rhythm. We enter that rhythm each time we engage Scripture.

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