Last Sunday's thought: this is the Gospel we proclaim

Then Jesus ‘opened their minds to understand the scriptures’ (Luke 24:45). Earlier on in chapter 24, Luke recounts how, on the road to Emmaus Jesus (though at the moment not recognized by two disciples) did the same thing: ‘Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures’ (Luke 24:27). After the two disciples recognized Jesus at the breaking of the bread, they recall: ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?’ (Luke 24:32).

Paul wrote to the early Christian church at Rome: ‘how can they believe without hearing about Him? And how can they hear without a preacher?’ (Rom. 10:14). Paul practised gospel-focused kerygmatic preaching, that is preaching centred on the ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He told the Corinthian church that ‘I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified’ (1 Cor. 2:2). The preaching recorded in the Acts of the Apostles repeated again and again the divine kerygma, the story of Jesus Christ: but then the apostles had no written gospels to which to refer their audience.

This is not the only Biblical model of preaching. There are times when life may seem to us almost meaningless and ruled by despair and death. What people need, in such circumstances, is a Word of redemption and meaning from outside this situation that will answer their deepest questions about life and death. Preaching brings this Word. It is Biblical because it was used by some of the Old Testament prophets and also by Jesus himself in some of his meetings with individuals in which existential questions are answered: three good examples (but they are by no means the only ones) are his meetings with the tax collector Zacchaeus, with Nicodemus and with the woman at the well.

An alternative style of preaching is the proclamation of God’s word as an alternate vision to injustice, inequities of power, suffering, and oppression. Biblical models for ethical-political preaching stretch from the prophetic preaching of the Hebrew prophets to Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom of God. Today this is very much the mission field of Christian Aid.

Another model of preaching has been called the ‘whispered word of God’, in the preacher seeks out the divine Word within the world and draws it up from the level of a whisper to the level of an assertion or proposition. Jesus is in conversation with disciples and the crowd uses metaphor, story, and parable, to take the ordinary bits and pieces of people’s lives and transform them into the very stuff of God’s revelation.

So there are several types of preaching according to the work of the Holy Spirit, circumstance, our needs and the needs of the world. Proclamation of the gospel, including interpretation and teaching is not an optional extra. It is close to the essence of our faith. Paul put it this way in Romans 10:8-10: ‘The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart (that is, the word of faith which we preach (kerygma); because, if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.  For man believes with his heart and so is justified, and he confesses with his lips and so is saved.’

Which preaching style is the most appropriate for the church and the needs of contemporary society? There are no simple answers. Perhaps an awareness of different styles and the deployment of a variety so that neither the preacher nor the congregation falls into cosy predictability is important. Most important of all is the need for openness to guidance and direction from the Holy Spirit who ‘blows where he wills’ (John 3:8). ‘You hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going.’

Last Sunday’s thought: The gospel preached to all the peoples of the (known) world

‘And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come’ (Matt. 24:14). In 1998 Richard Bauckham challenged the prevailing view that Matthew’s gospel was written for a specific Christian community (‘the Matthean community’), arguing instead that for all four evangelists a much more general audience was probable.

Nevertheless, in Matthew ch 24 there seem to have been multiple challenges faced by one particular Christian community – whether we call it the Matthean community or not – from false prophets, and others, who have led some sections of the community astray. The picture is of a much more vulnerable young Church than the self-confident Church depicted in the Great Commission (Matt. 28:16-20) at the end of the Gospel. Which is the true picture?

In Matthew ch 10, Jesus commands the twelve disciples to ‘go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel’ (Matt. 10: 5-6).  In the Great Commission, it is quite explicitly Jesus’ authority in heaven and earth that will enable his followers to make disciples, not the authority or power of the followers themselves. The authority of the disciples is always contingent, and they may need to perform their tasks in vulnerability and suffering. There is an undercurrent of adversity and vulnerability in Matt. 28:16-20 that is in continuity with the depiction of the Matthean community’s – or the young church’s  – experience found in Matt. 24. Certain actions are required of those who participate in God’s mission. According to Matt. 28:16-20, it is primarily to ‘make disciples’.  In Matt. 24:1-31 it is watchfulness and discernment, so as not to be led astray, and endurance. ‘In his name the nations (or Gentiles) will hope’ (Matt. 12:21).

The fate of the Gentiles is shown to be integral to God’s purposes, faithfully carried out through his servant, Jesus Christ. By drawing on Isaiah and other scriptures, Matthew emphasizes that this is part of Israelite tradition. Matt. 24 gives us the sense that the programme laid out is God’s mission, and that human actions are subject to this mission, working either with God, or against God. God’s mission had been, and continues to be, carried out through his faithful servants in the past, present and future, and most significantly, through his only son, Jesus Christ, to whom all authority has been given. The implications for us today are far-reaching. We need only be obedient servants to carry this mission forward.

Last Sunday’s thought (Bible Sunday): how might Christians read the Hebrew Scriptures? One suggested view.

Where does the term ‘Bible’ come from?
‘Do you remember how our hearts were burning inside us, as he talked to us on the road, as he opened up the Bible for us?’ Instead of translating the Greek Graphe with  the usual phrase ‘the Scriptures’, Tom Wright’s translation of Luke 24:32 in The New Testament for Everyone alludes to the Greek phrase ta biblia, ‘the books’, an expression Hellenistic Jews used to describe their sacred books several centuries before the time of Jesus. This is the origin of the English word ‘Bible’. (The Christian scriptures were referred to in Greek as Ta Biblia as early as c. 223 AD.)

Three big stories
In The Heart of Christianity. Rediscovering a Life of Faith (at p. 177), Marcus J. Borg writes: ‘strikingly, but not surprisingly, the New Testament understandings of Jesus correlate with the macro-stories of the Hebrew Bible. The story of Jesus thus becomes a story of salvation.’  This is only one way, among many others, of reading the Bible holistically, but it is worth seeing how this might work. What are the the big stories of the Hebrew Scriptures that are echoed in the New Testament? Borg describes three of the big stories as a ‘pastoral tool kit’, each one addressing a different dimension of the human condition.


1. For some of us the need is liberation. 
The story of the exodus from Egypt is seminal to the Hebrew people and is echoed throughout the Psalms. The human problem is akin to the bondage and slavery suffered by the Israelites in Egypt.  Pharoah was a real historical figure but is also a metaphor for what keeps us in bondage. It is a life of powerlessness and victimization. Exodus, liberation, the way out of Egypt is the solution, but not the end of the story, because the Israelites wander in the wilderness for 40 years.
     
In the New Testament, the metaphorical equivalent of the exodus story is Jesus’ gospel of liberation, the story of the one who has come to set the captives free. It is centred on Jesus’ announcement of the Jubilee in Luke ch. 4: ‘the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” ’  Much of this gospel of liberation is announced in Jesus’ teaching in the sermon on the Mount. It is radical stuff. It is what life would be like on earth if God were king and the rulers of the world were not. In God’s kingdom, in contrast to the real kingdoms then in existence, and the real states in existence now, there would, for example, be enough bread for all.
 2. For others of us, the need is homecoming.  
The story of the Israelites’ exile in Babylon in the sixth century BCE is well known because of Psalm 137: ‘By the waters of Babylon – there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps. For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’ How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither!’ The Babylonian captivity is a story of separation and alienation both psychological and spiritual, which is only overcome with the right of return granted by King Darius and the reconnection with God through the rebuilding of the Temple. For the early followers of Jesus, the new faith was ‘the way’. The gospel story of his life, death and resurrection is about homecoming. Our salvation is about homecoming, it is about turning to God in repentance (metanoia); it is about an open heart; we see anew with ‘the eyes of our hearts enlightened’ (Ephesians 1:18). 

Among Jesus’ stories the one that captures this transformation or homecoming most readily is the  parable of the return of the Prodigal Son, the subject of a superb extended meditation by Henri J. M. Nouwen. He writes of ‘the mystery that Jesus himself became the prodigal son for our sake. He left the house of his heavenly Father, came to a foreign country, gave away all that he had, and returned through his cross to his Father’s home. All of this he did, not as a rebellious son, but as the obedient son, sent out to bring home all the lost children of God. Jesus, who told the story to those who criticized him for associating with sinners, himself lived the long and painful journey that he describes.’