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Story within the Story

June 9, 2012 in Bible Thoughts with 0 Comments

If approaching the Bible as Story, and God as a story-bound God, opens up our interpretation of scripture, and Christianity, how does this not become a free for all?

Today I have a guest post up at Peter Enns’ site wrestling with just this issue:

if we open ourselves up to the idea of “story,” we are opening ourselves up to a Christianity, and a God, that cannot be easily controlled or pinned down. We are opening ourselves up to embracing the plurality of Christian expression and practice that we find even in the pages of scripture itself.

I was recently challenged on this. A perceptive reader of my work asked, “You’re talking about plurality and openness, and yet you speak quite confidently about any number of issues–where does that confidence come from within this more open narrative?”

Read the rest here.

Getting the Bible Right

June 7, 2012 in Bible Thoughts, Me with 0 Comments

I have a guest post up at Peter Enns’s blog: Why Getting the Bible Right is Critical for Our Faith.

There’s a follow-up post that will go up in a day or so as well.

Wise for Salvation in Christ

June 6, 2012 in Bible Thoughts with 6 Comments

What is the Bible and what are we supposed to do with it?

“Inspired” is an answer that many of us give right off the top of our heads:

Every scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for showing mistakes, for correcting, and for training character. (2 Tim 3:16, CEB)

But in general we’re not so up on the lead-in:

Since childhood you have known the holy scriptures that help you to be wise in a way that leads to salvation through faith that is in Christ Jesus. (2 Tim 3:15, CEB)

Scripture is not just about “learning things” that God wants us to know.

And it’s not just about finding out “what we should do.”

The things we are to learn, and the things we are to do are located within the work of God that has a specific end and goal in view.

We read scripture with full faithfulness not merely when we say, “This is God’s word,” but when we read and interpret it as a witness to the salvation that God has made available to us in Christ.

It’s not enough to read the Bible. We have to read it with a Christological hermeneutic.

Free to Say No

June 5, 2012 in Bible Thoughts, Culture with 33 Comments

If we think we’re free to say no to God, should this influence how we navigate the choppy waters of engaging culturally and politically as Christians?

Most people I know think that we are free to say no to God. Was it C. S. Lewis who spoke of eternal perdition of God’s final, “Thy will be done” spoken to the creature?

Indeed, human freedom of the will (an idea that never gets any airtime in the entire Bible) is a much firmer part of most of my students’ theology than their tentative affirmations of “predestination” (which is affirmed in several places in scripture).

We experience ourselves as free, and that freedom is one that, in our experience, extends to our receptivity to the call of God. And gifted theologians do find helpful ways of marrying freedom and Providence.

While I was reading Barth last week, I was struck by something that, I confess, I cannot find at the moment! (So I may be making this up.)

Barth was talking about God being glorious in God’s freedom. The discussion of God’s glory in freedom shifted for a moment, to claim not only that God is glorious as God acts freely, but that God is glorious as God gives humanity the ability to act freely as well.

God is glorified in his willingness to allow the creature to say no to God.

It made me wonder if we truly believe in the freedom that we say we value so highly. If we believe that God does not want to force compliance or love (for then it would not be love!) then why do we so often see ourselves charged with enforcing compliance to the will, law, or theology of God as we understand it?

It struck me that a people who would not have ourselves compelled should not compel others, but should summon them with love.

All of us are willing to affirm the greatness of Jesus’ words of love:

Do unto others as you would have done unto you.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

But are we able to own up to what we would have done unto ourselves? Will we genuinely acknowledge our desires, our freedoms, our refusal to be compelled, when we are face-to-face with a neighbor who has different desires, yearns to exercise her freedom in a manner differently than we have exercised ours, resists the compulsions of the Jesus story we participate in?

If we insist on our right to say no (or to have said no) to our God, what might that mean for our neighbor who may want that right as well?

Preach It

June 4, 2012 in Bible Thoughts with 4 Comments

It’s still Easter.

Yes, still.

Even now that churches have shifted their gaze to Pentecost and the Trinity, it’s still Easter. It’s Easter so long as Jesus Christ is raised from the dead.

And the presence of Easter means that those who are Christ’s have the ability to speak for him, extending his ministry of preaching and teaching through their own.

After the resurrection, Jesus appears to his disciples and says,

“I’ve received all authority in heaven and on earth.” (Matt 28:18, CEB)

Something happens in the resurrection–not just for us, but for Jesus himself. Jesus becomes Lord in a sense that he was not Lord before. Jesus is given all authority as the Resurrected One.

This is why it is always Easter. As long as the resurrected Jesus is Lord, as long as we are a people demarcated by the Spirit-given confession, “Jesus is Lord,” it is still Easter.

Precisely as one newly imbued with authority over all things, Jesus sends the eleven out into the world:

“Therefore go…”

When the resurrected Jesus appears, he always sends. He appears to the eleven and sends them out. He appears to the women and sends them to the eleven. Luke-Acts is the exception that proves the rule: he tells the eleven to wait. But that waiting is for the purpose of being empowered in order to be sent.

He appears to Paul. And Paul becomes an apostle.

What business does the church have speaking for God? What business does the church have thinking that it can speak as though it knows what Christ would say?

The church has this business because it believes that Jesus is risen from the dead. As the Risen One, he has authority not only to rule, but to send.

Under the Lordship of the Resurrected One, we do not merely go out into the world, but are sent there. We do not merely talk, but we speak for him.

We are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us.

So go ahead and preach it. Speak what is true about God. Make disciples of Christ. Teach them to obey what Christ himself has taught.

Do this, because you are not alone:

“Look, I myself will be with you every day until the end of this present age.” (Matt 28:20)

Do this, because it is still Easter.

Society, Hospitality, and the Kingdom

June 3, 2012 in Bible Thoughts, Culture, Food with 4 Comments

What difference does it make who you eat with?

Before you jump to too quick an answer, allow yourself to mentally relive the horrors of the middle school and/or high school cafeteria.

You sit with your friends. You sit with people like you. You hope for folks you think are cool and/or cute to join you if you’re sitting first. (Someone thinks she knows why all the black kids sit together in the cafeteria…)

Choice of who we eat with typically reinforces our social norms. When we share food together, we are quite often, if tacitly, confirming a likeness: we are family, we are Christians, we are neighbors, we are friends.

This morning I heard a sermon on hospitality. It took up the hard words of Jesus in Luke 14:

  • Don’t choose places of honor at the banquet–you might be humbled.
  • Don’t invite friends or family to your meal–they might invite you back!
  • Compel people to join the marriage feast!

The Kingdom of God warns us about how we eat.

If we use our meals as an opportunity to reinforce our social standing, we may be in for a humbling surprise.

If we decline to use our meals as an opportunity to transcend social boundaries, actively reaching “downward,” we may be in for a humbling surprise.

And, one of the important points from this morning’s sermon, if we don’t live as though the Kingdom of God is a social as it is “spiritual,” we have missed the point.

The Kingdom of God which comes and announces glorification to the humble is supposed to be reflected on earth. That earthly reflection is to be the church. We are to be the ones who demonstrate in our life together and lives individually the world-subverting hospitality of God.

Now, who should we invite over for dinner…

Unifying Spirit

May 29, 2012 in Bible Thoughts with 117 Comments

Last week I tied together some reflections on Pentecost with the ongoing discussions about women in ministry.

I got questions from two different sides but pushing on the same point of my exposition. Some saw the passage in Acts, or my reading of it, as an indication that we shouldn’t ordain anyone others that we should ordain everyone.

Or, to paraphrase a Facebook comment: “Every good complementarian thinks that women can have the Spiritual gift of prophecy, you haven’t made any argument for women’s ordination yet.”

So how is it that the gift of the Spirit to all, and the gifts of speaking for God in particular being given to all, constitutes an argument for women’s ordination. Why should we be willing to ordain anyone we baptize?

The argument that reception of the Spirit, and being baptized into Christ, delineates the boundaries of who might serve in pastoral or other leadership capacities, becomes compelling as we recognize the place that this reception of the Spirit and baptism into Christ holds in Paul’s arguments in Galatians and 1 Corinthians (in particular).

In both Galatians and 1 Corinthians, common reception of the Spirit and common baptism into Christ disclose the gospel-denying implications of discriminating within the Body of Christ.

In Galatians, Paul is confronting the idea that Gentiles, outsiders to the Jewish story, have to become Jewish in order to become fully part of the people of God. Sure, they can be in as Gentiles, but they are not treated equally.

Paul appeals to the common reception of the Spirit: you received the Spirit already, so why turn to something else as though it will make you perfect?

But here’s the thing: we have too little realized that Galatians is not merely about “soteriology,” how we are saved in Jesus. It is about this.

But it is about soteriology because Paul wants to convince them that their ecclesial practice must be different.

Paul is not trying to get the Galatians to change their theology only. He is working over their theology to show them that they are making evil, destructive distinctions among themselves.

To receive the Spirit is to be equal within the body. And if we, in our churches, make distinctions in our practices and positions based on anything other than the Spirit’s initiation, gifting, and calling, we are denying the Gospel.

The indicative of how we enter (baptism into Christ by the Spirit) determines the imperative of how we act (discriminating what people may do solely by the Spirit’s gifting).

In 1 Corinthians these dynamics are even clearer. The church is falling from its confession of the crucified Christ by perpetuating society’s differentiations and hierarchies in the body.

And make no mistake: in the ancient world, gender was not merely a question of differentiation, it was also a question of hierarchy. Men were regarded as better than women.

Paul deconstructs the Corinthians’ practice (ecclesiology) by extended appeals to the gospel and how they are saved (soteriology) as well as the way that the Spirit works among them (pneumatology).

In short, when we uphold the differentiations of society, rather than embracing the unity of the Spirit, we deny the work of God, the judgment of God, and the gospel itself.

Why is Pentecost significant?

Not because it tells us who we should ordain.

It is significant because it shows us that the gift of the Spirit is a democratizing, unifying, and transcending bestowal. God judges all as members of the body, and gives to each, as the Spirit will, or as the Lord Jesus will (Eph 4) according to his good pleasure.

If we demand that the gifting and calling fall along the lines of differentiation that demarcate first creation, if we say that only men can teach or preach, only men can lead and rule, we cling to societal differentiations that the Spirit of God has transcended.

We deny the work of the Spirit, and misjudge the body of Christ.

The Story of the church is always supposed to narrate what is most true about us as God’s people: not only that we are God’s in Christ, but how we are God’s in Christ (we live a cruciform life as a cross-saved people); not only that we are one in Christ, but how we are one in Christ (the Spirit poured out on all irrespective of gender, ethnicity, social status).

We faithfully live our our story when we display in our practice the reality of who we are at the core of our identity. As those marked by the Spirit without regard to gender, we must also faithfully steward the gifts Christ by the Spirit has given to the church without regard to gender.

Memorial Day

May 28, 2012 in Bible Thoughts, Culture with 29 Comments

This is Memorial Day in the United States.

It’s a great day to be an American. And a dangerous day to be a Christian.

It’s the sort of national holiday that creates remembrance of freedom, celebration of democracy, a reificiation of our identity as A People–A People willing to die (and to kill) in the name of liberty and justice for all.

Well, at least, liberty and justice as we define it for all whom we deem worthy to receive it (and some, against their will).

Image(s): FreeDigitalPhotos.net

As Christians in the United States, we should be careful not to take for granted our share in this freedom. None of us worries about being killed on Sunday morning for joining in public worship.

But this gratitude has its own danger.

We might begin to believe that true freedom is gained by the shedding of the blood of our fallen soldiers. We might forget that no, the freedom we enjoy has been gained by us making the other guy shed more of his blood than we have shed of our own.

“No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country.
He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.”
–General George S. Patton

This is the story of America. This is the story of Memorial Day.

And it is, at heart, the antithesis to the Christian story. And that’s the danger.

This story of making the other bastard die for his country is precisely the story that the disciples wanted Jesus to play out before them. It was the story Peter was demanding of Jesus when he rebuked Jesus for predicting the way of the cross.

And it is precisely the story which Jesus rejects by telling Peter, “Get behind me, Satan.”

Between the American story of freedom through our fallen (simply because they could not make the other person fall first!) and the Christian story of salvation through the self-giving love of Jesus, there could not be a wider gulf.

Our Memorial Day is celebrated every time we take the bread and pass the cup:

Do this in remembrance of me.

When we take the bread together we remember that our freedom was not a death in war, but a true surrender:

This is my body, given for you.

We remember that we are made a people in covenant with God by blood that refused to be spilled on a battlefield, by the blood of one who would not shed the blood of another:

This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Let’s be careful how we remember today. Let’s be careful what we remember today. There is freedom that is bought with the price of precious blood.

And it could never be gained by the swords, or guns, of war.

The Spirit of Easter

May 27, 2012 in Bible Thoughts with 5 Comments

It’s still Easter.

Easter is when the Spirit of God exerted the greatest power of all. A person dead for days was raised up to new life.

If Christians have a life-giving Spirit, it is only because the Spirit we have first gave life to the crucified Christ.

Because the Spirit is the Spirit of the Resurrected One, it is the Spirit who can make us sons and daughters of God. The Spirit’s first great son-making act was when it raised Jesus, enthroning him at God’s right hand as God’s Son (Rom 1:4).

This was a recreation of humanity as God’s sons and daughters, so that all who, by the Spirit, are in Christ are being transformed into that new image of God. And we all have a foretaste of our coming resurrection, in which we will be God’s adopted children (Rom 8:23), because the Spirit has made us such children even now (Rom 8:14).

It is Easter so long as God has children who cry out to God as Father upon the earth. Because our cry is the overflow of the resurrection life of Christ, poured out on us all by the Spirit.

It is Easter so long as God has children who obey God as Father upon the earth. Because our obedience is the fruit of newness of life that makes possible what was previously impossible. And this new life is the life of the resurrected Christ, poured out on us by the Spirit who raised him from the dead.

It is Easter so long as God has children who hope in God upon the Earth. Because our hope is the sure expectation that what has begun in Christ is not yet complete, and will not be and cannot be complete, until we fully participate in it. And this hope is stirred up within us by the Spirit who was sent to make good Jesus’ own hope when he was faithful to death, even death on the cross.

It is Easter so long as God’s children experience the Spirit upon the earth. Because the Spirit is the promise received by the resurrected Christ and poured out by the Risen One on the church. And this Spirit is the one who directs us all to confess that Jesus is the resurrected Lord.

Narrative Preaching

May 23, 2012 in Bible Thoughts with 4 Comments

What does storied theology have to do with preaching and teaching?

I get asked that question from time to time, especially by students who are preparing to preach. I think about it sometimes when I’m writing a sermon myself, as I’m doing this week. I got asked it during a webinar I did yesterday with a bunch of preacher-types.

Photo: Preacher by SeaDave

To my mind, how we preach is inseparable from what we think the Bible is and what, then, we’re supposed to do with it.

Three point sermons are great ways to talk through theology texts. Or instruction manuals. How good are they for plotting people within a narrative? Sometimes better, sometimes worse.

Communicating the gospel is telling the story of the Crucified Christ such that those who hear are drawn to recognize that his story is our story.

As Protestants, and as evangelicals, we do well telling and interpreting the story of Jesus as something that is “for” us. But we have not as often done a great job of telling it as our own–not our possession that we distribute through speaking, but the narrative that is to be enacted by the people of God.

Too often, our sermonizing entails a certain disconnect between who we are and what we are supposed to do: “God redeemed you in Christ. Therefore, obey because you’re thankful. Now go to Zimbabwe.”

But when the story is the thing, the connection becomes much closer: Jesus ate with the hookers and told the faithful who knew better that they didn’t have a clue. You are the body of Christ. Go and do likewise.

Jesus saved by his death, you have the same mind of humility in yourself, considering one another better than yourselves. Lay aside your own “glory” so that others may live. And then you will have treasure in heaven.

But more than particular stories with a particular story to be lived, what it means to preach the story of the crucified Christ is probably something along the lines of a long-term vision for conversion of the imagination.

As humans, we are inherently storytellers. We tell stories to understand and interpret the world.

Narrative preaching is hammering on the story to such an extent that we actually begin to hear the story of The Crucified as our own, and thus, in hearing it, to know that it shapes our identity–including what it means to act faithfully as followers of Jesus.

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