Faith Improvised

Several dear friends graduated from Grand Rapids Theological Seminary this evening.  I was blessed to give the prayer of invocation.  This is my prayer:

Father in heaven, we praise you for the love you constantly show us in Jesus.  We thank you for your goodness to us, for your constant presence with us by your Spirit, and on this evening of celebration, we thank you especially for your faithfulness and for the good gifts we have all received from your hand.

You have been faithful in calling us to yourself, making us your children, rescuing us from darkness and firmly establishing us in the Kingdom of your beloved Son.  You have called us into various ministries and have been faithful to equip us and to carry us through times of discouragement and fatigue, weariness of soul—those times when we have doubted ourselves and our calling.

We are inconsistent and often lose confidence, but you are faithful and true, always loving us, always empowering us, always upholding us, always longing to do us good.

And you’ve given us good gifts–loving family who have supported us, good friends who have prayed for us, others who have seen you at work in our lives and encouraged us with affirmations of our call to ministry.

Thank you, Father, for the seemingly insignificant things that were actually crucial in the stories of our lives–the encouraging word spoken when we were despondent; the note we received, just a few sentences long, but it gave us hope when we needed a lifeline; the word of rebuke or challenge that reminded us of our high calling and our commission to walk worthy of the gospel.

In all these things, Father, we are reminded of your faithfulness and the good gifts that await us each day.

We are confident that as we now seek to serve and minister on your behalf, you will prove yourself faithful, again and again.  You will continue to give us good gifts.

This evening, we celebrate your faithfulness and your goodness, and we look to the future with hope.  You have called us, you have equipped us, and you have carried us, and we celebrate by giving you thanks, in the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior, the Lord of the church, and the King of all creation.  Amen.

I’m teaching Galatians over the summer and again this fall, and I’ll almost certainly be using Bruce Longenecker’s book, The Triumph of Abraham’s God: The Transformation of Identity in Galatians.

He wonderfully captures Paul’s apocalyptic vision, framing the issues in terms of competing realms and competing sovereignties.  The Galatians must decide which realm they will inhabit—the present evil age, dominated by the cosmic powers of Sin and Death, or the realm of God’s new creation in Christ, animated by God’s own Spirit.  Their community life of destruction and division or of unity and cruciform love says much about who has a rightful claim to cosmic lordship.

Regarding the present evil age, its dynamics, and what it says about cosmic realities:

What liberation theologians call ‘structures of evil’ corresponds to some extent with what Paul calls the ‘power of Sin’, a controlling force that predetermines the direction, course, and possibilities of the lives of those who are born into the post-Adam ‘world’.  For them, only one option exists: to serve the purposes of the power of Sin by their own sin.  In a sense, the power of Sin has managed to set up a system, a society, a world, in which things have an almost natural way of running contrary to the will of God.  And this, of course, has ramifications concerning whose sovereignty such a ‘world’ advertises; a world order permeated by sinfulness is under the apparent sovereignty of the powers of Sin and Death.  So Death, itself conceived of as a cosmic power (cf. 1 Cor. 15; Rom. 8.38), can be said to ‘reign’ (5:14, 17), just as Death’s accomplice also reigns, the power of ‘Sin’ (5:21; cf. 5.12) (pp. 40-41).

Regarding God’s triumph and supremacy in relation to the existence, flourishing, and unity of the church:

Accordingly, in Paul’s thought, God’s ‘oneness’ – that is, God’s sovereignty, supremacy over competing deities, and worthiness as the one who alone is to be worshipped – is advertised in the social constituency of God’s people.  God’s eschatological triumph results in, consists, of, and is exhibited by, the establishment of a community of catholic membership.  The formation of such a group is itself the placard, the display, and the disclosure of the power of the ultimate divinity (p. 57).

Last August I wrote that Tiger Woods would not break Jack Nicklaus’s record of 18 professional major championships.  He currently has 14, which is astounding, but he needs to win five more.

Mike Adams wrote the other day that Woods will win a major this year–maybe even the U.S. Open–and eventually win 20 majors.

I disagree.

In his fascinating book about his years coaching Woods, The Big Miss, Hank Haney portrays Woods as a constant tinkerer.  Woods believes, and has stated as much in many interviews, that to keep from losing ground to his competitors, he must continually improve.

This may be true as a basic philosophy, but not when it comes to the golf swing.  The mental aspect of golf is mysterious and elusive, and the more complications one introduces, the more likely things are to go off the rails. 

Haney noted that because of all his tinkering, Woods has lost confidence in his driver.  This was obvious in the recent Masters Tournament, where Woods could hardly find the fairway.  Worse, he was hitting a snap hook.  That’s not his normal miss, but rather a sign for him of serious swing flaws that will seriously mess with his head.  It was obvious to everyone that he was coming apart at the Masters.

According to Adams, Woods is going to put on quite a show at the U.S. Open in June.  I think he’s dead wrong.

The Open this year is at The Olympic Club in San Francisco, a very difficult course that will require precise driving and mental toughness.  Previous champions there (Scott Simpson and Lee Janzen) were short, accurate drivers who knew how to keep the ball in play.  If Woods couldn’t hit it in the fairway at Augusta–a very forgiving course–he’s in serious trouble Olympic.  Far from winning, it’ll be a surprise if Woods makes the cut.

As I said before, it’ll be fascinating to watch and I do hope the best for Woods.  But again, I think Jack’s record is safe.

The warnings passages in Hebrews present difficulties for interpretation and theological integration. 

David DeSilva notes that when reading these texts, interpreters need to do so from within the same theological framework as the author.

The debate often hinges, however, on the attempt to determine whether or not this group of people has experienced “salvation.”  Are they “saved” individuals who then “lose” their salvation, or are they merely semiconverts who fall away, so that the doctrine of “eternal security” is not impugned by this passage?  This debate demonstrates the ways in which the ideology of interpreters may override the ideology of the author of the text, constructing a foreign framework that inevitably distorts the author’s meaning.  The author of Hebrews does not operate with the theology of Ephesians, where “being saved” is spoken of as a past fact, much less with a complex theology of the stages of salvation constructed from a harmonization of Romans and John (p. 220, emphasis mine).

DeSilva notes that “salvation” remains an eschatological reality for the author of Hebrews.  He’s thinking far more from the “not yet” of salvation, and not much at all from its character as “already.”

Are the people described in 6:4-5 “saved” individuals in the estimation of the author of Hebrews?  They cannot be, since “salvation” is, for this author, the deliverance and reward that awaits the faithful at the return of Christ.  Those who have trusted God’s promise and Jesus’ mediation are “those who are about to inherit salvation,” a deliverance (“salvation”) that comes at Christ’s second coming (9:28), a deliverance (“salvation”) thus comparable to that enjoyed by Noah (11:7).  Noah was not saved when he began to build the ark; he was saved when he finished, stocked, and boarded the ark (and, even more especially, when he found himself still alive after the flood).  The deliverance offered by the Son is indeed “eternal” (5:9), but this “eternal salvation” is what the obedient believers look forward to inheriting and enjoying, specifically on the day when the Son comes to judge the world and reward his junior sisters and brothers who have maintained their trust in and loyalty toward him in a hostile world.  “Eternal salvation” only becomes the “eternal security” of those who have been saved after one has decided that the formulations of Ephesians are more important to one’s ideology than Hebrews” (p. 221, emphasis mine).

Not that they’re “unsaved,” but for DeSilva, the recipients of this letter are all in the group “not yet saved.”  They have received gospel promises and have, to this point, held fast to them, walking in persevering obedience.  They must continue in faithfulness to the end to become those who are fully and finally saved.

Does DeSilva effectively take the pressure off of having to answer the question about the status (“saved” or “unsaved”) of this letter’s recipients?  Or, has he simply moved the goalposts?

I’m lecturing on Revelation Thursday night and, as always, am enjoying dipping back into Richard Bauckham’s brilliant book, The Theology of the Book of Revelation.  A snippet:

John’s work is a prophetic apocalypse in that it communicates a disclosure of a transcendent perspective on this world.

John (and thereby his readers with him) is taken up into heaven in order to see the world from the heavenly perspective.  He is given a glimpse behind the scenes of history so that he can see what is really going on in the events of his time and place.  He is also transported in vision into the final future of the world, so that he can see the present from the perspective of what its final outcome must be, in God’s ultimate purpose for human history.  The effect of John’s visions, one might say, is to expand his readers’ world, both spatially (into heaven) and temporally (into the eschatological future), or, to put it another way, to open their world to divine transcendence.  The bounds which Roman power and ideology set to the readers’ world are broken open and that world is seen as open to the greater purpose of its transcendent Creator and Lord.  It is not that the here-and-now are left behind in an escape into heaven or the eschatological future, but that the here-and-now look quite different when they are opened to transcendence.

The world seen from this transcendent perspective, in apocalyptic vision, is a kind of new symbolic world into which John’s readers are taken as his artistry creates it for them.  But really it is not another world.  It is John’s readers’ concrete, day-to-day world seen in heavenly and eschatological perspective.  As such its function, as we shall notice in more detail later, is to counter the Roman imperial view of the world, which was the dominant ideological perception of their situation that John’s readers naturally tended to share.  Revelation counters that false view of reality by opening the world to divine transcendence.  All that it shares with the apocalyptic literature by way of the motifs of visionary transportation to heaven, visions of God’s throne-room in heaven, angelic mediators of revelation, symbolic visions of political powers, coming judgment and new creation—all this serves the purpose of revealing the world in which John’s readers live in the perspective of the transcendent divine purpose (pp. 7-8).

In Mark’s Gospel, the temple in Jerusalem becomes the object of God’s judgment.  The temple apparatus had become a system of oppression and exploitation rather than a means of blessing for God’s people and for the nations.

Jesus wants his disciples to discern the temple’s true condition and Mark wants his readers to do the same.

On his way to Jerusalem to violently perform God’s judgment in the temple, Jesus curses a fig tree (Mark 11:12-14).  The cursed and withered tree is to be the interpretive lens through which Jesus’ disciples—and Mark’s readers—understand God’s opinion of the temple.  It’s a corrupt institution and its overpowering stature and beauty mask its rotten soul.

Mark makes sure that his readers closely associate the cursed fig tree and the judged temple.

He follows Jesus’ action in the temple with this in vv. 20-21:

In the morning, as they went along, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots. Peter remembered and said to Jesus, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree you cursed has withered!”

So Mark frames Jesus’ temple action with the cursed fig tree.

But there’s one more very subtle detail.  Mark notes that Peter remembers Jesus cursing the fig tree, and this is a tip-off to readers that they need to keep it in mind as they read the rest of the Gospel.  They, too, must remember this perspective on the temple.

Readers should recall this passage when a disciple says something very similar to Peter’s words regarding the fig tree.  Mark 13 opens this way:

As Jesus was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!”

The “look, Teacher!” of 13:1 should call to mind the “Rabbi, look!” of 11:21.  Alert readers will know that this disciple’s perspective needs correction.  He’s overawed by the temple’s immediately impressive grandeur.

If you’ve ever been to Jerusalem, you’ll know that this is easy to do.  The temple platform and its massive stones are simply astonishing.

Mark, however, wants his readers to gain discernment, to see through immediate appearances to the temple’s inner reality.

The system of oppression that prevents people from truly encountering God and experiencing shalom is protected by a shiny and impressive outer façade.  It’s so lovely, it can’t be a devouring monster, an evil and oppressive beast!  Look how impressive it is, how efficiently it is run!  God must be pleased with it!

Readers of Mark—and churches that read Mark together—must cultivate this discernment, too, learning to see through immediate appearances to the reality of their own tendencies toward corruption.

According to Mark, the stakes are high: If buildings and institutions become systems of oppression, they abide under God’s curse.

*Originally given at Midtown Christian Community, Sept. 4, 2010

Mark 11 shows us some of the ways, patterns, and dynamics of the Kingdom of God.  It also reveals to us some of the ways that we end up missing what the King and the Kingdom are all about.

Last week I quoted from U2’s The Wanderer: “I stopped outside the church house where the citizens like to sit; they say they want the Kingdom, but they don’t want God in it.”

Everyone in Mark wants God’s Kingdom.  The question is how the Kingdom comes, and how people participate here and now in God’s Kingdom reality.

The Kingdom of God is elusive in Mark.  Quite often throughout this Gospel the people who should be getting on board with Jesus just don’t get him.  They can’t comprehend what he’s saying and what he’s all about.  The problem is not that Jesus is saying all sorts of mysterious things—though sometimes we read what he does and we’re like, “what on earth is he doing cursing a fig tree!?”  But it’s not that he’s doing and saying mysterious things that causes people to miss what he’s all about.

What causes people to miss it is that they are so blinded by their own desires, by their own preconceptions of what the kingdom of God must be like that they miss it when Jesus talks about God’s agenda and what that means for Jesus.

We see this in Mark 8:31-32:

Jesus began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.

“I’m sorry, Jesus, what was that little bit about being killed!?  Let’s rewind and start that again.  I think you’re reading from the wrong script!  That is not how this goes!  There’s no dying or betraying or being killed!  We go to Jerusalem, take over, slaughter the Romans, and set up the Kingdom and enjoy God’s blessing upon his people.  That’s how this thing turns out, got it?”

But Jesus turns to Peter and says loudly so that everyone can hear, “Get behind me, Satan!” 

Why does Jesus rebuke Peter?  Is it because Peter is steppin’ up on Jesus and Jesus wants to put him in his place?  Not at all.  He rebukes him harshly because Peter “does not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.” 

Remember, Peter is not saying, “hey, forget about the Kingdom, let’s do something really interesting with your divine power!”  No, Peter wants the Kingdom.  That’s not the problem.  The problem is that he wants it to be brought about in the wrong way.

Peter is plotting to bring in the Kingdom exactly how humanity would do it—through power; triumphalism; a show of force; domination of enemies; revenge; payback to those who have dominated and exploited us for so long.

So Jesus has already told them about the Kingdom and has already corrected their desires and their vision of what the Kingdom must be and how it must come.  But we’re going to see here how people tend to miss what the Kingdom is about—how the Kingdom of God is elusive—unless our hearts are attuned rightly and our eyes and ears are open for the right things.

Now, as we think through this narrative, I want you to try some good Bible reading practice.  We are not so much interested in what Mark has to say here simply because it’s just so fascinating.  We want this chapter of Mark to move into our fellowship and do some work, to do some damage, and then do some redemptive repair work.  In order for that to happen, we need to do our part.  I want all of us to put ourselves in the place of the disciples and the crowd in the first 11 verses or so, and then I want us to consider ourselves as the chief priests and the teachers of the Law in the second portion of the chapter.  This may allow us to see how Jesus wants to work in our community to help identify misplaced desires, wrong expectations and notions of what the Kingdom of God among us looks like.

Our aim in studying Mark is not to see how stupid the disciples and the other characters are, but to see how we are people who need to be changed and transformed.

We’re at something of a crossroads in the story of Midtown, and this may be a good time to lift up the hood on how we’re thinking about being Midtown in order to let God truly go to work to identify foolish ways of thinking and of desiring so that we can all truly enjoy God’s presence among us.

I want to identify three ways in this passage that the Kingdom of God is missed, or misunderstood, and perhaps as we see these, you will notice that they have analogies in our own lives and in our own fellowship.  Let’s discuss those and if you see other things here in this wonderful yet bizarre passage, we can discuss those, too.

First, we have what we might call “Jesus’ Pathetic Entry” in the first 11 verses.  Now, that may sound offensive to you, but I think that’s how Mark crafted this passage.  Pay attention to the details: Jesus rides in on a colt; a young horse.  Notice what he is not riding in on—a stallion.

Centuries before, Judas Maccabeus entered Jerusalem riding a glorious stallion and leading a huge army.  A few decades later, Simon Maccabeus entered Jerusalem and was hailed with the following: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord to provide salvation to Jerusalem!”

This scene is pretty familiar in Jewish memory.  In fact what’s happening in Mark 11 is not at all what we might imagine.  Jesus isn’t making a triumphant entry at all.  He’s purposely making a ridiculous entry, one that is completely consistent with what he’s been all about from the beginning of his ministry.

He had told his disciples that he’s going to Jerusalem for a confrontation, betrayal, and death.  And he’s going to bring in the Kingdom through doing what’s right, suffering the murderous wrath of the perverted and exploitative religious establishment, and being raised from the dead by God.

So Jesus isn’t triumphant here at all.  He asks for a colt—kinda pathetic.  But his disciples and others are still holding on to their hopes for triumph.  So they drum up local support, try to whip up the crowds into messianic fever and make acclamations that would be suited for the epic heroes from ages past.

They shout: “Hosanna!” “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest!”  These are not genuine responses that Jesus is looking for at all—they are expressions demanding that Jesus conform to their agenda.

Note two small details in the text.  First, where are the people in relation to Jesus?  Ahead of him and following him.  Mark notes very purposefully that nobody is “with” him.  A small detail in Mark that does not have merely to do with where everyone is standing.  Mark means to indicate that no one is on board with Jesus’ agenda.

And what is Jesus’ response?  What’s he doing?  I always imagined him doing the royal wave.  Nope.  If anything, he’s probably shaking his head.  “You still don’t get it.”  Mark notes no response.  He just continues on his way.

Remember, Jesus has been saying over and over what’s ahead of him in Jerusalem, right?  “I’m going to Jerusalem to be rejected and put to death.  My Kingdom comes through self-giving and servant-hood, unto death, and not through grabbing for power or self-assertion.  You will know that I am King when I’m a withering corpse on the cross, and when God raises me from the dead.  And the way that you enact the Kingdom and participate in my joy is through self-sacrifice, service to the poor, and through broken prayer to your father in heaven.”

The Kingdom is elusive—not because Jesus is unclear, but because our desires are so powerful that they cloud our vision.  We are constantly making Jesus into our own image, making him the servant of our agendas.  We are just like the disciples, trying to turn Jesus’ “pathetic entry” into something that’s glorious, impressive, something that will make us look good.

We find a second way that the Kingdom is elusive in the second half of this chapter.  Jesus then goes into Jerusalem and does two of the most bizarre things in the Gospels—he curses the fig tree and then goes into the Temple to clear it out.  We call it a “cleansing,” but that’s a misrepresentation of what Jesus is doing.

Well, what on earth is Jesus doing!?  Did he just have a bad day and decide to go all Tonya Harding on a fig tree and Herod’s Temple?

Jesus’ actions are symbolic of the Temple’s coming destruction.  The religious system that God himself had set up was meant for good.  As Jesus said, it was meant to be a house of prayer.  But not only that, the Temple was supposed to be a missional temple—a “house of prayer for all the nations.”

Israel was called to be the people who received God’s blessing with great joy and thanksgiving, and then turned to radiate that blessing all around them.  That meant sharing good things with the poor, the orphan, and the widow.  And that meant forming risky and open-ended relationships with other nations.  It meant being a nation of self-sacrifice and self-giving, having faith that sharing what they had meant receiving more from God.  After all, God owns everything.  If we give away what we have and share it with others, there’s an infinite store that God works from and there’ll be plenty more to enjoy.  They were supposed to make it easy for outsiders to come to the Temple to encounter God, and a delight to come to Jerusalem to celebrate God’s universal reign of blessing and plenty.

That never happened.  Israel joyfully celebrated receiving God’s love and then went about fortifying their borders so that they never met outsiders.  Then they cut off the poor, the orphan, and the widow.  After all, if something is wrong in their life, that’s probably a sign that God is disappointed in them.  They shouldn’t be in the Temple anyway!

And the Temple administrative apparatus began to be exploitative, taxing the poor and charging huge prices for sacrificial animals.  The God-business was lucrative.  Forget being a self-sacrificial people!!  That’s a bear market—what’s the point!?

So Jesus performs a parable of judgment and then speaks a parable of judgment.  In the Old Testament, the God of Israel would show up to his vineyard and examine the fruit.  If there was no fruit in the vineyard, then the people would be judged.  That is, if they were not being the joyfully self-expending people that God wanted to make them, they would be cast out of the land into exile.  So Jesus performs what God would do.  He enters Jerusalem, looks around and leaves.  His impending word of judgment is foreshadowed by his examination of the fig tree—it has no fruit.  So it is cursed.  This action looks ahead to what Jesus is about to do in Jerusalem.  He’s about to curse it and hand it over to judgment because it has no fruit.

Something very similar had happened in the Old Testament, in Jeremiah’s day.  Jeremiah’s judgment on it was, “I’m going to destroy this temple and send you into exile; you have made it into a den of thieves.”

So when Jesus says to them, “you have turned my house into a den of thieves,” why are the religious leaders furious at him?

Not only because of Jesus’ verdict on them, but because it means the Temple is going to be destroyed.

So here, we see that the religious leaders have the same problem.  The Kingdom has proved  elusive to them because of their greed.  They have tried to stop up God’s blessing, to hoard it for themselves.  God’s verdict?  Destruction.

The third instance of how the Kingdom is elusive is when it comes to prayer.  And I think we can turn the spotlight off the disciples and the leaders and turn it on ourselves—or, maybe on me, if you’re not nearly as self-oriented and self-focused as I am.

This passage finishes with Jesus’ note about prayer.  I have to admit, I’ve always read this in terms of prayer in general.  Jesus is talking about praying with great faith and asking for wildly outrageous things—“I so badly want a sports car, God, and I have the great faith to know that  you’ll give it to me!” 

More cruelly, we can think of things that seriously hurt us or cause us pain—“Please God, take it away, fix this problem!”

…. and nothing happens ….

But Jesus isn’t talking about prayer in general here, and he isn’t talking about faith in general, either.  The disciples remind Jesus of the fig tree and he tells them, “Have faith in God!”

In the near context, there’s a group of people who are not having faith in God—the Temple authorities.  They are being unfaithful, treasonous to God!

Then Jesus says that they will be able to say to this mountain, be tossed into the sea!  And it will happen!  Jesus is not talking about magical abilities to do sorcery, is he? 

In the context, the mountain is the temple; it is the obstacle to God flooding his people and the world with his blessing.

So, Jesus is saying, “No longer is that building the site where God encounters humanity.  It’s corrupt and about to be destroyed.  You rag-tag, knuckle-headed bunch of disciples are the group that God wants to turn into his new agency for blessing the world, and if there are obstacles among you to that happening, pray that God would remove them, and he will do it!”

That’s precisely the opposite of how I’d normally read this passage.  I want to read it so that God will fulfill all my desires.  But Jesus means that if my desires and selfish plans are in the way of God making this community what it can be, pray that God will transform me and purify my desires God will do it!

And what’s the practical application of this that Jesus makes?

Forgiveness. 

The most immediate way that Midtown can enact being the agency of God’s life on earth is by loving each other, forgiving each other.

As I’ve mentioned, Midtown is at a crossroads.  We’re not sure what the future holds.  But one way we can guarantee that we will wither like a fig tree and will not become a community of flourishing is by pointing fingers and blaming one another. 

If we do that, we’re done.  If we do that and Jesus were to show up, he’d throw over the BBQ grill and toss our tables around as a sign that God is on his way to judge.

But if we’re a broken people, praying for God to give us renewed hearts, renewed minds, Gospel eyes and ears, then God truly can work among us to give us life, to make us flourish, and to use us in ever-so-small ways to be a blessing to Springfield for the glory of King Jesus.

Amen.

A few days ago, Metta World Peace (it’s just so hard to write that and not laugh) of the Los Angeles Lakers hit James Harden of the Oklahoma City Thunder in the head with an elbow.

He claimed afterward that it was accidental.  It was part of his celebration of the previous play, and Harden just happened to be in the way.

“It was bad timing for me and then, physically, it was bad timing for Mr. Harden,” World Peace said after practice was over. “Who can write up a left-hand dunk and then all of the sudden somebody is right behind you? It’s hard to draw that up and to plan something like that. It was just the worst timing for me.”

Watching the video of the incident, it’s hard to believe in World Peace (sorry, can’t resist).

Much of this is seriously uninteresting.  World Peace (formerly, Ron Artest) is a thug and a hopeless attention-seeker.  In 2004, after sparking the worst arena-wide brawl in NBA history, he went on radio talk-shows hawking his rap CD.

What I do find interesting, however, are the tortured justifications of an obviously intentional and brutal action.  I say this because I have the same tendencies toward self-preservation that drive me to try to evade the truth and obfuscate in order to escape blame.

I have found that when I’m wrong—when I’ve spoken hurtful words or behaved selfishly—I enact World Peace (alright, that’s enough).

When I’m wrong, my heart races with self-justifying impulses and my mind frantically casts about with strategies for self-preservation.

And I look just as stupid.

The impulse for self-preservation—trying to preseve as much dignity as possible—prevents genuine reconciliation.

True freedom and genuine reconciliation are possible only when I speak frankly.  However painful it is, I need to speak honestly about what I’ve done and ask for forgiveness.  That sort of truth-speaking opens up hope and clears the way for reconciliation.

It satisfies the heart of the one I’ve wronged and it’s the only way to open up roads of redemption.

A few days ago, I wrote that Christian people, evangelicals included, have developed the terribly unfortunate habit of misreading the Gospels.

It goes beyond unintentionally cultivated habits.  I think that reading the Gospels for what they’re really saying threatens to upset and destabilize our church community dynamics that have become predictable and comfortable.  Contemporary Christians—evangelicals included—are too threatened by the Gospels to read them for what they’re actually saying.

Resistance to the Gospels takes many forms and happens for various reasons.  We’ve noted in the comments some of the forms resistance takes over the last few days (e.g., older premillennial dispensationalism, some forms of a Law/Gospel contrast). 

Here are a few more.

I can recall our Gospels-resistance reading strategies from Bible studies in high school and college.  We would encounter a challenging statement of Jesus, such as that in Luke 14:12-15:

Then Jesus said to his host, “When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or sisters, your relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

Realizing that Jesus very clearly says to invite the poor and those of shameful social status, we would fall silent and then ask, “what do you think Jesus means by this?”

Inevitably, someone would say, “I think Jesus is referring to our hearts—that we should have willing hearts in case we’re ever called to serve.”

This is a familiar strategy, one I’ve encountered (and used myself) many times.  We stare at the clear words of Jesus that challenge our well-established social patterns and community dynamics, and we flinch.  We relegate Jesus’ commands to motive-purification, ignoring that he’s calling for purposeful transformation of actual social practices.

N. T. Wright is dead-on when he says that evangelicals are Bultmannian when it comes to the Gospels (How God Became King, pp. 22-23).  Bultmann sought to strip away the “husk” of the historical details of the Gospels in order to get to the “kernel” of theological truth the Gospels writers were really communicating.

We strip away the “husk” of Jesus’ clear words to find the spiritual “kernel” that we apply to our hearts and motives. 

This is a reading strategy whereby we keep Jesus safely tucked away in our hearts, self-satisfied with our piety.  But we intentionally avoid doing what he says with our bodies, social practices, and community dynamics.

It’s too threatening.  If we actually did the things Jesus says to do, we’d have to change, and we just don’t want to.

Another example, not so much of why Gospel-resistance happens, but how.  Several years ago, a senior colleague confronted me angrily about something I had written.  He quoted to me the following passage from a paper I had presented on racial reconciliation:

[The gospel is] the announcement of the arrival of the long-awaited kingdom of God—the announcement that God has come in Jesus to begin his work of reclaiming and redeeming the world, which begins with a redeemed people—a holy people who will manifest, in their social practices, the very life of God on earth.

He demanded to know where I could have gotten such a statement.  I thought he was joking.  He wasn’t.

I told him I got it from reading the Gospels.  He brushed that aside, insisting that this was a sign that I was “emergent.”

I’ve had a number of conversations like that more recently.  I spoke to one person about the church embodying Kingdom life through transforming corporate practices.  He told me that was the “social gospel,” a distraction from the mission of the church.

I said to another that based on a certain text in Mark, Jesus calls the church to take uncomfortable steps of faith—to go beyond what is familiar—in order to enact the Kingdom of God.  He asked me for a few examples, so I suggested that he and a few of his friends initiate a church-based urban mentoring program, looking after some junior high boys who don’t have fathers.

He told me that “sounded emergent.”

I asked him if he thought a more effective demonstration of faith would be getting together with his friends and praying for impossible things.  He nodded. 

After a brief pause, he smiled and said that he may have been speaking out of his theological conditioning, admitting that he doesn’t want to be pushed out of his comfort zone.

We could go on for quite some time giving examples from a variety of theological perspectives and Christian traditions of ways we manage to resist hearing what the Gospels are saying.  My sense is that many of us feel deep-down that there’s too much at stake–our comfort, the predictability of our church community life, our positions of influence, our entrenched interests. 

All of those are threatened by taking the Gospels seriously and letting them radically sift, reorder, and transform the community dynamics and social patterns of our churches.

It’s easier to relegate their clear message to the “safe zone” of our hearts and label calls to actually obey them as “liberal,” “emergent,” or “social gospel.” 

Or, here’s a new one: “That’s something N. T. Wright would say.”