Gen-X Missional Wesleyan

A few more thoughts related to the post a few days ago, reading the bible as one story 1. I’ll probably trickle along with thoughts on the Theology Today essay I mentioned previously, “The Urgency of Reading the Bible as One Story,” by Michael W. Goheen of Trinity Western University. So, I’ll only share a little bit here, content that this is not my only chance to share these thoughts…

On the modern press away from narrative as an overarching category (rather than only as a literary genre), Goheen has the following to say:

“We have fragmented the Bible into bits—moral bits, systematic-theological bits, devotional bits, historical-critiqual bits, narrative bits, and homiletical bits. When the Bible is broken up this way, there is no comprehensive grand narrative to withstand the power of the comprehensive humanist narrative that shapes our culture.” (64:4, p. 472)

Quoting NT Wright’s essay, “How Can the Bible Be Authoritative?” he presses folks holding the “conservative view” of Scripture. Wright “notes that Christians have often found the authority of the Bible in timeless truth and principles, or as a witness ro primary events, or in its timeless function.” Add to this:

“The problem with all such solutions as to how to use the Bible is that they belittle the Bible and exalt something else. Basically they imply–and this is what I mean when I say they offer too low a view of Scripture–that God, after all, has given us the wrong sort of book and it is our job to turn it into the right sort of book.” (64:4, p. 474)

Thoughts?

In “preaching study” posts, I’m really interested in fostering a “community” approach to study and prep for the message, so please interact as much as you like. All Scripture quotes are from the TNIV unless otherwise noted. Thanks!
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Continuing with the series on the Gifts of Christ as we live out the Christian Story, we’ve looked at the gifts of the Word and the Spirit. This week is the gift of the Community. For that, we begin by looking to Luke’s writings in Acts 2:42-47, a classic text on the early Christian community.

Literary Context

• Preceding this passage is Peter’s Pentecost sermon, which is an answer to the question voiced in 2:12, “What does this mean?” referring to all the noise and the disciples proclaming God to the people in their own native languages, which seemed (we suppose by the crowd’s reaction) clearly to be an unusual, if not supernatural event. Not to mention the fire on their heads!
• In 2:41, we read that the church began with a small-ish group of disciples, a defining sermon from Peter and a response from the crowd of “about three thousand” people “added to their number that day.” Not a bad day for a church plant… So, they seemed to have been organized into home groups.
• 2:42 has taken to describe the devotional practices of those home groups: apostles’ teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread (Eucharist or common meal?), prayer.
• One theme is unified devotion to God in community (instead of individually, which is not mentioned or alluded to), which runs throughout, not just in v42.
• They met both in the temple courts and in homes (v46).
• “Signs and wonders” were still a prominent feature of apostolic proclamation (v43).
• There is an emphasis on inclusivity and universality in the language throughout the passage: “Everyone was filled with awe,” “All the believers,” “everything in common,” “anyone who had need,” “enjoying the favor of all the people.”
• And the flow of the passage seems to imply causation between their life together as a community (remember it’s 3000 people in home groups we’re talking about) and the daily stream of persons added to their number.

Cultural Cues

• Table fellowship, a 1st century ethic that is of importance to Luke (as is firmly established in his Gospel), is in play here in vv42, 46. Understanding that ethic more in-depth will probably bring more out of the passage.
• What is the significance of the temple courts? Digging a little more deeply here will help paint the picture more vividly.

Thoughts so far?

My friend Rick and I got together as we regularly do to talk shop (we’re both 30-something Methodist associate pastors) and such over lunch last week. Conversation mostly happens around items like the younger clergy experience and issues of church leadership. On this occasion, the topic was the significance of narrative in contast with statistics. Some researchers found that people will choose a narrative as true in the face of data to the contrary because stories are more compelling. The implications for this are many, especially and obviously related to preaching and public speaking. But this is definitely true for leadership as well, with tremendous implications.

For example, we all make sense of the data we take in by fitting it into the bigger Stories that interpret that minute data. Think about diagnosing diseases and conditions and such (like the TV character House does famously). Same deal. Take the raw data, draw connections between them, and fit them into a larger story that makes sense of the individual parts. Only there are often several potential interpretations (see Acts 2:1-17 for an example of this–one interpretation is that the disciples are drunk–v13; Peter has another interpretation, that this fits into a larger story about what God is doing–v17 and following). Some are better grounded than others. The TV show (and character) House features a team of doctors under the direction of Dr. House whose job it is to diagnose the most difficult cases to diagnose, that is, the cases that are most challenging to connecting the raw data with one another and therefore into a larger cohesive story that makes sense of things.

The January 2008 Theology Today carried a wonderful essay by Michael Goheen, a professor at Trinity Western University in Langly, British Columbia: “The Urgency of Reading the Bible as One Story.” In it he raises up the following from Bob Webber and Phil Kenyon from their 2006 “A Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future“:

“Today, as in the ancient era, the Church is confronted by a host of master narratives that contradict and compete with the gospel. The pressing question is: who gets to narrate the world?” (vol. 64:4, p. 469)

Certainly there are many stories that claim to be The Story, like on the show House their are many diagnoses, or stories, that seem to make sense of reality. In the show, they all fall short somehow until the truth is discovered. That, too, is a good sketch for our lives. We try out a variety of stories that we suppose make sense of “reality” as we experience it. Hopefully, from my perspective, we find them all wanting until we listen to the Christian Story and discover there God’s True Story that makes sense of our lives and that more and more grafts us into its unfolding plot today.

If you haven’t seen this yet, check out this sheep tranquilizer game that measures reaction time. Ridiculous fun.

hat tip: Farmstrong (JD)

I’ve added a new page to the blog (see the tabs in the upper right) titled “booknotes” where I intend to share reviews of books I’ve read. I’ll put them in a pdf and link them on the “booknotes” page in order to keep a running catalog, but will also announce and link them here too when a new one is up.

The first is a book I read last night that my Sunday School Class is using for its curriculum at present, Adam Hamilton’s Christianity’s Family Tree: What Other Christians Believe and Why. In short, good book–an easy and enjoyable read that builds up one’s personal faith via a generous spirited approach towards the Christian traditions included. The pdf for it is here. It is online as a Google Document here.

If you were going to ask a leader for lunch each month for one year, who would you ask? Why/what do you want to hear from them that they are uniquely able to speak to? This assumes, of course, that the leader you’d like to get, would… So, yep, assume that!

Any organization or field–church, education, business, non-profit, (just so they don’t feel left out) government? My focus and context is leadership of Christian communities.

In “preaching study” posts, I’m really interested in fostering a “community” approach to study and prep for the message, so please interact as much as you like. All Scripture quotes are from the TNIV unless otherwise noted. Thanks!
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Continuing with some study around the text, Acts 2:1-13. This week, we look at Jesus’ gift of the Spirit to the disciples. (the first study post is here)

In the area of “cultural cues” in my first post, I raised up the day of Pentecost as a cultural reference in need of explanation. I was reading NT Wright’s new book, Surprised by Hope tonight (yes, I do intend to continue blogging it) and he talks about it there on page 98.

According to Wright, there are two basic roles/meanings of the Passover and Pentecost feasts/festivals: harvest and salvation-history.

HARVEST

“Passover was the time when the first crop of barley was presented before the Lord. Pentecost, seven weeks later, was the time when the firstfruits of the wheat harvest were presented. The offering of the firstfruits signifies the great harvest still to come.”

SALVATION-HISTORY

“Passover commemorated Israel coming out of Egypt while Pentecost, seven weeks later, commemorated the arrival as Sinai and the giving of Torah.”

TOGETHER

“The two strands were woven together since part of God’s promise in liberating Israel and giving it the law was that Israel would inherit the land and that the land would be fruitful.”

THOUGHTS…

So, the first place my mind goes is to thinking about the Cross and Resurrection in relation to the Exodus event (I’ve been pondering those connections for a few years now) and the gift of the Holy Spirit in relation to the giving of the Torah. The Law came as a gift, constituting them as a people–God’s people, and giving guidance for their life before God, with one another, and for the sake of others. Likewise, the Spirit comes as gift to us, constituting the Church as God’s people, guiding and ordering our life before God, with one another, and for the sake of others.

Thoughts?

In “preaching study” posts, I’m really interested in fostering a “community” approach to study and prep for the message, so please interact as much as you like. All Scripture quotes are from the TNIV unless otherwise noted. Thanks!
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I’m in the middle of a 3-part series in this week’s contemporary service on the Gifts of Christ for living out the gospel and the kingdom and Easter and being a body of apprentices to Jesus. Luke is our guide, with help from John primarily.

The 3 parts/gifts are: Word, Spirit, Community. This week we continue with the Gift of the Spirit. The main text is Acts 2:1-13. I’ll look also at the end of Luke’s Gospel, Acts 1, and the rest of Acts 2–Peter’s sermon and following.

Literary Context

1. Setting - The day is Pentecost and the location is Jerusalem. It’s a time when lots of folks would be in town (2:5, 9-11) and the disciples are gathered together, as instructed (Luke 24:49, Acts 1:4-8).
2. Outline - vv1-4 narrates the action of God in the gift of the Holy Spirit. vv5-12 narrates the response of those in the city. v13 poses an interpretation of the events and one answer to the question asked in v12, “What does this mean?” Peter offers a different interpretation in vv14-36
3. 2:1-4 - I find it interesting how hard it is to nail down a description of this event: “a sound like the blowing of a violent wind” and “what seemed to be tongues of fire.” What does that say about the nature of the event itself that it struggles for description? What can be said of certainty is in v4, “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.”
4. 2:5-12 - At least two things are important to notice here. The first is the great variety of persons gathered in Jerusalem at the time of the giving of the Spirit. The second is the disconnect between what the people see–Galileans, and what they hear–proclamation about God in their own language.
5. 2:12 - This is the key question: “What does this mean?” Of the possible answers, two are offered here…
6. 2:13 - This is the first option, “Some, however, made fun of them and said, ‘They have had too much wine.’”
7. 2:14, 16-21, 33, 36 - Peter stands up and offers the second option, highlighted in the selected verses here. Peter turns to Scripture, the prophet Joel, and explains Jesus, who he is and God’s purpose for him.

Cultural Cues

1. In verse 1, we read that it is Pentecost. The Church is accustomed to the Christian significance of Pentecost, but it was a Jewish festival. We need a refresher on the original, Jewish significance of Pentecost to understand the setting here.

Canonical Connections

1. One thinks initially of the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11:1-9, in which humanity is scattered and divided because language is divinely confused. In Acts 2:1-13, something like the reverse takes place as persons who are scattered and who speak different languages are given a common experience because language is divinely unified–not in the language spoken, but in the proclamation received.

Thoughts?

The April 8 issue of The Christian Century includes an article by Lilly Endowment VP for Religion Craig Dykstra on “imagination and the pastoral life” titled, “A Way of Seeing.”

He notes that lawyers seem to have cultivated, in their study and experience, a “particular way of seeing and thinking that is distinctive to that profession” that might be called a “legal imagination” (p. 26). The same goes for artists and probably most if not all other professions as well–doctors, teachers, business persons, salespersons, etc. Regarding pastors, he notes, “Every day pastors are immersed in a constant, and sometimes nearly chaotic, interplay of meaning-filled relationships and demands.” And, “pastoral ministry requires multiple kinds of intelligence, abstract and practical.” Certainly, a well-grounded and well-cultivated “pastoral imagination” is also a necessity for faithful pastoral leadership. The demands of not only the ministry work itself, but also the mental and emotional and spiritual resources one must keep ready and on hand, can be quite overwhelming.

Enter a helpful illustration on this point. Dykstra recalled his seminary days when he taught swimming lessons to children at the local YMCA. The first step? To teach them how to float–to teach them buoyancy. Once that concept took root in experience, they were ready to learn to swim.

“Buoyancy is not something you can teach children–or anyone else, for that matter–through a lesson in physics. Objective as it is, for the sake of swimming one has to come to know it personally. So it is with the life of faith. At the heart of the Christian life there lies a deep, somatic, profoundly personal but very real knowledge. It is the knowledge of the buoyancy of God. It is the knowledge that in struggle and in joy, in conflict and in peace–indeed in every possible circumstance and condition in life and in death–we are upheld by God’s own everlasting arms” (p. 29).

What is true for the faith of any Christian and for the faith of the Church, expressed above, is true of the pastoral life and imagination: “pastoral imagination [that is] built on the knowledge of the buoyancy of God.”

“The confidence that arises when pastors themselves know, in a deeply personal way, that they too can rest confidently in God’s upholding arms enables them to let go of the anxieties that can plague and eventually defeat pastoral work” (p. 31). 

Knowing in experience the buoyancy of God… Thoughts?

In “preaching study” posts, I’m really interested in fostering a “community” approach to study and prep for the message, so please interact as much as you like. All Scripture quotes are from the TNIV unless otherwise noted. Thanks!
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I’m beginning a 3-part series in this week’s contemporary service on the Gifts of Christ for living out the gospel and the kingdom and Easter and being a body of apprentices to Jesus. Luke is our guide, with help from John primarily. The 3 parts/gifts are: Word, Spirit, Community. This is something I’ve thought about for some time now, so I’m excited to study, reflect, and give it a go at preaching and teaching on this.

So, we begin with the first gift that I think of Christ having given us to form and sustain us in The Way, the Word. The text is Luke 24:13-35, the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus.

Literary Study

1. The passage develops in basically two ways: Geography (vv13, 28, 33) and Question & Answer conversation (vv17-27).
2. References to recognition of Jesus by the disciples bookend the passage. In v16, they “were kept from recognizing him” and in v35 they tell others “how Jesus was recognized by them when he broke the bread.” The movement is from ignorance to enlightenment and the key is the revelatory nature of Jesus performing (what would become) the Eucharistic pattern, at which they recognized him (v31).
3. But the preparation for this revelation at Table is the exposition of the Word. The crux of this presentation from Luke is in vv19-27. Two main items are worth attention: First, the contrast established in vv20-21, that Jesus’ death by crucifixion was a major interpretive problem, given the theological categories available to those disciples (and we suspect to any Jews of the period), for anyone who had, as they say, “hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel” (v21). Clearly, according to their understanding, execution on a Roman cross eliminated from consideration the title “Messiah” in relation to Jesus. Even the additions offered in vv22-24 are presented with curiosity and wonder, but not with a sense that something might change the “proper” interpretation of cruciform execution. Second, Jesus (whom they still do not recognize) answers these problems not by disregarding the Hebrew Scriptures, but by engaging them headlong (”beginning with Moses and all the Prophets…”) and finding a new interpretation of the story that had until this point in history been unseen: “Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and them enter his glory?” As Brent Laytham has written, “Jesus’ status as truthful interpreter was vindicated by God when God raised him from the dead. It is this Jesus, validated by events and vindicated by resurrection, who interprets Scripture on the road” (JTI, 1.1, p. 104). And, most importantly: “Jesus himself, in his performance (his life, death, and resurrection), is not only the primary interpreter of Scripture; he is its primary interpretation” (JTI, 1.1, p. 104, emphasis mine).
4. At their request, he stays with them in the village and while at table, repeats the actions he has performed earlier: “took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and began to give it to them…” (v30). This is the pattern from his actions at the Passover/Last Supper in Luke 22:19 and also in the feeding of the 5000 in Luke 9:16.
5. Finally, I will just mention that I think the line upon their recognition of him and his disappearance, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” is one of my favorites. Vivid, joyful, awe-full, it drips with energy and life to me.

Culture Cues

1. Verse 28-29 clearly references the hospitality ethic of the region. They had met a stranger on the road. Being near the end of the day, they most likely felt a sense of obligation to take responsibility in some measure for his well-being, since he appears to be travelling alone, and invite him to stay with them for the night.
2. Naturally, then, they would share the evening meal with their guest. The ethic of “table fellowship” that is front and center in Luke’s Gospel is once again on display. It is within the context of this cultural ethic that Jesus’ actions are set.

Canonical Connections

1. As I’ve said, I will read Luke alongside John as a theological conversation partner. Some initial thoughts will kick things off.
2. The connection in this passage between the Word and the Eucharist (or Holy Communion) is clear. The passage actually reflects an historic pattern of worship in the Christian Church of first opening the Word, then sharing the Eucharist. But the connection is increasing rich, I think, when read alongside John’s Gospel, particularly 1:1-18 (especially v14) and 6:35-58, the passages dealing with Jesus as the Word of God–the Word made flesh, and with Jesus’ own person as the “bread of life” of which to partake to have eternal life.
3. John 1:14. “ The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
4. John 6:54. “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.”

 Thoughts so far?