It was Jesus who stood out in his Jewish context, not the Essenes or the Pharisees. They were conventional and followed their logic of holiness well; Jesus went in a different direction. The prophetic calling of Jesus demanded the unconventional. The temptation for the church is to be conventional, when the prophetic calling often demands the unconventional.

How prophetic is your church when it comes to the conventional? Has the unconventional become in fact unconventional for the church?

As Luke Timothy Johnson says it in his book, Prophetic Jesus, Prophetic Church, conventionality at the time of Jesus meant to:

privilege the male over the female,
the free over the slave,
the rich over the poor,
the powerful over the weak,
the healthy over the sick.

Everything about Jesus was against that sort of conventional. Jesus’ ministry was a ministry of embrace. The conventional, Johnson says, is fully in step with the “logic of holiness.” Jesus’ ministry is noted, then, by these features: healings that restored people to society (exorcisms, healing the sick) and restoring the marginal (good news to the poor). [Read more...]

If Jesus was prophetic then the church that follows him is prophetic.

That means, first, that the church listens to, is empowered by and is confident in the Spirit of God. Johnson: “The prospect is at once thrilling and frightening.” Why? If we as a/the church learn to listen to the Spirit, we have to do what the Spirit directs us to do. We lose control.

Do we really believe the Spirit guides? Or do we say the Spirit guides — but through Scripture — so that in effect the Spirit is captured and contained by the Bible? Do you think the Spirit moves us beyond the Bible?

Luke Timothy Johnson’s new book Prophetic Jesus, Prophetic Church examines what Luke-Acts says about the Spirit with eloquent clarity.

Johnson develops about seven themes and then sketches what Spirit-prophecy means for the church today. I begin with his themes:

1. We need to avoid thinking of “Spirit” in Luke-Acts in terms of later Trinitarian theology.
2. The dominant characteristic of Spirit in the NT is “power” (eg., Rom 1:4; 1 Cor 2:4, etc).
3. Spirit refers to the Spirit who was promised and now is fulfilled.
4. Jesus’ childhood is filled with Spirit stuff (read Luke 1-2). All the characters in these chps are filled with the Spirit: Zechariah, Elizabeth, Mary, Jesus, John, Simeon, Anna.
5. Jesus’ ministry is filled with the Spirit — Luke 4:1, 14, 18-19 …
6. The disciples are prepared with the Spirit.
7. Acts is loaded with Spirit descriptions, from Luke 1 and Luke 2 on.

What about today? [Read more...]

If Jesus was prophetic (and he was) then the church that follows him is prophetic (and it isn’t always what it should be). But what does it mean to be “prophetic”? For some today it means little more than being critical of social sins. Many say we have to be careful not to lose our prophetic stance in our world. But is that what Luke would have meant? Hardly. That is why we need Luke Timothy Johnson’s new book Prophetic Jesus, Prophetic Church.

What do you think it means to be prophetic today? What can we learn from Johnson’s sketch in this post today? Fill in the blank: We are prophetic when we _______ ?

I want to suggest that Johnson’s ideas can be reduced to these features of what makes something prophetic:

1. Story fulfilled. This theme, so important for understanding gospel itself (see my King Jesus Gospel), works itself out in Luke-Acts with nuance pervasively. E.g., Luke often sounds like the Septuagint and readers can “hear” the Bible. Luke applies this to the Story of the Church as well as to Jesus — showing this theme as something that connects the two books. The speeches in Luke-Acts point to fulfillment of the Story. And within Luke-Acts there are all kinds of examples of something coming up and then later being “fulfilled” within Luke-Acts.  Example: shaking dust of feet in Luke 10:10-11 and Acts 13:51. [Read more...]

If I had to summarize Paul’s gospel, I’d use Luke’s last scene in Acts, and I would suggest this text summarizes the missional theology of Paul in the Book of Acts:

28:30 Paul lived there two whole years in his own rented quarters and welcomed all who came to him, 28:31 proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with complete boldness and without restriction.

Paul’s gospel is summed up in two expressions: kingdom of God and Lord Jesus Christ. The gospel is about the society where God’s people do God’s reigning will and embody his will in a redemptive way, particularly for Paul now in contrast to the Roman empire’s way of doing things. And, the gospel is all about Jesus, the one from Nazareth; that Jesus is the Messiah, which sums up the entire plan of God through Israel’s Story; and that Messiah Jesus is now the crucified and resurrected and ruling Lord, no matter what kind of statues and cult are being worshiped and observed in the Roman forum — Paul’s gospel, then, strikes at the core of what makes Rome tick, and it strikes into that with force and power through the power of the Spirit.

Paul gets to explain his gospel to the Jewish community in Rome, and here’s what he said:

28:23 They set a day to meet with him, and they came to him where he was staying in even greater numbers. From morning until evening he explained things to them, testifying about the kingdom of God and trying to convince them about Jesus from both the law of Moses and the prophets. 28:24 Some were convinced by what he said, but others refused to believe. 28:25 So they began to leave, unable to agree among themselves, after Paul made one last statement: “The Holy Spirit spoke rightly to your ancestors through the prophet Isaiah 28:26 when he said,

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We are in the final days of Luke’s missionary sketch of Paul, and we are in the final week of this series on Acts and Mission. Paul is in prison, and if the traditional site of his imprisonment, just off the Capitoline Hill overlooking the Forum, is accurate, this is not unlike what Paul would have seen from prison. [Click on the image and it will expand. Colosseum in the center background.]

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Well, folks, we’re coming round the bend to the final week of posts on Acts and Mission. (Our next series will be to go through the Psalms, and I will be using J. Goldingay: Psalms, Vol. 1: Psalms 1-41 (Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms)
.)

28:11 After three months we put out to sea in an Alexandrian ship that had wintered at the island and had the “Heavenly Twins” as its figurehead. 28:12 We put in at Syracuse and stayed there three days. 28:13 From there we cast off and arrived at Rhegium, and after one day a south wind sprang up and on the second day we came to Puteoli. 28:14 There we found some brothers and were invited to stay with them seven days. And in this way we came to Rome. 28:15 The brothers from there, when they heard about us, came as far as the Forum of Appius and Three Taverns to meet us. When he saw them, Paul thanked God and took courage. 28:16 When we entered Rome, Paul was allowed to live by himself, with the soldier who was guarding him.

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We’re skipping quickly through the journey narratives of Acts because our focus is on Paul’s missional work and missional theology, and traveling [Fair Havens to the right] … well it’s part of it because missional people travel. Paul gets an opportunity because he predicts disaster, and disaster comes; he gets more opportunity because of healing … he takes his chances.

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