By Craig Keener, professor at Asbury Theological Seminary, is author of twenty books including Paul, Women & Wives, The IVP Bible Background Commentary, and, most recently with his wife, Impossible Love: The True Story of an African Civil War, Miracles and Hope against all Odds.

Sometimes Paul gets a bad rap. The slave narratives are replete with sentiments from former slaves who loved Jesus but hated Paul, because slaveholders regularly quoted Ephesians 6:5, “Slaves, obey your masters.” What the slaveholders didn’t bother to quote was the rest of the passage, which goes on to say, “masters, do the same things to them” (6:9). That is, if slaves have to obey their masters, masters must also obey their slaves!

Did anyone in the first century take Paul literally on that point? Probably not. But that doesn’t change that what he actually said expressed one of the most radically antislavery sentiments of his day. He wasn’t talking about violently overthrowing the institution; even the failed slave revolts of his era had never attempted that. But he was talking ethics, ethics that went beyond mere theory.

Some early Stoic philosophers had advocated for human equality, but Stoics had backed off from this and those who could afford it had slaves. Paul certainly agreed with Stoics in principle: he affirmed that slaves and slaveholders share the same master in heaven (Eph. 6:9). But his instruction, “do the same things to them,” goes beyond theory to practice.

This isn’t an accident, a slip of Paul’s tongue or his scribe’s pen. Paul frames his entire section of household codes around mutual submission. What are household codes, you ask?

In his work on governance, the Greek thinker Aristotle had a large section on family roles. In it, Aristotle instructed the male head of the household to rule his wife, children, and slaves. Subsequent thinkers adopted the same schema, often in the same sequence. Because Rome was suspicious that minority religious groups undermined these traditional values, such groups often labored to reaffirm their belief in Roman values.

Paul presents a series of household codes in the same sequence as Aristotle: the relation of the male head of the household (as it was assumed in his day) to wives, children, and slaves. It’s possible that Paul is thinking like a member of a minority religious group–after all, he is writing from Roman custody, and is probably in Rome (Eph. 3:1; 4:1; 6:20).

Yet Paul changes the standard formula. Instead of addressing just slaveholding men, he also addresses the wives, children, and slaves, who probably comprised a larger bulk of the church. (In Paul’s urban congregations, the slaves would have been household slaves, who had more freedom and who more frequently had opportunities for manumission (liberation from slavery) than other slaves. Nevertheless, they were still slaves).

Moreover, he never instructs the male householder to rule; instead, he is to love his wife, serving her by offering his life for her (5:25), to avoid provoking his children (6:4), and to treat slaves as fellow servants of God (6:9).

Most importantly, Paul frames his entire set of instructions (5:21-6:9) by enjoining mutual submission: submitting to one another (5:21) and doing the same things to them (6:9). This sets submission in a new context: the example and teaching of our Lord, who invited us all to serve one another (Mark 10:42-45; cf. John 13:14-17, 34-35; Gal. 5:13-14).

Some men today like to quote Ephesians 5:22 (“Wives, submit to your husbands”) out of context, much the way slaveholders quoted Eph. 6:5.

But in Greek, there is no verb in 5:22. It simply says, “Wives, to your husbands.” Of course, it is not saying, “Wives, just do to your husbands whatever you want.” Greek grammar presumes that we will carry over the verb from the preceding verse, and that verb is “submit.” But because the verb is carried over from 5:21, it cannot mean something different than it meant in 5:21. The wife’s submission is merely an example of mutual submission; so is the husband sacrificing his life for his wife.

Some object, “But submission is explicit only for the wife!” Ah, but the command to love is explicit only for the husband (5:25). Yet we understand that all Christians should love one another (5:2), and that all Christians should submit to one another (5:21). Although Paul is not trying to cover every circumstance, he offers us a general principle for how we should live: looking out for one another’s interests, listening to one another, and loving others more than ourselves.

A few others taught mutual submission; like Paul, they were among the most progressive thinkers in antiquity. Yet applying Paul’s teaching on mutual submission literally would have been unheard of. Just because it was rarely attempted, however, does not make it any less significant.

Even today, husbands and wives and people in other kinds of relationships often seek their own interests more than those of others (cf. Phil. 2:4, 21). What would happen if we took Paul at his word? (I’m not referring to abusive relationships here. Also, there is much less mutual submission in the instruction to fathers: children do need guidance.) What would happen if we actually began to put mutual submission into practice? Let’s try it and find out.

You are What You Love: Nagging Questions

By David George Moore. Dave’s interview show and other media can be found at www.mooreengaging.com.

James K.A. Smith (aka Jamie) writes with insight and verve. He is a deep thinker who wants us to know that there is more to life than thinking. More on that in a moment.

I’ve read four of Jamie’s books: Letters to a Young Calvinist (reviewed here: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2013/06/15/david-g-moore-i-guess-im-not-a-calvinist/), Desiring the Kingdom, How (Not) to be Secular, and his latest, You are What You Love (YWYL). YWYL is designed as a more accessible version of Desiring the Kingdom, but I found both worth reading.

There is much to appreciate about the project Smith calls “cultural liturgics.” Smith has sniffed out a pervasive and naïve notion at least among American Christians: the idea that thinking alone is adequate to form us in the way Christ intends. Smith’s concern here is well founded as one can find many examples of Christians who once stuffed their heads with Bible knowledge only to find themselves now burned out, disillusioned, and adding to the growing numbers of self-proclaimed evangelicals who seek to work out their salvation autonomously. There is no doubt that Bible knowledge alone does not make one a Christ follower. Jesus warned the Jews to not confuse knowledge of the Scriptures with knowing Him (Jn. 5:39,40).

Smith forcefully argues that Bible knowledge alone is not enough. Some believe he falls prey here to a false dichotomy in correcting this error. I think that charge is unmerited. Smith gives some explicit disavowals to the contrary. Also, the body of Smith’s work makes clear that he is no anti-intellectual. Something else must be afoot rather than simply advocating a simplistic either/or option of head versus heart.

I agree that we are not just (a modifier Smith wisely employs on many occasions)“thinking-things” or ‘brains on a stick.” Smith’s view seems to be that formative liturgies are primary while biblical knowledge, essential as it may be, takes a subordinate role of sorts. He writes, “We learn to love, then, not primarily by acquiring information about what we should love but rather through practices that form the habits of how we love.” (Emphasis his)

The examples Smith gives in YWYL to demonstrate that biblical knowledge is hardly adequate for the best Christian formation are ones that sadly glut the evangelical landscape. Granted, there are many pathetic examples of ministers investing an almost magical power in acquiring biblical knowledge, but here is where I have questions. It is easy to see the foolishness of making biblical knowledge alone magical, but that begs a question of sorts. Is biblical knowledge acquired in only one way? That is, do all Christians believe that mere intellectual apprehension of biblical data is the proper way to learn Scripture?   Smith’s monolithic description of gaining bible knowledge does not consider the myriad of ways, including the healthy ones, where Christians interact with God’s Word.   Yes, we have many bad examples of a simplistic notion that learning the Bible better can automatically make one mature. However, there are Christians who come to the Scriptures with reverence, submission, and a genuine reliance on the Holy Spirit. Proper Bible knowledge is meant to lead us to the person of Christ. Smith never engages with these possibilities. Categorizing the place of all biblical thinking in a monolithically negative manner dismisses what ought to be delved into much further. David Morlan writes in his own review of Smith’s proposal that “he deals with generalities and stereotypes of churches, not actual people and actual churches.”

I would argue there is more of a both/and dynamic with thinking and formation rather than formative liturgies being primary. II Corinthians 10:3-5 and Romans 12:1,2 along with a more integrated/holistic anthropology (which keep the intellectual tethered to the affective) also move in that direction. The latest neuroscience from folks like Antonio Damasio shows that there is more talking going on between the so-called right and left halves of the brain than we previously imagined. I therefore find Smith’s regular refrain that we love things before we know why or that “virtue isn’t acquired intellectually but affectively” unpersuasive. Smith claims that our “primary orientation to the world is visceral, not cerebral.” In my own discipleship ministry with men I first cover trusting God when suffering intersects one’s life. I take the men through an in depth study of Habakkuk. It is heavy biblical input while candidly working through issues of sorrow, grief, and the important role of lament. I don’t find it possible or prudent to separate the so-called visceral from the so-called cerebral. New Testament scholar, Patrick Schreiner, voices a similar concern: “I still personally wonder if the picture Smith paints is actually too neat. Maybe the process of theological anthropology is too complex to break down into humans primarily being this or that. Because isn’t the intellect a part of the body’s and heart’s process of desiring”?

Jamie Smith makes all of us think more deeply about the Christian faith. I for one have benefitted from his gifted pen, even, and maybe especially so, when I disagree with him.

[I am grateful to Jamie Smith for his quick response to my questions. I am also appreciative for Dennis Okholm and Scot McKnight taking the time to interact with me over the role of liturgy in spiritual formation. I alone take responsibility for the views expressed in this review.]

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. (12:1-4)

There are many issues that we could pick up on and discuss in Genesis 11:27-12:9. The journey began with his father and brother when they left Ur of the Chaldean’s and traveled up to Haran or Harran.  Both Tremper Longman III (Genesis in the Story of God Bible Commentary), and Bill Arnold (Genesis (New Cambridge Bible Commentary)) agree that the Ur refereed to in the text is the well known city of Babylon although “of the Chaldeans” is an anachronism added to allow the reader to identify the city. The Chaldeans were not in Ur until well after the time of Abraham and even the time of Moses. John Walton (The NIV Application Commentary Genesis), on the other hand, argues that Ur may be some other city up near Harran, otherwise he finds it hard to understand why they’d stop in Harran as it is off the direct route. Longman suggests that they may have stopped in Harran because this was their ancestral homeland. This seems a reasonable suggestion. The exact path, however, isn’t really the point of the story. (The image outlines an “as the crow flies” path on a NASA image of the area.)

Although it is important not to drive a wedge between Genesis 1-11 and Genesis 12 and following, it is also clear that the story takes a dramatic turn. Genesis 1-11 dealt with deep history. The authors and editors may well have told this deep history in a manner that revealed God’s mission in the world but used the stories current among the people. Whatever we think of the literary construction of Genesis 1-11, Chapter 12 takes us in a new direction. It is still an ancient book written in the conventions of the time to an original audience removed from us, but it is telling the history of the call of Israel. This is ancient history, but it isn’t deep history. There are connections with 1-11, but there is also a clear change in tone and focus.

There are two key points worth discussion in the call of Abram and his initial journey into Canaan.

First, God has a promise for Abram. YHWH will bless him and make him a great nation. Note that all that Abram must do is “go,” God will do all the rest. Bill Arnold comments:

The syntax of the six clauses in 12:2-3 may well express purpose following the imperative of 12:1: “Go … so that I may make of you a great nation, so that I may bless you and make your name great, and so that you may be a blessing.” (p. 131)

The final phrase “and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” has given rise to much comment. The NRSV translation here is traditional, but it is also possible to translate this “in you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves.”  The latter reading would imply that Abram’s name becomes an invocation for blessing rather than Israel becoming a blessing for the world.  Longman, Walton, and Arnold all prefer the traditional reading. Walter Moberly (The Theology of the Book of Genesis), on the other hand, argues for the latter reflexive reading with the blessings here limited to Abram. In this speech God is giving hope to Abram. Moberly argues that it seems out of place to throw in a promise to be a blessing to all the nations of the earth.  How would this give Abram encouragement? However, the traditional translation has support in the Septuagint and in Jewish interpretation. It is a truly ancient reading. Moberly concludes:

Interestingly, however, a concern to read Abraham’s call by God as being for the sake of the nations is not simply a peculiarity of Christian Old Testament interpretation, courtesy of Paul, from which Jews simply disengage. A construal of Abraham as mediator of divine blessing to the nations is in fact also attested in Jewish interpretation down the ages, as is Abraham as a model.(pp. 159-160)

For even if Judaism has not characteristically understood itself in the kind of missionary terms that are intrinsic to Christianity, it has nonetheless regularly wanted to affirm that God’s call of Israel not only is an end in itself that needs no further justification than the love of a parent for a child, but also is of potential moral and spiritual benefit to other nations. (p. 161)

The story of the Old Testament is a story of the mission of God, and this mission involves the entire world, not only Israel. Given the broad scope of Genesis 1-11 and the call of Abram out of the nations of the earth scattered in Genesis 10-11, it seems quite reasonable that the intent of 12:3 is not limited to Abram alone. It is intentionally connected to all the nations of the earth, who will be blessed through Abram.

Second, Abram obeyed. He left his father and his brother Nahor in Harran and headed off to Canaan with his wife, his nephew, and his household (likely a significant group of people). Arnold comments:

“So Abram went” is one of the most remarkable statements of the Bible (12:4). We might expect any manner of dialogue or debate between verses 3 and 4, or hesitation on Abram’s part motivated by confusion, self-doubt, or stubbornness. But this text isn’t interested in such things. Rather the simplicity of “so Abram went” portrays a picture of bold and radical dependence on God’s word, the diametric opposite of Adam’s and Eve’s rationalization (3:1-7), which makes Abram’s obedience a model of faith  for the rest of the Bible. “Went” (wayyēlek) is an unadorned, almost nonchalant response, corresponding to the imperative of the same word in 12:1, “go” (lek). It is as though everything in the text has been stripped away in order to reveal just how perfectly Abram’s obedience matches Yahweh’s command.  (p. 133)

Abram goes to Shechem and then to a place between Bethel and Ai (not too far away). At Shechem the Lord appears and promises the land to Abram’s descendants. At both places Abram builds an altar to YHWH. Arnold notes that “The patriarchs never use existing cult sites, but rather build new altars or reuse ones they themselves built previously.” (p. 134)   Between Bethel and Ai he stayed for a time and built an altar to YHWH and invoked the name of YHWH. “Using the same phraseology as in Gen 4:26 for the institution of Yahweh worship among humanity generally, this invoking or “calling upon” the name of Yahweh is most likely a reference to formal, public worship.” (p. 135)

In faith Abram went and began to publicly worship the Lord.

If you wish to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net.

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By Joe James

My first post in this series was aimed at exposing an unnecessary divide in Christianity. I believe that the church cannot afford to adopt either a conservative or a progressive worldview. At the end of this series, I will propose a third way – the Table. But for now, let us examine the conservative paradigm.

One of my favorite novels (and films) is Cormac McCarthy’s “No Country for Old Men.” The book is pulp novel, blood and sensational. It is about a simple country boy named Llewelyn who discovers $2.4 million in the West Texas desert while hunting. What Llewelyn doesn’t know is that a truly terrifying trained killer named Chigur is after the money and is now hunting him. But the main character of the book is the small town Sheriff, Ed Tom Bell.

Each chapter in the book opens with these inner monologues from Sheriff Bell reminiscing of life in Texas a few generations ago and complaining the growing tides of evil swelling around him today.

I never had to kill nobody and I am very glad of that fact. Some of the old time sheriffs wouldn’t even carry a firearm. A lot of folks find that hard to believe but it’s a fact. Jim Scarborough never carried one. That’s the younger Jim. Gaston Boykins wouldn’t wear one. Up in Comanche County. I always liked to hear about the old timers. Never missed a chance to do so. The old time concern that the sheriffs had for their people is been watered down some. You can’t help but feel it. Sheriff Hoskins over in Bastrop County knowed everybody’s phone number in the county by heart. It’s an odd thing when you think about it. The opportunities for abuse are just about everywhere. There’s no requirements in the Texas State Constitution for bein a sheriff. Not a one. There is no such thing as a county law. You think about a job where you pretty much have the same authority as God and there is no requirements put upon you and you are charged with preserving nonexistent laws and you tell me if that’s peculiar or not. Because I say that it is. Does it work? Yes. Ninety percent of the time. It takes very little to govern good people. Very little. And bad people can’t be governed at all. Or if they could I never heard of it.

So let us entertain Sheriff Bell’s concern. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that things are getting worse. The world is in a moral spiral from which, it appears, it will not recover. This is typical of the conservative worldview. The idea is to give precedence to the evils growing all around us and appeal to the moral conscience of people to return to the “old times.” Such conservatives do not believe (perhaps wisely) in the idea of moral progress. To the contrary, they believe the moral shape the world ought to take is behind us. We were there 50 or 100 years ago.   We had it. We lost it.

There is a great scene in the film adaptation of “No Country for Old Men,” toward the end, when Sheriff Bell is having coffee with a sheriff from another county. They are both dazzled by the moral decline of their small Texas communities. The one sheriff bemoans that Texas children are walking around with “green hair and bones in their noses.” Sheriff Bell replies, “I think as soon as you stop hearin ma’am and sir the rest is soon to follow.” Then they collectively agree, “It’s the tide. It’s the dismal tide. It is not the one thing.” They share a sense of moral decline. Things are indeed getting worse.

Maybe?

Maybe things are getting worse. One of the best “conservative” theologians is Richard John Neuhaus. He has a great book called “American Babylon” where he attempts to dismantle the myth of moral progress.

Moral progress, however, is far from being self-evident. We have already noted the events of this century past that have so brutally battered the idea of moral progress. We should at least be open the possibility that today we are witnessing not moral progress but a dramatic moral regression.

Maybe Neuhaus is right. Think about what we call progress. Nuclear energy? Hiroshima and Nagasaki? A refusal to even speak about the consequences of sexual degradation in the name of an ethic called “privacy?” Are pandemics private? Has not the age of “precision warfare” proven to be the bloodiest in human history? Have we eliminated slavery, or just traded slave labor for sex slavery? Are things not getting worse?

Maybe. But here is a question. Are things actually getting worse, or is it simply that the veneer of the righteousness that covers American social life has been stripped away? There is a huge difference.

Sheriff Bell and a Crooked God

I have a shepherd at my church that is fond of quoting Ecclesiastes to people who moan about days gone by. Ecclesiastes 7:10 says, “Do not say to yourself, ‘Why were the former days better than these?’ For it is not from wisdom that you ask such things.” My good shepherd friend understands that sitting in the ashes of glory days is not from wisdom. You can either whine or work toward something better. But he also understands that the world is not quite as straight as we once thought it was. From what great moral mountaintop have we fallen? Genocide? Slavery? Segregation? Perhaps things yesterday are better in our memories than in reality.

This little proof-text comes from a collection of wisdom sayings from Ecclesiastes 7:1-13. The last piece of wisdom from the collection says this, “Consider the work of God; who can make straight what he has made crooked?”

Life is complicated. The world is messed up.   We live on top of unmendable cracks. Living wisely as citizens of the kingdom of God will surely involve recognizing that the history we live on top of, the story we inherit, the “sins of the father” are something we will never escape. We can’t go backward in time. Yesterday was just as broken as tomorrow.

In one of the closing scenes to “No Country for Old Men,” Sheriff Bell visits his wife’s Uncle Ellis. Ellis is a wheel-chair bound, filthy, uneducated man with a seemingly meaningless life in a rotting house in the middle of the desert. Ed Tom tells Ellis he is retiring. “I feel overmatched.” Uncle Ellis listens to his lament.

“I always thought when I got older that God would sort of come into my life in some way. He didn’t. I don’t blame him. If I was him I’d have the same opinion about me that he does.”

Ellis replies with the wisdom of a Hebrew prophet. “You don’t know what God thinks.” Ellis shifts back in his chair and sips his coffee. “Your daddy ever tell you how your Uncle Mac come to his reward? Gunned down on his own porch over in Hudspeth County. Seven or eight of ‘em come up there. Wantin this wantin that. Uncle Mac went back in the house to get the shotgun. They was ahead of him. Shot him in his doorway. They just sat there on their horses watchin him die. After a while one of em said something in Indian and they turned and left out. Uncle Mac knew the score even if Aunt Ella didn’t. Shot through the lung. And that was that, as they say. He died that night. She buried him out back in that hard old caliche.” Ellis takes a deep breath and gathers himself back into the room with Ed Tom. “What you got ain’t nothing new. This country’s hard on people. You can’t stop what’s coming. And it ain’t all waitin on you. That’s vanity.”

Uncle Ellis is the lone prophetic voice in Cormac McCarthy’s novel. Thinking our age is the age when everything falls apart, longing for the golden age of decades gone by… that’s vanity.

The following is an email correspondence between Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian in New York City, and David George Moore. Dave blogs at www.twocities.org

Dear Tim,

I have read several of your books and benefited greatly from each one.  I am also grateful for your willingness to do the Patheos/Jesus Creed interview with me.  Hyperbole and lack of nuance (not two things many associate with you) can be taken literally when the person communicating is well regarded.  I’m afraid that may be the case with the following.  In several places I have seen various iterations of your remarks when it comes to young preachers.  Here is one such example:

I don’t believe you should spend a lot of time preparing your sermon, when you’re a younger minister. I think because we are so desperately want our sermon to be good, that when you’re younger you spend way too much time preparing. And, you know, its scary to say this to the younger ministers… you’re not going to be much better by putting in twenty hours on that sermon–the only way you’re going to be a better preacher is if you preach often. For the first 200 sermons, no matter what you do, your first 200 sermons are going to be terrible. (laughter from the crowd). And, if you put in…fifteen or twenty hours in the sermon you probably won’t preach that many sermons because you won’t last in ministry, because your people will feel neglected.

Similar to Gladwell’s now contested “10,000 hours of practice,” many seem to take the 200 sermons in the most wooden of ways.  I get the point that it may take some five years of preaching to “find one’s voice,” but surely there is a wide variation of gifts and maturity that make the number 200 arbitrary, aren’t there?

Personally, I have heard young preachers whose maturity coupled with a genuine unction of the Spirit made it evident that “they found their voice.”  Conversely, I sadly report hearing some minsters who long ago crossed 200 sermons and still seem in search of their voice.

Sincerely in Christ,
Dave

Hi Dave—

Certainly we can’t take 200 in a wooden way. Of course there are variations. By the way, I doubt I’ve used the number “200″ more than once or twice in off hand remarks.

You are right in drawing out the broader principle. If you preach regularly, say 40-50 times a year, including Sunday preaching and other speaking at weddings, funerals, and conferences, then, yes, I’d say it takes at least three years of full-time preaching before you get even close to being as mature and skillful a preacher as you are capable of becoming.

There are basically three things that go into the “maturing” process: a) the actual preparation of the message, b) life experience—of your own heart, of pastoral work, of prayer, c) practice.

I’d say that younger preachers a) don’t have enough life experience, and b) don’t preach often enough to be growing in preaching as they should. They tend to put all the emphasis on long hours of academic prep.  It would be better if instead of 20 hrs of prep they did 5-6 hrs of prep and spent the rest of the time out involved in people’s lives, and then simply preached and spoke more often.  That is the balance that is needed. And then give it 3-5 years to come up to whatever level God has gifted you.

And, yes, I have heard some young preachers with pretty good spiritual maturity for their age and God’s anointing–be quite good.  Yet compare the sermons of the young Spurgeon (who was a teenage preaching phenom) with the old Spurgeon. The older Spurgeon sermons are far richer, wiser, better.

Tim

By John Frye: Preaching and Love

Seared into my memory is a bad sermon I heard once. I cannot get past the glaring contradiction of the communicator’s words and his facial expression and hand gesture. I see a man shaking his fist at the congregation, speaking through gritted teeth and with red-faced anger, bellowing, “God loves you! Loves you so much!” The content of what I heard and what I saw plus how I heard it dramatically cancelled each other out. Love and what looked and sounded like hate created an ugly preaching moment.

Without getting bogged down with the meaning(s) of “tongues of men or of angels” in 1 Corinthians 13:1, let’s focus on “speak” and “do not have love.” Gordon Fee comments, “To ‘have love,’ therefore, means to be toward others the way God in Christ has been toward us” (God’s Empowering Presence, 201). How a communicator, a pastor/preacher/teacher, can presume to speak for Christ without being saturated with and desiring to express the love of Christ is a mystery to me. The love of Christ, love for Christ and love for the ones Christ has himself sacrificially loved must permeate all of our communication of the Word.

This doesn’t mean preachers must avoid saying hard things, even words of rebuke and correction. It does mean, however, that all truth-telling is done in love. I believe that one of the most gracious abilities of the Spirit is to help our sometimes hard words feel like genuine love to those who hear us. Will everyone sense they are loved in times of rebuke and correction? Probably not. Yet that does not excuse the preacher. When my grown children remember me shouting across my front yard when they small, “Stop! Don’t run in the street! A car is coming!,” hopefully they realize the love in those dramatic shouts.

Some preachers like to whip the congregation with the Bible. Sadly, some congregations liked to be spanked. The words sting a little, the people get what they feel they deserve, but then they get to go into the week free to sin until the next cleansing. Preachers who tout that they are “sin- haters” actually sound like people-haters. The deadliest emotion, wrote Henri J. M. Nouwen, in so many preachers/teachers is frozen anger. “If there is anything that makes ministry look grim and dull, it is this dark insidious anger in the servants of Christ” (Nouwen, The Way of the Heart, 24). Believe me, friends, anger cannot be disguised as love.

Another substitute for love is the argument that goes like this: “I am the pastor-teacher. I have to study 40 hours a week. I have to hone and use my exegetical and homiletical skills. I love the people by doing all these things the best I can. I need the antiseptic arena of my study to keep me from the actual mess that people are. I really do love them…from a distance.” Hogwash. When the pastor is simply the educator, then everyone suffers. Do not misunderstand me. I am all for good study, exegesis, and homiletics. But how Jesus’s “feed my lambs, take care of my sheep, feed my sheep” got translated into “rightly dividing the word of truth,” I have no clue. John 21:15-17 is probably one of the most eisegeted texts in all the New Testament.

The best way to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in making the hard sermons to be felt like verbalized love is to spend time with people in the rough and tumble of their daily lives. There should be a book written titled Practicing the Presence of the Pastor. Permanently welded to all of Jesus’s remembered teachings (as recorded in the Gospels) is the accounts of his engaged presence with people. Imagine the smell of horrible skin infections, the vomit of those liberated from demons, the perfume of prostitutes and the fishy odor of Galileans, the loud wails of the bereaved, the dried blood of violent hands—all of this and more is in Jesus’s resume of love. I wonder with the crowd that Jesus addressed if most middle-class American evangelicals would have sat through the original Sermon on the Mount.

Be shepherds of the church of God which he bought with his own blood. A truly hapax phrase: the blood of God! (Acts 20:27). Practicing love might look a little like…

1. getting very close to messed-up people.
2. using the relational channels of the family: a nursing mother, a father (1 Thess 2: 7, 11).
3. building sermons around people’s lives. See, e.g., the parables.
4. shedding blood for others metaphorically and sometimes actually.
5. building others up, not filling people up with doctrine.
6. preaching well from a life lived with others.

We worship the same God.

We are in the midst of a series of posts on the book of Genesis, considering a number of different commentaries. In the primeval history of Genesis 1-11, as indeed in much of Genesis, God is the primary actor. Genesis isn’t so much a story of human origins or the origins of Israel as it is a story of God’s mission. The origins of God’s work with his people. Because of this the most important part of Genesis, and the reason the book is worth an extended series, is not found in the primeval history of Genesis 1-11, but in the call of Abraham and of Israel. (The image is a 17th century artist’s depiction of the journey of Abraham from Haran.)

The Christian story begins with the call of Abraham and the election of Israel as God’s people, a light to the nations.

The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” So Abram went, as the Lord had told him. … The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him. From there he went on toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord. Genesis 12:1-8

Later:

Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.” 18:18-19

A pledge reaffirmed to Jacob as he fled to his mother’s brother Laban.

Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Harran. … He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. There above it stood the Lord, and he said: “I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” 28:10-15

A pledge reaffirmed in the exodus of Israel from Egypt. God calls Moses referring back to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!” And Moses said, “Here I am.” “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” Then he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God. Exodus 3:4-6

Jesus meets Moses with Elijah on the mount of transfiguration. The same Moses who served the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus. Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” While he was still speaking, a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!” Matthew 17:1-5

God, the Father of Jesus, is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The God who called Abraham, who formed Israel, who rescued them out of Egypt, who anointed David, who brought them back from exile is the God of the New Testament and the God we worship.

We worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  This shouldn’t be a controversial statement … but it is.   The same God controversy at Wheaton over the winter made this clear. Many Christians were willing go argue that because we worship the God revealed in Jesus (whoever has seen me has seen the Father Jn 14:9), only those who worship Jesus worship the same God. Therefore neither Muslims nor Jews worship the same God we worship. I have no desire to get into a discussion of Islam – I have no firm position on this. But any argument against the “same God” that leads also to the conclusion that Jews and Christians do not worship the same God strikes me as wrong and borderline heretical. There is a vast difference between seeing in part (certainly as Christians we do believe that the Jewish understanding of God is incomplete) and worshiping a different God. We, like the Jews, worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, Elijah, and Isaiah.

Walter Moberly in his book The Theology of the Book of Genesis digs into this as he discusses Genesis 12-50.

From a Jewish perspective, perhaps the central issue in understanding Genesis 12-50 is posed by the normative, indeed definitive, nature of God’s self-revelation to Moses and Israel at Sinai/Horeb, together with the covenant making and gift of torah. If the norm for life with God is here, then how is Israel to understand those whose life with God is in some way of enduring significance – as Abraham and Sarah’s, Isaac and Rebekah’s, and Jacob and his twelve children’s clearly are – and yet who lived without torah, because torah had not yet been given? (p. 121-122)

Turns out that Jewish approaches include arguments that the patriarchs must have known torah. Moberly runs through a few examples, but concludes: “In one way or other, it is clear that the classic Jewish instinct is to handle the problem of the patriarchs’ pre-torah context by assimilating them into a torah context.” (p. 125)  From the perspective of Paul, who reads Genesis in the context of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the pre-torah context of Abraham and the other patriarchs highlights the importance of faith over torah observance. Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.

The problem that Genesis poses for Jewish thinking is surely closely analogous to the problem posed by the Old Testament as a whole for Christian thinking. For those whose norms of faith and life focus on the knowledge of God in and through Jesus Christ, the Old Testament poses the same issues as does Genesis 12-50 for Mosaic torah: How does one relate continuity and identity to real and major difference? Christians down the ages have made the same kinds of moves in relation to the Old Testament that Jews have made in relation to Genesis. The predominant instinct has been to assimilate – more or less subtly – the unfamiliar to the familiar, the divergent to the normative. (p. 131)

Some have simply dismissed the Old Testament. Marcion, the second century Christian who rejected the Hebrew Scriptures entirely, is the extreme example here, but it is also seen in less extreme forms. Moberly cites both Luther (mild) and Bultmann (more severe) as examples. I recently read an evangelical pastor who argued that the church doesn’t need the Old Testament. We simply need Jesus.

Moberly also points out that a canonical reading of Genesis requires us to reckon with “the fundamental theological issue of revelation – that God is known by Israel (and Jews and Christians, subsequently) because God has revealed himself.” (p. 137) Historical-critical tools, including a religio-historical account of the ancient Near East, can be of use in understanding aspects of the text, but ultimately God’s self-revelation need not fit neatly into that picture. God revealed himself to Abraham in a context that allowed himself to be known, but somewhat differently from the way that he later revealed himself to Moses in the burning bush or on Mount Sinai. Likewise, the coming of Jesus in his life, death, and resurrection involves a deeper and more complete self-revelation of the same God. The God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ is none other than YHWH, the God of Israel. YHWH the God of Israel is none other than the God who brought Abraham into Canaan from Ur of the Chaldeans.

If we neglect God’s self-revelation to Abraham and Moses, his dealings with Israel from Genesis through the return from exile, and his words through the prophets, we will not fully understand his self-revelation in the Lord Jesus Christ, his life, death, and resurrection.

If you wish to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net.

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By Jovan Barrington

Share Good Stories – A Better Way to Inspire

“If we don’t have good stories then what are we doing here?”

This is the mantra we use as a church staff to open up each of our staff meetings. We are inspired by good stories and we all want to be a part of something that is creating narratives that we are excited to share. I believe that for most churches there is something good that God is producing in that local body of believers. The problem is we have been trained to look at things with a critical eye.

God is always doing something good. If he is doing it in the church in which I serve, I want to hear about it and I want others to overhear it.  I want – no, I need to hear what specifically he is doing among us that is in fact, “good.” We settle for “good” and “well” and “fine” as an acceptable answers to the question, “How are you doing?” That may be “ok” as a response to a casual greeting, but we should not settle for that answer when we are attempting to inspire and lead followers of Christ to be like Jesus. “Hey church, things are going ‘good.’”

Stories inspire. Stories compel. Stories give flesh to vision. They bring the future into the present. Specifically, God stories bring the goodness of God into the everyday rhythms of life.

One of the core values for our small group ministry is the practice of sharing. We not only “share life together,” but we share Jesus stories with one another. I remind our small group leaders that I need to be reminded that God is good and he is doing good things.

I am forgetful. I get tunnel vision. When I receive criticism or receive news that something in our church is not going so good I am tempted to believe that nothing is good. Weird right? Or maybe not. It may be all to common for everyone. Bad news sells. Bad news carries better than good news. Its why gossip is so tantalizing. You are drawn into the trap of accentuating the negative. I can begin to see everything through only the lens of a critical eye.

This is why it is most difficult for me to have a genuine worshipful experience as a preacher in my own congregation. Its the curse of the critical eye and ear. “That didn’t happen right. That doesn’t sound right. That was too long or too short. That doesn’t look right. Where is everybody?” If you serve for a church either vocationally or as a volunteer, you know exactly what I mean. If you are “church shopping,” you get it.

Instead of asking the question, “Was it good?” Ask, “How was it used for good?” That reframes your experience. One question assumes the worst. The other assumes the best.

As a leader I desire feedback. I had once agreed to allow a group of people to give me feedback on my preaching. I found some sermon feedback forms online and adapted them for my purposes. A team was selected. I would meet with one person, sometimes two representatives from this sermon feedback team once a week. On one occasion it was reported to me that after one of my sermons a member of the team simply said my sermon was a “2.” That’s a 2 out of 10. No explanation was given. (Not saying that it probably wasn’t a two – meaning it deserved a low rank). I laughed, but I was crushed.

I had learned a good question to ask in case this were to happen. “What prevented my sermon from being scored a ‘1’?” This was the question I wanted the group representative to ask the critic. I wanted him to learn how to be helpful. He had forgotten the purpose of the team. To the critic’s credit, it led to an apology.

I’m not advocating that we should only tell positive stories at the neglect of being critical. One of our organization’s key habits is to, “make it better.” In order to make adjustments you must first recognize that something needs improvement. What I also believe is that we should first choose to be helpful, not just critical. I would rather be described as a helper, not a critic.

Leader’s who guide their church instead of pushing their church know the power of Jesus stories. People who push their church are critics. People who guide their churches are helpers.  I am still in the process of learning this.

If you want to make changes to become a helper through the power of Jesus stories start with your own.

A Christian’s testimony without the goodness of God is just a sad story. “I once was… and I still am.” Instead of, “I once was… until I met Jesus… now I am.”

You have a compelling story whether or not you where born on a church pew and baptized too early to remember, or you’re a hardened criminal who discovered the grace of God through Jesus Christ.

Next time you want to be critical, be helpful. Next time you want to share something. Share a good story. Share a good, God story.

Jovan Barrington serves as the Senior Minister  for the Littleton Church of Christ near Denver, Colorado. You can find out more about Jovan by visiting his blog or following him on twitter @JovanBarrington.