Friday, April 20, 2018

What is the Gospel message?

One day while I was in Kenya, I was walking down a beach in Malindi, on the Indian Ocean.  I got talking to guy called Captain Omar.  He was a Captain, because he owned his own rowboat.  He was Omar, because he was Muslim.  I didn't figure that our right away, and if I had maybe I would have been a little more cautious since the coast of Kenya is known for violence by Muslims towards Christians.

Captain Omar asked me why I was in Kenya-  was I tourist?

"No, I'm actually a missionary"

"What's that?"

"Someone who tells people about Jesus."

"I'm a person, tell me."

I suddenly found myself at a loss.  I'm great at apologetics, or defending isolated moral teachings, or explaining about miracles, or whatever.  But how do I explain to someone who knows next to nothing about Jesus why Jesus mattered?

By this time I knew he was Muslim, so I said something to the effect of  "Well, you believe in God-  and so do I.  But I believe that God became a man... well first He became a baby, and was born in a manger.  Then he grew up and became a man... not all of God, you see, just God the Son, who is fully God but there's still God that is not son... and they killed him, but he came back to life. Then he went to Heaven. But we still eat his body every week at Church."

You ever realize how stupid Christianity sounds to unbelievers?  No wonder the strongest argument against us is not really an argument so much as to make us feel intellectually embarrassed that we actually hold to these doctrines.

But it shows the problem-  even I, as a trained missionary and youth minister, could not quickly explain to a stranger what Christianity was really about.

This quick introductory teaching about Christianity is called Kerygma, which is just a Greek word for preaching.  It is worth isolating the basic pieces of it, so usually you'll see something like this;

1. God is Love and created us out of Love.
2. We sinned and broke our relationship with God.
3. Jesus came and died for us so that we can be with God again.
4. Christians are given the gift of the Holy Spirit, in order that we might be made Holy, like God.

Now if you know these 4 basic points, you've got the gist of the Gospel message, and can now 'evangelize', meaning bring people to a basic knowledge of the truth.

The point I'm most interested in is number 4.  It seems like a lot of Christians are of the impression that Jesus came, died, and rose, and that's all we need to know about Him.  There's a guy called N.T. Wright, who's an Anglican Bishop and New Testament Scholar.  His theory is that when we established the Creeds, like the Nicene Creed (c325 to combat Arianism) we summarized the disputed teachings of the faith.  But then we used that as a teaching tool, so we go straight from "Born of the Virgin Mary" to "suffered under Pontius Pilate,  was crucified, died and was buried."  Wright says he suspects that the Gospel writers would be like "Hey, I spent a lot of time writing about the stuff that happened in between those 2 events!"

If you look at Jesus' life in between those two things, this is where he did the thing that he said he was "anointed" to do. Jesus himself summarizes it by quoting Isaiah: 

"The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom to the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." (Luke 4:18-19)

This stuff is important!  The word "Gospel" means "Good news".  So what is the good news? Seems like most Christians think the good news is only that "You don't have to go to Hell."  Which is true, but try telling someone that as good news!

"Good news!  You don't have to go to Hell"

They might reply "Great!  I wasn't planning to!"

Even in Jesus time, the people the apostles were preaching to, didn't really think they were going to Hell. The Jews didn't focus much on the afterlife at all- the Sadducees didn't even think there would be one!  The Greeks believed in Hades, which is pretty attractive, but a far cry from how we picture Hell.

And Jesus had them preaching the good news before he even died and rose!  So what was the good news?

Jesus came and was annointed to establish His Kingdom on Earth!  So it's not just that you don't have to go to Hell...  when the Bible says we are "saved" from our sins the Greek word "Sozo" could be translated "Saved" or Healed or Freed.  So it's not just about Hell!

The good news is that we can be healed and freed of our sins too!  That means, that by God's grace, we can overcome addictions, and character flaws that hurt our marriages and relationships. We can be transformed into people who are "Rooted and grounded in love" (Ephesians 3:17), and who have the fruits of the spirit like joy, peace, kindness, patience (cf Gal 5:22) as natural attributes of someone who is plugged into God!

And it's not just me that can be personally transformed!  The promise of a kingdom is the promise of a community of others who are transformed and we hold each other up and we begin to transform society. In time by living lives of  transformation in Christ, we could see societies where war is eliminated, economic disparity is impacted by societal generosity, human dignity is upheld against lust and other destructive ideologies.

The Gospel message is all of these things, and it is great news!  By becoming disciples of Christ we can;

1.Experience personal transformation
2. Establish the kingdom of God on Earth.
3. Overcome death and Hell.

With good news like that, of course we should be prepared to tell others!

Thursday, April 12, 2018

Why did Jesus have to die for us?

So everyone knows that Jesus died for our sins, but the question is-  why? Like, couldn't God have just saved us from our sins by some other means?

This is a question that theologians have debated for centuries. They usually try to explain it by way of analogy, but often they'll add the caveat that those explanations are insufficient.

For example there's the courtroom analogy, as is seen in the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe.  Edmund is a traitor, and the ancient laws say that traitors must die. The White Witch has a claim on Edmund, but Aslan offers himself in Edmunds' place.  So the Witch sacrifices Aslan, even on an altar, but because Aslan is blameless,  the act breaks the ancient magic, Aslan comes back to life, and defeats the Witch.   So it is with Jesus.  Related image

God declared that the punishment for sin was death-  not just physical death, but spiritual death away from God.  Jesus took the punishment we deserved on himself so that God does not have to be contradicted and the ancient law could be appeased. In so doing he broke the ancient way, so that now we are freed from the logic of sin and death.

This analogy is helpful, and true as far as it goes, but is insufficient. Because why should God be bound to a law that He created-  was there some legally binding agreement with the devil?  It's a very good analogy, but leaves more questions.

Another helpful way to understand this is to understand the Jewish logic of sacrifice. In the Old Testament (which means old covenant or old deal) Jews would have to sacrifice an animal on an altar to please God and appease His justice. You could sacrifice an animal in place of someone else-  Think Abraham and Isaac or Moses sacrificing the lambs at passover.

It takes a lot longer to explain this piece to people when they ask since you have to explain the whole Old Testament logic of sacrifice, but this helps us understand Jesus' sacrifice a lot better!  After all, Jesus came to 'fulfill the law and the prophets' (Matt 5:17)- so everything that happened in the Old Testament happens again in a new significant way in the New Testament. Jesus death on the Cross fulfills Abraham and Isaac (A father sacrifices a son on mount Moriah) and even more obviously it fulfills Passover, as they celebrate the Last Supper on the feast of Passover.  This is why John the Baptist calls Jesus the "Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world" (John 1:29).  Just as at the Passover the Hebrews had to sacrifice a lamb and eat it in order for the angel of death to Passover them, so Jesus had to be sacrificed and we can participate in that Sacrifice by receiving the Eucharist, the unleavened bread which at Passover Jesus broke and said "This is my body, do this in remembrance of me." (Luke 22:19)

All of this is obviously key to understanding why Jesus' death is redemptive, but it still begs the question- why did God have to do it that way?

I think the trick is that that question is wrong. I don't think he had to do it that way.  I think he chose to.

I think we make a mistake when we frame our relationship with God and his redemptive sacrifice in legal language, as though God is bound by some law that is over even Him.

I think if we really want to understand it, we have to understand it through the language of love and relationship. So when you think of it in these terms, why would a God who is totally motivated by Love choose to redeem the world through his own sacrifice?

From this perspective it's actually easy to speculate about the answers.  Love has it's own logic- why have children? Why get married? Why give to the poor?  We are not legally bound to do these things, but we make huge sacrifices in order to do them out of love.

I think this is why the language in scripture is so much more often about a wedding than about a courtroom. Just as a groom gives himself to his wife out of love, so Jesus gave himself to us. His gift of self become totally complete when he died, which is why he says "It is finished" or even "It is consummated." (John 19:30) We receive his gift of self when we receive the Eucharist- and in so doing we give ourselves back to him.

God the lover shows his love for us by dying for us- "greater love has no man..." (John 15:13), and "God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8).

Perhaps God, the author of history, was not trying to fulfill some legal obligation.  Perhaps he wrote salvation history in such a way that the lover gives himself for his bride and dies and comes back. Not because he had to do it- he chose to do it to show us what his love for us is like.