Bridge the Gap: Exegete the Text—AND the Culture

An excellent video on the process of biblical and cultural exegesis for relevant preaching from CHURCH LEADERS.COM - STEVE

THE AUDACITY OF PREACHING

I am currently teaching a course called NEW TESTAMENT FOUNDATIONS as an adjunct instructor for Winebrenner Theological Seminary.  The course is provided as part what is known as the Pastoral Training Institute.  Essentially, the bulk of my students , who are currently involved in secular professions, are pursuing the goal of becoming local church pastors. 

Each time I teach this course, I begin with these words to those who would presume to be pastors and teachers, who will occupy pulpits and classrooms to connect people with the Bible and its revelatory truth for humankind.  In many ways, there is a certain audacity to preaching that must be grounded in obedient humility. These are the four things I tell them:

You are the Servant of this Book … it is God’s Holy Word

Remember what else is called the Word.  Jesus Christ.   Karl Barth called the Bible the Word of God Written to distinguish it from Jesus Christ, the Word become flesh.  With that in mind, remember ---

It is not your tool. You are its servant … This is a sacred book, to be held in highest esteem.

“Do your best to present yourself as one approved, a workman who does not need to ve ashamed and correctly handles the word of truth.” – 2 Timothy 2.15

It is truth and points men and women to the Truth—Jesus Christ-the Truth Who sets us free. (Henry Blackaby “Truth is a person.”)

Never underestimate its impact and its power.

“… so is my word that goes out of my mouth: It will not return to me empty. but will I accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” – Isaiah 55:11

WE NEVER REALLY COME TO THE BIBLE ALONE

An excellent post by Megan Ricci in the blog THE COST OF COMMUNITY

In the early years of being a Christian, it was not uncommon to hear the idea that all we need is the Bible.  If anyone of us wants to know God and understand His will, all we had to do was open up Scripture and study.  We were cautioned about commentaries- they might be helpful, but we should never substitute the blatant truth in Scripture for the opinions of others.  In its worst expressions, this led to anti-academic sentiment (and even anti-intellectualism).  The heart of this bias was genuine and well intentioned, but it was/is deeply misguided.  The truth is that we never come to the Bible alone.

Let’s say you open to the New Testament and read Matthew 5-7, the Sermon on the Mount.  The fact is, your are reading it in a translation.  Immediately you are not alone.  The work and minds behind that translation required endless hours of study, scholarship, debate and more.  It is, after all, only one of hundreds of translations available.  Even if you decided to learn the language of the original text(s), you’d still have to rely on that same scholarship.  Already the room is filled with countless others who are helping you read the text.

This says nothing about the fact that you are reading the text through the lens of your place in history, culture, language, gender, age, education, experience, etc.  Layer upon layer of bias, influence and context shapes how you read, what you understand as you read and how you respond to the implications of that understanding.  As if that weren’t enough, even the people who were listening to Jesus’ words in the moments He spoke them often understood and responded to them differently.  Even His closest friends and disciples got it wrong time and again.

This kind of thinking is met with great resistance by those who believe that the Bible is enough.  After all, they say, if you question our ability to trust Scripture, what can we trust?  I sympathize with their perspective.  There are those who have allowed these facts to rob them of faith in some/any authority in Scripture.  However, I believe that the logic of those who claim “Bible alone” actually achieves the opposite end they desire- that is, it results in us losing the essential and precious truth found in Scripture.

We do not come to Scripture alone, but do so with the Holy Spirit who helps us discern God’s truth and will within.  We do so through our brokenness and thus get it wrong time and again, but with humility, chastened certainty and the grace of a forgiving God, we continue to pursue Him.  This isn’t a formula or “5-easy-steps”, but it is a path upon which we will discover more of God and His truth.

This same Holy Spirit is the Spirit who unites us as One Body in Christ.  Therefore, the Spirit quickens our understanding of Scripture as we seek to discern together as community.  And that communal discernment engages the diversity and multiplicity of gifts within that community without condescending against some strength or privileging others.  We are mutually interdependent on one another through the Spirit.  In many ways, this unity and interdependence should provide an impetus for a humble, yet passionate engagement of mission.  After all, each person who comes into the Body of Christ brings with them absolutely unique expressions of gifting, perspective, etc.  In fact, it is often in those who are most other that bring us the most essential understanding to become more like Christ together.

We never come to the Bible alone.  And I thank God for it every day.

Have you thought about the relationship between the preacher and the Word he preaches.  This is an excellent post from Ben Witherington that addresses this issue. - STEVE

God in the Afternoon— a Homily by J. D.

May 19, 2012 By Ben Witherington 3 Comments

(Here is a fine homiletical research piece by one of my students in Asbury’s ACE program. See what you think). To follow Ben's link and comment ...

Whether a cram sermon writing session on Saturday night or a well thought out sermon series prepared over weeks’ time, pastors, at least the good ones, hope their Sunday morning messages do not fall on deaf ears. A greater hope may be that those who have come did not just “hear the Good News,” but are so inspired to go out and apply the content of the morning message and Scriptures to their daily lives.

What would this look like? Maybe a family lunch before taking communion to home bound congregants? Maybe delivering food and hygiene items to the homeless community downtown? Maybe calling those who have fallen on hard times and offering a meal and a prayer? Maybe opening the Bible and studying independently throughout the week? That would have to be a pretty great morning message.

However, more often than not, the masses leave the church and rush to beat the crowds to Luby’s or rush home to see opening kick-off. Some may rush to the grocery stores to buy up their meals for the coming week. Others head out to the ball fields for an afternoon of recreational soccer. The sermon did not fall on deaf ears, but quite possibly onto complacent lives. A recent study of adolescents and young adults found staggering results on the perceptions and realities of the American Christian church. The results did not only identify issues among young people, but how their issues reflect a deeper problem in the church, “an adherence to a do-good, feel-good spirituality that has little to do with the Triune God of Christian tradition and even less to do with loving Jesus Christ enough to follow him into the world.” Such a watered-down understanding of Christianity does not produce fruit.

This paper will examine how the lack of sound biblical teaching and independent study only continues the cycle of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism in American churches. It will point to the significance of understanding the inspiration of the Scriptures, grasping the power of the living Word of God, and of applying reason and imagination to biblical study. “Too often church programs and worship are geared to the entertainment and ‘event-full’ gratification of its membership, while the preaching of the cross and the call to radical discipleship, incarnation, and justice are absent.” Radical discipleship shifts the American church back in line with the God they are meant to know and worship, an eternal focus where justice matters.

The chronic disease of passive Christianity is perpetuated by political correctness that has found its way into pulpits over the past several decades. Moral absolutes scare potential members away so they are not discussed or taught. Surface level teaching is all-inclusive and easier to understand and live out. All this creates a new religion that no one claims to be a part of, but is growing rapidly. Moralistic Therapeutic Deism believes in a god that created, ordered and watches over life on earth. It, like most other world religions, expects people to be nice and fair toward each other. Thirdly, followers simply want to be happy and feel good about their life. Rounding out the creeds of this watered down religion is an understanding that God is not involved in life on earth except when a problem arises, and heaven is the post life destination. Unfortunately, many people would say these creeds are the same as what Christians believe, though it lacks any mention of the Holy Spirit and the Holy Scriptures—or servanthood, community and relationship with God, for that matter.

Hebrews 5:12-14 speaks to the issues of discipleship stagnation, “In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness.” In depth biblical study, studying from the original languages and looking to scholarly commentaries make more of the Bible than just a way to know good from evil. Proper study gives the Holy Spirit “more to work with” so that God is revealed more fully. Casual acceptance leads to “a world of nice people, content in their own niceness, looking no further, turned away from God, would be just as desperately in need of salvation as a miserable world and might even be more difficult to save.” Studying the Scriptures, by the power of the Holy Spirit not only teaches what he has done, but who he is and his desire to save his Creation.

Without the desire to study or the guidance of the Holy Spirit believers begin to look like everyone else in this era. The Information Age rages on often without questioning the credibility, validity or responsibility of the information. Society has access to the “answers” to many of life’s most difficult questions in their handheld, continually connected devices, but the pursuit of knowledge is no longer about the truthfulness, source and inspiration of the information. It is about how quickly any answer can be accessed. This is in sharp contrast to the importance of understanding the inspiration of Scripture. Paul writes in 2 Timothy 3:16 that “All Scripture is God-breathed…” (NIV). He was aware that the actual hand of God did not put pen to paper, so to speak, but God was the source and inspiration for the Law, the history and the works of the prophets he had studied since he was a young boy. The Spirit of God guided the hand of the authors. “The Spirit found their particular psyches, their intelligence, their readiness, their social location, their historical placement, useful to the divine plan and purpose, and spoke through them to and for all.” Such reverence for the text seems lost. Countless translations and versions, and possibly the shear availability of the Bible, has believers taking it for granted, mindlessly following without fully knowing. Losing sight of God’s hand in Scripture reduces it to mere fantasy and moral recommendations.

Throughout the New Testament, Jesus, Peter and Paul claim the Holy Spirit inspired the work of their ancestors. In Matthew 22:43, Jesus pointed to David’s authorship of Psalm 110 as being inspired by the Spirit, as did Peter in in Acts 25 when speaking of Psalm 2. While in Rome speaking to the Jewish leaders Paul says, “the Holy Spirit spoke the truth to your forefathers Isaiah the prophet.” There was no doubt that the Words they had been raised on were truly from God and were relevant and steadfast. The same is true for their own words that are now included in the canon of Scripture. In John 1:14 we see clearly that Jesus’ words were not only inspired. In him, “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.” All that Jesus spoke was and is God’s. The whole of the New Testament carries the same inspiration of the Spirit.

Grasping the Bible as a direct, inspired work of God must progress into an understanding and acceptance of its power. Casual treatment of the Scriptures is ignoring its power. Ancients treated the Word of God as sacred and holy, to be relished. Its power is frightening and comforting at the same time. One touch of the Ark of the Covenant could kill, but knowing its presence nearby was knowing that God was close to the people he loved. Ancients also believed that same power came when the Scriptures were read aloud. The power could move a community. The Scriptures were prayed with expectations of response because they had power. The present American Christian Church that relies on surface level knowledge does not recognize the Scriptures as power, but opinion. The call to be like Christ is never answered because the real Jesus has been “hijacked…portraying him as an open-minded, big-hearted, and never-offended-anyone moral teacher.”

Christians cannot be like someone they do not know. The authors of Scripture wrote with the intent that “God’s word is alive, and when it is heard and received it changes human lives and takes up residence in them…” To be like Christ, believers must read what the Scriptures say about him and expect to be changed, expect the Word to be made alive in them. God created humanity’s tireless desire for knowledge, truth, justice beauty, perfection, and love. In return, much of humanity has distorted or displaced this quest and “few things are so haunting as the stories of the very greatest seekers falling short.” The written word of God is his self-disclosure. It preserves and triggers memories. As American churches lackadaisically acknowledge Scripture, they are selling themselves short and those whom God had hoped to reach through them. Believers “are called to a Christian phronesis – to the mind of Christ. This Christian phronesis is expressed in kenosis, in self-emptying of prestige, prerogatives, and power.”
In Romans 12:2 Paul writes, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Transformation through God’s word is the opposite of conforming to the tolerances and expectations of this world. This passage also calls for use of the mind. People have to reason how to process the rich complexities of life, to probe and test and stretch their faith from the perspective of a Christ follower. Paul writes of the Bereans who studied and compared his teachings to the Scriptures before believing in Jesus as the Messiah. They applied reason and intellect, an act that was praised by Paul. It is that same ability to reason that can empower Christians today to progress in the faith, “Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.” Craving God’s truth in exchange for the world’s, growing up in his truth to strengthens relationships both with him and with others. Reason does not contradict faith, rather they are interlocking practices. Reasoning through Scripture, tradition and experience allows Christians to better understand the truth of Scripture and guard against self-contradictions.

Intellect also invites the reader to look at the author’s intent. What was the primary message of their narrative or letter? Who were they writing for? Who was their primary audience? When were they writing? Where were they writing?

Within the mind is not only the ability to reason and apply intellect, but also the ability to imagine, to think creatively. The prophets used their imaginations when conveying the messages of God to the people of Israel. Isaiah’s “woes” were a result of his ability to imagine what life would be like for God’s chosen people for generations to come if the people now did not turn from their wickedness. Jesus used his imagination as he taught in parables. He pulled the environment in which his listeners were surrounded into his lessons. He pulled from the traditional way of storytelling his people knew to create a new lesson, to help them relate to the kingdom language he was using. Paul and John of Patmos could imagine what the second coming of Christ would be like and, from that, worshiped and warned with a sense of urgency to compel the masses to understand and imagine along with them.

The American Christian church has lost its imagination and thus its ability for “making the invisible kingdom visible.” It has lost its ability to see itself as part of God’s story, a story it can no longer accurately retell. A lack of imagination makes it difficult for followers to know the historical Jesus, the Jesus who was a first century Jew. Keeping Jesus out of his cultural context keeps believers from relating to him as fully human. Readers are invited to imagine what the writers and their audiences were feeling—like Paul writing from prison to Timothy. Readers can read between the lines of Scripture to imagine and better interpret the truth at work while being careful to stay within the writer’s instruction and away from fantasy.

An intentional effort to study and know God’s word seems like a radical inclination in a culture where careless information sharing reigns, where knowledge goes in one ear and out another. A follower, a member of the American Christian church must recognize that “Word is the appointed means by which God’s grace is made known to men, calling them to repentance, assuring them of forgiveness, drawing them to obedience and building them up in the fellowship of faith and love” The Word is worth knowing and relishing, and radically sharing through relationship not conversion. A shift in the church back to a focus on creating disciples opens believers up to revelation, which occurs because God chooses to make himself known, not because we have chosen to have certain experience or have perfectly interpreted Scripture or have participated in the traditional sacraments. A focus on discipleship encourages pastors to preach the real Jesus, not the hi-jacked Jesus. It encourages congregations to listen and learn under the guise of the Holy Spirit. It reminds them that church is not a place you go, worship not an hour on a Sunday morning, but who you are and what you do well into a Sunday afternoon and each and every day.

Works Cited
Dean, Kendra Creasy. Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Guiness, Os. The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life, Kindle Edition. New York: W Publishing Group, 1998.
Kinnaman, David and Gabe Lyons. Unchristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2007.
Oden, Thomas C. Classic Christianity. Kindle Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 2009.
Smith, Christian and Melinda Lundquist Denton. Soul Searching. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Witherington, Ben III. The Living Word of God. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2007.
Villafane, Eldin. Beyond Cheap Grace. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2006.

SUBSTANCE NEGLECT

by Stephen L. Dunn

It's Thursday evening and my sermon is half done (no, I didn't say "half-baked."). Most weeks Monday is my Sermon and Study Day and I try to start gathering the notes, the exegetical discoveries, the illustrations that I have been collecting and begin to put it into a coherent and preachable form. Because of some pressing church business I did not do this until Tuesday, but having done so, Thursday night has arrived and I am fairly close to having something that is preachable.  I'll spend some more time with the message at some point Saturday.  Barring a last minute inspiration from the Spirit, Sunday morning will arrive with my "manuscript" notes complete, needing only a quick review over breakfast before stepping into the pulpit.

There is a popular misconception that good worship trumps poor preaching.  I once was asked to speak in Haiti for a conference only to have my sermon cancelled two days in a row because people had been so into the worship experience that they had run out of time for the sermon,  In the US, however, much of what passes for worship is more emotive than revelatory.  People coming away feeling uplifted is considered the most important thing in the worship event.

I am still traditional enough to think that the sermon is the critical element or pivotal act in a worship service.  For the sermon helps the worshiper focus on the message that the God people have come to worship intends the disciple to take away with them.  Remember, worship in Romans 12:1-2 is spoken of within the context of renewing our mind by discovering the mind of Christ.

But here's the rub.  Having defended the primary place of preaching in a worship service, I have to ask.  Is the message that you have prepared worthy of that place?  Is your sermon basically some popularized form of moral therapeutic deism or is it the Word of God?  Is the sermon substantive or is it so much religious fluff?  Is it grounded in a serious study of the Word, bathed in prayer, and reflective of the working of the Holy Spirit or did you just identify an opinion or personal preference that is dominating your thought these days and now intend to dignify it by declaring it to be "a word from the Lord?"  Has your relationship with the Lord and your attention to His presence and work been the source of the message? Or have you found something interesting, clever or relevant and are now asking God to baptize with His "amen."

When I stand before the people of God, I quite often utter this prayer in a public way, "May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be Your Words to Your beloved that I now have the privilege to share."

(C) 2011 by Stephen L. Dunn

TIM KELLER ON WHAT THE BIBLE IS REALLY ABOUT