evangelism in the new testament

Martin LaBar of the Sun and Shield blog has posted a chart with examples of personal evangelism in the New Testament, along with a blog post of commentary on the chart.

Among the things Martin notes are: there is no set pattern, all the conversations are with strangers, and none of the conversations begin with a warning about sin, or with talk about God's love.

One thing that he doesn't note, but stuck out to me was that in the majority of these cases, the other person initiated or invited the conversation. Nicodemas came to Jesus; the Ethiopian eunuch asked for guidance; Cornelius sent for Peter because of a vision; the jailer asked Paul and Silas how he could be saved.

Does anything else strike you about these examples of evangelism? What about other examples from the New Testament?

To the thief on the cross, Jesus presented the good news in the most succinct version possible, "I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise." This was preceded by perhaps the most succinct "sinner's prayer" possible, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom."

To Zacchaeus, Jesus took a very passive approach to evangelism, simply inviting himself to dinner and letting Zacchaeus do all the talking. Jesus didn't even mention the word salvation until after Zacchaeus had committed to turning his life around.

Despite the fact that Jesus often waited for people to come to him before he tried to evangelize (and despite the fact that he was Jesus), he was not always successful. The rich young man went away grieving, unable to commit to what Jesus asked of him.

Jesus had a chance to share the gospel with Pilate, too, but couldn't get a better response than a noncommittal "What is truth?"

Paul tried to share his testimony with the governer Felix, but all Felix was interested in was a bribe. Later, Paul tried to evangelize King Agrippa (son of Herod Agrippa) who was not impressed:

Agrippa said to Paul, "Are you so quickly persuading me to become a Christian?" Paul replied, "Whether quickly or not, I pray to God that not only you but also all who are listening to me today might become such as I am—except for these chains."

If anything, I think these additional examples give us even less of a clear pattern. Any further thoughts?

how do you decide?

In response to my recent post the role of the bible, Robert commented:

I believe the meat of [Ebonmuse's] point can be found in these two sentences:

What are the liberal believer's criteria for deciding whether a given verse reflects God's message or human error? Since they don't credit all parts of scripture with equal truth, they must have some way to decide which verses to follow and which ones to disregard.

I too am curious how a liberal believer decides which verses are divine and which are human. I often pose this question and receive a myriad of answers. What keeps it all--including the Resurrection--from being assigned to the figurative (or human-produced) category?

I think there are actually three separate issues here. As I see it, the questions are:

1) How does one determine whether a particular scripture passage is of divine or human origin?

2) How does one determine whether a passage should be followed or disregarded?

3) How does one determine whether a passage should be interpreted as literal or figurative?

These questions are not interchangeable. A passage may reflect the thoughts of its human author, may at the same time be literal, and may or may not be applicable within a given culture today. Another passage may have been received by the author directly from God, and at the same time be a parable, and again may or may not be applicable today.

Furthermore, these questions contain hidden assumptions. Question 2, in particular, is not relevant to certain types of Scripture. What would it mean, for example, to follow Psalm 139 or other psalms of praise? What would it mean to follow Micah 4 or another passage about a future peaceful kingdom? Does anyone really think the stories about Jacob in Genesis are an example to emulate? But just as Jacob wrestled with the angel, the proper response by a believer sometimes is to wrestle with the Bible text, to grapple with it to find a meaning. The follow/disregard dichotomy that the question presupposes may be appropriate for some parts of Scripture, but for others it simply doesn't make sense.

Likewise, the literal/figurative dichotomy presupposed by question 3 is not always appropriate. Sometimes a passage is both. In Galatians 4, Paul allegorizes the story of Sarah and Hagar from Genesis. This does not mean Paul believed the Genesis passage to be non-literal. He found a new meaning in the text. The author of Hebrews says in chapter 9 that the tabernacle, animal sacrifices, and objects relating to worship from Jewish Scripture are merely symbols or copies of the true heavenly worship. Again, this does not mean the author believed the tabernacle did not literally exist. Matthew allegorized passages like "The young woman will be with child" from Isaiah and "Out of Egypt I called my son" from Hosea to apply them to Jesus. In the second and third centuries, some Christians -- particularly those in Alexandria, Egypt -- allegorized nearly all of the Hebrew Scriptures to find references to Christ in every book.

This leads me back to question 1: Which parts of the Bible are of God, and which are of human origin? According to one understanding of inspiration, God uses Scripture to speak to us what we need to hear. The message may not be the same for each person. It may be a literal command or an allegorical interpretation. It may be a word of encouragement. It may simply be a word or phrase that leads to a train of thought that ends with the message God wants to reveal. So the real question is not whether a passage is of God or humans, but whether the interpretation of that passage is of God or of human origin.

And ultimately, we can't know, not in an absolute sense. We can pray, we can study, we can seek advice from others, we can meditate, we can act based on our best understanding. Ultimately, the Bible is far too complex a book to squeeze into a one-size-fits-all systematic theology.

Faith is often described as a relationship with God. Relationships are built on subjective experiences, not emperical data. Every relationship is different. That's why two believers may give different answers to these questions. And that's why I can't give a definitive answer myself.

the role of the bible

I have a confession to make: I love reading atheist blogs. I enjoy them because they challenge my faith and make me think about why I believe what I believe. They expose the irrationalities of Christianity, and remind me that the reasons for my faith are experiential, not rational.

Ebonmuse at Daylight Atheism has a pair of recent posts, Making Excuses for the Bible and Instruction Manual or Chronicle?, which offer a critique of "liberal Christians."

In Ebonmuse's classification system, there are only two types of Christians: "fundamentalists" and "liberals." Throughout this post I will put the two terms in quotation marks because most Christians self-identify as neither fundamentalists nor liberals.

The difference between the two camps, according to Ebonmuse, is this:

In the eyes of the fundamentalists, the Bible (or Qur'an or Book of Mormon or whatever other text) is God's word, dictated with infallible perfection to the minds of his followers. It's meant to be the deity's instruction manual, telling human beings everything we need to know about how to live.

For liberal believers, by contrast, the Bible is not a direct pipeline to God, but a chronicle of events put together by human beings doing their best to interpret history in the light of their beliefs. God did not speak directly to his followers and tell them what to write down - or, at best, he only did so rarely. Instead, God's followers tried to discern his will in the flow of events and infer what messages he meant to convey.

Ebonmuse notes that the criticisms of the Bible atheists use against "fundamentalists" -- e.g., immoral actions attributed to God -- don't apply to "liberals." If the Bible is understood as as "chronicle of events put together by human beings doing their best to interpret history in the light of their beliefs," there is a possibility that those human beings made some mistakes.

Still, Ebonmuse contends that there are some valid criticisms to be made against "liberal" Christianity.

First: Unless they believe that God spoke to one people exclusively - and most liberal believers don't - then they should acknowledge that their own view of scripture as a chronicle implies that other cultures will also have had contact with God, and other religious texts will reflect the same interpretive process. Why, then, would a believer define themselves exclusively in the symbols and language of one particular religion? Why call yourself a Christian if just as much genuine understanding of God can be found in the Qur'an or the Bhagavad Gita as in the Bible?

These are tough questions, and different believers may give different answers. There is a wide gap between all religions are equally valid and all religions are false except mine, and I suspect most people would find themselves somewhere in between. For myself, I will readily acknowledge that some truth can be found in other religions. I've written previously about how reading the Tao Te Ching has enhanced my faith. However, my faith is still a Christian faith. I have not converted to Taoism, and I wouldn't call myself a Taoist Christian. I still believe that Christianity is the fullest expression of the reality of God.

Ebonmuse continues:

Second: What are the liberal believer's criteria for deciding whether a given verse reflects God's message or human error? Since they don't credit all parts of scripture with equal truth, they must have some way to decide which verses to follow and which ones to disregard. In most cases this process is guided by the believer's own moral intuitions and by the moral progress society has subsequently made. Now that we know slavery, racism and sexism to be evils, modern liberal theists disregard the parts of their text that teach these things. Other verses which have better stood the test of time are assumed to be true lessons from God.

If this is true, it is surely an indictment of "liberal" Christianity. If our faith is grounded in nothing more than reading modern morals back into the Bible, then why do we need the ancient text? We might as well drop the pretense that the Bible means anything at all.

Indeed, Ebonmuse urges us to do exactly that:

However, once you've come this far, what do you need scripture for at all? Clearly, once a theist has reached this point, their own conscience is a superior and perfectly sufficient guide.

But here is the fundamental flaw of that line of reasoning: Christianity is not merely a system of ethics. If the Bible is a chronicle, it is not just a chronicle of one ancient mideastern people's grappling with their collective conscience.

The Bible does contain teachings about ethics -- I'm not denying that. But it also contains the story of God's interactions with God's people: First with a chosen people, the Jews; then through Jesus an invitation to everyone to participate in the unfolding story.

The stories of Jesus' birth, for instance, are not written as an example of good behavior that we should emulate. But what are they? Should we take them as a literal history of events of one miraculous evening long ago? Are they a romanticized tale to cover up Mary and Joseph's unexpected out-of-wedlock pregnancy? Or maybe an allegory using symbolic language to proclaim Jesus' messiahship?

I would suggest that for Christians to faithfully read the birth stories, we must not merely accept the answer that seems right to us -- whether we are "fundamentalists" or "liberals" -- but to wrestle with what God is saying to us through these stories. We might be surprised at the direction God pulls us if we move beyond the original intent -- whatever it was -- and make Jesus' story a part of our own lives.

Ebonmuse continues:

The final useful line of argument is one that works equally well against believers of all stripes. Namely, by what evidence do those believers conclude that their particular text reflects the will of God, in whole or in part? What makes them so certain that the text reflects any divine influence at all, rather than simply being the product of men, some of whom were benevolent and kind and some of whom were vindictive and cruel? Liberal believers acknowledge that the authors of scripture were wrong about many things. How do they know that those authors weren't also wrong about the existence of God?

Again, I can't speak for others. Personally, I believe God exists because of my own experience with the holy. The Bible played no part in convincing me that God is real. If I didn't believe for other reasons, I don't think I would get much out of the Bible. So why do I believe this text reflects any divine influence at all? Simply this: Jesus' story does resonate with my own story. Since that night God first became real to me, the Bible has shaped my life and transformed who I am.

Are there parts of the Bible that I believe didn't come from God? Certainly. But there are parts, too, that have shaped me even when I didn't like what they said.

I've been very brief in this post -- perhaps too brief. Each of these sets of questions deserves a much more thorough answer than I've given here. If I have time, I'll try to look at each in more depth.

expressing the truth

Can you imagine, for example, a modern economist articulating truths about our standard of living by reciting a poem? Or by telling what happened to him during a late-night walk through East St. Louis? Or by offering a series of proverbs and parables, beginning with the saying about a rich man, a camel, and the eye of a needle? The first would be regarded as irrelevant, the second merely anecdotal, the last childish. Yet these forms of language are certainly capable of expressing truths about economic relationships, as well as any other relationships, and indeed have been employed by various peoples. But to the modern mind, resonating with different media-metaphors, the truth in economics is believed to be best discovered and expressed in numbers.

- Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death

If, in Postman's quote, you hear echoes of Marshall McLuhan's aphorism, The medium is the message, it's because Postman was a disciple of McLuhan. But regardless of how the media might affect our thought processes, I think it is obvious that the modern mind does not look for truth in the same way ancient people did.

How does this affect our understanding of the Gospels?

In an era where rhetoric was considered as important as logic, Jesus was a skilled rhetorician. But to us, does it really matter whether he made the Pharisees look bad in conversation?

In age of low literacy rates, Jesus was a master storyteller. But today, do the Good Samaritan or the Prodigal Son have any resonance? What does it mean to us that God's kingdom is like a mustard seed, or like a net full of fish?

In a time when the universe seemed capricious, Jesus was said to have power over wind and waves, and to be able to cast out demons. He was said to be able to feed large crowds with a small amount of food. Do these stories have any meaning for today?

In the 21st century, are the Gospels relevant? Or is our world so different from first century Galilee that we can't really understand them even if we try?

bible translations update

In January of last year, the Society for the Promotion of Individualized Theologies (SPIT) announced the publication of the New Conservative Bible and the New Liberal Bible.

Now, scarcely a year and a half later, SPIT has returned with revised versions of both translations. The New American Conservative Bible (NACB) hits the shelves next week, while the New Progressive Translation (NPT) arrives the following week.

Due to my connections, I was able to get a sneak peak at both translations.

Despite the new names, it is clear that these are essentially the same translations, repackaged and rebranded, with colorful covers. Frankly, I have to wonder whether the revisions were warranted, or whether they are simply ploys to force the Bible-buying public to shell out more money.

Furthermore, the few changes that I have seen are not encouraging.

You may recall that I expressed some reservations about the NLB's handling of Matthew 5:9.

Blessed are the PEACEMAKERS!! Don't you get it, President Bush?!?"

It appears that the NPT translators took my criticism to heart, and have changed this verse to read:

Nyah nyah told ya so

Honestly, I think this is actually worse. It ought to have some sort of punctuation, maybe "Nyah, nyah, told ya so," or possibly, "Nyah, nyah! Told ya so!" Additionally, this phrasing doesn't quite capture the spirit of the original Greek, or so it seems to me.

The NACB has similar problems, in my opinion. Here's Matthew 22:35-38.

A lawyer asked him to test him, "Which commandment is the greatest?"

Jesus answered, "A man shall not lie with a man as with a woman. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it, A woman should not have an abortion. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

Call me old-fashioned, but I am not a fan of this kind of dynamic equivalence translation. I think a lot gets lost in the rewording.

I'm equally unimpressed by the NACB's addition of an eleventh commandment in Exodus 20.

Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.

I'm not an expert at biblical Hebrew, but my understanding is that in the earliest and most reliable manuscripts, this phrase is merely a margin note.

Speaking of adding to the books, I don't like what the NPT has done to Revelation 22:18.

We know y'all libruls don't really read the Bible, so it don't matter what we put here.

I hate to sound nitpicky, but frankly I'm disappointed in the quality of the grammar of this translation. Didn't anyone proofread it?

In related news, SPIT regrets that the New Emergent Bible (NEB) is still not available. The translators have been engaged in a heated debate conversation, discussing whether we can even know the biblical languages well enough to translate them. The good news is that they have managed to find enough common ground to establish that, if there ever is an NEB, it will not feature book names or chapter and verse numbers, as these are unnecessary and divisive labels.

In a written statement, one NEB translator offered the following, which may be a paraphrase of what other Bibles call 1 Corinthians 13:12.

Dude, we see in part, like in a mirror. I mean, really, can we ever say we know anything, you know, for real? Not this side of heaven.

on spiritual warfare

Indeed, we live as human beings, but we do not wage war according to human standards; for the weapons of our warfare are not merely human, but they have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle raised up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to obey Christ.

- 2 Corinthians 10:3-5

What struck me as I was reading this passage was not the "spritual warfare" language; after all, this is not the only NT passage that uses that metaphor. What struck me is the explicit contrast between physical warfare ("war according to human standards") and spiritual warfare.

In one sense, this contrast is nothing special: the same physical/spiritual contrast is used in other contexts, e.g. "letters of recommendation" vs. "letters written on our hearts" in 2 Corinthians 3:1-2, or physical circumcision vs. circumcision "of the heart" in Romans 2:26-29. In each case, Paul uses scenes from everyday life to draw analogies about spiritual life.

But underlying Paul's arguments is the (sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit) acknowledgement: Spritual life is not quite like that. In this example, Paul makes it explicit: "We do not wage war according to human standards." [emphasis mine]

The book of Revelation provides a striking image of this contrast:

and in the midst of the lampstands I saw one like the Son of Man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash across his chest. His head and his hair were white as white wool, white as snow; his eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined as in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, and from his mouth came a sharp, two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining with full force.

- Revelation 1:13-16

"From his mouth came a sharp, two-edged sword" -- the language is reminiscent of Hebrews 4:12, "Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart." In both places, the two-edged sword is associated not with physical might but with spoken words.

And yet so many Christians throughout the ages have gotten it wrong. From Constantine, through the Crusades, to George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq, Christians have for centuries tried to justify military aggression in the name of God.

Will Christians ever learn to be peacemakers and earn the title, "children of God" (Matthew 5:9)? Or don't we have any good news to offer a violent world?

the radical center

Last month Andy Bryan wrote a post, Unclaiming the Center, in which he responds to a friend of his who thinks the solution to divisiveness in the church is for liberals and conservatives to look for common ground in the center.

Andy replies:

Sounds neat, but it doesn’t work for me; I am not in the center, I am liberal. I am an honest-to-God “progressive.” If you are going to label me, label me left wing.


...for me, the solution to the divisiveness in the church is not to artificially move to the center purely in order to find common ground. That would not be authentic to who I am, nor to whom any of us are.

Call him liberal, but don't even think about calling him wishy-washy.

He makes some good points in his post, and I urge you to read the whole thing if you haven't already.

Nevertheless, I tend to disagree with his main point. I think it is vitally important that we do look to reclaim the radical center. But perhaps this disagreement is more in perception than in fact. I may be using the word "center" differently than either Andy or his friend are using it.

As I understand them, "liberal" and "conservative" are political terms that have spilled over into other areas of our lives. In American presidential politics, it is customary for candidates to play up their "liberal" or "conservative" credentials during the primary season, to appeal to the party's "base," then to "move to the center" as the general election approaches, to try to appeal to a wider range of voters.

This can be represented by the following image:




The black part of the line represents the center, and the white parts represent the liberal and conservative wings. Under this paradigm, Andy is correct that liberals (or conservatives) are not being authentic if they try to "claim the center" as a common ground.

But it seems to me that this entire paradigm is missing something.

A few weeks ago my wife took our 4-year-old son to the farmer's market and let him buy something with his own money. He spent a quarter, and got a home-grown peach.

Normally, when he eats fruit from the grocery store, he will eat a little bit from one side and leave the rest. So when they were in the car, and Nicki heard, "I'm done," from the back seat, she didn't expect him to have eaten the whole peach. Yet when she reached back for the remains, he handed her just the pit.

A peach pit is a better metaphor than a political campaign, I believe, for the radical center of the Christian faith.




Here we don't have two fringes at opposite ends, just a solid inner layer with a protective outer layer. The outer, fleshy part of the peach actually provides the nutrients necessary for the seed to grow -- or for a four-year-old boy. One way or another, though, the flesh will be consumed, and only the core will remain.

The core of the Christian faith can be found in the gospels, throughout all of Scripture, and in the ancient creeds. That's not to say that there is nothing more to Christianity than this. The church is one body with many parts, and God calls each of us to fill different roles.

But whether you're anti-oil or anti-abortion, and regardless of how important you personally think those issues are, those are not the essentials of the faith. Likewise, Christianity is not primarily about creationism, fair trade, gay rights, or even a living wage. Our faith may inform us about those issues, but we are almost certain to find ourselves at some point fellowshipping with those who hold different views.

That's when we need to affirm the radical center -- the core -- of our faith. If we cannot fellowship with those who hold differing views on the peripheral issues, we've failed to understand what Christianity is all about.

Unless I'm misreading him, that's essentially what Andy is saying too. So perhaps I don't disagree with him after all.

they would not have crucified the lord of glory

The atonement has been a big topic of discussion lately among several blogs I read (I've trid to link to one sample post from each blog, but I'm sure I've missed at least one blog). I don't really have anything to add to the conversation; I'm still trying to absorb all the ideas and piece the puzzle together.

The fact that I've been thinking over all this is probably the reason the following passage jumped out at me in my daily Bible reading:

But we speak God's wisdom, secret and hidden, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

- 1 Corinthians 2:7-8

Let's suppose, hypothetically, that things had happened differently: Upon hearing Jesus' teaching, the high priest Caiaphas suddenly realized that he was in the very presence of God. Or Pilate, upon examining Jesus, decided that he should set Jesus free no matter the personal political cost to himself. What if they hadn't crucified the Lord of glory?

These two verses are just a side note in Paul's discussion of the wisdom of God, but he seems to have considered it a genuine possibility that the rulers of the age could have recognized Jesus for who he was, and changed the course of events on that fateful Passover week.

If Jesus hadn't been crucified, how much different would our theology be? Did God have an alternate plan for our atonement just in case Jesus failed to get himself killed?

Did the atonement really rest on the dicey possibility that those in power would not recognize Jesus? Or is there possibly something about power that it necessarily renders those who have it unable to see God at work?

Now I know even less than I did before.

why i will not be raptured

Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkens have made an awful lot of money with their bestselling Left Behind series. And though the books are fiction, LaHaye and Jenkens have also authored a non-fiction book, Are We Living in the End Times? in which they attempt to show a biblical basis for the events of Left Behind.

Critical to Jenkins and LaHaye's story line is the idea of a rapture of the faithful before things get too difficult. True believers will be snatched away into the clouds to be spared from hardship.

Just how biblical are the Left Behind books, really? Just what does the Bible teach about the Rapture?

Remarkably, this whole doctrine is taken from one word that appears in just one verse in one of Paul's letters near the back of the New Testament.

But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words.

- 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

The Greek word harpazo in verse 17 above is the equivalent of the English words "caught up" and the Latin word raptus, from which Rapture is derived. The word appears nowhere else in the New Testament.

Rapture proponents also claim support elsewhere for this idea, most notably 1 Corinthians 15:50-51, Matthew 24:37-42, John 14:1-3, and Titus 2:13.

I'll look at these in reverse order, just because I can.

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus, who gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds. These things speak and exhort and reprove with all authority. Let no one disregard you.

- Titus 2:11-15

Did you see it? I didn't either. To a normal person reading this text, there is nothing to suggest that verse 13 teaches the doctrine of Rapture. To a Rapture proponent who is looking for any support he can get, this is one of the Bible's strongest indications that Jesus is returning twice. In LaHaye's own words:

The coming of Christ must occur in two installments because they are for two different groups of people and fulfill two different purposes. The first is the Rapture, when all living and dead Christians will be snatched up to be with Christ in the Father's house. The second is for all the people of the world, who will be judged for rejecting Christ. The first is secret, for a special group; the second is public, for everyone left on the earth. They are entirely distinct events!

Dr. David Cooper often compared the Second Coming to a two-act play separated by a seven-year intermission (the Tribulation). The apostle Paul distinguished these two events in Titus 2:13 by designating them "the blessed hope and glorious appearing."

- Are We Living in the End Times? p. 104

And it doesn't get much better.

Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.

- John 14:1-3

Jesus tells his followers he will go prepare a place, then he will return. Most Christians, who believe Christ will return but do not believe in a Rapture, understand this verse quite differently from the way Rapture proponents read it. For those who believe in a secret Rapture, the words "I will come again and receive you to Myself," acquire an additional meaning. The idea is that Jesus could not come both to comfort his faithful and to judge the nations at the same time. Apparently that's too difficult a task even for the Messiah.

For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away; so will the coming of the Son of Man be. Then there will be two men in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken and one will be left. Therefore be on the alert, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming.

- Matthew 24:37-42

At first glance, this passage looks like it may support the Rapture doctrine, with its talk about "one being taken" and all that. But what was it like in the days of Noah? Were the righteous taken away and the evildoers left on earth? It seems to me that it was the other way around. So maybe when Matthew says "one will be taken," he means taken away in judgment.

To be continued...

he is risen

After the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices to go and anoint the body of Jesus. Very early on Sunday morning, at sunrise, they went to the tomb. On the way they said to one another, "Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?" (It was a very large stone.) Then they looked up and saw that the stone had already been rolled back. So they entered the tomb, where they saw a young man sitting at the right, wearing a white robe -- and they were alarmed.

"Don't be alarmed," he said. "I know you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He is not here -- he has been raised! Look, here is the place where he was placed. Now go and give this message to his disciples, including Peter: "He is going to Galilee ahead of you; there you will see him, just as he told you.' "

So they went out and ran from the tomb, distressed and terrified. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.

- Mark 16:1-8

It is fashionable among theologians and "historical Jesus" scholars to assert that the empty tomb is a late addition to the resurrection stories. The followers of Jesus experienced something powerful, something life-changing, and had trouble finding the words to express it.

Classical historians who look at the gospels -- even if they don't believe in Christ -- tend to reach the opposite conclusion.

But in the end, when every argument has been considered and weighed, the only conclusion acceptable to the historian must be that the opinions of the orthodox, the liberal sympathizer and the critical agnostic alike -- and even perhaps of the disciples themselves -- are simply interpretations of the one disconcerting fact: namely that the women who set out to pay their last respects to Jesus found to their consternation, not a body, but an empty tomb.

- Geza Vermes, Jesus the Jew

Mark, as we have seen, had heard that the three women saw it together. But according to John, the first to see it was Mary Magdalene all by herself. Either of these reports is likely enough to represent the authentic occurrence, since the early Church would never have concocted, on its own account, the statement that this most solemn and fateful of all discoveries was made by women, including a woman with an immoral record at that. Perhaps John's version is the original one, and the other women were added to the story later to make it less shocking.

Who had taken the body? There is no way of knowing. Mary Magdalene thought at first that the cemetery gardener had removed it -- whereas the Jews, not unplausibly, maintained that it had been taken by Jesus' own disciples. At all events it was gone. And because it was gone, and no one knew where it was, this made it easier for people to believe, three days later (a period equated with scriptural predictions,) that they were seeing Jesus alive again and returned to the earth, risen from the dead. The Resurrection is the subject of some of the greatest pictures ever painted, but there is no actual description of it, and nobody claimed to have seen it happen. Yet those who believed that Jesus had appeared to them on the earth after his death have their alleged experiences recorded in a number of passages of the New Testament. Their testimonies cannot prove them to have been right in supposing that Jesus had risen from the dead.

- Michael Grant, Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels

Those testimonies are varied, but generally fall into one or more of four categories:

1. Apperances of the Jesus the disciples knew and recognized


2. Apperances of a Jesus the disciples did not recognize


3. Appearances of a Jesus who can appear and disappear at will


4. Apperances of Jesus in a vision

In the first group is John 21, where the disciples see Jesus at the seashore, and Jesus asks Peter three times, "Do you love me?". Also in this group is Matthew 28:16-20, wher e Jesus meets the disciples in Galilee and gives them some final instructions. Jesus' conversation with Thomas in John 20:24-29 also fits into this category.

In the second group is the story of the walk to Emmaus in Luke 24:13-32. The two disciples walk and talk with him but do not know it is him until the very end. In John 20:14-17, Mary Magdalene at first does not recognize Jesus when he appears to her at the tomb.

The walk to Emmaus also fits in the third group, as Jesus vanishes once the disciples recognize him. Also in this category are stories in John 20:19-23 and Luke 24:36-43 telling of Jesus appearing to his disciples inside a locked room. In the Luke account, Jesus then proves he is not a ghost by eating a piece of fish. Jesus' conversation with Thomas mentioned above can also fit in this category, as he had once again appeared inside a locked room.

The most famous example in the fourth category is the appearance to Paul on the road to Damascus, recorded in Acts 9 and repeated with slightly different details in Acts 22 and 26. The most vivid example is the vision given to John of Patmos, now known as the book of Revelation.

It is impossible to reconcile every detail of all the apperances. In Matthew 28:10 Jesus tells the disciples to return to Galilee, but in Acts 1:4 he tells them not to leave Jerusalem. In some gospels, Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene at the tomb, but in others he doesn't. No matter how we put the pieces together, there are elements of the resurrection experiences that must remain a mystery to us.

But for a secular historian like Michael Grant, the only mystery of that first Easter morning is: Who took the body? The great irony is that the empty tomb can be utterly convincing as a historical event, yet utterly unconvincing as evidence of the resurrection. By itself the tomb proves nothing.

That may be at the root of liberal attempts to minimize the importance of the tomb. Because, for the disciples, it was not the disapperance of the corpse that transformed their lives, it was the reappearance of the living Christ. It was the fact that he returned to them, many times and in many ways. And he continues to be present in the lives of Christians even today.

That's where we find the meaning of the resurrection. Christ is alive! He has conquered death, and he will be with us to the very end of the age.

the fast i choose

Shout out, do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins. Yet day after day they seek me and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments, they delight to draw near to God.

"Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?" Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers. Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high. Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord? Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am. If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.

If you refrain from trampling the sabbath, from pursuing your own interests on my holy day; if you call the sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs; then you shall take delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

- Isaiah 58

because you have shed so much blood

King David was a "man after God's own heart." Granted, he wasn't perfect: He had an affair with the wife of one of his soldiers, then had the soldier murdered to cover up his sin. And there was the little indiscretion of the naked public dancing, which didn't make his wife too happy. And he served more than a year in the army of the Philistines, Israel's enemies. And when his son Absalom conspired to sieze the throne by force, David fled to the wilderness, leaving his concubines to deal with the usurper.

But David, unlike most kings of Israel and Judah, worshipped one God. And he worshipped with a fervency not seen again in the history of either kingdom. The stories of his trust in God in extreme circumstances are legendary. David's name appears on more than 70 psalms. Even his naked dancing was an offering to God. Because of his faithfulness, God promised to give David an everlasting kingdom.

David was also a warrior king. He conquered the Jebusite city of Jerusalem and made it his home. He planned to build a house there for his God. But God declined.

David said to Solomon, "My son, I had intended to build a house to the name of the LORD my God. "But the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 'You have shed much blood and have waged great wars; you shall not build a house to My name, because you have shed so much blood on the earth before Me. 'Behold, a son will be born to you, who shall be a man of rest; and I will give him rest from all his enemies on every side; for his name shall be Solomon, and I will give peace and quiet to Israel in his days. 'He shall build a house for My name, and he shall be My son and I will be his father; and I will establish the throne of his kingdom over Israel forever.'

1 Chronicles 22:7-10

It wasn't David's adultery, or his callous treatment of Bathsheba's husband Uriah the Hittite. It wasn't David's naked dancing, or his defection to the Philistines, or his abandonment of the throne that offended God's holiness such that God didn't want David to build the temple. It was his military success. David was not a man of peace, therefore he could not build a house for God.

Instead, the temple would be built by the brutal and idolatrous Solomon, who as a young man had earned a reputation for wisdom but later abandoned both his wisdom and his love for God. He conscripted 30,000 men -- non-citizens living within Israel -- into forced labor to build his palace and the temple, then kept them in slavery to build other projects for him. Then he married their sisters and daughters, and worshipped their gods. His foolishness split the kingdom in two.

For all his faults, Solomon was not unworthy to build the temple of God. But David -- the faithful one -- was, because David was not a man of peace.

the one true translation

Mark Driscoll is at it again. The controversial pastor, who caused quite a stir last fall when he alleged that all mainline Christians are liberal homosexual pagan potheads, has recently sparked discussion in the blogosphere over his theological reasons for switching to the ESV translation of the Bible. Several people have already responded to Driscoll's statement, but I want to touch on a point that I haven't seen anyone mention yet.

In point #3, Driscoll says, "Words carry meaning." Unfortunately, he has forgotten about the Bible verse that says, "A picture is worth a thousand words." (I don't recall the exact scripture reference for that one, but I'm pretty sure it's somewhere between "Cleanliness is next to Godliness," and "God helps those who help themselves."

Anyway, my point is that a Bible translation with lots of pictures is therefore better than one without. And the ESV, whatever its strengths, falls woefully short in the area of color pictures.

In fact, most available translations are inadequate in this area. I haven't had a Bible with color pictures since the Children's Living Bible I received when I was five. The only modern translation that even comes close is the Good News Bible from the 1970s, which has some really cool line drawings. But the sad truth is that most modern translations omit the Lego photographs that God placed in the original text. That's why the best modern translation, hands down, is the Brick Testament.

Perhaps an example would help explain why this is so important. Driscoll laments in point #4 the absence in some modern translations of certain theological terms. But honestly, now, which drives home the point better: The terms "justification" and "propitiation" (I'm not sure that last one is even a real word), or this Lego image of Jesus crying out in anguish from the cross?

Granted, the Brick Testament is not even a complete Bible. But because every picture is worth a thousand words (I'm going to find that reference soon), when you add everything up, it leaves out a lot less than most of the modern translations.

And while I'm on the subject, take a look at these three photos. Do you see anything strange? They've taken the cross out of crossing!! Does this politically correct hyper-secularization of our society have no limits?

Whew. I feel a lot better now that I've gotten that off my chest.

principles of biblical interpretation, part 2

In my previous post I said that my first principle of biblical interpretation is to ask the question, "God, what are you trying to tell me through these scriptures?" Some might object that my approach is too subjective.

There are risks in approaching the Bible subjectively, I'll grant. It can be easy to read it not in terms of what does God want me to learn, but rather what do I think the passage means, or even what do I want it to mean?

On the other hand, there are dangers in trying to read the Bible objectively. We can easily separate ourselves from the text, relegating it to the long-ago past, or we can treat it as nothing more than the foundation of a systematic theology. These approaches can prevent us from really wrestling with the scriptures, making them personal.

And ultimately, that's what the word "subjective" means: personal.

But at the same time, a healthy approach to scripture must be more than personal. The Bible wasn't written just to me, and I'm not the only one who has wrestled with the texts. The community of Christians might be helpful to understanding scripture.

So, in addition to my first question, I'll add three more questions:

1. What did this passage mean to the original hearers?
2. What has this meant to Christians through the centuries?

Both scholarship and tradition can help answer these questions. Personally, I think scholarship is a little better than tradition at answering them, but that may be due to my modern biases. If I've learned anything reading from Christian tradition, I've learned that the questions we ask today are not always the same questions that have been asked through history. Likewise, the hot-button issues of today have not historically been matters of importance to Christian faith.

And:

3. What does this mean to other Christians today?

For this one, we can get answers from church, Bible studies, devotionals, books, conversations, or even blogs. Perhaps this question is less useful than the first two, because it is easy to let the spirit of our age affect the way we think, and today's church is carrying a lot of cultural baggage. Sometimes to hear God's voice we must step away from the insulated world of today's church. Still, none of us can grow in our faith without being part of a faith community. We were not created to live in isolation (except for a few rare individuals.)

Looking at the scripture's meaning in these three ways, we're likely to get a range of ideas. These can form a starting point in understanding what God is trying to tell us. But understanding the meaning is only half the battle. The Bible is useless if it can't be applied today.

So, I'll add three more questions relating to application:

4. How does this apply to the world today?
5. How does this apply to the church today?
6. How does this apply to my own life today?

Maybe a particular passage does not have an answer for one or more of these questions. Or maybe the answer is just hard to find. Then maybe that's not the lesson for today. Maybe God is trying to tell us something else first.

Finally, because the Bible is a book about God, the last question is:

7. What does this passage tell me about God?

It's possible, using these questions as a starting point, to learn something different each time we read the same passage. And that's when it begins to come alive.

principles of biblical interpretation, part 1

Harvey Bluedorn has laid out a set of general principles for the interpretation of scripture at the Trivium Pursuit blog. (Hat tip to Henry Neufeld of Participatory Bible Studies blog.)

I can't say I agree with these principles, or the stated goal behind them:

If there is such a thing as truth, and if it is important to know the truth, and if the Scriptures are the truth, then it is important to know and understand what the Scriptures mean.

If we all chose our own private way and took anything to mean whatever we desired it to mean, then how often would we agree? And why would we agree? We would agree about as often as we happened to have the same desire.

But if we all understood and followed the truth, how often would we disagree? And why would we disagree? We would disagree about as often as we failed to understand and follow the truth.

The bottom line is, if we all agreed to follow the truth of Scriptures, then the differences among us would be due to our ignorance or misunderstanding of the meaning of Scripture. So ultimately, our unity depends upon our having the same principles of interpretation.

If we all applied the same principles (these or any others), we might all reach an agreement about the meaning of the text, but truth does not always follow consensus. We might all agree, yet still be wrong.

Beyond that, the purpose of the Christian community is not intellectual agreement. Jesus did not say, "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you get all the facts right." No, he said, "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

He drove home this point with the parable of the Good Samaritan. The Samaritans had their theology all wrong. Theirs was a strange mix of Judaism and paganism. But in his parable Jesus made the point that the more important thing was showing mercy to someone in need.

That's not to say that Scripture reading is not important. In fact, my wife has observed that whenever I get out of the habit of spending time with God, I become less loving. And one of the ways to spend time with God is by reading the Bible.

But if I'm reading it with no higher goal than to confirm whatever I already think, then I'm not really spending time with God. To get anything out of Scripture, we must be prepared to be challenged. Harvey Bluedorn is perfectly right in rejecting any type of Bible study that merely conforms to our own wishes or desires.

On the other hand, if we are all part of the body of Christ, and each part has its own function, and the parts must function together to keep the body healthy, then it might make sense for God to give us each different lessons as we read the Scriptures. Maybe our disagreements are the result of our taking the lessons God has for each of us, and trying to apply them to others. Maybe, though, God has other lessons for them.

All this is a long way of introducing my first principle of biblical interpretation: "God, what are you trying to tell me through these scriptures?"

I have more to say, but it's late. I'll continue in my next post.

a parable, updated for our times

The Kingdom of God is like a preschooler with eight chicken nuggets. If one of them falls to the floor, will he not leave the seven on his tray, and crawl under the table to get the one? And once it is found, he will proclaim it cleansed from all impurities, and no one will be able to snatch it from his hands.

christmas according to luke

In my previous post I looked at the Christmas story as it appears in the Gospel of Matthew. Now I'm going to look at the Christmas story as recorded in the first two chapters of Luke.

If there is a theme to Luke's version of the Christmas story, it's the unexpected.

The gospel begins with the story of a couple named Zechariah and Elizabeth, who don't appear anywhere else in the Bible. They are an older couple with no children. Zechariah is a priest. While he is offering incense, the angel Gabriel appears and tells him that his wife will soon get pregnant. Zechariah is skeptical, and as a consequence his voice is taken away until the child is born.

Next, Gabriel finds a girl named Mary, and tells her that she too will soon be pregnant. Like Zechariah, Mary is skeptical. She tries to explain to Gabriel that she can't get pregnant while she is still a virgin, but Gabriel isn't interested in a biology lesson. God will make it happen, he tells her.

Right at the beginning, we have two unexpected pregnancies. After both women have conceived, Mary visits Elizabeth. Elizabeth feels her child leap in her womb. He wasn't even born yet and he already recognized the presence of the Christ. (Later, John would send messengers from prison to ask whether Jesus was the one. (Luke 7:18-23) Did he forget?)

Mary responds to Elizabeth with a song of praise that includes the words:

He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.

I can't recall any Christmas carols of our time that use harsh words toward those in power. But in the context of Luke's gospel, this reversal of fortune is just one more unexpected element of the story.

After Mary leaves, Elizabeth gives birth. Because Zechariah still can't speak, others are prepared to give the boy his name. They choose the name Zechariah to honor his father, but his father surprises them by writing the name John -- the name Gabriel gave him -- on a tablet. Once again, the unexpected.

After naming his son John, Zechariah is able to speak again, and he wastes no time speaking about what great things John will do. And yet, within Zechariah's prophecy, he says that John's role will merely be to "prepare the way" for the Lord. And that's the end of chapter 1.

Chapter 2 begins with one of the best known stories of the Bible, Mary and Joseph's journey to Bethlehem, giving birth in a stable because there was no room in the inn. There are two unexpected turns in this part of the story. Jesus of Nazareth was not from Nazareth. He was born in Bethlehem, the City of David. And yet, the one who would later be called King of Kings and Lord of Lords was born in a barn.

It's such a familiar part of the Christmas story that we might have trouble imagining Christmas without it. Yet, as history the Bethlehem trip is problematic for two reasons. First, it contradicts Matthew's account of Mary and Joseph having a house in Bethlehem, and second, Galilee was not under Roman authority until some ten years after Herod's death. There's simply no reason that Joseph should have taken his pregnant fiancee into Roman-controlled territory to register for a census when as a Galilean he would be exempt. And yet, if the gospel of Luke has anything to tell us about Jesus' birth, it is that nothing matches our expectations.

After Jesus is born, a group of angels announce his birth. They hand out cigar-shaped bubble gum with the words "It's a boy!" written on the side, and post a picture of him on the Internet. No, wait. That's what I did when my son was born. No, the angels call a press conference, which is covered live by CNN and Fox News, to announce that the Messiah is here. No? Then they tell the king's advisors the good news that the real king has arrived, and Herod can step down any time. No again? Well, at least they notify a group of astrologers in another country, who are led to Jesus by a star. No, that's the other gospel.

In Luke, the angels announce Jesus's birth by informing some shepherds, of all people. They wouldn't have been my first choice to notify, but maybe there is more to this than meets the eye. Perhaps this is foreshadowing the day when Jesus would be known as the good shepherd.

Eventually Mary and Joseph leave Bethlehem and go, not to Egypt as Matthew states, but to Jerusalem for the rituals of purification. Jerusalem is Herod's city, but Herod is not mentioned here. Two people are mentioned, though, the prophets Simeon and Anna. They both praise God for this baby. Simeon even says that he can now die in peace, knowing that he has seen God's chosen one. Then Mary and Joseph take Jesus back to Nazareth.

The conflict with Herod, the massacre of the innocents, the flight to Egypt simply don't appear in this gospel. I suspect this omission is intentional by Luke, to emphasize just what Jesus's role was as Messiah. Jerusalem was both the political and the spiritual center of Judean life, yet even when he was an infant Jesus's focus in Jerusalem was on the spiritual. That's not the kind of Messiah everyone was expecting.


I'm sure there is a lot more to each of these birth narratives than I've listed in these two brief posts. I've got a lot more studying ahead of me before I'll be able to say I understand the birth of Jesus. But one thing I have learned is this: These two gospels don't absolutely need each other. Each may lack some details that are covered by the other, but both birth narratives are complete in themselves. While it may sound odd to our modern ears to hear a Christmas story without both shepherds and wise men, or without both the journey to Bethlehem and the flight to Egypt, the reality is that each of these gospels has something to tell us about Jesus's birth. While we may learn something from combining the two, we can also learn by letting each one speak for itself.

christmas according to matthew

The Christmas story as we have come to know it is not really one story but two. The gospels of Matthew and Luke each contain a story of the birth of Jesus, and it has become a tradition to bring all the elements from both gospels together to make one complete story.

Remarkably, the two gospels share almost no details in common, other than the miraculous conception and the birth in Bethlehem. What I want to do in this two-part post is to look at each birth narrative on its own, because I think they each have things to tell us, and sometimes the details can get lost when we try to conflate the two stories.

First I'll take a look at Matthew 1-2.

If there is a theme in Matthew's gospel, it is to show a parallel between Jesus' life and the whole history of Israel. Even in the two chapters of the birth narrative, I count at least nine references to the Jewish Bible.

The gospel begins with a lengthy genealogy. If Matthew submitted it to a publisher today, he would be asked to write a better opening. But in ancient Israel, genealogies were important. They are scattered throughout the Bible along with legal code and narrative. So it is natural to begin Jesus' story with a genealogy.

But this is more than just a list of names. There's a point to this list: the number 14. Matthew divides the names into three groups of 14.

Numbers were important in ancient Israel, too. The number 40 appears repeatedly, for example, in the days and nights of the flood, the years in the wilderness, and for Christians the days of Jesus' temptation by the devil. Other numbers, such as 12 and 7, also appear often.

But why 14? This number is obviously symbolic. The actual number of generations in each group is not 14. Matthew only lists 13 names in the third group, unless Jeconiah is supposed to be counted in both groups 2 and 3. And 1 Chronicles 3:10-17 clearly lists 18 generations from Solomon to Jeconiah. Matthew was forced to omit a few names from group 2 to get the correct number.

So what is the significance of 14? The key, I've been told, is that the Israelites (like the Romans) used letters for numbers. Much of their numerology came from adding the letters of people's names and looking for significance in the total. In the case of King David, the total was 14. So this whole genealogy, in addition to establishing Jesus' lineage, points back to King David, the one whose rule was supposed to last forever. Matthew sees Jesus as a fulfillment of that promise.

After the genealogy, Matthew tells about Joseph's discovery that his fiancee is pregnant, his plans to send her away quietly, and his dream in which an angel sets him straight. Readers may recall another dreamer named Joseph.

In response to the angel's message to Joseph, Matthew offers a quote from Isaiah which, in context, appears to be a word of comfort to King Ahaz. Some modern scholars have argued that Matthew mistakenly took this verse out of context. But if Matthew's aim is to show parallels between the history of Israel and the life of Jesus, then it makes perfect sense to apply this verse here.

Following Joseph's dream is the visit of the Magi. This seems rather abrupt and a little startling to those of us accustomed to hearing Luke's account intermingled with Matthew's. Matthew tells nothing of Joseph and Mary's trip to Bethlehem -- in fact, if this were the only gospel, we'd assume they were residents of Bethlehem at the time of Jesus' birth. The Magi, led by a star, visit them in a house (2:11). Along the way, they are led by a star. This recalls the imagery from Isaiah, of the light to the nations.

In contrast to the Magi's worshipful reverence, King Herod displays jealousy and rage. To escape Herod's wrath, the family escapes to Egypt, as a result of Joseph's dream. Again, he's not the first Joseph to end up in Egypt because of his dreams.

Matthew offers a quote from Hosea, another passage that meant something else in its original context. Again, though, if Matthew's intention is to show parallels, this quote is entirely appropriate.

Herod's order to destroy the infants of Bethlehem recalls Pharaoh's orders to kill the Hebrew children.

Matthew quotes from Jeremiah, perhaps a more obscure passage than the two previous quotes. Still, the original context is one of hope and comfort. The children who were lost will be returning. Matthew's quote, once again, makes sense only if the weeping is understood as a parallel and not a prediction.

Eventually King Herod dies, and the family can return to Bethlehem. Except that Herod's son Archelaus is in charge there. So they go to Nazareth in Galilee. The odd thing about this is that another one of Herod's sons, Herod Antipas, is ruling Galilee. Why would it be any safer there? Still, Matthew relates this back to the story of Israel with one more quote, "He will be called a Nazorean." It is uncertain to what Matthew is referring. This phrase cannot be found in the Hebrew Scriptures.

But the point had already been made: The story of Israel was a precursor to the story of Jesus. From the very beginning of his life, Jesus was the ideal to which God's entire history of interaction with humanity was pointing. Everything God had promised was to be fulfilled in him. If that's not good news, I don't know what is.

our need for the word

Our airwaves are so dominated by preachers of a biblical fundamentalism that one may be tempted to leave the Bible to them. Indeed, they seem to have poisoned the well with their literal, narrow, and unloving interpretations of Scripture. The alternative way of reading and understanding the Bible which has been presented to us is in the way of literary and historical criticism. This method is taught in our seminaries, and is in itself a necessary and worthwhile discipline. But a seminarian's knowledge of hypotheses about literary sources and historical settings can lead to an objectifying of Scripture that keeps it from being a living word for the priest or the congregation.

How can we read and hear God's Word today as a "word of life" (1 John 1:1), when just such a scriptural citation makes us fear that the writer is either a fundamentalist or someone simply inviting us to play the game of "criticism"?

I will be bold to restate and attempt to answer the questions in biblical terms. How can we "receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save [our] souls"? (Jas. 1:21)

The text itself points the direction in which we should go. If the Word is to be implanted in us and if the purpose of this implanting is to save our souls, we are talking about a subjective experience of the Word and not mere critical knowledge. If it is to be received with meekness, we will exclude the arrogant certainties of the radio and TV preachers -- the "bunkshooters," as the poet Carl Sandburg used to call them. In his poem "To a Contemporary Bunkshooter," Sandburg provided us with more than a term of opprobrium. He made the point which many have made about why the Word has lost its power among us: it has not been proclaimed as good news for the poor.

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Meditating on the Word

I don't think I can add anything to that.

ten verses never preached

The hardest thing about blogging again after a long absence is writing the first post. So, in lieu of offering one of my own, I'm just posting a link. Maybe that will get me back in the habit.

A blog called Church Hopping has a list of ten Bible passages that don't often get read from the pulpit. Hat tip to Cross and Flame of Street Prophets.