How God Became King : Why We've All Misunderstood the Gospels | N. T. Wright

welcome welcome to the final day of the January Series 2012 my name is Kristy Potter and I'm the director of the January series the time has flown by so quickly it's been a great 15 days and I know many of you have come day after day to enjoy the presentations we've been inspired and challenged and have learned together I hope that it's been a blessing to all a special thanks today to Baker publishing our series under writer into all of our sponsors and daily underwriters for helping to make the January series of free gift to all and thanks to all of that you who have made individual donations this month in our gift envelopes as well these gifts help us bring the fabulous speakers that we were able to enjoy this year it's been an extra-special year this year as we've celebrated our 25th anniversary and I'd like to acknowledge the founder and original director of the January Series June Hammerstein who's in the auditorium today and now if you'll please be sure to silence those phones and join me in a word of Prayer dear Heavenly Father we thank you for a great month of learning for the opportunity to join together in this place and in locations across the country and around the world to hear gifted individuals we ask now that you will be with our guest Tom Wright as he speaks to us may his presentation cause us to grow closer to you in Jesus name we pray amen and now Scott was a director of the center for excellence in preaching and today's underwriter will introduce our guest some years ago in his fortnightly newsletter context martini Marti relate an anecdote that he had read somewhere it seems that many years ago the renowned poet TS Eliot was the featured after-dinner speaker at a university here in the United States seated next to him for the banquet portion of the evening was a young woman who was an undergraduate at the University mr. Elliot was quite charmed by this young woman and so at some point late into dinner he leaned over to her and said call me Tom at this the young woman drew back visibly and with wide eyes replied oh no sir I couldn't you were required reading well five years ago our speaker today was on the Kelvin campus and at that time my colleague Cathy Smith and I got to spend part of a weekend with him and very early on in that weekend he told us to call him Tom but the man who said that to us has been hailed in numerous quarters as one of the leading New Testament scholars in the world today and not a few claim that he just is the leading New Testament scholar just now his writings on the Apostle Paul including his brilliant 2009 book justification and his writings on the proper way to understand Jesus life and a resurrection have engaged readers everywhere among his over 50 books NT Wright has written simply Christian surprised by hope scripture and the authority of God and coming in March his forthcoming book bearing the same title as today's presentation how God became king even to be end to list his many articles and reviews would be a daunting task but in all that he publishes NT write again and again stimulates theological reflection at the highest levels of academia even as he inspires preachers like me to preach better more lively more insightful biblical sermons messages that hew to the core of the Gospel message that God was in Christ to reconcile the world to himself NT Wright is a teacher and a scholar with few peers he is the former bishop of Durham in the Church of England and is currently the chair of New Testament and early Christianity at the University of st. Andrews School of divinity the Center for Excellence in preaching at Calvin Theological Seminary is so very pleased to underwrite today's presentation and we are so pleased because preachers professors scholars and ordinary Christian folks everywhere know full well that for thoughtful Christians NT right is more than definitely required reading even so it gives me great pleasure to introduce our brother in Christ and our friend Tom thank you very much for that it's very good to be back here in Calvin and thank you for the hospitality you have shown to my wife and myself this is a great place to come I always have enjoyed the rich sense of engagement that goes on here and actually not without a little jealousy I was saying in the green room just now I do not know anywhere in the UK where people engage with theological ideas in the way that I find when I come here and thanks to to those who've worked hard to make this series happen and also to those who've underwritten it and so on I very much appreciate having organized one or two things in my life I do know just all the work that goes on backstage so thank you very much to all those who've done that the problem I want to tackle today is one I first met when I was a teenager I was helping to run a school Christian study group and we decided to have a series covering key things about Jesus why was he born why did he live why did he die why did he rise and why will he return and I drew the short straw why did Jesus live I quickly realized the other ones would have been easier incarnation atonement resurrection second coming didn't know that much about them but I knew enough to know that there were some things you could say and bases to be covered in some what about that stuff in the middle why did Jesus live I have absolutely no idea what I said when I was 14 15 whatever it was but I would like to know but I don't I met the same problem from a different angle in my late twenties when I was asked to do a Bible reading to the student Christian Union in Cambridge on the gospel in the Gospels within the Protestant and evangelical world we have all learned that the gospel the good news of God's love in Jesus death and resurrection and his free grace by which we are saved through faith the gospel is something quite different from the Gospels Matthew Mark Luke and John indeed to our surprise apart from one or two verses such as John 3:16 and mark 10:45 the four Gospels don't appear to say very much about what Protestants and evangelical Christians have meant by the gospel I assume you know those verses John 3:16 is ubiquitous I was once coming into your beloved come through country through customs you always wonder what you're going to be asked that I was wearing ordinary street clothes but the man asked me what I did and I said I'm a bishop bishop a he said what does John 3:16 say and so thinking quickly on my feet I said Hooters Garriga person hothi austin cosmo i said didn't you want to know what it said and fortunately we were not detained further mark 10:45 is the famous line about the son of man giving his life as a ransom for many say you've got those one or two little flickers and there is one passage in Luke where Jesus speaks of this man going down to his house justified rather oh good there we've got the Protestant gospel in the Gospels up it doesn't appear to be thematic for the Gospels as a whole so what's going on what does the gospel have to do with the Gospels and vice-versa now this problem is not confined to Protestantism worryingly it is instantiated even within the great Catholic Creed's of Christendom of course the Creed's were drafted in order to highlight points on which the church resolved major difficulties but when the Creed's began to be used as a teaching syllabus as they often are to this day then the problem begins because of course the Creed's jump straight from Jesus birth to his death I believe in Jesus Christ His Son our Lord is conceived by the Holy Ghost born of the Virgin Mary suffered under Pontius Pilate crucified dead and buried and the Nicene Creed does it the same only a bit more fully and I have a mental image at that point of Matthew Mark Luke and John standing there saying excuse me we spent a lot of time and effort telling you about all that stuff in between and you just skip over it what's that about now I have nothing against the great Creed's I love them and I say them or sing them X animo but they have accidentally encouraged or the way they've been used as accidentally encouraged a reading of the New Testament in which the main body of the four Gospels is not theologically load airing for many Christians it would have been quite sufficient if Jesus of Nazareth had been born of a virgin died on a cross and never done anything in-between except perhaps leave lived us in this life the four Gospels then function for many as the dispensable backstory for the Gospel as preached by Paul indeed a friend of mine put it the Gospels are the optional pre prandial nibbles the chips and the dips before you go to the table and sit down for the red meat of Paul and theology this is the de facto position of many Protestants and many evangelicals many conservative evangelicals the irony being of course that it's the exact same position as that of Rudolf Bultmann with the only difference being that Bultmann thought most of the stories were pious fictions but the reason why most evangelicals would differ is not that the stories are doing anything theologically in themselves but simply to shore up a view of the inspiration of Scripture not for the only time swathe of evangelicals of evangelicals are more anxious to protect a theory of Scripture than to hear what scripture actually says and in addition the one mention of the kingdom in the Creed's gives people a strong hint that the kingdom is something will only happen right at the end he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end that doesn't actually say the kingdom will only happen then but that's the impression a lot of people get and granted people who say the Creed usually say the Lord's Prayer as well in their liturgies in which we pray for God's kingdom to come and his will to be done on earth as in heaven but my impression is that for most people that too is thought of as a prayer for the ultimate future or conceivably just a prayer to help me through today and tomorrow and on I've often asked groups of clergy and others what they think the middle bits of the Gospels are all about I've said two groups of groups of clergy supposing you were to ask your congregations what is the middle bit of the Gospels between his birth and his death all about what would they say what would they expect you to say I've got some interesting answers some rather shallow answers oh Jesus was teaching us how to go to heaven say some well when I read the Gospels bit which may point in something like that direction once you've cleaned it up a bit but that doesn't seem to be the main thing he's talking about oh say others he was giving us his new ethical system well he wasn't he wasn't others again highlight his extraordinary example of love of self giving of pastoral shrewdness and so on some people will even say that the main point of the whole thing throughout the Gospels is that Jesus was revealing that he was the Divine Son of God come to earth to rescue us from this earth without realizing just how close that is to Gnosticism again shades of Bultmann now of course there have been many who've done it the other way round partly in reaction to this creedal framework with the missing middle plenty of liberal theologians have cut off the birth stories at one end and the death and resurrection of the other end and made Jesus the great social worker being kind to old ladies stray dogs and small children or perhaps or perhaps he was Jesus the revolutionary starting a proto Marxist movement for workers rights now plenty of that in in the 60s particularly or perhaps more recently he was a cynic style teacher of a cryptic wisdom he was a sort of sage figure helping people to find more integrity and meaning in their difficult lives and with all of this there is an implicit critique of the creedal tradition Oh atoning deaths resurrections virgin births ascensions that's just so much later theology added in by the church to tone down the uncomfortable truth that Jesus is a wonderful and subversive teacher rather than someone whose divinity an atoning action would save us from the harsh realities of this world so you get all those books written in the 60s and so on about quote Jesus who became Christ unquote making this point often written by people escaping their conservative protest or Catholic past so don't give us all that Dogma because that was dry and dusty and oppressive and we want the real living exciting Jesus in the middle who was an ordinary chap like us only more so and that makes him exciting Jesus the good liberal is what such folk want rumors of angels and spooky stuff like that are so much distraction from the main tasks and there is indeed a danger that those of us who like me follow the creedal formula may forget what the Gospels are all about and may use that truncated form of Christianity however Creed will it be as an escape from reality the challenge of the four Gospels hits hard at both these polarized positions what's more it hits hard at the entire implicit construct of the post enlightenment Western world that's the underlying problem we face the main thing that the post enlightenment world both Christian and non-christian has not wanted to hear let alone face is the challenge of theocracy the news that God has actually become king what is theocracy say to you does it sound like mad clergy in some distant land claiming to have a hotline to heaven so they are going to tell you how it is and they're going to punish you or lock you up or do unmentionable things to you if you don't agree that's what theocracy has said too many people ever since the 18th century and yes there are societies that try to find try to organize their lives like that but the question in the word theocracy is which SEOs are we believing in what does it look like when this God becomes King that's what the four Gospels are trying to tell us about and it was to avoid the challenge of theocracy that the radical scholars of the 18th century and ever since have been determined to say that Jesus himself was a bit of a failure either he was trying to start a revolution well that fizzled out or he was prophesying the end of the world and that didn't happen either one way or another then within such schemes Jesus intended project came to nothing whereupon his followers the early sources but then particularly mark and the others following him retold his story in a different light cleaning it up sorting it out explaining that actually he was the divine son who had rescued sinners by his death and resurrection and then founding Christianity on that fiction and Orthodox scholars from the 18th century to the present have responded that that's wrong and that Jesus really was the Divine Son of God really did die for the sins of the world and rise again but that response which you find in a thousand earnest Orthodox rebuttals of liberal constructs usually misses the point as well indeed the more we go through the 19th and 20th centuries the more we find the Orthodox Jesus detached from the real world leaving a gaping hole which liberation theology has then tried to plug that's another story but my point is that just as radical post-enlightenment thought has not wanted Jesus in charge and so has made the Gospels out to be fraudulent Orthodox post enlightenment thought has not wanted Jesus to have a political message and so likewise has misread and misunderstood the Gospels which are after all about how God became king then and there and has remained king ever since oh we all know the obvious answers to that which was said in the first century God become king look out of the window read the newspapers which planner to you on it's obvious God isn't running the show that's why the Liberals then say we have to build the kingdom ourselves now of the Orthodox have to say oh no the kingdom consists of our spiritual fellowship with Jesus in the present and then what we'll have with him in heaven later but again if we're to read the Gospels for all they're worth none of this will do so what are we going to do my central proposal which I will then work out extremely briefly into a fresh reading of the Gospels is that there are four strands running right through the Gospels to which we have to pay attention I want you to imagine that you are moving into a new house and the you have decided to install a splendid new sound system in your living room you're going to have four loudspeakers one in each corner now as you know a good recording of good music will give you a different angle on the music from each corner if you listen to a Symphony Orchestra you go over to this corner you'll hear the violins very strong you if the woodwind over there the brass and the timpani in that corner cellos and basses over here whichever way it is but what you have to do of course is to make sure that you adjust the volume on each of these four loudspeakers to make sure you've got the balance right just because you love to hear trumpets being played doesn't mean you go over to that corner and turn that one up so loud that it drowns out the other three or just because you're bored as clarinets and oboes doesn't mean you should actually go and switch off the woodwind corner altogether my case to you now is that there are four loudspeakers we need to adjust as we listen to the Gospels two of them have usually been turned up a bit too loud so that the music becomes distorted and two of them have usually been turned off altogether so that most contemporary readers don't even realize they exist I'm going to start with one of the ones that has been turned off altogether this first loudspeaker is the one from which we hear a strange powerful old melody all four Gospels in there very different ways are written to tell the story of Jesus of Nazareth as the climax and fulfillment of the story of Israel you may be surprised to be told that this one's been switched off that we believe that what Jesus did was in fulfillment of Scripture yes perhaps so that we have mostly regarded that as Jesus fulfilling this or that ancient prophecy as a detached D historicized nugget of spiritual foresight floating through time and as it were then landing almost arbitrarily on Jesus he has somebody back there said something like this and Jesus has sort of done it so that's a fulfillment but that's not what the Gospels are saying the four Gospels despite their differences in merge from the world of Second Temple Judaism in which the ancient story of God and God's people had not come to a stop it was still going albeit in a dark and puzzled mode the Exile of five centuries before when God had abandoned his people to their fate so that the pagan nations now ruled over them had not really come to an end Daniel 9 in the Book of Daniel was one of the most popular books in this period Daniel 9 declared that it would take 490 years for this to happen for the final full redemption to come about many in Jesus own day were doing their sums trying to calculate when that would come about the four Gospels all say in their own way that this is the moment the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand and the way they narrate the story of Jesus shows how this works matthew's genealogy often skipped over by Western readers we don't know who all these people are and we don't do family trees today like that so why bother no matthew's genealogy is a single long story the story of a family from Abraham to Jesus pausing David and the Exile as the intermediate moments which give added significance to what's going on and now Jesus the fulfillment of that story mark opens his gospel with quotations from Malachi and Isaiah both of which look ahead in Israel's history to the time when the Exile will truly be over this will be the moment of new Exodus the new release from slavery Luke opens his gospel with an e vocation of first samuel declaring that as with hannah and elkanah in first samuel waiting for the longing for the birth of their son and then this son samuel becomes the one who anoints david who is going to be king so luke story begins with the moment when that whole thing is fulfilled and Zechariah and Elizabeth have John the Baptist who ends up baptizing Jesus who is the Messiah and so on and then zechariah sings that wonderful song God has at last fulfilled his promises to Abraham the single long narrative has got where it was meant to go Luke ends with Jesus explaining on the road to Emmaus and in the upper room that everything in the scriptures had now come true this is how the story was supposed to end and John has Jesus recapitulating and bringing to their appropriate climax more or less all the major strands of Old Testament narrative from creation itself to Exodus think of the divine glory coming to take up residence in our midst from Moses and Torah and temple and sacrifice all of that comes together narrative early at this point in John now throughout all of this I suspect that one of the reasons why this loudspeaker has been turned right down is that at least since the Middle Ages the Western Church hasn't known what to make of the theme why should it matter to us to tell the story of Jesus as the fulfillment of the story of Israel isn't it enough to know that there were some ancient prophecies that he fulfilled no that isn't enough the point of the entire biblical narrative somebody I was talking to earlier this morning was talking about people who tell the story as creation fall Redemption and I was making the point that actually you can't do it like that without falsifying what the Bible says creation for Israel Jesus and then fifth act out beyond where we live that point of the entire biblical narrative is that the Creator God called Israel to be his means of rescuing the human race from its disaster and so of rescuing creation itself from its disaster God made humans to be stewards of creation and he never rescinded that project God called Israel to be the family through whom the world would be rescued so that humans could get back to that project at last and God hasn't rescinded the Israel project either despite the fact that he knew from the start that Israel the promised bearing people would also be part of the problem that indeed is what gives a dark and tragic shape and body to the whole narrative but each of the evangelists insists in his own way that Jesus came as Israel's Messiah to bring that narrative to its conclusion he came as the climax of the narrative of Samuel and kings as the true king with authority over the temple and a commission to restore the fortunes of God's people and bring God's saving rule to the world he came as the climax of the narrative of Chronicles coming as the true priest to offer Israel's God the pure worship of an entire consecrated life those two vocations narrative early constructed from the Old Testament converge on the cross where the king of the Jews is also the ultimate sacrifice but these stories in their original biblical framework including of course the Psalms are also about the way in which Israel's God is becoming King not just of Israel but of the whole world and the Gospels faithfully reflect that too Jesus is enthroned as King of the Jews and Lord of the world so as Messiah Jesus draws Israel's story to its proper climax as the crucified Messiah he establishes even while radically subverting all expectations about how that story would end and what role its true king might have this is the story the Gospels are telling that is what we hear when we turn the first loudspeaker up to its proper volume again the second loudspeaker has usually in Western Christianity been turned up far too loud and this second loudspeaker tells the story of Jesus as the story of Israel's God the Creator the trouble here is that most Christians in the Western world and east as well have regarded it axiom axiomatic that Jesus was an is divine but they've come with a distorted idea of who this God is the word God today is heard on the street as referring to a distant Deus divinity who might have made the world in the first place perhaps who might or might not reach in from time to time and stir the pot from the outside producing what we then call miracles events with no natural cause so for many the Gospels tell the story of Jesus okay if he's God incarnate he is the incarnation of that sort of a God that's the wrong God the Deus God or even an epicurean God doing the impossible becoming human even though everybody knows he shouldn't and can't floating through history is six inches above reality dispensing miracles and wisdom and supernatural salvation that's the image so many have of Jesus when they think of Jesus and God the loudspeaker has been turned up too loud God God God and it's shrill and people imagine all the wrong sort of things I was with some folk a few years back who were grumbling that their teenagers were all wearing bracelets saying what would Jesus do and I said you should be so lucky in your culture my teenagers wouldn't dream of wearing bracelets saying what would Jesus do I'd be happy to think that they would think about that for one second in a week but then they said no but they I was saying to my daughter the other day this person said that when she was refusing to clean up her room I said well what would Jesus do and she said oh he would have just zapped it clean that's Jesus the incarnation of a kind of magic god this this God who just steps in and does something funny and makes it all happen and the trouble with this Distortion like a loudspeaker which is crackling and hissing because the volume has been turned up too loud is both that it drowns out all the other music and that it baguettes a reaction many people in the churches and outside them have heard that distorted sound of this strange Jesus who is this odd being quite unlike the rest of us and they've said in reaction actually when I read the Gospels I think Jesus was just a good man with some great ideas and a real generosity of spirit and that's enough for me and though they have officially denied Christian teaching they have glib something true but the reaction is of course just as damaging as the distortion now happily good news here contemporary biblical scholarship in some quarters is at last recovering its nerve I listened last week to one of the lectures that my friend and distant colleague Richard Hayes from Duke Divinity School was doing in Edinburgh as a guest he's lecturing on the use of the Old Testament in the Gospels and bringing out exactly the point that I'm now going to make and others are doing similar kinds of things after generations of being told that John had a high Christology and the Synoptics had a low one we are at last recognizing that the story of God himself as it is told in the Old Testament is seen in the Gospels as reaching its own climax it isn't just Israel's story that reaches its climax it's God's but what is God's story how does God have a story well in the Old Testament as I said God abandons his people to their fate at the time of the exile read the early chapters of The Book of Ezekiel the terrifying sight of God on his throne chariot with the whirling wheels doing a vertical takeoff over Jerusalem and heading off somewhere else leaving the city to its fate Ezekiel says at the end of the book that he's going to come back but at no point throughout the Second Temple period does anybody actually say that he has done so yet that's part as part of the problem the priests in Malachi are bored they're bringing all kinds of rubbish animals to offer in sacrifice because they have a sense that though they've rebuilt the temple he hasn't come back yet and so Malachi says the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come back to his temple and that's the very quote with which of course mark starts his book Isaiah declares that Yahweh's glory will be revealed and all flesh shall see it together so we shouldn't be surprised then when marks Jesus forgives sins and stills the storm doing exactly down to verbal echoes what scripture says Yahweh himself does nor should we be surprised when Luke's Jesus comes to Jerusalem and to explain the significance of the moment tells a story about a man who went away and is now coming back again you didn't know says Jesus in Luke 19 the time of your visitation divine visitation in other words Matthew makes similar moves Jesus is the long-promised Emmanuel the God with us and at the end when Jesus says I am with you always we should get the point and John as usual has his own matchless way of doing it the word became flesh he says Caius Kinison and Haman pitched his tent tabernacled in our midst yes like at the end of the book of Exodus forming a circle with Genesis 1 when the Creator God who had lived there in his heaven and earth reality at the beginning with his human creatures wanting them to be his agents in running his garden then at the end of the book of Exodus despite Israel's horrible sin in the middle of that book Dane's in sheer grace to come and dwell in their midst in the tabernacle the glory coming to take up residence the word became flesh and tabernacled in our midst and we gazed on his glory the glory in other words has returned at last even though nobody thought it would look like this when it did once we recover in our minds not only the biblical picture of who God is but the biblical narrative of what God is up to we see that the four evangelists are telling the story of Jesus without crackling or shrill distortion as the astonishing story of how this Creator God has returned to his people at last through it all the meaning is clear this God has come back in order to be king king over Israel king over the world how lovely on the mountains says as I hire in a passage which is echoed across the New Testament are the feet of the ones who bring good news who say to Zion your God reigns that is the Evangelion the gospel the good news which it takes all four entire books to tell this is the story of how God became king Jesus draws this second theme to its proper climax not by striding around being divine all over the place but by embodying and acting out the ancient vision of the Covenant God as the merciful and self giving God who would have thought says the Prophet gazing in astonishment at the final picture of the servant who would have thought that he was the arm of the Lord Israel's God has made bear his holy arm in the sight of all the nations and all the ends of the earth can now see God's salvation now as I say that the third loudspeaker likewise has been turned up too loud in most Western Christian readings got the story of Jesus as a story of Israel the story of Jesus is the story of Israel's God the third one is the story of Jesus has the story of how the church was founded some traditional Christianity particularly some parts of Catholicism has read the four Gospels as the story of how Jesus gave His disciples instructions on how they were to set up and run the church Jesus then becomes the founder of a movement and the teacher of a new ethic and this too has bred its own reaction as many more liberal readers seizing on parts of the story which don't really looked like that they're that normal over loud Church found in reading they have declared that Jesus was a good Jewish lad who would have been horrified to see a church founded in his name now both those positions are of course distortions and once we get the first loudspeaker probably adjusted we see what's going on Jesus wasn't founding a church because the people of God had been going ever since Abraham and like some other Jews at the time Jesus believed it was his vocation to bring God's people to the point of the long-awaited new Exodus the great turnaround time when God would at last be gracious would forgive his people's sins and restore their fortunes and set up his kingdom and this would then generate exactly as scripture said a whole new identity for God's people in Scripture this regularly included thing about the nations of the world either coming into worship or being a glassed subdued under israel's anointed king and the gospels constantly hint at exactly that kind of redefinition of god's people many will come from east and west sit down at table with abraham isaac and jacob but it also adds a warning the sons of the kingdom might find themselves ejected many who are first will be last on the last first god's people are being it seems turned inside out and upside down and at the same time what is sometimes seen as jesus ethical teaching a as Jesus came to found the church to teach us how to behave so here's all his ethics and that's just all we have to do know what is sometimes seen as Jesus ethical teaching is much more than that it is an entire agenda for renewed humanity this is what it looks like when hearts are renewed when people are transformed from the inside out and it is also an agenda for renewing humanity a humanity through which God renews the world God's project to renew the world through his faithful people notice how some at least of the Beatitudes actually work they are not just promising God's blessing upon the poor and spirit the peacemakers and so on but rather God's blessing through such people in other words this is how God is becoming King through the meek the peacemakers the heart pure people the hungry for justice people when God wants to take his power and reign putting the world to rights as he had always promised he doesn't send in the tanks he sends in the meek the brokenhearted the crushed in spirit they will do in humility and hope the world renewing tasks medicine education justice mercy the tasks through which the Living God is implementing his way of being King we in the West have grown so accustomed to hearing that standard critique of the church from sneering post enlightenment philosophers Oh Christianity is just part of the sub part of the problem part of the solution but actually the world today is a totally different place from what it was in the first century and that transformation is due in large measure to the vision of the Sermon on the Mount being worked out in concrete history okay there are major major critiques of the church we have messed up big-time east and west north and south Protestant and Catholic we've all got it horribly wrong in all sorts of ways we all know that I hope but God has decisively launched his kingdom project in and through Jesus we mustn't sell our own story short when we turn this loudspeaker down from its shrill oh Jesus just founded the church volume we can see why the story the Gospels tell is the story of how through Jesus the Creator God was beginning the new phase of his world renewing project and those who read the story like that will find themselves caught up in to it not just as beneficiaries but as agents the fourth loudspeaker is another one that's usually been turned off altogether all four Gospels tell the story of Jesus as the story of how Israel's God defeated the powers of the world and the dark power that stands behind them all in the Gospels by strong implication Jesus is enthroned and everyone else from Caesar himself downwards and indeed right back to the evil one the accuser himself is dethroned one way of drawing attention to this a very interesting point is to note that in the first century AD the Gospels were not the only narrative which told of a centuries-old story reaching a surprising and royal conclusion Rome had long prided itself on being a republic but now Horace and Livy and above all Virgil had told the long story of Rome as a story which had reached an astonishing transformative climax in August's Caesar who was lord of the world and son of God the Gospels drew on Israel's much longer story - bring it - - it's astonishing and transformative climax in Jesus the true son of the true God and the true Lord of the world look at it in Luke's opening in particular Luke is very careful to tell us that august's Caesar is on the throne and he sends out a decree that all the world must be registered for taxation purposes or Gustus lives it lifts a little finger in Rome and at the other end of his world Mary and Joseph set off and end up in Bethlehem which is where Israel's Messiah is to be born and everyone who knows the Scriptures knows that Israel's Messiah is destined to be king from one side of the globe to the other matthew meanwhile has Herod the Great brooding over the birth of Jesus but being outwitted by the Magi and the Magi of course are the symbol of Israel's God being king over all the earth and then it has Herod's lacklustre son Herod Antipas brooding over Jesus public career but unable to stop Jesus being crucified as King of the Jews mark has the Centurion of the Cross muttering in surprise this man really was son of God and he must have known the implication since every coin in his pocket had son of God around Caesars portrait John's Jesus declares that the ruler of this world is cast out so that he Jesus will now draw all people to himself and in the most spectacular scene in all political theology John 18 and 19 Jesus confronts Pontius Pilate the representative of God's kingdom confronting the representative of Caesars kingdom and they argue about Kingdom and truth and power well what else would they talk about and then Pilate is shown to be without real power he is outwitted by the chief priests but Jesus goes to his death to unveil in action the all-powerful love of God but in each case the resurrection seals the point he is raised as Messiah Lord of the world son of God in power all authority in heaven and on earth he says is given to me I'm in charge now you go and get on with the work nobody reading the four Gospels in the first century could have missed that point and we think of all this stuff as political only because we in the modern world have separated out the so-called religious from the so-called political because if the Gospels tell the story of how God became King they do so in order to demonstrate not only an alternative King but an alternative mode of Kingdom as Jesus explains to James and John in mark 10 the rulers of this world do power in one way we're gonna do it the other way if anyone wants to be great they must be the servant of all because the Son of Man didn't come to be served but to serve to give his life as a ransom for many notes John in mark 10 thirty five to forty five you get the atonement theology inside the political theology or to put it another way the way God rescues people from sin and death is by overthrowing all the powers that held them captive and the way does that is not with superior firepower of the same kind but with a different sort of power altogether the power that is let loose transformative lis in the world through Jesus death and resurrection and which will work until every knee bows at his name now this fourth loudspeaker of now that we've got them all adjusted you will see that it joins up with the first one and it's no accident that those two have both been turned off because when you cut the link between the gospel and the story of Israel you are also going to cut the link between the gospel and the challenge to Cesar's kingdom the Old Testament book which issues all of this challenge is of course the Book of Daniel above all they all do but Daniel particularly Exodus Isaiah the Psalms but Daniel Daniel is central for the evangelists view of Jesus Jesus predicts his own vindication after suffering in language taken from Daniel 7 the Son of Man comes on the clouds not from heaven to earth but earth to heaven in vindication exalted to sit at God's right hand exercising judgment over the beasts at that moment he is simultaneously David trouncing the Philistines and Adam ruling over the animals this is the point of the kingdom of God Israel's God is king over the nations of the world and through him humankind itself is given back its sovereign rule over creation when you turn the four speakers to their proper volume that is the glorious quadraphonic music you're going to hear so what happens when we learn to listen to the Gospels in these four ways all together we discover in a new way that the story the evangelists are telling is a single story which can't be broken up as we have so often done into Jesus talking about the kingdom of God on the one hand and then Jesus dying a redemptive death on the other it's the same story read those early chapters the shadow of the Cross falls over the proclamation of the kingdom and the kingdom meaning is built solidly an intricate intricately into the narrative of the cross the kingdom in other words is launched in Jesus ministry but established through his death and resurrection it's because we find that so difficult to understand that we've pulled the Gospels apart or to put it the other way around the cross does not achieve something other than the kingdom of God but rather is the victory of the kingdom bringer by separating those two strands out as well as been done again and again in both popular and scholarly readings we have belittled the texts and the Christian faith we've tried to build on in particular we have capitulated to the Enlightenment agenda again the Enlightenment thinkers were eager to neutralize the message and meaning of the gospel so as to launch the brave new world in which Europeans and Americans had come of age Jesus is a great teacher on the one hand Jesus dying to rescue people out of the world on the other that's fine that creates the hermeneutical space for the Enlightenment project to get off the ground since they thought it's obvious that the kingdom didn't actually happen with Jesus we'll get on with building it ourselves and we'll let Jesus give people a private spirituality in the present and a hope of a blissful immortality in the future that's fine that'll keep them happy we are going to do our stuff and the churches of the West by and large have colluded cheerfully with this agenda the miss readings I spoke of earlier at both popular and scholarly levels merely instantiate this split of Kingdom and cross what happens when we put them back together again when we read kingdom and cross together with the music from the first loudspeaker in our ears we hear those great stories in Genesis and Exodus the psalms isaiah zechariah daniel all coming to their head israel's calling was to be the light of the world that calling is narrowed down to one man the Messiah and the Messiah turns out to be the servant the bruised and battered arm of the Lord wounded for our transgressions bruised for our iniquity the same split that has divided the kingdom from the cross in reading the Gospels has also split apart the promise of God's kingdom in Isaiah 52 from the work of the servant in Isaiah 53 but the poem is seamless it's time to put it back together again and when we do we find cross and resurrection saying with the book of Exodus this is what it looks like when Israel's God comes at last in his glory to save his people and lead them to their inheritance and with Genesis this is what it looks like when the Creator finally sorts out the mess in the garden by rescuing the humans who were supposed to be looking after it for him when we read kingdom and cross together with the music from the second loudspeaker in our ears we see in particular the way in which the promises of Isaiah 63 of Ezekiel 34 of 2nd Samuel 7 and so on once again of Daniel 7 had been fulfilled Israel's God always said he would come back would come back to be the Shepherd of his people would come back in person to rescue them would dwell in them it's not in a house of timber and hewn stone but in and as a human being the Lord Himself declares said Nathan to David that he will build you a house and he then spoke about David's son who would be God's Son in particular the strange vision of Daniel 7 speaks of Thrones being placed in heaven and the one like a son of man representing the saints of the Most High sits on a throne right alongside the Ancient of Days either this is a terrible compromise of Jewish monotheism or somehow the one who now shares the throne of God is the one for whom that is and always was appropriate the Gospels are all hinting in ways far more subtle than most books on Christology have realized that this is what we should have expected it to look like when Israel's God came back not in a blaze of glory not in the pillar of cloud and fire not an enthroned on the chariot with the whirling wheels but in and as the human being who would feed his flock like a shepherd who would gently lead those with young and would go and give his life for the Sheep the proper way to gospel Christology is to hold together kingdom and cross to listen for the music from the second loudspeaker and then to stand in awe of what we see in here and this is where the story becomes truly scary because when we listen to the third loudspeaker and ask about kingdom and cross we discover that the Gospels are full of signs that Jesus followers were themselves called to be not only Kingdom people we'd rather enjoy that but also cross people we shrink from that if anyone wants to come after me said Jesus you must deny yourself and take up your cross and follow there is a sense of course in which Jesus own vocation to the cross is unique which is why he insists in the garden that the disciples must not share the pure as most the tribulation but there is another sense in which when he calls them to carry forward the work of Kingdom inauguration he calls them to enlist as his followers in the battle which will involve for them as well suffering of various kinds up to and including martyrdom and there are signs here and there in the New Testament but some of the early Christians had a hard time working this out if Jesus has been raised if he is now in throne why are we still suffering and they working out Peter works it out Paul works it out book of Revelation particularly you are sharing the Messiah's sufferings this is how the kingdom happens and the church precisely because it consists of Jesus followers is supposed to be kingdom and cross people the people who work for the progress of God's kingdom precisely through their own suffering and shame the people who bear suffering and shame because they're working for God's kingdom this continues to be a massive challenge for all of us particularly in comfortable Western churches spend five minutes talking to a Christian leader from Burma China Pakistan many other places will remind you of the reality of what the New Testament is writing about the challenge comes of course not least because of the normally silent final fourth loudspeaker when Jesus confronts pilots and puts him decisively in the wrong about Kingdom truth and power and then when he goes to the cross to embody the truth the kingdom and the power of which he'd been speaking he is setting the pattern for his followers in John 16 he says when the Spirit comes the Spirit will convict the world of sin of righteousness and judgment and I've often thought that would be great I wish the Spirit will get on and do that and then you realize that the way the Spirit works is through the church this is our agenda to hold the world to account the church is not a spectator the Spirit will do this through Jesus disciples and you can see that happening what's going on in Acts in Revelation not least in Paul we come back and put the four speakers together the story of the renewed Israel is the story of how the Living God defeats human arrogance but it is the story of how the suffering the meek the merciful the hungry for justice people take over the world that's how it's done that's how God becomes king through Jesus unique victory now it would be possible to spell this out at much greater length and of course in the forthcoming book I've done exactly that and by the way I'm sorry there won't be time or space for questions it would be impossible really in this great gathering to do something like that it will be possible to reread the Gospels one more time looking at the great sequence that starts with Jesus baptism and builds all the way to the title on the cross drawing out the scriptural narratives it's a wonderful project you might do with all this in mind it would be possible to look in detail at Jesus predictions of the coming of the kingdom and show that many passages which have regularly been taken as promises about the second coming are in fact to be taken as promises about the effect of Jesus death and resurrection for the early church the kingdom came with power when Jesus came out of the tomb on Easter morning and it is only because so much scholarship in the last 200 years has rejected the bodily resurrection that it has had to put far too much weight on to the last event in the sequence the second coming of course the second coming still matters enormous ly eschatology is inaugurated not yet consummated but the claim that Jesus followers are to be kingdom people goes hand in hand with the warning that this will continue to mean suffering in the present we don't build the kingdom by our own efforts we build for the kingdom and the tools for that building remain the cross shaped ones we learn from Jesus himself in particular very in concluding I just want to make two brief points one each about a central doctrine of the faith we have tended to focus on two doctrines about Jesus his incarnation and his atoning work now the four Gospels against what many suppose all firmly believe in what we call the Incarnation the Jesus they offer us is the personal embodiment of Israel's God but as far as they're concerned this is the key in which the music is set rather than the melody that is being played the melody is not look-look Jesus is divine we catch that on root but look here is God becoming King we have substituted the static belief in Jesus divinity for the active belief in what the Incarnate son was actually doing it is possible to check the Credo boxes and miss the larger reality towards which they are the signposts what we need in this next generation is creedal Christians who know what the four Gospels are about so - with the atonement when we read the Gospels for all they're worth it's impossible to imagine that Jesus died on the cross simply so that we could pass safely from this world to the non spatio-temporal heaven imagined by plato NIST's the Gospels are eager to tell us that Jesus dies precisely as the king of the Jews the one who brings to its triumphant conclusion the long story of Yahweh's victory over the powers of the world culminating in sin and death the meaning of the cross in the Gospels cannot be captured in any of our usual atonement theology formula not because they are not true they are all true gloriously but because they are all signposts to that larger almost inexpressible reality of new covenant and new creation which are being launched throughout the gospel stories we are not saved simply for our own sake to be with God forever some people have talked about the kingdom of God in recent writing as though kingdom of God meant God and his people getting together and having a nice time know as revelation puts it when the lamb purchases men and women by his own blood it is in order to make them a royal priesthood so that they may reign on the earth and may sum up the praises of creation before God God saves us in order to work through us God wants his world to be ruled by humble forgiven sinners read John 21 the rehabilitation of Peter God wants to put the world right and so he puts people right so that they can be putting right people foreign in the world that's justification God wants creation to be renewed by people who themselves have been an are being renewed that is the story the Gospels tell and I think we've all missed it now there is much more could I that I could say where they're time you have to read the book when it comes out there is in particular a lot that needs to be said those who ears please hear about the ways in which would be historical scholarship both liberal and Orthodox has tried to study the Gospels and the ways in which those methods have themselves participated in the distortions and misunderstandings of which I have spoken there is also a warning to be given against those who assume that by murmuring words like Creed and Canon they can let themselves off the hook of wrestling with what the Canon actually says and rest content in cradle doctrines which however true only point to the central gospel claim who do not spell it out but let me conclude by saying this we can't read the Gospels merely for information about all this they're not designed for that they do not invite fly-on-the-wall readings they are like a musical score which demands to be played they are like a great drama which okay you can take it off and read it yourself in bed if you like but it'll only come to life when a group of actors gets together and tries to put it on on stage this is why the church has always read the Gospels in public and particular particularly at the Eucharist and why in most traditions the church stands up at that point when you take Matthew Mark Luke and John in your hands you are invoking the presence of the Living Lord of whom they speak we rise to greet our King only in a church that has forgotten what the Gospels are all about and is called something else the gospel could people suppose that they could safely treat the Gospels as the backstory for that problem ation it's time to put first things first once more and to read the Gospels as what they truly are what they will truly become again and again for those who take them seriously the story of how God became King on earth as in heaven in Jesus the Messiah and his death and resurrection those who read like this will find that in the power of the Spirit that very reading equips them to go into all the world to announce to a surprised and unready world that God is its king and that Jesus is its Lord thank you thank you Tom Tom will be in the West lobby for a very brief time only about 15 minutes it would help if you would come with your book like this if you would like it signed but also help if you wouldn't ask him little questions like that new perspective on pole thing what do you think so we want to keep the line moving but he'll be there for about 15 minutes thank you for coming everyone

Channel: The Narrow Gate

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Keywords: Jesus, Satan, Sin, God, Jesus Christ, Holy Spirit, Bible, Christian, The Gospel, Truth, Lord, Salvation, The Word, Preaching, Study, Sermon, The Father, Faith, Hope, Love, Apostle, Disciples, Heaven, Hell, Demons, Angels, Prophets, Saints, The Cross, Calvary, Crucified, Born Again, Scripture, Prophecy, Holy, Justification, Sanctification, Regeneration, Soul, Church, The Blood, Prayer, New Covenant, Grace, Christianity, Martyr, Pastor, Messiah, Savior, Atonement, PRAYER, repent, N. T. Wright

Id: Mks4gYcjpXc

Length: 62min 15sec (3735 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 19 2016