N. T. Wright on Paul and the Faithfulness of God: A Conversation about Preaching

hello and welcome to this interview with Professor NT Tom Wright about preaching from Paul in dialogue with his epic new book Paul and the faithfulness of God my name is Ron Allen I've taught preaching and Gospels and letters at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis since 1982 I am especially glad to welcome professor Wright to this interview because among major New Testament scholars he is almost uniquely qualified to serve as our guide to preaching on Paul his life and ministry have had three great foci first serious scholarship second leadership in the church and third interpretation of the Bible for lay audiences at a very popular and accessible level he is of course a scholar almost without peer in the number of works that he has written in their depth penetration insight and freshness in fact more than seventy titles have flowed from his hand for most of his ministry almost since finishing at Oxford he has also preached nearly every week as a university chaplain as the Dean of a Cathedral as the Canon theologian in residence of Westminster Abbey and as Bishop of Durham and in addition he is as I noted a serious interpreter of the Bible for lay audiences he has for everyone series Matthew for everyone Paul for everyone should be on the bookshelf of every Sunday school class and Bible study group dr. Wright it is a pleasure to welcome you to this interview and we look forward to your characteristic candor clarity insight gentleness and humility as these categories have marked your work from the beginner thank you very much because our particular focus today is on preaching from Paul I wonder if we might begin with you giving us a little overview of what you hope will happen during a sermon and of course how you go about preparing your own sermons well I have found over the years that there is no absolute single way of preparing sermons ideal they I like to spend good time with the text or the texts in my tradition there are usually two or three texts each service and so sometimes one is looking at bringing them together into some sort of convergence and sometimes it's quite clear for whatever reason that actually you have to focus on one and then it's a matter of reading it thinking about it having it in the back of the mind during the week this becomes harder if you're preaching as I was in Durham often three four five six times a week and you're going on the fly all the time but ideally that's that's how you do it you're mulling it over and then as you're doing that and as you're praying for the people to we're going to be speaking often certain themes emerge or certain illustrations emerge and I would find again and again that there will be a sort of aha moment yes now okay I now know which of the 19 things that I might say about this passage has to be said on this particular occasion so it's a it's an odd process it's as much of an art as a science because one is engaged with these people and that'll be different according to what sort of an audience it is of the controlling metaphor that I often have in mind is that of somebody preparing a meal that the scriptural text and regularly comes to us very neat and dense and tight especially Paul and it's hard just to present that to an audience as a straight-up exposition what they need is for as with a chef it has to be cut up prepared garnished and cooked at the right temperature for the right length of time which is the praying and the thinking and the scribbling of notes in order that it can be served as a digestible meal rather than is always the danger especially on Paul as an indigestion one so so that's that's the aim and one is this is a lifetime thing it's not something that that I've ever thought right I now know how to do it one goes on learning and when you go from that process to the listener what do you hope will happen in the congregation as a result of hearing the sermon mm-hmm I think I go back to the great expositors with in many bits of the Protestant tradition who have seen the sermon in almost sacramental terms the the visible words and then the living words coming together and since a lot of my preaching in various context has been within the setting of the Eucharist it's often it's remarkable how many sermons on many subjects can quietly at the end be turned towards so as we come to the table or so as we stretch out our hands or whatever there's a natural application which then focuses things for the congregation whatever it is that we're learning about can have a Eucharistic focus now obviously I've preached at many non Eucharistic services as well and so but but then the thing as with the sacraments is this is a moment in which one is hoping and praying that heaven and earth actually come together and just resonate and that's going to be different for different people yeah but again and again as you will know the ideal for the preacher is to have the sense for yourself but also in the congregation that that some people put it that God will actually show up and then somehow the the mixture of the word which is the given the preacher with all the praying and work that goes into it and the congregation who are expectant something will happen which is unpredictable and God will speak and God will be present there'll be a sense of his presence his love his challenge which will then permeate the rest of the worship and ideally that is then framed with the hymns and the prayers and the readings that are chosen that there should be a seamless feel to the whole service the sermon isn't sort of out on the edge oh thank you and as we moved from this general thought about preaching to preaching on Paul what would you say are some of the most important reasons the church should be interested in Paul today what does Paul have that we need Paul basically invented the thing which with hindsight we call Christian theology people didn't do theology in this way either in the Jewish world or in the pagan world Paul starts this extraordinary process of serious scriptural prayerful reflection on who God is who God's people are what God's purposes for the world and that's all through his letters in different dimensions in different ways and that as he does that he's not doing it just for the sake of organizing a set of ideas so that we can say right we've tidied that lot up and feel intellectually pleased with it that there is an intellectual pleasure of course in grasping these ideas but the reason Paul is doing this is in order to sustain the church as the United and holy and witnessing community and Paul has realized that this community whether it's in Corinth or collation or Philippi or wherever is incredibly vulnerable it's very easy to imagine that it's going to fall apart you're putting together Jews and Gentiles slaves and free men and women people of all sorts who would never normally come together and you're telling them they're actually a new sort of family now they have to live as that and and and love as that and in order for that to be the case they have to be sustained again and again with this big vision of God God's faithfulness God's purposes God had God's hope so that always it's about building up the church and Paul says that frequently and so in it's interesting when I was working on this book it dawned on me that whereas the topics everyone knows about like justification come very specifically in say Romans and Galatians and little bits elsewhere the topic of the unity of the church and of reconciliation between people of very different sorts comes in letter after letter after letter and so what we are doing as preachers with Paul is having the privilege of going back to the very beginning of Christian theology and saying we need to reinter mood metaphor we need to be sustained by this so that we can be reconciled so that we can be united so that we can be holy and so that we can be a witness to the world in your remarks just now and as suggested by the title of your book the faithfulness of God is an important concept for Paul and for you and I wonder if you would comment on how you see it as foundational for Paul but also how you see that concept as important for the life of the church today yes for Paul it goes back with deep roots in the Hebrew Scriptures and what we call the Old Testament because again and again Israel had to be reminded that God was faithful because of course the history of Israel is very checkered and complicated and the prophets regularly tell them hang on to God because he is faithful and if you wait for him and trust in him it will work out but of course for Paul that has been magnified by the events that occurred after the end of the Old Testament through what we call the Second Temple period and then particularly in the life and death of rent and resurrection of Jesus because suddenly there's a whole question god made all these promises to Abraham to David to Moses what's happened to those promises has it all come to nothing and so the question of God's faithfulness for Paul is very sharply focused and this comes out in many passage but passages but especially in the letter to the Romans on whether God is faithful to the promises that he made to Abraham and the other patriarchs but behind that again and Paul is clearly aware of this there is a bigger question which then opens out to enfold where we might be today which is whether God as creator is faithful to the whole creation and do we believe in a God who has made a good world and will one day renew it and fill it with his glory as the prophets have said or do we as many Christians of him belief in a God who may or may not have made this world but actually it's a piece of old trash now and he's going to throw it away and do something completely different which doesn't say much about his faithfulness to his original plan so that then for us the questions of God's faithfulness come again and again in our personal lives and in vocation and in marriage and in work and in the life of the church we thought we were going along along a particular direction something terrible has happened has God forgotten us and of course that's the classic question the Psalms are always asking and Paul plugs into those questions and kind of Rhian habits them and it seems to me in preaching one of the things one is trying to do is to help people for themselves to plug back in to those same great scriptural resources and to do so through the lens of Paul enables us not just to go back to the Psalms or Isaiah or whatever but to do so with a Jesus shaped focus and Paul would say that it's in Jesus ultimately that we always see God as faithful and of course in the paradox of Jesus death and resurrection there was the horror of my God why did you abandon me but then the reimbursing of Jesus of Israel of creation in the resurrection so Paul gives us a lens through which we conceive the great biblical promises of the faithfulness of God and through which we can actually appropriate those for ourselves and it seems to be the preacher is constantly trying to help people to get that sequence of thought into their minds and hearts yes thank you and changing channels just a little bit one of the exciting areas of scholarship the last 20 years has been the relationship of the gospel to the imperial system the relationship of Jesus and Paul to Caesar I wonder if you would comment about that a little bit with respect to Paul and then suggest if it seems appropriate how Paul might help the preacher think in terms of Imperial systems today yes that has been quite a buzzy topic over the last maybe 20 years or so and it's happened during my lifetime quite suddenly because nobody much was talking about Paul and Caesar 40 years ago but the last 20 years may be quite a lot I think the first thing we have to say is that just as we've had to learn that the 16th century ways of looking at Paul and salvation are not the best lens for understanding the first century so the 18th 19th 20th and 21st century ways of looking at politics aren't in the Western world aren't the best way of understanding how either a Roman or a Greek or a Jew in the first century would see the questions of power and Empire and rule and so on life is much more complicated we put everything on a left-right spectrum and the further you go down that way the more you'll gain towards anarchy or possibly socialism and the further you go this way the further you're going towards tyranny and strong government and so on and and we in our democratic systems we try and navigate some sort of a middle way with our voting systems between the two now in the first century that would have made no sense at all and for Paul there's a sense of inheriting a Jewish vision in which the one God who made the world wants the world to be wisely and properly governed by human beings and that so that governments and kings and rulers and magistrates are a good thing because otherwise the bullies and the power brokers push everyone out of the way and the great biblical emphasis on the poor and the needy and the weak generates then a desire and a need that we have good wise just government but within the Jewish world and Paul Rhian habits this we have a strong sense that rulers are going to be held to account that it's not enough to say well I was voted in so I can do what I like no the Bible is not nearly so much interested in how a ruler becomes a ruler as what the rulers do once in office and that God will hold them to account so that's the context within the Jewish world think of the Book of Daniel or Isaiah 4055 or a book like the wisdom of Solomon contemporary with Paul in which we have to understand Paul and I think often for a congregation this is difficult because they hear somebody like me saying that if Jesus is Lord Caesar is not and then they think well that means we're not quite sure what it means but it seems to have something to do with the putting down of our governments and for Paul it isn't quite that easy so the preacher is needing to do a bit of history I know I've often been told quizzically at the back door of a church well you you gave us some ancient history today and I say yeah that's because you folks don't know that and unless you do you will guess wrong about how this works but when we've done that work and encouraged the congregation to make it their own and to understand complexify it a bit then yes we can through Paul's eyes look at say Philippians 2:6 2:11 Paul is taking the story of imperial power and is retelling it completely upside down that his audience would be familiar with stories about how Caesar or Alexander the Great or somebody had arrived at this power by performing mighty deeds and then being hailed as Lord of the world is actually Jesus came to his position by the self giving self-emptying love which ended up on the cross and so what I think as preachers we're trying to do is to enable people to be grasped by that different vision of power which then can be applied by the preacher but also by the congregation in all kinds of situations whether it's in the business world in the banking world in the political world anywhere whether is power being wielded we need to be asking is that wise humane humanizing sort of power or is it the bullying dismissive destructive sort of power which so many empires of the world have routinely operated in the past thirty years or so our understanding of Judaism has evolved considerably you set forth an exciting perspective on Paul and Judaism and I wonder if you would say a little something about that then how that might have direct practical outcomes as the preacher attempts to represent Paul and Judaism and as the preacher might speak about our relationship to Judaism more generally yes I think the big thing here is to realize right up front that what we have in Paul is not a comparison of two sorts of religion as though he's saying Christianity is a good sort of religion and Judaism is a bad sort of religion for Paul there is this strong note of fulfillment and throughout the Hebrew Scriptures you have this forward look these signposts these prophesies these promises that are going somewhere and the whole of the New Testament is based on the belief that these promises all did come true in Jesus Paul says all the promises of God find their yes in him now of course that was a problem not only for the early Christians but for other Jewish groups as well the people at Qumran believed that the promises of God was secretly fulfilled in them and there are lots of other messianic movements roughly a hundred years either side of Jesus and throughout that period and each one of those was telling their followers this is how all the promises are going to be fulfilled so it's not an undue esteem to say in the first century in fact it's one of the most Jewish things you could say this is how our God is fulfilling is and you jolly well better get on board otherwise you'll miss the boat so it's what in the trade we call an eschatological position rather than a religion position it isn't we've got a new religion which is better than yours Paul never says anything like that it's a stream of history which has had an astonishing shocking new fulfillment nobody ever imagined that this great set of promises would result in a crucified and risen Messiah that wasn't part of the game plan now the trouble is of course that from quite early on at least as early as the fourth century but then particularly in the Middle Ages and at the time of the Reformation it became common coin among Christian teachers and preachers to talk about the Jews in a very negative way so Paul is opposing the Jews and giving a different sort of doctrine and this always in Europe and sadly even in America has had a sense of well we know who the Jews Arc's that synagogue down the street and of course sadly Jewish folk have picked this up and they know who the Christians are they're the ones who are putting them down and sometimes beating them up and sometimes far worse than that so we have a horrible legacy and I think it's incumbent on anyone preaching about all this material to make it clear that when Paul is saying what he does about Israel about God's purposes to Israel about them being fulfilled in Jesus this is not a way of saying oh fancy being Jewish what a stupid way of being Paul is a Jew Paul celebrates that Paul regards himself as are fulfilled Jew and Paul sees there's great biblical promises about God's people being now extended to embrace folk from around the world he sees that as having happened and the way that's been expressed by Paul is actually I think very clear in his letters but our traditions have often muddled it up and got confused with other socio-political agendas so it's hugely important to help congregations to a wise mature of view of that without simply flattening it down and Paul would resist that to say well there we are we all have our own different ways you know there's a sort of pluralism around and some preachers fall into that as a way of avoiding the hostility and the antagonism just to say well God loves us all anyway so what's the big fuss where support Jesus is Israel's Messiah and presenting Jesus like that is a constant challenge as a preacher there's no easy way to do it each time you're praying and hoping to get it across afresh and hoping that the congregation in grasping Jesus and being grasped by him will realize that their being in folded into that large Hebraic tradition which leaves them with the question of Romans 11 of how to relate wisely graciously to their Jewish neighbors well this is actually moving in the direct my next question which is to observe that there are a number of passages in the revised common lectionary and more generally in the letters of Paul that are challenging some of them are challenging exegetically but also hermeneutic lee theologically and for preaching and I wonder if you would share with us a passage or two that you have found challenging and how you have worked through and both in its ancient and contemporary yes I've been thinking a bit about this and two very different ones come to mind there's a passage in Galatians Galatians chapter 4 verses 21 to 31 and I remember when I was a teenager hearing a preacher basically shrugged his shoulders this is the passage about Abraham and Sarah and Hagar and cast out the bondwoman and her son and these things are an allegory etc and I remember I must have been 16 or 17 hearing a preacher basically throw up his hands in horror and say this is a very complicated passage I don't really know what it's about so let's talk about the Gospel reading instead you know which okay that that may be the cop-out for that Sunday but if we were to wrestle with that passage what we're trying to do again from Paul's perspective is first to get inside what's the situation he's addressing in Galatia here are some people who have come in and said unless you get circumcised and keep the law of Moses you have no right to be at the common table with the other people who are believing in Jesus and Paul is saying absolutely not he is this a line in the sand question for Paul that that Jesus has Jesus the Messiah has one family not two and all those who believe in Jesus belong in that family and so he then plays that back they are saying well we are getting this from Genesis so Paul said okay Genesis you want Genesis you shall have get a load of this and so he is teasing them and I think to help congregations see that Paul can sometimes be actually teasing and twisting their tail of it he does that in 2 Corinthians as well but then that helps us navigate through the otherwise very difficult passages about cast out the bondwoman and so on um because he's saying if they are saying this and this is is the only true people of God in other words only those who are circumcised can be at the table then there are no two ways about this either their right or wrong and actually they're wrong and I can see that wrongness reflected in the great covenant stories of Abraham and Sarah so one needs to work that through now there's another passage which struck me as being easy on the surface and then difficult underneath and it's a very famous passage in 1st Corinthians 13 when Paul is talking about love though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels but have not love I am nothing etc etc often read at weddings and often it's read simply as therefore love one another well that's a good lesson that's a good Christian lesson but the passage actually moves on and says when I was a child I spoke like a child thought like a child reasoned like a child but when I grew up I put away childish things now we see through a glass darkly then face to face now I know in part and I remember once thinking as I was due to preach on that passage why suddenly when he's talking about love does he go into this now but then now but then stuff if that's what again we call loosely eschatology a sense that something is true now but it'll be different what's that got to do with love and I remember it dawning on me that this is actually a stunning passage about how love is if you like the language that we will speak in God's new world and we get to learn it and practice it now so it isn't in other words just a set of moral commands this is how you love one another it's a way of saying this is going to be complete and perfect this won't stop this is the beginning and so that this is where Paul actually gives us I think a Christian version of really an Aristotelian virtue ethic that that is who will be in the future or if you like that is the music that we will be singing in God's new world and we get to practice the scales and arpeggios now by loving one other so suddenly there's a whole other world opens up and I found I've been talked with various people and preached about that a few times found people's ah now I get it that's what that stuffs about and for a preacher that's the that's the magic moment when you see the lights going on Oh magic and another way the lights go on is by analogy the preacher one of the honored ways of moving from ancient to contemporary settings is by way of analogy and I wonder if you think there are some analogies between Paul's world and ours that might be particularly fruitful for the preacher to explore these days yes it is difficult because I suppose as a historian I am again and again worried about people making the bridge the jump too quickly yes and hearing Paul simply within our own context and so it seems to me again and again particularly with Paul but also with the Gospels part of the task is to make the text unfamiliar before you can then come round and arrive at a new sort of familiarity I suppose obviously the biggest analogy in the New Testament would be to do with God as father and that has problems in our world because you know and every congregation every family has this problem of some families that are fatherless or where the father has behaved very badly or whatever and it seems to me there is an analogy though in that not least many Jewish people looking at God and saying what's gone wrong with our history were tempted to think you know who is this God that we've supposed to trust it in and the prophets say no God is our Father and you should pray to him as such and say hi you're our Father do something about it and Paul comes into that situation with his own vision of father and son and and the love of the Father not any for the son but through the son and so that's that's one example of a rather obvious analogy of wit but I think I'm weary of of making it too quick as I say because it's important that people realize these texts were not written yesterday they were written 2,000 years ago and we have to respect them as they are the authority of Scripture does not consist in some idea floating off the surface of the text and landing accidentally in the 21st century but in is doing real business with the hard work and then things emerge often that you didn't expect well you're also already anticipating my next question which is going wrong that is preachers sometimes go wrong dealing with Paul and I wonder if you would give us some observations about where you have seen preachers take a wrong turn or if not an absolutely wrong turn at least a not helpful turn and what they might do to be wary yes goodness it's that's that's a challenge because I'm sure I have as much as anyone else has it seems to me that we need to listen to the register in which Paul is talking because sometimes he is using irony I think particularly of that passage the boasting passage in 2 Corinthians 11 and people the cause Paul dismisses boasting elsewhere people might have real trouble getting to terms with that and actually we need to realize the situation in Corinth is that they have challenged his authority and he has steadily worked his way back and now is the sort of crowning moment in that this is a heavily ironic passage you want me to show you all my achievements you want an updated curriculum vitae from me okay I've been in jail I've been beaten up I've been stoned I've been shipwrecked these are all the things which they were ashamed of and says no these are the things that I'm actually boast in and I think probably half the Corinthian church their lips are twitching they realize he's got him here the other half is saying oh what's that about and I think to help her congregation realize that is very important and in the next passage when he says I know a man in Christ who and I don't know when it was or what he saw or whatever but he saw he had these amazing visions and people have sometimes used that passage I remember one person saying that this is a model for our own spirituality that we should aspire to and when Paul says he was given the thorn in the flesh and he said I I prayed to the Lord about it and three times I prayed and the Lord said my grace is sufficient for you I once heard a preacher say that actually what that meant was Paul you should pray a fourth time and then it will be taken away and I remember at the time and certainly subsequently thinking no that's not the point yeah that that preacher was avoiding the real ironic challenge of the text which is my power is made perfect in weakness and of course God does heal I mean you know healing is something that happens and God does it but not always to order as it were and that the message of the Cross emphasizes that actually God's power is not about sweeping or rubbish out of the way but actually finding God at the foot of the cross in the blood and the dust and the mess and that's what Paul was so good at and it's what preachers and churches often in various traditions often resist indeed well it's hard to believe that our time is coming to a close so I wonder if you have one thing or one or two things that you would like to leave with our viewers with regard to preaching on Paul I think I would like to challenge people to think about sometimes not every time actually preaching on a whole letter most people don't read the letters as holes I mean they're big and chunky and difficult but sometimes it makes sense to take it as if it was a novel I mean even Romans even 1 Corinthians the long ones and just read it straight through it a run and then say as you're reading it as a preacher as you're praying about it what are the three things that have really struck you from that and then to encourage the congregation by preaching a sermon on the whole letter that they could do that too because so many people in the Western tradition at least I don't know about these only ever meet Scripture in little 10 or a dozen verse chunks and of course for Paul particularly the argument is again and again developing an unfolding I often say to students and Paul often starts a statement with a tight little you know there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus and you think well that's great but why what's going on here and then like a flower it sort of opens up a bit because the law of the spirit of life has set you free from the law of sin death as Paul can you just explain that a bit God has done what the law we can by the flesh could not do etc and and gradually takes 11 verses to open out but then those 11 verses mean what they mean within the whole of Romans five to eight within the whole letter and I think often we allow our people to get away with belittling Paul by thinking that he's simply a succession of rather important little nuggets and from time to time and maybe the preacher has to model this in the pulpit okay here is Colossians only four chapters what's it about it's about Thanksgiving and thanks living it's about saying learning how to be grateful and learning how to live out of that gratitude now let's read the letter and so on so there are things like that that you can do which I think will surprise and challenge and possibly even delight congregations and yet for other occasions and other settings you might recommend a close reading of the text first by verse even word by word absolutely and the great tradition of preaching includes the preacher reading one verse and spending the whole sermon discussing it and Paul is full of verses that will take a whole sermon to discuss so I think it's got to be a balance and of course it's a personality thing some people are naturally big-picture people other people are naturally little details people and both for the preacher and for the congregation there has to be a balance between the two and so it's really I'm concerned about getting that balance but I suspect that in most cases it's the big picture that people are lacking well it is hard to believe that our half hour has passed and yet it has before we depart however I'd like to call attention to the wide spectrum of ways this video can be used of course it can be a resource in the seminary classroom in the university classroom in ministerial training programs and in Bible colleges in addition it might be a resource for a sunday-school class or an adult forum if your congregation has the minister meeting with a group of laypeople to think about the upcoming sermon this might be an excellent place to coagulate some of those thoughts a study guide has been prepared by fortress press and it is available at WWF us press comm and what a great way it might be to jumpstart a sermon series on Paul by watching this video again yourself well regardless of what comes next professor Wright preacher right we want to thank you not only for this time but for your lifetime of scholarship of preaching leadership in the church and attention to God's people at all their levels we thank you for this time and for your life's work thank you very much very good to be with you you

Channel: FortressPress

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Keywords: N. T. Wright (Politician), God (Deity), Gospel, Pastor (Religious Leadership Title), Theology (Field Of Study), Paul The Apostle (Saint), New Testament (Religious Text), Christianity (Religion), justification, Epistle To The Galatians (Religious Text), The Bible (Religious Text), Professor (Occupation), Religious Studies (Field Of Study)

Id: trPoevu5vgo

Length: 37min 44sec (2264 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 28 2014