Kingdom Collision – Reflections

This past Sunday marked the end of the “Kingdom Collision” sermon series at Central.  For folks who weren’t reading my blog back when I was prepping Kingdom Collision, this series took a look at the Gospel narrative and then looked at the political impact Jesus’ teachings would have had in the first century.  This series basically came from a question I asked once, “How did the Romans hear Jesus’ prayer, ‘thy Kingdom come?’”  Having come to the end of this journey, I wanted to spend some time reflecting on what “Kingdom Collision” accomplished.

From a personal standpoint, this was one of my most rewarding series to prepare for.  The books I read, the amount of Biblical Material I got to deal with, and the threading of the Biblical world into this one was all a wonderful joy for me.  I learned a lot, which is one of my goals in anything I do.

From a pastoral standpoint, I think it’s impact was so-so.  Central seemed to be scattered to the four winds over the course of the fall, and I didn’t do a very good job unifying the theme of the series for folks.  Looking back now I think I would have written a small-group guide to go with the material, and tied in a community prayer event on Election night (which was the obvious backdrop for the series).  I think these things would have encouraged people to be more regular in their attendance because it would have tied the journey together better.  The lack of these things falls squarely on me, I’ll know better for next time.

On the other hand, I got to touch on a lot of issues in our day within the context of Jesus’ Gospel, things which I might not have an opportunity to touch upon.  For the first time as a pastor, I felt free to pursue more of a lecture-style sermon and present to people some of the historical background to the Gospels, as well as the “big issues of the day” that that Gospel’s themselves dealt with.  That first sermon of the series remains a highlight for me.  I also think that a few people were forced to wrestle with the implications of Jesus turning the culture war of his day on edge.  He refused at all turns to be boxed into the “only options” that situations presented him with, and instead came up with a new way (like when he taught on paying taxes to Caesar).  I say a few, because I honestly don’t get all the much feedback from folks, nor does our church have a mechanism set up to positively do this (as the spirituality of the congregation matures we’ll need to do this).

So, “Kingdom Collision” is over, and it was personally fulfilling but kinda fell short in the congregation due to some of my own shortcomings.  At least the material is archived, maybe I can make a Bible Study series out of it for the future….

Kingdom Collision is put together…

I started putting together my sermons for the coming year this past week.  It’s a helpful discipline to me and I both look forward to it, and loath doing it, every year.  It’s fun to see everything laid out – but oh the mental errors I make doing it!

As I put together the readings for Kingdom Collision, I found myself wondering, “What is my purpose for this, anyway?”  Right from the start I knew I did’t want to be doing the same project that my friend, and fellow Eastern Alum, is currently doing.  I also didn’t want to do the same project that Greg Boyd had done back in 2004.  It’s not because these other projects aren’t worth working from, it’s just that they’re already being done – by folks better than myself at working them out.

I also have the audacious idea that I’d rather be working on a project that would almost seem like prolegomena for the other projects – a sermon series which helps establish a “Biblical language” with which the disciples gathered at Central Baptist might be able to use in their political conversations.  Conversations which may include the projects referenced above.

It is clear to me that our thinking about the mix of religion and politics needs to change.  It is certainly true that our understanding of Jesus’ relationship to politics in his own day need to be fundamentally refocused.  The centuries of belief that Jesus had nothing to say about politics in his day (desiring only to “save souls”) has created a vacuum in that aspect of our shared public life.  A vacuum which has been filled with all the “weapons” of any worldly political arsenal.  If Jesus had nothing to say about how to be involved in “politics,” after all, then we’ll have to take our example of how to wield political power from other sources – ironically, Christians on both our artifically constructed ends of the “left-right” spectrum have taken up these non-Christ-like examples in the name of “honoring Christ.”

The thing is, Jesus is portrayed in the Gospels as speaking on politics frequently.  The problem in forming the Kingdom Collision series was not the lack of material – but the over-abundance of it! This should come as no surprise to Christians.  After all, one of the “offices” Jesus took up was that of Prophet – and even a cursory reading of the prophetic literature in the Old Testament will tell you that the prophets were political by virtue of their calling.  Prophets challenged power structures to become in sync with the Covenant the Lord had made with Israel – and any time you challenge a power structure, you’ve entered the world of politics.

We’ll look at this prophetic picture of Jesus throughout Kingdom Collision – not to undermine the other offices of Jesus, but to show how the Prophetic office of Jesus great impacts the way that Jesus works out his Priestly and Kingly offices, to this very day.

The question for me is, “What would make this series a success?”  I can honestly say  I’ll feel that we’ve  been “successful” even one person who walks this journey with me starts listening to political news commentary, speeches and debates with the question, “How does this sound like what Jesus was talking about?” in the heart.  It’s a dangerous question to ask – one that might just turn the world upside-down.

I sure hope people ask it.

Reading the Gospels

As some folks already know, I’m planning a fall sermon series examining the political implications of Jesus’ preaching as the would have been experienced in the first century.  With the backdrop of the presidential election, it seems like a good time to cover material I’ve hit tangentially in the past.  Basically, I’m led to preach this series because I keep coming across a basic matrix of beliefs regarding Jesus’ message that I feel a need to address.  This matrix has three axis, and covers many of the variations you may have encountered yourself:

• Jesus’ message had no political implications whatsoever, he was only about “saving souls.”
• Jesus was/is a teacher who adheres to “family values.”
• Jesus is/was a teacher who believes in progressive individualism.

These ideas, and the ideas which form as their paths cross, make no sense to me.  So, during a season in which people will likely be rattling off each of these views I thought I’d offer something “different.”  My goal, is to help give people a better “toolbox” by which they can better interact with this world in the image of Jesus – this toolbox will help people recognize their own cultural assumptions as they are confronted with the dissimilarity between their own world, and that of First Century Palestine (“Palestine” is what the Romans called the collective region).

To that end, I’ve been doing a lot of reading New Testament Sociology.  Much of it is helpful, some of it helps me realize what field all the Freudians when into after he fell out of favor in main-stream psychology – but it’s all rewarding reading, and I still have much to read (thanks to my good friends Sarah and Jim).

Now that I’ve got some more grounding in the field which studies the social situation of the New Testament world, I’ve started reading the Gospels themselves (again).  I know many people may have said that I did this backwards, but I’ve read the Gospels so much that I’m generally unaware of my own biases that I bring as I read them – so I deliberately read the sociology material first so I could better be able to “change lenses” as I came to the text.  Now, because I’m attempting to experience, in some small way, the “ear” by which the first readers of the Gospels would have heard the text – I’m doing something I haven’t done to this point in my life, I’m reading each the Gospels through in one sitting – only taking the shortest of breaks to jot down references which might be helpful in my fall series.  This is likely how the Gospels were first encountered by the early Christians.

The effort to this point has been rewarding.  I did break with the canonical order and started with Mark rather than Matthew (I don’t feel bad about this, heck new believers aren’t even told to start with one of the Synoptics).  I did this for two reasons.  First, Mark is shorter – and my attention-addled brain finds that appealing.  Second, I do think Mark is the earliest Gospel and provides much of the source for the later Synoptic Gospels (Matthew and Luke) – by reading Mark first I could see how similar accounts became expanded in the later Gospels.

As I said, the result has been rewarding.  Matthew has always been my favorite Gospel, and I always instinctively neglected Mark as a sort of “also-ran” cousin.  Mark’s accounts seemed almost colorless to me, while Matthew painted the image in more.  Reading Mark through in one sitting, however, has changed my perspective entirely on this little Gospel.  In Mark Jesus is deliberately portrayed as one having authority, and the brevity of his account only highlights that more.  Jesus takes on evil spirits, challenges the status quo, and conquers them on the cross.  While the “cliff-hanger” ending is unsatisfying when one reads Mark in short spurts, when you read it one sitting the artistry of the ending is made clear.  The entire Gospel is set up to highlight Jesus’ authority and leave the audience wondering out loud at the end, “So, who is this?  What does this mean?”  In a real sense, Mark doesn’t so much answer questions as it is meant to provoke the right questions.  One of these days we’ll have to read through Mark as a congregation, just so people can experience that purpose.

Matthew was similarly rewarding.  While I was aware of some of the repetitions in Matthew, I never realized just how much was mirrored.  His teaching on the power of prayer was one of those moments for me – my memory has meshed both “mountain moving” (Matthew 17 & 21) statements into one teaching – but Matthew wanted it flagged as something important, so he recounts it twice (Jesus certainly repeated that teaching, I have no doubt, but in a world where space was at a premium for books you tended to only repeat accounts/teachings that you wanted the reader to take special note of).  I also appreciate Matthew’s portrayal of Jesus as a human being.  He shows great compassion on people, and yet at the same time is not “pastoral” as we might understand it today.  Matthew shows us Jesus as being capable of hostility, and even making gruff (and even caustic) remarks towards those who not only oppose him, but also towards those who come seeking his help!  Matthew pictures a more “real” Jesus than exists in a lot of our sermons (where Jesus kinda floats through life on a cloud).  Reading Matthew in one sitting shows just how “human” the portrayal of Jesus is in it (he is portrayed as divine as well, certainly, but the emphasis seems to be on his humanity without losing Jesus’ other nature).

So have I come up with my text for the fall series yet?  Nope.  I’ve got some Ideas, but I still have two Gospels to read before I take that step.  I’ll keep you updated.