Marginal Christianity

Matthew continues to mentor his readers and that on two levels. First, he mentors us on how to read the Old Testament. And second, he expounds the deepest significance of Jesus through this way of reading the Old Testament. If Mt. 2 closes with the Messianic “Nazorean,” Mt.3 opens with Messiah’s prophesied forerunner John the Baptist appearing in the desert to announce the near advent of the “Kingdom of Heaven” (v.1). As we might well suspect at this point, Old Testament images and types abound. We’ll take a look at a number of them here. “The Kingdom of Heaven” This is Matthew’s characteristic way of designating what the messianic ministry of Jesus is all about. No other gospel uses this phrase. Where they have “kingdom of God” Matthew seems to have substituted “heaven” for “God.” The common explanation that this is out of respect for Jewish scruples for speaking the name of God appears not to be correct. Matthew does not otherwise avoid the word “God” (51 times) and even...

We have just celebrated Jesus’ ascension to the Father to take up his royal rule on the heavenly throne. Before we can catch our breath from that, though, he’s coming back again! Pentecost is really Jesus’ second coming in the biblical narrative. He’s not the incarnate Son in this coming, to be sure. But it is the “Spirit of Jesus” (Acts 16:7). The form of his continuing presence in the world as he pursues God’s ultimate purpose. God never intended to leave his creation alone. From the first moments when he walked with our fore-parents in the Garden of Eden (Gen.3:8) God purposed to be near and dear to his human creatures. And that’s the story line of the Bible punctuated a key points with events hastening and deepening that divine nearness. Pentecost is another of those moments tracked by the church’s calendar. Luke story of Pentecost in Acts 2 is a rich telling of this key events. In my several posts on it we’ll explore a few aspects of it. In this first post I want to focus...

5.     That brings us to the Holy Spirit, the most elusive yet important member of the trinity for us in North America. The Spirit has been called the “shy” member of the Godhead because his task is to keep our attention focused on Jesus and animate Jesus’ life in us. He is elusive in himself and in particular for us westerners, “can do” pragmatists, who prefer control and predictability. For the Spirit fundamentally means “out of control.” We know this from various expressions of the Charismatic/Pentecostal movement. But even more importantly from the book of Acts where the Spirit instructs, guides, and countermands human plans and purposes. The church here desperately needs to recover the kind of relationship to the Spirit the early church had. a.     That relationship is best described, I think, by Buzz Lightyear of “Toy Store” fame describing flying to Woody as “controlled falling.” b.     The Spirit is animate, intimate char...

Nothing about being the Bible’s God’s person or God’s people is easy. And that’s just the way it is. It stems from the reality that God has a plan for this world. Every human being has defied that plan and sought to live life as they desire. In each and every case, then, there is no human being who comes into the world who wants to live God’s way. If God had given up and refused to have any more to do with us and abandoned us to our own fate then whatever religions or spiritualities we cooked up for ourselves (for it seems we humans have to worship something as Bob Dylan made clear in his song “Gotta Serve Somebody”) would be pleasing and understandable and doable by us.           But God has never so given up. Instead he launched a subversive counter-revolutionary movement to reclaim and restore his people and his creation to his creational design and plan. God always intended to create a world in which he and his creatures (human and...

1.     The Book The Bible plays a vital role in God’s SCRM. Every movement, especially a “great campaign of sabotage,” needs a Field Manual of Operations, and that, I suggest, is how, in most respects, the Bible functions for God’s people. The respect in the Bible is unlike a Field Manual of Operations, however, is the most important. It serves as a sacrament, sign, and servant of God’s SCRM. 1.1         The Bible as the Living Word of God The SCRM God communicates himself and his will and way for us in the Bible. “Jesus Christ as he is attested in Holy Scripture is the one Word of God whom we have to hear, and whom we have to trust and obey in life and in death.” [1] So claims the remarkable Theological Declaration of Barmen written by the Confessing Church as a witness against the Nazi regime in Germany in 1934. “As he is attested in Holy Scripture” – the Jesus we find in the pages of the New Testament witnesses to the ...