"the blood of the goat" and "the blood of the Lamb: on preaching for a transcultural occasion

On the occasion of our North American church visitors meeting some of our South African church partners at a rural homestead in the Transkei earlier this month, I found myself in the position of having to preach a message that both honored the transcultural dimension of the encounter and spoke to the spiritual realities of communities that still live on the boundary between Christianity and traditional religion.

I chose for the occasion a message that came to me much earlier but which heretofore I had not had the opportunity to preach.  While studying Revelation 7 last year, I began to ponder the significance of the white robes adorning the great throng from "every people, language, tribe, and nation" (Rev 7:9).  In an utterly paradoxical description, the robes of the faithful in John's vision were washed white "in the blood of the Lamb" (Rev 7:14).  Indeed, if it is blood that usually stains red, then the blood that cleanses white must point to a salvation for God's people beyond the physical, to a cleansing that transcends the flesh.  Along these lines, I began to ponder another biblical story of a robe--the robe of Joseph not cleansed but stained with the blood of a goat (Gen 37:31).  

The contrast between the robes washed white and the robe stained red was of far more than color; indeed their respective colors were just outward appearances of inward realities.  In the case of Joseph, the robe itself and the blood of the goat by which it was stained stood for division between the children of Israel, God's own people.  Since Israel had given Joseph a robe as a show of favoritism above his brothers, the robe aroused the brothers' jealousy toward Joseph.  At an opportune time, they stripped him of his robe, threw him in a pit, sold him into slavery, and covered up their crimes before their father through the blood of a goat: "They had the long robe with sleeves taken to their father, and they said, 'This we found; see now whether it is your son's robe or not" (Gen 37:32).  The blood of the goat, therefore, was as a seal to the robe of jealousy, marking a bitter separation between God's people which was to last many years until the time of forgiveness should come.

The robes of Revelation's faithful, by contrast, stood for the hard-won unity of God's people.  The robes of Revelation adorn not the one exalted by his father above his brothers but the many freed from their sins by the blood of God's own Lamb, Jesus Christ (Rev 1:5).  "These are they" who together--not one above another--have been made "to be a kingdom and priests serving [their] God and Father" (Rev 5:10; 1:6).  The robes of white stand for the peace of Christ, the genuine reconciliation of one human family which has come through the bitter discord of "the great ordeal" (Rev 7:14).  The robe of Joseph brought hostility, but the robe of Jesus Christ brings peace.  The blood of the goat brought separation, but the blood of the Lamb "speaks a better word" (Heb 12:24).

Thus it was that I tried to address, in one way subtle, in another way less so, what I perceived as the twofold demand of the occasion.  In terms of black and white meeting together for worship, the sermon pointed rather explicitly to the reconciliation between the races still laboring to be born years after the "great ordeal" of apartheid (literally, separate-ness) in South Africa.  And for a few hours on that day, black and white together praising our God and Father, the kingdom of God drew near.  In terms of the particular temptations of the traditionally-minded Africans with whom we worshiped, my intention was to point, in far less direct ways than to the issue of racial reconciliation, to the sacrifices which please God.  As a white person, for the cause of racial reconciliation, I am compelled to guard against being seen to be denigrating anything deemed by anyone to be a part of the cultures of black people.  And as one who preaches Christ crucified, I am also compelled, via the scriptures, to contrast the way of Christ to the ways of the world--black or white.  Thus, with what I believe was sufficient subtlety, I simply contrasted "the blood of the goat"--the most commonly sacrificed animal in Xhosa ancestral religion--with the "the blood of Jesus Christ" in the particular terms of the Genesis and Revelation texts.  By locating the contrast in terms of the texts, I believe that my chances of delivering a redemptive word are greatly increased.  Through Genesis 37's "blood of the goat" and Revelation 7's "blood of the Lamb" I can speak to issues of division and reconciliation between two groups of people even as the contrast between the sacrifices of "goats and bulls" (Heb 9:14) and the sacrifice of Christ need not be lost on anyone who has an ear to hear.  

-Joe

preaching as brooding

For the topic of Preaching last weekend at Bethany Bible School, I selected three texts: Genesis 1:1-5; Jeremiah 1:1-10; John 1:1-9.

These three texts have in common a focus on the Word of God or, in other words, that which human preachers dare to proclaim when they preach. That preaching is a big job is underscored by the call of Jeremiah, in which the prophet reacts to the coming of the “word of the LORD” to him with self-degradation—“Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy” (1:4-5). Yet proclaiming that word to others is something he must do, though something he can only do because the word is not his but God’s own put within his mouth (1:6, 9).

If it is thus true that the call of Jeremiah establishes for us the preaching imperative, the preacher still needs to know what and how he/she should preach. Genesis 1:1-5, the first words of the Bible, sheds light on the how of preaching. It is interesting to note, for example, that the spoken word is not the first thing in the story; before God speaks (1:3), “God”, “the Spirit of God”, and “formless” material of some kind (along with darkness and water) are in the story (1:1-2). In other words, before the word which is “light” (1:3) is spoken, the Spirit of God has been “hovering over the waters” (1:2). Though the waters are dark, though the earth is “formless and void”, though the creation is not yet really creation, though it is chaos, yet something is there—something over which God is pleased to hover.

The Xhosa translation uses -fukama for what the Spirit was doing over the waters; –fukama, what a mother hen does to her eggs and chicks, is what God was doing to formless matter: lovingly, jealously guarding-protecting-keeping it, considering what it will be until the day it is born. God the Mother was brooding over the waters.

It is from such brooding that the word finally speaks—and orders-creates a world. It is from the hovering of the Spirit of God (1:2), from perhaps the Mind of God (1:1), that the Word of God creates.

This is all to say that the preacher—the one called to speak the Word of God—must hover over the things of creation that will be before his word can begin to order them. Herein lies a “how” of preaching, a method for preaching. Before the proclaimer can speak, he must brood over material as a hen over unborn offspring. She must consider all things—people’s lives and stories, culture, news, proverbs, wisdom and—of course, especially—the text itself. Somehow, out of that consideration, by the Spirit of God, the creative Word speaks (or the spoken Word creates). This is a call for preparation—not of a rigid, inflexible kind but of a prayerful “brooding” over stories and the Story until the preacher has virtually taken them into herself. In short, a preparation of the Spirit.

The hovering of the Spirit of God has a second, equally important, implication for preachers and their preaching. Just as the Spirit hovered before the Word was spoken (not before the Word was), so the Spirit of God hovers over the things of creation before the preacher speaks or fashions them into a world. For the preacher this means that, no matter how chaotic the world to which he comes might be, how much unlike an ordered world it seems, that world—its inhabitants, its stories, its wisdom—is lovingly kept by its loving God. The Mother Hen is guarding her children and watching the preacher, keen to see whether his words will conform to the spirit of care with which God broods over them. Though, as God attested to Jeremiah, the Word can have a rough edge—“to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow” (1:10)—its ultimate purpose is “to build and to plant” (1:10). Tough love must be God’s and not the preacher’s own—it must come from the Word or not at all. God will judge the preacher if his words do not convey God’s love for the people.

Third, on this point, the brooding of the Spirit before the spoken Word contains an obvious connection to the missio Dei, or that common concept in mission theology that Christian mission is God’s and not our own. The implication of the missio Dei, of course, is that—in spite of certain historical mission rhetoric—the missionary does not “bring God” to people who do not know God; rather, the missionary, like Paul, proclaims “the unknown God” from within known cultural categories (Acts 17:22ff.) and toward the revelation of God through God’s Word. The presence of God before/ahead of us with others is essential for missionary patience and trust—virtues through which love is expressed to others.

Finally, a God-focused rather than a preacher-focused approach to preaching resonates with John 1:1-9, the third text here considered. For just as the “man sent from God, whose name was John” was “not himself the light” but only a “witness” to the light, so is any preacher in relation to the Word (1:6-8). For Christian preaching, that “Word” which “was in the beginning with God and was God” is Jesus himself (1:1-2); “for we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake” (2 Cor 4:5). He is, in the end, both “what”—who—we proclaim and “how” we must proclaim what we proclaim. For it was his Spirit that lovingly hovered over the waters at creation as “a hen gathers her brood under her wings” (Lk 13:34).

-Joe

deducing evangelism: an inductive Bible Study

Last night I presented to our Tuesday night Bible Study group a lesson I had done on evangelism at Bethany Bible School in February. Our text was Matthew 4:23-25, three verses directly preceding the sermon on the mount in chapters 5-7.

I chose the text to explore the meaning of evangelism because it is one of the places in the New Testament where the Greek word from which we get the word “evangelism” (or its relatives “evangel”, “evangelist”) occurs. In other words, I did not choose to explore the topic through texts commonly associated with the topic—for example, John 3:16, or a series of verses from Romans meant to illustrate humanity’s sinfulness and God’s response in Christ (e.g. Rom. 3:23, 6:23)—yet which do not contain the word or words from which we get “evangelism.” But by choosing a different starting point, we might gain a fresh perspective.

In the Matthew text, then, the word from which “evangelism” comes occurs in verse 23: Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news [Gk: euangelion] of the kingdom . . ..” Jesus’ “proclamation of the good news” is sandwiched between two of the text’s three key repetitions—the words “Galilee”, the place of Jesus’ activity, and “healing”, the third of the three verbs, in addition to “teaching” and “preaching the good news of the kingdom”, used to describe Jesus’ ministry. A third key repetition in the text occurs just after the word “healing”, that is, Jesus was “healing every disease and every sickness among the people” (v. 23). This basic description is repeated in v. 24 in inverted order: “they brought to him all the sick, those who were afflicted with various diseases and pains . . . and he healed them.” Following that, we find the second occurrence of “Galilee”; just as Jesus went about “Galilee” teaching, preaching, and healing, so now “great crowds followed him from Galilee”. This second time, however, Galilee does not stand alone, in geographic isolation, but is joined by “the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and from beyond the Jordan” as places whose people received the blessings of Jesus (v. 25).

Again, the three key repeated words in the text are:

Galilee

healing

diseases

Moreover, these are arranged in the following pattern:

Galilee

healing

diseases

diseases

healing

Galilee

This arrangement, known as a “chiasm”, or an A-B-C-C-B-A pattern, is common in biblical texts of both the Old and New Testaments.

Identifying the repetitions helps us to narrow our focus on the text and moves us toward discovering its central meaning. Once we have identified them, we also begin to identify what lies around them and to what they might point.

For example, we now ask if there is any critical information in the text that lies between the first mention of “Galilee” and the first mention of “healing.” Indeed, this is the case: as noted above, there is the description of Jesus “teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom” (v. 23). This seems too important to miss. Likewise, we ask whether there is any critical information in the text between the second occurrences of “Galilee” and “healing”—and we find that “great crowds followed him”. This is also too important to leave out.

Consequently, if we were to visualize this text, we would need to represent all of this key information as we build toward a central meaning. We can do that as follows:

A Jesus went throughout Galilee

B teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom

C and healing

D every disease and every sickness among the people

D and they brought to him all the sick, those who were afflicted with various diseases and pains . . .

C and he healed them

B And great crowds followed him

A from Galilee . . .

By now the parallels (marked by corresponding letters) and the chiastic pattern of the text should be obvious. Even still, one piece of critical information is missing. As indicated by the two parts of the text marked “D” stacked directly one on top of the other, the text converges at a “center”. That center, heretofore not revealed, lies precisely between the two lines of information about the diseases that Jesus healed among the people. As a result of that healing of human diseases,

“his fame spread throughout all Syria”

or, “a report about him went out into all Syria” (v. 24).

This is, structurally, the central phrase of the text; therein also lies the text’s central meaning.

What might that meaning be? And what might it say about our understanding of evangelism?

Jesus is the model evangelist. “His fame” or “the report about him” spread seemingly independently of his person, or perhaps—in light of other gospel stories—in the opposite direction of his own intentions. Jesus did not show up on the scene, in “Galilee”, going about “teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming” himself—even though he was, in the words of the Christ hymn (Php 2:5-11), “in the form of God.” On the contrary, he “went about proclaiming the good news of the kingdom.” He did not consider that the kingdom was his own, but that it was the domain of his “Father in heaven” (Mt. 6:9). In other words, he “did not consider equality with God as something to be grasped”, but took upon himself the diseases of the people, having “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave”, a servant of the people. It was thus his compassion for the people, his passion with them, perhaps expressed most concretely in his ministry of healing (but also through his teaching and preaching)—not his exalting himself above them—that drew people to him. “The report about him spread” as a result of his “suffering with.” Forsaking pride or the praise of human beings, he gained their praise. Seeking first the kingdom of God and its righteousness, everything else was added to him as well (Mt. 6:33).

This does not imply, on the other hand, that everyone who came to him—“the great crowds that followed him from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and beyond the Jordan”—were drawn to his suffering. Many must have come with other motives; they were lured by the report of his power, perhaps wanting it for themselves, not to the source of his power. They desired the manifestations of his relationship to God rather than that obedient connection itself. They wanted the exaltation without the humility, the glory without the suffering, the resurrection without the cross. Knowing their hearts, “he taught them” (Mt. 5:1). Indeed, the “report about him”, “his fame”, which brought to him “great crowds of followers”, gives way directly, from three short verses at the close of chapter 4, to three full chapters—“the sermon on the mount”—of teaching his disciples and the crowds (5:1; 7:28) about the life of the kingdom.

If Jesus himself—true God and true man—prepares for us the way we are to follow, evangelism will take the course of:

• teaching and preaching the good news of the kingdom, not ourselves or our churches. In our time, the good news of the kingdom means also the person of Jesus himself, since the Father’s intention was that “his fame” would go out into all the world—the Messenger has become the Message, the Evangelist the Evangel.
• compassion, passion or suffering with others, not isolation from or exalting oneself above. It is our “suffering with” that also leads to healing of diseases of both spirit and flesh.
• ministries of word and deed, spiritual and physical. Sometimes the language of evangelism is synonymous with the language of “missions”, as if both terms signify proclamation in word. Sometimes, the language of “mission” goes along with evangelism as a corrective, in order to broaden the understanding of evangelism. In this sense, “mission” is meant to encompass ministries of deed, for example, in the direction of “relief and development” work. Neither pairing seems quite right in light of such texts as the present one. In the structure of the text, Jesus’ “good news of the kingdom” is literally between “preaching” and “healing”, therefore also holding together as one the world of the spirit and the world of the flesh.
• discipleship. Teaching about the way of Jesus or the kingdom of God should not be reserved for some later time in the life of a believer; all the words of Jesus have the power to both draw and instruct people. There are no evangelism texts, on the one hand, and discipleship texts, on the other. Neither is evangelism training in order to do narrow proclamation, nor discipleship training in how to do evangelism in the mode of narrow proclamation. Rather, evangelism-discipleship is, from the earliest stage, instruction in learning to follow Jesus/be led by his Spirit.

For the sake of the discussion . . .

-Joe

"more to be desired"

Three weeks ago, the pastor phoned me before church to say that some mutual friends of ours had lost one of their adult children. I said we would be coming to church, and that we could talk about the matter following the service. In the end, the news meant that I would be preaching twice on this day; the pastor and I agreed that we should seize the moment and head out to the bereaved family's homestead directly after our regular service.

I have been to a bereavement such as this before. It is tradition in Xhosa culture for friends and relatives to visit the family at their home immediately following the death of a loved one. Some form of service inevitably ensues.

Nevertheless, when the pastor and I arrived, I was taken aback by the sight of a rondavel filled, as is typical, with men on one side and women on the other. I knew that we would soon be on. The people were singing as we arrived, and soon they would be expecting the words of comfort for which the visitors had been sent.

Psalm 19 was on my mind, for it was the text I had just preached on that morning in Mandela Park. Now I would have to find its significance for a different occasion.

In the church service, I had focused in on the line "more to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey, and drippings of the honeycomb" (v. 10, NRSV). That which is "to be desired", of course, is what the text calls variously "the law of the Lord", "the decrees of the Lord", "the precepts of the Lord", "the commandment of the Lord", "the fear of the Lord", and "the ordinances of the Lord" (vv. 7-9). These or this--shall we say simply "the word of God"--are/is, according to the Psalmist, the most desirable "thing" in human experience. Nothing, in fact, within the creation is finer or sweeter. Neither gold--the most expensive thing--nor honey--the tastiest thing--appeals to the senses as the word of God.

"It is good that God made us to desire him," I said, "for even if we should lose a beloved child, hope is not lost." Though all the things of creation--humans and plants and animals--should pass away, God and God's Word remain for those left behind.

I don't know whether that sounds trite. I do know that, as I go into situations in which I must speak, I am reduced only to that which is already in my heart, which I already understand. I am made more simple. I am reduced to trusting in the moment the very God I proclaim. I am reduced to trusting that the words and the love which he has already deposited in me are sufficient for the day. That I have found to be true.

-Joe

"the good confession"

Two weeks ago, Pastor Ntapo preached a short message based on John 17:3, "And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent."

The preacher's point was that Jesus came in order that we might know God, and indeed that the purpose of human life on this earth is to know God. Consequently, he admonished his people to know God before they die.

This probably sounds too typical, another example of standard preaching-for-conversion. Except that it wasn't.

The pastor's message was not accompanied by the question "Where will you go when you die?", the stereotypical warning of revivalism, but "What will you confess at the end of your life?"

He said that many of "our people confess when they die that they have killed so and so through witchcraft"; instead of a confession of evil-doing, he urged his people to do good in order that they could confess it in the end.

Obviously, the pastor thought that having nothing good to confess at the end of one's life is punishment enough--and motivation enough for his people to walk now in the way of Jesus, growing in the knowledge of God.

That the pastor might not accomplish the purpose for which he was placed on this earth is, in fact, his greatest fear. I have heard him say on several occasions that "the cemetery is very rich because of all the people buried there who never used up what God deposited in them."

"When I die," he says, "I want to be empty."

And that is why he presses on, amidst formidable obstacles, to teach a young congregation the way of God. "I was born for that," he testifies, citing Jesus' words before Pilate (Jn. 18:37). It will likewise be his "good confession" when he dies (1 Tim. 6:13).

-Joe

from danger to danger

One of the purest joys in my life is the act of preaching. In particular, this joy is the product of moments of unexpected creativity. In the flow of retelling a Bible story, words find me, flashing across my mind seconds before they leave my mouth.

Several weeks ago, I was taking my time in preaching the story of Moses. I came to the part in the story in which Moses' mother places him in a basket in the river in order to hide him from Pharaoh's campaign of slaughter of Hebrew boys (Ex. 1-2). In the concern of making the story exceedingly clear for my audience, I realized that it didn't make sense for me: why exactly would a mother think that putting her baby in a river, however pitched the basket and however watched by the baby's sister, is a situation more conducive to the child's survival than hiding him away in a house somewhere? Feeling my way through this dilemma, I suggested that the river was surely infested with hungry crocodiles. Then another scripture came to mind. In response to evildoers who proclaimed the coming of "the Day of the Lord", the prophet Amos had declared that "Day" not light but darkness. It was to be a day of judgment, and not one in which the perpetrators of justice would find comfort. Amos likened it to someone "who fled from a lion and was met by a bear", or "rested a hand against the wall and was bitten by a snake" (Amos 5:18-20). Taking up the imagery, I suggested that Moses adrift on the Nile was akin to going "from danger to danger."

From danger to danger. It was simply a phrase coined to find a way through a telling on my way to a broader point. It was, in the end, the phrase that one listener had filed in his memory bank, the phrase which he recounted to me weeks later upon our next meeting; the phrase had gone with him as the presence of God for weeks and weeks.

Why? I wondered. I do not know exactly, but I suspect that it has something to do with the reality that this brother's life is a going about "from danger to danger." A tempestuous marriage. A physically abusive wife (yes, contrary to the dominant pattern in South Africa, the domestic abuse in this situation runs the opposite way and, by the way, the wife is much bigger than the husband). Sporadic "piece" jobs. Wandering through town, dependent upon the generosity of acquaintances to provide for daily bread. Scrapping to pay school fees for four children.

If his life is not danger to danger, it is hardship to hardship, stress to stress, insecurity to insecurity.

"How are things?" I ask my friend. "It is better to have hope than not to have hope," he replies, reduced to one of the "three things that will remain" (1 Cor. 13:13).

"God is taking us somewhere", he also testifies to me. For my friend perceives that "from danger to danger" has a flip-side. The weight of suffering now is preparing him for "an eternal weight of glory", a "yoke that is easy and a burden that is light" (2 Cor. 4:17; Mt. 11:30).

"From danger to danger" is one side; "from glory to glory" is the other (2 Cor. 3:18).

-Joe