miracles

>Resurrecting space for belief

It goes without saying, Easter is a big deal. I only have to mention the significance of passages like Paul’s claim in 1 Corinthians 15:13-15 (NIV)

13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15 More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised.

As I a pastor I looked forward to Easter so much, but I knew that we would have visitors, family members, and friends who would come to our services out of relational obligation or for social interest in the event. I knew that some of these would not believe in the literalness of the resurrection of Jesus’ body.

I always had to think through how I was going to talk about this as a way that was both faithful in proclamation for us as a community of faith, while also attempting to be invitational and sensitive to potential objections or barriers from our guests.

I have no interest in apologizing for what we believe as a faith community. But neither do I want to dogmatically push an ancient worldview that may, to the listener, be suspicious at best and incompatible at worst. Continue reading “>Resurrecting space for belief” →

April 19, 2011 14

>Stirring the Water

I love reading the Bible. I am especially fond of the Gospels. One thing that I am increasingly aware of is the need for translation to the modern world. Yes, we need it to be translated from Greek to English well but we also need to translate it culturally. There is a significant gap between the world that the text was written in and the one that we live in.

I get lots of feedback from people who think that world is exactly the same as it was 2,000 years ago (angels, demons, prophecy, etc.) and that the only difference is we that have cars and computers and alarm clocks. But they think that gender roles and scientific assumptions are not really that different.

I think that everything from physics to language to cosmology, gender, empire and culture has been effected in major and minor ways. I think that the text needs to be both translated and interpreted. It is not a 1:1 equivalent with our contemporary understanding.

I want to look at a story from the Bible to illustrate how I think we can navigate the gap, translate for our age and time, and interpret in ways that are authentic for our present reality.

My goal is to be faithful to the text while being accountable to our contemporary world. I want to find continuity with the tradition while being credible to the modern understanding.
Continue reading “>Stirring the Water” →

April 12, 2011 1

>Last week I admitted to not believing in the supernatural [link]. For those that are still on the fence regarding this issue, the concern seems to be that there are some pretty crazy miracles in the Bible.

So let me just say that I believe in miracles. That is not in question. Miracles happen every day and they are amazing and divine and God at work. I am a big fan of miracles.

Let’s look at one of the most famous miracles: We read the story of Jesus walking on the water and he climbs into the boat and calms the storm which which in turn calms the disciples nerves. He says “fear not”
(or ‘be not afraid‘) in the version of John 6 (he also walks on water in Mark 6 and Matthew 14).

Here is my question: What is the ‘take away’ from this story of Jesus walking on the water? That God is lord even of the natural world and so we need not ‘be afraid’. That’s beautiful.

So what is the application of Jesus walking on the water?
Well … it is not for us to walk on water.

even if I believe that Jesus walked on water- I have never walked on water. I’ve never seen anyone walk on water. We don’t encourage or demand that people walk on water.

The application is to trust in God (or believe in Jesus) and “be not afraid”.

Here is what I am proposing: I want to move our application up a step and make it our interpretation.

There are three major benefits to doing so:

People fight to defend that Jesus actually walked on the water – then don’t do anything with it. It becomes a stand alone fact. There is no application. There is no ‘and therefor you should walk on water too’. It is a one-dimensional fight.
Since the application is the same wether you listen to a preacher who insists that it literally happen or one who thinks that it was figurative… this lets us skip all the rancoring. Otherwise it is a lot of fighting over something that we are not going to do much with.
Since walking on water is not an issue, we can focus on the point of the text. If we get all caught up in the physics and metaphysics behind the text then we lose the focus OF the text. The point of the text – what we are suppose to take away from it – is not that Jesus defied the laws of physics. That is not the point and so we we should not make it the point .

The end is not to do what Jesus did (walk on water) but to do what Jesus said “be not afraid”.

I can guess that the major objection to this reading will be. “If he didn’t really walk on water then how are we supposed to trust and not be afraid.” If he really did it , then we can really trust…

We need to be careful about something: The gospels are narrative works – they are works of literature. They are not newspaper reports, physics textbooks or modern biographies.

It is important to remember that the Gospel writers were telling us a story – and that the way they told that story matters. We should not demand of them the kind of detail and accuracy that a post-Indusrtiral Revolution or scientific texts would have. We need to be careful of reading them through an exacting Enlightenment lens – back through Greek dualism of the physical & spiritual and then impose them on a Jewish story.

In the end, what I am suggesting is that we move our application – (which is the same for fundamentalists, conservatives, liberals, charismatics, and evangelicals) – up one step and make it our interpretation.

The simple fact is that we no longer live is world where ‘supernatural’ is a sustainable or verifiable worldview. The phrase ‘supernatural’ A) is not Biblical and B) is not believable in the world of electricity. There is no sense in doggedly sticking to something that is both foreign to the text and incompatible in our age.

This would mean that what we DO with the story, we would call the POINT of the story – that the response it is designed to elicit IS our interpretation. It is not that big of a jump – and it changes our reading of the Bible to be consistent with the world as we know it to be while being authentic to the tradition that we have inherited (by trusting in God).