ENGAGING THE STORIES

Though we have understood the gospel primarily through the priestly lens, we discover the salvation story is about so much more. In the creation story, salvation is a restoration of all things, including human beings, to their original intent: a dynamic relationship and participation with God in his care over what he has made and called good. In the exodus story, salvation is the invitation to journey with God from bondage to liberation. Salvation in the exile story is God’s rescue of Israel and their journey from the fractured edges of belonging back into the center of life with God. In each of these three stories, salvation is dynamic and filled with motion. God’s people join him as he brings about his purposes for them. That is not the case in the priestly story. The priestly story is more static than dynamic. It is less about joining God and more about a transaction with God: you are dirty — here is how you become clean. Salvation in the priestly story is about unholy people becoming holy by brokering a sacrifice.

I believe that the priestly story is essential to the gospel message. But regrettably, I fear that we have made this one aspect of the good news the entire gospel and ignored the parts of the story that Jesus himself seemed most passionate about. The irony is that our world is consumed by the themes represented in the creation, exodus, and exile stories. You don’t need to listen very hard to hear them. Listen to people who not only want freedom from guilt but freedom from the meaninglessness that characterizes the lives of so many in our culture who are outwardly rich but inwardly poor, and then reconsider the creation story and the invitation to join God is his work of stewarding and restoring creation to God’s purposes for it. Listen to addicts of all kinds trying to figure out ways to move from bondage to freedom, but feel powerless against the powers in their lives, and then consider again the exodus story and the gospel of liberation. Listen to marginalized people hoping to somehow find a way to be included and experience wholeness, and then reckon that with the exile and the gospel of reconciliation. Salvation is not merely static or something that happens at a moment in time. It is about movement and the dynamic relationship that God extends in Christ.

People around me are excited about engaging spiritual realities, especially when they are framed as dynamic engagements that invite movement, participation, and the journey toward restoration. However, most don’t believe that Christianity has anything to say to such hungers. We keep making the gospel about the transaction, about the moment in time when we were unclean, then clean. When people don’t respond to us, our strategy seems to be to turn up the volume. But again, this is ironic. My own faith story demonstrates that this limited orientation toward the gospel is not even working for those of us who are already deep into the life of God in Christ. Why? Because the good news is about so much more that being forgiven and going to heaven one day. It’s not just a moment in time, but a dynamic journey. Heaven is not the point — it is the outcome. The gospel message is not just about sin and solution, but creation, sin, solution, and restoration. Holy days like Christmas and Easter are celebrations of the victory of God over sin, but also of God’s reclamation of creation, the liberation from bondage, and the restoration of all things in Christ.

As much as I have enjoyed embracing the church calendar and a holy way of observing time, it has been this robust understanding of God’s story and how Jesus came to fulfill and reframe it in such explosive and surprising ways that is reshaping my faith. Just as those in Nazareth were stunned to silence by his astounding claim to Messiah, so are we overawed when we begin to come to grips with what Jesus has done and the implications for us...his people. It is truly good news, better and even more relevant than we ever knew or hoped to believe.

Our church community in Kansas City is seeking to discover how not just to live differently in time, but also to live differently in the story. I am sure for many practical-minded leaders, such a statement begs the question of how it is that we do such a thing. Such a question is not easily answered though. It is not as if we are trying to “do” something different — at least initially anyway. It is more that we are trying to see things differently. It is as if we have been asleep to so much of the message of the gospel, but the voice of Jesus has pierced our slumber and we have awoken to a bigger and brighter world than the one we thought we knew. Coming to grips with how we are invited to participate in the creativity of creation, the liberation of exodus, and the restoration of exile is just beginning to affect the scope of what we understand God’s kingdom to include: how we preach, practice justice, do spiritual formation, read our Scriptures, interact with our children, and have spiritual conversations with our friends and neighbors. The list could go on. We are discovering so much, yet we still we have more than a long way to go. It is a journey, after all. But we have discovered this much: the gospel is not something that we receive or accept. It refuses such a limited container. It must be lived. The good news of God’s salvation is an alternate reality that startles us from our slumber. Once awake, we are invited to join and participate: to live in God’s time and God’s story with Christ’s call to join him as agents in his work of mediating shalom in his good creation. It is this reality that proclaims and incarnates the good news: our God reigns.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. Have you ever felt tensions in your own church community regarding the use of Christmas and Easter events to preach the gospel to attendees who aren’t regularly present? If so, how have you resolved these tensions?

2. How would you describe your own conversion narrative? Is it characterized by a dramatic moment-in-time conversion, or a “plodding and clumsy discovery”?

3. When you think of “sharing the gospel” with someone else, which biblical texts come to mind regarding your articulation of the good news? Why are these texts significant for you?

4. Tim Keel suggests, “The priestly story seems to be the one that Jesus spends the least amount of time engaging.” Do you agree? Why or why not?

5. What are the pressing needs of people in your neighborhood and community and how might the creation story, the exodus story, or the exile story be more relevant to them than the priestly story?

6. What are some ways your own community of faith might reframe the gospel so as not to neglect the priestly story, but to give more weight to the creation, exodus, and exile stories than has historically been done?

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