(re)Aligning with God: Reading Scripture for Church and World

By Brian D. Russell

How do we communicate the message of the Scriptures in our twenty-first-century, post-Christian context? (re)Aligning with God: Reading Scripture for Church and World answers this question by presenting the Scriptures through the lens of mission and by teaching a method for reading Scripture with a missional hermeneutic. The biblical story seeks to convert us to its perspective and to transform its readers and hearers into God's missional community that exists to reflect and embody God's character to/for/in the world. Ready to revolutionize your reading of the Bible and expand your ability to unleash the Scriptures in your context? (re)Aligning with God will give you rich content and practical tools to become a profound, inspiring, and confident reader of the Bible for all who are seeking to hear its good news.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Dec 22, 2015
• ISBN: 9781498274159

Brian D. Russell

Dr. Brian D. Russell (Ph.D.) is an ordained pastor, an award winning professor of Biblical studies, and founder of Deep Dive Spirituality a coaching program for pastors and spiritual leaders interested in deepening their spiritual formation for authentic Christian living and mission in the world.  Brian's calling is this: to seek out, study, and embody the deepest truths of God in order to model and teach them to others lovingly, compellingly, and transformationally. Brian is married to the love of his life. Together they are parents to six adult children and three grandchildren.

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(re)Aligning with God

Reading Scripture for Church and World

Brian D. Russell

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(RE)ALIGNING WITH GOD

Reading Scripture for Church and World

Copyright © 2016 Brian D. Russell. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

Cascade Books

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

Eugene, OR 97401

www.wipfandstock.com

isbn 13: 978-1-60608-551-6

eisbn 13: 978-1-4982-7415-9

Cataloging-in-Publication data:

Russell, Brian D.

(re)aligning with God : reading scripture for church and world / Brian D. Russell.

xiv + 190 p. ; 23 cm. Includes bibliographical references.

isbn 13: 978-1-60608-551-6

1. Bible—Criticism, interpretation, etc. 2. Bible—Hermeneutics. I. Title.

BS476 R85 2016

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1: Scripture and Conversion

Part One: (re)Engaging God’s Story

Chapter 2: The Old Testament Story:Creation, Fall, and Israel

Chapter 3: The Old Testament Story: Israel’s Life in the Land, Prophets, and Writings

Chapter 4: The New Testament Story: Jesus the Messiah, the Mission of the Church, New Creation

Part Two: Learning to Speak Human: Reading the Bible for All People

Chapter 5: Learning to Speak Human: Methodology and Missional Hermeneutics

Chapter 6: Reading the Old and New Testament Missionally:Jonah and Philippians

Part Three: Aligning Our Communities

Chapter 7: Unleashing the Biblical Narrative: Implementing a Missional Hermeneutic in Our Communities of Faith

Bibliography

To all who love the Bible and pray that the Scriptures will astonish our twenty-first-century world with their richness and power.

Acknowledgments

(re)Aligning with God represents the work of many years. I am pleased with its final form and hope that it proves helpful to you its reader. Thank you for picking up a copy.

Thank you to my good friend Eric Hallett for introducing me to the literature of mission and church planting. I am grateful for our breakfast conversations in 2004–2005 that opened a new world to me.

Thank you to Alex McManus of the International Mentoring Network for many stimulating conversations as well as for challenging me to become involved personally in church planting as an integral part of my preparation for teaching in a seminary. I remain grateful for the opportunities to share my ideas with your IMN cohorts.

I am grateful to my students at Asbury Theological Seminary for engaging my ideas rigorously. Teaching this material in courses in Old Testament and Inductive Bible Study helped to sharpen the material. It is a joy to study missional hermeneutics and its application to preaching and teaching with you.

Thank you to Alastair Sterne for reading an early version of the manuscript. I am grateful for Cheri Cowell for providing editorial and format help on the penultimate draft. Of course, any remaining imperfections are due to my own negligence.

Finally, thank you to my family for the support, encouragement, and love that you continue to provide for me. Te amo mi amor Astrid and much love to my daughters Micaela and Katrina as well as to my step-children: Julio, Astrid, Patricia, and Sarah. I am grateful for a family in which we can all aspire and grow into the people whom God created us to be.

Introduction

The art and craft of listening to Scripture today involves learning to operate simultaneously in two contexts: the Church and the World. Of course these are not mutually exclusive categories, nor should they be, but increasingly in our day these two entities coexist almost as foreign countries.

On January 8, 2009 an amazing convergence occurred between Tim Tebow, the Google search engine, and John 3:16. Tim Tebow, the former record-setting quarterback for the University of Florida Gators, was leading his team to victory over the Oklahoma Sooners in the 2009 National Championship game. Tebow is a Christ follower and as part of his public witness during that season he routinely painted Phil 4:10 on the grease paint under his eyes so that when the camera focused on him, as it often did, the audience would encounter a reference to Scripture. Of course, this assumes that Tebow’s audience could decode Phil 4:10 as a reference to the Book of Philippians chapter 4 and verse 10. For the National Championship game Tebow switched from Phil 4:10 to John 3:16. This is where Google entered the picture. Amazingly, John 3:16, and related variations of it, rose to become the number one search on Google from early in the game through the morning of January 9, 2009. Think about it. For more than twelve hours, John 3:16 was the most popular search on Google. Of all of the possible searches, Tebow drove searchers to the good news about Jesus. But before we say, Praise the LORD! too quickly, let’s look at this story from a different angle. What does it mean that the #1 search on Google was John 3:16 in the United States, especially considering the main audience of the game were the fans of two universities located in the Bible Belt? If people living in the United States don’t know John 3:16, what can we assume they know about the Scriptures? What does it mean to read the Bible for a world that no longer knows John 3:16, let alone any other biblical texts that have served as starting points for the proclamation of the Gospel?

The year 2009 also marked another profound shift in the world. Within a few months of Tebow’s John 3:16 phenomenon on Google, human culture reached a new milestone. For the first time in history, the population of people dwelling in urban areas exceeded the number of persons living in rural areas. Large masses of people in small areas create unprecedented opportunities for the church of Jesus Christ in the United States. Of course there are opportunities for resourcing global mission in the major cities around the world, but large urban areas in the United States are likewise in need of the Gospel. John Wesley, the eighteenth-century founder of the Methodist movement, once proclaimed that the world is my parish and then spent a lifetime riding thousands of miles on horseback to preach the Gospel all over England as well as unleashing a corp of committed evangelists to follow in his footsteps. The growing urbanization of our world inspired missiologist Timothy Tennant to turn Wesley’s dictum into "The world is in our parish." The mix of diverse cultures and religions in our urban areas creates challenges for existing churches because, in order to grow, historic churches must now learn to engage different demographic groups. What does it mean to read Scripture in our multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, and religiously pluralistic urban centers?

We humans value and desire security and we often experience fear in the face of new and unpredictable situations. The issues of biblical illiteracy and the need to engage a pluralistic urbanized world are daunting. The church of Jesus Christ can feel paralyzed and may even desire to retreat into and hide within the slowly deteriorating walls of its church buildings.

There is a way forward to an alternative and exciting future. I have written this book to help Christ followers reflect seriously on what it means to reengage the Scriptures for a World that no longer knows the Christian message and one that is increasingly urbanized. It is vital to recall that the Scriptures themselves emerged in the context of a pluralistic world. Ancient Israel existed in the midst of the nations. The New Testament church lived as a tiny minority in cities throughout the Roman Empire. The Bible narrates the story of God’s missional outreach to a lost humanity and a broken creation. God engages humanity within their cultures as means of transformation and redemption. The Scriptures continue to beckon us all to the life that God created for us to live. Thus, the current missional realities of our present world may actually help us to regain the proper posture from which to read the Bible.

In our churches many of us sense we are in a new day. We know the numbers of Christians are declining and our position of prominence in culture and society has slipped away.¹ But we struggle in the face of this emerging new reality with the temptation to hunker down and hold firm to some imagined glorious past. We often return to programs that proved successful in the past only to be disappointed by their failure in the present. Others choose the pathway of accommodation in which the Church merely serves as a mirror for the culture rather than as a window through which the culture may encounter the one true God. The Church flounders aimlessly in futile attempts at relevancy in an ever-changing cultural landscape. I have written this book for Christ followers who are returning to the Scriptures for a bold rediscovery of the power of the Gospel as the key to finding our way forward again.

Yet it is not enough to read Scripture for the world or for the church. We must learn the art and craft of reading the Bible simultaneously for both the world and for the church. We need to help persons who have grown up inside the church to recapture the missional vibrancy and confidence of the apostolic church of the first four centuries by reintroducing them to the biblical story. We must likewise introduce the life-changing message of Scripture to those on the outside of the church. Scripture is for both insiders and outsiders because God desires to bring healing, hope, restoration, and wholeness to all people. We thus must learn to speak human.

What does such a reading of Scripture involve?

Our argument will unfold in three parts. Part One (re)Engaging God’s Story will present a broad overview of the Bible in terms of the rubric: Creation—Fall—Israel—Jesus the Messiah—Church—New Creation. As we engage this grand narrative we will rediscover that God’s mission stands as the central thread that holds the biblical materials together and serves as the story that God invites all people to embrace as their personal story. Part Two, Learning to Speak Human: Reading the Bible for All People, will focus on the craft of a missional hermeneutic and provide clear examples of reading the Scripture for Church and World through a missional perspective. Finally, Part Three, Aligning our Communities, will look at how to implement a missional approach to reading the Scriptures in our local communities of faith. By realigning our faith communities with the missional center of the Bible, we are setting the stage for inviting the world to align itself with God’s missional intentions for creation.

1. As of 2009, in the Western world, there are five thousand less Christians every twenty-four hours.

1

Scripture and Conversion

The goal of biblical interpretation is conversion. We must not forget this. The Bible may be read as a gateway to understanding the ancient world, or to encounter stories about God, Jesus, and an assortment of interesting characters. It can be read for spiritual formation. It can even be used as the basis for understanding the literature and culture of the Western world. But without a conversion to the Scriptural story, the reading and study of the Bible is incomplete.

Scripture must become our story. Most of us in the Church will eagerly cry out, The Bible already is our story, and confess our belief in the authority and efficacy of the Scriptures. But how many of us really grasp the implications of it for living?

In John Steinbeck’s classic, East of Eden, Liza Hamilton serves as the pillar of faith for her family. She is a staunch advocate of biblical morality and ostensibly reads the Scripture as the guide for her earthly existence. Yet, there are cracks in her pious veneer. Steinbeck describes her use of the Bible sublimely:

Her total intellectual association was the Bible. . . . In that one book she had her history and her poetry, her knowledge of peoples and things, her ethics, her morals, and her salvation. She never studied the Bible or inspected it; she just read it. The many places where it seems to refute itself did not confuse her in the least. And finally she came to a point where she knew it so well that she went right on reading it without listening.¹

To this day, the final line of this quotation haunts me. As I reflect and dream about advancing the Gospel in our day, I am convinced that, like Hamilton, we are missing out on the true riches and power of the Scripture not only to transform our lives but also our world. Even much of our biblical preaching and teaching misses the central theme of the Scriptures.

The goal of (re)Aligning with God is the unleashing of the Scriptures in all of their richness and complexity. This book is not merely a call to return to the Scriptures. It is an invitation to experience a conversion to Scripture. It is a summons to a rehearing of the core message of the Bible. It is a bold and daring reentry into the world of the text for there we find God’s visions and dreams for humanity. In the Old and New Testaments we discover the true story of our lives as individuals and as part of the fabric of creation.

The Scriptures are the narrative about God’s mission from Creation to a New Creation. They focus primarily on God’s relationship with humanity and serve to call women and men to live as the people whom God created them to be. The goal of the Scriptures is our conversion to its viewpoint and way of thinking. Such a reading of Scripture seeks to shape us into the sort of people whom God desires for the purpose of the advance of God’s mission in Creation.

In the following three chapters we will take a big-picture look at the narrative found in the Scriptures. The storyline may be summarized succinctly: Creation—Fall of Humanity—Israel—Jesus the Messiah—Church—New Creation.

In this chapter, we will start our journey through the Bible with the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Jesus Christ is the central figure of the Scriptural story so the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is the foundation of the Christ following movement. Jesus launched his ministry with a provocative message: Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand (Matt 4:17).² In Jesus’ opening proclamation, he announced the long awaited age of salvation. The Gospels use the synonymous phrases Kingdom of God and Kingdom of Heaven to express this reality. This language answered the longings of Israel who were hoping for the renewal of God’s activity in their day. Jesus’ words signify the inauguration of God’s reign on earth. God’s kingdom is the sphere in which God manifests his reign.

Jesus’ words need unpacking for our twenty-first-century world. Why does Jesus begin his ministry with a call to repentance? What does repentance mean in this context? Who is Jesus’ primary audience? Why all this talk about the Kingdom of heaven? Why do Jesus’ words mirror those of John Baptist (Matt 3:2) from earlier in the Gospel as well as the message with which he entrusts his disciples later in his ministry (Matt 10:7)?

When we carefully observe Jesus’ words, we notice that it consists of an exhortation Repent, followed by the rationale for this call to action for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. But let’s first look at the context of Jesus’ initial proclamation.

Who was Listening?

The question of audience is critical for understanding the missional force and model of Jesus’ message. Jesus begins his public ministry on the margins. This is significant. Matthew (4:12–16) understands Jesus’ move to the margins as a fulfillment of Isaiah’s words about a coming Messiah who would pierce the darkness with light (Isa 9:1–2). Galilee was the region linked to the eschatological expectation of the renewal of God’s kingdom. The reference to Galilee of the Gentiles is important. In Galilee, Jesus is nowhere near the religious epicenter of Jerusalem and the Second Temple. Instead, he is far to the north. This was Gentile country. Jesus proclaimed the message of the Kingdom to people who lived around the Sea of Galilee. This region was a mixture of Jews and Gentiles with Jews perhaps in the minority.³ It was under the authority of Herod Antipas. This context is significant for understanding all of Scripture. If we are not careful we can easily misread the Bible as a story of God’s preferential dealings with God’s people. Rather, the Bible is the story of God’s calling of a people for the sake of God’s mission to the nations. It is fitting then for Jesus to locate his own ministry on the margins of Israel in the Galilee. Moreover, it is significant for understanding the movement of God to recognize the importance of the margins.

In the biblical narrative the Gospel moves repeatedly from the margins to the center. The first responders to Jesus’ message were fishermen (Matt 4:18–22). The first recipients of Jesus’ miracles were lepers, gentiles, and women (Matt 8:1–17). John the Baptist preached his fiery call for repentance in the wilderness (Matt 3). If we go to the Old Testament, Abram was a wanderer in the world (Gen 11:27ff.; Deut 26:5) before God called him to be the eponymous ancestor of God’s people. Israel’s home in the hill country of Canaan was not the epicenter of the ancient world, but rather a backwoods region wedged between the dominant power centers of Egypt and Mesopotamia. Moreover, the history of God’s people is rooted in servitude and slavery out of which God redeemed them (Exod 20:2).

The Gospel is not about power but about people—all people. Thus, the beginning of Jesus’ ministry adumbrates the post-resurrection mission—the proclamation of the Gospel to all people everywhere. Moreover, Jesus’ initial message is inclusive of both insiders and outsiders. He has come to save his people from their sins (Matt 1:21). It is easy to assume this meant Israel, but Jesus’ actions in the Gospel of Matthew suggest a broader understanding. Jesus’ people certainly include the lost sheep of Israel (Matt 10:6), but we must not miss the dynamic expansion of mission embodied in Jesus’ ministry. Matthew reminds us in the initial verse of the Gospel that Jesus is the son of Abraham. Abraham stands in the biblical story as the one through whose seed all peoples of the earth will be blessed (Gen 12:3). Jesus embodies this calling. This theme reaches its climax in the story of Jesus when in Matt 28:16–20 Jesus sends out his disciples to make disciples of all nations. Significantly, this sending out occurs when the disciples meet the resurrected Jesus in Galilee.

Rationale for (Re)alignment

Jesus’ opening words are audacious and demand an immediate shift in the orientation of his audience. Jesus is declaring that the new age of God’s salvation has arrived. It is a declaration that a new page in history is now being written. This new age is God’s long awaited era of salvation. It had been originally envisioned in Israel’s Scriptures. The Old Testament rings with anticipation. As we will see, Israel’s prophets foresaw a future renewal and redemption for the nation on the other side of its experience of judgment and exile. Israel’s prayers and songs celebrated the rule of God and hoped for a renewal of the Davidic monarchy. Those living in Palestine at the time of Jesus were languishing under the thumb of the Roman Empire. They were longing for a renewal of God’s saving power. They hungered for a Messiah who would bring liberation from oppression and usher in God’s new age of peace, wholeness, hope, and restoration.

In short, the people of God in Jesus’ day were expecting a decisive climax to occur in history. This would be marked by the arrival of God’s kingdom. The present evil age would pass away and a new age of justice, righteousness, peace, and salvation would replace it. What does the kingdom look like? In the LORD’s Prayer Jesus helps us to unpack its core reality with the phrases, May your Kingdom come. May your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven (Matt 6:10). In other words, the Kingdom of God is dynamically present whenever and wherever God’s will is being embodied and accomplished. In the Gospels, Jesus is the announcer of the Kingdom’s arrival and its personal embodiment. Jesus models the ethos and values of the Kingdom in his earthly ministry. He demonstrates the reality of the Kingdom through his acts of power and miraculous works (Matt 11:4–6). In his life, death, and resurrection Jesus embodies God’s Kingdom.

In his first-century context, Jesus’ words are bold and daring. For he declares that God’s long anticipated end-time rule is now present in his person. The announcement of the Kingdom is the core message of Jesus. Jesus’ coming is not the start of a new religion; it is more radical. It is a full-blown declaration of the saving power and presence of God’s Kingdom.

This puts Jesus’ message in continuity with the prophets of old and with the future proclamation of the Church. In Matthew’s Gospel, John the Baptist functions as the last of the prophets. Matthew records his message in 3:2 in identical fashion with Jesus’ in 4:17, Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near. Likewise, when Jesus sends out his disciples for ministry, they are to proclaim the gospel of the Kingdom: The kingdom of heaven has come near. In Jesus, God has arrived to usher in his end-time rule. This is the Gospel. But, there is a human response necessitated by Jesus’ announcement.

(Re)alignment

What response is required given the reality of a new age of salvation? Jesus’ message is simple. His exhortation is a single word, Repent. Jesus is calling for a radical change and transformation in the face of the arrival of the long awaited age of salvation. It remains the work of God’s people today to change and live out the Kingdom in their day.

Let me offer you my dynamic translation of Matt 4:17: Continually (re)align yourselves [with the ethos and will of God] for the long awaited age of God’s saving reign has arrived in the person and ministry of Jesus the Messiah.

Much could be said here, but I want to focus on my retranslation of repent as (re)align. Repent is a competent and adequate translation of the Greek verb metanoieo, but