Welcome to the final day of the January Series 2017
My name is Kristi Potter, and I'm the director of the January Series.
Can you believe it? The time has gone by so quickly.
*Applause*
It's been a great fifteen days, and I know many of you come day after day to enjoy the presentations,
and we've been inspired together, we've been challenged, we've learned together,
and I hope that has been a blessing to you all.
As we close out our thirtieth year I just want to say a special thanks
to our series underwriters: Baker Publishing and Doug and Maria DeVos.
To all of our sponsors, our daily underwriters,
and those of you who sent in gifts in the envelopes,
all of you have helped make the January Series a free gift for all,
and we are grateful.
Thanks also to our technical team for all your hard work behind the scenes,
and to the hosts at the fifty remote sites.
I know that you've worked very hard on these fifteen days.
And on this final day I want to send out a special welcome to the audiences at four of our remote sites:
Portland Oregon,
Chino California, Muskegon Michigan,
and the LCC International University in Lithuania.
And now President LeRoy, the president of Calvin College,
will introduce the Stob Lecture Series and open with prayer.
Thank you.
*Applause*
Good afternoon and, it has been an incredible year as we celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the series.
Today the long standing Stob Lecture Series also coincides with the January Series
as today's address continues the series' history of bringing to light
matters of ethics, apologetics,
and philisophical theology.
The Stob Lecture is sponsored annually by Calvin College
and Calvin theological Seminary in honor of Doctor Henry J. Stob
who served so well as a professor in both institutions.
The Stob Lecture is funded by the Henry J. Stob endowment,
and we express our appreciation to the family of Dr. Stob for their continued support of this event.
Now please join me in prayer.
Holy God, we come before you in reverence and awe.
You carry us through the seasons of the year
and the seasons of the heart.
You grant wisdom, and you reveal knowledge.
You have blessed your servant, Tom Wright, in great measure with both wisdom and knowledge.
So, too, now bless us through his words
with fresh perspectives on the cross of Jesus Christ,
which saves us and prompts us to live in gratitude.
Amen.
Now I would like to introduce my friend and the president of Calvin Theological Seminary, Jul Medenblik,
who will introduce Tom Wright.
*applause*
A Brief introduction to N. T. Wright,
a contradiction of terms.
A prolific writer, of both popular and scholarly books,
N. T. Wright bridges the world of the academy and the church.
He has written over thirty books including "Simply Christian",
"Surprised by Hope",
"What St. Paul Really Said",
"The Challenge of Jesus",
"Jesus and the Victory of God"
"Paul and the Faithfulness of God",
"The Case for the Psalms",
and his most recent,
"The Day the Revolution Began; Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus' Crucifixion."
He has also written the "New Testament for Everyone" commentary series.
Formerly bishop of Durham in England,
Tom Wright is research professor of New Testament and Early Christianity
at the University of Saint Andrews in Scotland.
He has served as canon theologian of Westminster Abbey
and Dean of Lichfield Cathedral
He taught New Testament for over 20 years at Cambridge, McGill, and Oxford Universities.
In addition to his many books,
Tom Wright reaches a broad audience through media appearances
and his extensive travel and speaking engagements.
He has been a frequent guest of Calvin College and Seminary,
and he will be presenting at the Calvin Symposium on Worship this coming week.
As is customary,
our speaker will be available to meet/greet the audience
in the west lobby of the Covenant Fine Arts Center following the presentation.
Calvin College and Seminary are grateful to the Stob Lecture Series for underwriting today's presentation.
Please join me in welcoming Tom Wright.
*Applause*
Thank you so much for your welcome.
It's always very good to be back here at Calvin
and to have the honor once again of being part of this prestigios January Series.
We have done our homework and discovered that this is actually the fifth time I've been here.
First was in 2002
and I hope this won't be the last - hint hint to the organizers.
It's great to be here,
and from a glance at the program this time it's clear you've had a wonderful Series.
I wish I could have been with you to soak it all up
and get involved in the discussions
but I'm glad I have the chance now to bring it all back home as it were
by focusing on the event without which there wouldn't be any Christian faith and thought at all
and as I shall be explaining by
without which the principalities and powers of the world would still be ruling unchallenged and unchecked.
What I am going to say is based on and growing out of my new book, "The Day the Revolution Began."
And before I launch in,
let me do one other piece of shameless advertising:
this book and several other topics
are featured in a series of online courses
which you will find available at ntwrightonline.org
And I know some of you have already done that, somebody was mentioning it this morning.
Now when we come to the Crucifixion,
we always ought to do so with awe and trembling.
We will never fully understand what's going on here,
and we ought just to be grateful and awed by it.
All my life, the Crucifixion of Jesus has been a powerful presence.
My earliest Christian memories
from the time when I was a small boy
are being overwhelmed at the thought of Jesus loving me enough to die for me.
Nothing in the years of academic study
and church life has changed that.
I have preached on the cross and lectured and written about the cross
many times over many years,
but until this book, "The Day the Revolution Began,"
I'd never really tried to pull it all together in one place,
and even then I was thwarted because the book got too long,
and I didn't touch the letter to the Hebrews, which is a major omission,
but still, Gospels and Paul and Revelation particularly feature.
But I found myself coming to conclusions in this book which surprised me.
I hadn't seen it like this, I hadn't said it like this before,
and it was a difficult task.
Even though I thought I knew where I was going, it kept on changing as I went along,
and I feel that I've got through it something of a fresh perspective,
not presumably the last, but a fresh perspective on the deep meaning of Jesus' death.
Now, in much popular Christianity there's a gap at this point.
It's always dangerous to say this sort of thing at Calvin,
that nobody today thinks that such and such.
I discovered this five years ago when I spoke about the forgotten meaning of the gospels,
and various people here, notably Jamie Smith, told me in no uncertain terms that it hadn't been forgotten here at Calvin
thank you very much.
But I think I'm on safe ground in saying that we all find it easy to lapse into an oversimplified, and perhaps distorted vision of what the cross achieved.
For the new testament writers, the cross wasn't just about how we get saved, though of course it is that,
it was about the royal revolution that had changed the entire world.
So here at the end of this January series, I'm not simply reminding you let's go back to the Bible to the gospel,
good though that would be,
I'm suggesting that when we do that, we might see fresh perspectives on what it means
as we face pressing issues of many kinds in our society and culture.
What it means to be people of that royal revolution.
Curiously, I think, most books on the atonement don't give much space to the gospels.
And likewise, many books on the gospels don't give much space to atonement theology.
But here's one of the biggest clues: In all four gospels,
Jesus chose Passover to confront the temple establishment with his radical counterclaim, knowing where it would lead.
Think about it, he didn't choose tabernacles or Hannukah,
he didn't choose the day of atonement.
He chose passover
because Jesus' understanding of his own vocation was to accomplish once and for all the new exodus for which Israel had longed.
Passover imagery then, in the new testament, isn't just miscellaneous Biblical decoration
around the edge of an atonement theory whose real focus is elsewhere.
It is the flesh and blook reality.
Within the gospels recounting of that passover, one scene stands out, which I'm going to use as a way in for our though this morning.
Or this afternoon, or whenever it is, actually it's this evening on my body clock, but we'll call it morning because I haven't had my lunch yet.
John's gospel displays deft artistry and fathomless theology throughout,
but especially in the foot washing scene in chapter thirteen.
I'd assume you all basically know the story.
In a few lines in John 13, we glimpse a tableu which is both intimate and touching, and scary and dangerous.
John began his gospel with the all creative word becoming flesh and revealing God's glory.
He now moves to the beginning of the shorter second half of the gospel.
The gospel divides clearly between chapters 12 and 13,
with an acted parable of exactly the same thing, of the incarnation of the word.
Jesus removes his outer garments, and kneels down to wash the disciples' feet,
summing up all that is to come in the act of divine humility,
of loving redemption, of clensing for service.
For John, as for the whole of the New Testament,
Jesus' vocation to reveal the divine glory in rescuing the world from its plight,
is encoded in action simultaneously dramatic, fraught with cosmic significance,
and gentle, tender with human emotion.
if you want to understand the mysteries of Christian theology,
trinity, incarnation, atonement itself,
you could do worse than spend some time in John 13.
The chapter begins, "Having loved his own who were in the world, Jesus loved them to the end, to the uttermost."
Here we see what it means that God so loved the world that he gave his only son,
a love at once powerful and humble, sovereign and sensitive.
Jesus' actions, the footwashing, shocks the disciples.
Peter characteristically raises an objection, "Shouldn't be doing this."
But Jesus waves it away
If I don't wash you, he says, you have no part in me,
and that produces a typically petrine overreaction.
Well then, says Peter, not my feet only, but my hands and my head as well.
Calm down, says Jesus, you are already clean because I have washed you,
all you need now is the regular foot washing.
But like everything else in John's story, this all then points forward to the great saving action to come
in which the filth are mire of the centuries would be washed away in the torrent of water and blood.
Jesus then resumes his garments and explains the surface layer of meaning
as I have done this to you, you should do it for one another.
Already this points ahead to the spirit driven ministries of the gospel in John 20.
As the father sent me, so I send you.
Atonement then, atonement now.
The theology of the cross is only ultimately complete when it issues in
the foot washing, fruit bearing, and world transforming mission of Jesus' followers.
Into this scene of symbolic prophetic action, John has woven the dark strand
which explains why all this is necessary,
and how the great redemption is to be accomplished.
And this is at the heart of the fresh perspective that I'm trying to explore.
John says that the accuser, the Satan, had already put it into Judas' heart to betray Jesus.
The accuser, the Satan, is the dark sub-personal force
that has dogged Jesus' footsteps throughout his mission.
Rather as, in The Lord of the Rings, Golem is never far away
while Frodo and his companions undertake their fateful journey.
Jesus had already hinted that one of his own followers would act out the great accusation,
the charge that would take him to his death.
It isn't just, you see, that Satan has now temped Judas to do something particularly wicked,
that's true as well, but it's not the point,
rather, the Satan, the accuser, is working through Judas to bring Jesus to trial,
to accuse him, in other words.
The hate and shame of all the world,
the raging howl that rises from the accumulated forces of evil,
of anticreation, of tyranny and spite,
and sneering and lies,
has gathered itself into one and has focused its deadly spotlight on the end fleshed word,
the living embodiment of the loving and wise creator.
And love only makes it worse.
It is after the foot washing, where Jesus warns that you are already clean, though not all of you,
it's after that that the Satan finally enters into Judas.
Do it quickly, says Jesus, and Judas goes out into the night.
People sometimes say that Luke was an artist,
but if ever a Biblical scene had all the elements of a great canvas,
holding many different characters and moods within a single dramatic tableu,
it's that scene in John 13.
Some here may know if there are any old masters of that scene, I can't recall any but I'm not an art historian.
Now I begin here in John 13 and in order to stir your imaginations,
to move beyond theories and models of atonement,
and to reach into vivid historical reality.
John has carefully positioned the foot washing scene to launch the final moves to the foot of the cross,
and out beyond to the fresh morning in the garden,
and the warm breath of the outpoured spirit.
The theories of atonement to which we shall return mean what they mean
as interpretations of the real life narrative of the word made flesh,
of the flesh made shameful, of shame itself killed and buried.
The theories are their best, battered little signposts pointing towards that larger reality.
The gospels are written not as so often in Christian readings,
the gospels are written not to provide lively illustrations of those theories,
but to name and invoke the historical reality towards which the theories point.
When Jesus wanted to explain to his followers what his death was going to mean,
he didn't give them a theory, he gave them a meal on the one hand,
and a dramatic action on the other.
The word became flesh, and it is in flesh, his flesh and then worryingly our flesh,
that the truth is revealed.
God forgive us that we have often answered skeptical rationalism
with fideistic rationalism.
It's in flesh that the world was saved.
It is in the flesh that the glory was, and is, revealed.
Now John places this tableu of chapter 13 not simply within his gospel,
but by multiple implication within the vast and sprawling scriptural story of Israel and the world.
One of the reasons we need fresh perspectives on the cross
is that we have failed to pay attention to that great story.
We have reduced it to a string of proof texts for doctrines that we have called from elsewhere.
John insists otherwise.
In particular, his prologue places the whole story within the long reach of the first two books of the Bible.
It's well known that John focuses on the temple, on Jesus and the temple,
Jesus upstaging the temple, Jesus speaking about the temple's demise
and the building of a new one,
and on Jesus finally doing what the temple could not.
That is common coin.
Anyone who seriously reads John knows that.
But what has this to do with Genesis and Exodus?
Time for some basic but often ignored Biblical theology.
Again, a nod to anyone here who would tell me that here at Calvin of course we don't ignore this,
I'm delighted to hear that, thank you.
But there may be some here who need gentle reminders.
Genesis 1 and 2 describe, to first century eyes, the construction of the ultimate temple,
the single heaven on earth reality,
the one cosmos within which the twin realities of God's space, heaven, and our space, earth,
are held together in balanced mutual relation.
That's what a temple is, a place which holds heaven and earth together.
And the seven stages of creation, as many scholars have pointed out,
are the seven stages of building a temple into which the builder will come to take up residence,
to take their rest.
"Here is Zion," says God
my resting place
Within this temple the final element created on the sixth day is the image
That's what you do when you build a temple in the ancient world you finally put in an image of the god
Through which the rest of creation will see and worship the Creator
But the image also is the creature through which
the Creator becomes present and active
in and with his creation
The God of Genesis 1 is the heaven and Earth God
The God who chooses to work through humans in the world
and with this we understand both the start and the climax of John's gospel
The start, you all know it
In the beginning was the word
en archaea, corresponding to Genesis 1:1
bereshit, in the beginning
God created
And now in the beginning was the word
and the word became flesh
And then onto the climax of John's gospel
on the last Friday, the sixth day of the week
the representative of the world's ruler
Pontius Pilate declares, "Behold the Man"
Pilate says far more than he knows
acknowledging that Jesus is the proper man
the true image
when we look at him John has already told us
we see the Father, that's what an image enables
and the Father is present working powerfully through him,
the whole of the Gospel is about that
and when, as he says,
the light has shon in the gathering darkness
and the darkness has tried to extinguish it
the final word that Jesus speaks
Chapter 19 verse 30
echoes Genesis once more
Tetelestai: it is finished
The work is accomplished
there then follows the rest on the seventh day laid to rest in the tomb
before the first day of the new week
the eighth day
When Mary Magdalene comes to the garden
and discovers that the new creation has begun
John is writing a new Genesis
and the death of Jesus places at the heart of this heaven and Earth reality
the sign and symbol of the image
through which the world will see and recognize its Creator
and know him as the God of unstoppable love
the sign and symbol of the image
through which the Creator has established that love at the climax of world history
the revolution that changes the world
the fountain head for the rivers of water
that will now flow out to refresh and renew the whole creation
That is the primary story John is telling
But if it's a new Genesis
it is also a new Exodus
Here there's a problem
for years when reading Exodus
I used to misjudge Moses' request to Pharaoh
remember Moses goes to Pharaoh and says:
We need to leave because we need to worship our God in the desert
I used to think that was just an excuse,
we actually want to go to our promised land
Pharaoh's not going to let us do that
so let's tell him we want to go and worship in the desert
But the whole logic of the Pentateuch forbids that interpretation
If you read Exodus at a run
you'll get to Mt. Sinai easily enough it's a page turner up to that point
The pace then seems to slacken for a moment
as you get the first list of rules and regulations
but in fact the narrative now moves swiftly forwards
to the main purpose which is the restoration of creation itself
how?, this is the purpose for which God called Abraham in the first place
the purpose to join heaven and earth together once more
only now in dramatic symbol and onward pointing sign
the giving of Torah is just preparation
what matters is the tabernacle
we should thank God for the many studies of tabernacle and temple theology now available
and we should repent for the protestant ignoring of that strand of scripture
the tabernacle is the microcosmos the little world
the heaven and earth place, the mysterious untamable moving tent
in which the living God comes to dwell
to tabernacle indeed in the midst of his people
in the pillar of cloud and fire
the whole book of Exodus is moving towards this moment in chapter 40
the tent is constructed and decorated with the highest human artistry
that itself is part of the point
and the divine glory comes to dwell in it
so that even Moses can't enter
Exodus 40 answers to Genesis 1 and 2
There's a long narrative arc that joins them
creation is in principle renewed
heaven and earth are held together again
the world itself is holted from its slide back to chaos
and the people of God, tent-makers and tent-keepers
and pilgrims wherever the glory filled tent will lead them
are to live the dangerous and challenging life
of a people in who's midst there now dwells in strange, humble sovereignty
the living hope for the whole of creation
all of this and much more, think of Solomon's Temple in first Kings
think of the vision in Isaiah 6,
all of this is then poured by John into the dense revolutionary reality of his prologue
as it reaches it climax in the beginning was the word
and the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us
skenoo en hemin
and we gazed upon his glory
we have been allowed where Moses was not
we have seen the glory, the heaven and earth reality
the human microcosmos, the tent where the God of the Exodus is revealed
as the one God of creation and new creation
John is describing in his Gospel, the ultimate Exodus
through which creation itself was rescued and renewed
to be the new creation which comes to birth on the 8th day
after the dark power, the great and terrible Pharaoh
has been defeated once and for all
of course Genesis and Exodus themselves indicate that things are not going to be straightforward
the glorious vision of Genesis 1 and 2 gives way quickly
to the whispering serpent, the original exile
the first murder, the long decline into human arrogance
which ends with the tower of Babel
Eden and Babylon, like Jesus and Judas at the last supper framed the action which follows,
as Abraham and his family are called to a stupendous vocation
and come repeatedly within a whisker of throwing it all away
then they go down to Egypt and Abraham says that Sarah's his sister
the whole thing might have been aborted right there
and then the children of Israel gloriously rescued and on their way to the promised inheritance make a golden calf
at the very moment where the microcosmos was about to be constructed among them
And it only doesn't then go horribly wrong because Moses goes out and has a shouting match
don't you love that scene where God says to Moses:
your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt they've done wrong, you push off
and Moses says: no you've got it wrong there, your people, you brought them out of the land
it's your reputation that's on the line
this is classic Jewis prayer I love it
and it works
but as the Pentatuch moves to its puzzling conclusion, the end of Deuteronomy,
it becomes clear that the people of God
the tent-keepers if you like, are still a rebellious people
who will have to suffer the consequences of putting other images at the intersection of heaven and earth
and they, like their primal forebears will go into exile
not despite the fact that they're covenant people
but because they're the covenant people
and that's what happens when the covenant people are disobedient
and worship other gods
God will fill his creation with his glory
but it will come through the casting away and receiving back of the tent-keepers
and ultimately through the casting away and receiving back of their royal representative
Genesis and Exodus then give us the structure, the framework of all subsequent, Biblical theology
and perhaps of John's Gospel in particular.
God will rescue and restore His heaven and earth creation
and the tabernacle is the sign seal of that promise
Aaron and his sons, the Priests are the image reflectors who holds that hope together
Israel as a whole is the royal priesthood
for the sake of the whole of creation
of the five books of Moses then give us the story
stretching forward in the final prophetic chapters of Deuteronomy
to embrace the whole period of kings and prophets
of exile and restoration
And the kings themselves are deeply ambigious lot
are nevertheless called in the Psalms to be the image bearers
to be the spearheads, the metaphor is not too harsh
of Yahweh's victory over the powers of evil
to be the focus of his reign of justice and peace
think of those royal Psalms, Psalm 2, Psalm 8
red royal as it should be
Psalm 72, 89, 110
there is to be royal revolution against the principalities and powers
or so it seems until kings and priests and even prophets
alike fail miserably
and the prophets, the canonical prophets
particularly Isaiah and Ezekiel see the glory of God and the shame of Israel in severe counterpoint
with the consequence that the shame is complete and the glory departs
but Ezekiel then describes the creation of the new temple
with Ezekiel 43 corresponding to Exodus 40
as the divine glory returns at last
and Isaiah in his Gospel of comfort describes the scene of majesty
in which the sovereign God comes back
the mountains have flattened and the valleys are filled in
for the glory to be revealed for all flesh to witness it
and the majesty is joined with tender intimacy
just as in John 13 he will feed his flock like a shepherd
gather the lands in his arms and gently lead the mother sheep
this is then a new Exodus, a new passover
that's what we're talking about all through
this prophetic theme though stretches like a long question mark
over the 400 years after exile in Babel
til a voice in the wilderness declares that the time has come
King, Temple, new Exodus, new creation
John sees these themes rushing together
and with his deceptively simple aristry of his narrative
he's held on to them and shown how they fit
Jesus chose passover as the moment to awaken the biblical resonances
which would frame his final kingdom bringing action and passion
his royal revolution
The Gospel writers following this foundation insight
tell the story of Jesus as the story of the strange new Exodus
in which the glory returns at last but in a form nobody had seen coming
no wonder Caiphas and his kronies were alarmed
they're priestly role supposedly standing between heaven and earth
was about to be upstaged once and for all
by the true image, the word made flesh
who would sum up in himself both the long delayed obedience of Israel
and the long awaited return of Israel's God
these two fit together
when Paul, quoting the early formula says that the Messiah died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures
it is this complex narrative full of doom and glory that he has in mind
proof texts are for the birds
or more accurately for near marcionite rationalists
what matters is the story, the true story
John and Paul draw out one theme in particular from Exodus, Isaiah
from the entire earlier narrative
Babel must be overthrown if Abraham's people are to inherit the world
Pharaoh must be overthrown if Abraham's family are to be rescued
Babylong and its Gods must be overthrown if the new Exodus is to be accomplished
This victory of God against the usurping powers
is clear throughout the prophets
particularly Isaiah for whom God's kingdom will be established through the defeat of the dark powers and the return of Yahweh to Zion
both of which will occur through the work and the shameful death of the servant
All this is retrieved and celebrated by the Gospel writers
particularly John as he leads the iap from his prologue through the footwashing scene and onto the cross
Jesus signs in John unveil his glory starting with the wedding at Canaan
which is itself a temple image symbolizing the marriage of heaven and earth
and the sequence of signs leads to the cross
where the dark glory of God is revealed
as the glory of the true image, the priest, the lover, the king
the royal revolutionary
this theme picked up in the foot washing scene where Judas embodies the satan,
has actually been highlighted in the previous chapter John 12
as John draws together the threads from the first half of his Gospel
he quotes just those passages from Isaiah in which the ideas I've sketched come to sharp expression
And the crucial passage I want to look at now
John 12 verses 20 to 36, you probably know it by hear being good Calvin folk
but if you don't, look it up when you get home
Johnh 12:20-36 begins with a typical Johannine puzzle
some Greeks come to the feast and want to see Jesus
what's going on here?
Jesus, instead of arranging, you know if some Greeks came to me
and said, yea sure I say let's go down to Mousakka
later on in the day and sort it out
but instead of arranging to meet them Jesus speaks in riddles
the hour has come he says for the son of man to be glorified
for the grain of wheat to fall into the earth and die
so that it can bear much fruit
what's that got to do with these poor Greeks who want to see him
Jesus is gazing beyond the immediate request to the ultimate purpose
the world upon which he looks out.
the pagan world and also tragically the Jewish world
is in the grip of the Pharaoh, the dark Babel gods
the ruler of this world,
there is no point having a chat with these Greeks here and now
what matters is not understand the the world but to rescue the world
this is the time for God's name to be glorified for judgment to be passed on the ruler of the world,
now says Jesus the ruler of this world is to be cast out and when I am lifted up I will draw all people to myself
that is the answer,
Jesus death willbe the means by which the power that has gripped the world of Greek and Jew alike
will be overthrown by the greater power
the power the world never imagined the revolutionary power
of a royal love which loves its own and loves them til the end
then it will be time for the Greeks to come in
freed from the powers that have hitherto enslaved them
and prevented their approach to Israel's God
You see, in John's gospel, there are two things which cannot happen until Jesus has died
apart from the resurrection and the new creation themselves
First, in Chapter Seven, the Spirit cannot be poured out into the world
through the hearts of the disciples into the world
until Jesus is glorified
And then here in Chapter Twelve, the dark power which has held the world in its grip
must be defeated before it makes any sense for the Greeks to come and see Jesus
Look wider and weep for what the Church has done
The Greeks cannot hold Jesus within their world of theory
They need to be embraced by the world of the new temple
the new cosmos that will open up when their present captivity is undone.
How often we in the Church have exchanged that vision çfor a set of theories
Jesus' death will overthrow the power, the ruler of this world
and then it will be time, as Paul sees in 1 Corinthians 2
for the hidden wisdom to shine forth
and that is why chapters 18 and 19 where Jesus engages in sharp dialogue with Pontius Pilate,
Kingdom of God vs Kingdom of Caesar
is so vital to the meaning of the story, and also for today's implications of the royal revolution
Pilate asks about kingdom, Jesus replies about truth
Pilate doesn't know what truth is because the only truth he knows is power.
Sounds familiar.
In his case, the power to kill
Jesus says all power, including yours, Pilate, comes from above.
But what he doesn't explain, because like the Greeks, Pilate just wouldn't get it,
is that ultimate power, the revolutionary power,
is the footwashing power,
the Passover power, the power of radical, transformative love.
But on the cross, as John makes clear,
that love goes powerfully to work.
John explains this again, not with theory, but with small scenes that bring out the meaning.
There is the tender moment with Mary and John.
And there is Pilate himself declaring, "What I have written, I have writen,"
not realizing, again in 1 Corinthians,
that by declaring Jesus to be King of the Jews,
Pilate is acknowledging him-
Psalm 2, Psalm 72, et cetera-
as the lord of the world, the ultimate ruler,
the justice-bringer, the revolutionary.
Tetelestai: it's finished.
The new Tabernacle, the new creation,
rescued from the wreck of the old
through the king who is also the Passover lamb
whose bones remain unbroken.
New exodus. Real return from exile.
Return of Yawheh to Zion.
Messianic enthronement.
Priestly work complete.
Revolution accomplished.
Creation itself ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven.
My friends, please don't ever think of trying to construct something called "atonement theology",
unless you know with John and Paul
what it means that the Messiah died for our sins
in accordance with the scriptures.
Because, of course, we have tried, the Western tradition has tried, to do it in many other ways.
We have erected different structures with Israel's scriptures as merely a sourcebook for random prophecies,
which can then be fitted into the redemption narratives which we have gleaned or constructed from elsewhere.
And we've then distorted those texts themselves to play the role demanded by those other narratives,
narratives of divine honor offended, divine law courts sitting in judgement,
human muddle and mistake.
All these matter in their own way,
but if we start with them, we will skew the whole.
Even "atonement" itself, the word is far less precise, actually, than we normally imagine,
must include so much more, including the notions of sacrifice,
which goes on past the cross and up to the ascention,
where according to Hebrews, the son offers his once for all sacrifice in the heavenly temple.
And these ideas themselves can be and have been distorted
as we've put them into our different frameworks,
in particular, I can't spend long on this now, but just to put down a marker,
we have misread the sacrificial traditions of ancient Israel.
In the Levitical and Numbers' sacrifices, animals were not being subjected to a vicarious death penalty.
They were killed so that their blood, itself a gift from God,
would cleanse the sanctuary to maintain the heaven and earth reality
in the midst of an as yet unredeemed world.
Passover was not an atoning sacrifice.
The animal that ever has sins confessed over its head is the only animal in the Levitical rituals that does not get killed,
the scapegoat that bears Israel's sins into the wilderness.
So many muddles and mistakes there.
Largely, again, as with the temple theology in general,
because the Western world has been so distanced from the entire subculture within which these things originally made the sense they did.
But these and other misreadings are enshrined in our traditions.
The much cherished and defended atonement theology
of the 16th century Reformers, which has been vital in some ways as a bulwark against other errors,
those theologies were themselves framed in reaction to late medieval ideas,
particularly of Purgatory and the Mass.
The Reformers were trying to give Biblical answers to 15th century questions.
That's a noble aim!
But the Bible itself, rightly seen as authoritative, makes it clear that this is not enough.
We must get inside the world of the Bible to hear their questions
and to see their answers as answers to those questions.
We must understand what is means that the Messiah died for our sins
in accordance with, along the line of, as the fulfillment of,
the great single narrative of Israel's scriptures,
and only so will we get fresh clarity in our thinking
and, equally importantly, fresh energy for our mission.
I have said almost as a mantra in one lecture after another,
I may well have said it here before,
we in the Western church have to stop giving 19th century answers
to 16th century questions,
and start giving 21st century answers to 1st century questions.
That's tough.
I've tried in the book to summarize in three moves what I think has gone wrong.
First, we have Platonized our eschatology.
If you've read my book, "Surprised by Hope" you'll know what I'm talking about.
If you haven't, please do.
I think you'll enjoy it. [laughter]
[laughter]
We have Platonized our eschatology; that is, we have assumed that the aim of Christian faith is going to heaven when you die,
not realizing that the people who taught that in the 1st century were not the Christians, but the Middle Platonists.
Not Paul, but Plutarch.
The New Testament is not about souls going up to heaven,
but about the new Jerusalem coming down from Heaven to earth.
About the new creation already symbolized in the wilderness tabernacle.
no wonder we never understood temple theology.
and brought in to reality by the royal priest,
Israels ultimate representative.
The word made flesh,
and when you get this right it isn't just a matter of adjusting a few nuts and bolts about personal escatology and future.
What we say about the future plays back into how we think about everything else.
Particularizar how we conceive the problem to which the cross and resurrection are offered in the New Testament as the solution,
because second; if we simply think about souls going to heaven
Platonizing our escatology,
we shrink the human vocation to be image bearers, to be the royal priesthood, to be God reflecters in the world,
into mere moralism.
Now, morals matter but morals matter as the by-product of being image bearers.
Summing up the praises of creation
rather than worshipping and serving idols.
Morallity matters because only through properly functioning image bearers,
will God's rescuing justice flow out into the world.
But if we focus on morality,
thereby making the knowledge of good and evil the fruit around which we construct our theological menu,
then we turn the whole drama of creation and new creation into a self-centered play about me and my sin
and what God's going to do about it.
And then with much western theology we read genesis
and what follows not as the story of the temple and the image
and not in consequence as the story of idolatry,
but simply as the story of humans failing an exam deserving punishment and the punishment falling somewhere else.
In the Bible though what ultimately matters is not sin but idolotry,
wrongly directed worship, that's what produces sin,
and that's why the Christers victor theme, victory over the dark powers,
takes priority over and then contextualizes God's dealings with sin.
when we worship idols, we give them the power we are ourselves ought as image bearers to be exercising.
and we have then platonized our escotology and to fit with that,
we have moralized our anthropology.
and the result is that we have been in danger of paganizing our soteriology.
It's to the ancient pagan world, not the ancient jewish world,
that we find sotries of an angry God and an innocent victim
and somebody being rescued from divine wrath because some innocent person got in the way at the last minute.
Now, of course very few preachers or theologians would admit to preaching the gospel like that.
They will always insist that they speak of Jesus' death as the act of divine love,
but you know and I know that this pagan story is what generations of people in our churches have heard,
and that's been easy because that's how generations of Christians have behaved,
using "would be" redemptive violence whether internationally or domestically
and always asserting that it is done with the best of intentions, out of love.
And so people hear what they think is suppose to be the gospel,
but instead of hearing God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,
they hear God so hated the world that he killed his only Son.
And the biblical truth of penal substitution
is thereby distorted and shrunk.
Distorted because there is a biblical truth of penal substitution.
You find it in a classic passage like Romans 8: 1-4.
There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus
because, on the cross, God condemned sin in the flesh.
Definitely penal, definitely substitutionary.
But it doesn't belong within the normal Western narrative.
It belongs within the much more interesting narrative of Paul's story of how humans are reconformed to the image of the Son.
And Paul's formula mean what they mean within the narratives to be found where most theologians don't bother looking for them:
in the gospels themselves,
the story of God's Kingdom coming on earth as in heaven.
Perhaps this is, perhaps this is muted because it generates at once,
as John's gospel obviously does,
what we today with our little categories call "potical theology."
How can the good news that God's, the worlds' creator has, recued creation from disaster
and established his son, his image, at the center of the new world,
how can this not have implications for every policy, ever household,
every community and country?
Every polity and policy?
How can we not at once be driven to reflect and act on the basis
that the dark powers have been defeated
so that the power of love may flood the world?
And if we really grasp that, would we not recognize
that the grandiose and Messianic statements we hear from people on both sides of the Atlantic are in fact a grim and self-serving parody?
A gross caticature of the reality.
And this is what I mean when I say that normal theories about the atonement have actually shrunk the meaning of penal substitution.
One of the online reviewers of my book accused me of not explaining how all this stuff, actually works.
But he ignored the point.
Here's how it works:
In the four gospels, the story of Jesus is set in counterpoint
with the Biblical story of Is- of evil.
The snake in the garden, the tottering Tower of Babel,
the power of Pharaoh killing the babies, think of Herod,
rebellious Israel, wicked priests and kings, false prophets,
idolotry is right, left, and center.
And then Jesus arri- announces, arrives and announces,
that God is now becoming king and that he looks like this,
and he draws unto himself as though by a magnet all the evil in the world,
from the shrieking demons in the synagogue
to the plotting priests in the Sanhedrin
and ultimately to Pilate.
Judas and Pilate merely bring into sharp focus what is going on all along.
Evil is gathered together in one place and does its worst.
And this is how atonement works.
With Jesus' death exactly as in scripture, Pharaoh is overthrown.
Babel crashes to the ground.
The gods of this world are robbed of their power,
because Jesus, representing Israel, representing thereby the whole human race,
and equally representing and embodying the creator God himself,
took upon himself the weight of evil hanging over all flesh.
"This is your hour," said Jesus as they arrested him, "and the power of darkness."
And he went into the heart of that darkness so that Peter and the others wouldn't suffer it.
So that Barabbas and the brigand on the cross might be freed.
So that like the chickens protected by the death of the mother hen,
those who come to him for shelter would find that he'd taken their place.
The victory then is won, though the representative substitution of the servant, the son, the image, the lover, the footwasher,
the one who has saved the world and revealed the glory at last.
And this, not some cheap and logic- chopped scheme, is why there is forgiveness of sins.
Why Gentiles are now freed from the enslaving powers to become members of God's family.
This is why Jesus' followers do not constitute a "religion" like other so-called "religions" to be cataloged by secular modernity,
pinned to the wall like so many dead butterflies,
but a polis, a new kind of community, a spirit-driven, suffering love people
who follow their master to the places where the world is in pain
in order that by the Spirit they may embody the love of God
and the pain of God right there
and bring God's healing and hope
and this is why the church urgently needs to reclaim our primary role of speaking truth to power exactly as Jesus did in John 18 and 19
unless we read the gospels like this and to this end,
we are falsifying as we do when we chop them into little snippets and use them as moral lessons or whatever
the gospels are the launching narrative of our own story
the first act in the new divine drama in which we are called to play our part
and this is why as I draw to my close we need not a refined set of theories
but a larger vision of the Biblical narrative
my new book poses the question: By the evening of the first Good Friday, what had changed?
Clearly all the New testament writers think something had changed in the world, what was it?
and how do we make our reality, not just our own, but our mission
The modern world has displaced the Christian narrative
because it tells a story in which the redemptive moment arrived to the eighteenth century
with the revolutions,
with science and technology
with the banishing of God to a distant realm so that we could run the world ourselves
God could be visited by the pious few like a kind family calling on the elderly relative every Sunday
The western church is regularly coluded with this diminishment of the Bible and the gospel
and that is one of the reasons why the vaccum is filled by the rough beasts now slouching towards Bethlehem
but the cross told us the climax of all four gospels
particularly Johns, which I focused on
leaves us no choice, now is the judgement of this world
now is the ruler of this world cast out,
we have some fresh thinking to do
to put it mildly, but thinking, the realm of logos,
has become flesh and must become flesh once again
that is how the glory will be revealed in tomorrow's world
that's how the world, saved once for all by Jesus revolutionary victory on the cross
will as he promised be filled with His glory and knowledge as the waters cover the sea
we are to be in the power of the Spirit, new Genesis people
new Exodus people new gospel people
new Jesus people.
This is the Royal Revolution.
This is the fresh perspective on the cross, which I believe we urgently need in our troubled times
Thank you.
*applause*
-We have already, lots of questions coming in and I'll
ask you one that I realize is the tip of the iceberg, maybe but
a student would like you to clarify just a little bit your comment that
it is idolatry and not sin that we need to focus on
-In the Bible, sin is what happens in your humanness
when you've actually been worshipping that which is not God
You become a genuine human by worshipping the true God
in whose image you're made
When you worship whatever idols they may be,
the ancient ones of Mars and Mammon and Aphrodite or all our moderns ones which correspond and go beyond etc,
then bits of your humaness start to deconstruct and that deconstruction is sin
so sin matters but if you're just trying to address sin as sin
you'll miss whats going on underneath
-Thank you
Well the next question I know is uh asks about when you talk about the renewal of creation,
you said the purpose of God tabernacling is the renewal of creation,
do you mean by that the spiritual renewal or physical?
-It's, that's the classic platonic either or
It's got to be both
because those wonderful passages I just quoted from about the earth being full of knowledge and glory of the Lord as waters cover the sea.
There's a sense that our distinction of physical and spiritual does not correspond to the Bible's distinction of Heaven and Earth
Heaven and Earth are made for one another
They are not in, it's one of the classic lies of the post-enlightened world
to think that if there is a Heaven, it's completely different from the Earth and never between shall meet
in fact they are made for one another
-Could you talk about the Holy Spirit's role during the crucifixion?
-That's a very interesting one
There is a silence, darkness in the gospel narrative
the Spirit is not mentioned there, however, I think if we were to ask John, what was the Spirit doing, I think John would say:
the Spirit was dwelling within Jesus,
just as in Paul in Romans 8, Paul says that the Spirit groans within us as we groan in desperation,
particularly when we don't know what to pray for, that is a crucifixion image in Romans 8: 25, 6, 7, that part
and it seems to be whats going on, on the cross
is Jesus living out that reality
and I think John and Paul would both say the Spirit was there
enabling Jesus to to to shout tetalestry etc
-I'm going to make a lot of theologians mad here but I
the soccer team wants to know who you favor in the English premier league?
Priorities -I'm not
currently interested in the premier league because the team I've supported all my life is New Castle United which currently is in the championship
happily, they're at the top of the championship and they will be promoted at the end of the season
-Okay, *laughs*
-You heard it first here
-That's, um, so why and how did the present popular escapist notions of heaven and hell come to dominate the Christian imagination
-I think that's a medieval thing and it's a medieval retrieval
of ancient paganism, it's I mean, most people don't
know this but actually the idea of a heaven and hell
in the sense that we often think of them is very frequent
in the ancient Pagan world rather than the ancient Jewish world
and the early Christians do not retrieve that Pagan notion
but it creeps back in like a lot of bits and pieces of Paganism creep in as you move towards the, I'm not a medievalist
but I merely observe
-I am -Oh okay, well fine you can ask the
question but I mean by the time you get the 15th and 16th century
it is very well established in Western not in the East
the Eastern Christians have the split of the 1000AD
the Eastern Christians simply don't see the eschatology like that
they have other problems but not this one
they actually believe that heaven and earth are made for each other
and that's what Jesus is all about
-That is one of the things that made me a Medievalist
is the notion that you don't separate everything
-uh huh, yea
-Here's a question on a different note
how do you balance personal life and life in the ministry?
-It's extremely busy, I get up very early in the morning
I say my prayers and do the next three things that have to be done
I mean it's a, there's no real secret to that
it's just the basic disciplines and it's a constant juggling act
a constant negotiation, a constant should I accept this and be engaged with something else, and um yea
I've been juggling it for 45 years doesn't get any easier
It's fun though, I have a good time -Good, I'm glad it is
would you talk just a little bit, we have a book on Paul to look forward to maybe tell us a little bit about that
-Yea, my publishers asked me I mean I've written quite a few books on Paul as was mentioned earlier
but they said: we need a biography of Paul, people need to know who this guy was
and I thought you really need to try and do it in such a way
that we understand what he's going through and what he's facing things so that when then we find him writing a letter
we already know roughly what he ought to be saying to these people, how it might work,
rather than meeting the letter cold as it were, as it were a document outside history
to try and get inside, and some of it is inevitably speculative
because there are gaps we don't know very much
about bits and pieces, it's difficult to fit all the bits to that but that's common to all ancient history
that you have that kind of a problem of gaps where we don't know what's going on
so anyways that book went off to the publishers last Thursday of middle day
and I'm waiting with bated breath to hear how much editorial,
it's quite possible editor will come back and say I don't like chapters 5, 6 and 7, do it differently
and I, I'm hoping and praying that he won't do that
-See, it's not just your English teacher
how would you teach the resurrection and crucifixion
let's put that in the other order, uh, the crucifixion and resurrection to a child
Uh, I would want to have them in church with me over Holy Week
and Good Friday and Easter
because this is a drama, a real life drama and children learn, I think extremely well by living through a drama
and the questions that they askas they're doing that, can be very illuminating and revealing
and I think there are lots of musical things
I think I first really started to think about all this when a 7 year-old, I was singing in the Repiano chorus in Bach Matthew's Passion
where you know you just hear the entire drama of Matthew 26 and 27 and you're just living it
and the music is helping you reflect on this
and at that age of course I'm completely innocent of all that Bach was doing but it's doing something to you
so in other words I would want to create an imaginitive context
within which then the things one might want to say
by way of more explicit theory or whatever might make the sense they might make,
some hymns do this very well, not all
because poetry like drama, like music reaches the parts that often logic can't.
-I like what you just said, I like everything you said
I'd like to thank you all for coming and let you know that
Tom Wright will be out in the front lobby afterwards
It's been great, thank you Kristi Potter, thank you AV
and physical plant and security and listeners and talkers and everyone
Thank you very much.
[applause]
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