May 23, 2004
By Jack Price

The story is told about a three year old girl who was an only child.  When she found out that her mother was pregnant again, she was very excited about having a new brother or sister.  Within a few hours of the parents bring a new baby boy home from the hospital, the girl made a request:  she wanted to be alone with her new brother in his room with the door s hut.  Her insistence about being alone with the baby with the door shut made her parents a bit uneasy, but then they remembered that they had installed an intercom system in anticipation of the baby’s arrival, so they realized they could let their daughter do this, and if they heard the slightest indication that anything strange was happening, they could be in the baby’s room in an instant. 

So they let the little girl go into the baby’s room, shut the door, and raced to the intercom listening station.  They heard their daughter’s footsteps moving across the baby’s room, imagined her standing over the baby’s crib, and then they heard her saying to her three-day-old brother, “Tell me about God.  I’ve almost forgotten.”

Today’s scripture lesson is the very end of Luke’s gospel as it elides into Acts, when the Holy Spirit is given at Pentecost.  Luke asserts that the Christ event is a fulfillment of Hebrew scriptures.  They point to the truth, not the literal events, of Jesus’ life and death – that as the Messiah, Jesus’ death was within the framework of God’s will for Jesus’ life – and that Jesus’ resurrection and abiding presence is the source of the church’s commission to proclaim “repentance and forgiveness of sins” to the world. 

Jesus’ own presence opens the disciples’ minds to the deep meaning of scripture.  He tells them to await the Spirit’s new clothing of heavenly power for their direction.  The gospel’s author believed in the Spirit’s power to open the minds of believers to the deeper meaning of the Hebrew scripture.  The Spirit would tell them again about Jesus, when they’ve almost forgotten.  It was this Spirit power that enabled the gospel writers, and other New Testament writers, to tell about Jesus’ life, to convey the meaning of who Jesus’ was even thirty, forty, fifty, and sixty years after his death.

Contrary to the understanding of those who arranged the New Testament canon, the gospels were not written by those apostles who had known the pre-Easter Jesus in the flesh, but by believers who knew the post-Easter Jesus by faith.

In a similar way, people since then have discerned the new depths of meaning in both the Old and New Testament in light of their particular situation and cultural experience by the power of the Spirit. 

There was conflict with the second century church around just how far to take the insight and enlightenment of the Spirit.  There were voices vying for uniformity of belief in the midst of terrible persecution of Christians by Rome. There were other voices within the second-century church, voices of imagination, voices who supported a more metaphorical approach to scriptural interpretation and a more mystical approach to faith. 

The reality of persecution and fear for survival led most Christians to desire uniformity of belief, with clear-cut doctrine.  People in such an anxious state of mind are often reluctant to live with much ambiguity.  In the midst of turmoil, there is resistance to diversity in doctrine.   This situation led to the orthodox view becoming predominant in what would become the universal Catholic Church based in Rome.

            Over the centuries, the church itself began persecuting those with different views.  Voices advocating theological imagination became peripheral – quiet voices, mystical voices.  More than a thousand years later, the ancient conflict was renewed in the Protestant reformation.  In our own time, there is again tension between the voices of theological orthodoxy and those of theological imagination.

            How should we respond to this tension within the church, within our congregation, and within ourselves?  When the choices are as stark as deciding between two extreme views, what choice is there?   What choice is there if we are forced to choose to accept without question a deposit of theological doctrine that came directly from the apostles -- especially since we now know that our biblical gospels were shaped and reshaped with layers of interpretation to get to the form we presently have?  What choice is there to seek only the newest theological thinking or fad and to cut ourselves off from the teachings on which the Christian church had its beginning, or to follow only the insights of our imaginations.  Neither extreme is tenable. 

Theological exploration has integrity and value only by holding these extremes in tension.  The teachings of the past can be clarified and deepened by our experience and understanding of the present and by our experience of the Spirit in our lives.  Our theological imagination can be grounded in accountability to the experience of the ages.  We can develop our own understanding in such a working tension.

The gospel says, “everything written about [Jesus] in the Law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled,” and that [Jesus] “opened [the disciples’ minds to understand the scriptures”.  They were able to perceive the great biblical theme of death leading to new life, of transformation, and of growth.  These great themes had their defining revelation in Jesus.

What does this mean for us?  Crossroads Church is a place where people can explore the understanding of their faith, their theology, in an atmosphere of trust and safety.  This is a place where people can ask hard questions, in love, and share differing understandings, also shared in love. 

To be certain, there is danger along the path of exploration.  There is a need to live with some degree of uncertainty and a requirement to engage in an ongoing process of discernment.  Paul’s admonition to “work out your salvation with fear and trembling,” is especially appropriate here.  The benefits to honest exploration include honesty in the searching and honesty in the questioning.  The result tends to be a sense of integrity of one’s whole-life beliefs – integrating the sciences, the arts, and theology.

On balance, we take the gospel theme that everything written in the scriptures must be fulfilled concerning Jesus not in a literal sense, but in the truth that the God we perceive in the Old Testament is the same God we perceive in the New Testament, and the same God we see in history, and the same God we perceive now.

Seeking to discern God’s ways, the movement of the Spirit, in our lives and in our church, requires that we exercise discipline, integrity, and consistency.  This means that we hold in tension an understanding of God that has been valid in the past with the excitement and uncertainty of how we imagine and sense God working now and into the future.

Theological exploration done with integrity must be life exploration.  Too often theological conflicts mask life conflicts.  Faith is both relationship and belief, but it is more relationship than belief.  Faith is both trust and insight, but it is more trust than insight.  Faith is both letting go of the familiar and comfortable and taking on new understandings and directions, but it is more letting go than taking on.

Paul was the apostle who never met Jesus in the flesh, yet he has influenced the faith of those who follow Jesus more any person other than Jesus.  Paul used the image of “being crucified with Christ.”  He meant that there was death within himself, a letting go of the goals and values that were dominant in his life before he knew Jesus.  The biblical theme plays out in Paul’s life.  He died to the person he had been and was born anew, of the Spirit, into the faithful follower of Jesus we know in the New Testament.

Theological exploration is one of the cornerstones of Crossroads Church.  This is a questioning people.  We are a good match because I am a questioning person as well.  We are practicing the promise of Luke’s gospel.  We are trusting the Spirit’s power to open our eyes to understand the deep meaning of the gospel message for our time and for our setting.  If our seeking and questioning is to lead to theological and life exploration that has integrity, we need to remember the foundation on which we are standing. 

God who is revealed in the Old Testament, who is revealed decisively in Jesus, and whom we see in our history and in community, is one.  God is the same yesterday, today, and forever.  Human cultures come and go.  We make theology for our present time, but it is shaped on past understanding in dialogue with current experience.  If our theology is to provide a solid foundation for the next generation, it and we must take seriously our perception of God from scripture, from tradition, from the community of the faithful around us, and from the Spirit’s working in our own experience.

Our theological exploration has meaning for us when it into and out of our faithful living.  Theology has integrity when it reflects the biblical theme of death, new birth, transformation of life, and growth in the Spirit.  Theological exploration has honesty when we approach it somewhat as the little children we are in relation to God.  Let us pray the Spirit to tell us again about God.  We’ve almost forgotten.