Chapter Four
1. The four gospels, then, are not merely “passion narratives with
extended introductions”... They are not merely reflections of the faith of the
later church projected onto a screen that the earliest evangelists themselves
knew to be fictional. They present themselves as biographies, biographies of
Jesus.
- What is the value of having four unique biographies
of Jesus?
2. The first speaker of our quadraphonic sound system to
be turned up is this: the four gospels present themselves as the climax of the
story of Israel. All four evangelists, I suggest, deliberately frame their
material in such a way as to make this clear, though many generations of
Christian readers have turned down the speaker to such an extent that they have
been able, in effect, to ignore it.
- What happens to our understanding of the gospels if
we read them independently or removed from the O.T. story of Israel?
- Why do some people/churches engage in such biblical
isolation?
3. I hope it is clear from this that, when we turn up
this first speaker, the music is telling us much more than simply that all four
gospels refer to the Old Testament and present Jesus as the fulfillment of
prophecy. This is a point of fundamental importance for the whole New Testament
and indeed the whole early Christian movement. The gospel writers saw the
events concerning Jesus, particularly his kingdom-inaugurating life, death, and
resurrection, not just as isolated events to which remote prophets might have
distantly pointed. They saw those events as bringing the long story of Israel
to its proper goal, even though that long story had apparently become lost,
stuck, and all but forgotten.
- Where does your life-story mimic and reflect the
biblical story of a people (Israel) and a humanity (us) in desperate need of
redemption?
4. Understand this point, and you will understand almost
everything. In Israel’s scriptures, the reason Israel’s story matters is that
the creator of the world has chosen and called Israel to be the people through
whom he will redeem the world. The call of Abraham is the answer to the sin of
Adam. Israel’s story is thus the microcosm and beating heart of the world’s
story, but also its ultimate saving energy. What God does for Israel is what
God is doing in relation to the whole world. That is what it meant to be
Israel, to be the people who, for better and worse, carried the
destiny of the world on their shoulders. Grasp that, and you have a pathway
into the heart of the New Testament.
- As Christians, then, do we carry the destiny of the
world upon our shoulders? With whom do
we share this shoulder-bearing?
5. Mark picks up, here and throughout his gospel, a major
theme from the ancient Hebrew scriptures: that when Israel’s God acts in
fulfillment of his ancient promises, he will do so in dramatic and radically
new ways. Here, to be sure, is a paradox we meet throughout the N.T…
God
acts completely unexpectedly— as he always said he would.
- Why are we always surprised by God’s “announced” surprises?
6. That the scriptures must be fulfilled is precisely the
point made by Luke at key points in his gospel. Luke is clear that the events
involving Jesus are the events in which all of Israel’s previous history has
been summed up and brought to its divinely appointed goal. But this is not
something that casual readers can see at a glance. It is not something that
Caiaphas or the Pharisees would instantly recognize when Jesus’s followers
began to announce that he had been raised from the dead. People would need to
“search the scriptures day by day to see if what they were hearing was indeed
the case” (Acts 17: 11).
- What does it mean to search the scriptures daily to
see Jesus as Lord?
7. And all the lines draw the eye up to the final scene
in which Jesus announces God’s kingdom before Caesar’s representative, while
Israel’s official leaders declare that “we have no king except Caesar” (19:
15). The result— the climax of the gospel, and for John the climax of Israel’s
entire story— is the paradoxical “enthronement” of Jesus on the cross, the
final moment of the fulfillment of the great scriptural story (19: 19, 24, 28).
Jesus’s final word, tetelestai, “It’s
all done!” says it clearly. The story has been completed— the story of creation,
the story of God’s covenant with Israel. Now new creation can begin, as it does
immediately afterwards with Jesus’s resurrection. Now the new covenant can be
launched, as the disciples are sent out into the world equipped with Jesus’s
own Spirit (20: 19– 23). This is how Israel’s story has reached its goal and
can now bear fruit in all the world.
- In a world of constant striving, what does, “It is
finished!” mean to you? How do you recognize
& celebrate that you are a new creation?
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