GroshLink

There were only 128 seats in Georgetown's McShain Lounge. And with 19 minutes until start time they were mostly taken. With 13 minutes until start time one of the coordinators of the event asked non-students to move into the back to give space for students and as the crowd became standing room only, I saw the speaker slip into the front row and not too long after that Kevin Offner, InterVarsity's Graduate and Faculty Minister in D.C., made his way to the front. A quick count revealed over 70 people standing and students began to fill in spaces on the floor at the foot of the speaker. What's the buzz about being Simply Christian?

My first encounter with N.T. Wright, Bishop of Durham for the Church of England (northeast England includes 290 parishes), was Following Christ 1998, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship's first national Graduate and Faculty Ministry Conference. The Challenge of Jesus, available on-line and in print, is a collection of his lecturers from the conference and is a powerful statement of stepping into the Biblical story. But how does one of today's leading theologians and biblical scholars recommend we enter into the Biblical story the first time? Furthermore, how do we continue in the disciplines which encourage our growth as part of the people of God?

At 7:30pm, Dr. Reynolds, Chair of Department of Theology, representing the Georgetown University sponsor, introduced Wright. And we were off as Wright explained his desire to write a piece with the same tone and direction as C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity, but addressing the 21st century with with Jesus, God, and what it all means for us.

[Below are some notes which I took from his presentation. May you find them an encouragement. Please post questions, insights, responses].

We are in the midst of quite a turbulent time with regard to the question of faith in public life. In Great Britain, issues such do Muslim women have the right to wear the veil in public schools and are people allowed to wear a cross at work [note: several have lost their jobs]. People are so up tight about Christianity and religion in how it relates to the world. Our politicians and media have not studied our faith to understand how it relates to the world. I'm trying to shake up some of the 2nd rate thinking about our faith.

Some people start off with Jesus. But I wanted to come in a more oblique way. What's going on that might draw me in? I'm not sure that you can prove God in a way that makes sense to people because you need a framework. Granted I may be looking at things from a slightly postmodern angle, but the question is "Can you show God to be true in my frame of reference?" I intended a 4th section to my book to address more of these concerns, but the publisher thought Wright had already written enough :-)

Echoes of a voice is an image of person in a room who hears something happening outside. All human beings catch echoes from time to time. E.g., justice, we all know the world needs to put to right but frustrated that we can't do it. Applies to societies and individuals, know it ought to be done. Kids age five, know things are not fair on the playground. We come hardwired that way, but we're not able to do it. People of any faith and none, all know there's something called justice.

Spirituality and the modern world, we had gotten rid of it w/secularized modernism. But it's back with a bang? What is it? What is out there? Pursuing one spiritual path doesn't satisfy. We seemed to be called to explore other dimensions of human life, which leaves us often puzzled

Relationship, we all know we're made for one-another, but why can't we work together? It's so difficult on the wider social and familial levels. Even when we try to get it right, we blow it.

Beauty, imagine a person in an attic finds a part of an unknown piece by Mozart. This is the piano part for a larger piece of writing. Beautiful, but haunting because its pointing beyond itself to something else. Looking at one part of a large whole. Slips through our fingers: sunsets, flowers, face of a child, wisdom of an older person. Death is hugely important and one of the problem w/all four of these puzzles. Yet those echoes are persistent. These echoes prove that this is the voice of God? No, try listening to some stories about people who have followed Jesus.

Staring at the sun: Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Shouldn't we be able to tell the exact truth about God? I really don't know and don't think I can know. The sun is blinding and dazzling. Run into problems with regard to who god is, which god are you talking about. God is not univocal as it was in N.T. Wright's day. Deism represents a distant, remote, detached deity who created and observes every now and then who might be involved periodically to judge and take others to heaven. The opposite view of god is pantheism. Everything is pretty much the same thing, divinity is anywhere, you, me, tree, flowers. The divine is in and through everyone. Difficult to maintain in the face of radical evil in the world and leads to cynicism which many times leads to suicide. Not the classic Jewish and Christian options.

Judaism, the God who made the world is present and other. The temple is not a big church building, but the place where the Living God Promised to Live. The Transcendent Other lives on earth in the Temple, God's wisdom and gift to humankind. God's Word is breathed out and results in happenings in the world world. Other than the world, yet present and active within the world the way it is. A matter of grief and joy, comedy and tragedy.

Israel, called to be God's people for the world, yet they found it deeply puzzling as they kept getting it wrong. If they persisted, God would figure it out and make it all come together. The passion for justice ingrained globally and commonly. Spirituality gives us the extra dimension in life. Jewish law relating wisely. Transcendent beauty glimpsed on earth with the Temple being a good example. Prophetic literature of a world put to right with the lion and lamb laying down together. Oh, if only. The climax of the story of Israel, we get the arrival of Jesus himself.

Christianity is about something that happened to and through Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus is not giving a new moral teaching . . . a wonderful moral example (note: great examples can be discouraging, e.g., Tiger Woods is not an encouraging example for me with respect to my golf game) . . . or offering/accomplishing a new route for how people can get to heaven when they die (note: this is a medieval notion. The final destination of God's people is a new heaven and new earth, not in heaven as in heaven but on earth as it is in heaven. See Rev 21, Romans 8, Ephesians 1:11 in which all things are summed up in Christ, things on heaven and on earth . . . heaven is important, but it not the end of the earth).

Point of Jesus' coming was to say Kingdom of God, here and now, get on board. It was not fresh teaching about God himself or more information.

Christianity is all about a great door swinging open to freedom to follow Jesus. A place of justice, spirituality, relationships, and beauty. In Jesus we find the voices we've been hearing all along. Woven into the fabric of Israel and the Jesus story, the evil of the world rushes together and does its worst to the central figure of Jesus who hangs on a Roman cross. Pain and tears of all the years were met on Calvary . . . final scream of desolation . . . either the most stupid, waste or the fulcrum of world history. What happened on the third day after Jesus, bodily resurrection as real event and the launch pad for God's new creation and we have a job to do. This is much different than the escapism about life after death. Not so much a very, very odd event in the old world, but the launch pad in God's new world. The new thing God is doing, until the earth shall be filled with the glory of God as the water covers the sea. We are not to be passive beneficiaries, but agents of it. It comes about because God breathes new life into His People which transforms us and enabling us to transforming people in God's world. Echoes of the voice translated into something we can do about justice, spirituality, relationships, beauty.

Reflecting the image, the task of being a genuine human being. Christians are not sub-human being living shrunken lives. Fasting, taking up the cross, the aim is to become more truly human through worship and prayer. Reflect God into the world. Angled mirror reflecting what is out there . . . The Roman emperor statues were placed across the empire to tell the world who their lord and master is, likewise our purpose is to let the world know who its Creator is. We become genuine image bearing beings.

This leads to the question of What about the Bible itself? Much better to soak yourself in the story than focus on the details. Big book filled with big stories of birth, beginnings and betrayal and that's only Genesis. In other worlds, go for it! This is the most amazing stuff. We Christians don't take it nearly seriously enough. Scripture is not designed to be an authoritative textbook. The authority of Scripture, God is with authority, he didn't give the disciples writings. What is God up to in the world through Jesus is dealing with sin through the cross of Christ, launching his work through the resurrection, sending forth energized agents for God's mission in the world.

The church is a bit of a turn off for many. For a lot of people, this is yesterday's story. And yet, if God is our Father, the Church is a Mother (John Calvin), we belong to one-another, we can't do God's work without the Church.

New creation started with the resurrection of Jesus. It's about all these things and what are doing about it? It's about announcing that God's Spirit of Truth has been let out into the world and our understanding of truth has to be reassessed through it. New creation deep down as wide as the world, where 2/3 of world is in debt to us. Global warming and what is happening. Heaven is important, but God's goal is a new heaven and new earth. Christian ethics takes its place neither in a deistic rule giver nor a romantic pantheism. Take seriously the goodness of the God-given world, the radical infection of the world, how Jesus dealt with the evil, and our role in applying the guidebook as a community. Discover again and again that those four echoes of a voice, become more and more who we have become in Jesus. If you ignore the echoes, watch out who you're ignoring.

Made for spirituality, we wallow in introspection. Made for joy, we settle for pleasure. Made for justice, we clamor for vengeance. Made for relationship, we insist on our own way. Made for beauty, we are satisfied with sentiment. But new creation has already begun. The sun has begun to rise, Christians are called to leave behind in the tomb of Jesus Christ, all that belongs to the brokenness and incompleteness of the present world. It is time, in the power of the Spirit, to take up our proper role, our fully human role, as agents, heralds, and stewards of the new day that is dawning. That, quite simply, is what it means to be Christian: to follow Jesus Christ into the new world, God's new world, which he has thrown open for us.

After the presentation the applause rang out. It was hard to believe the audience didn't rise. But Wright wisely asked everyone to take 2 minutes to stretch, chat, etc before returning for question and answer. Below are some of the questions.

1. Are all religions working toward the greater good? That was to be part of an additional section to the book. Part of the Christian faith assumes that if you are doing this work from a Christian perspective you'll have a better direction. Philippians 4, honor all that is good. We believe in Jesus Christ, he's launched it. The Church has not a done a good job all of the time.

2. The Scriptures call us to worship God and not Caesar. Where is Caesar today? No obvious empire today, U.S. is not ruling by direct rule. Western empire, America plus, is an economic empire. Who runs the economic empire, IMF, Bush? It's diffuse. Judaism and Christianity's God desires the world to be ordered so the bullies don't run the show. Any human structure seeking to keep order and peace will be tempted to be the problem instead of the answer. Broadly left and right spectrums tends to veer toward anarchy or controlling. All principalities under the authority of Jesus. Not easy to put faith and public life together. We must work on it or we'e not being loyal to one we call the world.

3. What about evangelism? In millions of ways we're called to bearing witness to Someone, Something. Trembling, we find ourselves caught up in. The Gospel is not just about God loves us, but God is asking you to come on board with His project. This is part of God's new creation. A lot of the teaching which Jesus gave in the Gospels came from Jesus explaining what He was doing. Some obvious, some deeply shocking. Be doing the Kingdom in every possible way, Go and preach the Gospel in as many as possible ways. And only use words when necessary. (St. Francis)

4. Rules do help us think through the issues in the heat of the moment. Even Christian people have great capacity for self-deception.

5. What is the role of the ecumenical movement? All working together for God's kingdom, this is what it is all about it. Our denomination (Anglican) is an ecumenical movement in general and is falling about at the seams. What matters is we follow Jesus; see our traditions as contributing to the large whole.

6. Thoughts on the Emergent Church? A multifaceted phenomena which exists in cyberspace. Western society is going through convulsions; the danger w/the emerging movements is that it can become counter-elitist elitist. The tradition carries all kinds of riches; we need the energy of the Emerging Church. We all need to learn and grow.

7. What are the prospects for Christianity in Europe? Parts are exciting and others are depressing. France is a deeply secular country. But who would have said that a black African archbishop would share a role in a Truth and Reconciliation Committee in South Africa? Who would have believed a pope would emerge from Communistic Poland? God can do and has done extraordinary things in my lifetime. The Gospel is about hope. Like Leslie Newbigin, I'm neither an optimist nor a pessimist, but I believe Jesus Christ rose from the dead.

8. Why believe in Jesus of Nazareth? Isn't loving people just enough? If you see someone in need, go help them. We had the Enlightenment, accepting people leading to the French Revolution, Gulag, and Hitler. Evil is more deeply rooted than good. In Jesus, the Living God has dealt with evil at its root, the only secure one. The proof is the Christian going and doing the work. In the West we've colluded w/the intellectualization of the faith.

9. In a secular society and institution, do you have any practical advise for how Christians can live day by day? The usually, fairly obvious, boring device called the Bible. The narrative is sustaining and if you can read it regularly it will address the various voices you're hearing. Prayer can be hard work and difficult. The sacraments. Brother and sister Christians. Absolutely basic. Link arms with others as to what you're thinking. When you watch TV, look at advertising, develop a critical perspective to accept and reject accordingly. That's why we have universities built on Christian foundations.

Well that wraps it up. Check out Veritas Forum, one of the sponsors, for an audio file posting in about 2 weeks. Note: N.T. Wright is the author of Jesus and the Victory of God, which is widely regarded as one of the most significant studies in the contemporary Third Quest of the historical Jesus. N. T. Wright has taught New Testament studies for twenty years at Cambridge, McGill, and Oxford Universities. Among his many published works are The Challenge of Jesus, The Meaning of Jesus (with Marcus Borg), and What Saint Paul Really Said. Evil and the Justice of God is just being released.