Easter

I was going to call this Newbiginday #3 - but Easter trumps it categorically.  Christ is risen.  Hallelujah.  As a reflection, I give a summary of some more strong words from Newbigin regarding the congregation as the hermeneutic of the Gospel.  Reading below as a part of the Church, I encourage you to know our story more and more each day.  If we are the hermeneutic, the interpretive lens, of the Word, then we must know the Word.  The Bible is our primary way to know the Living Word Jesus Christ as well as our identity and our story.  Looking forwards into this new Christian year, embracing new life everyday, as Christians we must be in the Bible to know how to live in this new life.

Précis of Lesslie Newbigin, “The Congregation as Hermeneutic of the Gospel,” in The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989), 222-233.

            To be faithful to the message of the kingdom of God, the church must claim the high ground of public truth.  This does not mean restoring a past condition of the church; neither martyrdom nor ruling power.  The current situation of a secular democratic state is weakened from divisions within, and cannot respond to religious fanaticism without denying its own principles (222-223).  The church must hold the tension of Jesus as the ultimate source of power and as the one who was nailed helpless to the cross to appropriately grasp the “impossible possibility” of salvation and that it is the supernatural work of God which accomplishes this.  The church is to be a servant as Jesus was a servant: responding effectively to people’s needs while ensuring that God alone is in control as master (224-225).  The Church represents the kingdom of God neither with the power of the world, nor modern techniques of persuasion.  The only appropriate hermeneutic of the gospel is a congregation of men and women who believe and live by it and who seek together to adopt the character of Jesus (226-227).

            This community has six characteristics: 1) It is a community of praise to God which contrasts the modern reliance on doubt and includes thanksgiving to God who has given us all we need, 2) It is a community of truth which prevents delusion by cultural plausibility structures, 3) It is a community deeply involved in the concerns of its neighbourhood; where good news overflows into good action, (228-229) 4) It is a community where members are trained and nourished in priestly ministry in the world under Jesus the High Priest and which rejoices in and embraces the different gifting of its members, 5) It is a community which functions as a new social order of mutual responsibility, (230-231), 6) It is a community which is shaped so much by the gospel story that it lives with hope!  This local congregation can represent the reality of the new creation, unmasking the illusions of culture (232-233).