THE NAME OF JESUS

Sometimes the ancient biblical story seems to select an already existing present-day story. In translating the passage from Matt 1:18–21, in which Mary is found to be pregnant and the angel convinces the understandably reluctant Joseph to marry her and name the baby "Jesus," I noticed that the opening sentence (usually translated "Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way") contained the Greek word "genesis," translated here as "birth." Literally, "genesis" means "beginning" or "origin" or "birth." Here the parallel between the beginning of all life in the first book of the Old Testament and the beginning of new life in the first book of the New Testament is too important to miss.

In both cases genesis is the work of the Spirit of God and it is very good. And in both cases the name of the creature conveys the point: "Adam," meaning "humankind"; "Jesus," a form of a Hebrew word meaning "God saves." Each one is the rare person whose name means exactly what it says. "Adam" identifies all people as God's creatures (and later, also as sinners). "Jesus" tells us who he is and what he does: he is God, and he does salvation. That's why we sing "Jesus, Name All Names Above," "All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name," and "How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds."

"Jesus" would seem to be the most widely known and respected name in the whole world, even if at that moment it must have sounded to Joseph like the worst imaginable suggestion for naming that baby. He wanted to break off the engagement, yet not only was he not to do that, but the angel was saying that the baby ought to have a highfalutin name that would call even more attention to an already embarrassing situation. Why not something less attention-getting than "Jesus" (God saves)?

Some years ago, when personal computers were first coming in, I was just learning to use a word processor—one step up from a typewriter. It was slow and cumbersome but it had one feature I liked a lot. Whenever I made a typing error the word processor beeped. Or when I typed a word it didn't recognize, such as "hermeneutics," it beeped. Imagine my surprise when I typed the most famous name in all the world and my word processor beeped.

It knew Adam and Eve and Abraham and Sarah; it knew Isaac and Jacob, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Amos; and Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, and Paul. For goodness' sake, it knew Muhammad and Confucius and the Buddha, Aquinas and Luther, Calvin and Wesley. It knew Herod and Nero and even Lady Godiva and Madonna! It knew all of these, but it didn't recognize "Jesus." It beeped every time I typed Jesus.

I could have fixed this, of course, but I left it—to remind me that Jesus was and is a scandal: God hidden in human flesh; one who is righteous precisely in relating to sinners; an offense from conception to crucifixion, unrecognized by wisdom both human and mechanical.

Christmas is about the genesis of Jesus, the second great creative work of the Spirit. Just as the Spirit once was the sole source of all life, so now again the Spirit is the sole source of new life—first in Mary's womb, now in us. As someone has said, "Every conversion is a virgin birth." Mary bore a child. His name was "Jesus." "Christ," "Messiah," "Son," "Lord"—these are all titles; but his name is Jesus. That may have seemed to Joseph to have been a mistake, just as it did to my word processor. Yet a "beep" calls attention to something important—like a tornado warning moving across the bottom of a television screen or the surprising name of Jesus.

MORE STORIES

Some other connections I have made with stories, doctrines, or artifacts and aspects of Christmas include the following:

• I recently used the details of my birth certificate, with all of its names, dates, times, and place —which lock a person into historical, social, familial, and legal reality—to get at the importance of Paul's words in Gal 4:4–5. In the fullness of time God's Son was "born of a woman, born under the law [emphasis added], in order to redeem those who were under the law" (which here, in the context of Paul's letter, means "enslaved to sin"). Notice that in this passage Jesus' birth in itself does not redeem us from the law; his birth is his submitting to its dominion in a particular time and place in historical, cultural, and political reality. Our deliverance is the result of his taking the curse of the law upon himself in his suffering and death, thereby setting us free from it, so that we might receive adoption as sons and daughters of God (v. 5b).
  
• In Luke 2:8–20, after hearing the angelic announcement of the birth of the Messiah, listening to a choir of angels praising God, going to Bethlehem, and seeing Mary, Joseph, and the child in the manger, we learn that "the shepherds returned." After the most astonishing night of their lives (or anyone's life) they went back to their sheep and their fields and their work. They didn't go to seminary; they didn't start a crusade or write a book or appear on a talk show or create a website. They went back to where they had come from. Why? Their action fits perfectly with the story as a whole. The God of heaven and earth becomes incarnate (enfleshed) in the baby Jesus. In him we see God deep in the flesh. We see salvation that does not save us from the world but for it. Here we meet the God who calls people to obedience precisely in their ordinary lives, because nothing created by God and assumed by God's enfleshment is adequately described as "ordinary." Meeting the God who is in Christ is not about spiritual transcendence or being especially "religious" or fleeing earthly life for that which is novel or extraordinary or mystical, for that is not where Jesus is. He is in, with, and under the creaturely, amid the historical, physical, political, economic, and social stuff where humans live, love, serve, and celebrate. As with those shepherds, we too may return in good faith to those people and responsibilities that God has given us.

On Sundays, unlike in a brief weekday chapel sermon, a preacher can take enough time to retell the biblical basis for the sermon and make the connection more explicit between the "what" of the text and the "so what" of the sermon. Failing to allow people to see how the biblical text "authorizes" the proclamation makes sermons more difficult for hearers to follow and may undercut even a good sermon by implying that it is only the preacher's opinion.

Stories or examples must not replace the text but instead should help to establish its claim as God's word on the hearer.⁶ Yet with the Christmas stories in the Bible, their association with childhood and miraculous occurrences may have already eliminated any claim those stories by themselves can make on many adults. That is the reason for trying to find new ways into those biblical passages, even with the risks such attempts involve.⁷


Used with permission: Word & World, Volume 27/4 (Fall 2007) 441-443.

Marc Kolden
Professor of Systematic Theology
Luther Seminary
St. Paul, MN

Marc Kolden teaches systematic theology at Luther Seminary and holds the Olin S. and Amanda Fjelstad Reigstad Professorship in Theology. He says that he learned most of what he knows about hymns, preaching, and worship from the legendary Lutheran campus minister Henry E. Horn. The opinions and conclusions written by Kolden are his responsibility, of course. His most recent book is By Faith Alone: Essays on Justification in Honor of Gerhard O. Forde (Eerdmans, 2004), which he co-authored and co-edited with Joseph A. Burgess.

Indelible Sermons

Seemed like such an innocent question: Describe the last 5 sermons you have heard. 

After a lively discussion with students, I realized that this question was more significant than I had anticipated. 

What do people really remember about our sermons?  I studied homiletics in seminary with the late Larry Lacour.  I can still remember the collective groan of the class when Dr. Lacour told us that people only hear about 7 minutes of our 20-minute sermon.  (A disturbing statement when you think about all the time that we invest in them.) 

What kind of sermon makes an indelible impression upon the worshipper?  When I think about the most memorable sermons that I have heard, there are several generalizations that I can make about them:

Unique Perspective
"I never thought about it that way." Familiar texts are not occasions for the preacher to lean back on old notes or old clichéd interpretations of the text.  The Good Samaritan, The Prodigal Son and the Twenty-third Psalm still lead to unearthed treasure. You might start by looking at your familiar text from different angles until you begin to exorcise the specter of the last time you preached from it.

If your attention has always been on the magnanimity of the Good Samaritan, turn your investigative flashlight on the unsung generosity of the Innkeeper.  If you have alternated between looking at the Prodigal and his Elder Brother, look instead at the neighbors who do not know what to make of the Father's love and forgiveness.  Examine the Shepherd Psalm through the eyes of the sheep. 

Human Interest 
The Bible is about human relationships with God and with neighbor.  Yet, it is relatively easy for us pulpit exegetes to get so caught up in the excitement of our research findings that we objectify the text.  In our eagerness to distill the text to five easy steps or seven principles (all beginning with the letter "L") we often move away from the humanity of the text.  The sermons I remember most did not shy away from the messiness of human relationships with God or with other people.  When preaching texts that contain people, it is often helpful to do a mini-character study of the person, see if they are mentioned in other places, or do a study of the people group that the person comes from.

Your congregation may not know that the Canaanite woman was not a Jew. Nor, might they understand the flap over asking a woman for a drink of water in Samaria!  Don't overlook elements of human interest like the messiness of Jacob's family tree, or the presence of Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba in the Messianic family line.  These may not always become the focal point of the sermon, but they often offer important clues to interpreting the text.

Grounded in Scripture
The sermons that I most remember also have been firmly grounded in a Bible passage.  Those memorable sermons were rarely based on one or two verses; they were based upon texts set in a biblical context and presented as such.  Seen in their own context, they offered me an unsmudged snapshot of lives or church fights or national crises that often mirrored my own and then offered me ways to embrace the text in daily life. 

A couple of guiding questions:   

• How do you use the text in your preaching?  Is text like a springboard, that launches you into a pool of ideas or do you use the text more like a treasure map that leads to greater understanding of spiritual things?  Robert Mulholland (Shaped by the Word), speaks of the difference between reading the text and having the text read us. 
  
• What are hearers invited to do with the text you have just preached from?   Text without some mention of application risks becoming exposition.  If the most frequent feedback you receive when shaking hands out the door is "interesting," sound an internal alarm to check your sermons for practical application.
  
• Finally, is your sermon on the biblical text presented in an understandable way?  Think of ways to word your revelations so that a fifth-grader, her parents, and the visiting grandparents might be able to participate in a substantive conversation about your sermon over Sunday lunch.  Jesus spoke in the language of the people using illustrations and allusions that all would readily understand.

Safiyah Fosua
Assistant Professor of Congregational Worship
Wesley Seminary at Indiana Wesleyan University
Marion, Indiana

Safiyah Fosua is a clergy member of the United Methodist Church and assistant professor of congregational worship at Wesley Seminary at Indiana Wesleyan University. She served as Director, Transformational Preaching Ministries at The General Board of Discipleship, an agency of The United Methodist Church. She is the associate editor of the four-volume Africana Worship Book series (Discipleship Resources, 2006-2008) and writes weekly lectionary preaching helps for GBOD-UMC at www.gbod.org/lectionary.

 

Quotes of Preaching

Challenging thoughts from Dr. Richard Lischer, especially as we conclude our advent preaching.  Does your preaching primarily move backward to the historical Jesus or forward to the risen Christ? 

"Because the risen Christ is alive and moving toward us from his own future, the preacher is not constrained to make him relevant as if Jesus were only a figure in the distant past. We do not have to prove that he is real because he is already here. We do not have to dig him up from his Sitz im Leben, for the movement of preaching is not backward to the historical Jesus but forward to the risen Christ."

Richard Lischer, The End of Words, 37-38.

Quotes of Preaching

"In the next millennium, knowledge about God will not preach. Knowledge of God will. And if that is too much to ask, then passionate pursuit of God will do. Those who listen to us expect more than a history lesson on Luke-Acts plus some freeze-dried stories we got out of a book. They want food for their hearts. They want help for their souls. They want to see Jesus, or at least someone who knows Jesus, and God help us if we offer them less than that."

Barbara Brown Taylor, "Preaching into the Next Millennium" in Erskine Clarke, ed., Exilic Preaching: Testimony for Christian Exiles in an Increasingly Hostile Culture (Harrisburg, Penn.: Trinity Press International, 1998), 98-99.

Quotes of Preaching

Homiletics is nothing more than rhetoric under the tutelage of theology.  In sum, good preachers are always good theologians.  Bad preachers are still dozing through the theological books they always meant to read.

David G. Buttrick, "Side Thoughts on Preaching for Those Who Must Stammer God's Unnamed Name" in Best Advice: Wisdom on Ministry from 30 Leading Pastors and Preachers

“Jangan Melupakan TUHAN” 1 Samuel 12:6-15

 Alasan yang paling efektif dan kata ajaib yang paling sering digunakan oleh seseorang untuk sebuah kelalaian (ketidaktaatan) adalah kata “lupa.”  “Mengapa kamu tidak membawa Alkitab?” tanya sang guru agama.  “Lupa Pak” demikian jawab sang murid.  “Lho koq mamah tidak membawa pesananku sih?”  tanya sang suami kepada istrinya.  “Aduh, iya lupa pah!”  Banyak orang menggunakan alasan lupa sebagai sarana pembenaran diri.  Parahnya ada sebagian orang merasa tidak bersalah ketika mereka melupakan tugas dan tanggung jawab mereka, sehingga lupa menjadi sebuah pegangan untuk melarikan diri dari tanggung jawab.  Tentu saja tidak semua orang seperti demikian, ada orang-orang yang memegang janjinya sedemikian rupa dan merasa bersalah karena kelupaannya.

Namun memang tidak dipungkiri kalau alasan “lupa” adalah efektif karena “lupa” itu adalah naluriah, walau bagaimanapun bukan berarti itu menjadi alasan kita untuk menjadi lalai.  Yang menjadi perenungan kita adalah lupa bisa berakibat fatal, seperti lupa mematikan kompor bisa mengakibatkan kompor meledak dan terjadi kebakaran, dll.

Demikian juga dengan yang sering dilakukan oleh bangsa Israel seperti yang dikisahkan di kitab-kitab Perjanjian Lama.  Sejarah menulis bangsa Israel seringkali melupakan Tuhan setelah mereka ditolong oleh Tuhan sekalipun.  Mereka memiliki reputasi sebagai bangsa yang tidak taat dan melupakan kebaikan Tuhan (dimulai sejak Kejadian 3).  Penulis kitab Samuel menulis, “Ketika Yakub datang ke Mesir dan nenek moyangmu berseru-seru kepada TUHAN, maka TUHAN mengutus Musa dan Harun, yang membawa nenek moyangmu keluar dari Mesir, dan membiarkan mereka diam di tempat ini.  Tetapi mereka melupakan TUHAN” (8-9).   

          

Kegiatan bangsa Israel yang sering melupakan TUHAN dikutip oleh penulis bagaimana TUHAN Allah tetap memperhatikan mereka dengan mengutus para hakim untuk membebaskan mereka dari penindasan bangsa asing (10-11).  Namun, kebiasaan lama yang dilakukan bangsa Israel dilakukan ulang: mereka (kembali) melupakan TUHAN.

Siklus ketidaktaatan ini sangat jelas dinyatakan di kitab Hakim-hakim: 

• Bangsa Israel hidup tenang dan taat di bawah pengaturan para hakim dimulai dari tahun-tahun terakhir masa Yosua (Masa Tenang [Rest])
• Muncul generasi baru, timbul penyesatan dan ketidaktaatan kepada hukum Taurat yang berkaitan dengan penyembahan berhala (Pemberontakan [Rebellion])
• Allah menghukum bangsa Israel lewat penindasan bangsa asing (Hukuman [Retribution])
• Bangsa Israel memohon pertolongan Allah untuk membebaskan mereka dari penindasan (Pertobatan [Repentance])
• Allah mendengar teriakan permintaaan tolong bangsa Israel dan membangkitkan seorang hakim untuk membebaskan bangsa Israel dengan kemenangan atas bangsa asing (Pemulihan [Restoration]).
• Namun ketenangan hanya berjalan sebentar, setelah hakim yang lama mati, tidak ada pemimpin, masuk periode yang baru, bangsa Israel mulai berlaku jahat lagi dan  siklus ketidaktaatanpun kembali berulang. 

Siklus pemberontakan ini berlangsung selama rentang waktu 200 tahun.  Penulis mencatat siklus pengulangan ini sebanyak tujuh kali di dalam kitab ini.  Menunjukkan bagaimana begitu seringnya bangsa Israel ingkar janji dan melupakan TUHAN.  Sampai akhirnya, Samuel yang merupakan hakim terakhir menjadi saksi penolakan bangsa Israel terhadap TUHAN.  Samuel kalah menghadapi tuntutan bangsa Israel, dan mengangkat Saul menjadi raja (13-15).  Namun, pemerintahan Saul sebagian besar merupakan malapetaka karena ketidaksetiaannya.

Apa yang dirindukan Tuhan kepada umat-Nya adalah kesetiaan.  Dan kesetiaan menuntut ketaatan, ketaatan untuk mendengarkan firman-Nya.  Tuhan ingin saudara dan saya tidak melupakan pemeliharaan-Nya, tuntunan-Nya, pertolongan-Nya dan perintah-perintah-Nya.  Perkataan-Nya semua tertera di dalam Alkitab, kita dapat membacanya siang dan malam.  Setiap minggunya kita bisa mendengar firman-Nya lewat ibadah rutin yang kita lakukan.  Di dalam persekutuan, firman-Nya kembali dapat kita renungkan bersama.  Tuhan mengasihi umat-Nya maka Ia ingin kita bisa terpaut terus dengan-Nya lewat ketaatan kita mendengarkan firman-Nya.  

Siapa yang sudah lama tidak beribadah, kembalilah beribadah kepada-Nya, dengarkanlah pengajaran-Nya dan bersikap setialah.  Siapa yang sudah lama tidak membaca Alkitab, kembalilah membuka surat cinta-Nya, temukan nasihat-Nya dan bertekunlah membaca.  Siapa yang sudah lama tidak berdoa, kembalilah berdoa, dengarkanlah suara-Nya dan perolehlah ketenangan.  

Amin.