City Blog

I’ve been realizing the increasing importance of asking the right questions.  This is especially true when it comes to preaching a sermon text. Sometimes I get hung up on the wrong question, one that drags me down and has no answer.  Other times, a question jumps out at me and excites the rest of the passage.  For example, when preaching on the Emmaus Road passage at the end of Luke (if you don’t know it, read Luke 24:13-35), I found that I got excited about the text when I started asking, “What picture of God do we get in this passage?”  We see Jesus sneaking up behind some travelers incognito. We see Jesus asking them provocative questions, allowing them to vent their frustration. We see Jesus traveling with them, pursuing them, even, going the distance.  Jesus has no business in Emmaus.  He’s with them because they are his business.  We see Jesus determined to break through their barriers, determined to reveal himself to them.

Christians have lots of answers to lots of questions.  The problem is that no one wants to hear our answers.  Why?  Because our answers are to questions that people aren’t asking.  The whole problem with how the gospel has been packaged for as long as I can remember is that it was packaged for people who already believed most of it.  To care about how to be forgiven for your sins, you have to believe there’s a divine being keeping track.  To care about “getting to Heaven,” you have to believe something comes after you die.  To care about how to be made right with God, you have to believe there is a God and that you aren’t right with him.  To people who don’t share these assumptions, the Gospel itself is irrelevant.

I’m quite confident of one particular aspect of Jesus’ preaching ministry that I read about in the New Testament.  The kingdom was preached with very little explanation but was immediately perceived as being “good news.”  Furthermore, it was “good news” to people who found themselves on the outs of the religious establishment. Jesus’ words were “good news” to people who were on the outside.  It was good news to them in their language where they were for their context.

The question that needs to be at the heart of my ministry is simply this.  Is the Gospel still good news for people on the outs of the religious establishment?  Is the Gospel at its heart still relevant for people today?  If so, then what is the message that we ought to be proclaiming?  What is the good news of the gospel?  I’m confident that if we don’t change and adapt ourselves and our message to a changing culture, we will soon find that not only do we have answers to questions that no one cares about, but we ourselves will no longer find those answers appealing or compelling.  It will have lost its goodness for us.  Based on how you see a lot of Christians doing church these days, you have to wonder to what extent we’re keeping up appearances.