The Homeless: Part VI - Struggling Toward a Christian Response

Last April I wrote a paper on homelessness for one of my seminary classes. The recent anti-homeless laws passed in Berkeley (which I talked about in this blog) prompted me to republish it here. This is part 6. 

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Struggling Toward a Christian Response

Howard Thurman threw down the challenge of our age by posing this question: “The masses of men live with their backs constantly against the wall. They are the poor, the disinherited, the dispossessed. What does our religion say to them?” (Jesus and the Disinherited, 3). What does our religion have to say for the spat on, the invisible, the dirty, the hungry, the hurting? What good is Christianity for the homeless?

Ultimately only they can provide an answer. No thoughts I offer can be definitive without their voice. As a seminarian, my habit is to talk about non-ontological, relationally based, social psychological theologies of sin. To cast grand visions of shalom from the Garden through the Law and Prophets, to Jesus among the outcasts, to the New Jerusalem. To creatively exegete the culture for contextualized articulations of the gospel. Then roll into a sophisticated, multi-pronged strategic plan for social transformation. All this has its place, I know, but the weathered faces squatting behind a concrete wall somewhere in my head keep staring at me saying, “What the fuck are you talking about?” My homeless friends do not want a technical answer about them, they want an answer that is for them and with them. I must begin phenomenologically to speak into the experience of being homeless: bored, chaotic, fearful, lonely, numb, disturbed...suffering and powerless.

If we are to offer something of value to the homeless, it must be done with painful sensitivity that we speak into the flow of suffering. Shifting the focus from traditional theological matters to the situation of the oppressed, James Cone writes, “Blacks do not ask whether Jesus is one with the Father or divine and human….They ask whether Jesus is walking with them, whether they can call him up on the ‘telephone of prayer’ and tell him about their troubles” (God of the Oppressed, 13). In suffering, a person wants to know if anyone is there with you. Cone goes on to say, “Through Jesus Christ they could know that they were people, even though they were bought and sold like cattle” (31). The discriminated and discarded want to know that they matter, that they have value, that they are human. Finally, those who suffer look for hope, searching for a sign that change can come, that someone is fighting on their behalf, and for the strength to resist their own persecution. On this note, Cone is superlative:

“Yahweh is known and worshiped as the One who brought Israel out of Egypt, and who raised Jesus from the dead. God is the political God, the Protector of the poor and the Establisher of the right for those who are oppressed. To know God is to experience the act of God in the concrete affairs and relationships of people, liberating the weak and the helpless from pain and humiliation” (57).

Though he writes specifically from the Black context, Cone’s words extend to oppressed people everywhere, to all who suffer. In his writing we find the beginning of a meaningful response to the homeless that can be offered as love: solidarity in suffering, an affirmation of worthiness, and power for liberation.

We are With You

At the end of Matthew 9, Jesus looks out on the crowds that have walked beside him and is moved. The passage says, “He had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” (v37). Compassion, in the sense Jesus expresses, is not merely offering some assistance to those who have less than you. “The word compassion is derived from the Latin words pati and cum, which together mean ‘to suffer with’” (Nouwen, et al., Compassion, 3). To all those who suffer, we offer the God who suffers with. Jesus repeatedly became the “harassed and helpless” alongside the people he loved, and epitomized his solidarity through death on the cross. The fact that Jesus not only ministered among the marginalized but identified himself as the marginalized good news offered from a Savior who is a brother and comrade in the struggle.

His solidarity also serves as a lifestyle to model for his disciples. Richard Hayes takes the cross as an emblematic symbol for ethical engagement in the world; “Jesus’ death on a cross is the paradigm for faithfulness to God in this world. The community expresses and experiences the presence of the kingdom of God by participating in ‘the koinonia of his sufferings’ (Phil 3:10)” (The Moral Vision of the New Testament, 197). Finding ways to empathize and share in the suffering of the homeless is both the truest form of love and the seed for transformation--“but the power of the resurrection is in God’s hands, not ours” (ibid). Those of us who attempt to shift from the dominant culture into solidarity cannot take this transition lightly. We have to accept that our lifestyles have benefited from and contributed to oppression. “Discovering himself to be an oppressor may cause considerable anguish, but it does not necessarily lead to solidarity with the oppressed...Solidarity requires that one enter into the situation of those with whom one is solidary; it is a radical posture” (Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 49). There is no better starting point for entering in than the simple art of listening. Dietrich Bonhoeffer claimed “the beginning of love is beginning to listen.” [22]

You Are Amazing

When speaking into the midst of suffering, followers of Jesus can declare an unfettered celebration of who a homeless person is. Far more than passive or begrudging affirmation, the Christian declares two sacred truths over the life of the oppressed. First, we know that a human being’s value is not reducible to economic productivity, but rests in the incomparable majesty of the image of God. In the ever-poignant words of Martin Luther King Jr, “The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents and discerns those inner qualities that make all men human and, therefore, brothers.” (Strength to Love, 25). Justo Gonzalez has also reminded us that human value--even human righteousness--does not correspond with their legality or criminality. Furthermore, when laws are unjust, it is not the lawbreaker who is in sin but the lawmaker and the law itself. [23]

Second, we know the paradoxical truth that the homeless are uniquely glorious among all people for Jesus himself dwells in and among them. It is the shamed who have honor in the kingdom, the poor who will inherit the earth, and the hungry, naked, and imprisoned with whom Jesus chose to identify himself. Following this logic to its conclusion leads to a startling revelation. If Christocentrism is the best point of departure for understanding the universe, and if the homeless are to be identified with Christ, then we are wrong to talk about the homeless as “marginals.” Rather, they stand at the center with Jesus as a window into the true nature of reality. In the final analysis, the homeless are not at the margins for to position them as such permits the oppressive society to function as the appropriate ‘center’ off which all deviants should be measured. From a Kingdom perspective, our work is not among the marginalized, but ministry among the centralized!

A third aspect of human nature revealed in scripture should send the privileged to the underpasses and train yards asking for forgiveness. God’s word exposes the lie of individualism and prophetically denounces societies built on its competitive, self-seeking foundations. In its place, the bible offers a vision of humans as wholly dependent on God and designed for interdependence with the entire community of creation. “If there is to be well-being, it will not be just for isolated, insulated individuals; it is, rather, security and prosperity granted to a whole community….Always we are all in it together” (Brueggemann, Peace, 15). Randy Woodley argues that on the basis of God’s creational intent for comprehensively inclusive communities, “sin, in a very real sense, can be defined as the absence of shalom” (Shalom in the Community of Creation, 23). We are, as the King quote says above, brothers. As brothers, we are responsible for one another. Unfortunately, we have abdicated this call since Cain first asked, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” The answer is yes. As the people of God, the most appropriate postures toward our homeless brothers and sisters is repentance.

[22] - Quoted by Barry Wade, Ministering at the Margins, 211.

[23] - See Justo Gonzalez, Mañana: Christian Theology From a Hispanic Perspective.

Focal Points

The Colorado State Capitol Building lines up with
the city's downtown street grid. It's also a gathering
spot for many of the city's homeless. (pic circa 1950)

Cities designed thoughtfully are filled with focal points. 

Even careless city plans have them in some shape or form. Whether parks, monuments, or significant buildings (public, private and religious architecture all fulfill this function and are a strong indicator of value expression at different points in a city's history), these become the visual reference points that help people orient themselves within the complexities of urban space and hold an "image of the city" (to use Lynch's phrase) in their mind. Sometimes focal points show up as a cluster of skyscrapers. Other times they appear as a strategically placed building at the end of a major boulevard. Whatever they are, these focal points draw our eyes and our bodies to them self and professes to the world what we find most important.

Focal places also function in a very interesting secondary role: they form the city's prime public spaces.

In the modern, capitalist city, public space is often inhabited by the poor. Private space outside the home is mostly geared toward consumption and profit generation in today's urban areas. Thus, the poor have limited private space available to them thanks to their limited purchasing and profit generating power. What's left are the public places available to anyone (though, increasingly, policies are being passed to oust unwanted folks from these places too). Imagine the parks and plaza's in your city's downtown. Who is seated and standing around capital buildings and courts, churches and office buildings? More often than not, this is where we find the homeless and those characters the dominant culture attempts to exclude.

I find it amazing that Jesus associated himself with exactly these people: the excluded, the disinherited, the barred from entry, the kept outside. Where you see the hungry and ignored, there, we are told, you see Jesus.

In the past, when I've thought about the focal design of our cities, the things we have centered our built environment and subsequently our lives around, I'm often saddened. At these center points we find the constructions of empire. The power of our government and financial institutions are set on full display. I have often worried that this leads us away from the true center, Jesus. And I have worried that this construction wordlessly teaches our imagination to value the wrong things.

But could it be that, ever so subtly, the presence of the poor in these places is subverting what the world has tried to place is the middle? That in the grimy faces of the poor, Jesus has planted himself at the center of our social worlds? Perhaps if we look down from the corner offices and emblems of power, if we can listen with humility, we will rediscover a more beautiful way to be human. We will find Jesus at the center, standing among the poor.

Following Jesus

For a few weeks in January and February, I explored five meanings of the gospel of Jesus: humanization, worldview reorientation, community building, shalom spreading, and present/future hope. These hold enormous implications for the status quo, but their impact is only really felt once people decide to embrace Jesus' gospel as their own and follow him wherever he may lead. If we desire a world where every human being's value is expressed and treasured, a world ordered around and comprehended through the radically loving example Jesus, a world where the violence and inequities dividing our relationships--with God, self, others and creation--are restored, a world of peace and justice, a world that is transformed for the common good before our eyes even as we await the day when all will be made new...if we desire this kind of world it will require people who are will to follow Jesus as his disciples. 

If there is one major stumbling block in the Christian tradition that trips up our journey into discipleship, it is the baggage around the words 'faith' and 'works.' Somehow through the reformation's struggle to undo abuses in the Church of the time, we reduced both of these terms to opposite methods for acquiring eternal salvation. In that process, their fundamentally inseparable natures became divorced from one another and from the everyday life of people trying to be Jesus' disciples. The result is that we have a wide conceptual gap between 'having faith' and 'being faithful.'  

"Following" brings these ideas back together in embodied practice. The choice to follow Jesus is based on some fundamental beliefs about who he is. For the original disciples, following emerged from their faith that he was a Rabbi with a new authoritative teaching of hope (Mark 1:27), that he came to enact the long awaited Jubilee--liberation for the oppressed (Luke 4:18-21), and eventually the convictions that he was the chosen Messiah (Mark 8:29), Lord (Phil 2) and God himself (John 1). To focus on "following" also frees us from believing we ever have Jesus figured out--that we have the right and comprehensive faith vs those other people. Just as the disciples set out after Jesus even though they would not comprehend who he was until after his death, our belief in Jesus is always a journey of ongoing discovery. Jesus continues to surprise us day after day!

Following Jesus meant that the disciples had to drop their nets and embark on a new life modeled after Jesus. To drop the nets was to relinquish a way of life, with its securities and familiarities. Whatever our beliefs are, they form the bedrock for how we live our lives. Believing that Jesus is the stuff listed above (among other things) initiates a holistic transformation of ourselves that does not stop with a shift in eternal destination.

One of the best explanations I have read that reconnects the two sides of belief and action comes from a non-Christian named Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator and activist, who wrote the following on the true meaning of knowledge:

Knowing, whatever its level, is not the act by which a subject transformed into an object docilely and passively accepts the contents others give or impose on him or her. Knowledge, on the contrary, necessitates the curious presence of subjects confronted with the world. It requires their transforming action on reality. It demands a constant searching. It implies invention and reinvention...In the learning process the only person who really learns is s/he who appropriates what is learned, who apprehends and thereby re-invents that learning; s/he who is able to apply the appropriate learning to concrete existential situations. On the other hand, the person who is filled by another with 'contents' whose meaning s/he is not aware of, which contradict his or her way of being in the world, cannot learn because s/he is not challenged. (Education for Critical Consciousness)

Unfortunately, there are many self-described Christians who function more like receptacles for information. Though they profess Christian sounding doctrines, they have never genuinely encountered these beliefs as a challenge to their "way of being in the world." Such people claim a faith which has never been allowed to actually transform them. But true knowledge--in the sense that Freire describes--of Jesus as one's Lord and Savior is inherently transformative. It necessitates that a person reformulate their point of view and way of life. It is like learning that the building you are in is on fire, or that the person you have secretly been in love with loves you back. Such knowledge simply has to be acted on by its very nature.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer provides a famous account of the Christian life of belief and obedience:

But since he is the Christ, he must make it clear from the start that his word is not an abstract doctrine, but the re-creation of the whole life of man. The only right and proper way is quite literally to go with Jesus. The call to follow implies that there is only one way of believing on Jesus Christ, and that is by leaving all and going with the incarnate Son of God...only he who believes is obedient, and only he who is obedient believes. (The Cost of Discipleship)

Jill Shook provides an example that hits close to home for many of us:

Luke's gospel emphasizes God's passion for justice for the poor. But that passion involves love for the rich as well. The involvement of the rich with those on the margins of society will be part of their own salvation, not a salvation of works, but of repentance, conversion, and forgiveness that results in justice for the poor. Wealth often stands between us and God. We who are privileged--and that includes almost all of [the readers of this blog]--may think we are knowledgeable and free, but we don't realize how we are blinded by greed and imprisoned in our affluent lifestyle, as in the story of the rich man and Lazarus. (Making Housing Happen: Faith-Based Affordable Housing Models)

In the first weeks of this blog, I spent a lot of time talking about contextual awareness. Why? Because we are so deeply enmeshed in our culture that we often cannot figure out where it diverges from the way of Jesus. We assume that because we listen to Christian music, do not say curse words and are opposed to abortion, we are swimming upstream from the culture. But it is almost never that simple. As Shook points out, this is particularly difficult for those in the majority (often called the "dominant") culture. The culture works for us. It is what has provided us with such an enjoyable lifestyle, so to critique it can be excruciating.

There is no faith and works tension. For Christians, there is only following Jesus which automatically implies both. The first Christians saw this clearly. They recognized that to follow Jesus was to testify to truths which had immediate implications for their lifestyle. This is why in the same breath we read in Acts that "those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls. And they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. and they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need" (Acts 2:41-45). To believe was to inter into a worshipful lifestyle. It was to live in community with the body of Christ. And, often overlooked, the Jubilee Jesus preached about immediately became the socioeconomic lifestyle of the new Christian community as soon as their worldview was transformed through belief in him. 

It is true, we will act in accordance with whatever our deepest commitments are. This is why we are reminded that cannot serve two masters. We cannot follow both Jesus and whatever career path will provide the greatest financial stability. We cannot follow both Jesus and the American Dream. We cannot follow both Jesus and a particular political party. We cannot follow both Jesus and whatever it takes to find true love. We cannot follow both Jesus and follow whatever our culture tells us is good. These agendas are not always contrary to one another, but anytime we have a "Jesus + ____" approach to life, the ____ inevitably leads us astray. As a disciple of Jesus, nothing can supersede our allegiance to the true King, there can be no complimentary motivation and no secondary pursuits. We must be willing to follow Jesus alone and trust that that is enough. 

Does that sound scary? It's ok. Jesus knew it would as soon as he said it. That's why he offered us encouragement:

Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither so nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how the grow, they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. ...will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?...But seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you." (6:25-33ish)

Do we believe that these are the words of God? Then "fear not, for behold, [it is] good new of great joy that will be for all the people!" (Luke 2:1)

To see my drawing of the whole discipleship model, click here. 

The Gospel in 5D: Worldview Re-ordering

Because who decides what's up?

Continuing to explore the gospel into the second dimension...

The Gospel as Worldview Re-ordering

Jesus is Lord! Caesar is not. 

In Thessalonica, Paul and Silas are imprisoned on the accusation that “They are all acting contrary to the decrees of the emperor, saying that there is another king named Jesus” (Act 17:7). In the New Testament, the empire is the the embodiment of Sinful power in human institutions of power. The missionaries do not deny that their accusers are speaking the truth because, for them, the gospel is a subversion of the world viewed through the empire’s lens and the way of life it imposes.* 

The good news that Jesus is Lord leads us into theological reflection as the task of reconceiving the world through the lens of Jesus’ Kingship. Jesus was constantly reinterpreting the world for his followers: “You have hear it said...but I say to you” (Matt 5:21-22). Those who heard him teach were amazed at his words because he preached as one with authority, reinterpreting the law in a manner they believed only God was capable of doing (Mark 1:22). Paul understood that for people to live out their new identity as Christians, they must learn to see the world differently. He therefore instructed his followers, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God--what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom 12:2). 

It is this function of the gospel as reordered thinking that instills our vision for how the world should be with Jesus in charge. Until our worldview is transformed, we do not know how to live well or what to pursue.

* Thanks to my buddy Ivan Paz for tipping me off to this verse.

The New Testament in 100 Words or Less

This fall I got to play around with one of the more fun assignments I've had during seminary: trying to express the "central message" of the New Testament in one hundred words or less.

What a challenge! What do you include and what do you exclude? What do you emphasize? Who are the main characters? What is the goal? What is the big "why" behind it all?

We were given four opportunities over the course of the semester to take a stab at it. I decided that I would try to write mine in a completely different way every time. My core themes stayed mostly the same, but this choice freed me from trying to hone in perfectly on the dogma that I believe is "right." Like I said before, theological reflection is more about knowing and following God than it is about trying to fully comprehending him and his ways, or reducing our ideas to inflexible doctrines. Nonetheless, it was fun to lay out some riffs that express the essence of what I believe this Christian thing is all about. So, I thought I would share them in the hopes of hearing what yours would be in response.


The simplest one I wrote zeros in on discipleship as the purpose the New Testament was written in the first place...

Riff #1:
The New Testament is a collection of resources written for local communities of Gentiles and Jews who are trying to be disciples of Jesus. Jesus is the God who became a man, demonstrated how to be fully human and sacrificed himself as an act of grace that offers others the way to be fully human as well. To be a disciple of his way is turning from other pursuits, accepting forgiveness and the freedom he offers, entering a life of loving God and loving all others, and discipling others to do likewise.


This second one is where I was most meticulous to include every element I thought was essential...

Riff #2:
The Kingdom of God is among you! It is commenced by the Father’s sending and incarnation of the Son, demonstrated through the life of Jesus, described through his teachings and epitomized in his death on the cross. The enemies of the Kingdom--human sin and the principalities and powers—have been overcome through his resurrection. It is carried forward by the sending of the Spirit to empower the Church as it participates in God’s mission of holistic redemption and reconciliation. It is enacted through the diversely unified, holy, worshipful, collective life of Christ followers. It will be fully consummated at Jesus’ return.


For the third, I thought I would try to pick a verse to let the NT speak for itself. I decided nothing captures it better for me than Philippians 2 (though I had to whittle at it a bit to get under the 100 word mark)...

Riff #3:
...look to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God 
as something to be exploited...
...And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death--
even death on a cross.

Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus...
...every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God.


The last version I wrote is a unique approach. I decided that maybe the New Testament is all about unpacking the gospel. So if that is the case, what is this gospel? In my opinion, that's a much more complicated thing than walking the Romans Road or reciting Four Laws. Those might (emphasis on the "might") have some usefulness in evangelism, but they fall short of expressing the whole of the good news concerning God's activities in creation. Here's what I decided to boil it down to for the time being...

Riff #4:
The Gospel as…
...humanization. Freed from Sin’s Power(s), we are new creations in Christ by grace and submission to God.
...worldview reorientation. Jesus is Lord! Caesar is not. Rethink everything through the lens of his life, crucifixion and resurrection.
...community building. Sin has alienated us from God, self, others and creation, but salvation reconciles us back into a beautiful unity with our diversities intact.
...shalom spreading. We are tasked to join God in his mission to spread peace and justice through love of neighbor, enemies included.
...present and future hope. God has come and will return to make all things new.


Over the next few weeks I'm going to expand on this final riff, exploring what the Gospel as humanization, worldview reorientation, community building, shalom spreading, and present/future hope might mean.

In the meantime, what do you think about my attempts? What would you write if you had to explain the central message of the NT in 100 words or less?

How I'm Trying to Read the Bible

Leadership is a practice based in biblical study and theological reflection. It has to be if it is to be "Christian." The bible and the ideas we draw from it provide us with the worldview, the vision, the character, and the means of leading toward the common good--shalom for all people.

But there are about as many approaches to interpreting the bible as there are interpreters, so I thought I would use this post to lay out a few of my presuppositions when it comes to biblical study--more focused on the "what" than the "why" or the "how." This has been a gradual process for me (an unending one I hope) but my thoughts took on much greater clarity (along with a whole new set of questions) this year. 

I'll start somewhat snarkily with this claim: a verse cannot be understood by studying it. 

What I mean is this. When I was being taught how to study scripture, probably starting around Junior High, I was taught to focus on a few verses at a time, asking the “when, what, where, why, who?” questions. I might need to look around before or after the verse to figure out what the "therefore was there for," but for the most part once I answered those questions and prayed about it, God would help me understand what this text meant--usually skipping straight to what it meant for me. 

Now these are by no means unimportant questions. We have to keep asking them, but that does not mean we can stick with Junior High bible study methods and expect them to allow our minds to wrap around one of the most complex books ever written in multiple literary genres, by multiple authors, speaking multiple languages, multiple millennia ago in cultures radically different from our own.  

These four hermeneutical pre-commitments represent the way I am trying to approach the text these days...

1) We are incapable of approaching the text from outside our own sociocultural location. This does not mean that we have to read our contemporary meanings into the text, but that our worldview is fundamentally shaped by our context. As exegetes, we must acknowledge up front that this affects our interpretive ability. Therefore, to write “Theology” as though we are objective readers is simply more than we should/can ever claim. It is possible to become a “border crosser” by gaining experience in other cultures, developing our cultural intelligence (CQ), and even by immersing ourselves in the biblical world, but we are never fully capable of reading scripture from its author’s perspective. I have already said a good deal about this here, here and here, so I'll stop repeating myself.

What is beautiful about this is that it means the act of reading scripture draws us into community and gift sharing with the body of Christ. My contextual lenses help me notice certain things in the Bible that others may miss, but in order to see all that God has provided in this incredible book I need to also listen to the insights of men and women from Asia, Africa and South America, of people from different socioeconomic backgrounds, and of different life experiences. Together our theology will be far richer than when we form conclusions on our own.

2) After acknowledging our context, we must come into an encounter with scripture recognizing that it is predominantly literature written as narrative in a historical context. Therefore, I cannot only ask the “w” questions of a text, but must also ask how it fits within the grand narrative being told through the entire bible, the salvation history of God’s activity in creation. Biblical scholar Sylvia Keesmaat describes the story like a 6 Act play:

“Act 1 is the creation of a good world. Act 2 is the distortion of that world by sin. Act 3 is the calling of Israel to be a blessing to this fallen world. Act 4 is the coming of Jesus, where sin is decisively dealt with. Act 5, scene 1, is the early church, where the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus are grappled with and lived out in the lives of the first Christian communities. Further scenes unfold, from the apostolic era, through the patristic period, and so on to the present. Act 6 is the coming consummation, when Jesus will return and we will join him on the new earth at the resurrection of the dead.”

We come to the text as sojourners living in the story it reveals--still in Act 5, awaiting Act 6

I must also ask what the specific historical context of the verse is, what the author’s lifeworld means for the text, and how it fits within the literary context of the book or letter that contains it. Deeper study into the bible's historical, economic, and sociological backgrounds is never a waste of time.

3) Jesus is the key point of departure for biblical reflection because “Jesus Christ is the self-disclosure of God in history” (God Our Savior, Norman Kraus). All verses only make sense in the light of his story. And that means including the whole story stretching from pre-existence with the Father to fully human incarnation in a stable, to his childhood, adult ministry, betrayal and unjust trial, crucifixion, death and burial for three days (and whatever was happening on the other side of the grave!), resurrection, time spent on earth in his resurrected body, ascension to the right and of the Father, giving of his Spirit, presence through the Church as the body of Christ, and eventual return to remake creation and rule on the new earth with his people. 

One caveat to this. Jesus makes no sense except against Old Testament, Roman and Second Temple Judaism backgrounds. So while I am saying that he must be the starting point for biblical interpretation out of one side of my mouth, I am also acknowledging that he requires a good bit of interpretation. Sorry, but we aren't benefitted by shying away from the complexities.

4) A quote from Professor of New Testament Tim Geddert can sum this one up: “Theology is important not because it is “Truth” or certain or final, but because it helps us move closer to that which is far more important still. The bible is more important than theology. The triune God is more important than the bible. The goal is to encounter, relate to, and follow God. Don’t get it backwards.” 

The goal of biblical interpretation is not--contrary to what is often portrayed--about formulating the right doctrines. Theology matters. I am deeply committed to it. But if our convictions about what the bible means begin to take precedence over actually knowing and following Jesus our Lord and God we will wind up in all kinds of mess. Biblical study is about entering into relationship with God, learning to be his disciple and learning to help others know and follow him too.