The Grace of the Gospel

Gospel Freedom Lecture

This morning I delivered a lecture for the Gospel Freedom series at the Lutheran Church of the Master in Corona Del Mar in California.

My friend Dr. Ken Sundet Jones promoted it by posting:

“Jason’s the most Lutheran Methodist I know and probably the best public theologian in the country today. His biblical understanding is deft. His grasp of popular culture is unexcelled. And his ability to craft language into a free word for you has made him one of my primary preachers. Get yourself to Lutheran Church of the Master.”

Most of what Ken said is horseshit, but I try to do what is asked of me. The text of my talk and video are below.

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About ten years ago, a woman in my congregation asked to meet with me.

Diane sat across from me one morning in my office. I knew her from classes I’d taught, pleasantries in the line after service, and a few hospital visits to her spouse, but I didn’t know her.

“Since we’ve decided to make this our church home, I thought you should know my story,” she told me, rubbing her hands along the channels of her pleated skirt over and over again.

Her voice was taut with anxiety or shame. I didn’t say anything. I just waited. After you’re a pastor for a while it doesn’t take Robin Williams from Good Will Hunting to spot someone who’s wanting to drop whatever burden they are bearing.  Still, what she told me surprised me. It wasn’t the sort of story you hear everyday.

With long pauses and double-backs and tears— lots of weeping— she told me how a few years earlier she’d been driving home from the grocery store in the middle of the afternoon on Route One in Alexandria, Virginia. Out of nowhere a pedestrian stepped into the street. Diane hadn’t been drinking. She hadn’t been distracted. She wasn’t texting or talking.

“There just wasn’t enough damn time!” she said with such force it was clear that she— not me— was the one she was trying to convince.

What she told me next surprised me even more. Diane told me how her mind developed a split personality to cope with the trauma of having killed another person. She spent nearly a year, she said, hospitalized for schizophrenia. She told me how worshipping at a new church, where folks didn’t know her and didn’t stare at the floor whenever they saw her, was one of the goals she’d set for himself upon her discharge.

She wept for a long time. I had to get up, leave my office, and go hunting for more tissues.

When I returned and sat down across from her, she said, “I know Jesus forgives me, but I just can’t forgive myself.”

And I didn’t respond immediately. I waited for her eyes to meet mine.

When they did, I said to her, “You know Jesus forgives you, but you can’t forgive yourself? Just who in the hell do you think you are, Diane? The one who forgives you— he’s not a teacher. He’s not a prophet. And he’s certainly not a relic of the past— we’re not the Jesus Memorial Society here. There is no other God behind Jesus Christ. You think you’re above God? Who are you to hold on to what the Lord’s let go? As though he’s wrong and you’re right? If you’re looking to repent of anything, repent of that.”

I didn’t know if what I said to her was helpful.

I just knew it was true.

In the Book of Acts, a man crippled from birth sits on the streets of Lystra and listens intently as Paul and Barnabas preach. Seeing him, Paul discerns the strength of the lame man’s faith. The apostle exhorts the crippled man in a loud voice, “Stand upright on your feet.” Luke reports that immediately the man “sprang up and began to walk.”

Just as quickly, the bystanders begin to shout in their Lycaonian language, positing Paul and Barnabas as avatars of their pagan deities, “”The gods have come down to us in human form!”” The denizens of Lystra then identify Barnabas as Zeus while Paul, they surmise from his role as chief speaker, must be Hermes.

According to Luke, all of Lystra kicks into cultic gear. “The priest of Zeus,” Luke writes, “whose temple was just outside the city, brought oxen and garlands to the gates; he and the crowds wanted to offer sacrifice.”

Unlike C3PO in Bright Tree Village, Paul emphatically rejects the honor. The apostles tear their clothes and rush out into the crowd, shouting, “Friends, why are you doing this? We are mortals just like you.” And then Paul announces the purpose of their travels, “We are here to speak the gospel to you; so that, you may turn from such barren deities to the living God.”

• Pay attention to the conjunction, “so that.”

• Mind the prepositions, “from” and “to.”

“We are here to speak the gospel to you,” Paul announces, “so that, you may turn from such barren deities to the living God.”

If you were so motivated to come out on a beautiful Southern California summer day to listen to an Enneagram 8 jaw on about Jesus, then presumably you have already heard the gospel that the apostles uttered in that pagan city. You have heard this gospel. You have received it in trust, as promise not threat. And, as Luther commended, you cling to your baptism into it.

Moreover, having heard this gospel and trusted it and been drowned in it, your charge is now no different than the one laid upon the apostles. Your baptism is also your ordination, Gerhard Forde insisted; therefore, you are called to gospel others.

Just so, my question is both simple and necessary yet seldom examined.

What is the gospel?

Last fall I co-taught a homiletics course at Duke Divinity School. The class had about thirty-five students in it, working preachers of all ages from across the breadth of Christ’s church. Figuring that it was a waste of time to talk about the how of preaching if we could not establish the what or why of preaching, I began by asking them the straightforward question, “What is the gospel?”

Their answers skipped all over the place.

Tellingly, even the preachers whose answers came closest to the apostolic kerygma (as it is defined in 1 Corinthians 15) betrayed no visible confidence they in fact had answered more or less faithfully.

Perhaps the confusion is due to a lack of clarity about the answer to still another question.

What is the gospel supposed to do?

What is the gospel supposed to do for those who hear it?