Community Prophecy, Community Salvation

I chose Wesley Theological Seminary for just one reason:  it had a track in Theology and the Arts, which very few MDiv programs offer.  For example, no Lutheran seminary offers that focus for the MDiv.  Maybe I won't graduate into a crowded career field.  But I'm not terribly worried about my future career.  I just want a chance to study the intersection of creativity and spirituality as part of my theological training, and I didn't want to have to create my own independent study.  I've been creating my own independent study opportunities for over 2 decades now.

It was only later that I researched the academic training of the faculty and the approach to the Bible that the campus takes.  Before I enrolled, I went to a Zoom meeting with the academic dean, who told us that Wesley took the Bible seriously but not literally; if we came out of a Bible literalist tradition, we'd be welcome, but we'd be expected to think about other approaches.  I do not come from a Bible literalist tradition, and I took a moment to think about how I hadn't even considered the theology of the school I selected before the academic dean's Zoom session.

I thought of these moments last night in my Foundations of Preaching class.  We spent the first half of the class getting ready to write a preach a sermon based on a New Testament passage.  Now for the hard part--a sermon based on a Hebrew Scripture passage.  Our professor uses the Revised Common Lectionary for the weeks we'll be preaching.  In some ways, that's a great approach--we're not preaching on hand selected passages.  This year, the timing makes for an interesting element:  we'll be preaching on Advent texts.

Several times our professor reminded us that if we're preaching the Hebrew Scripture passages, the answer to the prophets' question is never Jesus.  In other words, we think that Jesus is the Messiah foretold by ancient prophets, but those prophets would not have thought that.  The first Christians knew that something earthshattering had happened in the ministry of Jesus, and to make sense of it, they turned to their scripture, which would have been the Hebrew Scriptures.  They had to decide if they were at a hinge moment when they created a whole new approach to God that would require abandoning past scripture or if they could use what they had been taught to make sense of it.

So far, the conversation didn't seem terribly radical to me, but based on my professor's comments, I realize it might be very different for other students.  And based on her comments, I'm guessing that some past students went ahead and preached Jesus as Messiah foretold by Isaiah, a mistake I would not risk making, even if I believed it, which I don't.

Our teacher talked about Jesus, who steeped himself in ancient scripture.  She said that he lived into Hebrew Scripture so intently that first century Christians came to believe that casting him as the Messiah is the only way possible to see and understand him.  Who else could he be with this behavior?  He had so many opportunities to choose another path, and he stayed consistently on the ministry path that made sense to him and had a chance to change our sense of God at work in the world.  [when the recording of last night's session gets posted, I'll go back to check and make sure I've captured what she said].

We also talked about what those ancient prophets were doing, which was not forecasting a distant future which is why I don't believe that Jesus is the Messiah foretold by Isaiah--a Messiah, yes, but the ancient prophets had a different agenda.  Those ancient prophets were talking to a community.  We tend to think of prophecy as about a certain individual, especially if we come from some church traditions.

The prophets were talking to a whole community, not a subgroup that needed to change.  It was a whole society that needed to change.

I raised my hand near the end of class, and I said, "Maybe in a way that we've been getting ancient prophecy wrong, in thinking it's about an individual and not the larger community, maybe we've also been getting salvation wrong.  We say that Jesus died for each one of us as an individual.  But maybe Jesus didn't come to save my individual soul.  Maybe Jesus came to save the community by showing us how we need to transform it."

My teacher was nodding as I spoke, and when I was finished, she said, "Absolutely right."  After class, she said, in an aside to those of us still taking some extra moments to collect our things and file out, she said, "I can see it now--next class I'll have to reassure students that I actually am a Christian.  The born again kind."

She is the kind of professor who gives lectures that I spend days thinking about, giving us nuggets of wisdom that I return to again and again.  I know how it could have been otherwise.  I know how lucky I am.