The Church and the Nations

BACKWATER OR CROSSROADS? Mt. 4:12-23 [The following article appears this week in The Living Church, an "Episcopal weekly magazine of catholic orthodoxy" in the United States. While it appears anonymously, I include it here with the author's permission. He and I have tea together at 6 AM before our wife awakens.] Location, location, location! What else do we think about when we move? Forget the bathroom fixtures and the shrubbery. Does the location suit the circumstances and direction of our lives at this point? That is exactly what was on the mind of Jesus after John's arrest. Where should he move? What location best suited the overall purpose of his ministry? Where should he plant the locus of his ministry? Where should he recruit and train his disciples? Jerusalem would be the logical place - if his intent were only to revitalize Judaism. But his ministry had a larger scope, a global scope. So he relocated to the land given to Naphtali, the land of Zebulun, the backwater of the northern reaches of Palestine, far from central Judea, "Galilee of the nations". Yes, the backwater of the land of Israel, but - the very center of the world's travels. Three miles north of Capernaum was a road connecting to the Grand Trunk Road that went from Damascus to India, Afghanistan, and China. Along the coast beside the Mediterranean Sea was the Via Mare, "The Way by the Sea" connecting Cairo and Asia Minor. This was the crossroads of the world. This was the place that Jesus chose to launch his ministry and train his disciples. Maybe some of those structures still standing in Capernaum were B&Bs. Maybe the wife of Zebedee ran one to augment the income from fishing. Maybe the brothers heard stories from traders from Kabul, were friends with colonels from Rome, and debated with teachers from Athens. Why not? Something like that had to explain how this "simple fisherman" named John could write the profound Prologue to his Gospel, steeped in Greek philosophy. Just a few miles away from Capernaum was the Roman town of Bethsaida, the town where Jesus recruited Peter and Andrew. There the brothers mixed with the non-Jewish world, befriending many and knowing well their languages and cultures. They also would know well their spiritual hunger. What better way to prepare Peter for inaugurating the Gentile mission at the home of Cornelius? The right location for the global scope of his ministry, and for disciples who fully grasped his commission to the church - Galilee, land of the nations. THE LEAST EVANGELIZED .... THROUGH THE EYES OF ST. PAUL, APOSTLE TO THE NATIONS An important thread which this column will follow is the nature of Judaism in St. Paul's day. For this column I would like to explain its important and implications, and its impact on mission theology. St. Paul writes as a devout Jew who became a follower of Jesus Christ as the Son of God. He hammered out the Gospel that Christians believe. His writing was greatly influenced by his previous understanding of God's grace and righteousness. How we understand the presuppositions on which he framed the Gospel is of enormous importance for interpreting him. For Luther Paul left a religion of works based on the Law, and found a faith based on the cross of Christ and God's grace. Before Christ, following the Judaism of his day, he hoped to find God's righteousness by keeping the Law. After meeting Christ on the Damascus Road, he realized that righteousness came through faith in Christ, His sacrificial death on the cross. Recent scholarship has looked carefully into the Judaism of Paul to inquire if those were, in fact, the assumptions of the Judaism of Paul's day. Maybe Luther's assumptions were not quite accurate. The most pivotal and controversial work recently has been a study by E. P. Sanders. In 1977 he published his work entitled, Paul and Palestinian Judaism. In it Prof. Sanders explored all the significant Jewish literature of Paul's day in order to understand the religious beliefs they represent. The book is 600 pages long, with only 100 pages dealing with Paul. Most of it represents Sanders' research into the important Jewish texts of the time. Sanders gives the most thorough examination of the topic to come along in many years. Others, like Krister Stendahl, had looked closely at the Jewish assumptions and questioned them, but Sanders did the scholarship. His conclusion was that Judaism of Paul's day did not have a religion based on works. Jews understood grace as the heart of God's relationship with His people. The place of disagreement was their contention that God's grace was meant for the Jews only. In recent years many have taken on Sanders and his conclusions. One thorough study under the editorial leadership of Donald Carson has just been published. The conclusion of this team mostly supports Sanders' work. Sanders' work could undercut the assumptions that had largely gone unchallenged since the Reformation. This scholarship has introduced what is known as "The New Perspective on Paul". Though not all New Testament scholars accept this, most Pauline scholarship today at the very least acknowledges its insights. The light which the New Perspective sheds points to Judaism as accepting grace but as intended only for Jews. The issue in the New Testament of including Gentile centers on the persuasion of the Jews of the universal dimension of God's grace, His forgiveness, His Kingdom. If they were ever to reach out to Gentiles, they would have to lower their pride in Jewish "boundary markers" which, to them, legitimately set them apart and above Gentiles. Maybe you can begin to see the missions implications. My primary interest in all this is just that - what this means for the church's mission. I follow the scholarship, for it is important. Next week, for example, I will review the arguments of Sanders and his critic, Carson. But how these play into missions is for more pressing. The connection between the scholarship and missions is noticeably absent. I hope to highlight the insights as they give us a better view of Paul's global vision and his missionary call to the church.