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Since 1977, the Journal
for Preachers provides a unique
resource for the high calling of
proclaiming the gospel.
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Easter 2013 Foreword
Amos Wilder, New
Testament teacher at Harvard two
generations ago, wrote this succinct
summation of Easter faith:
Accept no
mitigation
but be
instructed at the null point:
the zero
The null point is recurringly
with us. In the Old Testament it is the
destruction of Jerusalem. In the New
Testament, it is the execution of Jesus.
In modern history, it is the Jewish
Shoah or the Armenian holocaust or
Hiroshima. “No mitigation” means do not
tone it down, do not soften it, do not
explain it away. It is the closing off
of all possibility and living without
hope in the world.
The church and its
preachers dwell always at the zero: a
broken marriage, a failed job, a cancer
diagnosis, a teen-age car wreck. And now
the zero goes public among us,
symbolized by 9/11, palpable in the
financial meltdown as the strong devour
the weak, unbearable in Newtown and a
dozen over massacres while the mantra
resounds, “Guns don’t kill people.” It
is no wonder people pay us to
“mitigate”!
We are at zero in our
society, and the church’s preachers
dwell there. The material in this issue
of the Journal is rich with courage and
imagination for being “instructed” at
the null point, the point our society
and much of the church want to
deny. Meda Stamper offers a compelling
survey of Easter texts, in sum an
invitation to experience “the full joy
of the resurrection.” Her piece is
matched by John Rogers’s exploration of
the resurrection narratives in the four
gospels. He considers the most familiar
phrases from each of the evangelists and
shows how rich and varied were the
church’s earliest attempts to utter this
unutterable new reality. That rich
variation gives the preacher much room
and funds much imagination. Bill Brown
capitalizes on the narrative
presentation of the “unidentified
gardner” to make a linkage between the
resurrection narratives and the first
garden in Genesis. The linkage opens the
way to see new creation “with and out of
old creation.”
At the center of this issue
are four expositions of resurrection
narratives. Lillian Daniel, with
reference to the enigmatic ending of the
gospel of Mark, is allied with the women
who were afraid and said nothing, filled
as they were with “questions, doubts,
and reservations.” Daniel welcomes their
open-minded uncertainty against those
who know too much. We are then offered
three sermons on John 20. Their
variation from the same text bears
witness to the freedom of faithful
imagination. Robert Dunham comments on
the resurrection in this text as a
happening that was totally unexpected,
beyond all credible explanatory
categories. In our knowing rationality
we want to make it all “fit.” But it
will not, summoning us to a different
life. Shannon Johnson Kershner makes
much of Jesus’ response to the
skepticism of Thomas. The exhibit of his
wounds to Thomas evidences that Jesus
knows all the pain of the world and the
doubt of Thomas. In such extremity, we
“have nothing to say,” but Jesus knows
and can make a difference. David
Bartlett attends to the almost comic
competition of John and Peter in the
narrative and celebrates the stunning
outcome of the story: All competition
ends on Easter morning! Our old efforts
to get ahead are now rendered
insignificant. My prayer in response to
Acts 3 concerns our waiting with all of
our odd ompanions, waiting in both
need and eagerness.
John Akers moves us in a
quite fresh direction with his
exploration of the work of Rembrandt in
Amsterdam. He identifies “three great
truths” that Rembrandt could articulate
concerning Jesus’ “final days.” The
painter who offered many renderings of
himself also gave us the bodily force of
the one whose weakness turned out to be
our strength. The issue concludes with
two recurring features. Adam Copeland
urges that the new challenges of an
electronic world opens a time ripe for
new daring, buoyant obedience in
ministry. In his review Ben Sparks
reminds us that Marilynne Robinson is a
major reference point for us in
mediating between the world of artistic
imagination and the core doctrinal
tradition in which we stand. Her
capacity to mediate that connection, as
he shows, is a great gift to us all.
The news at the zero is
that there is something, says Wilder,
“breeding.” Gestation is slow, hidden,
and well beyond our control. What is
being birthed in the zero, so
evangelical faith confesses with Wilder,
is “new algebra.” The outcomes do not
fit our old calculations or
computations, nervous as that makes us.
The new algebra of gospel possibility is
among us, threat, summons, and
assurance. We have only vague notions of
the new math. For starters at least, it
means making room for others unlike us
who have been excluded by the old
computations that we could control and
from which we could benefit. It is not
accidental that among the great
post-Easter issues in the early church
was the question whether Gentiles could
be admitted to the community. Easter
faith makes room for the ones unlike us.
The others living among us include
Muslims, immigrants, and gays… the usual
suspects. But closer home, the feared
other is more likely liberals for
conservatives and conservatives for
liberals. We keep trying to do again the
multiplication table, because it is the
only one we know. But after zero there
are now God-given new numbers. Our own
membership is decentered. The new center
concerns life beyond death, hope beyond
our possibility, companionship beyond
our protected isolation, courage beyond
our timidity. All of that given on
preaching tongues:
How are they to believe in
one of whom they have never heard? And
how are they to hear without someone to
proclaim him?
Walter
Brueggemann
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