The Crucifixion of Ministry

Surrendering Our Ambitions to the Service of Christ

Andrew Purves

• Publisher: IVP
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780830878581
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Ministerio cristiano

As a pastor, do you ever get the feeling that no matter what you try, nothing much seems to change?That is because the ministries themselves are not redemptive--they are not up to you. Only Jesus' ministry is redemptive. Jesus has to "show up."Theologian Andrew Purves explores at the deepest level the true and essential nature of Christian ministry. He says that the attempt to be an effective minister is a major problem. Ministers are "in the way." He radically claims that ministries need to be crucified. They need to be killed off so that Christ can make them live.Rooting church service in Christ's own continuing ministry, Purves provides a vision for students and practicing clergy to reclaim the vital connection between Christ and participation in his ministry today, even if it means letting Christ put to death the ministries to which pastors cling so closely.A radical appraisal for a critical malady affecting the life of the Christian church written in plain, down-to-earth language.

1

What’s in a Name?

MENTALLY GLANCE AT YOUR CHURCH BULLETIN for this Sunday morning. Most likely it identifies you as the minister or pastor. It may also have a reference to the people of the church as the ministers. I do not recall ever reading in a church bulletin Minister: Jesus Christ. The necessary name is missing!

In whose name will we do ministry? It is the same question which the Jerusalem temple tribunal asked Peter and John. “By what power or by what name did you do this?” (Acts 4:7). On one level it is not a complicated question. Obviously we all do ministry in the name of Jesus and not in our own names. But how do we understand ministry in the name of Jesus?

We might answer that the Lord has authorized our ministry. For example, at the end of his parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus said “Go and do likewise” (Luke 10:37). Left on this level, ministry looks like something we do in obedience to a command. Obedience has its proper place in the theological scheme of things. However, I am trying to build on a different foundation. I want us to build on what the Lord is doing before we rush to consider what it is we must do.

Minister: Jesus Christ

On a deeper level I am asking a more radical question that goes down to the roots of ministry. In whose name do we do ministry? What does it mean for the understanding and practice of ministry that the name of Jesus, as it was understood by the Christian community of the fourth chapter of Acts, indicates a present, acting and reigning Lord?

I am determined to ground our reflections about ministry in the person of Jesus Christ. Even before we reflect on the ministry of the Lord, we must grapple with his identity and his person. In every sense he and he alone is the authority for ministry and the actuality of ministry.

A Theology of the Name

The fourth chapter of Acts, with its theology of the name of Jesus, helps us come to terms with the priority of Jesus for the understanding and practice of ministry. Three name verses will guide our thinking: Acts 4:7, Acts 4:12 and Acts 4:30.

In this chapter I will reflect on the theology of the name of Jesus as it unfolds in Acts 4:7 and Acts 4:12, where we find established the singular authority of Jesus Christ. The rest of this book will be an extended reflection on Acts 4:30, where we read that ministry is performed through the name of Jesus. Such practical theology is truly radical, and I will try to unpack it as clearly as possible as we go along. While I will illustrate how the theology is lived out in ministry, this is a book about theology because it is a book about Jesus.

In the Name of Jesus

We will start with the basic story outline of Acts 3-4. Peter and John are going up to the temple for the midafternoon service of prayer. “A man lame from birth was being carried in” (Acts 3:2) to be placed at the entrance so he could ask for alms. Peter and John have no disposable income to help the man, but Peter offers him something he did not ask for. “I have no silver or gold, but what I have I give you; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk” (Acts 3:6). And he does!

Needless to say the healing greatly excites the crowd. Peter seizes the opportunity to preach. He interprets the Lord Jesus as the fulfillment of the faith of Israel and calls on the people to repent and believe that Jesus is Israel’s Messiah (Acts 3:11-26).

Naturally the temple leadership is upset. They arrest Peter and John and the next day bring them before a hurriedly assembled tribunal of religious leaders. The scene is not hard to imagine. The religious authorities had thought that the Jesus movement had been dealt with by his execution. We killed him; he’s done with. Now here are his apparent disciples healing people and saying that Jesus somehow is alive and doing deeds of power. They say he is resurrected.

The charge against Peter and John is the proclamation that “in Jesus there is the resurrection of the dead” (Acts 4:2). In the fervid theological and political atmosphere of occupied Jerusalem, upsetting the religious peace is a dangerous game. This spiritual insurrection must be put down once and for all.

Which God?

The public interrogation of Peter and John begins with the question “By what power or by what name did you do this?” (Acts 4:7). Notice the correlation between power and name. Perhaps it is not such an obvious correlation. They were asking “To what authority do you appeal? In whose name do you act? Which God do you represent?”

What is going on here is not a local squabble over fine points of theology. It is not the equivalent of a denominational debate or a theologians’ roundtable. We have to appreciate that everything the old order stands for is assumed in the question “By what name?” The authorities’ question expresses profound anxiety over the apparent emergence of a counterword which might displace the existing systems of authority, meaning, power and control. The leaders realize that everything is at stake: their job, their faith, their nation, their identity and their worldview.

If the name of this man Jesus is the name of power, if it means the actuality of God in present experience, then it is a fundamental challenge to the status quo. Everything apart from the name of Jesus is profoundly called into question, including every claim to power and authority, whether political or religious, social or personal, intellectual or moral.

We see the magnitude of what is at stake in the distinguished company who are assembled: Annas the high priest, Caiaphas, John, Alexander and all who were with the high priestly family, along with the rulers, elders and scribes. Everyone who has a stake in the old order has arrived for the questioning. Everything depends on the answer to “By what name?”

Gentle Jesus?

Perhaps we must stretch our imaginations to comprehend the radical quality of the threat posed by the resurrected Jesus to the political and religious authorities of the day. As North American Protestants we are quite comfortable with Jesus. How much do we allow him to threaten anything or anyone anymore? Certainly we have our moral issues where we challenge our culture’s assumptions and behaviors in the name of Jesus. But I suspect for a broad swath of Christians, Jesus is a Lord at home in our celebrity-oriented culture: Jesus Christ, superstar. No tables get overturned. Rarely are demons denounced. No brood of vipers gets condemned. It is unlikely that authorities get provoked. Gentle Jesus, meek and mild. But that’s not what is going on in the Scripture passage before us.

Same Question, Different Forms

The interrogators’ question gets to the heart of things. “By what name?” The question ripples throughout the New Testament, though in different words, as the ultimate urgent question. Within it is embedded a total claim upon our lives with nothing excepted. John the Baptist sent two of his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come?” (Luke 7:19). The fulfillment of the whole history and theology of Israel lay behind John the Baptist’s question. Jesus asked his own disciples by the villages of Caesarea Philippi, “Who do people say that I am?” (Mark 8:27). In John’s version Peter responds, “We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God” (John 6:69). Paraphrasing this: “Your name is Yahweh, Yahweh saves.” It is either the most appalling blasphemy or the logos of truth alongside whom there is no other truth.

Jesus is Lord. Are we anymore capable of being stunned by that claim? Frankly I am not sure that we are. The unfamiliar has become all too familiar. What if this Jesus is not at home in our church, our culture or our worldview? Then we might understand something of the threat which the name of Jesus poses to all other claims to ultimate authority.

Who Are You, Lord?

“Who are you, Lord?” It is the question of Saul on the road to Damascus when he is confronted by the light and the voice from heaven (Acts 9:5). The question will provoke our reflections well beyond this chapter. Not only faith itself but the whole of ministry turns on the answer.

For Saul the question totally devastates him and changes his life and his ministry forever. Like Elijah before him, Saul is commissioned for ministry by the Word of God. The question he asked concerns the identity of truth, meaning and reality in no disguise. Saul asked it with a willingness to deal head-on with the answer. I will address the question “Who are you, Lord?” under the Acts 4:12 declaration of “no other name.” In the next chapter I will reflect on the appropriate priority of asking the “Who?” question in Christology.

For now let us stay a little longer with the question “By what name?” because it opens up aspects of the deep confusion within both church and society concerning truth, authority, meaning and value. By what name will I live and act? By what name can I accurately interpret history? By what name is there a ground for hope beyond the ravages of divorce, cancer, abuse, war and death?

Between Two Extremes

We walk a fine line here because we must pick our way between at least two competing worldviews. The clash between them and the success of either will form the potentially tragic history of the twentyfirst century.

On the one hand we see around us a culture, both popular and intellectual, tipping headlong into postmodernist relativism. It insists, Leave me alone with my truth. That is the genesis of the diversity gospel we hear everywhere today. At its deadliest it ends in nihilism. Consider the body-pierced, tattooed images of the rock and sports stars who are thrust in front of our children on mainstream media. Who can doubt that we are rushing headlong into the moral abyss?

On the other hand, we also see around us a world grasping at absolutes and even killing for them. We see it in the amazing and deadly appeal of various religious and political fundamentalisms.

We ride the pendulum as it swings between two extremes. On one side is metaphysical chaos with its culture of self-destructive hedonism and dumbed-down ethics, summed up in the ubiquitous catchword Whatever. On the other side is metaphysical rigidity with violent, sometimes deadly consequences for disobedience.

The impasse between the two extremes locks churches and society in its grasp. Indeed the contemporary world with its intensifying internecine warfare is in part the result of this partisan bifurcation of experience. As the philosophical structures of the modern world collapse, is the only choice between chaos and absolutism? Is there another option? Is there another way?

Who Is Truth?

“By what name?” The question does not pose the issue of truth in any abstract manner. It does not lend itself to either ideological deconstruction or exclusive doctrinal affirmation. The question of truth is now posed as a personal question.

Suppose that the central issue of truth is not the nihilistic claim that there is no truth or the liberal query “Which truth?” or the absolutist claim of this truth and no other. Suppose those are all false options and the real question is Who is truth? What if truth at its heart is about a relationship with a person before subscription to an idea?

If priority is given to the “Who?” question, it is appropriate and even necessary to ask, What then is the truth’s name? We should not merely ask, “In what do I believe?” Instead we should ask, “In whom do I believe?” Truth is about being in love rather than being right. Truth is lived in terms of a relationship with God and not in terms of vindication.

Christians understand that we are not right, for no one is righteous. Only God is right. Because Christians understand truth specifically in terms of the name—that is, the person—of Jesus, truth is about a person and a relationship with that person which he has established from his side.

Communion with God

Christianity at its core is not about subscription to a theological system or the authority of a sacred text or ethical perspectives, although they are all important. Christianity at its core is about the selfreferenced claim by a person who said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). That person calls us into relationship with himself, which means communion with God. He showed and taught us that his way is love and mercy and forgiveness. His truth is not just his teaching but his person. His life is life indeed because in union with him we have communion with God.

The Christian claim is that at the end of the day, at the end of life, you and I have to deal with Jesus. Christianity is about a person and therefore it is about personhood. That means a great deal when we deal with other people, especially people who differ from us in their faiths, ethics, political ideas and worldviews.

Jesus Waits at the Beginning

Recently I heard a lecture by an English Methodist who is both a scientist and a Christian theologian. He was talking about the scientific debate over the Big Bang, and he used an image that I found quite arresting. He told us that physicists have pushed backwards in time to 10-47 of a second after the Big Bang. I am not a physicist; I am not sure what that figure means other than that it is an infinitesimally small period of time. As physicists push back to the beginning of everything, the models of the laws of physics seem to unravel. Our mathematics can’t cope. Then he said something like this: I imagine some brilliant theoretical physicist sometime soon pushing back to the beginning of all things. It will be like climbing a huge incredibly difficult mountain. And as the physicist struggles over the final intellectual ledge to see the beginning of creation in all its staggering immensity and intensity, that physicist will see Jesus sitting there waiting with a smile of greeting and welcome.

If Jesus is the eternal logos come in the flesh of his humanity, as we believe he is, then such a scenario is quite plausible. Ultimate truth is a person who has a name, whether in physics or in theology.

Not What Or How, But Who?

Pontius Pilate asked the wrong question when he confronted Jesus and asked “What is truth?” (John 18:38) The question of truth is a not a What? or a How? question but a Who? question. Ultimately physics and every other sphere of human inquiry will end up having to give the answer Truth’s name is Jesus.

Now I will go where wise angels fear to tread and take the risk of saying something quite provocative. One of...