So What Makes Our Teaching Christian?

Teaching in the Name, Spirit, and Power of Jesus

Pazmino

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2008
• eBook ISBN: 9781498275026
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This work explores a perennial question that Christians who are called to teach must consider: So what makes our teaching Christian? It considers the essential and distinctive elements of Christian teaching by examining the apostles' teaching ministry in the Book of Acts and aspects of Jesus's own teaching in the Gospel of John. It proposes how teaching in the name, spirit, and power of Jesus relates to the teaching ministries of Christians today. For example, an in-depth look at Jesus's teaching of both Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman known in Christian tradition as Photini provides insights for transformative teaching of both insiders and outsiders in a Christian community. This work is a theological, pastoral, and educational exploration of Christian teaching that has implications for both laity and clergy in their ministries.

1

Theological Basics

In exploring the ministry of teaching in Jesus’ name, Christian teachers are dealing with a practical theology. A practical theology deals with our understanding of God in relation to our actual lives, teaching ministries, and practices. In bearing the name of Jesus, these ministries imply a practical Christology, an understanding of the person and work of Jesus the Christ with implications for the practice of teaching. While each chapter of this work explores theological basics and connections, this chapter directly proposes a practical Christology. This chapter considers how Jesus’ legacy is played out in the ministries of his followers, in particular the ministry of teaching. One question emerges in relation to this chapter: What did Jesus model in his teaching that his followers today ought to emulate? As Christian teachers we recognize Jesus’ unique person as God’s Son and his redemptive work.

In relation to each of the three parts of this work I propose a theological category that helps to both ground and launch consideration of the Christian ministry of teaching. First, in relation to teaching in the name of Jesus, the incarnation looms prominent in affirming a sense of identity for Christian teachers. One’s Christian identity centers in one’s adoption as a child of God and one’s calling as a follower of Jesus. Second, in relation to teaching in the spirit of Jesus, the crucifixion emerges in inviting compassion that embraces both suffering and service as a commitment for Christian teachers. Third, in relation to teaching in the power of Jesus, the resurrection provides a model for guiding how Christian teachers consider the possibility of reformation, which invites transformation in their ministries and in the lives of their students and their wider communities. Therefore the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus provide three touchstones for teaching respectively in the name, spirit, and power of Jesus. These touchstones for Christian teaching provide a sense of identity, a model for compassion, and an embrace of reformation that Jesus himself modeled in his teaching ministry. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus are theologically and practically essential to teaching that is Christian in name.

Incarnation: Identity and Calling

By teaching in the name of Jesus, Christians serve, in a representative fashion, their Lord and Savior. Christians bear the name of Christ. They embrace as followers those virtues and values that typified the teaching ministry and life of Jesus. Christian virtues or values need to be incarnated in their own teaching practices. This flows from embracing Jesus’ plenipotentiary, or full potential, authority. A plenipotentiary role carries full representative authority and responsibility. Jesus, as incarnate, fully represented God in human form and fully revealed God, even while laying aside his divine privileges. He was fully divine, fully human, and fully one as God’s Son who came to earth.1 The prologue to John’s gospel celebrates Jesus’ incarnation in John 1:1–18 as the Word of God became flesh and assumed a home in God’s creation. John 1:17 declares, “The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” Such a clear declaration of Jesus’ identity does not discount any grace or truth coming through Moses, but notes the distinct contributions of Jesus’ very person and arrival on earth in human form.

Christian Virtues

To elaborate upon John 1:17, I suggest that along with truth, God’s grace in Jesus finds expression in the Christian virtues of faith, hope, love, and joy. These five virtues of truth, faith, hope, love, and joy capture what Christian teachers are called to incarnate in their teaching ministries. They are to faithfully represent their identity as followers of Jesus the Master Teacher. By assuming the name of Jesus and following him as disciples, Christian teachers strive for embodiment, or living out, those virtues that best characterize Jesus and, therefore, represent his essential character. Christian teachers, given their real limitations and sins, do not fully exemplify Jesus in their individual ministries, but they hold this potential in their corporate expressions to be identified as the Body of Christ, as God’s children (daughters and sons), and as a household of the Spirit. Henri Nouwen expands upon the importance of our corporate witness:

I have found it over and over again how hard it is to be truly faithful to Jesus when I am alone. I need brothers and sisters to pray with me, to speak with me about the spiritual task at hand, and to challenge me to stay pure in mind, heart, and body. But far more important, it is Jesus who heals, not I; Jesus who speaks words of truth, not I; Jesus who is Lord, not I. This is very clearly visible when we proclaim the redeeming power of God together. Indeed, whenever we minister together, it is easier for people to recognize that we do not come in our own name, but in the name of the Lord Jesus who sent us.2

As Christ’s Body, Christians, through diverse teaching ministries, historically and globally bring glory and honor to the name of Jesus. They can also dishonor Jesus’ name in their efforts. This, I was reminded, while serving as an academic dean and hearing from students about their experiences with my theological colleagues.

While teaching in a representative fashion in Jesus’ name, Christians recognize ways in which their actual practices fail to embody Christian virtues. Both personal practices and corporate designs and structures may fail to uphold the name of Jesus. They often detract from the ideals incarnated in Jesus’ ministry. The naming of these real gaps, and the confession of sin by persons and those who represent structures and associations, are necessary for the possibility of more faithful expressions in the present and future. The recognition of the need for change and transformation is also a matter of Jesus’ prophetic tradition of teaching.

Jesus, in his own practice, can be seen as a popular prophet in representing the little tradition of agrarian Galilee and of those who stood on the margins of the official great teaching tradition and temple system of his time. The little tradition of Galilee honored the popular culture of the village and common folk, as compared with the elites of the great tradition from Jerusalem.3 He confronted those patterns of unfaithful practices that were contrary to God’s ultimate purposes and intentions for all persons, regardless of their class or standing. This requires of Christian teachers the maintenance of space allowing for disagreement or alternatives to what may be advocated, in any particular teaching setting, by those with the authority to teach. Dialogue is crucial that permits those who participate in teaching to voice their responses and thoughts, even if they stand in contrast to the teacher’s perspective. The freedom to learn and think requires the extension of choice in teaching practices. This freedom does not discount the wisdom shared by the teacher and the support of necessary forms and discipline required for educational decorum. Forms and discipline can, in practice, support the dialogue and freedom required for the ownership of learning by persons who sit or journey with their teachers. This presents a paradox and tension for Christian teachers, but a necessary one.

Paradoxes

The amazing paradox suggested by the incarnation itself is that Christian teachers are called to incarnate in their ministries the very presence of Jesus Christ. Just as Jesus incarnated God in his very earthly presence, Christian teachers are to represent the very life and spirit of Jesus in their persons and teaching practices. This is a high calling, and worthy of the most diligent and receptive of Christians, to abide in Christ as Christ graciously abides by his spirit in the lives of believers. This reality fulfills Jesus’ prayer as recorded in John 17:20–23:

As you, Father, are in me and I in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

This amazing paradox is also a glorious one where Jesus is made present through the faithful teaching ministries of his disciples in a representative way. In this process Christian teachers recognize the gaps, dysfunctions, and discrepancies in their own lives and ministries. Nevertheless, at their best, Christian teachers rely upon the spirit of Jesus Christ to correct and transcend those gaps, known theologically as sin, in order to represent the living Christ in their ministries.

The desire to better represent Jesus is based upon God’s love made manifest in Jesus. The apostle Paul captures this perspective in sharing with the Philippian Christians: “Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain” (Phil 1:20b–21). According to Paul’s life motto, living in a teaching ministry is Christ where Christ is seen through the faithful efforts of a Christian teacher. Paul, in this same letter, suggests additional insights regarding this mystery in admonishing the beloved believers: “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil 2:12b–13). Christian teachers’ strivings are complemented by reliance upon God’s gracious working within them to accomplish divine purposes. This divine working embraces the paradoxes of life and death, and both divine and human efforts with their roots in the incarnation.

For Christian teachers the incarnation suggests presence and availability, just as God is made present in the person of Jesus. Such a presence and availability is in a way that is representative of Jesus. Representing Jesus is an awesome challenge that implies both responsibility and privilege. Christian teachers are responsible to be good stewards of their gifts for teaching. Christian teachers are privileged to have access to the all that the triune God intends for humanity, with God as the educator of all creation, Jesus as the exemplar for teaching practice, and the Holy Spirit as ever-present partner in one’s calling to teach. This accessibility follows from a full appreciation of what God has accomplished in Jesus’ incarnation.

Christ’s incarnated life finds further expression in the faithful ministries of Christian teachers. Teachers rely upon God’s Spirit graciously working both within and despite them, sometimes in a paradoxical way.4 Standing in the tradition of Jesus and following Jesus as disciples calls for honoring, in faithful ways, what Jesus modeled and taught. If Jesus can serve effectively as an exemplar, that I have proposed in my previous writings, Christian teachers must attend to those virtues that most cohere with his teaching practices. I identify five Christian virtues for teaching, namely love, faith, hope, joy, and truth. In one setting where I taught on this topic, one participant proposed the additional virtue of humility to my lineup.5

Humility

Humility can serve to identify the ways in which Christians embrace any virtues and how they are shared with others. Humility implies that if Christ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Theological Basics
• Part One: Teaching in the Name of Jesus
• Part Two: Teaching in the Spirit of Jesus
• Part Three: Teaching in the Power of Jesus
• Conclusion
• Bibliography