Preaching in a sea of change.

The witness of St. Luke

I believe that Jesus is the Son of God. That is our common Christian confession. What does it mean? Luke's Gospel is filled with stories that flesh out this "son of God" reality. This theme is announced to Mary by the angel Gabriel in Luke's first chapter: "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God" (Lk 1:35).

In chapters 3 and 4 Luke puts together a series of stories in order to put flesh and blood on the concept of Son of God. In Chapter 3 we read that John the Baptist was out in the wilderness doing his baptism thing. "I baptize you with water," John announced to the crowd, "but one is coming who will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire." And John went on baptizing. Jesus himself entered the water with the crowds. When Jesus came out of the water something incredible happened. The Holy Spirit descended upon him in the bodily form of a dove. Bodily form, no less. This appears to be a permanent indwelling of the Spirit, not the temporary manifestations of the Spirit in the work of the Judges of old. And a voice came from heaven: "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased" (Luke 3:22). In the midst of John's multitudes God lays claim to Jesus as "beloved Son."

Luke follows up the baptismal story with a genealogy. Where is this genealogy headed? It is headed for the announcement that Jesus is finally the son of Adam, the son of God (Lk 3:38).

There once was a missionary translator living in Papua New Guinea. He was translating Luke's Gospel into the local language. He would translate a section, then have an assistant read it to the gathered villagers to gauge response. He didn't even translate this genealogy. When he completed Luke 24, however, he went back, finally, to translate it. His assistant read it aloud. The crowd was more responsive and alive and on their toes than for any section read from the whole Gospel! The missionary translator thought he had made a grave mistake. He was filled with fear. "What are they going to do to me?" he wondered. When the reading ended, the villagers responded with almost one voice. "You mean he is really real?" they shouted. "We thought you were talking about a spirit person. But he is really real!" The villagers understood the meaning of a genealogy. That's how they kept track of things. The genealogy turned out to be the most exciting part of Luke's Gospel for them.

That may well be why Luke puts it front and center. This may have been the most exciting way he knew to express the meaning of Jesus as Son of God. Jesus is connected to God through flesh and blood.

The Spirit of God then took Jesus to the wilderness for forty days of testing. Jesus was hungry. The devil knew that. Listen to that first temptation: "If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread." "Come on, Jesus. You can do it. That's what Sons of God do! They dazzle with glory. Go for the glory, Jesus." Jesus replied very simply: "One does not live by bread alone."

The devil did not give up. He kept trying to teach Jesus what it meant to be the Son of God. "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here. The angels will catch you. You won't be hurt at all. Go for it, Jesus. That's what Sons of God do. They reach for glory." Jesus answered: "Do not put the Lord your God to the test." Jesus did not grab for glory. That's not what it meant for him to be Son of God. Before there would be glory there would be much suffering and pain.

Jesus went home. What else do you do after such tough days in the wilderness? It was the Sabbath. They asked Jesus to read. He found the passage from Isaiah 61, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor [the year of Jubilee]" (Lk 4:18-19).

Jesus sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed upon him. Something had happened in that reading. They weren't sure what it was. Jesus said to them: "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. Isaiah was speaking about me. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. This is what it means to be Son of God. It means good news to the poor, release for captives, sight to the blind, freedom for the oppressed. It means Jubilee!"

The other half of the human race

I was very pleased to be asked to preach here today at the end of our Doctor of Ministry Residency, at the end of my Deanship of this wonderful program. Within minutes of being asked to preach, the Spirit (at least I hope it was the Spirit) put into my head the thought of making this sermon a kind of reflection on the 43 years that have transpired since I graduated from Wartburg Seminary. I believe that more change has occurred in these 43 years than in almost any other comparable period of time in the church's history. The first great change struck me in my first year of teaching at Wartburg Seminary in the early 1970s. Because of actions taken by my church, The American Lutheran Church, women could now be ordained. That meant that one-half of the human race who had been largely excluded from the official theological enterprise were now to be welcomed. One-half of the human race! That is an incredible change.

I rejoiced in this change. I was pleased to have women students in my classes. I didn't think much would change in my teaching due to this new reality. Little did I know! I remember the day in the first-year theology class when I gave my hard-hitting lecture on sin. I was good at this. I knew well from all my middle-class white mentors that sin had everything to do with pride, hubris, self-centeredness. I slammed the point home. I watched three women students walk out with their heads down. They didn't like my lecture. Very patiently they and many other women students got it through my thick male skull that there are other experiences of human life. Some experience life as those who are powerless, oppressed, victims, or diminished. I'll never forget the words of one of those wise women mentors: "Some people already feel this low [she gestured with her fingers]. Yet you call us to repent, to get even lower. We don't have any lower to go. We're looking for empowerment in the gospel." My world was being enlarged. I had to change my theological thinking.

The change didn't end with redefinitions of the human condition. There was also the problem of the Bible and the way it often violates women's reality. The exclusive male language for God was another problem. Elizabeth Johnson writes that "the symbol of God functions." If our symbols for God are all male, a hierarchy of value is established with men at the top and women at the bottom. These symbols function. Patriarchy reigns! Even some of the atonement models were and are problematic. They picture Jesus as destined for passive acceptance of suffering. These women knew that this theme was often used to keep abused women in their place. They were told to be submissive to their husbands after all, even in the Bible. They should do it willingly in Jesus' name. They should passively accept their suffering just like Jesus did. But the women asked, "Should they?" My world of experience had been enlarged. I had to change my theological thinking.

Liberation theology 

Then my world began to be touched by liberation theologians. The "two-thirds world" found its theological voice. People of color around the world found their theological voice. The poor found their theological voice. In Latin America the liberation theologians talked much of a Marxist analysis of the human situation. Now, that was during the Cold War years. Marx was not a nice name for many North Americans. Some turned these liberation theologians off in a heartbeat. What these southern neighbors of ours were trying to do was find a way to analyze properly their human condition. It was a condition that rested heavily upon economics. The economic systems of the West and the North dehumanized the peoples of the South. That was their Marxist analysis. Dehumanization was the basic human condition of the poor.

The theologians of the South wanted to be able to articulate a theology of empowerment for dehumanized peoples. They discovered that the Bible was filled with the reality of poverty. They discovered even more importantly that the God of the Bible had a "preferential option for the poor." This was a truly remarkable discovery which engendered a new kind of message of empowerment. But not for me. I didn't like this notion at all. I wasn't poor. If God has a preferential option for the poor, who was I in the eyes of the world and in the eyes of God? My own theological tradition has always been suspicious of the Gospel of Luke, the Gospel of the poor! I thought there were primarily theological reasons for this. But I began to wonder. Luke challenges our middle-class world. Luke enlarges my world. And again, I had to change my theological thinking.

In much of Latin America the empowerment for the poor came often through Bible study in the base communities. A simple method of Bible study was used. Three questions were often asked of the text: 1. What is going on in this text? 2. What was God/Jesus doing? 3. Who was getting mad? Well, of course, it was the people in power who were always getting mad. I was rather dumbstruck by all this. I had never in my life dreamed of Bible study as empowerment for the poor. More change for my mind.

The postmodern world

I graduated from seminary in the modern world. Now, according to many experts, we live in a postmodern world. As Bob Dylan sang in the 60s, "The times they are a changin'." The Enlightenment Project seems to have come to an end. This, too, is an astonishing change. The modern enlightenment world set the theological agenda for hundreds of years. It was a world of reason, science, logic. We theologians were constantly confronted with the task of rescuing something rational from the relics of the past. Rudolf Bultmann's enterprise was almost paradigmatic for its time. What we needed to do, he counseled, is demythologize. Discard the myths in which biblical stories are wrapped and hold on to the kerygma to which they point. I cut my theological eye teeth on this enterprise. I found ever new ways of salvaging the rational from the "outmoded" thought world of the Bible. I could demonstrate the objective truth of Christianity to all who would listen. Don't you bet that those were exciting sermons!

The postmodern world is variously described. Stanley Grenz in his book A Primer on Postmodernism describes the change in this way. We have moved, he writes, from a time when truth was solely rational to a time when we understand that truth also has an emotional and intuitive side. We have moved from a world where knowledge was thought to be objective to a world where we understand that truth is also subjective and local. We have moved from an optimistic to a pessimistic world view ... and this prior to 9/11. The postmodern motto is: All is difference. Pluralism reigns. I found that these changes also introduced me to a larger world. In thinking through proclamation of the faith in a postmodern world I had to once again change my theological mind.

My retrospective cannot be all inclusive. We haven't time for that. There are many other changes that have taken place as well. The social-political changes of these past four decades merit a sermon of its own! I have been introduced to many new worlds of thought and life. My world has been constantly enlarged. But let these examples stand for now. Monumental changes! And more are surely to come. That I leave to you. (Retirement does bring some relief at least.)

What shall we preach?

In this sea of change what can we hold on to? What can we grasp? What can we proclaim? Theologians and homileticians are working overtime on this question. Let me make just one humble suggestion. We can tell the stories of the Bible. We can tell the stories of Jesus the Son of God. And we can trust that the Holy Spirit will take that story on the longest journey in the world: the journey from the human ear to the human heart.

"Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing," Jesus said. "The Spirit of the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind, liberty to the oppressed, and the year of Jubilee for all." This story we can tell. This tale we can proclaim. This Son of God we can preach yesterday, today, and forever.

Richard A. Jensen

Professor Emeritus of Homiletics Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago 

A sermon preached on the occasion of his retirement from the Deanship of the ACTS Doctor of Ministry in Preaching program