pat loughery

As we’re restarting, I’m in zealous pursuit of a True image of Jesus for myself and for our church. I want us to shed our preconceived notions, our culturally-infected understandings, our self-imposed limitations on the creator of the universe. I want us to deconstruct Jesus, and reconstruct Jesus based upon the images we see revealed in the Gospels. I want us to recapture the Jesus who was kind yet offensive; single-minded yet welcoming; revolutionary, radical, intriguing and difficult to grasp. I want us to understand how our lives much change if we truly choose to follow His path.

To that end, we’re trying an approach to our Bible discussion time that I’m very excited about. To sketch the approach in outline, I’m asking people to choose one of the 4 Gospels and read it through the next month (many times if possible; many gospels is fine also). During that time, as much as possible, lay aside your previous understanding of Jesus and see him again for the first time. I have provided a list of about 13 questions that I’m asking people to track notes on as they read; these questions will form discussion frameworks when we get together on Sunday evenings. During Sunday evenings we’ll compare notes a bit, and hope to spark some discussion about the Jesus(es) we are encountering on the page. I have no prepared sermon//discussion for this time; I’m just participating like everybody else is.

This approach has a few exciting strengths:

• It drives us each back to the Scripture with a need for fresh insight
• It gives us the opportunity to build a composite image of Jesus from the 4 Gospels
• It gives us the opportunity to build a composite image of Jesus from the findings of our community and what they see as important
• It makes us attentive to the leading of the Spirit, as we may see themes or emphases emerging from within us
• Everybody gets to play: (those with no Biblical understanding whatsoever, and those with advanced training and N. T. Wright memorized)

At the same time, I hope and expect that what we find is like a slap in the face – that the Jesus here is somehow different from the Jesus we’ve previously followed, and we have to understand what to do in order to follow the real Jesus. I emphasized that each of us will find things that are attractive to us, and things that Jesus says and does that are offensive – and if we’re not offended, we’re not paying attention. My hope is that as I’m reading John 6 for example, and I see Jesus say that I have to eat his flesh and drink his blood, I don’t just gloss over that and think of pita bread and grape juice because that is how my tradition of faith has expressed that passage.

That’s already working. Last week, as we kicked off the project (I’d sent the email out the week before, but lots of our folks aren’t email-driven), one of our guys gave us an example. He mentioned that he’s seeing how much Jesus goes out of his way to pursue people who are messed up, and how much he and we just try to avoid them. Now please understand, our crew is small, but we are out there with the broken people. Several of us have given shelter to addicts in the last year (our favorites are cocaine and heroin at this moment). Most of us have directly fed the poor, and we have postponed the start of our worship gatherings on more than one occasion to continue our conversation with the homeless guy who hangs out near the bulding we used to meet at. We’re not disengaged from the messed up people, but we’re seeing how much Jesus actively pursued them rather than engaged when he happened to stumble across them.

Below are the questions we are currently pursuing. I imagine that these questions will be highly modified tonight though (I’m seeing that there is duplication, and I’m getting a lot more notes on a few questions than I am on others).

Here’s the email I sent to our crew – it’s been slightly updated with some verbal discussion, but hopefully it will give you a flavor for this approach.

Hey, everybody – I hope your Holiday break is going extremely well for you all. May this season be one of joy made real to you!

I’d like to introduce you to January’s focus for our Bible discussions. I would like for us to rediscover Jesus, if that makes sense.

It is incredibly important that we as a Christian community fix our eyes on Jesus and the reality of God’s kingdom. In order to begin the new life of this community in a meaningful way, I’m going to ask you to study Jesus by reading one of the four Gospel accounts over the next month. You can pick your Gospel – Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. Let me know which one you’re going to focus on.

You need no expertise or previous training. In fact, I’m going to ask you to suspend any understanding or teaching you’ve had about Jesus and try as best as possible to see Jesus with fresh eyes as you read the story. Think of yourself as an alien (from Mars or the Amazon basin, take your choice) with absolutely no understanding of the Christian life – and your only way to find out about Jesus is this story in your hands. As you read, ask the Holy Spirit to lead you and show you with fresh eyes what God wants you to notice.

Some (perhaps most) of you will want to read from a Bible (your ‘regular’ translation or another one, to get a fresh take). Some will want to listen to the Bible on CD; if you don’t have one I can loan you mine. I also have Matthew and John on DVD if you’d like to borrow them. It would be extremely helpful for you to read your Gospel story more than once if at all possible.

As you read (or listen to or watch) your Gospel account, please take notes on the things that catch your attention. What is Jesus’ mission? What is his message? How does he accomplish this? Jot down notes wherever you want – a journal, a blank sheet of paper, a voice recorder, a Word document. It would be great if you can answer these questions with references to chapters and verse of your Gospel story along with a summary of the story: (for example, ‘john 3; Jesus and Nicodemus talk about birth’).

When we come together, I will pick a few of these questions to shape our discussion for the evening. You’ll find that there are common themes to all 4 Gospels, and there are striking differences in what each Gospel story emphasizes. Be warned: I’m not doing a sermon during January; we’re going on this journey together and each of us has a perspective to bring which is helpful.

For the month of January, we’ll focus our discussion around these questions, and you may want to keep notes on your understanding of Jesus around these questions. In no particular order…

1. What message or messages does Jesus repeat in your Gospel story?
2. How does Jesus describe his reason for ministry? (his mission)
3. How does Jesus treat social outcasts?
4. What expectations does Jesus have of his disciples?
5. How does Jesus train his disciples?
6. How does Jesus capture the attention of the crowds around him?
7. How does Jesus serve people’s needs?
8. What about Jesus’ life and teaching is most attractive to you?
9. What is difficult, challenging or difficult to believe about Jesus’ teaching and life?
10. Put yourself into the place of one of the disciples. Which one story would make you really desire to be a follower of Jesus? Which one story would make you want NOT to be a follower of Jesus?
11. Put yourself into the place of any other character in the Gospel story. (Pick your favorite story, the one that captures your attention the most). What is it about Jesus in this story that is most exciting to you?
12. Which story is the most difficult to grasp or understand or pattern your life upon?
13. What does Jesus demand of those who follow him?

Perhaps I’ll be able to record our discussion tonight on the iRiver. If it works, I’ll share it. If not, well… sorry.