N.T. Wright’s Parable [editor]

…let me end with a little parable. Returning one more time to the story of the two on the road to Emmaus and barring in mind something Jeremy mentioned in Matthew Arnold’s poem about Dover Beach with the sea of faith once full which had now retreated leaving ignorant armies clashing by night.

Two serious minded unbelievers are walking home together, trying to make sense of the world of the mid 1990s. The dream of progress and enlightenment has run out of steam. Critical post-modernity has blown the whistle on the world as we knew it. Our two unbelievers walk along the road to Dover Beach. They are discussing animatedly how these things can be. “How can the stories by which so many have lived, have let us down?” “How should we replace our now deeply ambiguous cultural symbols?” “What should we be doing in our world now that every dream of progress is stamped with the word Babel?”

Into this conversation comes Jesus incognito. It’s a good job they don’t recognize Him because modernism taught them to disbelieve in all religions and post-modernism rehabilitated so many that Jesus is just one guru among many. “What are you talking about?” He asks. They stand there looking sad. Then one of them, we better call him Jack, says, “You must be about the only person in town who doesn’t know what a traumatic time the 20^th century has been. We had a war to end wars and we’ve had nothing but more wars ever since! We had a sexual revolution and now we have AIDS and more family-less people than ever before! We pursued wealth but we had inexplicable recessions and we ended up with half the world in crippling debt! We can do what we like but we’ve all forgotten why we liked it! Our dreams have gone sour and we don’t even know who we are anymore. And now even the church has let us down, corrupting its spiritual message with talk of cosmic and political liberation.”

“Foolish ones,” replies Jesus. “How slow of heart you are to believe all that the Creator God has said. Did you never hear that He created His world wisely and that He is now active within His world to create a truly human people? And that from within this people He came to live as a truly human person… and that in His own death He dealt with evil once and for all? And that He is even now at work by his own Spirit to create a new human family in which repentance and forgiveness of sins are the order of the day… and so to challenge and overturn the rule of war and sex and money and power!?” And beginning with Moses and all the prophets and now also the apostles and prophets of the New Testament, He interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning Himself.

They arrived at Dover Beach. The sea of faith, having retreated with the outgoing tide of modernism, was full again as the incoming tide of postmodernism proved the truth of Chesterton’s dictum that when people stop believing in God they don’t believe in nothing, they believe in anything. On the shore there stood a great hungry crowd who had cast their bread on the retreating waters of modernism only to discover the incoming tide had brought them bricks and centipedes instead. The two travelers wearily began to get out a small picnic basket totally inadequate for the task. Jesus gentle took it from them. And in what seemed like moments he had gone to and fro on the beach until everyone was fed.

Then the eyes of them all were open and they realized who He was and He vanished from their sight. And the two said to each other, “Did not out hearts burn with us on the road as He told us the story of the Creator and His world, of His victory over evil?” And they rushed back to tell their friends what had happened on the road and how He had been made known in the breaking of the bread.

The part of Jesus in that story is to be played by you.

That is the so what?... that is why we have been given the Spirit. That is why we have been given the scriptures… that is where they find their truest authority. We are so to tell the true story of the world that God’s puzzled children find their hearts burning within them. We are so to act symbolically from breaking bread to healing the sick that we will be recognized as Jesus’ people. This is the so what? that results in our being found by the light and truth of God.

Comfort, comfort my peoples, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that her warfare is accomplished, her iniquity pardoned. Lift up your voice with strength, lift it up. Be not afraid. Say to the cities of Judah, “Behold – your God.”

Transcription from part of N.T. Wright’s lecture, So What?, found on the Veritas Forum. - jB