Wild Gospel

Morgan Alison

Description

A prophetic challenge to the Western church. The Christian faith is always subversive to the dominant world view. Jesus overturned every assumption which stopped people experiencing the living reality of God - the heart of truth. Sadly, the Western world has reduced "truth" to the merely rational, and then discarded it as inadequate. In Africa, and other parts of the world where God's truth has never been straitjacketed in this way, the church is characterised by a joy now absent in the West. Western culture has limited what we can believe and receive. Can we: Burst free from this restrictive secular framework? Learn not only to know truth, but to feel it, and live it? Live our faith in such a way that it becomes real to those around us? Alison Morgan shows that Jesus lived free from the culturally imposed norms which restrict our understanding of truth. Examining church history, prophecy past and present, the state of our culture and of the church today, and drawing on personal experience and the experience of others, Alison blends analysis and imagination, history and poetry in this prophetic challenge to Western Christians.

Sujets

• Christianity
• Philosophie et théologie

Informations

• Publié par: Lion Hudson
• Date de parution: 18 octobre 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780857211637
• Langue: English

Extrait

Copyright © 2004 Alison Morgan This edition copyright © 2004 Lion Hudson
The right of Alison Morgan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published by Monarch Books an imprint of Lion Hudson plc Wilkinson House, Jordan Hill Road, Oxford OX2 8DR Tel: [phone] Fax: [phone] Email: [e-mail] www.lionhudson.com/monarch
Reprinted 2005, 2009.
Published in conjunction with ReSource, 4 Old Station Yard, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 3LD
UK: ISBN 978 1 85424 672 1 US: ISBN 978 0 8254 6070 8 e-ISBN 978 0 85721 163 7
First edition 2004
Unless otherwise stated, Scripture quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) of the Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America and are used by permission. All rights reserved.
British Library Cataloguing Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover image: John Warden/SuperStock
THE WILD GOSPEL
What does it mean to live by truth? What is truth? We live in a world which has lost touch with truth, which has reduced it to the merely rational and then discarded it as inadequate to explain the complexity of our lives.
But truth is more than fact or concept. Truth is the living force of reality itself, the power of God in the universe. Incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ, truth is not just factual but personal, not just intellectual but profoundly emotional. Reality is not just to be explained but discovered, not to be understood so much as experienced. Can we burst free from the inherited framework of our culture, and learn not just to know truth but to feel it and live it, in such a way that it becomes real to those around us?
In this highly original book, Alison Morgan shows that Jesus himself lived free from the culturally imposed norms which restrict our understanding of truth. Offering a challenge to the world into which he came, Jesus overturned every assumption which kept people from experiencing the living reality of God. Examining church history, prophecy past and present, the state of our culture and of the church today, and drawing both on personal experience and the experience of others, Alison blends analysis and imagination, history and poetry in this prophetic challenge to the Western church. For a free group study guide to The Wild Gospel please visit www.alisonmorgan.co.uk .
 
A linguist and medievalist by background, the Revd Dr Alison Morgan has written a number of books, including an internationally recognised work on the poet Dante. She is the editor of Rooted in Jesus, a discipleship course for Africa now in use in 10 countries, co-author (with John Woolmer) of the ReSource healing course In His Name and (with Bill Goodman) of the Lent course Season of Renewal, and a contributor to the Mission Shaped Questions collection of essays. Alison works for ReSource as a thinker and writer, and travels the country to support and encourage the Church as it seeks renewal for mission. She is a member of the Archbishops’ College of Evangelists. After many years in parish ministry in Corby and Leicester, Alison and her husband Roger now live in Somerset with their three children. Alison’s website is www.alisonmorgan.co.uk
 
 
ReSource is a ministry with an Anglican distinctive, seeking to serve the Church by teaching, training, and encouraging people to renew their lives and their church through the power of the Holy Spirit so that God’s message of life-changing love reaches out to others. It publishes resources and a regular magazine, and works all over the country through a scattered and travelling team of people with complementary giftings and experience. ReSource ’s vision is to help build a church which is diverse, local, renewed in the Spirit and effective in mission.
Our role is to encourage – to try to bring a new sense of optimism and confidence to those who love our Church and are giving their lives to serve it. Our prayer and our aim is to see the Church increasingly renewed for mission in the power of the Holy Spirit. We do not have personal experience of God raising the dead, but we do know from our own experience that God is real and powerful and able to bring new life to individuals, churches, and communities. We also know that he does this in all manner of ways, in all age groups, and in the context of many denominations and church traditions. Our mission in ReSource is to tell the Church again about this God and, by listening carefully to them, help leaders and their congregations to try new things and trust God to breathe new life into them.
ReSource is based at 13 Sadler St, Wells, Somerset BA5 2RR. Please visit our website at www.resource-arm.net
To Roger, Edward, Bethy and Katy
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Cover Title Page Copyright THE WILD GOSPEL Dedication ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS FOREWORD INTRODUCTION PART ONE: THE MINISTRY OF JESUS     CHAPTER ONE: JESUS AND THE CULTURE OF HIS DAY     CHAPTER TWO: JESUS AND THE INDIVIDUAL     CHAPTER THREE: JESUS’ TEACHINGS: A NEW VISION PART TWO: WHAT WORKS AND WHAT DOESN’T     CHAPTER FOUR: THE GOSPEL IN HISTORY     CHAPTER FIVE: THE GOSPEL TODAY: ASSESSING A CULTURE     CHAPTER SIX: THE TASK OF THE CHURCH: DANGER AND OPPORTUNITY     CHAPTER SEVEN: SEIZING THE MOMENT PART THREE: A GOSPEL FOR OUR TIMES     CHAPTER EIGHT: CHANGING INDIVIDUALS: LIVING IN THE TRUTH OF CHRIST     CHAPTER NINE RENEWING THE CHURCH: LIVING IN THE POWER OF THE HOLY SPIRIT     CHAPTER TEN RELATING TO THE WORLD: LIVING IN THE LOVE OF THE FATHER BIBLIOGRAPHY
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My thanks are due to those who have stood alongside me as I have written. I am especially indebted to Jenny Ridge, who has prayed faithfully with me throughout; to Martin Cavender, for his constant challenge and encouragement; to John Woolmer, for leadership and inspiration in Africa; and to Tony Collins, my publisher, for his early belief in the book. Meriel Cullen, Nicola Vollkommer and my father Bill Keymer have read from first draft to final version and offered me many helpful remarks over the five years it has taken me to produce the book; and Roger Coleman, Jonathan Hesketh, Bob Jackson, Laurence Singlehurst, Laurie White, and Sue Young have all made invaluable comments and observations at various stages. They haven’t of course been able to rescue me from the fact that I am me, and errors and infelicities are therefore mine alone (as is the at times deliberately idiosyncratic typesetting). I am grateful to those who have allowed me to share their story, either by name or under a pseudonym. Of all that I have read, I have benefited most particularly from the writings of Walter Brueggemann.
More widely I would like to thank the people of northern Zambia and of the Diocese of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, who have welcomed me amongst them and shared their world with me, to my immeasurable benefit; and the members of Holy Trinity, Leicester, amongst whom I live, work and grow.
But most of all I would like to thank my husband Roger, for all these things and more.
FOREWORD
This remarkable book is about renewal in body, mind and spirit. It is eloquent and beautiful, about the re-creation of people, self-discovery and fullness of life, both individual and corporate. It is a book about God and his beloved people, God and his Church in its mission to his world. Most profoundly it is a book about life, which reminds me of those words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Christianity is not about religion – it is about making humanity, and making it as God intended it to be”; or St Irenaeus in the second century, “The glory of God is a human being fully alive”.
There is a moment in Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ when Jesus is depicted as falling, yet again, under the weight of the cross as he makes his bloody, battered, death-imminent way along what we have named the Via Dolorosa. His mother presses through the crowd and the flailing soldiers to cup his face in her hands for one last time. The figure of Jesus utters in that snatched second the glorious words, “Behold, I make all things new”.
It may not be biblically accurate in its timing – the words actually appear in Revelation 21:5, given to St John on Patmos – but the exchange is vital to our understanding of what Jesus Christ was doing for the world he had made as he gave his life, covered with blood and sweat and spit. In his death all humankind was made new. In this book Alison Morgan shows us brilliantly what that renewal means.
Bishop Tom Wright in his commentary on the gospel of St Mark speaks about the renewal in Jesus himself, as he was baptised by John in the Jordan at the beginning of his ministry. He speaks about the experience for Jesus as the Holy Spirit descended upon him in the form of a dove, and its intimate connection with the experience of the Christian believer – whether for the first time or in a constant remaking on the road. Mark says, “This is how it happened… he saw the heavens open”. Tom Wright responds from the biblical roots of the phrase, “It doesn’t mean that Jesus saw a little door ajar miles up in the sky. It’s more as though an invisible curtain, right in front of us, was suddenly pulled back, so that instead of the trees and flowers and buildings, or in Jesus’ case the river, the sandy desert and the crowds, we are standing in the presence of a different reality altogether”. Behold, I make all things new – or, in the words of St Paul, “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (2 Corin