The Bible as "Story", part 3: "Waiting for the Messiah..."

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The Saviour of Sinners and Saints: a reflection for Day 35 of Lent

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“Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.” (Luke 19.9-10)      Jesus and the disciples continue to journey towards Jerusalem. [1]   The number of people thronging around Jesus is increasing (Lk. 11.14, 29; 12.1; 13.22; 14.25; 19.1-3), and so is the tension between Jesus and the obstinate members of “his generation”.   Besides announcing imminent judgment, Jesus is feasting and telling stories.   Jesus’ “gospel” is bad news for the self-sufficient, smug and vengeful and good news for the poor, desperate and trusting.      The second episode showcasing the reactions of rich men to the challenge of the kingdom is found in Luke 19.   This chapter resonates with chapter 15, as Jesus once again dines with a (chief) tax collector, a notorious sinner from Jericho (Lk. 19.2, 7).   Also, the “punchline” of th...
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       Haters .   Does anyone hate you?   We all have “haters”, don’t we?   Have you ever been lied about?   Have people gossiped about you?   Have people accused you of things that you didn’t do?   It hurts when this happens, and it can scare us into being very careful and cautious in what we say and do.   It can be quite frightening to be hated, to know that people are saying mean things about you, most probably behind your back or perhaps on social media.   Of course, most haters don’t have the courage to directly confront those they are hating on.   If we don’t make an intentional decision to continue to be authentic, to be our genuine selves, fear can easily make us hide – perhaps literally – to hide who we are and what we believe.      When we read the Gospel, we find that Jesus had many haters.   From early on in his ministry, there were people who despised him so much that they wanted to ...
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Executive Summary      In what follows, I (briefly) tell the biblical story of redemption/salvation, understood as being the fulfillment, in and through Jesus of Nazareth, of the promises of God to Abraham (around the 20 th century B.C.).  One could define the (Hebrew) Bible as being the story of how the Creator God promised to save/rescue the world through Abraham and his descendants, and the “New Testament” as being the story of how God fulfilled those promises in and through Jesus, understood to be the Messiah (promised King) of Israel and therefore, the Lord of the world.  As far as biblical soteriology is concerned, it’s all about Abraham (and by extension, the nation of Abraham’s descendants, Israel ).  This “Israel dimension” of biblical theology has often been neglected in Christian doctrinal theology, but is now making a comeback within the world of biblical studies thanks to the recent prominence of narrative approaches to theology. ...
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