Common Love for the Words of the Gospel

Excerpt from Anthony D. Baker - ChristianityToday:  Learning to Read the Gospel Again

A few months ago, a graduate student in practical theology asked Stanley Hauerwas for his perspective on new church movements, especially emergent church movements. Disarming and epigrammatic as ever, the man whom Time once called "America's Best Theologian" replied, "The future of the church is not found in things like this; the future is doing the same thing Sunday after Sunday."

This may seem dismissive. The student certainly took it that way, and indicated as much on his blog. I want to suggest, though, that Hauerwas was essentially right. ...

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So what do we do? Perhaps the answer is much simpler, and more "old-fashioned," than we think: Maybe we ought to be teaching churchgoers to read the gospel. The first thing Muslim children learn about Christians is one of the last things Christians learn about themselves: we are a "people of the Book." Perhaps we ought to ask how to make this observation from the Qur'an true, once more, among those who fellowship around the Bible. How can we form ourselves as a people of the Book?

The first thing Muslim children learn about Christians is one of the last things Christians learn about themselves: we are a 'people of the Book.'

Any decent elementary-school librarian knows that getting children to read is about giving them a chance to love a story—to miss it during mundane events like math and dinner, and to fight throughout the day for chances to hide away with the characters and adventures to which they've become attached. Of course, what Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John offer us is a story, but not just a story. It's also the linguistic vessel through which we encounter the loving, creating, and saving God. The central character in this narrative loves us back. After asking, "Do you love what you are reading?" the Christian educator ought to be able to add, "And are you loved by what you are reading?"

If we could surrender our anxiety-ridden need for novelty, we could think about how to "work with the words" of the gospel in a way that makes God's loving call resound anew for children and adults alike. In learning to read the gospel, we would be giving ourselves the greatest and most formative gift possible: the gift of love for the fundamental story of the world, and a way of receiving and experiencing the divine love that story narrates. Imagine a church in which children and adults of all ages, races, and classes were bound together by their common love for the words of the gospel. If Christians can learn, week after week, to read the story of Jesus of Nazareth—to love what we read, to be loved by what we read—then surely the future of the church would look a bit more hopeful.