When an author writes, he/she often feels compelled to explain the “why” behind the substance. Here’s why I wrote The Feast. (NOTE: This was written before I changed jobs, moving from Rochester to Nashville).
For the last several years I’ve been teaching religion courses in Spirituality, New Testament, Gospel and Culture, and Christian Faith at Rochester College (Michigan) in the department of religion. I’ve also served as the teaching and young adult minister for a large local evangelical church. During this time, I’ve struggled to connect the power of the Jesus Story to people who, perhaps for the first time in American history, are learning what it might mean to be Christian in a post-Christian context. These students come from all segments of American Christianity: Catholic, Protestant (mainline and evangelical), and even some Anabaptists (though they might not use this word). And yet, together we’ve discovered that as real as the differences might be, the similarities are even greater.
As nationalism, apathy, idolatry, and indifference runs rampant, I’ve become passionate about the project of connecting the world of Scripture with today’s world. This book is written out of my struggle to live in the world of Scripture. The realms of this struggle include academia, preaching, teaching, and personal study, as well as my own journey as a person trying to figure out what it means to be a Christian, following the ancient teachings of Jesus in a modern and complex society. The Bible reminds me that the word for this is disciple.
I am convicted, as I listen to various thinkers (including my students), that Christians are in the midst of re-imagining the meaning of sacred words like gospel, salvation, church, justice, sin, worship, grace, evangelism, and faith. Christians do not play according the rules of the world, for we are people of the Way and we take seriously the opportunity to embody the teachings of Jesus in our particular time and place. We choose the other option, the path “less chosen.” The name the church has given to us for this other way is incarnation. We don’t wage war, oppress, acquiesce, flee, or compromise—filled with God’s Spirit, we are committed to enter into the world redemptively. One of my professors at Columbia Seminary, the legendary Hebrew Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann, once said in a class lecture, “The church always appears to be dying. When’s the last time the church wasn’t in crisis? That is the context into which we enter to do the work of God.” If he’s right, I hope The Feast will awaken heads, hands, and hearts to the imaginative vocation of being the church for the sake of our neighbors and our world.
