Q SHORTS

CULTURE | FUTURE | CHURCH | GOSPEL

REFRAMING THE GOSPEL

by TIM KEEL

Tim Keel is the founding pastor
of Jacob’s Well in Kansas City,
Missouri. He is married to Mimi and
together they have three children:
Mabry, Annie, and Blaise. Tim
received a BFA in Design from the
University of Kansas and a Master
of Divinity from Denver Seminary.
Tim is an avid reader and loves
to learn, write, and teach. He is
passionate about creating spaces
for people to connect to God,
themselves, and others. He is also
the author of Intuitive Leadership:
Embracing a Paradigm of Metaphor,
Narrative, and Chaos (Baker, 2007).
Editor | Norton Herbst
Contributing Editor | Gabe Lyons
REFRAMING THE GOSPEL
by TIM KEEL
I love the church calendar. I know, it is a bizarre confession, but I
mean it. Perhaps I feel so strongly about it because I discovered it
later in life than many others do — like those who give up the hope of
a relationship after years on their own, only to be surprised when they
meet their soul mate and discover a part of themselves they thought
was dead has been awakened, and now adds a dimension to their life
they never knew possible.
When, after many years of following Jesus, it dawned on me that some
Christians observe and celebrate time according to a different rhythm,
I was curious. In my world, time had always flowed according to the
dictates of the civic or academic calendar. I grew up in mostly evangelical
church settings; it was no different there. Christmas and Easter were
holidays, not holy days pulsing at the heart of sacred seasons. That
is not to say we didn’t understand or celebrate God’s miraculous
activity in Christ. It’s just that it seemed isolated, disconnected from
anything beyond the days themselves, and somehow muddied by the
surrounding noise of a cultural narrative of consumption.
Discovering the church calendar opened me to a new way of being
rooted in time, in God’s kairos and not just the culture’s chronos.
Christmas and Easter no longer existed in a long line of other holidays
like Labor Day, President’s Day, and the Fourth of July, but took their
proper place with Advent, Epiphany, Lent, Pentecost, and something
called “Ordinary Time.” How extraordinary! Since then, holidays have
been transformed into holy days that locate me in a story larger than
my own or even that of my particular culture. Christmas and Easter
have become not just singular, isolated events in themselves, but
rather joyous culminations of the whole expanse of time: God’s life
and story unfolding among us.
Event Anxiety
All that being said, however, I have another confession to make. As
a pastor of a local church, Christmas and Easter still function like
events and, as such, they create anxiety for me. It took me a while
to realize that though. Initially, I was just aware of a vague sense of
dread shadowing me whenever I thought about Christmas Eve and
Easter morning worship services. I now think I understand why those
days generated the anxiety I felt. Let me give some context.
I spent my formative years worshiping in a Southern Baptist church.
I cut my ministry teeth within para-church organizations largely
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Hospitality is a Christian virtue
meant for the benefit of the guest.
REFRAMING THE GOSPEL
focused on evangelism. Both of those institutions placed a premium
on “winning souls.” Within that framework, Christmas and Easter
became the ultimate opportunities to win souls by presenting the
“gospel.” Why? Because Christmas and Easter are those blended
times, events where civil holidays and spiritual holy days overlap,
when non-churchgoers might “darken the doors” of a church. Thus,
the responsibility of the pastor was to “preach the gospel” in hopes
that such people would be converted to “it.” Practically, that meant
that a truncated version of the Christ story was told in the form of
propositions. The invitation to accept Christ’s death as the sacrifice
for sins was extended — the promised result being that once that
sacrifice was accepted by the individual in faith, he or she would be
saved and assured of eternal life in heaven. Perhaps you can sense
why, despite my exploration of the wonders of God’s story unfolding
in the beauty of the liturgical year, singular days like Christmas and
Easter held residual anxiety for me, a pastor, framed as they had been
for most of my life as evangelism events.
Reflecting on this tension I have discerned two dynamics at work —
distinct, yet intimately connected. The first dynamic is the tension
created by approaching evangelism in the way I have described. In a
broad sense, my struggle is a methodological one. But that distinction
does not hold long by itself. It quickly collapses into the second
dynamic, fueling the tension I, and many others, are experiencing,
both within and without leadership contexts: the theological tension
of how we have understood and framed the gospel itself.
Questioning Methods
Have you ever been invited to someone’s home for what you thought
was a party, only to discover that the invitation was a ruse to try and
get you to buy something? Maybe it was nothing more sinister than
makeup or Tupperware. Or perhaps you were aggressively recruited to
be someone’s next level in a multi-level sales scheme. Either way, both
scenarios leave me with a multi-level reaction.
My first reaction is to feel a little less human, somehow hollowed
out by the experience of being seen as a means to another’s desired
end. At least advertisers are (generally) honest about what they want
from you. My second reaction is to be offended and angry on a deeper
level. Why? Because such a scenario proffers something good and
desperately missing in our culture: hospitality and the space it creates
for relationship. Hospitality is a Christian virtue meant for the benefit
of the guest. Under the guise of hospitality, what I am describing
takes guests and uses them for the financial benefit of the host. It is a
bait-and-switch, plain and simple. It’s not that a guest isn’t receiving
some benefit, but rather that the host offers/sells the benefit knowing
the whole time that it is his or her own self-interests that are being
advanced.
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 REFRAMING THE GOSPEL

I am afraid that such an orientation has invaded our conception and

practice of evangelism, including (but not limited to) the Christmas
and Easter gospel sales pitch. It’s as if the same consumer mentality
that threatens to overtake our holiday celebrations has also infected
our orientation to the gospel and evangelism. These “presentations”
often take on the same bait-and-switch mentality as what is described
above. We invite people into our spaces and they are often intrigued
or even excited to be there. But why is that so? I think that most
people have a sense of something sacred when drawing near to these
holy times. Inasmuch as the civic calendar overlaps spiritual realities,
people are often drawn to come and participate in the amazing drama
that is the story of Christ. Whether or not that is always the case, they
certainly have not shown up in order to become the focal point of an
evangelistic sales pitch. After twenty years of Christian ministry and
leadership, I have become convinced that such an evangelical bait-
and-switch is bad hospitality. Many may think what we present is
the ultimate benefit offered freely — good manners be damned. But
what is also true is that we ourselves are not neutral in the mix. We
are always as invested in the outcome as the person to whom we are
selling our “goods.” Our culture is rife with cynicism about this very
dynamic and it doesn’t take much in the way of discernment to pick
up on it.

So one aspect of my methodological wariness toward evangelism as an

event (holiday or otherwise) stems from a violation of what I believe
is the basic impulse of hospitality: generous space for others in our
midst, created for their benefit at our expense. The other aspect behind
my suspicion is far more practical: beyond the numbers of people I
know who have been turned off to the gospel by being “presented” to
in such a way, I know very few who have actually become followers of
Christ through such means.

Of course, such a statement sets me up for a flood of testimonies that

counter my personal observations. Even so, I hold this to be true: very
few people can point to a moment-in-time conversion experience. It is
indeed the case that some can point to a specific moment that marks their
turn to Christ, and it may have even happened at an event designed for
that very purpose! But even in such instances, many of them have been
left wondering if that moment was all that there is to their faith. Others
feel the need to somehow continually get back to that moment (maybe
through additional events where the invitation is to “rededicate” oneself
to Christ). And for those who have not had such definable moments, this
orientation is confusing, particularly because it has become the normative
narrative for becoming a Christian in most people’s eyes.

Early in the life of our church community, Jacob’s Well, a group of us

met at a neighborhood bagel shop one morning. As we ate bagels and

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Our faith seemed to be more of an
ongoing and progressive surrender
of ourselves to God that was
integrally tied to a simultaneous
ongoing and progressive revelation
of God to us.
REFRAMING THE GOSPEL
drank coffee, the time somehow turned from casual conversation to
the seven gathered telling the stories of their lives and faith journeys.
When the last person had shared, someone made the offhand comment
that not one person in our group described his or her faith story in
conventional conversion terms. No one could point to a moment in
time when they were “out,” then “in.” It was a surreal moment because
prior to that conversation, each of us had thought something was wrong
with our stories. As we continued to talk, we realized that our faith
was made up of a series of mini-conversions spaced out over time. In
fact, our conversions were less like Paul’s dramatic Damascus Road
experience and more like Peter’s plodding and clumsy discovery that
the one whom he had been following was the One long promised by God.
Our faith seemed to be more of an ongoing and progressive surrender of
ourselves to God that was integrally tied to a simultaneous ongoing and
progressive revelation of God to us. Our narratives were characterized
not so much by a moment in time that we had become Christians (though
we had), but by a process of responding over time, more or less, to Jesus’
invitation to join him and participate on this journey.
That conversation in the bagel shop with my friends became an “AHA!”
moment for me. But even as it was comforting, it was also unsettling.
As evangelicals, we were prepared to examine our methodology
and reengineer our methods in order to be more effective in our
proclamations of the gospel message. However, our own experiences
seemed to reflect that something more than methodology was askew.
It’s as if something in our theology was not quite right. Initially, I
was not prepared for that. Even so, I began to wonder if it was not
just that we were “doing” something wrong, but if something in our
very understanding of the gospel itself was off-kilter. If that was the
case, then it was scary to contemplate. But if it was true, then it made
sense of why everything else in my understanding of the scaffolding of
salvation seemed to be wobbling. I needed to know more.
The Origins of “Gospel”
The word “gospel” is one of the most important words for understanding
what God is up to in Christ — and it may be one of the most
misunderstood. For many, the word gospel has become a shorthand
way of describing God’s action to save human beings from their sin
through the atoning death of Jesus Christ on the cross. When people
accept by faith Christ’s death as the payment for their personal sin(s),
then they are assured eternal life. That basic premise has become a
sort of formula that many Christians use to describe and share their
faith with other people. Reduced in this way, however, I believe the
gospel has become for many nothing more than a ticket to heaven
secured by praying the “sinner’s prayer” in response to an “altar call”
or some such personal or corporate presentation.
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The Old Testament provides a
back-story or framing story
for all that we encounter in the
pages of the New Testament.
REFRAMING THE GOSPEL
For me, and many of my friends, that is all we ever heard or knew
about. Ministry was largely about getting more people to personally
believe that faith formula. And I suppose that is good — as far as it
goes. But I don’t believe it goes far enough. Why? Because the focus is
mostly on sin and the solution for sin: the cross. Don’t misunderstand
me. Sin is a problem and the cross is the means by which God deals
with it. But that is not all that God is up to in Christ. The Bible talks
about gospel and salvation in a far more robust and multi-faceted way
than just sin and solution. But most people don’t know that. In fact,
most people are surprised to discover that the word “gospel,” or “good
news,” originates not with Jesus in the New Testament, but rather
with Yahweh in the Old Testament.
One thing I have loved discovering over the last several years is that
nearly everything we read in the New Testament has its precedent in
the Old Testament. Another way of saying it is that the Old Testament
provides a back-story or framing story for all that we encounter in the
pages of the New Testament. When we become familiar with those
framing stories, we begin to better understand what is happening with
Jesus and why he says what he says and does what he does throughout
the Gospels. It goes without saying that the Scriptures Jesus
interacted with were what we now call the Old Testament. Reading
the Gospels, we see that Jesus was intimate with these Scriptures. His
fluency and agility began at a young age and continued all through
his life and ministry — as did his ability to confound and frustrate the
religious authorities who were certain that their understandings and
applications were sacrosanct.
The most famous teaching of Jesus is found in Matthew’s Gospel
and is called the Sermon on the Mount. Yet this discourse is not new
content delivered out of nowhere. Rather, in the sermon we discover
Jesus radically reinterpreting Old Testament teachings that Jews
already knew, but apparently had not understood. This is why many
of the teachings in the Sermon on the Mount contain the refrain, “You
have heard it said...but I say to you...” That is but one example. As
we read about Jesus and see him going about his mission, we often
fail to recognize that both his words and his actions are a constant
and continual dialogue with the words, people, and events of the Old
Testament Scriptures. While we may miss these cues, we can be sure
that his first century audience did not.
“Gospel” is an Old Testament idea. The Greek word euangelion, from
which we derive the word gospel, literally means “good news.” In the
Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, the word
euangelion first appears. The final section of Isaiah, chapters 40-66,
describe what life with God will look like when God’s people, Israel,
return from their exile in Babylon. Because of their disobedience to God,
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 REFRAMING THE GOSPEL

Israel came under God’s judgment. That judgment was executed when
Babylon, acting as God’s agent, attacked and destroyed Jerusalem and
many of the remaining Jews were taken to live as a conquered people
in Babylon. It was a humiliating time for Israel and her people. In
keeping with Jeremiah’s prophecy though, they were held in captivity
for only 70 years. At the end of that time, they returned to rebuild and
repopulate their homeland. Isaiah 40:1-5 begins this new chapter in
Israel’s life and outlines God’s intent to restore his people to his favor
and their land.

Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.

Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and proclaim to her
that her hard service has been completed,
that her sin has been paid for,
that she has received from the L ORD ’s hand
double for all her sins.

A voice of one calling:

“In the wilderness prepare
the way for the L ORD ;
make straight in the desert
a highway for our God.

Every valley shall be raised up,

every mountain and hill made low;
the rough ground shall become level,
the rugged places a plain.

And the glory of the Lord will be revealed,

and all people will see it together.
For the mouth of the L ORD has spoken.” ( TNIV)

When John the Baptist appears on the scene quoting part of this
passage, first century Jews would have understood that he was claiming
that God was about to usher in the Messianic Age in fulfillment of his
promise. As far as they were concerned, this age would be the time
when Israel was finally rescued and restored to her full glory. Indeed
she had already returned from Babylon, but since that time Israel had
been invaded and occupied by a series of empires, most recently the
Roman Empire. Such a state of affairs was unacceptable to the Jewish
imagination, and they anticipated the day when Yahweh would finally
overcome all their adversaries through the long-promised and awaited
Messiah. This messiah was imagined to be a military leader like King
David, a ruler who would restore Israel to its place of prominence on
the world stage and demonstrate that Israel’s God, Yahweh, reigned.
When John the Baptist came in the garments of a prophet and quoted

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Jesus is almost always interacting
in some way with one of these four
framing stories.
REFRAMING THE GOSPEL
this text, he created a sensation. Why? Because he was proclaiming
to the Jews of his day his belief that Israel’s salvation was at hand,
that the Messiah was arriving. It is in that same section of Isaiah that
euangelion, or good news, first appears:
How beautiful on the mountains
are the feet of those who bring good news (euangelion),
who proclaim peace,
who bring good tidings,
who proclaim salvation,
who say to Zion,
“Your God reigns!” (52:7, TNIV)
This is gospel and salvation, as the Jews, including Jesus, would have
understood it: that Israel’s God, Yahweh, reigns. And what made
up the reign of Yahweh? The proclamation of peace, or shalom, the
Hebrew word that conveys the sense that all creation was living in
harmony with God’s intentions for it. With John the Baptist’s prophetic
introduction from Isaiah in the background, Jesus arrives in Israel
and announces that in him, God’s reign has indeed begun, the days
of salvation and shalom have been inaugurated. “The time has come,”
he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the
good news (euangelion)!” Mark records Jesus saying (1:15, TNIV).
Amazing. But before we get too deep into that, let’s do a little more
exploration of the Old Testament and the context into which Jesus
comes announcing the good news that God’s salvation is at hand.
Discovering God in Stories
In exploring the origins of the word “gospel,” we discover that there is
more to it than we might have initially understood. First we discover
that it has a context — in Isaiah, it is Israel’s return from exile. We also
learn that gospel has specific content — it is the announcement that
God is acting in Israel’s context (history) to bring about his purposes
(salvation) for his people Israel — namely that God’s reign has begun.
It is salvation understood through a different lens than the one that
has come to dominate our religious landscape. Or maybe it is more
accurate to say that it is salvation understood through more lenses
than we are aware of.
For first century Jews, there were four primary Old Testament stories
that framed their imaginations and interactions with the world
around them. The four stories that animated Israel were the creation
story, the exodus story, the exile story, and the priestly story. Each of
these stories describes some aspect of God’s interaction, intent, and
provision for his people. If we read the Gospel accounts and examine
closely the behavior and teaching of Jesus with those framing stories
in mind, we start to see that he is almost always interacting in some
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 REFRAMING THE GOSPEL

way with one of these four framing stories. As Jesus incarnates God’s
plan of salvation, he is constantly reclaiming, reinterpreting, or
renegotiating some aspect of the creation, exodus, exile, or priestly
narrative. And for Jesus, it is not just a salvation story for Israel, but
for the whole world. Let’s briefly examine each of these stories to get
a sense of what God was up to.

The first story is the creation story. The book of Genesis records
God’s acts of creation: he speaks and his word creates the cosmos.
Day by day, God’s creative power orders reality, and as he creates,
he divides one thing from another, names it, and calls it good. There
is only one time when God pronounces something that he has made
“not good”: when he sees that Adam is alone. So God creates male
and female beings fashioned in his own image. It is now good. Adam
and Eve are then called to join God in his creative work, to divide one
creature from another, to name them, to act as God’s stewards over
creation. The one thing they are not invited to do is determine “good”
and “not good” — to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil is prohibited. Only God can do this. And, of course, that is the
one thing they do. The result is that Adam and Eve are ejected from
the garden. Even so, the creation story describes God’s intent for a
dynamic relationship where human beings, made in his image, are
called to live in harmony with God and the world and join him in his
work stewarding his good creation.

The exodus story begins in Genesis and spans the Torah, coming to a
close in Deuteronomy with the death of Moses and Israel’s arrival on
the edges of the Promised Land. The exodus story is a massive drama
that chronicles Israel’s oppression in Egypt and the way that God acted
to save her from that oppression. Hearing her cries, God raises up
Moses and uses him to confront Pharaoh. Through many interactions,
God demonstrates his power and the reality that it is he, not Pharaoh,
who reigns. And so Pharaoh finally, though temporarily, relents and
releases Moses to take Israel from Egypt to the land that God promised
them. Two events dominate the exodus narrative: the Passover and the
crossing of the Red Sea. Even though the events of the exodus story
play out in the first five books of the Bible, its significance continues
to be felt throughout the rest of the Old Testament (especially in the
Psalms) as this story is narrated again and again in Israel’s ongoing
liturgical life. Jews in the time of Jesus continued to celebrate the
Passover and would go on pilgrimages to Jerusalem reenacting the
journey of faith that Moses led Israel on as they followed God from
slavery to freedom.

We have already discussed the third story, the exile story, in light of
Israel’s time in Babylon, as well as God’s intent to restore his people to
fullness and blessing. The story of Israel’s struggle to remain faithful

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I believe that the church has been
obsessed with the priestly story.
REFRAMING THE GOSPEL
to their covenant with God is recorded in the book of Joshua and
continues through 2 Kings. It includes many of the prophetic books,
both major and minor. The books of Nehemiah and Ezra tell of Israel’s
return to the land and the reforms that religious leaders instituted to
ensure that Israel would never again transgress God’s law and so come
under judgment. We can see the impact of these reforms continuing to
play out in the New Testament through the teachings of the Pharisees,
a holiness movement that sought to keep Israel pure by adding to God’s
laws additional restrictions meant to deter Jews from the possibility
of sin. Jesus continually crashes up against the Pharisees and the way
they see the world and the purpose of the law. The weight of the exile
story and God’s deliverance of Israel from the margins back to a place
of fullness and restoration cannot be overstated for the first century
Jewish world. That the Jews were still awaiting this story’s fulfillment
figures enormously in the life and ministry of Jesus.
The final story that gave shape to Israel’s identity as God’s people
was the priestly story. In order to make provision for Israel’s sin, God
instituted a system of sacrifice as the means of atoning and cleansing
the people and the community from their sin. This system was enacted
by a family of priests, the tribe of Levi, given the task of mediating the
fractured relationship between humans and God. The book of Leviticus
describes this sacrificial system, though the laws and terms of God’s
covenant with his people are found throughout the Torah. This system
of sacrifice offered for sin continued into the time of Christ.
I believe that the church has been obsessed with the priestly story.
As a result, we have framed the gospel and Jesus exclusively in the
priestly story. This is then how the good news of God’s salvation is
presented: that our sin has made us unclean, but through the sacrifice
of Christ on the cross, we have been cleansed of our sin and the guilt
associated with it. And like I have said, that account of salvation is
true and good as far as it goes. But it doesn’t go far enough, nor does
it focus on that which interested Jesus himself. Of the four framing
stories of the Old Testament, the priestly story seems to be the one
that Jesus spends the least amount of time engaging. When he does
interact with it, he engages it in a way that subverts the conventional
wisdom of his culture regarding who is clean and unclean, what is holy
and unholy. And he infuriates many in the process.
Reframing the Good News
As we reread the Gospels, allowing them to be framed by a deeper
understanding of their Old Testament context, we begin to see that
Jesus was up to something much more robust and dynamic than we
might have originally understood. He was not merely satisfying the
demands of the law in order to make people clean. That rendering
of the good news is too small and doesn’t do justice to the accounts
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of his life and ministry. Nor does it account for the different ways
in which salvation played out in the different stories that framed
Israel’s imagination. Jesus constantly engages the stories and themes
of creation, exodus, and exile. He then reframes them in light of the
announcement of good news: that in Christ, God’s reign has begun.
John’s gospel is fascinated by the creation story. His account begins
by echoing Genesis 1: “In the beginning...” His writing is rife with
imagery and language that demonstrates that through Christ, God is
recreating all things and restoring people to the garden. Indeed, twice
John tells us that Christ rose on the first day of the week (20:1,19): a
new creation week has begun! Mary, in that same account, stumbles
unaware into Jesus, mistaking him for the gardener (20:15). Mark
and Matthew seem more focused on the exodus story and how Jesus is
reconstituting Israel and leading her on a new exodus. Their accounts
record different instances where Jesus symbolically reenacts critical
moments in the exodus narrative that would have been obvious to
those around him.

And Luke? Luke’s priority resonates with the themes of Israel

returning from exile, that Christ is restoring to wholeness those who
sit on the margins. In fact, Luke allows us to peer into how Jesus
himself conceived and understood his calling. Near the beginning of
his public ministry, Luke tells us that Jesus stood up in a synagogue
in Nazareth and read from the Scriptures.

The Spirit of the Lord is on me,

because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. (4:18-19, TNIV)

Luke’s account says that Jesus rolled the scroll back up, handed it
to the attendant, and sat down. Then with all eyes locked on him, he
drops the bombshell: “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing”
(Lk 4:21, TNIV). Perhaps by this point we should not be surprised to
discover Jesus was quoting Isaiah, from the very section that describes
what life will be like when God restores Israel from exile and they
begin to live in harmony with his purposes for them. Jesus says to
them that that long-awaited time has come to pass and that they are
witnesses to the in-breaking of God’s kingdom and the arrival of the
Messiah. Luke’s gospel goes on to describe the many ways that Jesus
went about fulfilling his proclamation of good news as he interacted
with the marginalized people inside and outside of Israel.

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Our world is consumed by
the themes represented in the
creation, exodus, and exile
stories.
REFRAMING THE GOSPEL
Engaging the Stories
Though we have understood the gospel primarily through the priestly
lens, we discover the salvation story is about so much more. In the
creation story, salvation is a restoration of all things, including
human beings, to their original intent: a dynamic relationship and
participation with God in his care over what he has made and called
good. In the exodus story, salvation is the invitation to journey with
God from bondage to liberation. Salvation in the exile story is God’s
rescue of Israel and their journey from the fractured edges of belonging
back into the center of life with God. In each of these three stories,
salvation is dynamic and filled with motion. God’s people join him
as he brings about his purposes for them. That is not the case in the
priestly story. The priestly story is more static than dynamic. It is less
about joining God and more about a transaction with God: you are
dirty — here is how you become clean. Salvation in the priestly story
is about unholy people becoming holy by brokering a sacrifice.
I believe that the priestly story is essential to the gospel message.
But regrettably, I fear that we have made this one aspect of the good
news the entire gospel and ignored the parts of the story that Jesus
himself seemed most passionate about. The irony is that our world
is consumed by the themes represented in the creation, exodus,
and exile stories. You don’t need to listen very hard to hear them.
Listen to people who not only want freedom from guilt but freedom
from the meaninglessness that characterizes the lives of so many
in our culture who are outwardly rich but inwardly poor, and then
reconsider the creation story and the invitation to join God is his work
of stewarding and restoring creation to God’s purposes for it. Listen to
addicts of all kinds trying to figure out ways to move from bondage to
freedom, but feel powerless against the powers in their lives, and then
consider again the exodus story and the gospel of liberation. Listen
to marginalized people hoping to somehow find a way to be included
and experience wholeness, and then reckon that with the exile and the
gospel of reconciliation. Salvation is not merely static or something
that happens at a moment in time. It is about movement and the
dynamic relationship that God extends in Christ.
People around me are excited about engaging spiritual realities,
especially when they are framed as dynamic engagements that
invite movement, participation, and the journey toward restoration.
However, most don’t believe that Christianity has anything to say to
such hungers. We keep making the gospel about the transaction, about
the moment in time when we were unclean, then clean. When people
don’t respond to us, our strategy seems to be to turn up the volume.
But again, this is ironic. My own faith story demonstrates that this
limited orientation toward the gospel is not even working for those of
us who are already deep into the life of God in Christ. Why? Because
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The gospel is not something we
receive or accept. It refuses such a
limited container.
REFRAMING THE GOSPEL
the good news is about so much more that being forgiven and going to
heaven one day. It’s not just a moment in time, but a dynamic journey.
Heaven is not the point — it is the outcome. The gospel message is not
just about sin and solution, but creation, sin, solution, and restoration.
Holy days like Christmas and Easter are celebrations of the victory of
God over sin, but also of God’s reclamation of creation, the liberation
from bondage, and the restoration of all things in Christ.
As much as I have enjoyed embracing the church calendar and a holy
way of observing time, it has been this robust understanding of God’s
story and how Jesus came to fulfill and reframe it in such explosive and
surprising ways that is reshaping my faith. Just as those in Nazareth
were stunned to silence by his astounding claim to Messiah, so are we
overawed when we begin to come to grips with what Jesus has done
and the implications for us...his people. It is truly good news, better
and even more relevant than we ever knew or hoped to believe.
Our church community in Kansas City is seeking to discover how not
just to live differently in time, but also to live differently in the story.
I am sure for many practical-minded leaders, such a statement begs
the question of how it is that we do such a thing. Such a question is not
easily answered though. It is not as if we are trying to “do” something
different — at least initially anyway. It is more that we are trying
to see things differently. It is as if we have been asleep to so much
of the message of the gospel, but the voice of Jesus has pierced our
slumber and we have awoken to a bigger and brighter world than the
one we thought we knew. Coming to grips with how we are invited to
participate in the creativity of creation, the liberation of exodus, and
the restoration of exile is just beginning to affect the scope of what
we understand God’s kingdom to include: how we preach, practice
justice, do spiritual formation, read our Scriptures, interact with
our children, and have spiritual conversations with our friends and
neighbors. The list could go on. We are discovering so much, yet we
still we have more than a long way to go. It is a journey, after all. But
we have discovered this much: the gospel is not something that we
receive or accept. It refuses such a limited container. It must be lived.
The good news of God’s salvation is an alternate reality that startles us
from our slumber. Once awake, we are invited to join and participate:
to live in God’s time and God’s story with Christ’s call to join him as
agents in his work of mediating shalom in his good creation. It is this
reality that proclaims and incarnates the good news: our God reigns.
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 REFRAMING THE GOSPEL

Discussion Questions
1. Have you ever felt tensions in your own church community
regarding the use of Christmas and Easter events to preach the gospel
to attendees who aren’t regularly present? If so, how have you resolved
these tensions?

2. How would you describe your own conversion narrative? Is

it characterized by a dramatic moment-in-time conversion, or a
“plodding and clumsy discovery”?

3. When you think of “sharing the gospel” with someone else, which
biblical texts come to mind regarding your articulation of the good
news? Why are these texts significant for you?

4. Tim Keel suggests, “The priestly story seems to be the one that
Jesus spends the least amount of time engaging.” Do you agree? Why
or why not?

5. What are the pressing needs of people in your neighborhood and

community and how might the creation story, the exodus story, or the
exile story be more relevant to them than the priestly story?

6. What are some ways your own community of faith might reframe
the gospel so as not to neglect the priestly story, but to give more
weight to the creation, exodus, and exile stories than has historically
been done?

© Tim Keel and Fermi Project, 2008

All Rights Reserved.

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