Week 19—Wednesday Luke 11:37-41
Luke 11:37-41
“ALL GREAT LITERATURE IS AUTOBIOGRAPHY”
We must linger another day on the keynote address given at the very opening of the campaign in launching the greatest movement that ever touched our planet—the kingdom of God. The Spirit of the Lord was upon Jesus to launch a Kingdom which would touch the whole of life—economic, social and political, the physical, the moral and spiritual, and the collective. It was marvelous as a program, but the program took flesh and blood—the program became a Person. The program as program would have died, as many paper utopias have died through the ages, but this program was no word become word—it was the Word of the Kingdom became flesh. “This text has come true” (Luke 4:21, NEB).
This set the pattern for preaching—it was witnessing out of experience. As “all great literature is autobiography,” so all great preaching is testimony. “When they had testified and preached”—note the order—first, testimony. That preaching which is not primarily testimony is the Word become word, or as a theologian, Dr. Adolph Keller, put it, “the Word became theology.”
Bishop Pakhenham-Walsh, an Anglican saint, once heard me speak in India on the Kingdom, and he asked, “Where do we begin?” And I replied, “I suppose the way to begin is to go out and act as though the Kingdom were already here, and it will be as far as we are concerned.” “Then,” said the bishop to himself, “I will act as though the Kingdom were already here.” So he went and established an Ashram among the Jacobite Syrians of Travancore who had had a court case on for many years which left the church divided. He gave his life for the healing of that division, lived a life of utter sacrifice and self-giving love. And the division was healed, a court case of over forty years canceled by agreement. The Kingdom had come as far as the saintly bishop was concerned—had come in him.
O Jesus Lord, you have become the pattern for our preaching. In you, message and person were one. So much so that you became the Message. Help me, Lord, so to identify myself with you that in me people may see the message—the message in a person. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: My words will reveal me today. By my words I shall be judged.