I just got my hands on N.T. Wright's newest book, Christians at the Cross: Finding Hope in the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus. I made it about halfway through last night. The book is essentially a collection of a series of sermons delivered during Holy Week 2007 in the town of Easington Colliery in the Northeast of England, a town who's economic lifeline, a mammoth coal mining pit that employed thousands, was shut down in 1993, leading to more than a decade of hopelessness in the community, economic and otherwise.

I'm not sure if it was providence or coincidence that I began to read the book at precisely the same time that I've been engaging in a conversation over at the Emergent Village blog about the collapse of "Emerging Church" as a defining label. That conversation has, perhaps naturally, morphed into one about how we as a Church can best communicate the Good News of Jesus. And it is that question that is so freshly tackled by Wright in Christians at the Cross.

The series of sermons, or meditations, are delivered within the framework of an interesting new metaphor or paradigm that I've seen Wright hint at in the past, but in this book we see how it works in practice. The paradigm is this: the message of Jesus, the Gospel, the Good News, is and has always been a many-layered, many-dimensioned thing. In Christians at the Cross, Wright implores and leads his listeners to think of it in terms of a piece of music, consisting of the treble (or the main tune), the bass (the part of the music that grounds the whole thing and keeps it sold and firm), the tenor (the part of that often tells if you if the chord is major or minor, happy or sad), and the alto (sometimes a bit shy, sometimes doesn't seem very exciting, but the harmony isn't complete without it).

Wright delivers his sermons within this paradigm, with the explicit story of Jesus during Holy Week as the treble, the main tune, the Old Testament writings, particularly Isaiah, as the bass, the part that grounds the story, makes it comprehensible. The tenor part consists of viewing the story of the pain of our world, our communities, going on within that story, providing its classification as "major" or "minor" depending on the circumstances. And finally, we are implored to hear the music our individual part, our own personal story, which metaphorically constitutes the alto.

There are many more that simply four layers to the Gospel. Wright hints at this when he mentions one of the motets of Thomas Tallis that had no fewer than 40 parts, all different, all harmonizing together. But these four are central, comprising the essential parts of any great piece of music, such as the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And perhaps that discussion over at Emergent Village, a small example of the wider conversation being had within the Church as a whole, has taken the shape that it has precisely because we have, as we often do, deconstructed the music, taken it apart to view it in its isolated parts that were always meant to be viewed, to be heard, rather, simultaneously, harmoniously.

Thank you again, good bishop, for bringing into focus an issue that was always there to begin with, simply muddled by us fallen disciples, and presenting it to us in a fresh way (not different, just fresh).

Grace and Peace,

Raffi

First Thoughts on N.T. Wright's New Book, "Christians at the Cross"