The Great Discontinuity

"Biblical faith begins with the radical announcement of discontinuity that intends to initiate us into a new history of anticipation."

-Walter Brueggemann, The Land: Place as Gift, Promise,
and Challenge in Biblical Faith

The church in America generally struggles to preach vibrantly from the Old Testament. Most pastors either avoid it altogether or else reduce it to pithy moralizations that highlight the human players at the cost of seeing the work of the Divine Playwright.

The Old Testament is, admittedly, more intimidating than the New Testament. Because it is situated within the hellenized Roman Empire, the early church doesn't seem so culturally distant from us; we in the west have a much harder time dropping into the milleu of Abraham than of Paul.

In one sense, it is unhelpful to separate the testaments. While the reasons we do so are strong and many, the cost is (or at least, can be) a failure to see the consistency of God's action throughout history—and what responding to God's action requires of humans.

Brueggemann develops his concept of biblical faith from the example of Abraham, who, through an act of discontinuity, left a life behind to follow the promise of Yahweh. This faith, however, is not stagnant, but rather one of great anticipation. Abraham demonstrated this anticipation throughout his life: Though the biblical text only gives a few instances of God speaking to Abraham, he trusted in God's promises for decades of his life. He trusted God to the point of being faithful—even to his deathbed, when the only land of promise he could claim was his grave site. A great nation? A land for his own? Hardly.

Yet Scripture shows us how God made good his promises to Abraham. At the crossroads of the testaments stands the Incarnation: very God of very God takes on human flesh and reconciles a chosen people to himself. As great as was the discontinuity in Abraham's life when he trusted in God's promises, how much greater will be the Christian's response to the Incarnation, the Great Discontinuity?

In light of the Resurrection we celebrate today, we celebrate an anticipation that because the grave could not hold Jesus, neither will it hold his children. We shall not remain dead, but shall be raised! Abraham left certainty of earthly comfort, family, and familiarity to follow God into unpromising (by human standards) territory. His faith required a discontinuity from his past life in order to embrace anticipation of God's promise. I fear many who fashion themselves "Christian" do not sufficiently embrace this discontinuity.