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Many years ago, while I served as the supply preacher in a small town church, an elder came to me after a service with an observation. "You say a lot about God in your sermons," he said, "but you don't say very much about Jesus." It caught me by surprise. I suppose that I thought that the sermons were in the spirit of Jesus or represented Jesus' teachings. But the more I thought about it, I came to see that he was actually right. And one of the interesting things about this was that until he mentioned it, I had not actually noticed it.
Since then I have become more aware of the small amount of attention that is given to the New Testament message about Jesus in many of our sermons. An allusion is made, perhaps a story is cited - certainly the life of Jesus is a gold mine for illustrations. But I wonder if somehow, somewhere along the line, we have lost our ability to "lift high the Cross" as the decisive authoritative action of God in world history.
If one were to ask the question, "What did the early Christians preach and how did they do it?" the answer would be obvious. The record is clear. The gospels are decisively structured accounts of the life, teachings, and significance of Jesus. They are, so to speak, complex sermonic presentations.
While each of the gospels was composed in a different context and bears the marks of specific applications, all of them concur in setting the account of Jesus as the principal focus. And as has been frequently noted, the passion narrative, the events composing the arrest, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, receive the greatest attention among all the connecting passages. There must surely have been a significant reason for this particular arrangement of materials.
So the answer to this question can be drawn from the preservation of early Christian preaching and teaching that in time were compiled into the gospels. Early preaching concentrated on the exposition of God's continuing presence to save and to command through the unique power of Jesus Christ. That is what the record shows and that is unquestionably what worked. As Luke says, following the patterned example of Peter's address in Acts 2, "And day by day the Lord added new converts to these numbers."
I have also pondered Paul's words in 2 Corinthians 2:1-5 quite regularly, "I resolved that while I was with you I would not claim to know anything but Jesus Christ - Christ nailed to the cross - the word I spoke - carried conviction by spiritual power." (REB) We do know, of course, that Paul had many other things to say about the Christian gospel. However, this was apparently the heart of his preaching. And "spiritual power?" Sounds important.
One can then move on to compare what has come to be called "the Apostolic tradition" with the testimony of the New Testament. Time and again the post biblical history of the early Church centers the authoritative proclamation of the Gospel in the life and significance of Jesus Christ. That is where the force of God's intervening power was felt. In a worldly, pluralistic, sophisticated culture, the essential declaration of the Body of Christ was consistently about the supernatural meaning and transcendent power of Jesus Christ. That pattern was regarded as the "Apostolic tradition."
Now here is the catch. If our 16th century Reformers jump started the Protestant Reformation when they learned what the early church did about preaching, I wonder what we ought to do? Should Paul's example in 2 Corinthians 2, "I resolved not to claim to know anything but-" still set the pattern for us?