What is the kerygma? The kerygma is the central proclamation of the Gospel, the story of the person of Jesus Christ, the facts of salvation. Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, the Pope’s preacher to the papal household, put it this way: he said the kerygma is the “germ cell,” the living Word that gives birth to faith in people’s hearts. One of the great spots to look at in the Bible is Acts chapter 2, where we see the first proclamation of the kerygma by the Apostles after they receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
And we can see the key elements of it right here. It begins with Peter standing up, under the grace and anointing of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness to the facts of salvation. They said, we were with Jesus, you killed Him, God raised Him; we are witnesses to the fact that God has raised Him. God has confirmed that Jesus is uniquely the Son of God by the signs and wonders, Peter said, that he worked on behalf of Our Lord. But then Peter moves on. And the climax of the proclamation is really the heart of the kerygma in many ways. He puts it this way. In verses 36-38, he says, “Let all the house of Israel therefore know, assuredly, that God has made Him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”
So the heart of the kerygma is the declaration. It’s the proclamation of what God has fundamentally done in His Son. And what is Peter saying? That God has not only raised Jesus from the dead, right? After having been crucified for the sake of our sins, having shed his blood to deal with the human sin problem, Peter said, “death could not hold Him down.” And then God raised Him [Jesus] up, and then Peter said, and where is Jesus now? He is at the right hand of the Father, and the Father has made this one, Jesus, the Lord of everything, and the Christ. That means all authority in Heaven and earth belongs to Jesus, and He is the Messiah. That means the one through whom the Holy Spirit, that is going to give birth to the Church, comes forth from the Father and from the Son. And then Peter goes on.
As he preached the reality that Jesus is Lord, those who heard were stirred and they were convicted by the Holy Spirit. And they looked at Peter and said, what should we do? And then what Peter gives is really the foundation stone of Christian identity. He puts it this way. He says, first of all, repent. And that means, respond to the truth about who Jesus is, respond to Jesus’ diagnosis of the condition of the human heart, the sin-sick condition. (I mean, we need to have our sins forgiven!) So we turn toward Christ who we now know is Lord and we bring our life under His lordship. “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins.” What Jesus has come to do — and He is the only one who can do this, and this is what is declared and why it is such “good news” to the world — is He is the only one who can take away the sin in us, the sin problem which produces the death problem which separates us from God.
So repent, be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. So that is the fundamental and first proclamation of the kerygma that we see in the New Testament.
But it is also summarized in shorter forms in different places in the New Testament. For example, in Romans 10:9, Paul says, “If you confess with your lips that Jesus Christ is Lord and you believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, then you will be saved.” In 1 Timothy 1:10, he puts it this way: “Jesus abolished death and He brought life and immortality to light.” I used to love the Memorial Acclamation that we used to say at Mass, “Dying He destroyed our death, rising He restored our life, He is coming again in glory!”
And so, I like to summarize that sometimes when I am talking to people as: “He destroyed death, restored life, and He’s coming to bring His glory,” to bring us into glory. That’s kind of another way of summarizing what is at the heart of the kerygma. And then Romans 4:25: “He was put to death for our sins and He was raised for our justification.”
So the kerygma is the “good news” that God the Father has come in His Son Jesus, sending Jesus for our sake, to come and seek and save those of us who are under the power and dominion of sin and death, to free us from that bondage through His authority, His power, His death on the Cross; and then [us] receiving that, saying yes to it, and we believe that God has made Jesus now the head of the whole human race and all of His creation. And that’s all in His hands now, and the way to salvation is to receive the free gift from Jesus Christ and the forgiveness of our sins. That means turning to Him and giving Him our sin, and being baptized so our sins can be ultimately forgiven and we can receive the new life in us, which is the power — the living presence — of the Holy Spirit in us.