The Bible is not a legal constitution, a coherent document with internal consistency! Building on the previous chapter, McLaren argues that the Bible is best understood as the definitive library of the Christian community. A library, not a constitution. We do not expect that all the favorite books in our library agree with one another. A good library will reflect the culture it represents, with all its messiness and internal tension. “A culture thinks certain questions are so important that it keeps struggling with them over many generations.” So ambiguity or disagreement are flaws in a constitution, but expected and welcome in a library!

My own conviction is that the Bible points to faith as trust in the face of uncertainty. In story after story in the library we call the Bible, those who address life with certainty are met with the word of God, “I am God; you don’t know what you are talking about.” The classic description of this, as McLaren says, is the Book of Job.

McLaren says we have made a mess of how we approach the bible:

1. We have painted ourselves into a corner in regard to the scientific understanding of our society, by regarding the Bible as a divinely inspired text book which is definitive about all aspects of life, including how and when the earth came to be, the origins of human life, the causes of illness, etc.
2. When we make the Bible our definitive ethical rule book, we find conflicting prescriptions about, for example, how to treat our enemies (forgive them, dash their children’s heads against a stone), and no mention of many crucial current issues – abortion, capitalism, communism, autism, racism, nationalism, climate change, genetic engineering, space travel, nuclear war, just war theory.
3. When we use the Bible as a club to bludgeon those who disagree with us, we contribute to the polarization and violence which is threatening the fabric of human society.

McClaren’s training is in English language and literature. “. . .my training taught me to read for scenes and plots, not doctrines; for protagonists and antagonists, not absolute and objective truths. . . ” Approaching the Bible in this way, the first book, Genesis, becomes a prequel, setting the stage for the main story. “It is the story of a good creation marred by expanding human evil, countered by divine faithfulness. . .” This is the first dimension of the story, and relates to the past, the origins from which we come.

The prime narrative comes in the second book, Exodus, where God calls Moses to lead the children of Abraham out of slavery into freedom – the second dimension.This is the central theme of the Hebrew Scriptures, referred to again and again in the stories that follow. It gives us a vision of the present as a pilgrimage toward freedom, internal and external.

The story of liberation has a sequel. McLaren identifies this third dimension as “the peaceable kingdom.” This is a vision of a future  to be hoped for, a new creation where love and justice are present and powerful. He quotes several passages as examples. I have selected a few and give them as translated by Eugene Petersen in the Message.

The Message Isaiah got regarding Judah and Jerusalem: There’s a day coming when the mountain of God’s House
Will be The Mountain—
solid, towering over all mountains.
All nations will river toward it,
people from all over set out for it.
They’ll say, “Come,
let’s climb God’s Mountain,
go to the House of the God of Jacob.
He’ll show us the way he works
so we can live the way we’re made.”
Zion’s the source of the revelation.
God’s Message comes from Jerusalem.
He’ll settle things fairly between nations.
He’ll make things right between many peoples.
They’ll turn their swords into shovels,
their spears into hoes.
No more will nation fight nation;
they won’t play war anymore.
Come, family of Jacob,
let’s live in the light of God. (Isaiah 2:1-5)

 

“I will pour out my Spirit
on every kind of people:
Your sons will prophesy,
also your daughters.
Your old men will dream,
your young men will see visions.
I’ll even pour out my Spirit on the servants,
men and women both. (Joel 2:28-29)

 

“Well, tell them this, ‘This is your Message from God, the Master. True, I sent you to the far country and scattered you through other lands. All the same, I’ve provided you a temporary sanctuary in the countries where you’ve gone. I will gather you back from those countries and lands where you’ve been scattered and give you back the land of Israel. You’ll come back and clean house, throw out all the rotten images and obscene idols. I’ll give you a new heart. I’ll put a new spirit in you. I’ll cut out your stone heart and replace it with a red-blooded, firm-muscled heart. Then you’ll obey my statutes and be careful to obey my commands. You’ll be my people! I’ll be your God! (Ezekiel 11:16-20)

 

When we read the Biblical narrative in this way, says McClaren, the picture of God that emerges is not at all like “the dread cosmic dictator” of the six line Greco Roman framework. Rather, God is “wild, passionate, creative, liberating, hope-inspiring.” I like this, even if I find it a little unsettling. I’ll try these adjective out in prayer and see what happens

“Elohim” is one of the words for God in the Book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible. Elohim seems to love stories, as McLaren points out, quite unlike the Greek God, Theos, whose nature is to be unchanging. If constant perfection is your aim, you don’t have much use for stories – much too messy and unpredictable.

McLaren doen’t take the stories in Genesis literally. He does take them seriously, “to situate and orient us in a story, so that we will know how to live.” The basic character of this story is that it is a compassionate coming of age story, where each stage of our development as human beings brings progress in some ways and problems in other ways. You can read Genesis, McLaren says, as a comment on the “progress” of humans

McLaren draws an interesting diagram to illustrate what many people, inside and outside the church, think is the basic message of the bible. I don’t know how to draw diagrams in this blog, so here is my own version in point form. Note that this is my summary of a view that McLaren thinks is not actually biblical. Neither he nor I see the bible in this way.

1. God made everything perfect in the Garden of Eden.
2. Adam and Eve messed up and ever since then humans are basically sinful and God is mad at us.
3. God sent Jesus to remind us of how to live right and he suffered the punishment which is rightfully ours.
4. Those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God and live a perfect life will go to Heaven when they die.
5. Everyone else goes to Hell.

My experience has taught me that it is often more helpful to be clear about the question than it is to be certain about the answer. I like the questions that McClaren has distilled from all the conversations that he has been having around the world. In chapters 4 – 10 he describes what he means by a question and then sets out his tentative responses. Note that he does not claim to have definitive answers, simply some tentative responses. I will take this approach myself, making my tentative response to his responses, and I invite you to do the same. Please do post your comments, share what you think, what you feel and what you want. Also reflect on what has shaped your response. I look forward to this exploration. Here is his list of questions. Which are most interesting to you? Are there others you would like to explore?

1. What is the overarching story line of the Bible?
2. How should the Bible be understood?
3. Is God violent?
4. Who is Jesus and why is he important?
5. What is the gospel?
6. What do we do about church?
7. Can we find a way to address human sexuality without fighting about it?
8. Can we find a better way of viewing the future?
9. How should followers of Jesus relate to people of other religions
10. How can we translate our quest into action?

I invite you to join me in some summer reading. Brian McClaren’s A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith ( Harper Collins, Inc.. 2010) is at the top of my list. I plan to read two chapters a week and to post my thoughts and questions, beginning with this post which is a response to Chapter One. The book is available from Amazon  and I will be glad to order you a copy if you send me an email.

Please do share your responses to what I post, whether or not you have read the chapters for the week or even cracked open the book. If something in the book strikes you, do share that also, even if I have not written about it.

So why did I choose this book? Do we really need a new kind of Christianity? What is wrong with the kind we have? St. Mark’s is a committed to be a multigenerational parish in which we celebrate God, enjoy one another, and serve our neighbors. Our mission is to create a place of safety and support in which all God’s people are given the opportunity to be transformed, as we explore our faith and our call to service. I am glad to serve as your priest as we seek to follow where God is calling us.

Yet it does seem clear to me that we need to find a new way of being  church at St. Mark’s. The established members are getting older and new members come with a different mindset about church and many different ideas and questions about what they really believe. Parents with young children are often stretched thin and sleep deprived. Those with school age children choose organized sports over worship or education at St. Mark’s.  The current way we are being Christian together seems to be only marginally important for many and unsustainable for the congregation. Is there a way of being Christian together which will meet our deep hunger for belonging and purpose in life?

McLaren believes that this is a challenge facing the church as a whole, across denominations, affecting both liberal and conservative Christians. Yet he is full of hope and excitement, seeing a new generation of Christian disciples being formed, coming alive and coming of age, disciples who hold amazing promise, even as they face huge challenges. I see this too, in the young adult interns I work with in Boston, in young families that find their way to St. Mark’s and in long term members who are opening themselves to new ways of being church. I look forward to thinking more about this as I read the book and am in conversation with you.

In the first chapter McClaren quotes Harvey Cox, a theologian at Harvard who has influenced me for decades. Cox describes the first 300 years after Jesus as the age of faith. The church was persecuted but it grew rapidly, characterized by energy, diversity, suffering and courage. Then the Roman Emperor, Constantine, made Christianity the official religion of the Empire. So the Empire that had crucified Jesus now claimed to be the agent, patron and police force of a newly dominant Christian religion. Unity of belief became a way to promote unity in the empire and thousands were executed as heretics. The age of belief had been launched. I still see signs of this way of thinking; people are concerned that if they don’t believe the creed exactly as written (which most don’t), they are not fully Christian.

Cox and McClaren say the age of belief is dying. Cox says that we are entering a new age, the age of the spirit. I find connection here with the reading I was doing on sabbatical. I was discovering a  new way of believing that has to do with bringing my mind into my heart. For me this means, for example, that when I say “I believe in God, the Father” this is not primarily an intellectual statement related to other statements, where I find myself thinking “if God is Father, why do bad things happen to His children?,” and “should I be saying God the Parent?” In the new way of believing I take a breath, settle into my heart and entrust myself to a universe in which I am a beloved child. This is not really new. The Latin word “credo” from which we get the word “creed” means “I set my heart” more than “I believe this statement to be true.” The age of the spirit has much in common with the first 300 years, the age of faith.

I am grateful to McClaren for his courage in staying in the tension that he feels between something real in Christianity and something wrong. I hope that this first chapter is laying the foundation for a deeper exploration as we wonder about a new kind of Christianity.

For the month of March I am resident at the School of Servant Leadership in Greensboro, North Carolina http://www.servantleadergreensboro.com/ . On Tuesday evenings I attend a class on COMPASSION:Awakening the Intelligence of the Heart. I am also doing the reading for the class Tricia is attending on POWER: The Practice of a Third Way, as well as participating in other activities and conversations at the School.

A central text for my class is Field of Compassion, by Judy Cannato. The subtitle is How the New Cosmology is Transforming Spiritual Life. The author proposes that we no longer need to live between two competing stories – the scientific story and the religious story. The new science which has emerged tells a story which complements and stretches the religious story. The book is challenging and exciting me. I am still digesting it. In the mean time, here are two quotes from Thomas Merton she uses to provoke our imagination:

• Compassion is the keen awareness of the interdependence of all things                              
• I have the immense joy of being [human], a member of the race in which God became incarnate. . . . if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.

A highlight of my trip to England was a visit to John and Shirley Davies. John was the Anglican chaplain at the University of the Witwatersrand when I was an undergraduate. The community which grew under their leadership continues to shape my own vocation. Hear is what I wrote to them after the visit.

Dear John and Shirley,

. . . .. I vividly remember my first retreat in Rosettenville, finding myself at home in a community of men and women, black and white. When I was waiting outside the Johannesburg station for a bus home, being back in apartheid South Africa was so disorienting that for a moment I could not see anything – didn’t know which frame to use! It has taken me a long time to know how to translate experience of transformational community into parish ministry. The early years of my ordained ministry (after two years as a curate in Springs) were non parochial. I was able to focus on creating transformational communities on the margins of the church – Self supporting ordained ministry in Johannesburg, Theological Education by Extension groups for Laity in the USA (which developed a model and methods of theological reflection) and Congregational development teams in the Diocese of South East Florida.

In 1992 Tricia and I became jointly Rector of St. Martin’s-in-the-Field in Severna Park, Maryland, a position we held for more than 12 years. This was an opportunity to invite the parish as a whole to be a community of transformation, where each person had an opportunity to discover and live into God’s particular call. We did make progress with many individuals and together with Dylan Breuer, who was on staff at the time, created a three part curriculum to further this work. When we moved to Massachusetts in 2005 Tricia and I continued to develop the curriculum and to implement it in the parishes that we served. You can find the courses at www.saintmarksburlington.org

Prior to accepting the half-time position of priest in charge at St. Mark’s in Burlington, the lay leaders and I agreed that my role would center in empowering them to be the church. This agreement continues to guide our life together and is beginning to bear fruit. I am implementing the curriculum with positive results; I am also finding a need to strengthen the opportunities of ongoing healing, emotional, physical and spiritual. As we hear and respond to God’s call we are faced with the limits of our resources and the wounds which cripple us.

All of this is sourced by my own transformation at Wits. Thank you both for setting me on this path! I look forward to our continuing conversation.

Tricia and I had a truly amazing time in Kenya. We stayed for a week at the training and office facility of BTCKE in Ongata Rongai, about an hour out of Nairobi, depending on the traffic. The three person staff team of Natalie, Sarah and Ken were preparing for the launch of the 2012 organizing campaign, which is linking teams of young adults with Children’s Homes (Orphanages) to mobilize community support for the work that is being done with the orphans. Participating in the preparations for the weekend launch was a huge blessing, allowing us to meet the five directors of the Homes which are participating this year, and the five young adults who will each lead one of the teams. I was deeply moved by the faith, compassion and commitment of the directors and young adult leaders and I look forward to continuing to be involved in this work in some way. You can see more in the BTCKE blog at http://bethechangekenya.wordpress.com/2012/02/16/btckes-2012-launch-weekend/