THE FOURTH QUESTION: The Jesus Question
12: Who Is Jesus and Why Is He Important?
McLaren starts this chapter by making the controversial statement: “Just saying the name Jesus doesn’t mean much until we make clear which Jesus we are talking about” (p. 119). Just as “God” can mean many things, so Jesus can disguise many different saviors and Christianity can mean vastly different ways of living. He quotes one of his critics saying: “I can’t worship a guy I can beat up” and casting Jesus as a warrior intent on inflicting violence and shedding blood (he gets this, naturally, from Revelation).
To illustrate this, he quotes a section from the grace before meals in the movie Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, who calls upon the baby Jesus since he likes the Christmas Jesus best. McLaren remarks: “We all are tempted to remake Jesus into just about anything we like…who hates the people we hate and likes whatever we like” (p.121). Sadly, we feel our view is an objective view, with no distortions.
He returns to the passage from Rev. 19:11-16, but places it in its historical context and genre of Jewish apocalyptic literature “which in turn is part of a larger genre known as the literature of the oppressed” (p. 122). This genre, he states, functioned for its readers like Science Fiction does for us. It is NOT predicting the future, but talking about the present with a view of changing it for the better (cf Planet of the Apes, The Matrix, Star Trek, Wall-E). For example, The Matrix and Wall-E “warn us about losing our humanity in a technological and consumerist culture.” “They provide windows on the actual present from the perspective of an imagined future and they do so in hopes of influencing us in the present to live and choose wisely, thus creating a better future than we otherwise would” (p. 123).
And so, McLaren says, we must interpret the passage in a way to be true to the reconciling messages of Jesus’s gospel and life, and NOT as if these were a sham because Jesus was going to return as a Caesar, “more of a slash-and-burn guy, brutal, willing to torture, and determined to conquer with crushing violence.” The passage from Revelation is intended, rather, to reassure the persecuted Christians that Jesus’s message of peace and reconciliation will in the end prove more powerful than Caesar’s swords and spears. The blood on his robe is his own blood, or perhaps the blood of the martyrs.
See pages 124 - 126 for an eloquent testimony of Jesus’ message of nonviolence and peace. “Jesus matters precisely because he provides us a living alternative to the confining Greco-Roman narrative in which our world and our religions live, move and have their being too much of the time” (p. 125). What Revelation actually tells us, says McLaren is “that the humble man of peace is Lord…the poor unarmed Galilean riding on the donkey, hailed by the poor and hopeful, is the one to trust…Revelation celebrates not the love of power, but the power of love…It asserts…that God’s anointed liberator is the one we beat up, who promises mercy to those who strike him…In response to the crucified one’s name—not Caesar’s or any other violent human’s—every knee will gladly bow” (p. 126).
13: Jesus Outside the Lines
McLaren answers another of his critics in this chapter—one who said Jesus had no social justice agenda or desire to help the poor: he only came to save people from hell. McLaren then uses John’s Gospel, which McLaren calls the “least likely” to support his alternative view of Jesus from the viewpoints of creation and reconciliation (Genesis), liberation and formation (Exodus) and new creation and the peace-making kingdom (Isaiah).
He says it’s “least likely” because it is most often used to “buttress the Greco-Roman story” (with verses quoted like 3:16, 5:24 and 14:6A). And so McLaren needs to show how John immediately evokes the Genesis story of creation, and continues with references to it in the conversion of water to wine and the walking on the water (as the Spirit does in Genesis). He has a wonderful interpretation of the resurrection story in John as the beginning of a new day, a new creation, ending with a reconciliation of brothers just as Genesis does with Joseph reconciling with his brothers.
He translates Jesus promise of ‘eternal life’ with “life of the ages.” He envisions him as promising a life that transcends life in the present age and is part of God’s original creation. “John wants us to see in Jesus a rebirth of the original garden” (p. 130).
He then moves on to show how the Exodus themes of liberation and formation shine through the Gospel of John, right from 1:11, 17. Jesus liberates from the social and spiritual oppression of his day. Jesus identifies himself as “I am” (Exod. 3:14). John the Baptist identifies him as the Passover Lamb; Christ means "anointed" suggesting a king or leader of the people. He is leading the people on a new Exodus journey. He even gives a new command as Moses gave the commandments: “…that you love one another” (Jn. 13:34).
And at the end of the Gospel, Jesus hands his disciples off to the Spirit, saying He will guide them. He will guide them into the promised land, i.e., the peaceable kingdom, celebrated by the prophets, especially Isaiah. This concept changes in the O.T. from a literal piece of geography to a social kingdom and an era of harmony, justice, prosperity and safety. McLaren points out that the “key to this golden time is light” with many quotes from Isaiah, and then shows how many references there are to light in John’s Gospel. This kingdom is one in which “God’s wisdom draws nations up to a higher level of relating, so disputes are settled nonviolently, wisely, peacefully” (pp. 133 - 134).
THE FIFTH QUESTION: The Gospel Question
14: What Is the Gospel?
For Evangelicals, the Gospel is the message of justification by faith (M. Luther). The major source of this theory is found in Paul’s Letter to the Romans. One of McLaren’s friends 15 years ago started him on a different quest when he pointed out that McLaren quoted Paul to explain what the Gospel is. “Shouldn't you be letting Jesus define the Gospel?” he asked. --That is, read Paul in the light of Jesus? (p. 138)
Note that as a constitutional reader of Scripture, the words of Jesus and Paul were on a par for McLaren. AND if the major point of the Gospel according to Jesus is that “the kingdom of God is at hand,” for McLaren this meant heaven, when you die. McLaren felt Paul taught a theory of “penal substitution” for the forgiveness of original sin.
McLaren took Jesus’ word “repent” literally. He became 'pensive' again and had 'a change of mind and heart.' Now the meaning of ‘the kingdom of God is at hand’ got transformed into Rod Washington’s : “God’s new benevolent society is already among us.” This kingdom was meant to be in stark contrast to the kingdoms of Caesar and Rome. Calling Jesus Lord meant that Caesar wasn’t. Martyrs gave their lives for the contrast between the violent kingdom of Rome and the peaceable kingdom of Jesus.
Jesus didn’t come to start a new religion, named after him. He “came to announce a new kingdom, a new way of life, a new way of peace that carried good news to all people of every religion” (p. 139).
It wasn’t simply information about how individual souls could leave earth, avoid hell, and ascend to heaven after death. No, it was about God’s will being done on earth as in heaven for all people. It was about God’s faithful solidarity with all humanity in our suffering, oppression, and evil. It was about God’s compassion and call to be reconciled with God and with one another—before death, on earth. It was a summons to rethink everything and enter a life of retraining as disciples or learners of a new way of life, citizens of a new kingdom (p. 139).
McLaren finds the good news fulfilling 3 prime narratives of the Hebrew scriptures: (1) being born again; i.e. participating in a new Genesis, a new creation that would interrupt the downward death spiral of violence, and joining in an upward regenerative movement; (2) embarking on a New Exodus of baptism, eating the new Passover meal and experiencing liberation from the powers that oppress and enslave; (3) becoming a citizen of the new kingdom, “a peaceable kingdom imagined by the prophets and inaugurated in Christ, learning its ways as a disciple and demonstrating in word and deed its presence and availability to all as an apostle” (p.140).
And Jesus proclaimed that the time for this kingdom was NOW. This is the time “to cancel debts to forgive, to treat enemies as neighbors, to share your bread with the hungry and your clothes with the naked, to invite the outcasts over for dinner, to confront oppressors not with sharp knives, but with unarmed kindness” (p. 140). And so the call to repent and adjust our way of life to these invitations.
At this point, McLaren wonders what is so disturbing his critics, since he is on a conservative quest, going back to Jesus and the scriptures, to the original Evangelists and apostles. And so he asks if this new way of looking and acting can simply be added to what we already do and believe so it won’t disturb anyone. Many ministers are trying to do this and McLaren wishes them luck. For him, the new understanding of the kingdom changes everything. It can’t co-exist with the six-line Greco-Roman narrative.
But what about the traditional reading of Romans? Are there irreconcilable differences between Paul and Jesus? McLaren sees Paul in Romans as trying “to clean up a mess that Jesus had created through his gospel.” --Like prostitutes and tax collectors closer to God than some Pharisees and priests; like great faith being found in a political enemy who belonged to another religion; like what was clean and unclean; like the Sabbath observance; like how to treat outsiders and like who is a descendant of Abraham. Jesus made it possible for non-Jews to be accepted in a faith tradition that “had previously been exclusively Jewish” (p. 142).
As Christianity expands, little cells of people created centers of koinonia (fellowship) and diakonia (service). Geographic centers became less important. McLaren is confident that Paul never intended his letter to be an exposition of the gospel. Instead, he was dealing with this mess: “How could Jews and Gentiles in all their untamed diversity come and remain together as peers in the kingdom of God without having first-and second-class Christians, on the one hand, and, on the other, without being homogenized like a McDonald’s franchise with the same menu, same pricing, same bathroom soap?” (p. 143).
McLaren also points out that Paul, like Jesus, is NOT a linear thinker. He is eastern, more akin to poetical, circular thought. And so Paul circles around his theme, coming at it from all angles, using metaphor after metaphor. [McLaren cites Mt. 13 as a similar way Jesus argues]. He is dictating a letter to Tertius and this is the natural flow of his thoughts. “Together, the Holy Spirit and Paul make move after move toward the single goal of justifying the gospel as good news for Gentiles and Jews alike” (p. 146).
15: Jesus and the Kingdom of God
McLaren is still wrestling with Romans (since it would be the pivotal Scripture thrown against his new quest?). And so he interprets Romans as a series of brilliant moves on Paul's part; explaining Paul’s first brilliant move as reducing Jew and Gentile to the same level of need (Rom. 1:18-3:20). He details first the sins of the non-Jews, and then the sins of the righteous believers! Everyone fails and breaks God’s laws. No one has an inside track. We are united in our need for grace.
Paul’s second move is to announce a new way forward for all, Jew and Gentile: the way of faith (Rom. 3:21-4:25). The way out is not a new religion or trying harder at the old, but faith—“having reverent confidence or dependence on God” (p. 148). Everyone is guilty and everyone is liberated/justified by grace through faith. He goes back to the story of Abraham and notes that he was justified neither by the Law of Moses nor by circumcision, but by his faith. So, he maintains, regardless of whether you are a Jew, you can be a a child of Abraham “if you are marked by the same kind of faith Abraham had when he responded to God’s call” (pp. 148 - 149).
Paul’s third move is “to unite all in a common story, with four illustrations: Adam, baptism, slavery, and remarriage (Rom. 5:1-7:6). Paul starts talking about ‘we’ and ‘us’ and ‘our’ instead of Jew and Gentile. Despite our differences, we are united in the story of Adam and in Jesus as a new Adam, a last Adam. We also share the death and resurrection of Jesus that is dramatized in baptism. Our bodies can be either slaves of sin (“evoking slavery under Pharaoh”) or liberated and surrendered to God as “free agents of God’s reign, as agents of God’s restorative justice.” In Christ we are now married (enslaved) to a new master “like a former widow newly wed, we are impregnated with our divine lover’s goodness, bearing more and more good into the world” (p. 150).
Paul’s fourth move is to “unite all in a common struggle and a common victory, illustrated by two stories: the Story of Me and the Story of We (Rom. 7:7-8:39).” Paul never says the law is or was evil, but he means to correct any misunderstandings. He adds the metaphor of adoption. He details the struggles he personally has had internally, following a course from forgiveness to relationship to suffering to victory and reward. He concludes with the famous passages about all creation groaning in anticipation of this new humanity in Christ—one new humanity; and the passage asserting that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ (8:37-39).
Paul’s fifth move is to “address Jewish and gentile problems, showing God as God of all (Rom. 9:1-11:36).” He agonizes over the issue of why his Jewish brethren have not accepted the gospel of the kingdom of God. He retraces his steps and the stories of the O.T. Finally, he opines that may God has hardened their hearts for some greater good. Maybe they were too proud because they had the Law; and maybe, he warns, the Gentiles could become too proud at discovering the gospel and adhering to it. Finally, he comes to the mystery: “..God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.” And then he concludes with the famous passage: “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!” (Rom. 11:33-36).
Paul’s sixth move is to “Engage all in a common life and mission (Rom. 12:1-13:14). “We should present our entire selves to God as a ‘living sacrifice,’ Paul says, a new kind of sacrifice in which Gentile and Jew can equally share. We shouldn’t be conformed to the patterns of the world, but should be transformed by the renewing of our minds” (p. 153). McLaren notes similarities with the Sermon on the Mount. “They live and work as law-abiding, tax-paying citizens within the kingdom of Caesar, even though they are now citizens in God’s kingdom,” and their highest law is not Roman or Jewish, but the law of love.
Paul’s seventh move is to “Call everyone to unity in the kingdom of God (Rom. 14:1-16:27).” Paul grapples with the current issues that can divide Jews and Gentiles, like dietary laws, holyday practices, etc. His message is the same as Jesus’s: “Don’t judge one another.” “What they do regarding disputable matters is important, because it expresses their devotion to the Lord. But what they do is not relevant to what others do as their expression of devotion to the Lord. The Kingdom of God…will not be a community of uniform policies and practices. Only one policy will be universal: love” (p. 155).
Paul concludes with four benedictions. “Through all these moves, Paul makes it clear that there is only one gospel: Jesus’s good news of God’s kingdom, available for all people…Paul is a Jesus and the kingdom of God guy from first to last…Repent and believe the good news. Be reconciled” (p. 158).
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