|
|
|
| Strengths of the Proposal |
 |
Note: The rest of this sermon (#7 in a series entitled "The Jesus Project: Maintaining the unity of the Spirit in the bond of Peace") is available on tape through the Woodmont Hills Website.
For the past several weeks, Rubel and I have been attempting to rethink what it means to be the body of Christ, the church, in the 21st century. How do we break out of the divisive spirit that has dominated church history for the past five centuries and seek, instead, to “maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace?” How do we leave behind the individualism and sectarianism that produced hair-splitting debate and begin to live out in our time the prayer of Jesus that his followers be one just as he and his Father are one? How do we stop thinking of churches as organizations and start understanding the church as organism—as the living body of Christ rather than an institution?
At the heart of the Jesus Proposal is the conviction that while Jesus Christ may indeed be the same, yesterday, today and forever, our human understandings and perceptions of Jesus are ever changing. This, to me, is the most difficult challenge to our longings for stability and security. There is not a static understanding of God or of Jesus that can be traced through church history. What you find instead are versions of God and Christ and church throughout human history that are shaped by the times and circumstances and belief systems of the people who hold them. As one writer, Brian McLaren, puts it, we humans tend to describe God as a better, greater version of ourselves. Thus,
”for the conservatives, God is a conservative (surprise!); for the liberals, God is liberal; for the intellectuals God is clothed in abstractions and complexities; while for the uneducated, God is a down-to-earth and simple kind of guy. For the military man, God tends to be about power; while for the bureaucrat God is about policies. For the artist God has a wildness and beauty that inspires and attracts; while for the engineer, God’s grandeur is in predictability, stability and definition—opposite qualities of those loved by the artist. For the social worker, God sides with the poor and oppressed; while for the entrepreneur, God rewards the diligent and clever.” ["More Ready Than You Realize: Evangelism as Dance in the Postmodern Matrix (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002) 34]
He goes on suggest that the same is true at the larger perspectives of East versus West or industrialized verse non-industrialized cultures. Of course, in the amazing story of God called Scripture one can find a text to support any of those portrayals.
It is little wonder that the church as institution has flourished over the past 200 years in America, or that church leadership and organization structures closely resemble those of the business world. Corporate structures and institutional design are the very fabric of American life. No one should be surprised in American church culture that God wants to increase our territory and bless us with more and more and more material wealth, nor that we should find a proof-text that gives Biblical credence to our desire. That’s at the heart of our capitalist economic system. No one should be surprised that evangelism became church growth, which in turn became marketing the church. One targets market shares and advertises appropriately in order to grow big companies and big churches. We should not be surprised that in a culture that prizes individualism and personal choice, that churches cater to felt needs and individual desires.
In the name of not conforming our faith to our culture, how do we escape the realization that God and Christ and our interpretations of Scripture and our pursuit of faith are constantly conditioned by our circumstances? The answer is we don’t and we can’t escape. We also cannot pretend that our faith and our practices in our particular church are immune, or that there was a time called Bible times that was immune. There never has been a time when some pristine form of Christian faith lived outside of such cultural reading and conditioning.
The search in Scripture for some sort of church pattern, when you think about it, is a culturally conditioned response to the text in the new world of science and industrialization. That 19th and 20th century search for patterns assumed a blue print model for everything that was good. Draw up the business plan, produce the architectural drawings for the house or the skyscraper. Everything has order that we are able to figure out. Surely God’s design is there for the taking in Scripture. Thus when you even find the word “pattern” in Scripture, that must be the plan! So why did so many architects end up with so many different blue prints, all claiming to be the only plan?
media
|
|
|
Site-specific content Copyright (c) 2000 FaithSite.com or Used by Permission
All other content Copyright (c) 2000 FaithSites, Inc. All rights reserved.
Use of this site is subject to Terms of Service and to our Privacy Policy.
If you are offended by anything on this page, click here.
| |
