A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church
Published: December 29, 2008
In 2005, while en route to a speaking tour of the United Kingdom, we decided to treat ourselves to a stopover in Rome. As one does when in the eternal city, we visited the Vatican and St. Peter's Basilica. It was every bit as beautiful as we had imagined. Everyone who sees St. Peter's agrees that it is a truly remarkable feat of human ingenuity, with perfectly designed shafts of natural light highlighting its artistic treasures, built on a scale designed to foster a feeling of spiritual awe.
Like all tourists we wandered, mesmerized, our necks craned upwards to take in the sheer grandeur of the cathedral. Not looking where we were going, we accidentally bumped into each other, and there in the middle of the room that represented the heart of global Christianity for centuries, we reflected on what we were seeing and asked each other where Jesus was to be found in this place. Certainly, we agreed, the architecture of the basilica was stunning, and the sculpture, windows, and ceiling were beautiful. But both of us had the same niggling question bubbling around in our minds: Where is the poor, itinerant rabbi from Nazareth?
We open this book with this story to illustrate our concern with what has been promulgated in Jesus' name throughout history. The name of Jesus has been invoked as central to movements that do not seem to be in accord with the Jesus we find in the pages of the Gospels.
For instance, the KKK's Bible-thumping reign of terror in Mississippi attempted to sanctify their actions with ardent prayers to Jesus. In the Vatican - one of the archetypal buildings dedicated to the religion that was founded on Jesus Christ - it is hard to locate the simple, hardy, revolutionary carpenter who is compellingly portrayed in the Gospels. At the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, the Jesus of the Gospels competes with tsars and generals for the affections of the devoted. All of these are unsettling insights that speak directly to the purpose of this book because they raise disturbing questions about the continuity between Jesus and the subsequent religion established in his name.
In saying this, we don't mean to equate the Catholic or Orthodox churches with the Ku Klux Klan. We simply mean to identify instances in which a group's depiction of the person of Jesus is, to us, incongruous with the actual Jesus. Indeed, the discontinuity between Jesus and the religion that bears his name that we found in Rome and Moscow is by no means limited to those churches or denominations. Both Catholic and Protestant groups, right up to our present time and including even the newer Christian church movements, have traded in the radical way of Jesus for the seemingly greater grandeur of such religious expressions.
All this suggests questions that can be - indeed, should be - asked of all believers, churches, and denominations in any time and place:
• What ongoing role does Jesus the Messiah play in shaping the ethos and self-understanding of the movement that originated in him?
• How is the Christian religion, if we can legitimately call it that, informed and shaped by the Jesus that we meet in the Gospels?
• How do we assess the continuity required between the life and example of Jesus and the subsequent religion called Christianity?
• In how many ways do we domesticate the radical Revolutionary in order to sustain our religion and religiosity?
• And perhaps most important of all, how can a rediscovery of Jesus renew our discipleship, the Christian community, and the ongoing mission of the church?
1 of 2 | Next Page ›
Recommend this 316 story on your favorite social bookmarking site.
A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church
Published: December 29, 2008
Discover some of the radical challenges Jesus had for the church.
To link to this article from your blog, copy and paste the url below into your blog or homepage. Using this link will ensure access to the article, even after it becomes part of the 316 archive.
Permalink: