I recently attended the "Church in the 21st Century" conference at the Washington National Cathedral. It was a 3ish day event based loosely around the work of Diana Butler Bass in her new book Christianity for the Rest of Us. On the evening of day 1, Marcus Borg, Jesus Seminar scholar and noted author, gave a presentation on the 2 kinds of Christianity roaming about the US religious landscape. Basically he was pitting modern evangelicalism against the enlightened liberal mainline and showing why we should all move to the left, but what I found fascinating in his presentation was what he saw to be the focus of each "Christianity."
For the evangelicals, he said, the focus was on getting one's self into heaven; that's it. For the liberal mainline (which he called emerging Christianity in a great bastardization of that word, emerging) he thought the focus was on loving our neighbor. In his opinion this was the Christianity of Jesus, the model for faith that we were to live out. To live a faith that in any way looked to the glory of heaven was, in his words, "a self-centered faith."
Which leads me to wonder what he does with Luke 10.20. It is probably a suspect verse for his fellow Jesus Seminary buddies, but it made it into the canon, so I believe we must take it seriously, whether it came from the mouth of Jesus or not. "Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven." Jesus, who admittedly was focused more on the here and now than on the future, tells the 70 that they joy should not come from freeing others from oppression (in this case demon possession), but instead that they are going to heaven, they will join with the Trinity in its unending dance of love, they are among the elect, the saved, the blessed.
I wonder if it might be possible to do both; to live a faith that is focused on the betterment of all in the here and now AND focused on the task of saving souls? Can we do both? Can we live in that tension? Is there really a tension at all? I wonder.
3 comments:
Pipe down, Spankey. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.
Oh wait, wrong Borg. ;-)
I'm with you - I think different parts of the church get different parts of the gospel pretty well right, but tend to stick their fingers in their ears and go "la la la la la la" when anybody - even Jesus - talks about other parts. That's why we all need each other. Er - except when we still don't listen to each other. Which is usually, I suppose. :-)
Peace,
Mike
I'm with you Spankey - I don't see how it can't be both.
Spankey, though you brag that you didn't do much reading in seminary, clearly you listened pretty close! I think that yes It IS BOTH! and the good (rather than the bad or the ugly) of the Anglican Tradition lifts both of these up...and points us to the challenge of living in the tension ... Glad to see you're back to the blogging! Peace,
Peter
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