Easter:
·
Resurrection
·
New
Life
·
Hope
Through disputation and
deliberation and discernment, the people of God laid their varied, even
opposing, understandings on the table and through faithful questioning and honest collaboration successive
generations moved closer to the understanding of God reflected in the life of
Jesus of Nazareth.
Jesus then sided with one
specific side in the debate, and plotted a redemptive trajectory of healing,
restoration, compassion and love based on his way of interpreting Scripture.
But, somewhere around the
third and fourth centuries the rabbinic process of faithful questioning and
Jesus’ redemptive trajectory were strangled by the Pharisaic practice of unquestioning obedience to their
understanding of Scripture, which they saw as frozen in time, for all time. The
problem is, given that humans are limited by the clay of which we are made, and
given the subsequent human penchant for control and domination, what they would
have everyone obey unquestioningly is
not always consistent with the way Jesus read Scripture.
Subsequent generations
have followed the Pharisees, replacing the Word with our doctrines, thereby splintering
the Body of Christ.
All the foregoing is
essentially what prompted the founders of my denomination [Christian Church
(Disciples of Christ)] to break from their established churches. It was never
their intention to form a separate denomination. In fact, at one point in the
unfolding of our history, the founders formed “The Springfield Presbytery”,
which was intended as a venue for uniting the splintered Body of Christ. When
it quickly became evident that the participants were beginning to
institutionalize specific doctrines and polities, the founders disbanded what
they perceived to be an increasingly sectarian Presbytery and published “The
Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery” to clarify their non-sectarian
position.
The founders would turn
over in their graves today if they knew the movement they birthed has now
become not a separate denomination, but three
separate denominations that don’t get along with each other; indeed, some
manifestations of what once was known as the Restoration Movement now
demonstrate difficulty getting along with all other Christian bodies; indeed,
they contribute significantly to the further splintering of the Body.
If Christians can’t
interact with loving collaboration, then I fear for the future. But doctrine
has trumped love as a foundation of identity for too many Christian bodies.
Still, a valid concern is
how do we thrive without a body of beliefs?
According to Jesus (Matthew
22:36-40) and Paul (Romans 13:9-10), when we love we have fulfilled all the requirements of the law. Love is the face of true faith.
That understanding of
faith and Scripture was put to death by an unquestioning
obedience to a reading of Scripture that condones violence as a valid way
of enforcing “right” doctrines and vengeance as an appropriate response to
evil. It was buried by the act of freezing Scripture in time, for all time.
But Easter calls us to
resurrection. Can love rise again from the grave of intolerance reinforced by
an unloving reading of Scripture?
What if, for one year, a
significant number of Christians from across the denominational spectrum all
agreed to set aside the creeds and doctrines we have so meticulously
categorized and so fervently venerated, and what if we agreed to support and
encourage each other in an effort to drape our actions over the framework of
love?
In 1896 Charles Sheldon
published In His Steps, a novel about
a minister who challenged his congregation to preface every act and every
response with the question, “What would Jesus do?” As the plot develops it
expresses the values and ethical mores of late 19th century
Christianity; but the point it makes is still valid. The lives of those people
were changed; and through them their community was changed. Yes, it was
fiction; but while it may not have been fact, it bore every characteristic of
Truth.
So, what if congregations
and individual Christians covenanted together to support and encourage each
other to preface every act and every response with the question, “What would
Love do?” Instead of obsessing over what some people are “getting away with,”
what if we simply took responsibility—and held each other accountable—for our
own actions and responses?
What if we take as our
only doctrine the way of Christ and his redemptive trajectory of compassion,
grace and love of the enemy? Might we discover better Jesus-shaped alternatives
to the way we have been pursuing?[1] (And,
by the way, how have those alternatives we’ve been pursuing been working out
for you?)
It may be easy, and even
tempting, to divert attention away from the difficulty implied by this
direction. It would be easy to return to those passages in the Bible that
justify and even celebrate retaliation and violence—the very passages Jesus
rejected. Love is difficult. Love is risky. Love makes us vulnerable, just as
it made Jesus vulnerable.
The Pharisees and other
religious leaders had adopted those vengeance-oriented texts from the Hebrew
Scriptures and had venerated them as the way of liberation from their
oppressors (or more likely as the way of wreaking bloody vengeance upon them!)
And when Jesus rejected those passages and chose instead the way of Love, his
vulnerability was multiplied all the way to the cross.
But the call is to
approach the Bible not as passive readers, but as morally engaged and thinking
readers. It involves faithfully questioning the Bible, but it equally involves
allowing ourselves to be challenged and stretched by it as well. It
demonstrates that truth is found in the struggle—that questioning is the mark
of a healthy faith, and the reflection of a robust character.[2]
Christ Is Risen! Can his
love live again?
That’s how I see it
through the flawed glass that is my world view.
Together in the
Walk,
Jim
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