SUNDAY 2 OCTOBER 2005
Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20; Matthew 21: 33-46
There??s an ad playing on television at the moment for, I think, Toyota, where a Chinese gentleman at a golf driving range tells how expensive it is to join a golf club in Hong Kong, and only then after a twenty-year wait, so he has to restrict his golf to the driving range. Then after some shots of the easiness of playing golf in New Zealand and with a song "We don??t know how lucky we are" in the background, he stares into the camera and says, "You lucky, lucky, b?ñ"
I think that one day in the future, Christians might look back at us and say "You lucky, lucky b?ñ" for our being alive and being Christians at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Of course, quite probably, we don??t know just how lucky we are. To be alive at the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first centuries ?± to be alive and Christian with the monumental shifts in thinking that are going on all around us, and with us here taking a small part in that in our little corner of the planet, is just so exciting! At least, I think so anyway.
It is difficult to exaggerate the magnitude of the shift in thinking that is taking place. It has been in process for just over a hundred years. For a lot of that time it has been going on mainly among scholars in theological faculties and seminaries. Many clergy have been aware of these shifts, but not their congregations. The shift in thinking is so great, many ministers are nervous about the ability of their congregations to receive what is being said.
We are in the midst of a shift from one view of Christianity to another view so different from the first that they might seem like two different Christianities. Both will use the same Bible, and a great deal of the same language, but they are two quite different views. Some writers refer to two paradigms: a traditional paradigm and an emerging paradigm. We might speak of "traditional Christianity" and "emerging Christianity".
Most of us, even we who thought we were liberals many decades ago, grew up to a greater or lesser degree within traditional Christianity. Emerging Christianity is something many of us here have come to accept, or are coming to accept, as normal ?± as ?´this is how things really are for us?? in such a way that if we were asked to recite the Nicene Creed, for instance, we might as well recite clues for a cryptic crossword for all the immediate sense it makes.
One of the clearest examples of the divide between traditional and emerging Christianities, the clearest difference in the two paradigms, is the Bible. Traditional Christianity sees the Bible as a divine product. It comes from God in a way no other book does, and because it comes from God it is "sacred scripture", and therefore, it is authoritative. This means, for many Christians, that the words of the Bible are the words of God; that is, the Bible tells us how God sees things. Some Christians may recognise a human element in the creation of the Bible, but nevertheless believe the Spirit of God so guided the writers that while there are some human slip-ups in recording and transmitting the text, there are no errors on anything that matters for our eternal salvation.
Traditional Christianity interprets the Bible more or less literally. Some are strictly literal ?± at least they think they are, we often notice they are selectively literal. Others may see some stories ?± like Jonah spending three days in the stomach of a huge fish, for example ?± as perhaps more of a parable than history. But nevertheless other stories are true ?± the Israelites really did escape Egypt through a miraculously-parted sea, Jesus really did walk on water, turn water into wine, physically rise from the dead, and so on. In fact, ?´spectacular?? stories like these are important in traditional Christianity. The miraculous is central to the truth of Christianity. Question any of the miracles, and you question Christianity itself.
Because the Bible comes from God, says traditional Christianity, its teachings can only be true. It is the ultimate authority for faith and morals. Any deviations threaten the veracity of the rest of the Bible. Therefore what the Bible says, or rather is claimed to say, about any number of matters has to be true.
Emerging Christianity, on the other hand, sees and reads the Bible quite differently. It sees the Bible as the historical product of two ancient communities ?± ancient Israel and the early Christian movement. In short, it is a human book which tells us how at various times ancient Israelite people and the early Christians saw things. An obvious statement to make, but one that is not frequently voiced, is simply this: the Bible was not written for us or to us in 2005. None of it was ever intended to be read two to three thousand years after it was written. The Bible was written to and for the ancient communities that produced it. Therefore in reading the Bible in 2005, it is important to seek to understand what any particular passage means in its original context.
For emerging Christianity, biblical literalism diminishes and even trivialises the Bible The Bible is not some kind of holy encyclopaedia in which one may look up information about God. The historical factuality of a passage is not as important as its meaning. The question is not, "Did it happen this way or not?" but "What meaning does this have for us."
If there is anything within the Bible that makes the Bible "God??s book" in the eyes of many, then "God??s commandments" would be one of the prime contenders. Because, of course the Ten Commandments come from God ?± don??t they?ñ.?
Well, do they? The first four are a set of religious regulations; the remaining six are a set of instructions for human relationships. There certainly is nothing about the commandments against stealing, adultery, murder, bearing false witness and so on that required divine genius to work them out. They are simply basic commonsense rules, paralleled in many ancient Near Eastern societies, making it possible for human beings to live together in community. The first four are cultic principles to reinforce the uniqueness of Judaism in relation to the myriad of religions all about them. The Sabbath law, for instance, was essentially a product of the Priestly scholars who reframed Judaism after the Babylonian victory and during the years of exile. Even the Ten Commandments reflect how those who framed them saw things, not how God saw things. It was a particularly male perspective ?± for instance, they prohibit coveting your neighbour??s wife, but say nothing about coveting your neighbour??s husband.
None of this is to suggest the Ten Commandments are unimportant. In drawing out their human origin we begin to understand more about the depth of Israel??s response to what they understand to be God??s choice of them. The point about the Ten Commandments is they were not delivered as an eternal framework of morality, as a universal rule to apply to all peoples everywhere for ever. They were the response of a grateful ancient people living in a covenant relationship with their God. In the story of the Hebrew people, God had decisively demonstrated God??s commitment to them in the Exodus. The framers of the Ten Commandments placed that reminder in the opening words ?± "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery". That was the pledge of God??s love for the Hebrew people. The Commandments are the people??s response, a pledge expressing how a loved and liberated people will live in relationship with God and one another.
So, asking "what does this mean for us?" leads us away from the didactic, moralistic use some would make of the Commandments, to asking instead ?± if that is how the people of ancient Israel expressed their response to the graciousness of God, how do we express our response? How do we, 21st century Christians, express the essence of what the Christian life would look like just as the ancient Israelites expressed how their life would look in those historic words of the Ten Commandments?
That is an important question, because the Christian life is a second major area of difference between old and emerging paradigms, between the old and the emerging Christianities. In the traditional Christianity most if not all of us grew up in, there are three significant things about the Christian life.
First, faith as believing is central. Many of you will remember the TV series from the seventies "All in the family" with grumpy Archie Bunker. In one programme Archie produced a memorable line defining faith ?± "Faith," he said, "is believing in things nobody in their right mind would believe in." And that is what faith has become to many modern people ?± believing in things that are difficult for modern minds to believe in like walking on water or turning water into wine or a virgin conceiving and giving birth and remaining a virgin, or physically rising from the dead. Believing in things that don??t happen because they can??t happen If you are a Christian, in traditional Christianity, you have to believe certain things whether or not they are rationally credible.
Second, the afterlife is central. It is both a promise and a motive for good living. Ultimately, the afterlife is why one should be a Christian at all. To be a Christian is to be in line for the good afterlife which, regrettably, is denied to anyone who isn??t a Christian (or, in some cases, who isn??t my sort of Christian). If there is no good afterlife as a promise and a reward, why bother being Christian at all? If the promise of heaven or the threat of hell are empty, what??s the point of even being religious?
This takes us to the third central understanding of traditional Christianity which is that the Christian life is about requirements (such as obeying the Ten Commandments) and rewards. The main reward, of course, is a blessed afterlife. But, for many, the rewards in this life for fulfilling requirements about believing correctly and not sinning are many. They can include answers to prayer for healing, and the gift of prosperity. God prospers and answers the prayers of those who are true believers and obedient followers. The point of being Christian and fulfilling the requirements of being Christian is being rewarded, getting something out of it. If one takes this traditional point of view, believes the things one is supposed to believe, and fulfils requirements like tithing and church attendance, reading your Bible and saying your prayers, great are your riches ?± in heaven at least, if not now on earth when you actually need them.
For growing numbers of people who continue to be surprised by God and attracted to Jesus of Nazareth, for whom prayer and worship continue to be important, the centralities of traditional Christianity are hollow and unhelpful. How can we justify a God who is worried about the details of what I believe, but who seems to be content to condemn my good-living Hindu neighbour to an eternity of darkness? How can what I believe as a twenty-first century liberal Presbyterian Christian in New Zealand really matter, when the particulars of my beliefs differ wildly from the particulars of second century Syrian, or eighth century Irish, twelfth century Russian Orthodox, fifteenth century Chinese, and nineteenth century Scandinavian Lutheran particulars of belief? Or, does what God consider important in beliefs change depending on historical and geographical setting?
Many 21st century people might also ask, isn??t the notion of living a good and moral life in order to gain heaven and avoid hell an inadequate, childish kind of morality? Living on the basis of obtaining rewards and avoiding punishments is no better than a ten year old child hopeful or fearful of a parental response to behaviour. We are adults, and as adults our moral behaviour should be based on an adult appreciation of what is appropriate or inappropriate, loving or not loving, true to our calling or not true, without any underlying motivating hope or fear of personal eternal consequences ?± or even immediate personal consequences.
Emerging Christianity has no truck with reward and punishment theology, nor with a focus on whatever life there is beyond this life. Being Christian is not about future reward, nor is it very much to do with believing. Rather, faith means what it often meant up until about the sixteenth or seventeenth century when it came to refer to what you believed in; that is, faith means trust. Trust in God is a rather different concept from belief in God. For emerging Christianity the Christian life is about a trustful relationship with God that potentially transforms life in the present. The point of being Christian is to be transformed, daily, continuously within the context of the lives we live here and now, so that we too can be transformers of life for others and in this world, not the next.
We are lucky, lucky?ñ We live in a time when we have many more choices than have existed before about how we may be Christian. We live in a time when we are witnessing tectonic shifts in what it means to be Christian. For many people for whom traditional Christianity has become an enormous intellectual, spiritual, and moral stumbling block, emerging Christianity provides a way of taking Christianity and the Christian life seriously.
Many have already found this enormously liberating, and the source of a deepening relationship with God. If we have to use parental imagery of God, it is like the development of a healthy, open, mutually respectful relationship of an adult child with their parent. You and I can never be God??s equal, but neither is subservience required. We can never be God, but we can be increasingly God-like in our lives, our actions, our relationships. We are lucky, lucky?ñ because the shape and style of the Christianity that is emerging allows us to see ourselves in partnership with God, empowered and enriched by a freely entered-into relationship that is without the coercion of an externally-imposed set of commandments, and without fear of eternal consequences as we make mistakes, because it is a relationship based on a profound and mutual love which gives us eternity now.