Christian Identity in the 21st Century (Diarmuld O'Murchu)
Excerpts adapted from Chapter of the Précis by Helene O’Sullivan, M.M.
Chapter 6
The Post-Kinship Horizon
Only in the early years of the present century did I take to heart the words of the Sermon on the Mount: “Seek you first the kindom of God” (Matt. 6:33). As I have delved deeper into the reality of the kindom of God, and changed the language in that process, perhaps the greatest single challenge is the realization that Jesus brought a whole new reign of God in which we are all called to be adult co-disciples, serving and earthing his new empowering dispensation. The implications are spelled out in the present chapter.
Jesus entered a world haunted by the embattled failure of patriarchal power. A new imagination was desperately needed – and some rightly argue it is still needed – a strategy that would be visionary but also immensely practical. Jesus rose to the occasion, not with another panacea but with a transformative vision that could modify human and earthly reality in a substantial way.
Did Jesus succeed? Perhaps the more relevant question is, did humans allow him to succeed? Since the mid-20th century, Scripture scholars and theologians have been sorting through the inherited baggage and pointing us in a more promising and proactive direction.
Theologian José Antonio Pagola states the challenge:
= 2 =
The reign of God could only be proclaimed out of a close, direct contact with the people who most needed breathing space and liberation. The good news of God could not come from the splendid royal palace in Tiberius or from the sumptuous villas in Sepphoris or from the wealthy neighbor-hood where the priestly elites lived in Jerusalem. The seeds of God’s reign would only find fertile soil among the poor of Galilee. (Jesus, A Historical Approximation, 2009, p. 98)
A Timely Breakthrough
The Gospels speak of a future kindom, a new Israel, but also indicate that it is already happening in the here and now, what the scholars describe as realized eschatology. We may never discover what the historic Jesus had in mind in terms of the time-context for this new dispensation. What we do know is that it was a phenom-enon of central importance for Jesus and a countercultural challenge not merely to the imperial culture of his day but indeed to royal dispensation of every time and age. We who represent the living Christ today, the body of Christ on earth now, need to choose an expansive and empowering vision for our own human future and that of all creatures who share the web of life with us. In all probability that is what a contemporary Jesus would want us to do.
The Expansive Horizon
First, we need to acknowledge that this new vision is for everybody, rich and poor alike, with a more immediate benefit for those living in poverty and oppression. It is not just for Christians but for everyone, and one of the great scandals of history is that this new reign of God has often been lived out in far more authentic ways by non-Christians and non-believers than by Christians.
= 3 =
The new reign of God is the revelation of God awakening throughout the entire creation. It embraces the whole context of our being and becoming, the grand arc of God’s creation. With Scripture scholar Ernst Troeltsch we can assert, “Jesus did not bring the kindom of God: it is the kindom of God that brought Jesus.” For Jesus, the reign of God was all about encountering God in the open space and universality of creation, and not merely in the closed precincts of temple, synagogue, church or mosque. It was of an entirely different global ambience. The new reign of God is cosmic in its universal outreach.
Theologian Elizabeth Johnson advocates an expansive horizon and global vision:
For this was the kindom of the redeeming, saving God of Israel. Slaves would be freed, exiles returned home; springs would flow in the desert, abundance mark the fields; justice would be established and mercy reign. In a word, the symbol refers to the state of the world when the will of God is finally and fully honored: compassion and kindness will abound, joy and peace will break out, and all creation will flourish. Jesus’ use of this particular symbol was inherently subversive. His announcement turned the usual operations of the kingdoms of this world upside down. God’s way of ruling was the opposite of the empire’s Caesar. (Creation and the Cross, 2018, p. 75)
So, the whole cosmic creation is God’s primary revelation to us. This is where we experience the creative empowerment of God primarily at work, and since ours is an evolutionary creation forever unfolding in grandeur and complexity, then that revelation never ceases and is forever new.
= 4 =
In incarnational terms, God’s embodied presence in our world belongs first and foremost to the universal, cosmic creation. Thereafter we discern that same reign of God in every evolutionary, embodied develop-ment, including that of our own species. How the conventional Christian understanding of incarnation in the person of Jesus can be integrated with the enlarged horizons is a task theologians have not yet undertaken.
Identity of Jesus
It seems that Jesus began his public ministry as a disciple of John the Baptist. Why he opted out is not clear, but a shift from a more ascetical strategy for reform to one based on healing and commensality (sharing a meal together) seems highly significant. In Luke 7 and Matthew 11, the disciples of John seek clarity from Jesus, and he said: “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard; the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleaned, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who takes no offense at me” (Lk. 7:22-23). In addressing John’s disciples, Jesus meta-phorically points the finger away from himself and takes the focus off of himself.
“The blind see, the deaf hear….” This is the new reign of God taking shape! Jesus is pointing directly at the reign of God, saying to the disciples of John: “Stop looking at me, the individual savior, and look instead toward my relational matrix, the web of my mission, from which I, the individual Jesus, and you, receive personal identity and discipleship for mission.”
Toward a Relational Anthropology
In Africa, one occasionally still hears allusions to the notion of Ubuntu: “I am because we are.” Contemporary anthro-pologists assert: I am at all times the sum of my relationships, and this is what gives me identity. The Christian challenge, captivated succinctly by Walter Wink, is:
= 5 =
“Incarnation is a task for us all to accomplish and not just some divine attribute of the historical Jesus.” (The Human Being: Jesus and the Enigma of the Son of Man, 2002, p. 157
Regarding the new relational paradigm, Albert Einstein captured quite beautifully what is at stake in a remarkable letter written to a friend who was grieving the loss of a loved one:
“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something sepa-rated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of our consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” (The Ultimate Quotable Einstein, 2005, p.206)
According to this relational understanding, none of us can grow into what the Christian gospel calls the fullness of life, without being sustained by a relational interconnectedness that spans the entire web of creation. All of us are programmed for relationship, and it is through our relational interdependence that we fulfill our deepest aspirations and contribute creatively to making the world a better place for all.
We also hold the evolutionary viewpoint very much to the fore, and each present reality is an open-ended system; what is happening in the present is always informed not only by the past but also by what John Haught calls the lure of the future. The companionship of empower-ment is bringing about heaven on earth, collaborating with God, as Jesus did, to support and advance the evolutionary complexity within which creation is forever unfolding.
= 6 =
The great paradox of creation–cum-destruction or the recurring cycle of birth-death-rebirth underpins all suffering in our word, human and nonorganic alike. And most of the meaningless suffering that humans cause arises from our ignorance of, and inability to befriend, this foundational paradox. Jesus did not avoid this paradox, nor did he try to get rid of it, which would mean the end of all creation. Rather Jesus entered deeply into it – in his life, death and resurrection - and thus showed Christians how we also can engage the paradox more authentically. We begin to see that the new, empowering companionship requires us to take a more direct responsibility for our own empowerment and that of others.
Our mutually empowering relationships make more real on earth the new companionship, and constitute the heart and soul of Christian living. The flourishing of each is inescapably interconnected with the flourishing of all, and that capacity for mutual empowerment is what redemption and salvation mean in our evolutionary world. We cannot do it on our own.
In the grand scheme of things, let us never forget that we are earthlings, creatures born out of the earth and accountable to the entire cosmic creation. For us to flourish, everything must flourish, even in a world endowed with the paradox of creation-cum-destruction. The ability to hold that enlarged reality in our hearts and to integrate it into our daily lives, as both individuals and communities, enables and empowers a truly graced coming-of-age.