A New Kind of Christianity - Brian McLaren [14]
I charge you before God and his blessed angels that you follow me no further than you have seen me follow Christ. If God reveal anything to you by any other instrument of His, be as ready to receive it as you were to receive any truth from my ministry, for I am verily persuaded the Lord hath more truth and light yet to break forth from His holy word.
The Lutherans cannot be drawn to go beyond what Luther saw. Whatever part of His will our God has revealed to Calvin, they (Lutherans) will rather die than embrace it; and the Calvinists, you see, stick fast where they were left by that great man of God, who yet saw not all things. This is a misery much to be lamented. For though they were precious shining lights in their time, yet God has not revealed his whole will to them. And were they now living, they would be as ready and willing to embrace further light, as they had received.
This is the attitude of a man, and a community, on a quest. They know they do not yet see “all things.” There is “further light” to be embraced, and more of God’s will to be revealed, so they must not “stick fast” to their current understandings, but must “go beyond,” for “the Lord hath more truth and light yet to break forth from His holy word.” They pray together one last time, and the Mayflower sets sail for Massachusetts.
Today, imagine that we are standing on a beach, ready to embark on our own voyage. John Robinson’s words echo through the years to us, and now we kneel in the sand and share a prayer like this:
Lord, we acknowledge that we have made a mess of what Jesus started. We affirm that we are wrong and Jesus is right. We choose not to defend what we have done and what we have become. We understand that many good Christians will not want to participate in our quest, and we welcome their charitable critique. We acknowledge that we have created many Christianities up to this point, and they call for reassessment and, in many cases, repentance. We choose to seek a better path into the future than the one we have been on. We desire to be born again as disciples of Jesus Christ. Now grant us wisdom and guide us in our quest, and create something new and beautiful in and among us for the good of all creation and to your glory, Living God.
Each line of this prayer can be the basis for a meditation to prepare us for the journey ahead, our quest for a new kind of Christian faith.
We acknowledge that we have made a mess of what Jesus started. Are there those who can claim that their denomination, their church, their version of Christian faith is anywhere close to fulfilling what Jesus intended? Can they claim that their institutions or movements alone capture the spirit and mission of Jesus? What televangelist can make this claim? What Pentecostal storefront church, what headquarters in New York or Middle America or Canterbury or Rome or Lagos? Aren’t all Christians of all denominations fully unified in the realization that what we have become is not a continuing faithful embodiment of Jesus, but rather—too often—a Disney-esque simulacrum, sometimes a tired fossilization, in some cases even a comic parody or tragic catastrophe or veritable travesty, when compared to the vibrant life and way of Jesus?
We affirm that we are wrong and Jesus is right. Would any like to assert that both they and Jesus are equally right? True, many are quick to claim and proclaim their rightness in relation to other Christians—Calvinists know they are right when compared with Arminians, Catholics compared with Protestants, Pentecostals compared with non-Pentecostals, Evangelicals compared with liberals, and the Orthodox compared with the non-Orthodox, and vice versa. But who would be so pristinely arrogant or demonically