A New Kind of Christianity - Brian McLaren [147]
23. This is an appalling command in one sense: Jonah was a citizen of a small, vulnerable country, who was being sent to the capital city of the restless empire to the north and east that threatened to conquer and assimilate Jonah’s homeland at any moment.
24. The open ending most similar to this one, I think, is the Apocalypse, which concludes with a haunting invitation, an echoing “Come!” that simultaneously invites Christ into our present and beckons us into God’s future: Come!
25. For all the openness, the main theological point is quite obvious, even though it’s bound to be unpopular and hard to swallow to practitioners of tribal religion: God stubbornly refuses to be shrunk to the convenient tribal or nationalistic size religious people typically prefer. God’s scope of compassion is bigger than our religious systems and tribal or nationalistic identities can handle, and God’s concern extends to all nations, even our enemies. What would it mean to ethically anticipate that scope of concern in our lives as individuals, churches, nations, and civilizations? Obviously, there are powerful connections between these considerations and our next chapter on religious diversity.
26. That same open nonending comes to us in the Bible’s final book, which is so often misinterpreted within the narrow Greco-Roman time line. There, the New Jerusalem is pictured as a cube descending to the earth (almost certainly evoking the cubical Holy of Holies in the temple). But it is not a closed box; it is full of gates and doors on all sides, and those doors remain perpetually open (21:25) to welcome in every good thing. The river of life is not fenced off (22:1–3) and closed to the public; it flows and nourishes the tree of life, whose branches offer healing to every nation on earth. The last word of the Bible’s last book is an echoed invitation—an open invitation. First, God invites us, “‘Come,’…‘Come.’ And let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.” And then we echo the invitation: “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” (22:17, 20). The vision is of a profound openness of God to us, and of us to God.
27. For more on this subject, see Rom. 14:9–13; Heb. 4:12–13.
28. I think this is what Peter is saying in Acts 10:42–43. Jesus is appointed by God to be both the judge of the living and the dead and the source of forgiveness. Judgment and forgiveness are not mutually exclusive.
29. Paul envisions this scenario in 1 Cor. 3:10–15.
30. Once the selfish and unjust parts of some people and groups have been burned away as worthless, there may be little substance left to be associated with their name and story. This is the warning inherent in the message of judgment. For more on the personal dimensions of eschatology with regard to the question, “What happens after I die?” see the article “Making Eschatology Personal” on my Web site, brianmclaren.net.
31. 1 Cor. 15:24–28, with a nod to Julian of Norwich.
32. Martin Luther King, Jr., A Christmas Sermon on Peace, December 24, 1967. Widely available online, including http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2003/12/276406.shtml.
33. Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God (London: SCM, 1974), p. 178. See also his “The Final Judgment: Sunrise of Christ’s Liberating Justice,” Anglican Theological Review 89/4 (2007): 565–76. There he says, “We live in an unjust, hostile, and divided world. We live and suffer in an ongoing struggle for power. We must therefore take sides with the poor, the weak, and the victims of violence, if we want to work for a universal redemption and anticipate the coming liberating and healing justice of God. God’s justice is first of all for the victims of sin, and then thereby also for the slaves of sin, to overcome sin on both sides. The liberation of the oppressed is the first option and includes as the second option also the healing of the oppressors. For overcoming the power of sin and evil we need liberation on both sides. It is God’s own action