A New Kind of Christianity - Brian McLaren [32]
Everyone with a vine and fig tree. That wouldn’t necessarily mean a literal return to an agricultural economy for everyone, but it would suggest full employment for all families everywhere, all having some secure place in a healthy, sustainable, regenerative economy. Men and women prophesying, the knowledge of the Lord covering the earth like water covers the ocean basin. That would mean a deep kind of universal and egalitarian spirituality. And so on.
There are foretastes of the dream coming true, of course, even though the dream itself always beckons and is never fully grasped. As we mentioned earlier, King David represents a move toward the peaceable kingdom. But even he, a man of war, disappoints in the end. Solomon’s kingdom has a certain opulence and power, but in the end it tragically adopts the same totalitarian practices as Pharaoh’s regime. Nehemiah and Ezra lead a kind of Exodus in the return from exile, but even their return to the promised land, for all its joy, is fraught with partiality, ambiguity, and disappointment. The temple is rebuilt, but its very existence evokes even greater dreams: that the Spirit of God would one day fill not just a temple, but the whole earth; that God’s glory would not just be localized in one temple and one holy city, but that someday temples would be unnecessary, because people in every city would walk in the light of the Lord twenty-four/seven; that God would dwell not just within the stones of the temple, but within the hearts of all people. Ezekiel, among many others, tries to articulate this dream:
I will give them one heart, and put a new spirit within them; I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh, and give them a heart of flesh, so that they may follow my statutes and keep my ordinances and obey them. Then they shall be my people, and I will be their God. (11:19–20)
I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols. I will cleanse you. A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you, and make you to follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. (36:25–27)
When God says, “They shall be my people, and I will be their God,” God proposes a relationship of mutual belonging and unity, like king and kingdom, husband and wife, parent and children, head and body. In mutual, unifying relationships, each refers to the other as “my”—my king, my people; my beloved, my beloved; my mother or father, my child; my head, my body. So, if we were looking for some kind of shorthand for this narrative of a time of fulfillment, safety, joy, and shalom, we would refer to the peaceable (or peace-making) kingdom of God, the marriage of God and creation, the family of God, or the embodiment of God. We shouldn’t be surprised that these are exactly the images explored by the prophets and, later, by Jesus and the apostles.
If the Genesis story sets the stage by giving us a sacred vision of the past, and if the Exodus story situates us in the sacred present on a pilgrimage toward external and internal liberation, then the story of the peace-making kingdom ignites our faith with a sacred vision of the future, a vision of hope, a vision of love. It represents a new creation, and a new exodus—a new promised land that isn’t one patch of ground held by one elite group, but that encompasses the