St. Paul’s Episcopal Church North Andover, Massachusetts Loren Carlson
Good Morning. Stephanie asked me to speak with you today about Brian McLaren and his book, Everything Must Change. McLaren has been invited by Bishop Shaw to lead a Learning Event for clergy and laity on March 7.
My goal is to give you some background on McLaren and his ideas and invite you to join us at the Learning Event at Boston University. I hope that this will stimulate future conversations within our parish concerning the vision and mission we want to undertake. This is another step in a process.
McLaren asks three fundamental questions:
1. What are the most critical problems in the world, the ones that cause the most suffering or pose the greatest threat to our future and what are their underlying or root causes?
2. What do the life and teachings of Jesus have to say about the most critical problems in our world today?
3. Why hasn’t the Christian religion made more of a difference?
What are the most critical problems and what are their underlying causes?
McLaren summarizes the major problems by reducing long lists into four categories of crisis:
1. The prosperity crisis: the need to continually produce and consume more material goods, without regard to limits, in order to feed the demand of the economic systems for more rapid growth to increase profits.
2. The equity crisis: the growing gap between the ultra rich and very poor and the shrinking of the middle class.
3. The security crisis: the constant terrorism and wars arising from intensifying resentment and fear among various groups at opposite ends of the economic spectrum.
4. The spirituality crisis: the failure of the World’s religions to provide a framing story or paradigm capable of healing or reducing the first three crises.
Each of these requires several sermons, which you’ll be glad to know I will not give today. But I do recommend reading the book.
McLaren then shows, very importantly, that these are closely interrelated problems and are caused at a root level by our dominant social systems.
The important idea is that these are not discrete problems but they are closely related to each other in complex systems of relationships. We are dealing with systems of systems.
When we combine complex systems of systems with each other we often describe the large systems as ecosystems. Everything is connected here and around the globe and everything affects everything else.
McLaren is saying that we are now in a systemic crisis because the systems are fundamentally broken.
How many times over the past few months have you heard some talking heads on TV say that the current economic crisis is different because it is a systemic crisis – that means that the basic systems are broken.
This is exactly what McLaren is saying. If the systems are broken a trillion dollar band aid may not work. We must go deeper and change the paradigms, the assumptions upon which the systems are built.
This is what I mean by fixing systemic problems. No major problems can be solved by working within the thinking that created them.
We may need the trillion dollar band aid to stop the bleeding but solving the systemic problem will take longer and cost more … and require new paradigms.
What do the life and teachings of Jesus have to say about the most critical problems in our world today?
When he turns to the second major question, what can we learn from Jesus about dealing with these problems you might expect easier reading but you would be surprised.
To McLaren, and most modern biblical scholars, it matters which Jesus you turn to.
There is the Jesus who we know from 2000 years of addition and editing by the church authorities. This is the Jesus who came to earth and died on the cross to save us all from our sins and is waiting for us in heaven.
But there is also the Jesus we can know from an understanding of the Gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke. This is the Jesus who spent his full ministry teaching that the kingdom of God has begun here, in this life, and teaching us how to live with him in the kingdom of God now.
Last year a group of us in this church studied the Jesus revealed in the parables by trying to understand the context of the times in which he was teaching.
This is the Jesus whose major message is that the kingdom of God is here now, in this place and in this time, in this life.
His message was a radical denial of the dominate world view at the time he delivered it, which was that Caesar is the son of god and ruler of the world --- and that those who opposed this view would be killed on a cross.
This was a time of empire and state violence. This was a time when peace was imposed by victory in battle and maintained by domination systems that assured their own survival through tyranny, exploitation and injustice. This was a time very much like every age since.
Jesus was not saying endure injustice in this life because you will be rewarded in heaven.
He chose to speak of the ‘kingdom’ of God because this made it very clear to his audience that he was speaking against the kingdom of Caesar. People knew what ‘kingdom’ meant.
He was not speaking about life in heaven after we die. He was speaking about life with God in our life now.
McLaren wonders if Jesus would use the term ‘kingdom’ today or would he choose another term. I think he might speak of ‘the community of God’ rather than the kingdom of God – but for this term to be strong enough and inclusive enough we would need to have a deep understanding of the demands and potential for real community.
From this point on I will use the term ‘community of God’ to mean kingdom of God.
So it is to the Jesus of the early Gospels that McLaren turns when he asks what can we learn from the teachings of Jesus about dealing with the major problems of the world.
We can learn all we need to know.
When we bring the light of understanding what we need to do to live in the community of God now and focus this light on each of the fatally dysfunctional systems that are at the root of our major problems it is clear that we too • must oppose empire, • oppose domination, • oppose injustice, and • oppose violence in all forms and stand witness to the alternative paradigms of • love, • compassion and • justice by acting in real ways.
We must be prepared to step out of the boat of complacency firm in our conviction that the water of our faith will support us as we speak truth to power.
McLaren provides detailed summaries of what we can do based on ‘the way’ of Jesus to counter each of the dysfunctional systems currently threatening the world. I’m sure he will discuss what we need to do at the Learning Event.
Why hasn’t the Christian religion made more of a difference?
Perhaps the answer to McLaren’s third question, why hasn’t Christianity made more of a difference in solving the major crises of prosperity, equity, security, and spirituality is that we haven’t given the Jesus of the Gospels and his radical message of hope a chance.
Instead we domesticated him and contained him within the very paradigms of domination and empire he opposed. We took him out of this world and put him somewhere else and we used the threat and promise of his judgment in some future time to allow others to control us.
Changing this is what the emerging church is all about. When Tom Shaw was visiting us in January he said that the Episcopal Church must understand the emerging church or we will loose our relevance. Well, that sounds important!
People like you and me are gathering in small communities around the world to develop their personal faith in the grace and love of God and from the core of this personal faith act by living in community with God now.
St. Paul’s Church is one of these communities. We are living in the community of God now. We do make a difference.
We can help direct and shape the coming age that postmodernism foretells and the emerging church proclaims.
We are living at a hinge point of history. The Vestry will be discussing this in its retreat later this week.
We, our children and our grandchildren are writing the new framing stories, the next great chapter in human history, which we pray will be more fully based on the original teachings of Jesus.
In summary, perhaps in future discussions in our church we will examine the proposition that believing is the most radical thing we can do.
We will try to understand that we are not only called to have faith in Jesus but also to share the faith of Jesus.
It will take courageous conversations to determine how we as individuals can make a difference, how we, the parish of St. Paul, can become a stronger community of faith that makes a difference.
We need to hold conversations around questions like: 1. What is it like to live in the community of God? 2. How will our behavior change? 3. What are the actions that we must take? 4. How can we be the church that Jesus intended? 5. Where would we expect to find Jesus in the community of God? 6. How can we write and live a new framing story that is capable of healing the pain of the prosperity crisis, the equity crisis, and the security crisis?
Are you ready to join those in other communities and step out of the boat and into a life with Jesus in the community of God now?
Are you ready to stand as witness in opposition to the kingdom of Caesar and for distributive justice, for compassion, for tolerance, for non-violence, for the love of God?
I believe that when we do we can change everything.
**** You can get more information on the Learning Event at the coffee hour. I was also asked to provide written copies of the longer versions of my talk for those of you might be interested. These will also be on the table.
