An Excerpt from Doug Pagitt

There is a great excerpt from Doug Pagitt’s new book, A Christianity Worth Believing, on Emergent Village’s website. It is a simple and yet profound article filled with New Creation jargon that will be familiar with many who are Emerging, but it really accentuates the significance of the story of Jesus as God’s way to clean up the mess of the world through us, His Body/Community. Enjoy! The excerpt is below:

"Living in Partnership with Our Creator"

(By Doug Pagitt an exclusive excerpt from the bookA Christianity Worth Believing(now available in paperback): )

The story of Jesus unfolds in the midst of personal and collective struggle. The story of Jesus is surrounded by the death of individuals and communities, by the constant stirring of war. For the Jews in particular, the first century was a volatile, violent time. The Jews were literally fighting to save their culture and their faith. The Old Testament rumbles with the cry of the Jewish people: "How long, oh Lord?" Their desperation is palpable.

But Jesus was about a different kind of revolution. He was about a revolution from the kingdom of Caesar to the kingdom of God.

Some theologians have dissected all of this by talking about spiritual kingdoms and wars verses earthly kingdoms and wars. They argue that Jesus did bring about a kind of war in which the power of good battles the power of evil and that Christians are to be warriors who fight against the darkness that oppresses us, knowing that one day Jesus will ride out of the sky and defeat the enemy at last. I suppose that's one way of thinking about all of this, but I think there's more to Jesus than a change of metaphor. It seems to me that the way of Jesus is not just to shift the war motif from one kind of war to another but to see Jesus as the ender of war, period. Jesus brought with him the hope that the people would no longer see themselves in the midst of a war but would join with God in the healing of all the world.

Jesus was the new Isaiah who had come to usher in that promise in a particular way. Jesus wasn't bringing some kind of future-based spiritual good news to the poor. He was inviting them into life with God in the present. Jesus healed literal blindness, not just spiritual blindness. His proclamation of the year of the Lord's favor conjured up all the hopes of those who wanted the apocalyptic retribution to come, but the Lord's favor came not through war but through a holy act that conquered death forever.

It seems to me that this is what rescue ought to look like. It doesn't look like more war; it looks like the end of war. The very elements of battle — the boots and blood- stained clothes — become a source of life, of hope.

Jesus was not sent as the selected one to appease the anger of the Greek blood god. Jesus was sent to fulfill the promise of the Hebrew love God by ending human hostility. It was not the anger of God that Jesus came to end but the anger of people.

The story of Jesus Christ, of Joshua the Messiah, is about the healing all of creation. This was God's promise from the start — that people would be God's partners in the world. When Jesus was resurrected from the dead, life won out. The power of God's love for humanity proved stronger than our capacity to hate one another. Jesus' death was about war, about violence, about destruction. But his resurrection was about peace, compassion, renewal. The resurrection is the full picture of God's promise.

The Christian faith finds its center in the story of Jesus not because this is where the problem of God's anger is solved. Jesus is the core of Christianity because it is through Jesus that we see the fullness of God's hopes for the world. Jesus is the redemption of the creation plan. He shows us what it means to live in partnership with our creator. He leads us into what it means to be integrated with God.

Resurrection is not a do-over. We don't move on as though nothing ever happened. Jesus was resurrected with scars. The scars weren't simply a reminder of the past; they were the pathway to the future. They were there because the cause of death had been consumed. The hatred of death had been healed over by the love of God. The resurrection wasn't like a last-minute save by the divine goalkeeper. The scars gave testimony to the power of death. Death gave Jesus its best shot; it laid it all on the line and accomplished it goal. But life overcame death. Love overcame hate. Peace overcame war. The resurrection life needs death to remind us that the call to love our enemy not only means loving in the midst of scars but loving those who cause them. Because, in Jesus, love wins.

(Abridged from A Christianity Worth Believing, chapter 16: "So you want a revolution?" Copyright 2008 by Doug Pagitt, published by Jossey-Bass. Photo by Jack Thielepape. )

A Brief Meditation of What the Scriptures Mean to Me

Last evening we had a very good discussion about the role of Scripture in our lives. There were a lot of very interesting comments and highly challenging questions among the group. As I sat there, taking it all in, I felt very thankful for our community in a couple of very real ways: (a) that it is a place of safety where followers of Christ can echo concerns, doubts, struggles, and thoughts, even if those things may not be what is considered traditional; and (b) that Scripture is such a significant part of our lives that we devote such energy to its discussion, role, and action in our lives.

I am thankful for The River and one of the reasons for my ongoing love for her is the plain fact that its community is struggling to be authentic with not only how she lives, but with what she believes and the real-life implications of what those beliefs are.

Going back to the discussion about the Scriptures for a couple of moments, I began to reflect upon this in my life today and asked myself some basic questions as life occurred. As I was reading the Scriptures this morning, I asked myself the question, “What difference does this make to my life?” As I work with recovering addicts who are in search of rescue from their hellish addictions and insufferable selfishness, I ask myself the question, “What difference does this make to their lives?” And as I am tempted to do wrong on a daily basis and frequently God’s words (yes I did say “God’s words”) come to mind, I do find myself asking again, “Does this make a difference in my life?” My summary is that I can’t imagine a world in which God is acting to renew all of creation and bringing about His kingdom without what has been considered to be such an essential part of the life of God’s people down through the ages. I still see this word as the “Sword of the Spirit” slicing and dicing people who are in need of change, testifying of Jesus, giving people life, rescuing souls, and calling God’s people to join Him in the grand act of recreation.

As I close this, I am reminded of the English pastor Charles H. Spurgeon’s famous quote about the Scriptures. He said that the Bible is like a lion. You don’t defend a lion; you just let him out and let him go and he can defend himself. That may sound really trite to some, but it still resonates with me today, because although much has changed about me and my view of the Bible, the Bible is still very compelling to me, because I still believe that God’s Spirit using it along with God’s People is necessary for true God-produced change.