Saving Jesus from the Church

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Book Reviews, Christianity, fundamentalism, God, Jesus, religion, Robin Meyers, social concerns, theology

First let me thank the publishers, Harper One, subsidiary of Harper Collins, for their unfailing kindness in sending me yet another of their books for review. I am so very grateful.

In deciding what to say about Robin Meyers’ “Saving Jesus from the Church: How to Stop Worshiping Christ and Start Following Jesus,” I paged through the book, finding quote after quote that would make a good beginning. Finally I decided on none of them, for in fact what Rev. Meyers has done here is write a love letter to the church. That is what this book is.

It is stern at times, it wags the finger often, but it is born out of deep love for the church. It is a plea for it to recall what it originally was and to return to that calling. Those of you who are regular readers recall that I mentioned it a couple of times in my two part posting on “What is the Message.” So you probably have some idea what I’m likely to say.

Fundamentalists and others who consider the Bible to be the unaltered “word of God” dictated for all intents and purposes to be our perfect guide in life, will probably do well to avoid the book. It will not be to your liking. For those of us who see the bible more realistically as the inspired work of human hands with human purpose inscribed within its various books, this book cuts through the myth and overlays, the redactions, revisions, additions and so forth, to seek the Galilean peasant who really existed, and called us to vision God and ourselves, and more importantly our relationship, in a new radical way.

Rev. Meyers calls us to reclaim the original Jesus as it were, from the Christ that he has become. Not because he may not be the Christ, for that is, as I read Meyers, our personal decision to make. But he makes a powerful case, calling upon some of the best scholars in the world, to suggest that Jesus certainly never saw himself as the Christ. What he was, was radically open to God and he attempted to show us how to be that way to.

Meyers accuses the institutionalized church of all to soon getting caught up in just exactly what Jesus preached against–power. It, well meaning as it may have been, determined that it had the correct message and structured itself to defend that  interpretation. It fought off challengers (other Jesus following groups with different interpretations) and over the subsequent decades and centuries developed and overdeveloped the concepts of sin and salvation, neglecting the community of equals that Jesus envisioned.

As Jesus failed to return, as the earliest writers presumed, the later writings forgot about the “Kingdom on Earth” and focused on a “Kingdom in Heaven.” By the time we get to John’s Gospel, Jesus is the pre-existent “divine Word” incarnating in human form. He is now fully the Christ.

The concepts of sin and salvation became the seminal message. We were no longer blessings, but sinful from birth. Our churches now focus to an enormous degree on instilling a set of beliefs that one must agree to in return for being “saved.” Christianity has become “I” oriented. It’s all about my sin, my means of salvation, my attaining eternal life.

But for Jesus, it was never about I. It was always about us, we, thou. It was community, a community of inclusion, where everyone was invited to the table. The early church lived this, as anyone who has read Acts can attest to. God was compassionate, Jesus taught us, and our job is to be compassionate as well.

Meyers recalls us to the Sermon on the Mount, that radical upturning of life as usual. He calls us to recall the Good Samaritan, the woman who hemorrhaged, the Syro-Phoenician woman who taught him Jesus about other. He brings us to, as Meyers’ calls them, “maddening” parables wherein our expectations are turned upside down, and the worker who arrives at the last hour receives equal to the one who has worked all day. The rich aren’t likely to get it Jesus warns. Better to relate to God than brother or wife or father if that is what it takes. This is radical indeed.

We are called not to recite creeds and continue to mouth what we believe as the means to enter the Kingdom. We are required to FOLLOW Jesus, in that scary world of trusting fully in God, all the while doing the work of community. It’s simply not enough to throw some envelop in the basket each week and say we have done our Christian duty of feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, caring for the sick. Certainly not while returning to our air conditioned lives in suburbia, gated and filled with others like “us.”

Following Jesus means being willing to stand on the front lines in attacking the injustice of war and violence that permeates our world,  a world seemingly hell bent on war to achieve ends. It means saying no to institutionalized racism and sexism that continues to grind up more and more people so that we can continue to charity our consciences clean. It means working for structural changes in government and business practices, cleaning up the environment, and providing a decent life for all God’s people, everywhere. Fully 1/6 of the earth goes to sleep hungry. That is not acceptable.

It means living Jesus, not nodding and bowing and mouthing beliefs. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think Rev. Meyers thinks, nor do I, that believing all these things about Jesus is wrong. They are perfectly fine for each of us to conclude if we so believe. But that is private devotion and worship, and it is not the main purpose of our churches.

Our churches are the vehicles by which we organize to do the work of Jesus. And that is what we must reform them to be again. This book reads like a sermon, it is chock full of quotes you will want to remember. It is a book that will make you feel uncomfortable, guilty, and will arouse in you the desire to get up and DO. Jesus as the itinerant Preacher, is someone I can attempt to be, however poorly. Jesus the Christ, I can never be or hope to be.

Meyers book is important. It should be read  by every Parish council, vestry, or church leadership group. If we are ever to reclaim the tens of thousands who have walked away from church in disbelief, but who yearn to serve, this is the way. Read it.