Saving Paradise: A New - Old Foundation for the Church

I am reading one of the most importnat books I have read in the last 10 years.  It is called Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love for this World for Crucifixion and Death. The premise of the book is well described in the first paragraphs of the book jacket.

When Rita Brock and Rebecca Parker began traveling the Mediterranean world in search of art depicting the dead, crucified Jesus, they discovered something that traditional histories of Christianity and Christian art had underplayed or sought to explain away: it took Jesus Christ a thousand years to die.

During their first millennium, Christians filled their sanctuaries with images of Christ as a living presence in a vibrant world. He appears as a shepherd, a teacher, a healer, an enthroned god; he is an infant, a youth, and a bearded elder. But he is never dead. When he appears with the cross, he stands in front of it, serene, resurrected. The world around him is ablaze with beauty. These are images of paradise—paradise in this world, permeated and blessed by the presence of God.

But once Jesus perished, dying was virtually all he seemed able to do.

One thing that has impressed me about our progressive churches: no matter how progressive we say we are, no matter how progressive we are in politics or theology, many of our worship services are still rooted in the shame and guilt theologies that many of us inherited as we were brought up in the church.  In worship we are invited to a confession which assumes sin not blessing, shame not celebration, a hell on earth from which we must escape, if we are lucky and have enough faith.  This has never really worked for me.  As a child I remember repeating the confession with the congregation and needing to stop, Almighty God, we are unworthy to come into your presence, because of our many sins. -- I don't believe this!  So it has never worked for me nor do I think that it works for many who worship with us.  There is a reason people come to a progressive church -- they have had enough of this groveling.  Yet, even in progressive congregations, it continues. Why do we shovel out the same old stuff in our churches?  I think it is because we do not have a mythos, a foundation that sustains a more positive outlook on life and the world, God's love and grace.  We have forgotten what a Christian might have told us before the 10th century:  in resurrection Christ has opened eternity, has opened paradise. The foundation of our lives is paradise, not death, sin and guilt.  

What Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Parker are doing in their marvelous book, Saving Paradise, is reclaiming a Christianity that loves this world and celebrates our humanity as wonderful creations of God.  The Communion service is not a meal of sacrifice, rather it celebrates the beauty and power of the resurrection.  Our ethic is not one that is entered into to appease a jealous or vengeful God.  Rather our ethics extend paradise to all, to creation itself.  God did not send his Son to die for our sins. Rather he is sent to live the potential of human life and to open paradise to men and women who become true to their created nature as being created in the image of God.  Do you begin to see the difference? 

Saving Paradise is an important book as we in the church begin to look at the ways that we can become transformative in our time. Not only do we "save" the paradise that is our heritage from the first millenium, we save paradise for ourselves noting the ways that we can celebrate the love of God alive in the world, the grace that is in the everyday, the continuing revelation that is part and parcel to our every day in paradise, that is, this world in the here and now.  I am excited by this book.  In it you can trace with the authors a Christian history bespeaking the sanctitiy of the here and now and you can get a glimpse of the church as it is becoming again a place for transformation, celebration and growth.  

I will be holding a monthly forum on this book and topic beginning on December 7 after 10:30 church.  Let's explore paradise together.  

Blessings, 

David