Everything Must Change: Part three.

Part three starts with chapter ten and contrasts a conventional view of Jesus with an emerging view. The former tends to be tightly focussed on personal salvation whereas the latter is more of a holistic view. McLaren takes a look at the downsides of the conventional view which tend to be about it being easy for it to acquiesce in the kinds of injustices and excesses which started the book mainly by defining primary duties to looking after our own 'in groups' of family and the saved.
McLaren then resituates Jesus in his earthly context by drawing out the implications of Empire in the Roman variety by focussing on how it only really worked well for well-connected males close to the heart of Empire. For everyone else there were various degrees of being exploited.

We are then invited to consider the cross as a symbol of coercive Roman power; the means of keeping people in place and a warning to those who might think of rebelling. This moves us into chapter 11 and the reflection that coercive power tends not to achieve a total degree of coercion but rather to breed rebellion and bitterness and, more significantly for the development of the argument, counter narratives: stories embodying self understandings in contrast and rebellion to the prevailing hegemonic ideological myths of Empire (my phraseology, McLaren doesn't frighten his readers with such stuff). He shows how the Jewish people in Palestine under Roman occupation tended to develop four basic counter-narratives exemplified by the stances respectively of the zealots, the Saducees, the Pharisees and the Essenes. These turn out to be the main logical positions of any counter-narrative. The analysis begins to bite when McLaren relates these to positions found in north America today among Evangelicals: those who like the Essenes draw into separated subcultures, Then there are the culture warriors who seem to resemble the zealots, then the holiness/purity people like the Pharisees, and the Saducees represented by those who pretty much adopt a 'my country/party right or wrong' approach.

We are then introduced to an analogy drawn from Steve Chalke where the message of Jesus is likened to a box containing a jigsaw puzzle, but where the wrong lid has been put on which tends to mislead in various ways: do we insist on the picture on the lid despite the evidence and even perhaps alter the pieces to fit the picture better, or give up on the whole thing because we can't get a match, or decide that the lid has been switched?

What if, we are invited to consider, Jesus was offering a different counter-narrative: a transformative reframing which relativises the claims of empire?

Chapter 12 is entitled 'No Junk DNA', and begins with an encounters with a genetic expert who ends up giving an expert opinion that,despite, a common misconception, there probably is no junk DNA, just DNA that we do not understand at this point. We then read about the possibility that in the view of many Christians there is, in effect, a lot of junk revelation which does not appear to contribute to the main conventional 'gospel' message. The rest of part three is given over to the task of testing whether, in fact, this junk revelation has more purpose than conventional evangelicalism had given it. McLaren does this by looking at twelve features of Jesus' ministry. One is the way that Jesus refuses to be co-opted by the counter-narratives of either the Sadducees or the Pharisees and seems to have people in his disciple band from different counter-narrative communities, and indeed imperial collaborators. His habit of table fellowship with the 'unholy' was not in the counter-narrative of the Pharisees. And note the way he sidesteps questions whose answers could place him in a particular counter-narrative box.

Incidentally, we can see the impact of seeing the Jesus events against the imperial background when McLaren invites us to re-consider the story of the rich young ruler: someone who has probably been profiting by the imperial system in which he is working as a ruler. Jesus' call to him is to serve those whom the system has been exploiting rather than being mainly an issue of whether he loves money. And the parables about stewards gain a new poignancy when we realise that stewards, as the managers of the estates of the elite would have been in a rather 'interesting' position especially in the story of the 'unjust' steward. Further examples are given of this kind of understanding. The next chapter continues the reflection on how reading the gospels against the Imperial narrative makes sense of the 'junk revelation': consider the gospel canticles in Luke. McLaren illustrates the 'problem' by rendering the magnificat into what it 'should' have been according to the kind of evangelicalism in which he was brought up. “The Mighty One has provided forgiveness, assurance and eternal security for me -an holy is his name”, “He has helped those with correct doctrinal understanding, remembering to be merciful to those who believe in the correct theories of the atonement ...”. Ouch! But, so true.

And yet we are also reminded of the way that Jesus handled the aftermath to his Isaianic manifesto which also was a big deceleration of the kinds of expectations of the more zealot sort. Chapter 14 opens by inviting us to consider the meaning in the wider context of Peter's confession of Christ at Caesarea Philippi and then onto Jesus before Pilate. It doesn't say anything that isn't said elsewhere but it does help to grasp more firmly the conceptual shift that many would have to make in their reading of these passages.
Amazon.co.uk: Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope: Books: Brian D. McLaren