Will We Allow Jesus To Save Christians?

I've just finished this book, Rob Bell & Don Golden 'Jesus Wants To Save Christians', and would recommend you to read it.

The four compass points which give shape to the book are:
Egypt - our experience of slavery
Sinai - where through grace we find purpose and identity
Jerusalem - the challenge of what to do with the blessing God has given us
Exile - when we lose the plot and fail to live the blessing God has made us, but also the place where we can confess, repent and be renewed by God's grace all over again.

A very helpful way of thinking through the implications of the biblical story and our path of discipleship. But, in the end, what does Jesus want to save Christians from?

Jesus wants to save our church from the exile of irrelevance (p.174) - in a world of poverty, AIDS, despair and suicide we can be church in a way that will never connect with the suffering to be a blessing to them.
Jesus wants to save us - from the kingdom of comfort, from the priority of preservation, from the empire of indifference, from an exile of irrelevance (p. 177) Using the theme of Eucharist (see earlier post here) Jesus will save our church, will save Christians from being so into themselves as not to notice a world of need which Jesus loves and is giving his church to as a blessing.

Jesus wants to save us from making the good news about another world and not this one.


Jesus wants to save us from preaching a gospel that is only about individuals and not about the systems that enslave them.


Jesus wants to save us from shrinking the gospel down to a transaction about the removal of sin and not about every single particle of creation being reconciled to its maker. (p. 179)


I could go on, but then I would end up copying out the whole final chapter. Is Jesus really saving us from these things? He needs to, and I hope and pray we will let him.

Being Eucharist and Preaching

In a challenging chapter from their book Jesus Wants To Save Christians,
Rob Bell and Don Golden write of eucharist:

Eucharist is a good gift and, 'Jesus is God's good gift to the world' (p. 148). And then, because the church is the body of Christ, 'The church is a living Eucharist, because followers of Christ are living Eucharists' (p. 150).

The church here becomes a good gift from God to the world. Not an empire which uses power or resources to defend a position or maintain influence. A good gift from God to a hurting world that needs to see weakness and brokenness in God and his people.

So, this is, among other things, cashed out in relation to preaching as follows:
The measure of a sermon is not whether it affirms what you already believe. A sermon is not a product to be consumed and then evaluated according to how good it was or whether it was pleasing or enjoyable.
If a sermon can be resolved in the time it took to deliver it, then it missed something central to what a sermon even is, which is connected with what the Eucharist is. The gathering of the church, in a service or worship or teaching setting, is to remind, instruct, and inspire people about being Eucharist for the worlds they find themselves in. It's written in the letter to the Hebrews that they shouldn't give up meeting together because they should "consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds." (Heb 10:24)
These gatherings aren't the end; they're the beginning. They're the start. They put things in perspective, they remind, they provoke, they comfort, they inspire, they challenge, but ultimately they are about the Eucharist. About these people in this place at this time being equipped to be a Eucharist.
The Eucharist is ultimately about what we do out there, in the flow of everyday life. (p. 159-160)


How many sermons are preached to the gallery and applauded only because they tell us what we already believe?
How many sermons are forgotten before the last hymn is finished and never influence life in any way?
How poor is our form of worship when we omit a weekly celebration of the Eucharist as central to our calling as the church and our being God's good gift to God's world?

Missing the point

I'm still enjoying Rob Bell's book - Jesus Wants To Save Christians.

Writing about exodus and exile as the background into which the Lord Jesus came in a section on the Emmaus Journey (see Luke 24) we read:

whatever the stranger on the road taught these disciples from Moses and the Prophets, they got it. Their eyes were opened. The suffering and death and crucifixion of Jesus made sense to them.


In a couple of hours, using nothing but the Hebrew Scriptures, this man converted all of their despair to hope and a vision of a new future. p.90.

Where this really bites for me is just a few sentences later:

In Jesus' day, people could read, study, and discuss the Scriptures their entire lives and still miss its central message.
In Jesus' day people could follow him, learn from him, drop everything to be his disciples, and yet find themselves returning home, thinking Jesus had failed.
Which is a bit like walking with someone for hours,
only to discover that you had missed who they really are the whole time.
Because the stranger is, of course, Jesus. p. 90

I certainly know too many scholars, some of the finest intellects I've ever met, who've studied the bible their whole working lives and never met Jesus, and don't know what it is to follow him. But what strikes me is not where this affects others. No matter how faithfully, passionately, skillfully I read and study Scripture I must confess that I will and do get it wrong, I miss the point - worse I can walk beside Jesus and not recognise him.

We can have great confidence in Jesus and in the Scriptures, of the Old and New Testaments, Jesus can and will use them to open our eyes to his grace for us in the cross and empty tomb. That I get it wrong does not mean I need to abandon the gospel or the bible. Rather, in all humility, however much I think I know I need to come again and walk beside Jesus and hear him teaching the gospel from Scriptures until my heart burns within me.

And if you'll forgive me, I think you do also.

Something's Wrong

I've started reading Rob Bell and Don Golden's Jesus Wants To Save Christians. Now, there's a provocative title to think about.

In the first chapter Bell writes of something being wrong - a sense we share, even if we're not quite sure what's wrong.

Jesus was a Middle Eastern man who lived in an occupied country and was killed by the superpower of his day. (page 17)
For a growing number of people in our world, it appears that many Christians support some of the very things Jesus came to set people free from. (page 18)


What's wrong? People are not free.
What's right? Jesus came to set people free!
What's wrong? People today are living in bondage, and living in ways that condemn others to the
                        bondage from which Jesus came to set them free.
What's right?  ???
What's wrong? People who claim to know Jesus are living in ways that would have, and will again,
                         condemn Jesus to death
What's right? Jesus is right and we need to learn to live like him.