Chapter 17 "Surprising People"

Psalm 34: 1-18; Matthew 1: 1-17; Luke 2: 8-20

“How do you respond to this approach to the meaning of “Son of God”?

McLaren highlights several aspects of the surprising people mentioned in Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospel and of how they tell of Jesus.  “Surprising People” since Matthew’s genealogy included women, gentiles even, unheard of in any Jewish genealogy, and Luke included shepherds in his story of Jesus’ birth! Matthew emphasized how gentiles are included in the story, with gentile Magi even coming to worship, showing a fulfillment of the call to Abraham, whom God had said would be a blessing to all people.

Luke also included a genealogy but for a different purpose. His followed Mary’s line, (find it in Luke 4) also in the line of David, and traced all the way back to Adam, the “Son of God.”  This title for Jesus as the son of Adam, the “Son of God,” “is in some way a new beginning for the human race -- a new genesis… Just as Adam bore the image of God as the original human, Jesus will now reflect the image of God.  We might say he is Adam 2.0” (p.76).

Both Matthew and Luke tell the story of Jesus, of his birth, of the start of his life. And both highlight within it people we might not expect to find there.  The inclusion of these surprising people, the women in Matthew’s genealogy, the unlettered shepherds, poor Simeon and Anna, the poor, the disenfranchised invites us to recognize how God actively is reaching out to such surprising people and often through them to us as well. The people in whom we would not expect perhaps to meet the Savior are the very ones in whom we meet Him.  

McLaren calls Jesus “Adam 2.0.”  As such, He is the start to a new life. We do not live based upon our own efforts, by keeping rules, by being careful to try super hard to be like Jesus in our lives. We do not live asking “What would Jesus do?” and trying to do it. I think of Boxer, the horse, in Orwell’s Animal Farm who again and again responds to the impossible demands around him with his worn out phrase:  “I will try harder.” This is what many make the walk with Christ -- a continual “I’ll pick myself up by my bootstraps” kind of litany, an effort to do better by working harder.

But we do not try to pound our round life into a square hole.  No, instead, this Adam 2.0 thought, this idea of Jesus beginning a NEW humanity, means that Jesus has come to fit us for this life.  He sets us free from that which we could not free ourselves. Jesus comes to bring that life into us. We do not try and try harder, but instead, are filled with the life of God, and that life moves through us. Jesus lives his life through us moment by moment -- as a pregnant mom’s life gives life to the child within her.  I do not align myself with Him, but rather, I receive Jesus and He aligns me with Himself. “You shall be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect (Mt 5:48),” is what Jesus does in me and in you. And that word translated “perfect” means complete, mature, reaching the point God intended. I don’t have to work to bear fruit, for when attached to Him, like a branch to an apple tree,  I find my life in Him and He bears fruit through me.

This reminder I found most compelling and encouraging in McLaren’s emphasis on the surprising people.  It is equally surprising that Jesus would life his life through me, as it is surprising when I encounter His life lived through someone in whom I least expect it.  I guess both Matthew and Luke readily would tell us to expect the unexpected with Jesus. It is He who brings life, so it ought not surprise us when we encounter that life through unlikely characters.  Also, perhaps in a good reminder, that life is not ever limited to the deserving, the privileged, but is for everyone, literally. Jesus came through a poor young Jewish woman, and was heralded by poor shepherds, and He was in the line of people that included gentile women and lowly characters to shout that he came for the likes of me, of you.  Such a good message.

McLaren invites us:  “This week, look for surprising people to whom you can show uncommon respect and unexpected kindness.”

Chapter 16 "Keep Herod in Christmas"

Jeremiah 32:31-35; Micah 5:2-5a; Matthew 1:18-2:15

McLaren presents the argument that we must “keep Herod in Christmas” for in Herod’s demonstration of violence, in his attempt to kill the threat to his rule, Jesus, Herod  behaved as many of us would have. There is no “us” vs “them” when we come down to it, for “...like Herod, members of ‘us’ will behave no differently from ‘them,’ given the power and provocation” (p 72).  Wars will still occur and like this slaughter that occurred in Bethlehem, those wars will be fought by those much younger than those who planned them.

McLaren reminds us that what Herod commanded had also been commanded centuries earlier by another despotic ruler, Pharaoh, in Egypt, who commanded that all the baby boys be drowned in the river in order to prevent the Israelites from overthrowing their slave masters.  His attempt to protect himself from Israel failed as Moses was one of the boys spared. Moses later became a mighty leader, a type of Savior, of Israel, who led them out of slavery.

McLaren asks:  “Does God promote or demand violence?  Does God favor the sacrifice of children for the well-being of adults?  Is God best reflected in the image of powerful old men who send the young and vulnerable to die on their behalf?  Or is God best seen in the image of a helpless baby, identifying with the victims, sharing their vulnerability, full of fragile but limitless promise?” (p 73).   

We know how God answered those questions already by coming to earth as that child.  Until the violence against children ends in this world, McLaren said, this slaughter of the innocents must be kept in Christmas to remind us of the precious value of every life.  

Question to engage in:

“Share a time when you were a child and an adult other than a parent showed you great respect or kindness?”

When I was in 7th grade I needed a new start.  On my birthday, March 22nd, when I turned 13, my family moved from our house in the community of Turlock, to an almond ranch my dad had bought out in the country near a much smaller place called Denair.  This was not a long move, but it meant I had a choice to make. Did I want my mom to drive me back to Brown School for my continuation of Middle School, or would I like to change schools, leave friends behind and attend a small, country, one-room school just about a ¼ mile from our new house called “Gratton School.”  

My 7th grade year had been immensely difficult already.  I was flunking German and some other classes. I had spent the majority of that year either in a wheelchair or on crutches because of what I said was horrible pain in my heels.  I couldn’t walk, for that season, at all. It was a strain on my family. My brothers thought I was just seeking attention. I didn’t really think that was it, after all they couldn’t feel what I felt.  I received shots in my heels, my legs were put in casts, I was put into the wheelchair, I was put on crutches. All that year I had received special attention as a person handicapped. But the psychologist my parents sent me to was certain in his diagnosis:  “Brian cannot stand up to life.”

Truly, I think that was it.  So, one day, in February, my friend Ken had pushed me into our backyard, and my mom stood at the back door and said, with some exasperation,  “Brian, get up and walk in here.” And crying, complaining, I stood and staggered to the door. There was more to it, but I walked again and thereafter, quickly, recovered.

So, when it came time to decide whether or not I would change schools, I jumped at the chance. The 6th-8th class at Gratton School had about 20 students, and the 7th grade class only eight students when I joined.

Our teacher was Jack Harlan, and somehow he understood me.  I received special attention of a new variety. I competed against the super smart students in the class, like Bonnie Hubbard with her perfect handwriting.  Even when I lost in the Spelling Bee, failing to spell anxious correctly, that loss didn’t feel like defeat. My grades and attitude improved, in Mr Harlan’s class.  In a real sense, he was a man who reached into a river in which I was drowning, and pulled me out. He taught me to believe in myself, and, gave me hope where I had had none.  

He was an adult in a powerful position who rather than using it against me, used his power to rescue me.  I do not know what this was like to him. I do know what it did for me. He is a continual example of how one person can change the trajectory of another’s life.

Who might you name as such a person whose life made a difference in your own?  

Chapter 15 "Women on the Edge"

Scripture: Luke 1:5-55; Isaiah 7:14 and 9:2-7; Romans 12:1-2

In his chapter he encourages his readers to move beyond the questions in modern minds as to the possibility of an elderly pregnancy, like Elizabeth’s, or an immaculate conception, like Mary’s and ask what these events might mean to our own walks of faith.  

The facts of these events, truly, cannot be denied as the historical biographical evidence is solid.  There is more evidence for the virgin birth and resurrection of Jesus, than for the fact that President Lincoln was shot in Ford Theater in 1865.  It’s solid historical fact. We can still struggle with it, be that as it may. And so as to meaning, even the people of John’s time and Jesus’ wondered what the events of those births might mean.  

McLaren says the virgin birth was not as much about bypassing sex “as about subverting violence.”  Truly, this child, Jesus, through Mary did come to subvert, to overthrow, to bring a shift into humanity that would change it forever.  

He was the new beginning of humanity. The 2nd Adam.  A new starting place. Even when Matthew pulls forward Isaiah’s prophecy, which was first fulfilled in Isaiah’s time, for it was delivered to King Ahaz, the unfaithful king, that was not to prove the virginity of Mary. That virginity was already proven for Matthew declared it more than once.  No, it was to show the kind of shift in power that would take place.

In Isaiah’s time, that shift meant that by the time the promised child was 3-4 years old, the current powerful kings would be overthrown, and by the time he turned 10, the threat would be removed completely.  This occurred exactly as predicted (see Isaiah 7, especially vs. 13-17; and 2 Kings 17). When an actual “virgin” was pregnant, not just a “young woman” as the original Hebrew could be translated, the evangelists recognized this prophecy of Isaiah applied again.  And then this child, Jesus, again would be overthrowing the power of Rome, and a greater power, the power of the “prince of the power of the air” (Eph 2:1-3) that of Satan, as he came to “destroy the devil’s works” (1 John 3) not in a violent overthrow, but as with a kingdom that grew because of God.  

The prophet Daniel  described this overthrow:  “In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people.  It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever. This is the meaning of the rock cut out of a mountain, but not by human hands -- a rock that broke the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold to pieces” (Daniel 2: 44-46).  

McLaren is correct that Mary saw this.  Mary, of whom it is said pondered God’s words in her heart, was on the lookout for the fulfillment of what God was doing in the world.  She was not just a pawn, but was a leader, a mighty woman, even as a young teen, who saw God moving to change the world. She was one who dared to believe in the God who could do the impossible, and who could use her, an unlikely vessel for this purpose.  

Indeed, as God used this young woman to birth life and hope and the impossible through her, so God yet desires to use you and me to do the same, to bring Jesus to others.  This is the great gift of this chapter -- a God who enters people to live through them, a God who frees us from what binds us to free us into what God has for us to do -- this is the God we serve.  

McLaren reminds us of all this in his brief chapter inviting us to grab ahold of hope and the God of the impossible for our lives as well, not to just meet some need in us, but to accomplish that impossible plan through us.  

I’m currently reading the book Thirst by Scott Harrison, the unlikely founder of the best known and easily most successful nonprofit ever seen.  Founded when Scott was 30, in 2006, this vision to change lives by providing water has so far impacted 8.4 million people.  Talk about impossible things made possible by God, and you see it in this man and his life and mission. He’s a remarkably ordinary guy who after wasting 10 years of his life doing everything he ought not to be doing, by his own account, running from God and life, Scott turned around and dedicated a tithe of those years, one full year, back to see what God might do.  In that year, that turned into two, God changed Scott’s heart and the result was the work for which Scott was created-- Charity:water. 8.4 million people are saying thank you. What plans does God have to work through you?