Viola and Sweet created a page they call the A Magna Carta for Restoring the Supremacy ofJesus Christ a.k.a. A Jesus Manifesto for the 21st Century Church.
The cynical side of me says it is probably more marketing than anything else for their books (which you can liink to at the bottom of the page) but it in typical fashion it says some things that need to be said.
Julie Clawson, pans it, as does, Paul Glavic and to a lesser degree, Mark Van Steenwyk from the "Jesus Manifesto" site.
All the above mentioned authors struggle with Sweet and Leonard equating Christianity to Jesus. Reading between the lines they struggle more with Viola's last book than anything else and haven't quite forgiven him.
They appreciate the call to Jesus' supremacy. But they want to say that it has to involve more. They don't want people to forget about the fact that Jesus preached the Kingdom. They need to remind us that we need to be about the Kingdom.
They acknowledge that this all may seem to be a deja vu moment and that we walked this road during the Liberal movement of the 1920's and '30's, but they say this is different because this time we are not denying Jesus' divinity and bodily resurrection. No, this time we are getting it right we are affirming "both / and". They are fearful that we will go back to one or the other-- theological conservatism that seems to not give a damn about the world, or liberal activism that is lacking the real power of God because it denies Jesus and therefore God himself. They believe that the new "manifesto" is a step backward on this journey and takes us back to an "either / or" stance. I don't think it does
While I don't have many frustration with the emergent movement (whatever it really is), one of them is that it confuses our priorities and makes it harder and more confusing to follow Jesus. I need to be Jesus to my neighbours, my friends, my family. My congregation needs to be Jesus too. The Church also needs to be Jesus. We all need to be Jesus, in his fulness to this broken world. When we start ttrying to be more: politicians, social or environmental activists, etc... we miss the point. We can be all those things. Indeed, some of us may be called specifically to be those things... but I cannot define how the Spirit is leading you to be Jesus today, anymore than you can do so for me. When we focus ont he peripherals and miss the reason we are sunk. All Sweet and Viola are doing are trying to help us keep our eyes on the target.
Love is at the center of the Kingdom. Today I need to focus on loving everyone in my world well; from my wife who needs me to finish writing quickly to help her, to my children who need my strength and stability, to my friends who need to hear my story and experience the grace I offer. I need to love the guy who will not see me on my motorcycle and try to run me off the freeway. I need to love my wife's ex who is a little bit more than a little nuts.
I need to be Jesus today in the world he has placed me in. If we each did that, we'd truly be building the Kingdom. But I think it takes too much supernatural power to do those things. It is much easier to focus on a program to feed the hungry or try to figure out a way to provide healthcare for all Americans. In the great measure of things, we throw away the harder immediate daily tasks to love in the name of the Kingdom. And Jesus sees and weeps. We need to hear Sweet and Viola on this. Jesus does have to return to pre-eminence.
Glavic, who is perhaps the harshest also has the most meat in his argument stating:
I think the Manifesto, on a Trinitarian level, fails completely. The authors’ call for Christocentrism is misguided. [Gasp.] What I mean is that if we examine the words of Christ we won’t find a call to Christocentrism. The work of Christ (and, I’d say, Christ’s expectation for the Church) points in a thoroughly Theocentric direction. Contrary to the Manifesto, Jesus did not become the Father. He came to make the Father known, and to make us the sort of people who make the Father known. He is our Brother Jesus. The Manifesto’s Trinitarian shortcomings continue as “the living Jesus” is depicted as our Helper, while the Spirit is hardly mentioned throughout the Manifesto. It is the Spirit and not the “living Jesus” (let alone canonized Scripture) that the historical Jesus called his followers to lean against as they progressed in their kingdom-building work. Jesus didn’t fake the Ascension. He went so that the Spirit could come
The trouble with Glavic's statement is that we cannot base our theology merely from the words of Christ. All of Scripture must be taken into account. The rest of Scripture is clear, "Jesus is above all things." There can be no real debate about that. Glavic, who I enjoy reading, and who most of the time makes more sense than not seems to be thinking more like a lawyer trying to win a case and make the other side look bad than he is a theologian looking at what is being said.
Surely, if we are to exalt Christ we will listen to what he says and heed his teaching about all things. We will defacto live as Kingdom people, be filled with the Spirit, and love where we are incapable of loving. But to do this... to really do this we must keep our eyes firmly fixed on Jesus the author and perfector of our faith. They moment we lose sight of him for any thing else, no matter how good it is, that thing we are looking at will be the second thing we lose.
Glavic is correct, we are a Trinitarian people. We need to stay a Trinitarian people. The mystery of all this though is that we become who we are to be by focusing on One person -- Jesus. The rest will fall into place. I wish there were more marketing tools that exalted Jesus the way Viola's and Sweets seems to do.
Just wanted to mention--The online “Jesus Manifesto” essay by Sweet & Viola has just been expanded to a 200-page book called JESUS MANIFESTO (published by Thomas Nelson). The book releases Tuesday, June 1st at a discount from Amazon.com. :) Here’s the link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0849946018?tag=stellardesign-20&camp=14573&creative=327641&linkCode=as1&creativeA
Posted by: Amy | 31 May 2010 at 08:19 PM