“What if Jesus had a message that truly could save the world, but we’re prone to miss the point of it?” (3)

What if?

This question resounds through Brian McLaren’s latest book, The Secret Message of Jesus. With wild-eyed wonder, contagious hope, and a compassionate spirit, McLaren invites us to consider the hopeful possibilities of God’s kingdom – possibilities that may remain unrealized because of our failure to grasp Jesus’s message; possibilities that may have arisen by our comfortable acceptance of the status quo; possibilities that may exist because of our willing partnership with systemic powers of evil in government, politics, and religion.

The Message of the Kingdom

Why is it that people are interested in Jesus but repulsed by his spokespeople? What if his spokespeople are misrepresenting Jesus?

What if?

A revolutionary alternative to religion-as-usual exists in the “secret message” of Jesus. McLaren invites us “to see, seek, receive, and enter a new political and social and spiritual reality [Jesus] calls the kingdom (or empire) of God” (17).

Jesus’s basic message can be summarized: “Repent, for the kingdom of God has drawn near.” Jesus invites us to a whole new way of seeing, being, and doing centered upon God’s kingdom. McLaren paraphrases Jesus’s kingdom pronouncement:

The radical revolutionary empire of God is here, advancing by reconciliation and peace, expanding by faith, hope, and love – beginning with the poorest, the weakest, the meekest, and the least. It’s time to change your thinking. Everything is about to change. It’s time for a new way of life. Believe me. Follow me. Believe this good news, so you can learn to live by it and be part of the revolution. (32-33)

Because the language of kingdom often “evokes patriarchy, chauvinism, imperialism, domination, and a regime without freedom” (139), McLaren offers numerous metaphors highlighting various aspects of Jesus’s kingdom message: the dream of God, the revolution of God, the mission of God, the party of God, the network of God, the dance of God, the story of God, the school of God, the guild of God, the symphony or choir of God, the team of God, the friendship of God, and the table of God (140-148).

Special care in announcing God’s kingdom is necessary because it is different from every kingdom with which we are familiar. It is completely new: “A new day is coming – a new earth, a new world order, a new reality, a new realm – in short, a new kingdom” (23). Because God’s kingdom is “not of this world” we should not expect it to be patterned after existing kingdoms. The wondrous, wild, new, and unpredictable nature of God’s kingdom is so radically different from our present experience that Jesus spent his entire ministry explaining and demonstrating it.

The “truth” is not obvious, but hidden. To understand and embody it will take great effort and commitment – indeed, a lifetime!

The Power of the Kingdom

What if the power of God’s kingdom is so completely different from the world’s that its strength appears as weakness, its weakness as strength?

What if?

While proclaiming God’s kingdom, Jesus exposed the evil – sometimes obvious, sometimes hidden – of all alternative kingdoms. He exposed the corporate, systemic evil that can inhabit the most respected institutions – government, politics, religion, family. The greatest threat arises when religion aligns itself with evil powers: “We have no king but Caesar!” When this happens, the people of God reject the true power of God for an idol.

The power of God’s kingdom is unlike all accepted forms of power with which we are familiar. For this reason, its power goes largely unrecognized. Its greatest act of power is the weakness of the cross. “The kingdom of God does fail. It is weak. It is crushed. When its message of love, peace, justice, and truth meets the principalities and powers of government and religion armed with spears and swords and crosses, they unleash their hate, force, manipulation, and propaganda” (70). Though this weakness may seem ridiculous – indeed, scandalous – McLaren asks, “But what is the alternative?

We really must consider this question. Could the kingdom of God come with bigger weapons, sharper swords, cleverer political organizing? Could the kingdom of God be a matter of what is often called redemptive violence? Or would that methodology corrupt the kingdom of God, so it would stop being “of God” at all, and instead would become just another earthly (and perhaps in some sense demonic) principality or power? (70)

This leads McLaren to an extended series of “what ifs”:

What if the only way for the kingdom of God to come in its true form – as a kingdom “not of this world” – is through weakness and vulnerability, sacrifice and love? What if it can only conquer by first being conquered? What if being conquered is absolutely necessary to expose the brutal violence and dark oppression of these principalities and powers, these human ideologies and counterkingdoms – so they, having been exposed, can be seen for what they are and freely rejected, making room for the new and better kingdom? What if the kingdom of God must in these ways fail in order to succeed?...

What if our only hope lies in this impossible paradox: the only way the kingdom of God can be strong in a truly liberating way is through a scandalous, noncoercive kind of weakness; the only way it can be powerful is through astonishing vulnerability; the only way it can live is by dying; the only way it can succeed is by failing? (69-70)

God’s kingdom does not come through violence, hatred, deception, or any other destructive force. Combating evil with evil only leads to escalating evil. Martin Luther King, Jr. puts it well:

Through violence you may murder a murderer, but you can’t murder murder.
Through violence you may murder a liar, but you can’t establish truth.
Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can’t murder hate.
Darkness cannot put out darkness. Only light can do that. (154)

The power of God’s kingdom is love. Peace is the goal and the means through which God’s kingdom arrives. This is shocking, unrealistic, and silly to most “reasonable” people. It is not “common sense.” If you can’t laugh at its utter absurdity, then you haven’t quite “got it.” For this reason, Jesus’s message was a scandal to his generation – and to ours!

This kind of revolution, on the one hand, seems laughable. It’s the crazy dream of poets and artists, not the strategy of generals and politicians. Anyone who believes it should be laughed at or perhaps pitied. It’s hard to imagine anything more unrealistic – perhaps pathetic is the most fitting word for it.

On the other hand, what other kind of revolution could possibly change the world? Perhaps what’s crazy is what we’re doing and pursuing instead – thinking, after all these millennia, that hate can conquer hate, war cure war, pride overcome pride, violence end violence, revenge stop revenge, and exclusion create cohesion. Perhaps. (33)

It is a crazy dream; but it is God’s dream!

Is it yours? What if it was? What if it was the world’s dream?

What if?

The Glory of The Kingdom

What if Jesus was right? What if God’s kingdom is truly breaking into our present reality?

What if?

The message of the kingdom is a “secret message” by the very nature of its invasion. It does not come with the fanfare, fright, and frenzy of evil powers. Its more like Emily Dickinson’s poem: “Like lightning to the children eased/ Through revelation kind,/ The truth must dazzle gradually/ Or every man be blind” (198).

We see glimpses of the kingdom, but never the whole. Occasionally, we are surprised by its reality. On other occasions, we wonder if it is merely a fantasy. But the momentary glimpses infect us in a way that a full-blown revelation does not: “We are incurably afflicted with the desire to see more, and more, and more. We are converted into seekers of God’s kingdom” (199).

Like a seed planted in a field, yeast within bread, or treasure hidden in a field, the kingdom of God will one day arise from within our midst – where it has been hidden all along. McLaren does his best to describe this:

God will see God’s own primal dream for creation finally coming true – and that dream won’t be imposed by God from outside by domination against creation’s will, but it will emerge from within creation itself, so that God’s dream and creation’s groaning for fulfillment are one. God’s creation will finally be – as a whole, and in all its parts – good, beautiful, and true. It will be harmonious and diverse, dynamic and healthy, generative and fruitful, novel and wonderful. Its evil will be judged and purged; its harvest will be celebrated. And of course, these words fail. (203)

The Extent of God’s Kingdom

What if we committed to making God’s dream a reality in everyday life?

What if?

The message of the kingdom is not particularly “religious.” It embraces the whole of human existence.

I’ve become convinced that if the good news of Jesus were carried in a newspaper today, it wouldn’t be hidden in the religion section (although it would no doubt cause a ruckus there). It would be a major story in every section, from world news (What is the path to peace, and how are we responding to our neighbors in need?) to national and local news (How are we treating children, poor people, minorities, the last, the lost, the least? How are we treating our enemies?), in the lifestyle section (Are we loving our neighbors and throwing good parties to bring people together?), the food section (Do our diets reflect concern for God’s planet and our poor neighbors, and have we invited any of them over for dinner lately?), the entertainment and sports section (What is the point of our entertainment, and what values are we strengthening in sports?), and even the business section (Are we serving the wrong master: money rather than God?). (10-11)

As Brian notes, “kingdom is not a particularly religious word, and Jesus seemed to go out of his way to describe the kingdom in ways that common people could understand” (81). This is important to recognize, because the message of the kingdom encompasses more than “religious professionals”:

Kingdoms may have priests and preachers, but they must also have farmers, governors, painters, engineers, drivers, writers, carpenters, scientists, diplomats, teachers, doctors, nurses, cooks, philosophers, sculptors, and even lawyers.

Too often, when the story of the movement of Jesus is told, most of the focus is on the religious professionals. But what if their role is at best minor? What if the real difference is made in the world not by us preachers, but by those who endure our preaching, those who quietly live out the secret message of the kingdom of God in their daily, workaday lives in the laboratory, classroom, office, cockpit, parliament, kitchen, market, factory, and neighborhood? (81-82)

Everyone can make a difference in God’s kingdom. It is not exclusive to preachers, pastors, or any other church leader or religious organization. Every person can be a “secret agent in the kingdom of God” (89).

We make a difference by embodying Jesus’s “kingdom manifesto”– the Sermon on the Mount. What would happen if we lived this way? Wouldn’t the kingdom be more palpable, obvious, and desirable? Wouldn’t people take the message more seriously? And isn’t this what it means to be salt, light, and a city on the hill so that all people may glorify God?

What if our communities of faith intentionally became living parables where the secret message of Jesus could be hidden today?

What if?

Quotes excerpted from The Secret Message of Jesus by Brian D. McLaren
Review © Richard J. Vincent, 2006