Meeting Jesus, Again

Marcus Borg died in January of 2015.  He was an important apologist for Christianity because he shared his recovery of faith by remembering how it felt to believe when he was young and allowing himself to feel that way again about stories and explanations that academic criticism and challenge had deconstructed and dismissed.  

Remember when we all were fascinated by the power and magnitude of Jesus' miracles or those Cecile B. deMile-ian moments from the Old Testament?  Like last Sunday's story of Mose's shining face after his encounter with God on the mountain, the stories are so big our wonder keeps us remembering until some challenge rises up out of textual variance or historical contradiction.  

Borg, who introduced himself to a wider audience with his charming and comforting "Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time"  helped more than those whose nostalgia was darkened.  He helped the same scholars who had frightened away a generation of believers.  

Thanks to Phillip Clayton, PhD,  Ingraham Professor, Claremont School of Theology for his development of these four aspects of Borg's impact so worth our attention, especially as we work through these Sundays informed by John's "I am the bread" gospel readings.

• Borg was hopelessly Jesus-centric. Nothing in the history of Christianity or its present-day institutions could turn him away from this Jesus — not the great ideas and theologies of intellectuals, not the debates over the historicity of the New Testament, not the frustrating trivialities of bureaucratic functionaries. If the entire institutional side of the Christian church should go down in flames — and many think that it is — Borg’s faith would be untouched. Borg was unwaveringly drawn to the Jesus of the gospels; he couldn’t imagine building his life around anyone else. I’d like to think that Emergence Christianity at its best does precisely this.


• Borg described a God worth believing in. Borg’s writings (and his person) consistently convey belief in a loving and compassionate God. He wasted little ink on theological disputes. The only thing he consistently wrote about God was that he was a panentheist: God is immanent in the world, as the world is immanent in God. The rest of the metaphysical debates about the divine went into the “optional” category for him. So did the battles over Christian orthodoxy, from substitutionary atonement to pre-incarnate Logos to pre-millennial eschatology.


• Borg’s unencumbered Christianity didn’t negate other religions and spiritual paths. It didn’t tell you that you have to hate gays or proselytize Buddhists or be wary of your neighbor’s doctrine of Scripture. Love is not a zero-sum game. Following Jesus is not first about propositions, stacking up true ones on your side and attacking the false propositions of your enemies. Borg’s humility, which so many of us experienced, was the natural expression of a Christian faith built around Jesus’ radical way of compassion first, with everything else a distant second. Isn’t it fair to say that what has drawn so many to the emergence movement is this same message: a Christianity without exclusion or intolerance?


• Borg knew that we have to pare Christianity back down to the basics... or else. The age of Christian Empire has passed (thank God). The Church is no longer the center of American society, as the Harvard Pluralism Project has so clearly shown. The fastest growing religious group in America are the non-affiliated. As the famous process theologian John Cobb said in a talk recently, “The more progressive denominations on the whole have been losing members and resources. There are many reasons. But I think the deepest one may be that what we do and say does not seem to be terribly important.”

We can use these highlights to help us read and understand the Gospel this month and maybe meet Jesus again for the first time ourselves.