Embracing Grace - Chapter 3

Embracing Grace: Chapter 3

McKnight places here four chapters in the story of the Eikon. The First is the Edenic chapter dealing with the world as it was always supposed to be. The second chapter deals with the cracking of the Eikons. The third chapter dealt at length with the story of Jesus. The fourth and final chapter deals with eternity as God’s long awaited return to the world for the glorification and reuniting of man to God.

Here McKnight, whether intentionally or unintentionally, leaves out a large chunk of the story of the Eikons. There is “chapter 2 ½” that dealt with the world of the cracked Eikons in the context of Israel. Israel plays an important and central role in understanding God’s divine chase of humankind. It is the chase that began when he grabbed a hold of Abraham’s life and sent him in a new direction. It is the story of God pulling Moses out of his context to help bring redemption to a people long oppressed by the Egyptians. It is a chapter of the story that we cannot leave out.

McKnight argues that the most important aspect of the Eikons is the third chapter. I disagree. I would argue that it is in this “chapter 2 1/2” that we find God moving to create the basis for a world in which the “kingdom of God” could come through Israel. There a five books dedicated to this idea called “Torah.” It is these books that deal with the very foundation of what it means to live as people of God in a world that is “God-bathed.”

Jesus didn’t all of a sudden invent this “kingdom” idea. Jesus only interpreted it a certain way. He was the incarnate who brought this kingdom to its consummation, restoring it to the status of what it was always supposed to be. But Jesus primarily taught Torah and to say that “chapter 3” somehow stands above the others is a subtle fallacy.

McKnight moves on from there attempting to understand what it means to be an Eikon in the here and now. The question that is of importance to McKnight here is, “What makes humans like God?” This may seem like blasphemy until one considers that we are “Eikons” or “images” of God. That is, that we are called to be people transformed to be more and more like God.

To answer this question more concretely McKnight asks a sub-question: What does God do? He answers this with three main attributes of God: God creates order out of chaos, God relates, and God rests. Each of these should be central to how Christians worship, serve, instruct, reach out and fellowship. If we are to be Christians who make order out of chaos we need to understand contextual theology. If there is a problem in our city, whether it has to do with God or not, if we are to be Eikons of God we will help to fix the problem.

For example: there is a huge problem of education in America today. Should we create more Christian schools (often inaccessible to lower income families) or should we help to fix the ones that are decaying? Communities of Christians should be the first in line at schools for volunteer work, to help rebuild decaying buildings and to give of their bodies. So often white upper-class Christians are interested in writing a check to somewhere in Africa where the gospel is desperately “needed.” There are places in America that need this same “gospel” and money is not always going to be the answer.

Secondly, God relates. If we are to relate to the world around us as God relates in Trinitarian love then we must be able to see people, not programs. I just finished a class with a highly respected professor at Azusa Pacific University named Bruce Baloian. The class was a 1 and 11 Samuel Class. In it he dealt with this idea of people. At the very end of this semester he mentioned that Saul’s model of kingship will make a person much more successful, but, David’s model is the model of God. It is the model that cares about people. It relates to people and hopes to understand where they are coming from.

Finally, God rests. In watching “A Charlie Brown Christmas” it is always funny to here Lucy’s response to Charlie Brown’s problem of Christmas: “You need involvement.” This is the often quoted answer of many churches in the West: you need to fit more crap in your already busy schedule and that will give you happiness in the Lord. What if we really took a Sabbath on Sundays? What if we stopped working so hard and said, “God we give this day to you for a day of rest and reflection?” We would live in a different world.