the kingdom of God

"In spite of these synergies between Paul's mystery and Jesus' secret message, we must admit that Paul doesn't speak in parables as Jesus did. But consider this: perhaps Paul doesn't need to use parables to illustrate and "hide" his message. Perhaps Paul himself is in fact a walking, talking parable traveling among other walking, talking communities of parables. Perhaps Paul's own story of transformation -- from a hateful religious bigot to a bridge-building messenger of love and reconciliation -- embodies and exemplifies the transforming and reconciling power of the good news of the kingdom. And perhaps the people he is gathering and networking are themselves -- individually and as communities -- a medium that contains the secret message of Jesus. Could it be that the message is hidden in them, in their common life, just as it was hidden in the parables of Jesus? Paul says as much in his second letter to the Corinthian church (3:2-3), when he tells them that they are a letter, an incarnated message, written not with ink but rather with the Spirit of the living God, not chiseled on stone tablets but embodied in living human hearts. [...] Is this beginning to make sense? Can you see how the secret message of Jesus is meant not just to be heard or read but to be seen in human lives, in radically inclusive reconciling communities, written not on pages in a book but in lives and hearts of friends? Can you see how the kigndom, originally hidden in parables, began to be hidden in new place -- in the stories of real people and real communites across the Roman Empire and, eventually, around the world? Can you imagine yourself and your community of faith as a living parable where the secret message of Jesus could be hidden today?" (McLaren, The Secret Message of Jesus, 101-102)


-- the Brian McLaren version of a Bob Nix lesson I heard several years ago.