Marcus Borg was the leading edge<\/a> of Progressive Christianity, before we ever even had words like Progressive Christianity. Today, at the sad news of his death, many of us are mindful that he gave us the lexicon for this journey.<\/p>\nSome members of our fearless worship team spent some time last Sunday cleaning out that dreaded corner of the church known as \u201cThe Worship Closet.\u201d (shivers). If your church has such an area\u2014and I promise you, it does\u2014you know the horrors of going through years of stuff and junk and things. You are not just sifting through dust (and possible bat\/mouse leavings), you are literally moving through the church\u2019s history. Seasons of change; loss and heartbreak, hope and growth, all wrapped up\u00a0with\u00a0old paraments, drippy purple candles, maybe some unidentified scraps of fabric. They were certainly beautiful, once. Everything in that corner was certainly useful, meaningful, lifegiving. Once.<\/p>\n
What Marcus Borg did with his life was the systematic, sometimes tedious, but ultimately crucial work: of going through the Church\u2019s closet. But whereas my church has about 12 years\u2019 worth of stuff piled in that corner, he had to go through the detritus of a couple millennia. He shook the dust off of the Church\u2019s most deeply held beliefs, drug them out into the light of day, and was not afraid to say\u2026 Where did this come from? Who gave it to us? Is it true, and does it matter?<\/p>\n
The space that he created through that process\u2014we may never know the measure of it. But I hear, over and over again, people say that Borg offered a \u201cway back\u201d for them at a critical time in their faith journey. He offered a lot of skeptical, struggling disciples\u00a0a pathway back to faith and community. He claimed a sacred space for doubt at the heart of the Christian narrative. He made room at the table for those who did not \u2018fit\u2019 the space the traditional Church created for them.<\/p>\n
To be clear, he was never just throwing away. Despite what his many critics said (and will continue to say) he was not just tossing away the core beliefs of Christianity. His goal was always to broaden the story; to challenge that which was harmful, rote, and\/or merely superstition, and find \u2013beneath the junk\u2014a deeper truth that still held life and meaning.<\/p>\n
And critics, there were many. Some politely challenged the veracity of his faith and scholarship. Some worried that he was a danger to \u2018real\u2019 faith and biblical authority. And some were just downright hateful, to the point of causing disturbances at his public appearances, and condemning him to hell. I\u2019d venture that he even received threats of violence, at one time or another.<\/p>\n
To this latter group\u2014the haters, the rousers, the terrorists\u2014I don\u2019t know, I like to picture Marcus waking up in whatever kind of heaven there is this morning, and saying \u201cCheck it, bitches. I got in. Your perfect fluffy-cloud paradise is full of heretics, after all. You still coming, or what?\u201d<\/p>\n
Of course, he would never in life have said such a thing, so I doubt he would express such sentiment, even in death. He was far too gracious and kind. Always engaging even the most fearsome critics with patience, trusting that they\u2014even they\u2014were still becoming, in the image of God.<\/p>\n
While many today are thinking of the ways Borg saved them\u2014from leaving faith altogether\u2013 I\u2019m thinking instead of all the ways he\u2019s helped to save the Church from itself. Cracking windows, breaking down doors, letting some air and light into the places where our attachments and anxieties were slowly suffocating us. And paving a way for the return of those long-ago exiled to the wilderness. To them we say, welcome back, friends. We\u2019re sorry it took us so long, but we\u2019re making more room.<\/p>\n
And now the question is\u2026 Now what? Who will continue this often-tedious, but very necessary work of shaking off, airing out, and creating more space for whatever new thing God would show us, if we\u2019d just let go of last year\u2019s Lent d\u00e9cor? \u00a0And, Lord help us, the tarnished brass candelabra that somebody\u2019s grandma donated in aught-7\u2026 It was surely beautiful once.<\/p>\n
I know it\u2019s not always fun, it\u2019s not always pretty\u2026 but I\u2019m putting on my dust mask and I\u2019m going in. Who\u2019s with me?<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, is there an afterlife, and if so, what will it be like? I don\u2019t have a clue. But I am confident that the one who has buoyed us up in life will also buoy us up through death. We die into God. What more that means, I do not know. But that is all I need to know.\u201d <\/em><\/strong>\u2013Marcus Borg, 1942-2015<\/em>.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Listen, I don\u2019t have a wildly inspiring story about the time I met Marcus Borg, or how one of his books saved me, precisely, from abandoning the church altogether. I did hear him speak once. From the FRONT ROW. And he was gracious, and engaging, and challenging, and yes, inspiring. But I never met him […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1154,"featured_media":3543,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1012,9],"class_list":["post-3542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faith-and-community","tag-marcus-borg","tag-progressive-christianity"],"yoast_head":"\n
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