“Be not conformed to this world; but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (Romans 12:2) These words capture the spirit of Richard Black’s Maximus. The book is about the gradual and then quantum transformation of a Roman general and his closest friend and colleague’s from military men to lovers and followers of Jesus. “This world” of past certainties must give way to an emerging spirituality, a faith without boundaries and fences, straining to be faithful to God’s movements of grace.
Augustine once said that of God that “you have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You.” Maximus and Androcles are restless and don’t know why. They have gained the world, defeating Rome’s enemies and expanding their nation’s boundary. But, they are now war and world-weary. Surprised by an unexpected assignment to discern whether Jesus is a threat to Rome, they go on an adventure of geography and spirit. They fall in love with two Jewish women and along with falling in love, meet Jesus for the first time, not just as the subject of a political investigation but as their spiritual heart’s desire. Their “restlessness” does not lead to spiritual stasis but to new relational and spiritual adventures.
The text describes the honeymoon of early Christian experience, long before battles over doctrine, ritual, ecclesiology, scripture, science, and sexuality. In those salad days of the Christian movement following Jesus meant freedom – freedom to experience new life, cross boundaries, accept otherness, and be part of an adventure where everyone belonged and no one was an outsider. In fact, these earlier Christians were making it up as they went along, joining tradition with innovation in response to God’s new vision for humankind. Nothing was fixed; all was alive in the dynamism of Jesus’ healing hospitality.
The love of God and the love of two oddly matched couples broke down barriers of culture, ethnicity, and religion. With God, all things are possible and all roads lead to – and are motivated – by God’s intimate and ever-expanding love. In this world, the impossible – intermarriage of Jews and Gentiles – becomes possible.
While doctrines and rituals are important in the formation of persons and institutions, they can stand in the way of experiencing the wonders of God’s love. Even Christian doctrines and rituals can stand in the way of experiencing the holy. Often they have been used to exclude rather than include, dominate rather than welcome. But, there is a movement within that invites us to freshness and love as persons and as institutions.
Maximus and Androcles were unknowingly part of a new religious movement, breaking through legalism to become a global religion. In light of the movement of the spirit, all movements were too small to contain the message of Jesus. Jew and Greek, male and female, slave and free, and every other polarity was relativized and healed by the grace of God.
Today, Brian McLaren and others speak of A New Kind of Christianity, an emerging global faith awakening to the pluralism, science, and technology of our postmodern world. Perhaps there are explorers at fringes of today’s faith, breaking old boundaries, including biblical legalism, to be faithful to Christ in our time. We are invited to take up the restless and adventurous faith of Androcles and Maximus as God’s restless movement of creative transformation lures us forward to lively visions of Christianity for our changing times.
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