Church as the New Humanity

I've been thinking over Rob Bell and Don Golden's new book lately as I listened to it as I drove down to TN before Christmas.  The name of the book is "Jesus Wants to Save Christians."  Like most of Rob's teaching, it stretched and challenged me a lot.  I'm going to quote a little bit from the last chapter to hopefully spark some discussion among us.  But before I begin, I totally recommend this book.

A church is where peace has been made.  Because in the Eucharist, in Jesus' body and blood, everything has been reconciled to God.  Paul calls this the "new humanity."  The Eucharist is about the new humanity.  People who previously had nothing in common discover that the only thing they now have in common is the one things that matters.  People who had previously found themselves on opposite sides of a wall find out that the wall has been distroyed.  People who had fought over an endless array of issues realize that peace has been made and there is nothing left to fight about.

In the new humanity, you hear perspectives you wouldn't normally hear, you walk in someone else's shoes, you find out that the judgments you had previously made about that group of people or that kind of men or that kind of women or all of those kids simply don't hold up because now you're getting to know one of "those" and it's changing everything.  You learn that your labels for different people groups are insufficient, because people are far more complex and unpredictable and intelligent and creative.

You used to have a rigid stance on a particular issue, but now you've heard the other side and it's impossible anymore to categorize them all as stupid and uninformed and heartless, because you realize that they have thought about their position and they have weighed the consequences and they have good points that you must consider.

In the new humanity our world gets bigger, our perspective goes from black and white to color, our sensitivities are heightened, we're rescued from sameness and uniformity, because the wall has come down and peace has been made.  A church is the new humanity on display.  She's in graduate school, and he's in his nineties; and one couple has a million dollars, and another doesn't have enough money for dinner; and he arrived in this country three years ago with a small suitcase, and they've never been out of the country; and they have a son fighting in the war, and they're going to a war protest later today; and he's got serious doubts about what he was taught growing up, and she's just decided that God might even exist.

All of these people-who are divided, who never sit down and listen to each other- in the new humanity, in the church, they meet, they engage, they interact, they begin to feel what the other feels, and the dividing wall of hostility crumbles.  In the new humanity, them becomes us, they becomes we, and those become ours.

Sounds a lot like being generous doesn't it?  Is it possible for our protestant churches in this day and time to look like this?  Especially established churches?  I'll post a few more quotes from this chapter in the next few days.