To What Community Do We Belong?

To what community do we fundamentally belong? For followers of Jesus, the Church is that community. Our identity and allegiance root in and stem from our being in the Church. Certainly other communities to which we belong – nation, race, clan, gender, language, party, occupation, affinity, and more – shape and even "claim" us to greater or lesser degrees. Yet we must understand and pursue our essential belonging, our paramount and therefore focal identity and allegiance, in and through the community of the Church. We must subordinate, and in some ways and instances even refuse, claims from those other communities on our identity and allegiance, on our very life. To the extent we seek and experience the true commonweal of this world and of our individual life in it – trust and hope and love, and truth and beauty and goodness – we must do so fundamentally within and from the community, the society, which is the Church, which is ultimately the kingdom of God.

Ecclesiology, Grace, and Redemption

Whatever we understand the church to be, that is our understanding of the nature and means of grace and redemption. Whatever we understand the nature and means of grace and redemption to be, that is our understanding of the problem at the core of human existence.

The Church: First Fruit of Re-Creation

In To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World (p. 158), James Davison Hunter remarks that ecclesiology is, for what he terms the neo-Anabaptist perspective, the form of engagement with the world. This stems from the significance of the communal aspect of Christian faith in this view. The individual is of course significant, but Christ formed a community of believers or followers: the church. Christian ethics is not solely or even primarily individual. It is corporate; it is ecclesiological.

Hunter is right about this in a certain sense. However -- and I am not necessarily reacting to Hunter or to any person in this so-called neo-Anabaptist perspective -- I contend that the reason for the existence of the church is not to engage the world. To employ Hunter's terms, the reason for Christ forming the community of believers is not in order to have a form or means of engagement with the world. The church is not utilitarian in the divine economy. The church is essential in the divine economy. The purpose in the divine formation of the church is the re-creation of the cosmos. The coming-into-being of the church is fundamentally an act of redemption or salvation, first and last, not ethic or mission. Ethic and mission derive from that redemption which is the divine formation of the church. Ecclesiology gives rise to ethic and mission. Or perhaps a more nuanced way of putting this is to say that a comprehensive ecclesiology seeks to understand and explicate both the essential being of the church (redemption, re-creation of the cosmos, the vanguard of the new humanity) and the necessary acts of the church in manifesting that being (ethic, mission). In the end the church is not a divine tool to engage the world outside of the church through ethic and mission. Were that the case, the church would cease to exist in the age to come. Rather, the church is the first fruit of the divine re-creation of the cosmos. In the age to come, when all of time and space are made new, beyond sin and death, in God's grace and power, the church will be the last fruit of that re-creation. Outside of the church will be nothing, for the church will be all, as God will be all in all. With and in God, the church will humbly and joyfully persist in God's good re-creation.

Church: Vanguard of the New Heaven and the New Earth

In many evangelical churches we often hear the church’s vision and mission cast in Great Commission terms. The impetus is to be a Great Commission church because this, it is thought, is the very nature of what it means to be a church. This aspiration on the part of the clergy or the clergy and congregation need not indicate a formal connection with one or more of the Great Commission Church associations. It often indicates simply a more general sense that Jesus’ commission to his disciples in Matthew 28:16-20 constitutes the essential nature and purpose of Christian churches. This is why the Church and churches exist.

There is no question that the Church and local churches should have a strong outward dynamic through mission, evangelism, and service. The Church is not an exclusive club or secret society. Jesus calls not only individual believers but the Church as a body to love God and love the neighbor with the wholehearted, sacrificial love he embodied and continues to manifest to the world.

Yet the nature and purpose of the Church cannot be adequately captured, distilled, or focused by the label or identity of “a Great Commission church.” For the Church is the new community of humankind or the new humanity created by God in Jesus. The Church constitutes in a real sense the vanguard of the new heaven and earth. Just as God first created humanity in Adam and Eve, so God has re-created humanity in Jesus Christ and the Church.

If the Church were solely or even primarily a missional body, it would cease to exist in the final re-creation of heaven and earth which God will effect at the end of history as we know it. Yet that prospect makes no sense. In God’s gracious power and love, the Church, humanity re-created by God, will continue, perfected, in the new age pictured for us in Revelation 21.

I speak here chiefly in theological and essential terms, not in terms of the practical realities of the Church of wheat and tares. However, it may be inaccurate to assert such a qualification. For indeed the Church may well be the new humanity and the vanguard of the new heaven and earth in both theological and practical terms in this world if we conceive of the work of Christ as source and guide of the Church and not only as goal or end result.

In other words, one of the category mistakes of Christian thought, and thereby of Christian experience, is to understand the work of Christ almost completely in triumphant and static terms of the finished or end product. Too often we hold up the work of Christ in the life of the Church and the lives of individual Christians primarily with the perfected end state in view. We emphasize what will be in perfection so much that we lose the sense of good in process in this life toward that blessed completion. Indeed, we may even thus lose the sense of progress in faith, hope, and love, truth, beauty, and goodness, that will surely mark our corporate and individual life not only in this age but in the glorious age to come.

We better understand and experience the presence and activity of Christ in our world and in our community of the redeemed in terms of dynamic process as well as result: Christ dealing with sins or our fallenness, not only Christ having dealt with sins. We understand and experience these aspects of Christ’s work as the “already and the not yet” reality of the kingdom of heaven in our world, as many theologians have put it. Here, in this existence, between the cross and the Second Coming, we are the Church in process, the Church of wheat and tares. This is truly the Church, in this age. And of course, when we speak of the Church of wheat and tares, we refer at least as much to the wheat and tares within our very selves as well as within the community.

We come back then to the point that the Church most truly and essentially exists not for, but because. The Church, God’s new creation, is not utilitarian. That would be like saying that God created humanity in the first place for utilitarian purposes. The Church does not exist for mission. The Church exists because God loves. The Church emerges from God’s love and because of God’s love through the suffering labor of the cross (in contrast to the painless labor of God which gave rise to the cosmos and humanity in the first creation), in and to the delighting and loving pleasure of God. Any for of the Church’s existence grows out of this irreducible because of its existence.

The for-ness of the Church then roots in and stems from the because-ness of the church. The for-ness is not rooted in utilitarianism but in essence. And this for-ness is multidimensional. The Church, being the new humanity in Christ, lives out the for-ness of its existence in several broad but fundamental ways. In terms of purpose and activity, the Church consists of a community of worship, fellowship, service, and witness (by word and deed). Worship, fellowship, service, and witness comprise the multidimensional purpose of the Church stemming from its essential nature as creature of God’s love. With this in mind, it is wrong to say that the Church exists for witness or mission. Therefore, to seek to be a Great Commission church as if this were the whole reason for the Church to exist is to misunderstand the essence of the Church and to limit the multidimensional purpose of the Church, which is to love God and love the neighbor.

Church: The Community of the Righteous

The church, in relation to the world, stands as the community of the righteous. Not the self-righteous but the righteous. Righteousness does not describe our relationship to our own goodness or moral standing. Righteousness describes our relationship to or standing before God. It signifies right relationship with God. Right relationship subsists in God’s holy grace and our broken repentance or humility. So the church, in relation to the world, stands as the community of those who know and proclaim God’s holiness and grace – the community of those who know and proclaim that righteousness, including their own, subsists not in moral achievement but in brokenness and humility in the face of God’s holiness and grace.

A Community of Service

Introduction

A prayer attributed to Saint Francis

“Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be console as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.”

There is great need in the world. Yet it appears that much of the need in the world is ignored or inadequately addressed. So much of the attention and resources of people, communities, organizations, companies, societies, and countries is focused and directed in other directions.

We find a contrast in the nature of God and the pattern of God’s activity in the world, from creation through redemption. We find that God has a passionate and active concern for those in need, for those on the margins of life, for the neglected and the lost. We find that God goes to extraordinary lengths to love and to serve people.

Where do we stand in all of this? Saint Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome:

“I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.”[1]

There is great need in the world

There are so many needs requiring so many resources and so many people in response. Whether through personal experience, through family or friends, or through awareness of contemporary conditions in this country and other countries, we all are acquainted with many of these needs.

However, the world seems to ignore these needs to a large degree, or to address them inadequately. There may be many reasons why this is the case, but an appraisal of various realities makes it hard to conclude otherwise. Consider where we put our money and other resources, how we spend our time, where we put people in need, how we raise our children, and many other indicators of how we organize and direct our “time, talent, and treasure.”

In view of all of this, the world needs a revolution. For a great many people in the world, the current system is not working.

In fact, the world has had such a revolution. It was a revolution like no other in human history, and the central figure of that revolution wants his followers to live out the revolution. The central figure was Jesus of Nazareth, and his revolution consists of salvation through suffering love. He is molding his followers – the Church – to be the vanguard of his revolution. He wants the Church to be characterized fundamentally and comprehensively by suffering or sacrificial love.

A consideration of God’s nature and his presence in the world up to and including Jesus shows us the revolution that God seeks in the world.

The nature of God and the pattern of God’s activity

Central themes in creation are God’s love and the goodness of creation. The goodness of creation roots in and stems from God’s love and God’s goodness.

However, as we noted, the world is in great need. Creation is fractured, marred, twisted, rebellious. It ought not to be this way – for God did not create people and the world to sin and to suffer – yet it surely is.

In response to the world’s need, the pattern of God’s activity is deep, recurring love for his creatures. This pattern of God’s love and activity constitutes “good news.” It is not sentimental, simplistic good news. The good news of God comes through suffering love. We see it epitomized in the Old Testament in the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53, and in the New Testament we see it incarnated in Jesus.

While there are many, many threads of God’s good news (which consists of suffering, sacrificial love, and which is incarnated in Jesus) throughout the Old and New Testaments, here is a list of some key texts. Individually and collectively, they make a profoundly spiritual study for us.

• Exodus 22:21-22 (God’s care for the alien, the widow, and the orphan)
• Isaiah 25 (God as a refuge for the poor and needy; and the messianic banquet)
• Isaiah 35 (people made whole in an eschatological vision)
• Isaiah 53 (the Suffering Servant who heals by his sufferings)
• Isaiah 58:6-14 (a holy fast is to overcome injustice, to assist the needy, to keep the Sabbath)
• Isaiah 61:1-4 (to proclaim good news to the oppressed) – see Jesus in Luke 4:16-21
• Matthew 25:31-46 (serving Jesus in “the least of these”)
• Luke 10:25-37 (the good Samaritan)
• Luke 16:19-31 (the rich man and Lazarus)
• Luke 22:14-27 (the Last Supper and the dispute about who would be greatest)
• John 13:1-17 (the Last Supper, footwashing, servanthood)
• Philippians 2:1-11 (encouragement to love and serve because Jesus took the form of a slave)

Do not be conformed…be transformed

As Saint Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome, we are not to be conformed to the world. We are to be transformed, from the inside out.

We are to be transformed by the Holy Spirit and empowered by the Holy Spirit.

We are to be transformed into the image of Jesus – imitatio Christi. Our transformation is to be modeled on the example or pattern of Jesus.

We are to be transformed into faithful servants. See John 13:1-17. To paraphrase 1 John 4:19, “We serve because he first served us.”

This is not the status the world seeks or offers, nor is it the transformation intended by the myriad of self-help and self-potential programs that are popular today. Yet faithful servanthood embodies the character and role intended and incarnated for us by Jesus.

Becoming transformed

The question then for us is this: How can we become more like Jesus today than we were yesterday?

There are at least a few fundamental ways whereby we can grow as a community of service, more and more into the image of Jesus.

Growing in servanthood begins and ends in worship and prayer: worship of our loving and life-transforming God; prayer for others; and prayer for ourselves (e.g., for our ability to serve in love, and for our strength to serve faithfully).

In the power of the Spirit, through our prayer and obedience, we can reconceive and reinvent – transform – our regular perspectives and activities into instruments and opportunities of service. Everything we do can be done in service.

We can train our children to be people of service, to be servants. We can provide homes and a church with the servant values of Jesus. We can provide examples of service through our lives, and we can provide opportunities of service through volunteer efforts. We can encourage them to seek relationships, families, and careers built on loving service rather than self-centered competition and self-aggrandizement.

Another way – a possible way – represents more of a strategic option for a local church. This could involve focusing on certain service needs as a congregation or community. As individuals, we would still practice the two fundamental and general or comprehensive ways of service mentioned previously. But a local church could have a strategic focus for congregational service through a particular program or programs.

Conclusion

We have been trying to “paint a picture” of the Church, of what the Church looks like, or should look like. We have been trying to paint this picture because we must ask what kind of people God is creating, what kind of community God is forging. And we must ask so that we can grow more and more into that kind of community.

We know that the Church fundamentally lives in two directions. In one direction we live from God and for God. In another direction we live from other people and for other people. When we are living in God’s Spirit, these two directions are characterized by service. Hence, the Church in the Spirit is a community of service in a truly fundamental and essential sense. It is a servant community.

Consider these statements and petitions from the Litany of Penitence in the Ash Wednesday liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer.

"We have not loved you with our whole heart, and mind, and strength. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves."

"We have been deaf to your call to serve, as Christ served us. We have not been true to the mind of Christ. We have grieved your Holy Spirit."

"Accept our repentance, Lord, for the wrongs we have done: for our blindness to human need and suffering, and our indifference to injustice and cruelty…."

"Accomplish in us the work of your salvation;
That we may show forth your glory in the world."

What would it look like for a church to be known – to God, to the people around it, and to its own people – as a community of service? How would that please God, and how would it bear witness to those who do not know God of the sublime worthiness of God and the inestimable love that he shows us in Jesus and pours into our hearts through the Holy Spirit?

Let us pray for this to occur in our Christian communities. The prayer attributed to Saint Francis marks a good beginning for us.

“Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.”

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[1] Romans 12:1, 2. (All citations from Scripture refer to the New Revised Standard Version, unless otherwise noted.)