Christian Mission as Eschatological Proclamation :: Matt. 9:35-10:31

I wrote this sermon on the Gospel of Matthew’s Mission Discourse for my Introduction to New Testament Interpretation class last semester.

An innacurate, unhelpful portrayal of the scene.

 

Christian Mission as Eschatological Proclamation[1]

Matthew 9:35-10:31

Jesus called his disciples to leave behind their livelihood and to follow him.  So, they went with Jesus, Matthew 4:23 tells us, as “he went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people.”  This dynamic combination of preaching and healing goes hand-in-hand for Jesus’ pronouncement that “the kingdom of heaven is near” (Matt 4:17).   Undoubtedly, many people gathered near Jesus just to glimpse this man who brought ‘good news’ throughout Galilee.  Seeing the large crowds, Jesus went up on a mountainside and “began to teach them” as Matthew records (5:1-2).  “Teach them.” This is quite an understatement.

What ensued was the most revolutionary and provocative ethical oration.  “Do not resist an evil person.  If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also” (5:39).  “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (5:44).  Jesus presents a portrayal of an upside down world, or perhaps a right-way-up world—“blessed are the poor in spirit”; “blessed are those who mourn”; “blessed are the meek”; “blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness”; “blessed are the merciful”; “blessed are the peacemakers”; “blessed are those who are persecuted” (5:3-10)—and he is saying that with his work all this is starting to come true.  Jesus, however, does not dish out universal principles that, if approached through the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount, would solve every problem in this country or the world.  That was Harry Truman, not Jesus.  Jesus’ teaching is a proclamation that the kingdom is near.  This is gospel:  good news, not good advice.
“Why have you started here with the Sermon on the Mount?” you may ask.  Well, because the narrative suggests that we should.[2] Both the Sermon and the mission discourse begin at the same place.  Matthew 9:35 again informs us that “Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness.”  Moreover, the Sermon and the Mission discourse are the fruit of Jesus’ encounter with the masses.  In the former, there is no indication about what in particular compels Jesus to issue the Sermon.  In the latter, however, Jesus’ compassion for the crowd of people, who “were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (v. 36), impels Jesus to act decisively.  Filled with great empathy, Jesus commissions the disciples as “workers sent out into [the Lord’s] harvest field” (v. 38).

The progression has come full circle for the disciples.  They followed Jesus; they observed his demonstrations of the “good news,” of the in-breaking kingdom of heaven through miracles, and they listened with great awe at his teaching because “he taught as one who had authority” (7:28). And now, Jesus commands them to do likewise.  “Preach that ‘the kingdom of heaven is near’!” he instructs his disciples (10:7), “Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons!” (10:8)  The disciples must imitate their master in all things.

The disciples move from spectators to initiators.  Fear must have gripped their hearts.  Imagine their trepidation as Jesus unfurls the contours of their mission.  They are to embody the radical shape of the Sermon.[3] Just as the sermon is an eschatological invitation to live according to an ethic shaped by the world to come, the mission discourse is a call take up an eschatological posture in light of the kingdom that is at hand in the process of converting people to Christ.

Yes, conversion.

This dirty little word strikes hard against our modern sensibilities.  It is a cacophony to the ear tuned by liberal society’s definition of pluralism.  We are right to be weary and cautious considering the church’s complicity in the colonization process.  Chinua Achebe’s novel, Things Fall Apart, depicts the consequences of Western colonialism in Africa, namely, the unraveling of the Ibo social and cultural fabric.  Indeed, Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth accuses the church of implanting foreign influences at the center of a culture and then overtaking it through the “white man’s God.”  But we must resist the perspective that assumes that one’s religious beliefs belong to an untouchable personal sphere, beyond the reach of the good news of God’s salvation.  We must deny the claim that to convert a person is an inauthentic expression by which an individual manipulates another person to think exactly like she does.  Conversion requires that a person repent of her sin and accept a new divine reality.

We would much rather champion the Sermon’s ethical instruction than preach Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection.  We find no real aversion to the Sermon’s ethical instruction, but we squirm under the command of the mission discourse to proclaim salvation through Jesus Christ.  Our culture understands social justice, not the Great Commission (28:16), because our understanding of “justice” has no correlation to God.  Our culture identifies with the effort to intervene in Iraq and African countries where many women suffer genital mutilation.  In the end, these efforts can also be classified as working for conversion.  Conversion means “to change in character, form, or function.”[4] In this case, we attempt to change the character of the value system of another person or culture.  We hope to inculcate a new reality that causes a person to discard their old sinful way of life and recognize the dignity of a woman.

So, both social justice and preaching the kingdom seek to do the same thing:  to convert a person to a new perspective, to change the character of an individual life.  Our problem with conversion, the reception of Jesus’ salvation, then, results from imbibing a cultural script that does not recognize God, and thus, makes Jesus’ imperative to preach the coming of his kingdom unintelligible.  We deem worthy converting a person to true justice, but recoil at the thought of converting a person to the true God.

The kingdom is unintelligible to an unbelieving world.  But to this end, Jesus commissions his disciples to follow in his footsteps to make visible the reality of the unseen kingdom.  They must accomplish this by structuring their mission according to a world that is not yet here.  Their lives must demonstrate eschatological expectation.  For Matthew (and Jesus), you cannot have the Sermon without the mission, nor the mission without the sermon.  Regrettably, the Church has often undertaken the mission to the exclusion of the Sermon.

As a result, the Church possesses a checkered history of heavy-handed conversion.  Our second problem with conversion stems from our cultural image of conversion.  Conversion connotes forcing a person to believe what you believe, refusing a person the freedom to choose.  Jeopardizing anyone’s freedom, by the way, is the cardinal sin in America—but that is another sermon.  Neglecting the Sermon results in obnoxious behavior and hijacked relationships, all for the sake of “the Gospel.”  Jesus imagines something very contrary to this for his disciples.  The disciples will be the ones on the receiving end of obnoxious behavior, they will be the ones persecuted and abused.  The shape of the missional work Jesus outlines in the sending discourse bears little resemblance to the kind ‘guerilla evangelism’ that pushes the ‘truth’ in someone’s face.

Nevertheless, this passage is about conversion.  But our ideas of mission and conversion are so skewed that we can’t find it in this text with our working definition.  We must allow the text to redefine our understanding of evangelism. Matthew’s text reconfigures the visage of Christian mission in three ways: (1) it is fundamentally eschatological, (2) extremely dangerous, but (3) undergirded by God’s love and the Spirit’s presence.

Eschatological expectation resounds throughout Jesus’ discourse.  First, the reference to the sheep and the shepherd in v. 36, as Davies and Allison note,[5] harkens back to Ezekiel 34: “For this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I myself will search for my sheep and look after them.  As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so will I look after my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness.  I will bring them out from the nations and gather them from the countries, and I will bring them into their own land” (vv. 11-13).  With this in mind, the passage looks forward with eschatological anticipation for Israel’s Messiah to come and shepherd her, to tend to the poor in spirit, to those who mourn, to the meek, the hungry, the merciful, and so on.

Jesus, then, reconstitutes his people in the symbolic action of sending the twelve.  They are the eschatological symbol that the messiah has come and gathered up his sheep, and that a new kingdom has dawned.  The disciples now live in this new world that is ultimate, but has not yet fully arrived.  John Howard Yoder says, “This is what we mean by eschatology: a hope that, defying present frustration, defines a present position in terms of the yet unseen goal that gives it meaning.”[6] The disciples are sent in hope, defined in the present by the end.  They must welcome poverty (10:9-10), rely on hospitality from strangers (vv. 11-12), they must bring healing (v.8) in order to proclaim that the kingdom is near.  The disciples must imitate Jesus, the inaugurator of the kingdom, in everything:  they must embody a life articulated by the Sermon and Jesus’ ministry of healing deeds.  They must engage in eschatological proclamation.

And so must we.

We have been commissioned, sent by Jesus to live among those not yet in the Good Shepherd’s fold.  We must intentionally seek out the friendship of our neighbors, to reproduce for them an experience of God’s love and forgiveness.  Proclamation of the Gospel story and witness to its reality must come together.  And our individual relationships must be a natural inroad into our church communities if we are to make palpable the nearness of the Kingdom of Heaven.  Otherwise, we have failed to be eschatological in our mission, for community and eschatology are inextricably bound up with one another.

Karl Barth puts the mission of the church wonderfully: “The community does not speak with words alone. It speaks by the very fact of its existence in the world; by its characteristic attitude to world problems; and, moreover and especially, by its silent service to all the handicapped, weak, and needy in the world. It speaks, finally, by the simple fact that it prays for the world. It does all this because this is the purpose of its summons by the Word of God. It cannot avoid doing these things, since it believes. From the very beginning the community also expresses itself in spoken words and sentences by which, according to the summons of the Word, it attempts to make its faith audible.”[7]

Our faith becomes audible when we radically embrace strangers as God did us, and when we pray to partner with the Spirit, who is already involved in every person’s life.

And if eschatology gives expression to our mission, then it invariably encounters danger.  It is perilous to forgive and pray for enemies.  It is hazardous to entrust yourself to others, both Christian and non-Christian alike.  Possessing an inverted value system, which privileges mourning over comfort, meekness over strength—just to name two of the hallmarks of living in the kingdom amidst the present reality—will lead you to take risks.  You may go live with and join a suffering community in a blighted neighborhood.  Praying to partner with the Spirit at work in a non-Christian may require a lifetime of patience while the invitation into communion with God goes unanswered.  Or you may be asked to sow seeds of the Gospel story of Jesus, even though a person does not want to hear the truth.

Though we are not told exactly why the gospel mission is dangerous, we know that the disciples were beaten, arrested, and even killed for proclaiming the arrival of the kingdom of heaven in both—and it must be both—word and deed (vv. 17-18).  Christian mission even incites family division and hatred (vv. 21-22).  Most of us have encountered this strife already at family gatherings, but I suspect we are its cause, not the gospel.  We have mastered Jesus’ imperative to “be as shrewd as snakes,” while neglecting to be “as innocent as doves” (v. 16).

The eschatological dimension of the mission discourse also holds a dark, unsettling reality for those who reject the Gospel message:  Judgment.  This is the second dirty word in our text.  Commentators W.D Davies and Dale Allison note that Jesus places the villages that reject the kingdom of God in the same category of Sodom and Gomorrah (v. 15).[8] This typology stands as a proverbial warning of God’s wrath for those who refuse his love.  Conversion, then, is a life and death matter.

But “do not fear” (v. 26 and 31).  Well, do not fear people at least.  Jesus exhorts us to fear the “One who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (v. 28).  Immense comfort flows forth from the fact that the “One who can destroy both soul and body in hell” is for us. The Father loves us.  He is so involved in the happenings of our world that not even a sparrow falls to the ground apart from his will.  The Father, who has carefully numbered every hair on our heads, is for us (v. 30).  He loves and keeps us.  This means that we can entrust ourselves to him, even in unexplainable suffering.

Our trust may not manifest itself in silent resolve.  Though we may lose our voices, “the Spirit of the Father will speak through us” (v. 20).  The Spirit may prompt us to vocalize our faith through suffering and persecution.  Do we really believe that the Spirit speaks through us today?  We might if eschatology gave rise to our mission, and we encountered obstacles that brought us to the end of our own means and forced us to rely on the Spirit.

This challenge to live into the Eschaton is the crux of the matter.  For Christian mission begins where it ends: the imminent return of Jesus Christ to put right the world.  Until then, we stand on tiptoe in anticipation of this ultimate and certain hope.  Though it remains yet unseen, we have glimpsed the kingdom with the eyes of faith.   And so, we must embody the Sermon and the Mission together, which overlap and interlock because they are fundamentally eschatological.  That is, they assume that the future world has penetrated this present reality and view all of life from this vantage point.  Our evangelism, then, seeks to draw others into the already true reality of God’s salvation through Jesus Christ, and it also extends the peace of the kingdom to others:  “Freely [we] have received, freely [we] give” (10:8).  This right-way-up world proclamation is both our message and our method for conversion.

So, we pray knowing full well that God the Father loves us, that Jesus Christ died for us, and that the Spirit guides us and utters on our behalf:

Our Father in heaven,

Hallowed by your name,

Your kingdom come,

Your will be done,

On earth as it is in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread.

Forgive us our debts,

As we also have forgiven our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation,

But deliver us from the evil.

For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.

Amen.

---

[1] This sermon has in mind an audience in the Northeastern region of the United States.  However, it may also work in any context feeling the weight of religious pluralism, such as our own Duke Divinity School.

[2] W.D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, The Gospel According to Saint Matthew. (Edinburgh:  T&T Clark, 1991), 143.

[3] Ulrich Luz, Matthew: A Commentary. Vol. 2.  Hermeneia, Trans. Crouch, James E, (Minneapolis, 2001), 59.

[4] http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/conversion

[5]Davies and Allison, 158.

[6] The Royal Priesthood: Essays Ecclesiological and Ecumenical, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), 145.

[7] Evangelical Theology: An Introduction, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1992), 38.

[8] Davies and Allison, 179.

The Primacy of Theological Discourse

James K. A. Smith, in Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism, describes the posture of a common theological strategy plaguing the church, the “correlationalist model.”  This approach begins with “a certain confidence in the findings of a secular discipline–whether philosophy, psychology, history, or sociology–[and then] adapts this neutral or scientific framework as a foundation and then correlates Christian theological claims with the facts disclosed by secular science.”  In an apologetic effort to make Christianity intelligible and universal to an audience, churches translate the gospel according to the rationale of scientific or “objective” truth rather than to the particularity of Christian revelation.  The correlative method also directs church practice as well.   Churches have assimilated business-growth paradigms with their definitions of success, as well as marketing strategies and their penchant for trends.

John Milbank offers a diagnosis for modern theology:

Radical orthodoxy, radical scarf.

“Once theology surrenders its claim to be a metadiscourse, it cannot any longer articulate the word of the creator God, but is bound to turn into some oracular voice of some finite idol, such as historical scholarship, humanist psychology, or transcendental philosophy.  If theology no longer seeks to position, quality or criticize other discourses, then it is inevitable that these discourses will position theology.”

- Theology and Social Theory:  Beyond Secular Reason

Hauerwas on Evangelicals

In this very short video, Stanley Hauerwas points to a few things that evangelicals need to recover.  His thoughts are a simple articulation of what I often struggle to communicate to my evangelical friends.  I left my work with a campus ministry organization because Dietrich Bonhoeffer (and later Karl Barth) showed me that the church is not a second reality to my immediate relationship with God.  Instead, it is precisely through the church that a person knows God.  Jesus mediates between humanity and God, and the church is inexorably bound up with Jesus.

After coming to Duke and taking (only) two semesters of church history, it is clear to me that our conception of faith, and the church as well, is one that we’ve inherited  As Hauerwas says, “You don’t get to make up God.”  I’ve come to see that it is absolutely vital to the Christian faith of today that we engage with the faith of old in order to remain faithful tomorrow.  This means that we need to read Scripture in concert with the voices of past Christians, in dialogue with the wisdom of the Church.  Recognizing that we are actors in a drama that began 2000 years ago is crucial to combat myopic, and thus heretical, conceptions of God.

Confessions of a Theologian of Glory

Title page from Luther's Deudsh Catechismus, 1659

I have been reading through a book by Gerhard O. Forde, entitled “On Being a Theologian of the Cross.” Forde works his way through Martin Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation of 1518, juxtaposing a “theology of glory” with a “theology of the cross,” categories which he borrows directly from Luther.  The contrast between these ways of doing theology has shed light on my past year of theological training.  It is now apparent that I am functioning as a theologian of glory (again); for subtle shifts in my thinking have already occurred so that I no longer depend on the grace of God but rely on my own capacity to be faithful and to become more faithful.  Indeed, one of the chief claims of the theologian of the cross is that, by nature, every person is a theologian of glory.  We are in bondage to operate according to Scholastic Nominalism’s proposition to “do what is in one’s self” and let God do the rest.  This maxim encapsulates humanity’s unrelenting resolve to be “the master of [our] fate[s]/ the captain of [our] soul[s].”  We are, therefore, tragically bound to the insatiable thirst for our own glory.

As a theologian of glory, I operate as though my will were in control, free to choose between good and evil.  Under the assumption of “free will,” I attempt to reason myself into a more virtuous existence, or I try to make theology and virtue attractive so that it will appeal to my free choice.  My other strategy hinges upon my effort to discipline myself, to practice virtuous habits in order to reconfigure the years of sinful behavior patterns (e.g. impatience, anger, lust).  But an optimism about the elasticity of the will–that it may be bent toward faithfulness–says Forde, is the root cause of despair.  Telling a narrative that misrepresents the reality of human nature only leads first disillusionment then malady.

The cross is an attack on sin “that reveals the real seat of sin is not in the flesh, but in our spiritual aspirations, in our ‘theology of glory’” (1).  That is, the cross seeks to unmask optimism placed in human ability.  The real locus of sin lies not in our evil works, but in the good things we do; the theologian of the cross targets the “pretension” that accompanies what we do well.  Thus, the theology of the cross is offensive, for it reveals our rejection of God precisely through our good works.  This narrative upends and shocks us, pursuing us to the end of our rope, to surrender and cling to the cross.  This story claims that hope rises out of despair, that life comes only through death.

Luther organizes the Disputation according to the logic behind the division between the theologian of glory and the theologian of the cross: “The question of the knowledge of God is directly related to the claim that we can, by our natural powers prepare for grace by ‘doing what is in us’…A fault in the estimation of works [Theses 1-12] is based on a false estimate of the power of will [Theses 13-18], which in turn presumes a knowledge of God’s judgment on such works [Theses 19-24]” (70).  Theses 25-28 conclude the Disputations arch from the law of God to the love of God, arguing for the sole agency of the grace of God in the life of the theologian of the cross.

I will devote some space in the blogosphere to a series of reflections outlining the Disputation’s theses as they relate to my own grappling with Luther’s (and Forde’s) assertions.  Reading the book through the first time was convicting, confusing, challenging, and I am still unsure what it means to be a theologian of the cross in light of recent Biblical scholarship, e.g. more accurate views of “the Law” in ancient Judaism and the abounding critiques of Reformation exegesis of Paul, as well as some of modern theology’s push back on Luther’s ordo salutis and his definition of faith.  Finally, I hope these posts will help me work out how a theologian of the cross faithfully proclaims the ethical components of the gospel, the Christian vocation of justice and peace.

Resuscitation, not Resurrection!

Summer should will resuscitate this blog:  Resuscitation, NOT resurrection.  This blog was not dead; nay, it merely lay dormant, incapacitated by the Duke workload.  And after such a stagnant interval, the blog, as it stands now, lags behind my current intentions for it.  Thus,  a few changes must be made if  “Opus Dei” is to serve its purpose  (or my purpose).   Hence, the new layout.  I can’t figure out how to actually adjust the byline, but that will be adapted to reflect the wider scope of this blog.

Now that I have an outlet for my processing what I read (grad school), I hope to include musings and stories of our personal life.  Of course, I do not really mean “personal”; this is only a blog after all!  Nevertheless, I will still devote a fair amount of my efforts to matters of “theological importance,” whatever that means.

For What Its Worth: A 2009 Ranking of Graduate Programs in Theology

R.R. Reno, Professor of Theology at Creighton University and an editor at First Things, ranked the best places to do Theology in North America.  This is an explicit evaluation of graduate schools engaged in Orthodox theology.

It is difficult to distill his rankings into a simple, ordered, linear list.  I suggest you read the article:

Duke University

Here is a rough distillation:

1. /2. DUKE University  2./1. Notre Dame (Reno makes a case for why each school is perhaps better than the other)

3. Princeton University/ Princeton Theological Seminary (if considered as a package)

3. Wycliffe College/ Toronto School of Theology

5. Marquette

Other notable mentions:

- University of Dayton

Notre Dame

-Perkins School of Theology

-Baylor

-Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology at Berkeley

-Harvard, Yale, Chicago

Reno refers to a previous article undergirding his rationale, which he published a few months ago.

As for my thoughts:

I am happy to see that Reno praised two of my professors this semester: my OT professor, Dr. Stephen Chapman (AKA: Chaps) and my church history professor, Dr. Warren Smith.   Both are excellent.

The Creed: Forming A Posture of Trust

A wily Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury

Rowan Williams, in Tokens of Trust, asserts that the Christian’s faith is a matter of trust, not belief. Although throughout Christian history the words ‘trust’ and ‘belief’ shared synonymity, in modern use the words describe two very different postures for the way we engage God’s existence. Our language is important as it directs our engagement with what we ultimately hold to be true. It is therefore vital that the distinction is made between ‘trust’ and ‘belief’ if we are to allow the existence of God to impinge upon our lives. A sketch of each posture, then, is necessary if we are to explore the significance of Williams’ claim. This will provide a foundation to explore the ways in which a posture of trust gives shapes to how we “take up” the Christian faith. And so we shall see that trust is the vehicle through which the reality of God penetrates our existence, affecting the way we feel about ourselves and about the world .

For Williams belief is primarily a relationship to an abstract idea or thing. Belief answers the question of whether or not something exists out there. It regards the objects it probes as magical or mythical in nature, and so the question of belief in God is similar to, “Do you believe in ghosts or UFOs?” This is a rather impersonal question which is unconcerned with the consequence of whether or not something exists. That is to say, if a ghost really did exist, it would hardly make a difference in the grand scheme of things. This kind of belief cannot conquer the crippling effects of suspicion, because it forms a posture incredulous to hope, meaning, and relationship. Suspicion prevents one from participation in celebration, love, hope, and trust. It forms a posture closed to the possibility of God affecting the way we feel about ourselves and the world around us. This kind of posture rests on fallacious assumptions about God.

God is not the kind of being that is out there or ambivalent to what is going in the world. Belief for Christianity is not a question of opinion concerning whether or not God exists, but it is rather whether or not God is to be trusted. Williams makes this plain by turning our attention to the Creed, which draws for our imagination a radically different visage of God—one in whom we are invited to trust from the onset. The Creed is composed of statements that reveal God’s agenda by what God has done. It is therefore impossible to stand with neutrality in relation to God. Belief in God’s existence is inextricably tied to questions like, “Is God reliable? Does God have our best interest in mind?” The very nature of God thus demands that we not think of God in the same category as UFOs or ghosts. Belief is the wrong kind of posture for a God who is proximate and good. It is, then, a categorical mistake to approach God’s existence like one might an abstract being, such as a ghost. To do so is to relegate God to impotence and irrelevance. A posture of trust, however, invites God to make a difference in the way we feel about ourselves and the world around us.

Williams’ insistence on trust, not belief is rooted in the conviction that God is entirely other than that from which concept, theory or principle is constructed. Every mode of knowledge is defined by the nature of its object. Therefore, a God who is wholly other than creation necessitates a different kind of touching, seeing and hearing. Intellectual assent and conceptual postulation will not do. God is eternal and transcendent, but not impersonal or unknowable. God is not an impersonal force like gravity which pushes toward the center of the earth without reason or care; neither is God like a theory, a body of impersonal information to master. We must consider the proper mode of knowledge, or posture that accounts for the Creed’s proclamation of a God who cares, listens and speaks—a God who actually revealed Godself by entering our history as the human, Jesus Christ.

Since God lovingly cares for us, we are faced with the decision to receive or ignore God’s love for us. Care is the kind of thing that is only received when the source of care is trusted. It doesn’t matter how much God loves us, if we do not trust him, we cannot receive God’s love. A posture of trust is one of dependence and vulnerability in a relationship. Trust is germinated by its object when there is evidence that the object is working for one’s good and— of course—possesses the power to bring that good to fruition. We are compelled to trust that God is for us when we see God’s agenda made clear: peace and praise. This is most prominent in the cross where God suffered as a human in this world to set people free from fear and guilt to live a new life.

How then does a posture of trust shape the way in which we take up the Christian faith? If God is not an object of neutrality, but one who is relational and active for good, then abstract belief or intellectual assent will not do. And if the Christian life is a function of trust, not merely belief, then the task of spiritual and theological formation is to entrust our lives into the holy hands of God instead of amassing a framework of information. For this reason, the Creed’s theology is ultimately concerned that we entrust ourselves to the God it articulates. As we live our daily lives then, we must be attentive to situations in which we fail to trust God. We are often aware of external sin, but Williams’ emphasis on trust begs us to turn a critical eye to whether or not we, at a given moment, trust that God is perfectly loving, infinitely wise, and totally sovereign. We must ask ourselves, “Are my thoughts and actions indicative of trust in the God who is always and wholly for me?”

The Life-and-Death Contest

I think a Bonhoeffer quotation is far past due:

“Thus at the very beginning of Christian fellowship there is engendered an invisible, often unconscious, life-and-death contest.  “There arose a reasoning among them.” :  this is enough to destroy a fellowship.

Hence it is vitally necessary that every Christian community from the very outset face this dangerous enemy squarely, and eradicate it.  There is no time to lose here, for from the first moment when a man meets another person he is looking for a strategic position he can assume and hold over against that person.  There are strong persons and weak ones.  If a man is not strong, he immediately claims the right of the weak as his own and uses it against the strong.  There are gifted and ungifted persons, simple people and difficult people, devout and less devout, the sociable and the solitary.  Does not the ungifted person have to take up a position just as well as the gifted person, the difficult one as well as the simple?  And if I am not gifted, then perhaps I am devout anyhow; or if I am not devout it is only because I do not want to be.  May not the sociable individual carry the field before him and put the timid, solitary man to shame?  Then may not the solitary person become the undying enemy and ulitimate vanquisher of his socialbe adversary?  Where is there a person who does not with instinctive sureness find the spot where he can stand and defend himself, but which he will never give up for another, for which he will fight with all the drive of his instict of self-assertion?

All this can occur in the most polite or even pious environment.  But the important thing is that a Christian community should know that somewhere in it there will certainly be “a reasoning among them which of them should be the greatest.”  It is the struggle of the natural man for self-justification.  He finds it only in comparing himself with others, in condemning and judging others.  Self-justification and judging others go together, as justification by grace and serving others go together.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, pg. 90-91

But to Correct a Flood, One Does Not Want a Drought

Amy and I are reading Thomas Howard’s Evangelical is Not Enough.  What began as a post directed toward the book’s main thrust–the worship of God in liturgy and sacrament–has found its way to what has always been an intriguing topic to me:  the division between “sacred” and “secular”.  I am planning to compose something closer to the center of Howard’s fascinating book later, but until then…

Evangelicalism has rightly pointed that the locus of true spirituality lies in the heart.  In an effort to protect piety, a distinction has been made between the sacred, that which is spiritual, and the secular, that which is non-spiritual (and merely physical).  In the former, Sunday worship, Bible study, and prayer matter more than what takes place Monday through Saturday in the latter, washing the dishes, cooking, work, ect.  Within this rubric, prayer is a more spiritual labor than cooking a meal as it only deals with the physical aspects of our humanity.  Ministry deals with “souls” and thus matters most.  Conversely, the worth of a secular marketplace job springs from its use as a channel for evangelism, or when part of one’s salary can be tithed.  It is against this that Thomas grimly asserts:

“False religions perpetuate the great divide between flesh and spirit, rather than between good and evil where Christianity says it lies.”

Howard observes that many Christians embrace this false dichotomy between flesh and spirit when they read St. Paul.  For St. Paul, the spiritual is not the “disembodied”, nonphysical; there is no distinction between the spiritual life and regular, ordinary living.  To understand what St. Paul meant, we must briefly revisit the garden of Eden.

In the beginning, the universe was a single tapestry woven harmoniously together.  All things were interwoven, overlapping in proper relationship with one another.  Creation was whole, blazoned with God’s Glory; it seamlessly and continually lauded its Creator.  As Howard points out, “The distance lay not between the “physical” and the “spiritual” so much as between the created and the Uncreated”  (30).  But humanity’s grab for the apple tore the tapestry of creation saying, “this much of it will be mine.”  We wrecked it all in our commodious swipe and, “The poor remnant we clutched in our fists was secular, in the most tragic sense of the word:  that which is not acknowledged as God’s.  It is a noncategory of course, since nothing that exists belongs to anyone but God” (30).

The vast splintering of creation alienated us humans from the Creator, from one another, from the rest of creation, and it even divided our self from its true identity.  We are not yet through reaching.  We grab at what does not belong to us in every relationship, whether it be a romantic interest, pleasure, resources, money, a job, fame,  a church–and even at God!  Because we struggle to relate properly to God, we are prone to worship the created, or claim it as our own.  As a result, we see too dimly to rightly acknowledge what is God’s, and worse, we wrongly adjudicate what are his good creations as culprits of evil.

So what about St. Paul?  Thomas delineates:

“To be spiritual for Saint Paul was to have brought everything back to God where it belongs and where it was in Eden.  It is to have had one’s life knit back together so that it is no longer secular and divided, but whole… ‘The flesh,’ as Saint Paul used the term, refers, ironically, not to our bodies but to fallen human nature.  The ‘carnal’ spirit is the one that devours things for itself and refuses to make them an oblations to God.  The carnal spirit is cruel, egocentric, avaricious, gluttonous, and lecherous, and as such is fevered, restless, and divided… The difference between the carnal man and the spiritual man is not physical.  They may look alike and weigh the same.  The difference lies, rather, between one’s being divided, snatching and grabbing at things, even nonphysical things like fame and power, or being whole and receiving all things as Adam was meant to receive them, in order to offer them as an oblation to the giver.

It is the demand for things that Christ sets us free from, not things themselves… Once again we may stand in our proper relation to things, as lords over them and not as their slaves.”

The challenge is to learn, or rather, relearn how to relate properly to all things.  Although creation is good, we have the witnessed incalculable corruption of it.  The abuse of  authority, food, sex, and humor show us that it is a dangerous thing to handle and touch what God has made.  We must be very careful, for we are easily mastered.

There is something in us that would rather not engage in the reweaving of a world reordered in subordination to Jesus’ rescue of God’s creation.   Instead of correction, we often choose prohibition.  It is easier to hide from the task to relate properly.  “But to correct a flood, one does not want a drought”, cautions Howard.   This dictum parallels the stern warning St. Paul issued to the Colossian church:

“Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belong to it, submit to its rules:  ‘Do not handle!  Do not taste!  Do not touch!’?  These are all destined to perish with use, because they are based on human commands and teachings.  Such regulations indeed have the appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence” (2:20-22).

Busyness: The Enemy of Spirituality

A friend handed me a photo-copied and coffee stained interview with Eugene Peterson published in 1991 in The Wittenburg Door (I just visited the website of the aforementioned magazine and found it to be reprehensible; a magazine brandishing satire to chop down to size those religious leaders it considers pompous is unfortunate).  Peterson struck a chord with me; his words resonate with my own attempts at spirituality and ministry.

I am posting a few excerpts which are, for me, both a hearty call for repentance and an affirmation of  some of my suspicions about the contemporary protestant Church.  Peterson’s insights are the fruit of a long, faithful pastoral service, thoughtful introspection, and the prophetic viewpoint of a person entrenched in Scripture with one foot in the here and now of the Church and the other in God’s future kingdom.

PETERSON: “Busyness is the enemy of spirituality.  It is essentially laziness.  It is doing the easy thing instead of the hard thing.  It is filling our time with our own actions instead of paying attention to God’s actions…It is an either/or situation.  Busyness has nothing to do with activity, and spirituality is not the absence of activity.  You either enter into what God is doing or you don’t.  A busy person is a lazy person because they are not doing what they are supposed to do.”

DOOR: “It seems like most pastors we know are just like you have, described.  Busy, busy, doing the work of the Church.”

PETERSON: “Most pastors want to run a good church and they will do just about anything to make that happen.  We pastors have a good nose for the market.  We sense when people are getting a little bored and we jazz things up a bit, challenge them with a new project, and we use Sunday morning ‘worship’ as the stage to do that.  I am convinced that pastors don’t give two cents about worship.  They really don’t.  And there’s a good reason for it.  True worship doesn’t make anything happen.  It is a losing of control, a weaning from manipulative language and entertainment.  It’s tough to practice that reality because give the choice between worship and dancing around the golden calf, pastors know people are going to dance.  Pastors sense if they really practice worship they are going to empty out the sanctuary pretty fast.”

“…The pastor’s primary work is leading the people in worship on Sunday morning, proclaiming the word of God, being knowledgeable in theology and scripture, and being committed to a pastoral chair which does not have the therapeutic model for its structure…Pastor’s pray a lot.  Prayer is hard work, but the prayer should be the distinctive about us.  We should have a deliberate or a conscious, intelligent, personal relationship with God which is articulated in prayer.”

DOOR:  “You mentioned earlier that your model for ministry is spiritual direction…What would [that] look like?

PETERSON:  “It doesn’t have a very exact definition, but classically, it is a friendship or companionship which enables another person to recognize and respond to God in their lives in detail, not in generalities.  It takes a lot of leisure.  You can’t do it in a hurry.  It requires extensive knowledge of your people.  You do this over a number of years, not a number of days.  It has no goal in the end.  It is not counseling.  Counseling has a goal, but there’s no goal in spiritual direction.

There is a great story in Moby Dick .  They are in the whale boat and they are chasing Moby Dick.  The sailors are rowing furiously and the sea is frothing, but there is one person in the boat who is not doing anything.  He is just sitting there, quiet and still.  It’s the harpooner, ready to throw the harpoon.  Melville has this great line:  ‘To ensure the greatest efficiency in the dart, the harpoonists of this world must start to their feet out of idleness and not out of toil.’  For a long time the harpoonist appears to be ‘non-productive’.  But that is only so that when the right moment comes he can be productive.”

DOOR:  “So spiritual direction is a slow process that looks idle and inefficient.”

PETERSON:  “It’s subversive.  I’m a subversive, really.  I gather the people in worship, I pray for them, I engage them often in matters of spiritual correction, and I take them on two really strong retreats a year.  I am a true subversive.  We live in a culture that we think is Christian.  When a congregation gathers in a Church, they assume they are among friends in a basically friendly world (with the exception of pornographers, ect.).  IF I, as their pastor, get up and tell them the world is not friendly and they are really idol worshippers, they think I’m crazy.  This culture has twisted all of our metaphors and images and structures of understanding.  But I can’t say that directly.  The only way that you can approach people is indirectly, obliquely.  A head-on attack doesn’t work.  Jesus was the master of indirection.  The parables are subversive.   His hyperboles are indirect.  There is a kind of outrageous quality to them that defies common sense, but later on the understanding comes.  The largest poetic piece in the Bible, Revelation, is a subversive piece.  Instead of being a three point lecturer, the pastor is instead a storyteller and a pray-er.  Prayer and story become the primary means by which you get past people’s self-defense mechanisms…

If the church member actually realized that the American way of life is doomed to destruction and that another kingdom is right now being formed in secret to take its place, he would be pleased at all.  If he knew what I was really doing and the difference it was making, he would fire me.

True subversion requires patience.”

DOOR:  “This sounds so… well … opposite of what most people think a successful pastor should do.

PETERSON:  “Pastors should not give people what they want just because it brings in customers–which it does.  The biggest enemy to the Church is the development and proliferation of programs to meet people’s needs.  Everyone has a hunger for God, but our tastes (needs) are screwed up.  We’ve been raised on junk food, so what we ask for is often wrong or twisted.  The art of spiritual leadership is not to tell people that they can’t have what they want, but to give them something of what they’ve asked for and not let it go at that.  You try to shift the dimensions of their lives slowly towards what God wants.”

If you are interested in reading the whole article, which I encourage you to do, then click here: original article.