Vol 3:4 Can Jesus be our Starting Point for Engaging in God’s Mission?

I am still reflecting on Craig Van Gelder’s and Dwight J. Zscheile’s The Missional Church in Perspective: Mapping Trends and Shaping the Conversation.  To reiterate, in this book, Van Gelder and Zscheile are exploring how the missional conversation has unfolded since Missional Church was published in 1998.  The conversation has moved in different directions, many which are indeed not very missional, but reframe perspectives in missional language which have little to do with discerning where God is active in the world. 

This week I would like to offer some reflections, perhaps even some questions for on-going study, regarding a critique they have regarding Christology as a starting point for participating with God in God’s mission. 

Referring to Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch’s ReJesus, Van Gelder and Zscheile express that “Frost and Hirsch fail to realize that the trinitarian understanding of God’s mission they use to frame their Christology is in fact a theological missiology – a missiological framework that defines the interrelationship of God, church, and world.  They choose instead to make Christology [rather than Trinitarian theology] their starting point . . .” (p. 80).

As an Anabaptist this is also a critique I need to ponder since Anabaptists have a Christological preference in expressing what discipleship and mission entails. 

As they continue their critique, they argue that having Jesus as the starting point for engaging in mission “tend[s] to  (1) diminish the role of the Spirit in the life of the church as well as in the world; (2) foster an understanding of church as a contrast community within the world that seeks to emulate the example of Jesus; and (3) reduce missiology to an applied discipline, thus eclipsing its richer biblical and theological assertions” (p. 80).

For me, I believe the only way we can begin to participate with God in God’s mission is through Christ – and therefore, in desiring to participate in the Trinitarian mission, we can only enter into that mission through a Christological engagement and understanding – because as John reveals, Jesus is the only one who has seen God, is God, and is in closest relationship with God, who makes God known to us (cf. John 1: 18).  Likewise, Paul expresses in Colossians 1: 15 that Jesus is the image or the icon of the invisible God.  We cannot know God, participate in God, or participate with God in God’s mission unless we enter into relationship with Jesus and participate with Jesus in his participation in the mission of God. 

Christology, then is key, but perhaps it depends on what kind of Christology we hold.

I believe the starting point for engaging in God’s mission is Christology, but the kind of Christology that is necessary is one that engages us, through Christ Jesus, to participate with God in God’s mission in the manner in which Jesus was involved in mission. 

I think Van Gelder and Zscheile rightly express that this requires more than an emulation of Jesus – it requires more than following the teachings of Jesus in the expression of our discipleship – it requires our participation in Jesus.  What this leads to is our continuing the ministry of Jesus in the world – what Ray Anderson, in The Shape of Practical Theology, describes as christopraxis.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a pastoral colleague a couple of weeks ago.  He is in the midst of writing a monograph on comparing Micah 6:8 with John 14:6, comparing mercy, justice and walking with God in relation to Jesus being the way, truth and life.  Our conversation that afternoon, over coffee, reflected upon Jesus being the way and demonstrating the way we are to participate with God in God’s mission.  This requires more than a mere emulating of Jesus, because mere emulation still leaves us to try and engage in God’s mission in our own ways.  Only as we participate in Jesus do we begin to be integrated in the way of Jesus, in which Jesus is the way.

Such a Christology rooted in participation of Christ – as Christ participated with God the Father in mission, must then be the starting point for our engagement of the mission of God.  Such a Christology does not diminish the role of the Spirit, because the way of Jesus embraces the Spirit of God – all that Jesus did in ministry was by the power of the Spirit – how can we do otherwise, unless we only emulate Jesus and not participate in Jesus. 

Further, such a participation in Jesus, shapes us to live as the incarnate people of God, the incarnate body of Christ within our world, within our cultures.  We are not merely a contrast community, as Van Gelder and Zscheile critique, as if we could separate ourselves from the world – but like Jesus, as we participate in Jesus, we are engaged with the world and in the world – we are instead a new kind of humanity in the world.  In the expression that Stan Hauerwas uses – we are a community of character in the world, demonstrating as Jesus demonstrated, a different way of being human, a different way of being a human community in the world.  Being different is not merely being a community in contrast, we are a community showing a new way of being human in the midst of the brokenness and death narratives of the world.  This also is dependent upon the Spirit of God – for Jesus was dependent upon the Spirit to demonstrate the character of new creation.

And in light of this, such a missional understanding of Christology frames missiology as being no mere applied discipline.  Rather, it seeks to give expression to the way we are a new human community in the world because we participate in Jesus, who participates in the trinitarian mission of God.  Jesus, and Jesus alone, is our entry into participation with God in God’s mission – and so a missional Christology is the rightful starting place – in fact the only starting place for our participation with God in God’s mission.

I realize that what I am expressing here is a quick overview and just a beginning of my exploration of the connection between a trinitarian understanding of mission and Christology – and I realize it requires more in depth investigation, yet, I believe we cannot understand God and God’s mission without a missional Christology. 

So, I invite your reflections as well – that we may engage in theological dialogue together.

Vol 3:3 Competing Fictions and the Mission of God

I am writing this week from Eastern Mennonite Seminary in Harrisonburg, VA in which I am participating in a pastor’s conference focusing on God and Mammon: Reframing Stewardship Amidst Abundance, Scarcity, and Conflict with Walter Brueggemann being the primary presenter. 

Last night Brueggemann said something that got my attention – we live in a society, an empire, that necessitates that its citizenry embraces a narrative of accumulation.  This narrative of accumulation involves a spiritual attraction to money and demands our loyalty.  Our North American empire tells this story so pervasively through media, through advertising, through the political and economic systems, through the military machine, making it so visible that we all want to be part of it.  In order to maintain this narrative of accumulation as the only viable narrative, the Empire states that all other narratives, all other stories are fictions – even the Gospel.

In fact, the Gospel is a fiction, by the norms of the Empire.  The Empire claims that it has the only truth – the truth that perpetuates the narrative of accumulation.

So how do we who seek to participate with God in God’s mission respond?

Brueggemann states that we need to display a different narrative –we need to challenge the epistemology (or way of understanding) of the Empire.  We are called to live out our being human, under the rule of Christ, in missional communities in radical different ways which reveal a different story, a different vision – in fact, embracing God’s Story and Vision, so that in our living, our speaking, our doing of all that we do, what is revealed is that the narrative of the Empire, the narrative of accumulation, is indeed a fiction in light of the narrative of the Gospel, in light of the active mission of God in the world. 

In that the Empire seeks to make its fiction real, God’s missional people commit themselves to partner with God in living in such a way as to unmask the falsehood and deceptive nature of the Empire’s narrative. It is about making a spectacle of the principalities and the powers, which Jesus did by embracing the violence against him and against humanity thrust upon him on the cross.

This involves more than merely declaring that the Gospel narrative is a better narrative.  In the face of the narrative of the Empire, we are being called to live as a community of character (Stanley Hauerwas’ term) that so lives out the Gospel narrative that it puts on display the system of death that is inherent in the Empire’s narrative of accumulation.  It is not merely finding God’s mission in the midst of our culture, but to so participate with God that we demonstrate, in the power of the Spirit, that God’s mission in the midst of culture actively re-creates humanity and creation, so that humanity is no longer subject to the powers of sin and death. 

Perhaps a first step in doing so, as the people of God in North America,  is in confessing our collusion with this narrative of death, this narrative of accumulation, this narrative of the Empire – for we have found comfort in this narrative.  Confessing and living out the narrative of the Gospel – the only narrative of life – in contrast to the narrative of the Empire will be a costly confession, a costly living out of our discipleship.

But only such a costly discipleship will unmask the fictional nature of the Empire’s narrative.

Vol 2: 43 The Soul of God: A Christmas Gift - Resurrection and Missional Participation

As we come to the end of the year, this will be my last reflection on Ray Anderson’s theological memoir, The Soul of God.

Anderson notes that in Christianity that we rightfully make much of the cross – the cross is essential to the mission of God, but then he remarks that the cross is the end, it is not the beginning – Resurrection is the beginning.

As we celebrate Christmas this week and focus on Christ and his incarnation, we realize that his participating with God in God’s mission put him on a trajectory that leads him to the cross.  Yet, the good news of the Gospel, of God’s reign, of the outworking of God’s mission, is that it does not end at the cross, God’s mission through Jesus is fully manifested through the Resurrection.

Hear Anderson’s reframing of our understanding of the cross:

“The cross is the end of our life as mere sinner, not the beginning.  The cross put an end to the law which condemns, says Paul.  The cross is not a place to revisit time and time again in morbid fascination with the things that weigh us down and destroy our worth as God’s children. ‘I died to the law so that I might live to God,’ wrote Paul. ‘I have been crucified with Christ’ (Galatians 2:19).  What Paul says of himself is true of every human being.  In the cross all of humanity died when Christ died.  That is, through Christ God brought the consequence of sin upon himself, so that death no longer has power to determine human destiny. ‘It is no longer I who live,’ added Paul, ‘but it is Christ who lives in me.  And the life that I live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me’ (Galatians 2:20).  Not every person can say that, but only those in whom the spirit of the resurrected Christ dwells (Romans 8:9).

            ‘The world behind me, the cross before me,’ we assert when singing the familiar song, I Have Decided to Follow Jesus. That is so wrong!!  I would rewrite it to say, ‘The cross behind me, the world before me!’  No one should think that following Jesus leads back to the cross.  That is finished! Once and for all. . . . The Lost Lane-end Into Heaven, as the novelist, Thomas Wolfe, wrote, is not found at the foot of the cross but in the pathway marked by the light shining out of the empty tomb.  There is indeed a cross in my past, but not in my future.  I want to walk in the light and be singing of a Risen Savior when Jesus walks in the door!” (pp. 115, 116).

Yes, those of us who have been set free through Christ have a cross in our past, but now as we live, identifying with Christ, continuing the ministry of Christ in the world, we live participating with God in God’s mission in the light of the Resurrection.  We are a resurrection people, a people who still have stuff in our lives that needs to be crucified, but the trajectory of our lives now is beyond the cross, living in light of the resurrection of Christ – which in being identified with him through our baptisms, we are living as ones who have been resurrected into the life that is God (I say this because in Exodus 3 we discover that God’s name is not a noun, but a verb meaning Being, Life, Is – God is Life, because God is the Living One from whom all living emanates!)

And in being resurrected, we are living participants with God in God’s mission of bringing life, peace, hope, joy – life to all of humanity and to all of creation.  Mission is not something we do, but rather how we now live because we are a resurrection people connected to God, in relationship with God, through Christ Jesus in the power of the Spirit of God.  The mission of God is about transforming all of creation.  And as we live as transformed ones, being infused with resurrection life, we participate with God in God’s mission, because we now share in the life that is God.  The resurrection has re-created us and prepared us, so that our living as human beings is all about what God is accomplishing in this world to make all new. 

What a Christmas gift – a gift of God that began in the incarnation of God in Jesus, that led to the cross – Jesus taking on all the violence thrust against humanity, and culminated in the victory over sin and death through Jesus’ resurrection.  Because of this gift in Jesus, we now are empowered and filled with the Spirit of God to participate with God in God’s mission of making all creation new.  Merry Christmas!

[I will be taking a break next week, so my next posting will be during the week of January 6, 2012 – see you next year.]