Vol 3:2 The Relational Nature of God’s Mission

These days I am reading Craig Van Gelder’s and Dwight J. Zscheile’s The Missional Church in Perspective: Mapping Trends and Shaping the Conversation.  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.  In their section on “Expanding and Enriching the Theological Frameworks” they present an important discussion on the relational nature of God’s mission in relation to Trinity.

They make clear, and I agree, we cannot understand or engage in God’s mission unless we embrace a theological understanding of the Trinity.  They express that a major facet of a theological focus in Trinitarian renewal “is the fresh attention being given to the relationality of God” (p. 105).  Which they state, “represents a crucial complement to the sending emphasis so characteristic of the West” (p. 105).

They relate “that theologians such as John Zizioulas have argued that the Cappadocian fathers . . . made a revolutionary move against the backdrop of Greek philosophy by asserting that relational personhood . . .” (p. 105) is an inherent aspect of understanding God as Trinity.  Stating further, “in this view, God’s very being is not an abstract divine substance characterized by certain attributes, but rather is profoundly personal.  There is no personal identity without relationality” (p. 105).  What this means is that Trinity is to be understood more in terms of the relationality inherent within the Godhead – expressed by the concept of perichoresis, than an abstract defining of God by God’s attributes or functions.  In essence, we begin to grasp what it means for God to be Trinitarian when we realize that “Trinity is seen as a community” (p. 105). 

This reveals the relational character of God’s mission in which we, as the people of God, are invited into relationship with God to participate with God in God’s mission.  As the Van Gelder and Zscheile express, “in this Trinitarian perspective, to be a person is to participate in others’ lives, to have an identity shaped by other persons, rather than to be an isolated individual” (p. 105) – each person in the Trinity is in relationship with and involved in each person of the Trinity and God’s mission is an expression of the relationality inherent within Trinity.

One of my take aways from this, in the brief space of this blog, is that for God, the mission of God is not merely a “task.”  Mission is not just something God merely does – as an act outside of the personhood of God – God’s mission matters to God.  Because God is relational, God’s mission involves God in all of God’s Trinitarian relationality – God cannot be any other way.  Mission is something personal for God; mission is something that does not happen outside of God, but involves God’s heart, involves God’s character, involves God’s love.  God enacts God’s mission not as an act outside of God, but rather God is personally involved in bringing about what God is purposing in reconciling humanity to God and recreating creation – bringing about God’s eschatological telos.

This helps me to understand my participation with Jesus in the mission of God.  It has often been said that to be adept in ministry that we need to exercise professional boundaries in relation to those we serve.  To me this is merely an excuse for being impersonal (though I understand that “boundaries” are essential if we are not abuse others – but that is another discussion about a different kind of understanding of boundaries).  The result of being impersonal is that we are apt to exercise our own ministry, but not God’s mission.  To be involved in ministry that participates with God in God’s mission has to be inherently relational and personal.  I believe, ministry to others must not maintain a professionality, but must involve all of who we are as persons, in relationship, taking the risk of being hurt by the love we extend to others and receive from others – ministry, like God’s mission, must be intensely personal and relational.  To minister in any other way is to not participate with God in God’s mission – because to minister in any other way is to minister in ways which are foreign to God’s Trinitarian relationality.

I know I need to develop this line of thinking some more – and so I am open, as always, to your constructive comments.

Vol 3: 1 Participating with God in God’s Mission in the Ordinary Rhythms of Our Lives

For those who do not follow a liturgical calendar, we are entering the season of Epiphany.  Epiphany is a Greek word meaning “manifestation.” Epiphany is a time of God’s presence being revealed through the discovery by the magi that God has come to be among us in being born as a human being in the person of Jesus.  God being manifested in Jesus reveals God up close and personal to the world. 

God’s incarnation in Jesus is all about God coming to be among us, to dwell among us in ordinary ways – perhaps even in obscure ways.  After all, though the scribes who knew the Scriptures were on the lookout for the coming Messiah, it was not until about two years after Jesus’ birth that astrologers from the east, following a star, asked the question, “where is the one who has been born king of the Jews?  We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him” (Matthew 2:2). 

God’s incarnation in Jesus was not meant to shine a spotlight on God so as to garner celebrity status for God in Jesus – though this is what Satan was trying to do through his tempting of Jesus (cf. Matthew 4:1-11).  Rather, it seems that God purposes to be manifest, to be revealed in obscure ordinary ways that permeate the ordinary goings and doings of people’s lives with God’s presence.  God came to dwell among us in ways which those following the headlines would not notice, but only those crying out for re-creation.

The idea of incarnation as an act of re-creation in the ordinary goings and doings of people’s lives is evident in Mark’s gospel as he describes the appearing of John the Baptist.  The word used for his appearing, an appearing which pointed to the coming Messiah is egeneto (root: ginomai).  It is the word for genesis in the New Testament and has multiple meanings depending upon context.  It is a creative word which can mean being born or begotten, to be created, to take place, for something new to happen to someone – and here it means “to appear” – as a creative presence coming onto the world stage in the wilderness to reveal something new that is redemptive, reconciliatory, re-creative of creation – light in a dark world!

John participated with God in God’s mission by pointing to, revealing the coming of the Messiah, through whom God would make all things new (cf. Colossians 1: 15-20).

It is evident from Jesus’ ministry that he lived out God’s incarnation in the brokenness, ordinariness, mundane reality of our humanity.  He hung out where the most of us hang out.  Jesus did not frequent venues that got him noticed by People magazine, but instead was with people in places in which he was called a glutton, a drunk, and a friend of sinners (cf. Matthew 11:19). 

The significance of understanding the ordinariness of God’s incarnation – God living out his humanity in ordinary places, is that God’s mission happens in the broken, ordinary, everyday places of our humanity.  And, in light of that, our participating with God in God’s mission encompasses the ordinary rhythms of our lives, the ordinary places of our lives, the ordinary activities and duties of our lives – as we encounter others doing ordinary things and going to ordinary places.  Participating with God in God’s mission is a low calling – and by that I mean that we are called to the low places, the ordinary places.

For it is in the low places, the ordinary places that we participate with God in God’s mission as Jesus did.  May we discover how to participate with God in God’s mission in the same ordinariness, brokenness as Christ Jesus:

“He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what.  Not at all.  When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human.  It was an incredibly humbling process.  He didn’t claim special privileges.  Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death – and the worst kind of death at that: a crucifixion.” (Philippians 2: 6-8, The Message). 

And because he participated with God in God’s mission in this way, and enables us through the power of the Spirit to participate with God in a similar way, we worship him who continually reveals and manifests God to us in the midst of our brokenness and ordinariness:

“Because of that obedience, God lifted him high and honored him far beyond anyone or anything, ever, so that all created beings in heaven and on earth – even those long ago dead and buried – will bow in worship before this Jesus Christ, and call out in praise that he is the Master of all, to the glorious honor of God the Father” (Philippians 2: 9-11, The Message)

May we see more clearly the presence of God in the ordinariness of our lives – because that is where God is to be seen!

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.]

Vol 2:42 The Soul of God: Offering God our Brokenness - God’s Grace in Broken Places

In this Advent season, a time of grace and hope, we often misunderstand grace – grace, however is a gift, not for how good we have been – ala God checking a list to see who is naughty and whose nice, but a gift of grace in the midst of brokenness, barrenness.  If this is the case, then grace is indeed an act of hope, especially in our difficulties we face in these days.  Ray Anderson, in his theological memoir, The Soul of God, states that indeed this is the case.        

Anderson begins with some hard to receive words:  “The grace of God must first kill before it can make alive” (p. 101).  He continues: “The grace of God requires barrenness not our belief as a precondition.  True faith and true obedience come as a gift of God’s grace, and the inner logic of that gift requires that where we have inserted a human possibility the grace of God must remove it.  This was true for Moses, as he experienced his own failure and futility, only to witness God’s power and grace through his weakness” (p. 101).

Anderson also reminds us of Abraham and Sarah – Abraham believed he could fulfill God’s promise to him through Ishmael, rather than through the impossibility of Sarah bearing a son.  But it is precisely in the midst of Sarah’s barrenness that God’s grace is manifest. 

And this is what we need to embrace as well if we are to be a people who are transformed by God’s re-creative work in us as God makes all things new.  We not only participate with God in God’s mission, but we are also transformed through God’s mission taking hold of us.  When we think we have something to offer God as a precondition to our being involved with God in God’s mission – the mission becomes about us, rather than about what God is accomplishing.  But the mission is not about us – because God’s grace presupposes barrenness, not fertility (as in the case with Sarah).

It is in our weakness – read through the narrative of God’s encounter with his people throughout Scripture, it is always in our weakness that God’s presence, God’s activity is manifested.  It is when we say to God, “I’ve got this, take a break,” that we no longer are in need of God’s grace, nor of God’s hope, love, nor mercy – and as a result, we fail.  Such failure is indeed a grace, because it realizes that we have nothing to offer to God except our brokenness, our barrenness – so that all God does in us, and all God does through us is indeed the active outworking of God’s mission. 

And so Anderson concludes: “We must understand that the grace of God presupposes barrenness, not fertility; that impossibility from the human side is the condition which demonstrates most clearly the inner logic of grace.  We must also learn that humans have a share in the grace of God; that human obedience and faith are not set aside by grace, but are drawn into the grace of God as an indispensable aspect of God’s ministry, [God’s mission].  After all, Isaac did not drop down from heaven on a supernatural parachute! Rather, his birth resulted from a human act as much as did the birth of Ishmael.  Grace is not a supernatural addition to a natural life, but the empowering of natural life to realize and produce a divine potential.  The miracle of God’s grace is not that Abraham could disseminate his seed, but that a barren woman could conceive from it!” (p. 102).

This Advent and this Christmas, as we think of what gift we can give God – we realize that what we give are things that the world discards – our failures, our barrenness, our brokenness. In offering such “gifts” or “non-gifts” to God – these are indeed acts of faith, acts of obedience, recognizing that the nothing we have to offer is exactly what God needs to carry out God’s mission, and graciously to work through us to transform the world.  May we give God all of our nothingness and be open to receive the gift of God’s grace – that, as the Gospel reveals, is fully manifested in Jesus Christ – the content of God’s grace.

Vol 2:41 The Soul of God: Advent as the Incarnation of God’s Mercy

In this Advent season, many wonder why God became a human being to dwell among us.  The simple answer is that God loves us and is merciful to us.  What does this mercy entail?  Ray Anderson’s theological memoir, The Soul of God, has an insight.        

When humanity abandoned God to try to do life on their own, we were like teenagers who know their parents know nothing.  But we did not do well on our own – we ended up betraying one another, stealing from one another, accusing one another, killing one another.  But God does not abandon us, God is merciful!

Anderson expresses:

“The soul of God is intrinsically a relational soul.  The soul of moral theology must possess the moral instincts of love rather than the insensible letter of the law. ‘The letter kills but the Spirit gives life’ (2 Cor. 3:6).  As suggested earlier, the intention of mercy is the creation of a new moral being.  Mercy is not an abstract virtue, but a means for maintaining a relationship damaged by moral failure.  Mercy is what keeps sin from being fatal” (p. 90).

He continues:

“Mercy is the motive behind God’s love for the world.  This mercy is extended toward ‘all the families of the earth’ through the seed of Abraham, which extends through the generations to Jesus, according to Paul (Gen. 12; Gal. 3:16).  Divine mercy guarantees forgiveness and makes reconciliation possible.  Forgiveness is offered to all through Christ, and reconciliation is the intended goal.  God does not want any to perish, ‘but all to come to repentance’ (2 Peter 3:9).  Mercy must be received in order for forgiveness to be realized as a gift of grace.  The goal of grace is not merely the granting of amnesty, which often leaves the one who is estranged free of guilt, but a mercifully restoration with life in community.  ‘Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy’ (1 Peter 2:9-10).  Receiving mercy, experiencing forgiveness, and being reconciled to God within the people of God is to know the salvation of God” (p. 91).

Anderson shares a story that expresses how the merciful and forgiving redemptive mission of God recreates us to be merciful and forgiving as well – as a new humanity demonstrating a different reality in a world in need of mercy, forgiveness and reconciliation.

“In 1993, Amy Biehl, a 26 year old Fulbright Scholar, was murdered by 4 blacks in South Africa while registering voters for the nation’s first free election. Her murderers were apprehended and imprisoned.  Her parents, Peter and Linda Biehl, went to Cape Town to establish a foundation with the goal of violence prevention.  This foundation, named for Amy, continues to maintain a presence for peace.  Under the government’s newly formed Truth and Reconciliation Commission, established to grant amnesty for political crimes to those persons who confess and give the whole truth about their actions, the four men who murdered Amy were given full a pardon and released from prison on July 29, 1998.

            Commenting on this action which they supported, Amy’s parents said, ‘It is this vision of forgiveness and reconciliation that we have honored.’  They believed that this is what their daughter would have wanted.  Peter Biehl then added, ‘We’re not dispensing forgiveness.  We’re not God.  But we support the decision.’  Releasing the men from further punishment in no way mitigated the crime, to which they confessed.  Forgiveness in this case, however, was an act of mercy which the Biehls saw as an important steo in the journey toward peace and reconciliation” (pp. 91-92).

Advent, God’s coming to be among us in Jesus Christ, was not about establishing a religion in order to create further division amongst humanity, it was all about showing to us that God’s mercy is not merely an idea – God’s mercy has hands and feet that touches us deeply and personally.  Jesus reaches out to us to extend God’s mercy to us so that we might experience forgiveness and reconciliation being recreated as a new humanity, restored to relationship with God, which restores us to relationship with one another. 

Advent is the most earthy act of God’s mission – in Jesus, God is brought into relationship with us and we into relationship with God.  May we always be open to the embodiment of God’s merciful presence in Christ Jesus.

Vol 2:40 The Soul of God: So this is Christmas - Jesus, the Embodiment of God’s Mission

In this Advent season, many wonder who this Jesus, whom we celebrate at Christmas, really is.  Jesus is the active participation of God in humanity in order to reconcile humanity to God.  This insight is expressed in Ray Anderson’s theological memoir, The Soul of God.        

There is something completely unique and completely human about Jesus that embodies and fulfills the mission of God in restoring all of creation.  In the fifth chapter of The Soul of God, Ray Anderson relates that “Jesus did not become the Son of God by being anointed with the Spirit of God and by doing the works of God; rather because Jesus is the Son of God, the works which he does testifies to that inner relationship” (p. 69). 

It is not only that Jesus is completely unique as God and as human; it is also that God is unique as God and our creation is unique as an act of God. 

I recently found a copy of Georg Vicedom’s The Mission of God, which gave expression to the initial understandings of what missio Dei entails, which helps us understand the uniqueness of God. 

Vicedom stated:

“Christianity, in contrast to other religions, emphasizes the fact that God created the world and [humankind].  . . .  The world is not an effusion of the Deity and thus a part of [God].  Nor did it come into existence through birth.  Above all, the world did not originate alongside of [God] or against [God], so that it would thus be a force antagonistic to [God].  There is no dualism or emanationism involved.  These types of explanation, familiar to us in other religions are completely out of the picture.  With [humanity], the world is the creation of God brought into existence by [God’s] Almighty Word in accordance with [God’s] will.  In other words, God has created . . . a ‘Thou,’ and thus a place for activity on [God’s] part.  This was already the case before the Fall.  The imago Dei can certainly only mean that God created a being which could have fellowship with [God] and therein found life satisfying” (Vicedom, The Mission of God, 15).

Creation is, therefore, a unique act of God, because only God creates – no other gods have created as God creates.  And, therefore, since creation is unique to God, incarnation or God coming to participate in our humanity through Jesus Christ is an act that is unique to God in the fulfillment of God’s redemptive mission, so that humanity might be reconciled to God and restored in communion with God.  It is because we are unable to understand the uniqueness of God’s creation that we are also unable to fully grasp the unique act of God in becoming a human being, in participating in our humanity – for our benefit.  But that is the creative act of Christmas – which we are invited to receive as a gift from God.

As Anderson expresses, “the Apostle Paul proclaimed as a sacrament of salvation, ‘In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things . . .’ (Col. 1:19-20). In the person of Jesus Christ, this double movement took place simultaneously, not sequentially.  At every moment during the life of Jesus, the inner being of God was being revealed through the words and actions of Jesus.  . . . At the same time, every word and action of Jesus was a movement from below to above, reconciling humanity to God” (p. 71).

And so as John Lennon sings, Happy Christmas (War is Over), with these words:

A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear
And so this is Christmas
For weak and for strong
For rich and the poor ones
The world is so wrong
And so happy Christmas
For black and for white
For yellow and red ones
Let's stop all the fight   . . .                  

I pray that we are open to experience the God who creates by receiving God’s participation in our humanity in Jesus, and that we may have eyes that see Jesus and hearts and lives that respond to his words and actions that give life and restore us to live in community with God.

Vol 2:39 The Soul of God: Being in Christ and Christ Being in Us

God’s mission connects us with God through Jesus Christ.  This insight is expressed in Ray Anderson’s theological memoir, The Soul of God.        

In the fifth chapter of The Soul of God, Ray Anderson relates that “to know God is to be reconciled to God, and in being reconciled to God we come to know God” (p. 71).  He expands on this, lest we think that the act of reconciliation is something we do, “both revelation and reconciliation take place through our being in Christ and Christ being in us” (p. 72). 

Allow me to offer a length quotation by Anderson that helps us understand the necessity of Jesus in being reconciled to God. 

“It would not be wrong to say that Jesus is the true believer, whose own faith in the Father becomes the basis for our faith in such a way that we are freed from the ambivalence and inward uncertainty which always plague our own attempt to believe.  It would not be wrong to say that Jesus is also the true disciple, whose own obedience lived out in the face of temptation in such a way that we are freed from our own instability and unreliability of will.  . . .   Every day of his life, Jesus took that human will and bent it back in perfect obedience to his Father so that in being joined to Christ our will is graciously conformed to his own willingness, which exists to this very day in the humanity of Christ now glorified and existing within the very being of God.  This is the basis for our assurance in union with Christ through being made partakers of Christ through the Spirit.  There is part of God in us through the indwelling Spirit of Christ.  The Christ who in us, says Paul, is our ‘hope of glory’ (Col. 1:27).  At the same time, Paul says, our ‘life is hidden with Christ in God’ (Col. 3:3).  This means that there is something of us already abiding in the very presence of God through Christ!” (p. 72)

As I reflect on this statement, on this confession, my response, during this week of Thanksgiving – but also during any week – is one of giving thanks and praise to God.  God’s mission is not merely about effecting some grand recreation; God’s mission is indeed very personal in which in our being reconciled to God through Christ Jesus, there is a part of God in us, and a part of us in God – meaning we are brought into community with God – participating and sharing in the life of God and God participating and sharing in our lives.  I am not talking about our becoming divine – we have been created human and that is our gift from God – but God always intended that we in our humanity would be in community with God.  The good news of Jesus Christ – of God with us as a human being – is that we have been restored to being in community with God through Jesus.  In God being human among us in Jesus – we are invited into community, into relationship with God through Jesus.  Indeed, this is a thanksgiving that my words are incapable of fully expressing – which can only adequately and minimally expressed in worship of God.

Join me this Thanksgiving in giving worship to God through Jesus Christ.