Howdy people! Here's part 2 of my Integration of Theology & Mission, focusing on the Church in the midst of a Creation whose Creator is by nature communal, relational, and therefore missional. The last part will be more practically-minded, the actions that follow the worldview I've been spelling out.
In the first post, I defended how a missional Church must begin their theology with the Trinity. Each Person has always been involved in Creation, has been participating with the other Persons in Creation, and therefore the Church has been invited and called into this communal, missional act. The focus is not merely some individualistic view of relation with only one Individual of the Trinity (Jesus). Because participation and self-donation are inherent in the nature of the Trinity, and therefore determine the identity of any one Person in it, these characteristics are what the Church needs to embody to perpetuate the missio Dei.
Hope you find this to be a blessing today. Grace & Peace
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Where does this leave the
Church? If the entirety of the
Trinity is actively being missional within the world, then it would seem that the Church is not strictly necessary for the missio Dei. And if the Church does
not have a monopoly on God’s salvific work, then it would seem that the Church may
only get in the way. However, the
Church still has a central role to play in the missio Dei, and it is based entirely on the participatory nature of
God.
The
Church is a missional paradox.
Historically in the Western World, the Church has claimed to be the
vessel through which Christ’s salvation came to the world; and yet the Church has
often found itself acting detrimentally to that very mission.[1] David Bosch calls the Church itself “an
object of missio Dei.”[2] Christians remain humans, and so they must
continually be renewed by repentance into new creaturely habits of heart and
mind, just as Paul encourages the churches:
“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.” (Rom 12.2 NRSV)
“So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting
away, our inner nature is being renewed bay by day.” (2 Cor 4.16 NRSV)
“So if anyone is in Christ, there is a
new creation: Everything old has
passed away; see, everything has become new. All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through
Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.” (2 Cor 5.17-18 NRSV)
Bosch further reminds his readers
that “Paul, who knew so much about the weaknesses of the churches to which he
wrote his letters, began nearly every time by thanking God for their existence,
their faith, their loyalty”[3]
(i.e. Rom 1.8; 1 Cor 1.4-9; Eph 1.15-16; Phil 1.3-7; Col 1.3-4; 1 Thess 1.2-3;
2 Thess 1.3-4). The Church, paradoxically,
is both imperfect object and transforming
agent of Mission: Having been
reconciled and in the process of being continually renewed, the Church also
acts out the reconciliation and the continual renewing of the missio Dei. The Triune God, by God’s own relational nature, is glorified
by participating with the Church as a bride (Rev 21.9), entering into the
Church as she empties herself for the greater glory of both.
The
Exodus narrative illustrates this participatory God with his people,
Israel. In Exodus 6 God promises
to redeem his people, and God is celebrated in Exodus 15 for having done
so. The root word for each of
these is tied to the idea of a “kinsman redeemer,” which “affirms a bond
between [God} and Israel that is as close and as committed as any bond of human
kinship, and with it YHWH accepts the obligation that comes from taking
Israel as his own family.”[4] This is the doctrine of election—God
invited a people into a communal relationship because that is the nature of the
Trinity. The Hebrew Bible
testifies to the participation of both God and Israel present in the call of
Abram:
‘Now YHWH said to Abram, “Go from your country and
your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and
I will bless you, and make your name great, so
that you will be a blessing.”’ (Gen 12.1-2 NRSV)
The very act of God calling Abram,
making a covenant with him, blessing Abram, and sending him into another land
was presupposed by the idea that Abram
would bless those around him.
Abram must reflect the self-donating love inherent in the very
nature of the Triune God who called him, and the nation of Israel after him is
given the same command, even in exile.
“And seek the shalom of the city to
which I have exiled you, and pray on its behalf to YHWH, for in its shalom there will be
shalom for you.” (Jer 29.7)[5]
The
shalom of the LORD
should not be restricted to humanity, however. The entirety of Creation is interacting with the Triune God:
‘Then God said to Noah and to his sons
with him, “As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants
after you, and with every living creature on earth.”’ (Gen 9.10)
“I consider that the sufferings of this
present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to
us. For the creation waits with
eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was
subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who
subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its
bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of
God.” (Rom 8. 18-21 NRSV)
It seems that God has intentionally
held Creation back, and it awaits the “children of God”—the Church, by way of being grafted into Israel (Romans 11.1-4, 11-12, 17-18). So, as the Church continues to proclaim
the name of the LORD and make room for the Triune God’s power, Creation
itself should be the recipient of the blessing, just as every human being
should be.
This
then brings Mission to the Cross. N.
T. Wright connects the Kingdom of God with the missio Dei, then he plainly describes how “Kingdom and Cross belong
together.”[6] Wright affirms the purpose of Humanity
to bear God’s image, the special election of Israel for the sake of Human’s
redemption, and Jesus Christ’s completion of that redemptive task on the Cross.[7] Not only did Jesus redeem Human, but he
also bore the weight of the “the accumulation of the actual human pride, sin,
folly, and shame.”[8] Then through death Christ defeated
Death, and through his Resurrection gained power and authority over it all—a
power and authority the Church now has through Christ against Death and all its
continuing forms, like oppression, hunger, hate, war, inequality, etc:
“When you were buried with him in
baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who
raised him from the dead. And when
you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you
alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the
record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the Cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities
and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it.” (Col 2.12-15 NRSV)
The Church, in proclaiming the
Kingdom of God, is also meant to be an agent of its coming; and this Kingdom,
this “reign of YHWH,” brings justice to the oppressed (Isa 61.1), food
for the hungry (Matt 25.34-40), peace to the nations (Isaiah 2.2-4), and economic prosperity
for all people (Isa 61.2; Luke 4.19).[9] This is what Christ died for; this was
“the joy set before him” for which he “endured the cross” (Heb 12.2 NRSV). And this is the work of the Trinity in
all of Creation into which the Church is invited to become co-workers with the
Triune God (3 John 8). In
addition, the Cross is also that which has created One Body out of many: Those found in Christ have been unified
through the suffering LORD, and therefore the Church bears that Cross and
that Christ in the world by her actions, by her very habits of heart and mind.[10]
[1] See Bosch ch. 7-9, and
Bevans & Schroeder ch.
[2] Bosch, 396.
[3] Bosch, 394.
[4] Christopher J. H.Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s
Grand Narrative, Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press (2006), 266-7.
[5] Ibid., 99.
[6] N. T. Wright, After You Believe: Why Christian Character
Matters (New York: HarperOne, 2010), 114.
[7] Ibid., 112.
[8] Ibid., 114.
[10] Volf, 47.
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