The climactic moment of one’s faith journey is not, as many assume, the point in which an individual accepts Jesus into their lives. Although this point of receiving God’s grace is a powerful sign of God working in us, it ultimately is not the action through which we receive salvation. In the excitement that comes from feeling oneself tugged toward the will of God, we cannot help but feel proud of ourselves for making an important decision. However, when we come to our senses, we realize (hopefully) that “he saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy, through the water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.”
In other words, our salvation is linked with the two primary practices of our communion with God and each other-baptism and the Eucharist. The former is our initiation into the body of Christ where we die to ourselves and are born anew into the community, the church. The latter is our regathering, renewal and witness. In neither case is the celebration primarily one of an individual’s relationship with God. The “private enmities [are not] more important [than] the struggle of an entire people.” Rather, in the baptismal and eucharistic rites, we are celebrating the presence of God in God’s new community. “The liturgical performance of his flesh…continually produces and reproduces a different city, which is called church or ecclesia.” This ecclesia is “a new inter-ethnic social reality into which the individual is inducted rather than the social reality being the sum of the individuals.” In other words, we become saved in our participation in the larger reality of church, not through our own will. This community of faith that we enter into is the conception of the Father, established and led by Christ, which is provoked by the ever-processing fecundity of the Holy Spirit. It knows no geographical boundaries, has its own economy, judicial proceedings, and even its own grammar. It is a new way of being a people of God that is an expansion of the generous covenant with the chosen people of Israel. We are gathered to simultaneously inaugurate and demonstrate the new creation, the new way of being- i.e. creation redeemed from sin in “an ongoing redemptive relation to God”. This positively affects our relationship with those both within the community, as well as the wider world.
Internally, the church gathers to worship God and interpret the movement of the Spirit. We “describe his wonders [thereby giving] Him the fullest glorification possible.” When we describe these wonders well, we glorify each of the distinctive roles that the three persons of the trinity perform in the life of creation, for each person should be worshipped. First, the Father should be worshiped as the creator of all things. Then the Son, whom through his life, suffering and death we became intimately related with God. We worship the Son for what he did for us, for what he did, “is inseparable from the Person of Jesus Christ and vice versa.” Because there is no individual incident that you can point to and say, “that is where the salvation of humankind occurred,” it is likely that the event required all of Jesus’ offices (i.e. according to Calvin- Prophet, Priest, and King). So when we worship well, we draw upon descriptive images that evoke all of the components essential to teaching us how to be the polis of God, reunite the flesh with God, understand the magnitude of Christ’s redeeming the sins of the world etc. We have a natural tendency to praise and pray to the person of Jesus because we can relate, ever so slightly, to his fully human nature. As Jones comments, Jesus Christ is both ‘with us’ and ‘for us’ fully in both his humanity and divinity. That is, he is of the same substance as we are and can therefore work on our behalf and he can achieve this work because he is fully divine. So, we worship the Son because we cannot do otherwise. “It is I [Jesus], it is I; it is I who am highest; it is I you love; it is I who delight you; it is I you serve; it is I you long for; it is I you desire; it is I who am your purpose; it is I who am all; it is I that Holy Church preaches and teaches you; it is I who showed myself to you here.” We may not be certain how we are saved, but it is enough to know that we have been assured that the church is.
And finally, we share Paul’s prayer to the Ephesians that “out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.” We worship the Holy Spirit for guiding us to God. Also, as Gregory of Nazianzus suggests, the Holy Spirit is to be worshiped because we declare that he deifies us in our baptism. And “if he is to be worshiped, surely he is an object of adoration, and, if an object of adoration, he must be God.” Then, lest we mistakenly essentialize any one of these roles to any one of the persons, thereby ignoring each of their complete natures, we worship the unified Godhead. We offer up prayers to God, ‘not as though we would pull down to ourselves [God], but that, by these remembrances and invocations […] we may commend and unite ourselves Thereunto.” That is, the blessing bestowed upon the church is the ability to discern God’s will over and against competing wills in the world.
Through this process of continually appealing to God to grant us the strength and wisdom to receive and utilize God’s will, we learn to better care for the different parts of the body of Christ. The more faithful the church is at practicing praise and prayer, that is, the more it acknowledges the corruption of humanity as compared to the goodness of God and conforms itself to the latter, the greater its blessing. Kathryn Tanner describes this phenomenon as the non-competitive relationship between God and humanity where humanity gains self-actualization and freedom in direct proportion to its dependence upon ‘the fecund provider of all that the creature is in itself.” We partly receive this blessing through the Eucharist in which we reenact the death, life and return of Jesus Christ, as expressed in ‘the mystery of faith’, so that we develop the theological virtues that enable our re-membering and reenacting of Christ’s works in the way we live our own lives.
Humanity, in the Kingdom of God will become fully actualized human beings, completely decentralizing secular power in favor of a universal congregation (and all of creation with it) aligning in right relation to God. So, Ludwig Feuerbach was correct in noting that ‘every advance in religion is therefore a deeper self-knowledge’ though he was horribly mistaken regarding the direction of the knowledge. We are a poor reflection of the divine rather than the divine being a hyperbolic reflection of us. Furthermore, it is easier to know God than our own soul because, “he is the ground on which our soul stands”. As mentioned above, God is immutable and simple whereas humans are fickle and changed from moment to moment.
By now it should be clear that the church, the cross, and the entirety of our reality, is given to us as pure gift. As St. Anselm expressed this truth, “for I cannot seek thee unless thou teach me, or find thee unless thou show me thyself.” It is a gift freely given by a God who is pure love, who obviously does not expect that we could return the favor, and who does not have any need to give except for the simple fact that it is somehow pleasing to God. But, “he made everything for love; the same love sustains everything, and shall do so forever.” Furthermore, by accepting this gift, we are not doing God a service at Sunday service. God is complete within the trinity-each component offering and receiving abundant love from the others. Nevertheless, God does take delight in our limited appreciation of God’s continual bestowing of gifts. God revealed to Julian, “see here how I let my side be opened, and my heart be riven in two, and all the blood and water that was within flow out. And this makes me happy, and I want it to make you happy.” And again, “If you are pleased, I am pleased…if I could suffer more, I would suffer more.” She concludes that “This human example was so powerfully shown, that a man’s heart could be ravished and he could be beside himself with joy at this great friendliness.”
So, what does this mean for the church? When the church conveys these truths and models 'this great friendliness' well, it stands as a light to the nations, displaying to the world the humble power of a community of believers aligning their wills with God’s. More specifically, the church demonstrates to the world what the future Kingdom of God will look like. It demonstrates in the here and now what creation’s destiny is. That is, it with our process, route and end. The church is a sign of the simultaneous current presence and future realization of the Kingdom of God. It is the indication that the children of God are finally accepting the direction of the Holy Spirit toward the second person of the Trinity. When church is church, we love one another, praise God well, and spread the good news. By this infectious example, we invite others to partake in the fruits of these actions. When we trust in the Lord and demonstrate his radical commandments to love the unlovable and forgive the unforgivable, we demonstrate to the watching world that love does not cause the social order to fall into chaos like we always imagined. Rather, we establish a fellowship of right relation with each other and God, which produces an environment of peace. When we squarely confess those sins (individual and communal), which we would otherwise choose to ignore, we demonstrate that reconciliation and gratifying justice are not the products of coercion, but the outcome of mutual love. By giving itself up to God, the church lays bare the power that obeying the various counter-intuitive commandments demonstrated to us by our Lord has. When we forgive one another, share unselfishly, and hold each other accountable, we create a new environment which is open to the Holy Spirit and reverberates into the secular world. These service oriented ministries that 'bridge and empower' are primarily in the domain of the deacon. That is, deacons create the bridges between the disparate areas of the church so that we truly are a united body, and not isolated hands, heads, and feet. Deacons also create the bridges that allow the church's witness to truly be a witness. This is done by making connections between the church and the world. So that the church does not only model peace, but is actively engaged in its creation in the world. So that the church does not restrict her offering of accountability and forgiveness to her own, but reverberates throughout society.
The church is also the storehouse of both our publicly and privately proclaimed knowledge of God. Therefore, we are given the responsibility to pool our gifts, graces, and knowledge in order to educate one another in the ways of celebrating our faith well. This is the primary function of the elder. When we dedicate the community and the individuals within the community exclusively to the act of praising God, we bear witness to the fount of true happiness that makes even the most cutting-edge consumer product pale in comparison. In other words, we, as church, are God’s agents of change, not out of our own intellect or will, but out of our prayerful obedience. The elder is responsible for ensuring that 'the flock' is nourished, recognizes in their own lives cause for rejoicing, and views the church as a safe place of exploration. Through these preconditions, the elder speaks for the church in word and sacrament, therby empowering the community to praise God well. This is where my “greatest passion intersects with the world's greatest needs”, as the common definitian of calling states. I seem hard wired for theological and philosophical study. More importantly, when it comes time to combine this study with what the Holy Spirit is putting on my heart to share with the congregation, I do so in a way that connects. I am very conscious of being
When we accept people into this community, we baptize them “In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” not because we are tritheists, but because this expression of the Godhead most closely resembles (as far as the tradition has been able to determine up to this point) its distinct complexities. For example, the nature of God is love, which is a relational topic. Yet, God is not dependent upon creation in any way, especially since creation is incapable of mutually fulfilling its end of perfect love. So, God’s love finds its perfect expression within the persons of Godself. Without an internal relationship of God, God could not fully express Godself.
Of course, the church does not live up to her calling. Our ignorance, sloppiness, and even our good intentions not founded in The Word create a fog in which “signals cannot be recognized, and one can no longer distinguish between friend and foe.” Our fallen nature allows for betrayal, lust for power, and fear. As James Cone concluded in his study of Black spirituals, there is a fluidity of time in the work of salvation. There is always a sense of “already but not yet” in the work of God. Any attempt to push things toward “the sweet by and by” while ignoring present reality is not consistent with the redemption that Jesus offered. Likewise, an obsessive focus on the present will only lead to embitterment and despair. So even though it is understandable why the church gets scorned by the world for declaring that the Kingdom of God is here in the midst of tragedy, we remain confident in declaring that “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” The alter of a church is on the east side because “we are seeking Paradise, our old fatherland, which God planted in the East of Eden.” This vision of the true promised land and the hope in the rewards of aligning our will with God’s will is the source of our strength. In defining real possibility, Jones declares, “the act of hoping for that future possibility involves belief that the possibility can be realized, can become actual”. As Martin Luther King preached, “I just want to do God’s will and He’s allowed me to go to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the Promised Land. So I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man.” In an age of corrupt Romans and Barbaric hordes, black plague and ruthless kings, or S.A.R.S. and religiously fanatic quasi-United Methodists with access to the bomb, we can put our trust and confidence that there is a higher power that gives life instead of destruction, engenders love instead of hate, and offers hope in place of fear.
For this reality, we continuously offer up our praise and thanksgiving.
Further thoughts on Who Jesus is and What He Did?
All of Christology is an exegesis of Matthew 16:15. Jesus asked his disciples, "But who do you say that I am?" to which Simon Peter answered, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God." Therefore, the very question “Who is Jesus and what did he do?” is redundant. Neither ‘Messiah’ nor “Son of the living God” is a job description. They do not describe an accident or property of Jesus. Rather, Jesus Christ’s essence, existence, and ‘purpose’ as the second person in the Trinity are identical.
The latter part of Simon Peter’s confession, that Jesus is the “son of God”, is a designation that appears at lest thirty-nine times in the scriptures, and is verbally affirmed by the first person in the trinity, Christ himself, friends and detractors of Jesus, and even Satan herself. But Jesus is also God. I heard a pastor scandalize his church by exclaiming, “Jesus? That bastard be his own daddy.” It is through this wonderful absurdity that Jesus can accomplish the salvific function of the Messiah. St. Augustine puts it a little more delicately by saying, “God himself remains God; humanity is assumed by God. There results a single person. Here is God, our liberator; here is man, our mediator.” Jesus Christ, as the second person in the Trinity, shares the divine attributes of omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, eternality and impassibility. But, as the son of the Virgin Mary, he is fully human. The tradition tells us that only that which is assumed can be saved. Likewise, humanity is too fallen to overcome its own fallenness. So, Jesus Christ is the salvation of creation partly because he perfectly united humanity with the Godhead. As Julian of Norwich teaches us, the ‘higher part’ of humanity (our soul-though not detached from the body) has been united with God since creation. But our ‘lower part’, that is, our sensory part, was not united with the Godhead ‘until’ Jesus Christ. In other words, Jesus Christ demonstrates that God is actually in creation, not just behind it. Just as Adam, God’s firstborn creation lost God’s blessing as a result of disobedience, Jesus Christ regains it through perfect obedience. However, as Kathryn Tanner points out, this is not to imply that God rewards His Son for this perfect obedience. Rather, the obedience is the result of God’s blessing. This is accomplished by conforming the flesh completely to the will of God. When Jesus committed the unique (that’s an understatement!) act of conquering death in his own flesh, he gave us grounding for our own hope of resurrection in the new earth. It is unfortunate that some church leaders would remove this hope through statements such as “I believe in the resurrection of Jesus, but I cannot affirm that his resurrection involved the resurrection of his physical body.” This violates the rules of Christian grammar in the same way as “I believe the Jaberwokky ditried at the gumgum tree” violates the grammar of literature. The syntax implies sense, but the locutions are nonsensical.
When a Christian who speaks well says ‘Messiah’, they are referring to Jesus. However, this meaning is a partial supplanting of a more general Jewish term meaning ‘the anointed one’, which referred to a political ruler who would restore Israel and renew God’s covenant with His chosen people. As Jones notes, “The actual Jesus—as the subject--redefined and reshaped the predicate, ‘Messiah.’” In one sense, Jesus is a messiah of a radically different sort than what the Jewish tradition had anticipated. Rather than overthrowing the competing nation-state, Jesus introduced a new way of being a people that was not founded in violence. On the other hand though, there are important similarities between Christian and Jewish Messianic expectations. In both the Christian and post-Second Temple Judaism, the coming (or return) of the ‘Messiah’ will accompany the creation of God’s kingdom on earth and its accompanying distribution of justice. For Christians, this has happened already, but not yet.
Jesus Christ the Messiah is the Word who told us and showed us the way to be truly human. Colloquially put, he practiced what we preached. By doing so, he demonstrated the unfortunate and inevitable result of living in complete obedience to the Father in the present, fallen world. Namely, death-even death on the cross. But through the conquering of even this, we get a glimpse of the unlimited possibilities of the Kingdom of God. Unfortunately, one component of Christ’s messiahship is that Jesus handed the cross down to us through the establishment of his church as his body. Although, “the ecumenical creeds of the church have not attempted to define how Jesus is savior,” we can agree that his life, work and death “is fundamentally at work with regard to sin and the consequences of sin.” We grow in faith, not by creating increasingly specific theories of atonement, but by weaving the tapestry of the components of Christ’s life and death, with our own lives and deaths.
When Paul tells us to pray unceasingly, a fitting mantra for every occasion could be “Thank you Jesus, thank you Jesus, thank you Jesus…”
