Sunday Sermon: The Great Commission

Matthew 28:16-20

(Picture from Simon Smith's wonderful contemporary Easter Story "Raised in Leeds". Click on to enlarge.)

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

It would have been easy for the disciples to assume that everything was over. The call, the commitment, the commission could have all ended on that fateful Friday, when the one to whom they had committed their lives was executed. Even in the face of the resurrection, there did not have to be an understanding that what began three years earlier would continue. The trauma of the crucifixion had sent them scattering into hiding in fear and grief. And as much as Jesus had tried to prepare them, they really weren't ready for life and work without him. It could have been over.

 

But something happened after they received the testimony of the women. "He's not dead. He's alive!" they said. "Go and meet him in Galilee." And when the disciples gathered, the resurrected Christ, the living Lord, Jesus, met them there. But as Jesus greets them and they're worshipping him there are still some questions, there is still some uncertainty. We don’t, of course, hear Jesus’ full response – that’s what is often so frustrating about the Gospels, they are not a verbatim record of the conversation, merely, as we might put it, edited highlights, but Matthew tells us that as part of his response Jesus said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

That is the gist of today’s Gospel passage and, short as it is, it takes some unpacking.

I think the first thing I’d like to say may well be something that I’ve said before here and it is about the nature of how we interpret Jesus’ words in any given passage. We need to be clear who Jesus is talking to. Well, we see Jesus here talking to his disciples and if we, all this time later, consider ourselves also to be followers or disciples then this passage is most certainly for us to hear - and to act upon.

This passage is often called The Great Commission: it sets out very clearly an instruction, an imperative - and therefore not an option - in terms of making disciples of others. It’s The Great Commission, not the Great Suggestion. However, there are many today who would say that we have failed in our obligation and that we should call it instead The Great Omission.

The church really does seem to have lost sight of its mission to make disciples. This is one of the reasons why the traditional churches in the main with one or two notable exceptions are struggling to grow; Anglican, Methodist, Baptist, United Reformed and so on. The statistics don't look good. The church is not replenishing itself with a new generation of disciples and we aren’t reaching the younger generation.

What has happened? Why can't the church today be like the early church? The answer comes through something that a number of Christian commentators have noted: "If the Holy Spirit was withdrawn from the Church today, 95% of what we do would go on and no one would know the difference. If the Holy Spirit had been withdrawn from the New Testament Church, 95% of what they did would have stopped, and everybody would have known the difference." To put it another way, we do too much in our own strength and from our own agendas.

Last week in the Town Hall we heard a stirring sermon for Pentecost Sunday. We were told about the transforming nature of the Holy Spirit in the lives of the first disciples and how that power is available to all disciples down the ages since. The following day I came upon a cartoon which showed the inside of seemingly empty church but there were two speech bubbles coming from under the pews. One was asking, “Is he still here?” and the other was replying, “Yes, stay put. He’s looking at the notice board.” It made me smile. Is this how Christians today really approach Pentecost Sunday and the receipt of the gifts and the power of the Holy Spirit? Yet here we are and the expectation is, that as the story unfolds, we are in receipt of that awesome power and we’re certainly going to need it for The Great Commission!

Is the Holy Spirit the driving force of the church today? If we are to reclaim the fire of the Spirit the early church had, if we are to share our witness effectively we must be willing to open ourselves to the movement of the Spirit! That's what the early followers of Christ did! They were not sophisticated people. They hadn't been to college; they hadn't read books on church growth and marketing the church. They simply made themselves available to the Holy Spirit. And look what happened in Acts chapter 2, "Each one heard them speaking in his own language." It was clear! The Holy Spirit did it through them because they were simply willing to be used! The Holy Spirit broke through communication barriers and the gospel translated.

Perhaps we should remind ourselves again what the text says. What we have is, “All authority is given to me and I am sending you.” The unavoidable truth is that as Christians we are called to bear witness, to tell people about Jesus--to make disciples. Now, this may scare some of you to death: it certainly does me!

Well, let’s also note that the passage talks of making disciples, not converts! If all authority belongs to Jesus, the mission of the church is not to convert people -- only the Holy Spirit who expresses that authority in the world can do that -- but to invite or urge others to join us on the road of following Jesus. Jesus does not command us to maximize conversions but to enable people of all backgrounds to become true and lasting disciples.

Integral to that process of discipleship is learning to walk the road alongside people of different backgrounds.

In words usually attributed to Archbishop William Temple, “The church is the only institution that exists to serve the needs of those who are not its members, so Christian mission is about assisting what God is doing in the world.”

So Christian mission is about assisting what God is doing in the world.

When I was at Vicar School, one of our first modules was that of Mission. It was one of the ones I most enjoyed. We were taught about the Missio Dei - The Mission of God. Mission is not the church going out and saving people. Rather, it is God creating and saving the world. The mission of God came first and the church was created as a response to that. That makes the church a product of mission rather than the other way round.  I sat up and began to take serious notice here: The mission of God came first and the church was created as a response to that. That makes the church a product of mission rather than the other way round.  Wow! And I think of the hours I have spent in church meetings trying to plan the next parish mission!

Now, all approaches to evangelism are valid but there should be a balance rather than a heavy reliance on one method. I have very strong memories as a teenager of feeling “guilt tripped” over the model of evangelism that was being promoted then. “You have to tell people about Jesus. You must speak up or they will be damned.” I have never felt comfortable with the altar-call approach to mission and it came as a surprise and relief to discover an approach to the Missio Dei which advises being reactive rather than proactive, reactive rather than proactive: discern where God is already at work and join him there, after all, it is God’s mission. I no longer had to be apologetic about mission:  I simply had to be as good a role model of discipleship as the Holy Spirit gave me the grace to be and see what happened.

As someone who comes into contact with people from a variety of faith backgrounds, and is trained to teach about them, I have always been interested in the interface between Christianity and other religions and the wisdom I find there. The Magi, the Centurion, the Syrophoenecian Woman and others were not Jews, but their witness was valid and affirmed in the New Testament, so I can talk to my Muslim, Sikh and Hindu colleagues about my faith and I don’t have to smack them around the head with my Bible. I do, however need to listen in return because that is the nature of dialogue and yet we can get so much more over about the nature of our beliefs if what we are doing is chatting, so much more than if we were lecturing or berating. We don’t convert, the Holy Spirit does and we don’t know what seeds we may plant for the Holy Spirit to work on.

People take notice when the church becomes involved in social action: the negativity which often characterises the public’s attitude to the church, and therefore by extension to Christianity, is replaced by a general positivity when the church speaks out with authority on behalf of the poor and marginalised. It is as if the majority of people I meet are somehow subliminally programmed to expect the church to speak out against injustice, a positivity which is not apparent towards the street preacher outside Marks and Spencer. We bring the Kingdom closer when Christians stand alongside others for an end to poverty and oppression even if it risks the wrath of politicians?

 I am also struck by the opportunities for discussions about faith which arise naturally. That I am a Christian is widely known by those I regularly meet: as a Religious Studies teacher discussions about matters of faith are everyday – often with colleagues too. It’s best not to second guess the Holy Spirit: all conversations that take place in the street, in the supermarket and at the bus stop are mission conversations because they bring the Kingdom of God closer; every one of those people is potentially a penitent thief on the cross so all conversations are potentially a means of grace - but rarely if that other person feels that there is an agenda for conversion - but rarely if that other person feels that there is an agenda for conversion. I cannot earn God’s favour by speaking about him but His grace won’t be limited when I do.  However we approach mission we must show genuineness, empathy and respect and question our motivation. Is what I am doing the Missio Dei - God’s mission - or is there another agenda?

 

 

Approaches to Mission 4: Enlightenment Modern Mission and Mission within Postmodernity

As before, I am looking at Stephen Spencer’s studyguide Christian Mission.

 

 

Enlightenment Modern Mission

This approach to mission is concerned as much about the physical and mental conditions in which people live as their spiritual lives. It is rooted in what Küng calls the Enlightenment Modern paradigm, itself formed by key ideas of the eighteenth century Enlightenment in European culture.  It was a hugely influential approach to mission in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, leading to a construction of schools, hospitals and other educational and medical work all around the world and also propelling Christian laity and clergy into the forefront of social reform in the West. With Christian contributions to the founding of the welfare state in Britain, this mission type arguably reached the height of its influence.

In some ways the Protestant Reformation provided a seedbed of the Enlightenment Modern paradigm. This was through its theology of the two kingdoms and the way this brought about an increasing separation of civil and spiritual realms. The Church was to be concerned with the latter, while the state and civil society were concerned with the former. On political, social, economic and even moral questions the Church was gradually sidelined: its concern was to be the things of Heaven rather than of Earth. This resulted in the Church losing control of scientific endeavour and the post-Reformation period in Europe saw the blossoming of scientific exploration across the continent. In this paradigm, the Kingdom lies in the future but is being realized through human progress. Jesus is present among us as the pioneer of of a new humanity which is gradually coming about. 

Bosch, writing in Transforming Mission, provides a helpful summary of key features within this new way of thinking:

·       It was pre-eminently the Age of Reason, where reason was seen to belong not only to believers but to all people.

·       It operated within the subject-object scheme, in which nature ceased to be “creation” and was no longer peoples’ teacher but the object of their analysis.

·       It eliminated purpose from science, introducing direct causality as the clue to understanding reality.

·       It believed in the notion of progress with exploration of the world as well as science opening up new possibilities for human living, convincing many that humanity had the ability and the will to remake the world in its own image.

·       Scientific knowledge was regarded as factual, value-free and neutral, and as really the only kind of knowledge that counts.

·       All problems were in principle solvable, though it would take time to solve them.

·       Human beings are now emancipated, autonomous individuals.

Taken together, these ideas represent a revolution in European thought: the Age of Reason saw an increasing turn away from supernatural revelation as the source of truth and an increasing suspicion of medieval thought as stifling.

The Enlightenment also saw the rise of historical consciousness developing out of a critical study of history, including the Bible.

There were political consequences too. The rise of individualism implied the rise of democratic ideals and the overthrow of the medieval monarchies. The two most significant examples were the American War of Independence and the French Revolution.

Scientific understanding led to the development of newer technologies and commercial expansion overseas followed in the nineteenth century, which carried European culture, philosophy and education to many points around the globe. The Age of Reason became the Age of Empire, which harnessed technology and industrialisation for the scramble for global domination by the European powers.

The Enlightenment belief in progress, and especially in European culture’s progress within science, technology, philosophy and politics, had a major influence on a new type of mission within churches. Progress suggested the imminent this-worldly global triumph of Christianity. Some believed that the entire world would soon be converted to Christianity or that Christianity was an irresistible power in the process of reforming the world, eradicating poverty, and restoring justice for all. The spread of Christian knowledge would suffice in achieving these aims. The philosopher Leibnitz described the Church’s task in the world as the propagation of Christianity through science or knowledge. The advance of the honour of God was equated with the good of mankind.

The increasing provision of education became one of the most significant  by the churches in nineteenth century Britain and God’s Kingdom would become increasingly aligned with the culture and civilization of the West.

The second half of the twentieth century has also seen this type of mission promoted in various parts of the worldwide Church, though in different ways. For instance, in The World Council of Churches report The Church for Others (1967), the particular role in the mission of God was seen as pointing to God at work in history, to discover what he is doing, to catch up with it and to get involved ourselves: for God’s primary relationship is to the World and it is the world that must be allowed to provide the agenda for the churches.

The Roman Catholic world also embraced this kind of socially and historically rooted outlook. The initial impetus came from the Second Vatican Council’s document Gaudium et Spes, which, in rousing language called on the Church to turn outwards to the world in which it lived. This led to the Bishops of Latin America responding to that call with solidarity and applying it to their own context. As the Bishops opened their vision and hearts to the peoples’ struggle for justice they initiated the Liberation Theology movement.

A different and influential example is the 1985 C of E report Faith in the City,  a response to inner-city riots which made it clear that both church and nation needed to take anew look at the most deprived areas in the larger cities and the recent growth of poverty. This was fiercely attacked by the Conservative government of Mrs. Thatcher.

Mission within Postmodernity

The roots of this new theological paradigm partly lie in the collapse of Enlightenment aspirations. The Age of Reason became the colonial age of empire in which European powers harnessed technology and industrialisation for the scramble for global domination. The next step along this road was war between the competing European powers which many see as the outcome of the Enlightenment era. These desperate events included the Holocaust and the dropping of atomic bombs on Japanese cities and for many these events undermined the belief in the existence of human progress based on reason and technology. While the work of church schools, hospitals and political involvement undoubtedly improved the physical wellbeing of many people, such work had not resolved or begun to resolve the ultimate issues and questions of the reign of God.

A second key development during this period has been mass immigration into western societies from the Indian sub-continent, Africa, the West Indies and central Asia which resulted in the rise of pluralist societies in Europe with different religions, cultures, languages and customs rubbing shoulders with each other in the larger European cities. This has included not just the arrival of other faith groups but also Pentecostalist forms of Christianity.

In the latter part of the twentieth century these two developments gave rise to a new way of relativistic thinking in Western culture - at least in the urban centres. This is often referred to as “postmodernism” and has led some commentators to describe the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty first century as the start of a new postmodern era, contributed to by writers such as Adam Smith, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Freud and many others, who claimed to provide systems of political, religious or cultural ideas.

In tandem with these traumatic social and cultural events there has been an unfolding theological revolution. Karl Barth led a revolt against the way of thinking which had seen religion as concerned with the cultivation of people’s spiritual faculties and which believed that humanity might achieve union with the divine by gradually leading itself to God.

Christ’s revelation is primary for Barth: everything else must be seen in the light of that. The discipline of theology must have Christ’s life, death and resurrection - or “The Christ Event” - as he called it as the beginning, the middle and the end. Theology consists in tracing the significance of this event for every aspect of life. Christ, the Word of God, reveals the truth of all things. Barth’s theology does not begin with general and abstract philosophical arguments about the “ground of being” or “the feeling of absolute dependence” as nineteenth century theologians tended to do. He begins with God as revealed by Christ in his birth, death and resurrection: he addresses the doctrine of God and brings the doctrine of the Trinity to the centre stage because he sees the nature of God as defined by the interrelations of the Son, the Holy Spirit and the Father. Even when Barth explores the doctrine of Creation he relates it to Christ. He describes God’s work in creating the world as being about setting in place the right conditions for the revelation of his Son.

Barth was first misunderstood and rejected, especially in Britain and North America: his theology was labelled a “neo-orthodoxy” and dismissed as reactionary but now he is recognised as a pioneer of an approach to theology which is no longer dependent on philosophy or the study of history and has found its authority in transcendent revelation: the Word of God as found in the Christ Event. The Kingdom of God comes as His gracious gift, as a transcendent reality breaking into the corruption and failures of human life.

Barth was the key figure behind the coining of the phrase missio Dei as a summary of mission’s dependence on the initiative and substance of God himself. Mission was not to be seen as one of humanities building projects, carried forward by its own strength and reason, but as a divine movement in which the church was privileged to participate.

One of Barth’s students, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Lutheran pastor and theologian, who resisted the Nazis and was put to death by them, has been described as the architect of a new way of understanding the mission of the church. He believed that the Christian community was the concrete presence of Christ in the world and needed to be valued and nurtured as such. He also saw that the Christian life, if taken seriously, is no easy matter. He opposed what he called the offering of cheap grace by the established churches to their members. In his book, The Cost of Discipleship, he described the costly nature of following Christ, a way of service rather than domination. His writings, and particularly his Letters and Papers from Prison, help to articulate a theology of mission implicit in the witness of his life.

Man is challenged to participate in the sufferings of God at the hands of a godless world. He must therefore plunge himself into the life of a godless world, without attempting to gloss over its ungodliness with a veneer of religion and trying to transfigure it….It is not some religious act which makes a Christian what he is, but participation in the suffering of God in the life of the world…. The church is only her true self when she exists for humanity. (Letters and Papers from Prison)

Christian mission, then, is about the church laying aside its own power and becoming open and vulnerable to the world, giving itself to serving the needs of others, locating itself where they live and, only then, finally, seeking to communicate the meaning of the gospel: Christian mission is all about witness out of a prior vulnerability.

This open-ended approach to mission has been expressed in an increasing number of places in the latter part of the twentieth century, especially as migration has resulted in people of different faiths increasingly living side by side and churches have had to enter into dialogue with Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and others. This has taken place at every level, though not usually under the label of “mission”.  Dialogue is the norm and necessary manner of every form of Christian mission, as well as every aspect of it, whether one speaks of simple presence and witness or direct proclamation. Any sense of mission not permeated by such a dialogical spirit would go against the demands of true humanity and against the teaching of the gospel. (Bevans and Schroeder: Constants in Context: A Theology of Mission for Today.)

As Bosch affirms, We do not have all the answers and are prepared to live within the framework of penultimate knowledge, that we regard our involvement in dialogue and mission as an adventure, are prepared to take risks and are anticipating surprises as the Spirit guides us into fuller understanding. (Transforming Mission)

Gibbs and Bolger, writing in Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Culture, conducted extensive research into the Emerging Churches movement in Britain and the U.S. They identified patterns most prevalent in churches that take postmodern culture seriously. The three core practices are;

·       Identifying with the life of Jesus, including welcoming the outcast, hosting the stranger and challenging the political authorities by creating an alternative community.

·       Transforming secular space in the same way that postmodernity calls into question the separation of sacred and secular.

·       Living as a community within all realms of the life of their members, not just within a Sunday morning meeting.

This strong sense of the missio Dei has led some leaders to renounce traditional evangelism altogether. We do not do evangelism or have mission. The Holy Spirit is the evangelist, and the mission belongs to God. What we do is simply live our lives publicly as a community in the way of Jesus Christ, and when people enquire as to why we live this way, we share with them an account of the hope within us…. Taking care of the sick and needy creates all the evangelism we need. (Gibbs and Bolger)

Approaches to Mission Part 3: Medieval Catholic and Protestant Reformation paradigms

 

As before, I am looking at Stephen Spencer’s studyguide Christian Mission.

 

Medieval Catholic Mission

As Constantine took control of the Western Empire he stopped persecution of the church. His family and court began to adopt the faith in increasing numbers and Christianity effectively became the state religion. The church began to become the religious arm of the Roman government. This shows the birth of “Christendom”, with the Christian community firmly embedded within the political structure in a position of power and wealth, but under a Christian monarch who has authority over the church as well as the state.

The Emperor was being given a mandate to use the power of the empire to bring its diverse peoples into the Christian religion and the use of coercion within mission was being sanctioned. While Constantine himself allowed a plurality of religions to be practiced in the empire, later emperors, particularly Theodosius, would proscribe all religions except Christianity.

All this throws light on the statement in the Nicene Creed that the Church was “one” as well as “holy”, “catholic” and “apostolic”. The Church was to be one as the empire was one, exercising authority over everyone within the empire. The Christendom paradigm had made its appearance: there was to be one order with Christ at the head and beneath him, the Emperor or, later, the Pope. Implicit within this was a new understanding of mission: the Church was to come into an increasing unity with the state and together do all they could to incorporate more and more people within its jurisdiction. The Church, in other words, was to work for the establishing of Christendom.

In the Eastern empire, this marriage of church and state remained as the norm for the next thousand years. In the Western empire the situation was more confused with the invasion of Goth hoards and the sack of Rome but St. Augustine established a theological framework that would give the church a renewed sense of its own inherent authority in the medieval world. Based on his reading of St. Paul in Galatians and Romans he became increasingly convinced of the deep corruption and sinfulness of humankind and of its inability to raise itself up. He developed the doctrine of original sin to account for this weakness and he saw that salvation must be entirely the gift of God, learning from St. Paul’s teaching on justification. This theology brought the cross to the centre of the faith: it was Christ’s death on the cross that achieved salvation for the believer, not their own efforts. It also shows that God must be the one who decides who shall be saved and who will not. The seeds of the doctrine of predestination are sown here. It is God who moves towards us, having predestined some to be saved and others not to be saved.

All of this is significant to mission because it places the individual soul at the centre of mission: to belong to a corporate community that has access to the gate of heaven, as in the Hellenistic paradigm, is not enough. The issue is whether the individual has appropriated that fact for themselves. The community as a whole, through its teaching and liturgy can aid that process but it cannot do this on their behalf: justification through the cross of Christ can only be appropriated by the individual believer. Bosch describes this as the individualisation of salvation and it would have dramatic effects on the practice of Christian mission, especially during the reformation era.

For Augustine, the Church was an indispensable because God’s gift was given through the Church: only membership of the church could allow salvation to be imparted to a believer, for salvation depended on unity with the church of the apostles. This meant that an awareness of boundaries between people came back into mission theology: Augustine’s theology created a sharp and decisive boundary between those who were part of the sacramental life of the Church and those who were not, and mission became all about moving them across this boundary. It is God who moves towards us, having predestined some to be saved and others not to be saved. Those to be saved belong to the city of God: the rest belong to the earthly city; in this life both cities are intermingled but in the next life they will be separated.

This association of a church-centred mission with coercion was to gain strength over the course of the Middle Ages. Pope Gregory advocated that those who would not listen to “reason” be “chastised by beating and torture, whereby they might be brought to amendment” and free men were to be jailed. All of this was for the non-believers’ own good.

Spencer goes on to discuss the relationship between Pope Leo III and the Emperor Charlemagne to explain how the relationship between church and state was strengthened. The Poe’s responsibility was to intercede for the Emperor and his military campaigns. Each needed the other.

In the Church of England today we see vestiges of this paradigm in the Monarch’s role of Supreme Governor of the Church.

Protestant Reformation Mission

Augustine bequeathed a deep theological contradiction to the medieval world, one which helps to explain the eruption of the Reformation in the sixteenth century. He stressed the city of God and the earthly city, arguing that the church contained both good and bad and it would not be until the final consummation that the two groups would be separated and this led him to adopt the idea that God must have predestined those who are saved. He espoused the Cyprian principle that there is no salvation outside the church. However, he also argued the Pauline doctrine of Justification by God’s grace: salvation is given freely to the sinner by God and this could only be received by an inner conversion of the soul, a reception that only God can see.

Martin Luther is the pioneer of the Reformation paradigm of Christianity and, within that, the Protestant Reformation type of mission. This took place at a time of the rise of humanist learning with its undermining of much medieval theological thinking and at a time when ordinary people began, firstly to tire of the Pope’s attempts to commercialise the business of religion and then to be  opposed to it.

Luther was an Augustinian monk and the turning point for him was a theological one: he experienced an increasing sense of anguish and despair as he failed repeatedly to live up to the holy and righteous life. He came to believe that the Epistle to the Romans was the most important document of the New Testament: the Gospel in its purest expression. While he accepted the Augustinian doctrine of original sin and the dependency of humanity on God, he concluded that a believer could only be declared righteous through faith in the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. In this sense he agreed with Augustine but he rejected Augustine’s contradictory idea of predestination as found in his doctrine of two cities. The crucial arena for the receiving of salvation was within the soul of the believer and what took place was known only to God. The corporate life of the Church ceases to have any direct role in the securing of salvation and Luther was particularly critical of the corruption of the church of his day, particularly through the selling of indulgences. The doctrine of justification by grace through faith gave a theological rationale for sidelining the institutional church in the salvation of the believer. The key relationship was between the believer and God and was a direct one-to-one engagement. Everything else was secondary to this and therefore there could be no coercion to outward shows of faith.

A second important strand in Luther’s thinking was the elevation of scripture over the church as the authoritative guide in the life of the Christian. It was Luther’s own reading of Romans which had opened his eyes to the true nature of salvation whereas the teaching of the church had clouded these truths. If scripture taught all things necessary for salvation then it was scripture that should be recognised as the primary authority in the life of the Christian. This, of course, meant that it needed to be accessible to the individual and therefore needed to be translated into the languages of ordinary people rather than in Latin which, as most people did not understand it, could only be interpreted to them by the church. In addition Luther ejected the idea of a “spiritual” and a “secular” estate: All Christians truly belong to the spiritual estate and there is no difference between them apart from their office … We all have one baptism, gospel and faith which alone make us spiritual and a Christian people. This has become known as the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers and it became a central feature of the new Reformation paradigm. Inevitably these ideas began to spread and take root elsewhere in Europe where they were championed by native theologians.

In each nation or area of civil government the unity of church was to be secured by an established religion: Now anywhere you hear or see the word of God preached, believed, confessed, acted upon, do not doubt that the true Holy Christian Church must be there. This clearly shows the centrality of preaching to the life and mission of the church. It is through preaching – both its delivery and its reception - that the visible church (the outward organisation) most closely resembles the invisible church (the true church, whose membership is known only to God) but this happens only through the God’s action by the Holy Spirit and not through the will of preacher or congregation.

The starting point for the Reformers’ theology was not what people could do for their salvation, but what God had already done in Christ. Christians were therefore under an obligation to preach and teach the gospel to the erring pagans and non-Christians because of the duty of brotherly love.

However, there are weaknesses here. The emphasis on the pointlessness of “good works” as a means to please God, when salvation comes through faith alone, has given some the excuse to be inactive about struggling for justice and social change.

Additionally the emphasis on the role of scripture has restricted some of the disciplines of Biblical criticism as a conservative understanding of scripture has held sway.

Approaches to Mission Part 2: The Apostolic and Hellenistic Orthodox Paradigms

This post is based on Stephen Spencer's studyguide Christian Mission. It might make more sense if you have already read the previous introductory post.

The Apostolic Mission

In the earliest days of Christianity converts were primarily Jewish and had a worldview dominated by eschatology, particularly the book of Daniel: they believed the end of the age was near and would bring a time of catastrophe but there would be deliverance for God’s people at this time. Many early Christians related these ideas to the Roman occupation: the end was indeed nigh.

The Christians came to associate Jesus as the figure described in Daniel, “I saw one like a Son of Man coming with the clouds of Heaven.” (Daniel 7.13) The death and resurrection of Jesus became, for them, the inauguration of the end-times and they believed he would return in their lifetimes. Some of the earliest New Testament writings (I Thes and 1 Cor) show this view clearly. The Parousia was imminent.

This meant that it was desperately important that as many people as possible were told about the offer of salvation. It was imperative that people turn to the Lord, put their lives in order, and be made ready for his coming: the church was the ark of salvation. “Repent and be baptised” was the motif of the period.

Christian mission was all about appealing to the hearts and minds of Jews and then of Gentiles to bring about belief in Jesus and repentance before it was too late. It was not about changing cultures or religious structures: time was too short. It was a search and rescue operation.

We can see how this approach is still the basis for mission and evangelism in many conservative and evangelical churches today.

Hellenistic Orthodox Mission

The non-return of Jesus in the expected time-frame precipitated a minor crisis for the early church and some were questioning the church’s claims: First of all you must understand this, that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and indulging their own lusts and saying, ‘Where is the promise of his coming? (2 Peter 3.3) So the church had to rethink its eschatology at the same time as it was spreading into a predominantly Greek speaking and thinking culture in Asia Minor and Greece. Christians were influenced by that milieu which was a long way in so many senses from the Palestinian Jewish culture with its emphasis on righteousness.

Christianity became influenced by Neoplatonism: immortality is no longer seen as linked to some future day of judgement but in the here and now, through learning and the acquisition of knowledge. With its emphasis on the Eternal Being as an ever present reality in the world, Neoplatonism can be detected in some later passages of the New Testament. There is a shift away from future eschatology to realized eschatology. John’s Gospel best illustrates this with its emphasis on what Christ has already accomplished and what he offers here and now, Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. (John 3.18-19) Very truly, I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgment, but has passed from death to life. Very truly, I tell you, the hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. (John 5.24-25) Furthermore in one of the best known passages of the New Testament it is the interior value of belief rather than the practice of righteousness that is presented as the heart of Christian living and the gateway to eternal life: For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. (John 3.16)

Some of the church Fathers from this period (Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Augustine of Hippo and Origen) interwove Neoplatonism with Christianity. Justin Martyr develops the idea of the logos, who had sown the seed of truth in all people and becomes incarnate in Christ in order to teach all people the whole truth.

In this period the Biblical stories began to be read allegorically, carrying a meaning which needed to be unlocked from the text of scripture. Philosophical thinking is the means by which the Greeks are to be led to Christ.

No longer is the church living between past and future events which would culminate in the imminent second coming and requiring righteousness on the part of Christ’s followers. In this second paradigm Christianity is about holding correct beliefs which can be definitively stated as doctrine which articulate eternal truths, hence the development of the creeds.

Salvation is all about the progress of the soul as it learns these doctrines and becomes united with the immortal wisdom of God. It is the church which is the vehicle for this progress: the conviction gradually grew that the church was the Kingdom of God on earth and to be in the church was to be in the Kingdom.

In the first paradigm the key boundary was between those who were within the saved community and those who were not. Here the key boundary was between earth and Heaven. The church was no longer the ark for the saved but the door for the whole community. It is not enough merely to attend the liturgy: participation must include an interior Theosis as the human and divine meet in communion. The liturgy becomes central. In the liturgy, eternal truth radiates into the world and Orthodox theologians refer to the “second liturgy” which takes place after the service in the world, in the lives of those who have participated in it.

Mission is part of the nature of the church. Outside the context of the church, evangelism remains a humanism or a temporary psychological enthusiasm. (David Bosch, Transforming Mission.)

This paradigm significantly influenced the theology of Anglican Archbishop Michael Ramsay in the 1960s and, with its emphasis on contemplation, stillness and openness to the divine, can be found at the heart of the modern Taizé movement. It is still the basic paradigm of the Orthodox Church today.

However it does not see this realm as lying in the future and coming through change and struggle. It therefore entails a certain acceptance of the social and political status quo and a loss of the radical and transformative dimension of Jesus’ mission. The Orthodox Church has been attacked for this by some in the West. The Anglican Church has often been described as the Conservative Party at prayer. In their own political and social contexts, similar can be said of the Orthodox Churches.

Approaches to mission

 

 

When I was at Vicar School, one of our first modules was that of Mission. It was one of the ones I most enjoyed. I am revisiting my understanding of mission and so, with some pleasure, it was to Stephen Spencer’s SCM Studyguide Christian Mission that I turned and I unashamedly summarise and plagiarise him here.

Stephen Spencer’s introduction identifies three traditional view of mission:

Mission as Social Action

Spencer begins by relating the story of Rosa Parks and setting it in the context of the American Civil Rights Movement. The gist of the argument is that the mission of the church is God’s mission and is about the coming of the Kingdom with its peace, justice and healing. The role of the church here is to assist this wider mission through its support of various liberation movements as Christians speak out for an end of poverty, injustice and oppression. In words attributed to Archbishop William Temple, the church of God is the only institution which exists to serve the needs of those who are not its members, so mission is about assisting with what God is doing in the world: mission is human development.

It is worth noting the contribution of the Roman Catholic Church here: Vatican II speaks of human progress in creating a more just social order in the modern world which can be through the secret moving of the Spirit in human beings.

However, there needs to be a vibrant church to do the assisting and the fact of that mission needs to be made public and identified. It also needs to be related to its various scriptural imperatives. If significant energies are not devoted to building up the church, how will it avoid losing itself in the struggles of the world?

Mission as Church Growth

The C of E report Mission Shaped Church looked extensively at different kinds of congregational church life and took great comfort in “Fresh Expressions of Church” which it saw as a sign of great creativity of the Spirit in our age … a sign of the work of God and of the Kingdom. The church is the fruit of God’s mission … creating new communities of Christian faith is part of the mission of God.

However, some of these initiatives are seen more as maintenance as growth – a kind of chaplaincy to those who cannot bring themselves to attend traditional churches anymore and it is questionable whether real mission has taken place. This conversation takes place in the context of a universal decline in church attendance in the developed world in all denominations.

Mission as Public Witness

If Christ is not known in missionary work then it is questionable to what extent CHRISTIAN mission has taken place at all. In this model mission is about proclaiming Christ and the churches need to take an enthusiastic lead.  Evangelism is seen as the defining feature of mission. In Transforming Mission, Bosch alludes to a real crisis of nerve over mission, claiming that the church was no longer sure what it meant! Leslie Newbeggin, writing in The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, called for the churches to engage in the mission of proclaiming the Gospel as “public truth”: We have been shown the road. We cannot treat that knowledge as a private matter. It concerns the whole human family.

The emphasis is on the key features of Jesus own mission, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the Gospel of God and saying “The time is fulfilled; repent and believe the Gospel” (Mark 1.14-15) This isn’t about Jesus’ glorification but about something much bigger, the ushering in of the Kingdom of God and the personal response of those who repent and believe. People are to change the direction of their lives. The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us. Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination.

Spencer goes on to talk about:

 Missio Dei: God’s Mission

The mission of God is, The mission that belongs to God and flows from the heart of God. The Missio Dei speaks of the overflowing of God’s being and nature into His purposeful activity in the world. Avis, A Ministry Shaped by Mission. It is the mission of the Son and the Spirit through the Father that includes the Church. God is a missionary God and mission is first of all His action. The missionary initiative flows from the love of God to reconcile His created yet alienated world. He trod a long road of redemption with Israel, until out of the depths of His love the Father sent the Son to reconcile all things to Himself. Jesus accomplished the mission for which He was sent by a complete atonement in His death and resurrection. On the basis of this accomplished work God poured out the Spirit of Jesus to gather His people together into one body as a first fruit and an earnest of Christ’s redemption. That same Spirit of Jesus equips and empowers His people to continue His mission as witnesses to God’s redeeming love and work. Thus the church is caught up in God’s redeeming action. (Newbigin)

Mission is not, therefore, the church going out and saving people. Rather, it is God creating and saving the world. The mission of God came first and the church was created as a response to that. That makes the church a product of mission rather than the other way round. It is also important to note that that since God’s concern is for the entire created order, so too, should be the scope of mission: it should embrace both humanity and the world and it is this which the church is privileged to participate in. There is no participation in Christ without participation in his mission to the world. James A Scherer, Mission Theology.

Mission and paradigm shifts

The church is only one player in mission. The others are the social and cultural context and the inaugurated Kingdom of God. In tracing the history of mission it is important to understand how the church has related to these other two.

Spencer identifies a number of paradigms. He notes that while there has been a continuity of faith in Jesus as Lord and Saviour, the intellectual framework that holds this belief in place changed from one era to another. Each of the paradigms, though closely identified with a particular paradigm shift and era, continues to be found in different parts of the world today. New paradigms have come about as a result of social and political change revealing the creative engagement of the church with different cultures throughout history.

I shall explore these various paradigms in subsequent posts.

A Meditation for Easter Day: Halelujah! He is risen indeed! Mark 16.1-8

Mark 16.1-8

When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. ²And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. ³They had been saying to one another, ‘Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?’ ⁴When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. ⁵As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. ⁶But he said to them, ‘Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. ⁷But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.’ ⁸So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid

Without Easter, we wouldn't know about Jesus: if his story had ended at the crucifixion he would probably have been forgotten other that for passing references in contemporary sources. There would have been no community memory to pass on.

What kind of stories are the Easter stories, then? What language do they use? Are they intended as historical reports and thus to be understood as history remembered or do they use the language of parable and metaphor to express truths that are much more than factual? Or is it a combination?

Those of us who grew up as Christians in in overt Christian environment have an awareness of the Easter message, albeit an amalgam of the entirety of the four gospels and the gloss of Acts and the epistles.

Borg and Crossan use the terms "hard" and "soft" interpretation. The hard form, affirmed by Christians committed to ideas of biblical inerrancy, sees every detail as factually, literally and infallibly true. Many other Christians affirm a softer view: aware of differences in the accounts, they do not insist on the factual accuracy of every detail and recognise that witnesses to any event can have quite different recollections depending on a number of factors. In my own classroom last week thirty fourteen year olds were unable to agree on the exact sequence of a simple cause and effect process. Those who affirm the softer view are not concerned whether there was one angel (Mark and Matthew) or two (Luke) at the tomb and may disagree amongst themselves about the meaning of the word angel and therefore the nature of angels. They don't worry about where the disciples hid out after the crucifixion: Jerusalem (Luke) or Galilee (Matthew) but they do affirm the historicity of the basics: the tomb was really empty, this was because God transformed the body of Jesus and Jesus did appear to his disciples after his death in a form that could be seen, heard and touched.

So central is the historical accuracy of the stories for many people, that if they didn't happen in this way, the foundation and truth of Christianity disappear. If Christ has not been raised then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. (St. Paul 1 Cor 15.14) At one and the same time some of us assent to Paul's statement while not necessarily assuming that it intrinsically points to the historical accuracy of a tomb empty of a physical body. When I was an undergraduate my Professor of Theology, David Jenkins, left to become the Bishop of Durham and he got in deep water for saying such things and was roundly condemned as an atheist Bishop amongst those who followed the hard interpretation. He is still a byword for apostasy and heresy in certain circles of the CofE, unjustly so. "The Resurrection is more than a conjuring trick with old bones." he said. I was constantly amazed and disturbed that the words more than were excised from the text of his address.

It must be the case that an emphasis on the historical facts of the Easter stories, as if they were reporting events that in another time could have been filmed as they unfolded, gets in the way of understanding them. On the one hand, it is a stumbling block for those who have difficulty in believing that the stories are factual. If such people think that believing these stories to be factually accurate is essential to being a Christian, then they can't be Christians. The issue is not simply whether "things like this" ever happen. Rather, the issue is generated by the stories themselves; often the differences are hard to reconcile, and their language often seems to be other than the language of historical reporting. We often do not get beyond the "Did they happen?" reply to the "What do they mean?" question.

When these stories are seen as history, their function is to report publicly observable events that could have been witnessed by anyone who was there. When we see these stories as parable we need to use the model of parable Jesus himself used - the truth of the story is not dependent on whether it is historically accurate: there was no Good Samaritan. Does that render the story meaningless? Parables can be true - truth filled and truthful - regardless of their factual accuracy and to worry about factual accuracy misses the point. The point lies in its meaning and in you and I getting that meaning.

Seeing the Easter stories as parable does not involve a denial of their factual accuracy. It's quite happy leaving that question open. What it does insist upon is that the importance of these stories lies in their meanings. As an example, an empty tomb without a meaning ascribed to it is simply an odd event. It is only when meaning is ascribed to it that it takes on significance. Parable can be based on a particular event (there could have been a Good Samaritan whose actions Jesus based his story on) but it need not be.

Effectively we are saying: believe, if you want, that the events strictly happened in that way. Now lets talk about what they mean. Equally, if you're quite sure they didn't happen quite like that, fine. Now let's talk about what they mean.

Importantly parable and parabolic language can make truth claims: we should not think of history as truth and parable as fiction and therefore less important. Indeed, this identification is one of the central characteristics of modern western culture. Both Biblical literalists and people who reject theism completely do this: the former insist that the truth of the Bible depends on its literal accuracy and the latter see that the Bible can not be literally and factually true and therefore don't think that it is true at all. What both miss is the fact that parable can be profoundly true independently of its historical accuracy. Asking the parabolic meaning of Biblical stories is always the most important question. The alternative of fixating on whether it happened in this way will likely lead one astray.

Mark's Easter story is very brief but he provides us with the first narrative of Easter. He does not report any appearance of the risen Jesus and the story ends very abruptly. His story starts with the women who saw Jesus' death and burial going to the tomb to anoint his body, concerned as to who will roll away the stone covering the entrance to the tomb. As they arrive, their question becomes irrelevant. They saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled back. They enter the tomb, somewhat tentatively we might guess, to discover a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side. We generally interpret that young man as an angel, but even that word is loaded with countless unhelpful images of wings and harps and halos thanks to medieval artists. Let's be clear: an angel is God's messenger. Let's strip away the fanciful appearance. He says to them "Do not be alarmed. You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified. He has been raised. He is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him."

Mark then tells us that the women were given a commission: "But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you." Though Mark does not recount any stories of the risen Jesus the stage is nevertheless set for such events. Then Mark's story abruptly ends. So the women went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid. This ending was deemed unsuitable as early as the second century and so a second ending was added in vs 9-20.

Without denying any factual accuracy of the story, let's look at this section as parable. It is powerfully evocative.

* Jesus was sealed in a tomb, but the tomb could not hold him and the stone has been rolled away.

* Jesus is not to be found in the land of the dead. "He is not here. Look this is the place where they laid him."

* Jesus has been raised. God's messenger tells the women this. Jesus who was crucified by the authorities has been raised by God.

* God has said Yes to Jesus and No to the powers who killed him. God has vindicated Jesus.

* His followers are promised You will see him.

* The command "Go back to Galilee" means go back to where the story began, to the start of the Gospel.

What do we hear at the start of the gospel? We hear about the way of the kingdom.

Without the emphasis on Easter as God's decisive reversal of the authorities verdict on Jesus, the cross is simply pain, agony and horror. It leads to a horrific theology: God's judgement means that we all deserve to suffer like this, but Jesus died in our place. God can spare us because Jesus is the substitutionary sacrifice for our sins. It also leads to a skewed view of the current world where we conclude that the powers are in control and Christianity is about the next world, not this one.

Easter as the reversal of Good Friday, on the other hand, means God's vindication of Jesus' passion for the Kingdom of God, for God's justice and God's "no" to the powers who killed him, powers still very much alive in our world. Easter is about God as much as it is about Jesus. Easter discloses the character of God. Easter means God's great cleansing has begun, but it will not happen without us in terms of personal transformation and political transformation: dying to the old way of being and being reborn into a new way of being. In short, being born again.

A Meditation for Holy Saturday using The Creed

 

After detailing every day from Palm Sunday through to Good Friday, Mark says nothing at all about the Sabbath then picks up the story on Easter Sunday with the finding of the empty tomb. What about the day we call Holy Saturday? Was there nothing to say about that day in earliest Christian tradition? If we, as Christians, have followed Mark's silence about today, have we lost something in the process?

We can see very clearly what Mark has omitted by looking at the Apostles Creed

Friday Suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead and buried.

Saturday He descended into hell.

Sunday The third day he rose again from the dead.

The descent into hell is not to the later Christian place of eternal punishment, but the Jewish Sheol, the afterlife place of non-existence, the grave writ large. What is the meaning of that event?

As Mark set out to describe Jesus' execution he was working within Jewish tradition that had always emphasised how God vindicated those righteous Jews who remained faithful under persecution and were ready, if necessary, to die as martyrs for their faith in God. In the Apocryphal book of Wisdom we read But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God and no torment will ever touch them. In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died, and their departure was thought to be a disaster, and their going from us to be a destruction; but they are at peace. For though in the sight of others they were punished, their hope is full of immortality. (3.1-4) It is such theology which is behind the gospel stories of Jesus death and vindication. First Jesus is mocked by passers by, by the authorities, and even by those crucified with him for the lack of preemptive divine intervention to save him from death on the cross.

Then we recall future vindication from several places in Mark's text. Apart from three prophecies of death by execution and vindication by resurrection in 8.31, 9.31 and 10.33-34, the promise of vindication is repeated in 13.26, They will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory, and again in 14.62, You will see the Son of Man at the right hand of the Power and coming with the clouds of heaven. This is post-death public vindication which was in accordance with the scriptures for all who knew their tradition.

Scholars have debated whether that divine salvation refers to the immortality of the soul or the resurrection of the body. If, as in Biblical tradition, your faith tells you that this world belongs to and is ruled by a just divinity and your experience tells you that that the world belongs to and is ruled by an unjust humanity, eschatology becomes almost inevitable as the reconciliation of faith and experience. God, you believe, will transform this world of violence and injustice into one of nonviolence and justice. God will act - indeed must act - to make new and holy a world grown old in evil.

Eschatology is absolutely not about the end of this world, but rather about the end of this world's subjection to to evil and impurity, injustice, violence and oppression. It is not about the evacuation of earth for God's heaven, but about the divine transfiguration of God's earth.

How then did the claim of general bodily resurrection, surely the most counter intuitive idea imaginable, become part of that scenario of cosmic transfiguration? The general reason was because the renewal of an all-good creation here below upon this earth demanded it. How could you have a renewed creation without renewed bodies? That magnificent vision of a transformed flesh as well as as a renewed spirit, demanded transfigured bodies as well as perfect souls.

The specific reason for bodily resurrection became part of the scenario was related to martyrdom, particularly in the 160s BC in the Seleucid persecutions. The question was not about their survival but about God's justice when faced specifically with the battered, tortured and executed bodies of martyrs. Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. (Daniel 12.2)

Those general and specific reasons had come together in apocalyptic eschatology and Pharisaic theology at the time of Jesus. When God's great cleansing happened the first order of business was the general resurrection. Since God's purpose was to establish a just and non-violent world, it had to deal with the past before it could deal with the future and there was already a great backlog of injustice that had to be redeemed, a great crowd of martyrs who had to be vindicated.

If you believed as Jesus did and as Mark wrote, that the Kingdom of God was already here on earth, you were claiming that God's great cleansing had already started, then the bodily resurrection and vindication could indeed begin with Jesus at the head of those others who had died unjustly, or at least righteously before him. This is what Jesus' descent into hell was all about. That is what Jesus had to do on Holy Saturday.