BLOG 7/15/13. (CONT) ECONOMIC JUSTICE AND THE FORM OF THE CHURCH

I asked the question in my last Blog as to whether the church was quite too silent on the subject of economic justice, and I got some inquiries back about what we might do about that. It is my opinion that it has to do with our basic misunderstanding of the form of the church. The church, in New Testament documents, is the community of God’s new creation (kingdom) in which God demonstrates the communal incarnation of that new creation, that in-breaking kingdom.

That communal demonstration has two dimensions that are symbiotic and interdependent as we see them, first, in Acts 2 where the larger church in Jerusalem gathers (probably in Solomon’s porch), and then house to house 2:42ff) around the apostles’ teachings, intimate fellowship, breaking of bread and prayers. The same two-dimensional form is evident in Paul’s report to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20, about how he did not cease for three years to teach them “the whole counsel of God” in public and from house to house.

My understanding, then, is that there is a significant place for larger gatherings, or communities of faith whose purpose is instruction in the Word of Christ, in edifying music (Col. 3:16), and the celebration of the Eucharist. Here is where the teachings of economic justice, so replete in scripture, would be taught, lifted up and made a part of our understanding of discipleship.

But one does not really understand the form of the church without those other “house to house” or smaller gatherings in which everyone has a name and a face and a story. It is in such church-around-the-table settings that we see the “one another” relationships practiced, i.e., our responsibility for, and accountability to, one another demonstrated. There are no anonymous persons in such a setting. And here is where economic justice is incarnated. “No one considered anything he possessed as his own, but they had all things in common” (Acts 4:32).

The Biblical principles, then, are taught in the larger gatherings of the church where gifted teaching-shepherds unpack the teachings of Christ … but the application of, discussion of, mutual responsibility and prayer about  those teachings is only possible in “one another” settings. This is where economic justice in the church belongs, realistically.

So, if I am in some large, typical institutional church setting where I don’t know that the guy sitting next to me is struggling economically, jobless, too embarrassed to admit it, while I am doing well and have secure income—or vice-versa—then the kind of economic justice we see in the New Testament documents is unrealistic to us.

How to resolve this? This is why the ascended Lord provides the church with Elders/Bishops who are responsible before the Great Shepherd to be both the shepherds and models for God’s people. This would include the goal: that no baptized member, who is identified with the church community, should be able to be anonymous (or autonomous?). Rather there is to be order and exemplary models of personalized, loving, gracious oversight by those Elders/Bishops (I Timothy 3:1-8; Hebrews13:17; I Peter 5:1-5).

Ah! But such personalized caring and responsibility is so unreal in the typical depersonalized church institutions with which we are all too familiar. So that economic justice can be ignored … and people suffer in silence. Feed me back your questions and we’ll pursue it further.