Enchanted Community

1/20/14. (CONT.) THE HUMAN IMPOSSIBILITY OF THE CHURCH

The alternative narrative for tomorrow’s church will include the thrill of embracing again our understanding of the humanly impossible calling of the church, i.e., being the dwelling place of God by the Spirit, or of bearing the gospel of the kingdom to the remotest corners the human community. This is not an idle theoretical point that we can ‘blow off’ as we pursue the church into the unknown incarnation of the church’s tomorrow, into its demonstration of New Creation community.

Yet this, which is humanly impossible, is our hope and goal, and we know that Jesus did not call us to despair or grim resignation. We know that with the calling he also gave us the equipment to bring it to reality, and at the heart of this equipment is not only that of our obedience to his teachings, but also our passion for his own glory. He also told us that apart from him we could do nothing. A dynamic relationship and communication is a key … and that defines prayer. Consider, for instance, the most difficult, complex, even hostile social, moral, political, and cultural setting you can imagine in your city, or in other parts of the world, and then know that it is into just such contexts, such areas of need, that the church is called to go and to become God’s Light there, and to demonstrate the joy and hope of his New Creation/Kingdom … and there in such a humanly impossible setting to obey Christ’s calling. For the church to be the church is not achievable in merely human terms. (I’ve probably lost some of my readers at this point.)

Our response to the human impossibility of the church, however, is not resignation … but rather is intercession and petition for the creative and evangelizing source we need to accomplish God’s purpose. What do you think we are praying for when we pray: “… thy will be done [here and now] on earth as it is in heaven?”

Did you ever stop to ask why the church recorded in Acts was always praying? or that the apostle taught that we were to pray without ceasing? or that the final piece of the whole armor of God (Ephesians 6) is that we should always be praying with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit for all the saints? This all begins precisely where we are, in our 24/7 contexts. Our calling to be the children of light is in the realities, first of all, of our immediate incarnation, i.e., the persons, the potentials, the difficulties, the pathological or hostile or agnostic personalities whom we meet. But as we pray, we also become the missionary arm of the Triune God in those places.

A huge part of our problem is that our present church narrative focuses on the humanly achievable church institutions, which we have created, i.e., the Christendom churches with their sanctuaries, their church professionals, and their focus on gatherings and well-crafted worship services—but which fail to realize that none of these are called for in the New Testament documents. What we are called upon to do is to ‘make disciples,’ to obey Christ’s commands, to teach and admonish one another in the Word of Christ, to see to it that all of God’s people are equipped to maturity for engagement in the mission of God. And this is all empowered by God as the church accesses the power of prayer given to it by God. We are not called upon to create comfortable church institution in which we entertain ourselves with churchy activities. Our alternative narrative will be to engage in bold intercessions … for the humanly impossible, for our active participation in the mission of God to our neighbors and for our colleagues who live lives without a center, or an authority, or a creative source, or guiding principle, or an ultimate goal. It begins with you and me, with us, with the here and now—this place and this time.

BLOG. 1/16/14. THE CHURCH OF TOMORROW: “HUMANLY IMPOSSIBLE”

If a ‘church community’ is humanly explainable, it is probably only marginally a church at all. Pursuing my alternative narrative thesis, the church of tomorrow needs to relinquish its illusion that the church can be a human construct, or is humanly explainable. Consider that Jesus’ primary reference to the church (Matthew 16:18-19) is his asseveration (check out that good word) that it was he, himself, who would build his church, against which the gates of hell could not prevail. His mandate to his followers was not to build churches, but to obey his teachings and commandments.

Consider that his commission to his followers was to go make disciples in every corner of the human community. His followers are to be contagious heralds of the reality of God in Christ inaugurating his New Creation (Kingdom/Salvation/Eternal Life/etc.). Such disciples will inevitably find each other, and engage in the commanded one another love, which in turn would make them to be the communal demonstration of that New Creation. That New Creation community would, itself, be part of the witness. But it is only possible, as individuals become disciples and are, as such, the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit in the world.

Consider how humanly impossible is the new life in Christ. Remember that Paul’s own commission from the Risen Lord was that he should go and turn men from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God—or as he would later write to the church: to see men delivered out of the tyranny of the darkness and into the kingdom of God’s beloved Son. This is humanly impossible. This is what was behind the oft-recalled encounter of Nicodemus with Jesus one night. Nicodemus was trying to interpret his awe of Jesus within the framework of his Judaism, and of the whole temple enterprise. Jesus disabused him of his quest and rather gave to Nicodemus his own alternative narrative, in so many words: “You must be born again. What is born of the flesh is human, but what is born of God is Spirit.”

Where the divine and human meet in this enterprise is in our obedience to his command, that of heralding the gospel of the Kingdom into every corner of the human community. It is God who opens eyes and ears and hearts to the gospel, but he does that as the gospel is communicated in our conversation with others—where the sword of the Spirit is exercised. Much of our gospel communication falls on deaf ears and unresponsive hearts. That’s all part of our understanding of our task. But we are to enter into God’s passion for his defiled world and for his rebellious human community, and that also is not something that is achievable or explainable in merely human understanding.

An institution of religious Christianity (to use Bonhoeffer’s designation) that is humanly explainable, i.e., a church building, a passive congregations dependent on clergy or ‘church professionals’, etc. … can hardly be defined as a church. You cannot worship a Savior whose blessings you seek, but whose teachings and commands you are not obeying and incarnating, whose passion for the world and for its human community you are ignoring.

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BLOG 1/13/14. “ TOTO, I’VE A FEELING WE’RE NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORE!”

The direction to which I have committed myself in these Blogs is that of an alternative narrative for the church’s future. Right away I’m in trouble. I have learned the hard way that imagining a different future for the church doesn’t sit well with those who are happily content with the present, even when that present may be a relic of a passing culture, and rapidly fading to the margins of the 21^st century. More than that, I have learned that people can be contemptuous of me when I dare to critique the church to which they are emotionally attached, even to the point of idolatry. It is fairly well established that most cannot imagine anything other than the church they know and have experienced—they cannot see beyond the horizons, or suspend the boundaries of their thinking.

When Dorothy and Toto wound up after having been swept by tornado into the Land of Oz, it didn’t take long for Dorothy to decide that they weren’t in Kansas anymore. Even that illustration may lose my younger readers (but thanks to Google they can check sit out). In recent decades we have gone through what can best be described as a cultural diastrophism, when the subterranean tectonic plates upon which we depended for stability for centuries, shifted and eliminated the familiar landscape. One of the pieces of that landscape was the conception of the church as an institution, a village meeting place, a reminder of the story of Jesus, a community with pastoral father-figures, liturgical services, respectable people, good works of many sorts, choirs and fine music—but increasingly detached from the daily lives of its participants, and essentially unevangelized in its comprehension of the teachings of Jesus, and the obedience required by such.

We moved ineluctably into the post-modern, post-Christian (post-everything?) western culture of the past millennium and a half, and into the present information age-digital global culture, with the church diminishing in the prestige and influence which it formerly had, and being so inconsequential it has been increasingly abandoned by many, especially in the emerging Millennial and the Generation Z cultures. These generations have more information at their finger-tips (being digital natives) than is imaginable—the iPhone bunch. But they also live in a culture of moral and ethical ambiguity, and loss of meaning, while at the same time they come with a pragmatic streak that wants results. The church has been in denial over this. It, all to much, has clung to its traditional forms of dominant clergy, passive laity, predictable church life and sermons, impressive sanctuaries … while more and more of its participants abandon this as: questionable use of their time, and resources, even many of those who are intentional disciples of Jesus.

But I am an optimist. It is Christ who is building his church. While the church has been marginalized in the west, it is growing globally, but often in different forms. Often this Lord has to come as a ‘refiner’s fire’ before the church is refounded upon that thrilling purpose for which he founded it. So my thesis is that a previous (and increasingly ineffective) narrative of the church, so familiar to us, is departing, and we are in a position to imagine a new and alternative narrative that is the dynamic presence of God’s New Creation community, that can only be explained by God’s working, and which will be fruitful in the realities of this bewildering new culture.

So my first macro force for such a narrative is our cognition that: the church is humanly impossible, i.e., it only brings Light into the darkness by the dynamic working of the Holy Spirit creating obedient disciples whose lives display the glory of God in the midst of daily life. I’ll leave it there for now, and let you chew on it.

WHO’S THE GUY BEHIND THIS ALTERNATIVE NARRATIVE?

In these recent decades there have been so many gifted voices speaking to the ineffectiveness of so much of the church that I know I am in danger of being redundant, except that most of them are attempts to accomplish some kind of renewal on the church as we have had it for the past millennium and a half (including some of my own books), and I want to risk an attempt to project an alternative possibility for you to work on, and feed back to me. But you need to know who I am, first of all.

I am now a full-blown octogenarian, and with a whole life lived in the context of acceptable Christendom church institutions. I have recently completed my memoirs for my family and close friends, so all of this is fresh in my mind. I am a kid who grew up in Sunday school, wiggled my way through church services, went to youth group and youth conferences, and by high school days was beginning to sense a desire to see something more into the whole Christian faith thing than I was experiencing. I went to a church related college with a commitment to pursue Christian ministry (though I did not have a clue what that was, except that “full-time Christian service” was dangled in front of us in those days as a commendable way to serve the Lord).

I had some superb fellow-travelers at college, on the same quest as I. So, on through theological school, most of which I found to be of dubious value when I actually got into ‘the trenches’ of pastoral ministry, then into 60+ years that I could not have imagined at the beginning. I have read widely in Christian classics: Catholic and Protestant. I cut my teeth as a missioner to university students (who can ask brutal questions). I was to pastor to a dismal and dying industrial church and watched God bring it dramatically to life and then to engage in a ministry to the university community nearby. Those were the years of the civil rights movement, the Viet Nam war, and social turmoil, all in ferment on the steps of our church community. I had to deal with reality. I learned how intense disciplemaking can be when one is seeking to mentor others into some Christian maturity in the midst of such.

Then, to an urban church in New Orleans (a culture unto itself), and the turmoil of the restless youth culture of the late 1960s and 1970s. I watched a very old and traditional church rise to the occasion. That got me involved in a denominational council trying to come to grips with the whole subject of evangelism, which, in turn got me recruited to be the Presbyterian Church’s director of Evangelistic Ministries. These were also the years when I was part of an ecumenical pilgrimage of evangelical Protestants to the Vatican, in which 28 of us were guests of the Curia for two weeks to discuss the ministry of the laity in the workplace. I have been part of ecumenical discussions around the subject of missiology in many venues. I have taught scores of congregational retreats, officer-training sessions, conferences, and on and on. I have taught in 6-8 seminaries here and abroad. I am not a detached observer.

Now to the point: more and more as I have been in dialogue with those for whom I have been a mentor, I hear their lament over their struggle to be faithful church members in church communities that they are finding irrelevant to their other six days of work-a-day ministry … how the church has not been much help in equipping them to deal with the challenges, the stimuli and potential of a whole new culture, with the difficulties, with real persons who can be hostile or agnostic … and with the often alien culture as they seek to be sons and daughters of the light, i.e., how to be “the sweet aroma of Christ” in the midst of such realities.

So I am somewhat passionate about being willing to let  the church, as we have known it, move to the margins (many such churches will cease to exist in the next 20-30 years), and look for an alternative narrative with an understanding and form of the church that will be fruitful and encouraging in equipping God’s people in the next generation. I may be crazy, but I want to give it a shot! I am an optimist: Christ is building his church!

Stay tuned …

BLOG 1/6/14. THE CHURCH: AN ALTERNATIVE NARRATIVE

It is going to be my purpose, as we enter a new year, to initiate a journey into what can best be described as: an alternative narrative on the form and mission of the church. By this I intend to set aside all of our present experience of institutional Christianity, which is so familiar to us in the west, and project again into the church’s essence, its intended purpose and mission, its communal form as set forth in scripture. Be warned: there are layers of complexity here, and not a few hazards.

This may sound a bit grandiose, or arrogant, but not so. It actually is not something that I came up with on my own. There have been profound studies on this for several decades by those who are my mentors: Leslie Newbigin, Gerhard Lohfink, Jacques Ellul, Darrell Guder, and so many more. But I know that most of the readers of this Blog of mine have not read these sources that have so enriched me, and I want to provoke some fresh thinking on this alternative narrative while acknowledging my indebtedness to others.

Another of my responders has actually asked me to come up with 6-10 macro forces that will be needed to enter into a church if it is to be equipped to reach into the post-Christian culture which most of us experience day by day. Face it: the church is a stumbling block to many. There are so many crazy understandings of the church—not just among those outside the church, but by people who have spent their lives sitting in church meetings.

What I am purposing here is not really a new narrative at all, but the original narrative that has been displaced, diluted, or forgotten as the generations have unfolded. Nor is it a new dilemma. One only has to read the 7^th century prophets in the Old Testament to see that such was their message to Israel and Judah: “you have forgotten your calling and your purpose … you have forgotten the Torah, you have forgotten that you were to be a light to the nations. You have all of the accouterments of temple worship what with priests and sacrifices, but you have absorbed the cultural idols around you and have violated you calling to be God’s holy nation.” Those prophets were also warned that most wouldn’t have ears to hear what they were saying—and I suppose I face that same reality with my readers, but I’m feeling reckless.

The same forgetfulness was true among most of the seven churches in Asia Minor who were addressed in Revelation 2-3. They were only a generation away from their apostolic founding, and already they had become too much conformed to the cultural darkness in which they existed.

Ezekiel 20 (vss. 40ff) proposes that Israel is to not only a pleasing aroma unto God, but is to manifest his holiness among the nations. So the apostle gives us the picture of the church spreading the fragrance of the knowledge of Christ everywhere, of being the aroma of Christ to God among those among whom we live (II Corinthians 2:14ff). That tells us something fascinating about the purpose of the church—not some stagnant pool of ‘religious Christianity’ but the church formed by joyous news of God’s gospel of peace in visible demonstration.

Be it known, then, that I want to work on that with you. What misunderstandings will we need to divest ourselves of, and what will be the macro forces that we will need to embrace in order to be that thrilled, equipped, joyous, spontaneous, reproductive community of God’s New Creation?

In my next Blog, I will try to explain to you who I am so you will know something of what forms my thinking. Stand by …

BLOG 1/6/14. THE CHURCH: AN ALTERNATIVE NARRATIVE

It is going to be my purpose, as we enter a new year, to initiate a journey into what can best be described as: an alternative narrative on the form and mission of the church. By this I intend to set aside all of our present experience of institutional Christianity, which is so familiar to us in the west, and project again into the church’s essence, its intended purpose and mission, its communal form as set forth in scripture. Be warned: there are layers of complexity here, and not a few hazards.

This may sound a bit grandiose, or arrogant, but not so. It actually is not something that I came up with on my own. There have been profound studies on this for several decades by those who are my mentors: Leslie Newbigin, Gerhard Lohfink, Jacques Ellul, Darrell Guder, and so many more. But I know that most of the readers of this Blog of mine have not read these sources that have so enriched me, and I want to provoke some fresh thinking on this alternative narrative while acknowledging my indebtedness to others.

Another of my responders has actually asked me to come up with 6-10 macro forces that will be needed to enter into a church if it is to be equipped to reach into the post-Christian culture which most of us experience day by day. Face it: the church is a stumbling block to many. There are so many crazy understandings of the church—not just among those outside the church, but by people who have spent their lives sitting in church meetings.

What I am purposing here is not really a new narrative at all, but the original narrative that has been displaced, diluted, or forgotten as the generations have unfolded. Nor is it a new dilemma. One only has to read the 7^th century prophets in the Old Testament to see that such was their message to Israel and Judah: “you have forgotten your calling and your purpose … you have forgotten the Torah, you have forgotten that you were to be a light to the nations. You have all of the accouterments of temple worship what with priests and sacrifices, but you have absorbed the cultural idols around you and have violated you calling to be God’s holy nation.” Those prophets were also warned that most wouldn’t have ears to hear what they were saying—and I suppose I face that same reality with my readers, but I’m feeling reckless.

The same forgetfulness was true among most of the seven churches in Asia Minor who were addressed in Revelation 2-3. They were only a generation away from their apostolic founding, and already they had become too much conformed to the cultural darkness in which they existed.

Ezekiel 20 (vss. 40ff) proposes that Israel is to not only a pleasing aroma unto God, but is to manifest his holiness among the nations. So the apostle gives us the picture of the church spreading the fragrance of the knowledge of Christ everywhere, of being the aroma of Christ to God among those among whom we live (II Corinthians 2:14ff). That tells us something fascinating about the purpose of the church—not some stagnant pool of ‘religious Christianity’ but the church formed by joyous news of God’s gospel of peace in visible demonstration.

Be it known, then, that I want to work on that with you. What misunderstandings will we need to divest ourselves of, and what will be the macro forces that we will need to embrace in order to be that thrilled, equipped, joyous, spontaneous, reproductive community of God’s New Creation?

In my next Blog, I will try to explain to you who I am so you will know something of what forms my thinking. Stand by …

BLOG 12/23/13. THIS IS A SERIOUS CAROL: “ … BE BORN IN US TODAY”

Allow me to toss this reflection to you before I sign off these blogs until after the first of the year. It is pretty normal to hear the Christmas carols so often that we sing them without a whole lot of reflection on what we’re singing. Some carols are pretty sentimental stuff. Others are loaded with gospel comprehension, such as the carol: Joy to the World. That carol may be as comprehensive a statement of the gospel of the kingdom as we have.

But I’m pondering the theme of my recent blogs on our calling to have Christ formed in us in knowledge, true righteousness, and holiness. The very reality that we have allowed our understanding of Christ’s calling to be something that leaves us passive in God’s design (which is to create all things new) underscores this endemic mindlessness that afflicts the church all too much. For instance, it is an interesting experiment to ask folk during this period in the church’s year to give a thoughtful understanding of joy, or peace, or good-will to men … to get much more than some inane and sentimental–certainly not a Biblical– response.

In the carol: O, Little town of Bethlehem is this petition: “O holy child of Bethlehem, be born in us today.” Have you ever wondered what in the world it would look like if the very life of God were incarnate in all who sing this—how convulsive and revolutionary it would be ethically, socially/civilly and economically were we all to be the flesh and blood expressions of the agenda of Jesus Christ. (It would make Pope Francis’ recent deliverance on the Gospel of Joy look tame!)

But it is such a formation of Christ in us that is precisely what God intends. Remember that Paul wrote: “ … my little children, for whom I am again in anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you” (Galatians 4:19).

To ‘cop-out’ and excuse oneself with the lame: “I’m only a layperson,” is near blasphemous. There is no clergy <> laity distinction in the New Testament. How long does it take to grow into maturity? The writer of the Hebrews rebukes, or shames, those to whom he is writing that when they should be teachers of others, they are still in need of being taught.

We have all too often been bamboozled by the excuse, or sophisticated lie, that some folk are sacralized and expected to be more knowledgeable and holy that the rest of us, i.e. ‘church professionals’ or ‘reverends,’ and so those to whom we are to defer. This is all so antithetical (inimical?) to the New Testament teachings that Christ is to be formed in all.

So be careful what you sing in these coming days.

And as a final shot, it is interesting that in the church’s liturgical year, Christmas day is followed on December 26^th by; The Feast of St. Stephen the Martyr—a recent believer who gave his life in his conscientious declaration and defense of Jesus as God’s Messiah!

So, with that I’ll sign off until early in 2014. Go in peace! And the Lord be with you.

BLOG 12/19/13. THE INCONGRUITY OF OUR CHRISTMAS OBSERVANCE

I think incongruous is the proper term for it.

Just stop and consider that, ostensibly, we in Christ’s church have (in times of integrity) observed the advent of God becoming flesh and blood in the person of Jesus … as a time to stop and stand in awe before the very idea of incarnation. It becomes the more awesome when we see exactly how that took place, and under what circumstances. God’s Son did not arrive with all of the accouterments of splendor and power, or with identification with the rich and powerful … but with peasants and shepherds, with the impoverished and powerless.

Or, as it stated: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, …”

And yet here we are lost in this orgy of extravagant—even obscene—consumerism and revelry and pretended merriment, all of which begins weeks beforehand (right after All Saints Day, would you believe?) so that the commercial interests can make the maximum of economic profits in the weeks leading up to this thing called ‘Christmas.’

It just doesn’t fit. And the church gets sucked right into the maelstrom of materialism, but adds its own touch of fine music, poinsettias, candlelight, and a mindless reading of the gospel accounts.

I say: mindless because if one reads Mary’s Magnificat, in context, it is so economically and socially radical that it could pass for communist propaganda: “My soul magnifies the Lord, … He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their heart; he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away. … in remembrance of his mercy…”

What does that have to do with the thing we now call ‘the Christmas celebration’? Somehow along the way in our history we took what was a much needed annual reminder of Christ’s advent, and then little-by-little combined it with the pagan festivals of the winter solstice—Yuletide and all of that—then we pulled in the myth of Saint Nicholas, and gift giving, etc., etc. until we come up with something that is now worshipping of mammon, and shopping malls become the new temples.

“ … though he was rich yet for our sakes he became poor.” Right? Or wrong? But, my critics will affirm: “It is how the merchants and corporations keep their profits up.” That reminds me of the dialogue between Ebenezer Scrooge and the ghost of Jacob Marley in which Scrooge is defending their business partnership in life in which he defended all of their greedy actions by the principle of making a profit. He says: “But that was our business, Jacob,” to which the ghost says, in essence, “No, Ebenezer, humankind was our business, and their welfare was our business.” (Never forget that Charles Dickens was a social reformer.)

At this moment in history, when merchants here want to make the largest profit ever, there are more homeless and hungry refugees in this world than there have ever been in the history of the world—ever!

So, Henderson, how do you propose we celebrate Christmas? I propose, first, reflecting on the ministry of Jesus, how he was born and how he inaugurated his public ministry with an announcement of good news to the poor. Then celebrate with simplicity, and with generosity to those wonderful people and agencies who are seeking to minister to the homeless poor around the globe—for starts. Merry Christmas!

BLOG 12/16/13. THE MILLENNIALS, THE CHURCH, AND ADVENT

There has been a recent spate of journal and web-site articles, along with many books, dealing with the response (or lack thereof) of the emerging generation to the church, and how “millennials are leaving the church.” On one hand, as cynics might observe, young adults, who have grown up in the church, not-infrequently leave it for a while to see what else is out there. Others of them like the security and familiarity of the in-house church culture and just continue in it somewhat routinely (mindlessly?).

But the generations of younger men and women among us who are emerging into adulthood are products of a new and different culture: one that is post-Christian, and is culturally without any patterns—something of a cultural whitewater. What is refreshing from my perspective is: that they’re asking the right questions about the church. They are asking: Why is the church? What is its purpose? What does it have to do with Jesus Christ? How does it demonstrate, or incarnate, anything that is necessary to my Christian discipleship, or to the mission of God? (Don’t skip over those questions too lightly.)

For a millennium and a half the church (especially in the west) has assumed an institutional form, which requires buildings and a whole class of church professionals (clergy, priests, reverends, etc.) none of which are mentioned in the New Testament documents in the form they have assumed. … And there are a large number of thoughtful younger adults who are observing this and asking the right questions, and looking for some insight into what Jesus was referring to when he said he would build his church.

As an aside—I was interested in an interview with Michael Dell (of Dell Computers), who when he was asked how his company weathered some severe internal tensions and emerged so healthy, answered that his staff did not invent something and then seek to market it, but asked their customers what they needed now, and would be needing in the future, and then came home and produced just such customized systems. Could the church do that? Old, traditional, institutional churches with all of their traditional accouterments are like main-frame computers of a former period of history. They are expensive. They don’t focus on making disciples. They don’t know who they are, or why they are. Their mission is their own survival … and there are many folk who are completely satisfied with that. But a new tide of pragmatic and inquisitive younger adults are not satisfied with that. I’m thrilled with the potential of what may emerge from them.

I am an octogenarian, but I am blessed with a wonderful company of such creative, bright, inquisitive, culturally alert friends from this emerging culture. I have spent endless hours with them over coffee/beer engaged with them in provocative conversations on this very subject. I have attempted to record the fruits of these conversations in my trilogy of books on missional ecclesiology—or on the what? and why? and “so what?” of the church. These books are my modest contribution to the conversation and I commend them to my readers of these Blogs.

They are: Enchanted Community: Journey Into the Mystery of the Church; Refounding the Church From the Underside; and The Church and the Relentless Darkness. In these books I have created a composite friend with whom to engage in dialogue on these questions. The books are available from Wipf and Stock Publishers, or from Amazon. I believe they are a healthy contribution to a much larger discussion. Advent celebrated the incarnation of God, and the church is the ongoing incarnation as God is incarnate in a New Creation community.

BLOG 12/11/13. CHRIST’S INCARNATION AND OURS: HOLINESS.

If you are like me, you don’t spend excessive amounts of time thinking about holiness … but in our continuing Blogs in this Advent Season about God recreating us into the image of Christ [see past two Blogs], along with being recreating in knowledge and true righteousness … we are also to be recreated in holiness. Add to that the fact that Peter writes: “… as he who called you is holy, you also must be holy in all your conduct” (I Peter 1:15); and another writer puts it this way: “Strive for … holiness without which no one will see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14).

These say that we have a clearer understanding of the image of God that walked among us in Jesus of Nazareth because of these descriptions of the image of God—but then it gets more serious, because these passages say that Jesus Christ is literally be reproduced in us in these same attributes of the image of God.

Yet, holiness remains an illusive word for most of us … even sometimes used pejoratively, or contemptuously, as when someone accuses another of thinking he is “holier than thou.” But that is just a ruse. We know from scripture that God calls out a holy people, so we need to get serious in understanding something of its flavor. Eugene Peterson paraphrases it as: God “accurately reproduces his character in us.” That has all kinds of implications. It has to do with our lives being in harmony, or “in synch” with who God is (that would include his passion for his lost and broken humanity!). It would include the reality that “through us [God in Christ] spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere” (II Corinthians 2:14).

When people observe our lives and our authenticity and our character, they ought to catch the sense of the wonder and love and grace of God. It is to be manifest in our daily walk. Let me attempt an example from my own experience. In my home church in Florida there were two very much loved elders, who were models of wonderful Christian discipleship: my dad (who was a mechanical engineer) and Mr. Reidhead (who was a salesman of some sort). Mr. Reidhead came after I had long-since left home, but I learned that he had a very prominent preacher-son, Paris Reidhead, who was pastor of a church just a couple of blocks off of Times Square in New York.

So one Sunday evening several of us decided to go hear Paris Reidhead, and so arrived a bit late at the church, and were ushered down front after the service had started. It was an edifying evening, but after the service Paris Reidhead approached me and said: “You have got to be Virgil Henderson’s son. When you walked in I sensed that just by your demeanor and presence. Is that true?” I was astounded. How had he seen my father in me? But somehow it communicated.

If Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase is anywhere close to accurate, then just as Paris Reidhead saw my father in me, so all those with whom we associate, and those who get close to us, should see the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ accurately reproduced in us. That’s the image of God into which we are to be recreated—to be incarnated–and that’s beautiful!

That should give us something to ponder in this Advent Season. Got it?

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