What is the Church and its mission in the world today? (essay)

In one of the last classes I took in seminary, my classmates and I were required to answer two questions throughout the semester, one of our own choosing and one assigned to us. We wrote short papers answering these questions from various angles, such as historical, biblical, theological, and so forth, and then we each synthesized our answers into two main papers. The following is my comprehensive summary paper responding to the question assigned to us, "What is the Church and its mission in the world today?"

Becoming Wholly Ourselves in Christ: The Church and its Mission in the World Today

When I began considering the question “What is the Church and its mission in the world today?”, I pictured a stone monastery with a cross, outside of which a group of people were moving away from the monastery over the bend of the world, perhaps toward other people.

Living Stones

Just as the people in my image emerge from a stone monastery, the Church comes from a living temple, Jesus Christ. Peter writes that the Church consists of “living stones” (1 Pet. 2:5) which make up a temple. Thus, not only does the Church come from a monastery; it is the monastery. Paul uses the metaphor of the Church as the “body of Christ” (1 Cor. 12:27). The Church is a people who emerge from and continue to embody Jesus Christ.

Historically, buildings have been important for the Church. The first Christians pooled together their resources and supported one another, meeting for worship in peoples’ homes. I experienced something like this growing up when, every Sunday, my family would worship together in our home. In college, I began attending a larger local congregation, where most of our activities together took place on the church grounds: we worshiped God and ate together in the sanctuary, and we played basketball with young people on the church basketball court.

Iona Abbey, Scotland

The word monastery comes from the Greek monos, for “alone.” Throughout the Church’s history, many Christians have sought holiness by establishing monastic communities away from cities and crowds of people. In their monastic communities, monks practiced humility and love through worshiping together, fasting, confessing the truth, and other spiritual disciplines. When Christians gather together for worship, they enter a spiritual gymnasium, a training ground or boot camp, a greenhouse which nurtures the seed of Christ so that it bears fruit. 

One of the primarily fertilizers that the Church uses is scripture, which witnesses to God’s work among Israel and the Church. Through the Torah, Israel reminded itself of God’s creating the world, delivering Israel, and guiding Israel how to live in the Promised Land or in exile. Through the prophets, Israel sought to turn itself back to God. Through the Psalms, Israel sang praises and grieved to God together. The Gospel writers told the good news of Jesus to illuminate and encourage. Peter, Paul, and John (as well as others) wrote epistles to guide the early Church amid questions and persecution. 

Through the scriptures, the Church talks to herself. While some scriptures are directed to people outside of Israel or the Church, most of them express internal communication. Through the scriptures, the Church reminds herself of God’s creating, saving, and restoring work in the world; encourages herself to obey the covenant of love for God and neighbor and to worship in truth; expresses to God all of her grief and joy; and works through the business of daily life.

The Church talks to herself regularly, at least once a week, and often on a Sunday morning. In so doing, the Church becomes a sanctuary in time. Many Christians mark time based on the coming, the birth, the life, the death, the resurrection, and the ongoing life of Jesus Christ. This Christian calendar comes from the Jewish calendar, which patterns each week after God’s creating the world in six days and resting on the seventh. Christians, too, rest on the Sabbath, though for them the Sabbath is Sunday, the day on which Jesus rose from the dead and the first day of the new creation. The Christian calendar is a stained glass window through which people can see God’s healing time itself, guiding it toward the Sabbath rest for all creation.

The prophet Isaiah foretold this coming Sabbath age when he described a banquet in Jerusalem to which God summoned all people (Isaiah 25:6-8); John envisioned it as the New Jerusalem (Revelation 21); and Hildegard of Bingen saw a time when “rivers of living water are to be poured out over the whole world, to ensure that people, like fishes caught in a net, can be restored to wholeness.”[1]  For Diana Butler Bass, this coming day is one of “universal hospitality” in which “the whole world will be made right through the boundless welcome of all to God’s table.”[2] 

In following the Christian calendar, the Church points to these visions of paradise and wholeness. For example, the three central days of the Christian year are Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday, which honor the death, rest, and resurrection of Jesus. These days, called the triduum, “forcefully made the point that God was with humanity to transform suffering into a joy-filled feast as the days move from crucifixion to celebration.”[3]  Through reliving Christ’s passion and victory, the Church proclaims that God redeems the suffering of humanity into life. 

During the dark ages, when Europe was plagued with violence, the Church announced a “Truce of God” in which “princes, nobles, and knights swore to desist from all warfare from Saturday to Monday and during the holy seasons of Lent and Advent.”[4]  Holy days were temporal sanctuaries when killing was prohibited. These times became visions of the peaceful coming reign of God. The sanctification of time expresses how the Church, in the words of Irenaeus of Lyon, has been “planted as a paradise in the world.”[5]

Thus, in the monastery, through regular public worship, the Church tells herself the hopeful story of Christ: Christ in the universe, in the world, in Palestine, in history, in wherever and whenever the Church finds herself. She does this because we become the stories we tell and hear, and the Church wants to become like Christ. 

The gospels say that when we lose our lives in Christ, we find them in Christ. In telling the story of Christ, not only does the Church become more Christlike; she becomes more herself, and each of her members becomes more fully themselves. The hymn “Take This Moment” by John Bell prays it this way: “Let my life be yours and yet / Let it still be me.”[6] Becoming whole in Christ is, in essence, the way of holiness.

The Call to Holiness

Although the whole Church is called to be holy, one denomination, the Church of the Nazarene, understands its particular calling to be “to advance God’s kingdom by the preservation and propagation of Christian holiness as set forth in the Scriptures.”[7]  Nazarenes’ understanding of holiness comes from John Wesley’s teaching that God desires and empowers believers to be purified from sin and to live in perfect love for God and neighbor.[8]  This “entire sanctification” is a gift of the Holy Spirit, a grace which follows justification, or the forgiveness of sins.[9] 

The Church of the Nazarene has sought holiness in three main ways: purity, compassionate ministry to the urban poor, and evangelizing the world. While these streams of holiness are distinct among the Church of the Nazarene, they illustrate larger responses within the Church to the call to holiness. 

To be pure means to be clean, set apart from that which is impure. The walls of the monastery are membranes dividing behaviors and attitudes between the culture of Christ and cultures contrary to God’s ways. 

For example, the U.S. has the strongest military in the world, and its movies, songs, and video games promote a violent and “hyper-masculine”[10] culture. The Church, however, reminds us of Jesus’ command to “Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword” (Matt. 26:52, NRSV). The U.S. is the richest nation in the world, and its commercials call us to worship sleek cars, skin, and technology. The Church, however, teaches that we do not need to worry about what we will eat, drink, and wear, but to “seek first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matt. 6:33). Where U.S. and other cultures divide us based on ethnicity, socio-economic status, and gender, in the Church “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28, NRSV). When U.S. culture demands us to be productive, working long hours seven days a week, the Church reminds us of Jesus’ invitation to “Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28). The Church cultivates an alternative way which gives life.

Thus, the Church can learn much from the biblical prophets, whom God called to announce messages and visions. While many of the prophets preached to the Israelites, some, such as Jonah, preached to the non-Israelite Ninevites, whose wicked culture God threatened to annihilate. When the Ninevites heard God’s message through Jonah, they repented, resulting in their salvation. Like Jonah, the Church is called to proclaim God’s messages to the world. Here we return to my image of a people who, after having told herself the story of Christ in the monastery, now leaves the monastery to tell that story to the world.

Welcoming the World

The story of Christ is also the good news, or Gospel, of Christ. The mission of the Church in the world is to proclaim the Gospel to the world. The Church does this through her actions and words. Just as the Gospel cultivates wholeness in Christ among the Church, it also cultivates wholeness in Christ among the world. Thus, proclaiming the Gospel is an act of holiness. This brings us to the second and third streams of holiness for the Church of the Nazarene: compassionate ministry to the urban poor and evangelizing the world. 

The Church of the Nazarene named itself after Jesus, who came from the town of Nazareth, of whom it was said “Can anything good come from there?” (John 1:46). The first Nazarene congregation agreed that “the field of labor to which we feel especially called is in the neglected quarters of the cities and wherever also may be found waste places and souls seeking pardon and cleansing from sin.”[11] Nazarenes find wholeness through telling good news to and living with the poor.

This calling is not only for Nazarenes, but for the global Church. The U.S. and the rest of the West are, in the words of the Iona Abbey Worship Book, “privileged and tired of being privileged.”[12]  With that privilege the West has directly and indirectly violated the weakest and poorest members of the world, both humans and other members of creation. With those abuses come, and will come, moral injury or shame for what we have done. Ministry to the poor includes speaking truthfully to power on their behalf and seeking justice for them. It involves repenting of the Church’s own turning aside from society’s outcasts and calling the West to repent, praying in the hope that one day “salvation [will] come to this house” (Luke 19:9).

In my image, the monastery is not only a place of refuge for the Church, but for the world. Historically, monasteries were places of hospitality for strangers and travelers, and many monks believed that Christ often disguised himself as a stranger. The Church is called to welcome strangers, foreigners, and hungry people, feeding them with Christ, fellowship, and physical food. In so doing, the Church lives into its vision of the Sabbath banquet.

The Church’s welcoming the world into the banquet prepared by Jesus is the Church’s evangelizing the world. Evangelization means preaching the Gospel, the story of Jesus Christ, whose life and death was a banquet for all who welcomed and welcome him, and whose resurrection proves that the feast continues and awaits us. 

Jesus told a parable comparing the kingdom of heaven to a wedding banquet. In the parable, the king tells his slaves, “Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet” (Matt. 22:9, NRSV). This is evangelism: going to people and inviting them to the feast of Christ, the wedding celebration between Christ and the Church, the redemption of the world.

Good News for All

After reflecting on the question “What is the Church and its mission in the world today?” for several weeks, a new image comes to mind: a globe. Perhaps this suggests that the Church is scattered throughout the world. Or perhaps the whole world is God’s Church, speaking to itself in many dialects, sometimes succeeding and often failing at embodying Christ and the Gospel. 

Such a vision contradicts my inclination to separate Christianity from other religions, the holy from the profane, the Church from the world. It also seems arrogant to impose the title “Church” on all people, many of whom tell their own stories of God or the nature of existence and would likely not appreciate my calling the world the bride and body of Christ.  

However, the story of Christ is supposed to be good news for all of creation. If not, then how can it be good news for any of it? When I perform music, usually the songs through which I connect best with the audience are the songs which are the most meaningful to me. I believe the same is true of the Gospel. What is good news for me is good news for others; what is good news for one is good news for all. 

If the gospels are correct in saying that when we lose our lives in Christ, we find them in Christ, then perhaps the story of Christ is good news for the world because, if the world accepts Christ, the world will become as God intends it to be: fully herself, and all of her inhabitants fully themselves. The Church understands Christ to be the incarnation of the Word “through whom all things came into being,” and the life who is “the light of all people” (John 1:3-4). Thus, this Word is present in all things, including the world. It may express itself differently, but we should be able to recognize it based on Jesus Christ.

The Church, then, is potentially all of us: just as the Word took on flesh in Jesus, Christ desires to live through us all, and our mission is to teach people to listen to that Word, to dwell in the light of Christ, and so live. The more faithfully we respond to Christ, the more we become the Church, the more we become like Christ, and the more we become wholly ourselves.

~

[1] Diana Butler Bass, A People’s History of Christianity (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2009), 291.           

[2] Ibid., 302.

[3] Ibid. 52-53.

[4] Ibid., 133.

 

[5] Ibid., 52-53.

[6] John L. Bell, "Take This Moment." Copyright © 2014, WGRG, Iona Community, Glasgow, G2 3DH, Scotland. wgrg@iona.org.uk; www.wgrg.co.uk Reproduced by permission.

[7] Manual/2009-2013 Church of the Nazarene (United States of America: Beacon Hill Press, 2009), 5.

[8] John Wesley, A Plain Account of Christian Perfection.

[9] Mark R. Quanstrom, A Century of Holiness Theology (Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press, 2004), 96. 

[10] Rita Nakashima Brock, ESR Willson Lectures, 2014. 

 

[11] Floyd Cunningham, Ed. Our Watchword and Song: The Centennial History of the Church of the Nazarene (Kansas City:  Beacon Hill Press, 2009), 100.

[12] The Iona Community, Iona Abbey Worship Book (Glasgow: Wild Goose Publications, 2001), 180.

As you led your people in the wilderness (song)

As you led your people in the wilderness
Guiding daily with a cloud and flame
Lead us now through all of our uncertainty
Let us know your presence still remains.

As you fed your people in the wilderness
Every day, enough to fill their bowls
Satisfy our hunger with our daily bread
Fill us with your word which makes us whole.

As you gave your people in the wilderness
Water sweet and flowing from a stone
Give us living water that will not run dry
May we drink from gardens we have grown.

As you saved your people in the wilderness
From the army that chased them through the sea
Deliver us from those who use and harm us
From evil laws and leaders set us free.

As you taught your people in the wilderness
How to walk and follow all your ways
Write your law upon our hearts that we may live
In love for you, our life a song of praise.

Because you brought your people through the wilderness
To the land you promised, full of rest
Though we are lost and cannot see, we hope in you
You are the way. We trust that you know best.


Written by Josh Seligman

Click here to hear a version of this hymn.
Click here to read more about this hymn. 

A sky shepherd (poem)

The tips of towers,
the lines of lights and satellites
look just like stars
but I know, now,
what a star looks like.

A star stands still
shedding light wave after wave
clapping, overlapping, somersaulting--
some are weeping
but none are sleeping.

A star can never sleep.
Its work is play, its night is day
fighting to pray even for us:
All we like sheep have gone astray
But I know that a star will stay.

"Wait for the LORD": Advent sermon, Isaiah 64:1-9

I confess that I sang Christmas carols during Advent, so perhaps it balances things out by posting this Advent sermon during Christmas season. And though Christmas has come, I believe this message is still relevant. I preached it at Southeast Church of the Nazarene on the first Sunday of Advent, 2014.  



Isaiah 64:1-9
 

Isaiah was a prophet who proclaimed God’s message, mainly to Judah, about 700 years before Christ. This was during the time the Assyrian Empire had conquered Israel and Judah.

Many believe that Isaiah’s disciples continued proclaiming God’s word in Isaiah’s footsteps, and that this occurred centuries after Isaiah died. If this is true, it is likely that our passage tonight was written in the 500s, after the Babylonian Empire had defeated the Assyrians and captured the Israelites, and then after the Persian Empire had conquered the Babylonians. In 538, the Persian leader Cyrus the Great allowed the Israelites to return home from captivity. It may be during this time of return from exile that our passage was written.

Unlike many passages in the book of Isaiah, which tend to be God’s messages to Judah or the surrounding nations, Isaiah 64:1-9 is part of a prayer to God.

So it begins:

“Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down,
that the mountains would tremble before you!
As when fire sets twigs ablaze
and causes water to boil,
come down to make your name known to your enemies
and cause the nations to quake before you!
For when you did awesome things that we did not expect,
you came down, and the mountains trembled before you.”

The prophet prays that God would show God’s power through great supernatural, destructive acts—that God himself would come down, and by descending, cause the earth and its nations to tremble in fear! The prophet writes on behalf of a people returning to a home that is alien; their temple, their walls, their fields are ruinous and barren, and the great hope they had been expecting—God’s deliverance—wasn’t as they imagined it to be. The prophet asks God to reveal himself so that the nations would know of God’s power and the source of Israel’s strength. He asks God to reveal himself maybe also so that the Israelites themselves would again believe. 

On one level it is difficult for me to relate to this. To my knowledge, neither I nor my immediate ancestors have lived as prisoners and refugees and then returned home, only to find our home disappointing.

Yet I have felt disappointed, have felt that my expectations of reality did not match my actual experience of it. As a member of the body of Christ, these words in Isaiah seem to unearth feelings I did not realize I had. We as Christians have returned home from exile, the exile of sin; we have been returning home ever since Jesus declared “It is finished” on the cross. And when he rose again, he showed us that God has already begun creating a new heavens and a new earth, planting streams and a garden in the desert, preparing a banquet to feed all nations. 

Yet we have dwelled in this age that is supposed to be our home for thousands of years—and it is disappointing. In many places the temple seems to be crumbling, the walls are brittle, and the land is dry and cracked. Yes, the church has done much good over the centuries, but she has also been faithless, joining hands with empires more powerful than Assyria or Babylon. So often she is difficult to distinguish from unjust rulers. Yes, many of us are secure, but often it is a security not in God but in what we have mastered with our hands, walls made of sand. Yes, we may be fed, but so much of the world is not, and the earth and many of its people are crying out. 

And where is God? If only God would show himself as he once did, with fire and wonder! If only God would show our enemies—would show us—that God still performs miracles to save us. If only God would finally live among us and make things right, once and for all! Hasn’t enough time passed? 

Maybe we too have whispered this prayer from Isaiah:

“Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down,
that the mountains would tremble before you!
As when fire sets twigs ablaze
and causes water to boil,
come down to make your name known to your enemies
and cause the nations to quake before you!
For when you did awesome things that we did not expect,
you came down, and the mountains trembled before you.”

The prophet continues:

“Since ancient times, no one has heard, no ear has perceived,
no eye has seen any God besides you,
who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.
You come to the help of those who gladly do right,
who remember your ways.”

This is who God is: God works for those who wait for him, and helps those who gladly do right and remember God’s ways. 

Throughout the book of Isaiah we see what it means to wait for God, to gladly do right and remember God’s ways. It means to be still and trust God. It means to release unjust burdens and cancel debts, to care for strangers and welcome them into our homes, to not hide from our families.

Now that I have spoken those words, I find the prophet’s next words to be almost comforting. They speak on my behalf as someone who needs to wait upon God, to gladly do right, and remember God’s ways.

Verses 5-7:

“But when we continued to sin against them, you were angry.
How then can we be saved?
All of us have become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;
we all shrivel up like a leaf,
and like the wind our sins sweep us away.
No one calls on your name
or strives to lay hold of you,
for you have hidden your face from us
and made us waste away because of our sins.”

The prophet cries that God has hidden from God’s people because of the people’s sins. That is why God will not come down; that is why God has not acted and helped God’s people. That is why God’s people have decayed.

How then can we be saved?

The prophet looks not to other people, and not to himself, but to God for salvation.

Verses 8 and 9:

“Yet, O LORD, you are our Father.
We are the clay, you are the potter;
we are all the work of your hand.
Do not be angry beyond measure, O LORD;
do not remember our sins forever.
Oh, look upon us, we pray,
for we are all your people.”

The prophet’s hope is in God—the parent who gave birth to and has guided Israel; the potter who has sculpted her into a beautiful jar fit for service; the one to whom Israel belongs, the one who is responsible for Israel. 

We are here tonight because we know that God did answer the prophet’s prayer: God did come down, though in a way no one expected. The mountains trembled beneath singing in the sky, and mighty leaders quaked at the news that a King would be born—that God would come in the most vulnerable of forms, as a baby. God did act on behalf of those who waited for him, and did help those who gladly did right and remembered his ways. 

But we are in Advent, not Christmas. First we must wait. This is why some people don’t sing Christmas carols during Advent—they wait until Christmas, or until they can hold out no longer, whichever comes first. During Advent we wait with Israel, given a promise that God will bring salvation, but uncertain if the promise will be fulfilled.

What helps us identify with Israel is that we are in a similar situation. We too are waiting—for Jesus to come a second time, and for God to completely deliver us from sin and transform the world, replacing weeping with laughing. And like Israel returning home from exile, we too may find that home—this age we live in—is not as we imagined it to be. We are glad to be home, don’t get me wrong, but it is not the home we were hoping for, at least not yet. Jesus has not yet returned. And some of us may wonder where God even is, why God does not seem to be doing anything, and if Jesus ever will return. 

Like he did to Israel, the prophet encourages us in our time: wait for the LORD, and he will act on your behalf. Gladly do right and remember God’s ways, and God will help you. Find your strength in quietness and trust, and as you watch for the morning, shine your light by sharing with those who have little and by comforting the restless. 

Advent reminds us that we are called to wait for God. This isn’t passive idleness, or complete absence of thought; when we wait for someone, we keep our eyes out, alert and expecting to find that person around the corner. If we don’t wait, we might miss the arrival. If we don’t wait, we might not be ready to welcome the homecoming. Maybe, through our waiting for God, we begin to reflect the character of God, and so become vessels through which God works in the world.

As we wait for the promised day when Jesus comes down for a second time, may we find that through his Spirit he is present with us individually and as the church, making his name known, causing the nations and mountains to tremble, and doing awesome things that we do not expect. May God forgive us anew for times we have failed to live up to our calling, and may God fulfil in us God’s word because God is our Father and our Maker, and we are God’s people. 

Many Christians practice a form of worship called waiting worship. After I close, I invite us to spend some time waiting, together, for God. By waiting together here for a short time, we can strengthen each other to become people who wait with our whole lives. If you feel prompted to speak a word for the whole group, you are welcome to do so. We believe that when we wait for the LORD, God acts--though in ways we may not always understand. Our time of waiting will end with our final song. May we be refreshed in the Lord’s presence as we wait for him.

Why I haven't been blogging lately

Yesterday my friend Alec told me he noticed I haven't been blogging lately. I told him that in large part it's because I do not know who reads my blog, and who I am writing to.

I started this blog when many of my friends were blogging. I read their interesting thoughts and wanted to share my own thoughts with them. Some thoughts, maybe, have been interesting, and some not so much. However, most of those friends no longer blog, or at least not regularly. Still, I have often shared my thoughts on this blog when I felt inspired to do so. I haven't felt that way lately (except, apparently, for this blog post, but this is a little different).

It's been six years since I first wrote in this blog. During that time I've grown and changed, and the way I express my thoughts and experiences has also changed. On one hand it's nice to keep up a blog for such a long time, but on the other hand I feel more embarrassed with each new post about what I once wrote. If I am to write as a form of ministry, I believe my writing must ultimately love, serve, and bless God and the readers. But not all of my posts have been intended to be for ministry. Many of them have been simply for fun or personal expression, and sometimes they have been sloppy.

So these are things I'll be thinking about. Maybe I'll start a new blog and focus on writing as ministry, a blog intended for a wider audience than my friends (but including my friends too of course). Maybe I'll continue writing in this blog but change my approach. In the meantime, however, I am posting this entry to offer some of my thoughts about blogging, and to express gratitude to my friend, perhaps among the very few who will read this, for encouraging me to write.

A Hopeful Advent and a Merry Christmas to all of you.

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