Peace to Men on Whom his Favor Rests

We did lectio last night on Luke 2:1-20, and it was interesting to see how much God was speaking to us about the shepards' prominence in the Christmas story. There is much to be said about this, but I'm literally writing this on the fly in the middle of madness at work on the last day before Christmas vacation.

What God showed me through our discussion and mediation time was how the proclamation by the "heavenly host" to the shepherds - "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests!" - has a direct link to the Sermon on the Mount, particularly the Beatitudes. This is a precursor to the message Jesus would bring, "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God...." Why did God reveal his glory to a few outcast shepherds during that night of raucous celebration in heaven? Because that is the nature of the kingdom this infant was bringing to earth. This birth would not be celebrated in the royal palace or the temple of the religious establishment, but in a podunk town amongst stinky animals and nobody shepherds.

Welcome to the kingdom! Merry Christmas!

A New Vision Statement

I have questioned the legitimacy of things like vision statements for churches in the past, but if our church had to have one, it would be something like this:

"We follow the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were."

The neat thing about this statement is that I stole it from someplace very familiar, yet often overlooked. More than likely, given the context of where I found the phrase (I added the "We follow" part), most people gloss right over these wonderful words and miss their meaning and power. "The God who gives life to the dead..." of course speaks to the resurrection, both of Jesus and of ours as his children and heirs. But I would add that it also speaks to the little "resurrections" that are happening all around us, every day, as God's Spirit is re-forming and re-shaping us into his image. This has echoes of the "already, but not yet" of God's kingdom, of which we are experiencing the first fruits of new life but are still looking for the fullness of the life to come.

However, it is the second part, "...and calls things that are not as though they were," that really brings out the kingdom colors in this phrase / vision. God's kingdom, where his will is done on earth as it is in heaven, is and always has been about turning nothing into something. Story after story in the scriptures, both Old Testament and New, are about God accomplishing his purposes through people and events that would typically be thought of as absolute disasters, or at least, longshots to produce anything worthwhile. I could name a few examples, but the list would grow so quickly it is not worth even attempting. Open the Bible anywhere, and you see where all hope is lost, death is certain, unending suffering is guaranteed - things that do not exist become as though they did.

This is the mission heart of God. And this is where he is calling his people to follow.

By the way, the phrase is from the Apostle Paul, Romans 4:17.

It Starts and Ends With the Kingdom

For the past few hundred years, missions has been seen as something that the church supports, supplies workers for, or simply ignores as the task of an entirely separate entity. The relationship between missionaries and churches has never been as cozy as everyone would like to think. Generally, missionaries see the church as a local, static entity structured for spiritual nourishment alone. Churches tend to romanticize missionaries, but see them as somewhat untethered or even a bit rebellious. In the past generation, the lines have gotten more blurry as church planting movements expanded overseas and missionary organizations focused on building up indigenous churches. But only until very recently has the idea of "mission" become something regularly and seriously talked about as a normal component of church life in America.
A quick google of "missional church" will bring back about 250,000 links filled with articles, blog posts, book reviews, and general discussion. This, in my opinion, is a healthy sign that the breach between what has been traditionally seen as "missions" and "church" is being repaired. Churches are beginning to see that missions is something more than what happens in Africa or when the youth group goes to Costa Rica for a week. The question is becoming not "How can our church support missions?" but rather "How can our church participate in God's mission to the world?"

For me, the conversation hit my radar screen when I picked up a book on my friend's bookshelf back in Gainesville, Missional Church, A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America. This book was co-written by six scholars and church leaders who had been heavily influenced by the writings of Lesslie Newbigin and a conversation on "Gospel and Culture" that began in the mid-eighties in Great Britain. I first read the book in 1999, a year after it was published. At the time, I was beginning to wonder deeply about the nature of church, discipleship, and the significance of God's kingdom. This book helped to further spark my imagination towards new alternatives for living as God's people in a postmodern context.

Like many others around that time, I began to be convinced that postmodernity had created a new mission field right in our own North American backyard. However, I quickly became dissatisfied with how the church was generally responding to this missionary task. Retrofitting the youth building with couches and mood lighting, hiring an art director, and playing Gregorian chants before the service did not seem to be an adequate response. I began to see that the core of this transition was theological rather than simply dressing up the familiar in a "culturally relevant" package. It was not, contrary to popular opinion at the time, just window dressing to reach the postmodern crowd. There was something deeper going on that spoke to the essence of church and would radically change our understanding of mission.

As the title of this post reads, It Starts and Ends With the Kingdom. The kingdom of God is the context for where this new vision of church and mission begins to make sense. It is also the context where an attempt to introduce Jesus into a foreign culture is possible. Without an adequate understanding of the kingdom, we are left hiding (and fighting) behind our denominational hang-ups or meeting organizational goals. For example, you can often hear churches speak of their work as "building" or "extending" the kingdom of God. However, "this treats the church's mission as a sales project. The church attempts to provide an expanded place where the reign of God may reside. Functionally, the church becomes the CEOs, promoters, or sales force for the reign of God." (Missional Church, pg. 93) The kingdom vision that Jesus proclaimed is not something we build through our organizational efforts. As he says in Luke 18:17, "Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a child will never enter it." This is God's kingdom, his reign, and he is asking us to join him in what he is already doing.

Of course, this does not mean we sit idly by why God does his thing. Life in this kingdom is radically different than how we are used to living in this world and automatically puts us at odds with the status quo. The kingdom is earmarked by values such as love, forgiveness, peace, mercy, holiness, grace, service. True power in this kingdom comes from the bottom rather than the top. Sacrifice and suffering are familiar friends. In other words, the hubris of our efforts to save the world for Jesus pretty much fall flat in comparison to the kingdom's beauty and simplicity. It is both the safest and most terrifying place to live on the planet.

In the coming weeks before our trip to Peru, I am planning to use this space to discuss how the kingdom is changing our view of mission and how the church can be a part of what God is doing both here and abroad. Much of this will be wondering out loud how the message of the kingdom might break down cultural barriers and allow us to have a mutually beneficial relationship with our Peruvian brothers and sisters. Any questions or comments are, as always, welcomed and encouraged.