becoming

In chapter 1, Jesus and Israel, Lohfink attempts to bridge the connection between the first 2 petitions of the Lord’s prayer, with the re-gathering Israel:

What is really meant by the prayer, now so strange to us, that God sanctify his name? Once again the answer is given in the Old Testament, in Ezekiel 36. There it is said that the name of God has been desecrated by the dispersal of Israel among the nations. As a result of this, all the nations say: “So this is the people of God! This Yahweh must be a miserable God, if he is unable to preserve his own people from the loss of their land!” (cf. Ezek. 36:20).

Quoting from Ezek. 36:22-24, he continues:

The text clearly shows that God himself will sanctify his name. He will sanctify it by gathering Israel in the last days from all over the world, renewing it, and making it again into a holy people.

… “Sanctify your name” — this means, in other words, nothing other than “Gather and renew your people! Let it become anew the true people of God!” Jesus was obviously convinced that this eschatological gathering of the people by God had already begun now, just as the coming of the kindgom was now taking place. And Jesus was convinced that the gathering of the people and the coming of the kindgom were occurring through him. For when Jesus acted, God acted. Precisely this was Jesus’ mystery.

Lohfink further concludes (with reference to Matt 10:6) that Jesus did not envision a mission to the Gentiles. How then do the Gentiles achieve salvation? Not “become believers as a result of missionary activity; rather, the fascination emitted by the people of God draws them close.” To Lohfink, this explains why Jesus “turned so automatically to Israel alone” because “Jesus had to work in Israel, for only if the light of the reign of God shone in God’s people would it be possible for the nations to undertake the eschatological pilgrimage.” (19)

Knowing that Matt 11.8:11-12 was originally functioned as a threat directed again Israel, Lohfink draws the parable of the great banquet in Luke 14:16-24 to further describe the crisis of Israel and her failure. The Twelve functions “not only a sign promising salvation, but also a sign of judgement. At the last judgement they will testify against Israel if Israel does not repent.” (22)

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At this point, it is not clear as to what Israel should repent from? Lohfink seems to hint that Israel rejection of Jesus re-gathering of God’s people was indeed the issue. In light of this, are we to assume the death of Jesus simply as “God’s plan (to regather) went wrong”? Was Jesus’ mission a re-gathering of the Twelve to be light of the world through His death and resurrection, or were they just tragic consequences with which the Son of God perceived as one possible outcome? If the Jewish people had more or less rejected His call, how much of what He had called could still be considered as a regathering of Israel? Was it re-gathering, or re-constituting?

And to ask a hypothetical question — if Israel were to accept Jesus’ call, would the cross still be necessary?

Lohfink continues in the preface:

Not long ago there was a report in the newspapers that church agencies in Berlin had established a mobile unit, an automobile equipped with short-wave radio, in which a priest, a physician and a psychologist could be summoned immediately at any hour of the day or night. That sounds very up to date: the church, in a sense, at the front, modern technology in service of the reign of God. But in reality this ecclesiastical mobile unit is a highly questionable symnol of what the church has largely become in our society: a church which takes care of the individual, an institution which offers its wares to a group of individuals.

This conception corresponds exactly to the situation of our consumer society, which Gisbert Greshake recently compared to a large supermarket. Everyone moves around with a cart and picks out what he likes and needs. In the giant “Supermarket West Germany” there is among many other things a section which offers religious products to individuals. Responsibility for this section lies with the churches. Society is very anxious that this corner remain occupied; the stock should be complete  It seems to me that the mobile religious unit in Berlin is a perfect symbol of this supermarket-church, which takes care of individuals, provides for them, and leaves them in their anonymity.

Of course Lohfink was describing the German Catholic church in the early 80’s. It is rather interesting to recall how the late 19th century liberal theology had reduced church and salvation into individualistic and profoundly spiritualized/internalized forms. In such sense, a striking resemblance can be found easily among many Chinese churches today (yet their theologies are anything but liberal!). The supermarket analogy is simply dead on in today’s church. Hence it begs the question — if contradicting theologies can produce similar phenomenon, what’s the real driving force behind it?

I decided to re-read Lohfink’s book Jesus and Community. Here are some of the quotes from his book and at times, I will write down some questions and/or comments.

Preface:

It is not much of an exaggeration to say that Jesus could not have founded a church since there had long been one — God’s people, Israel. Jesus directed his efforts to Israel. He sought to gather it in view of the coming reign of God and to make it into the true people of God. What we now call church is nothing other than the community of those ready to live in the people of God, gathered by Jesus and sanctified by his death. From this perspective, it is foolish to look to the historical Jesus for a formal act of founding the church. But it is very meaningful to ask how Jesus gathered Israel and how he envisioned the community of the true Israel, because right here we reach the ultimately decisive question of what the church should look like today. (p. xi)

A question I have always been asking: if Jesus’ work is “merely” about the gathering of (the true) Israel, what makes his death and resurrection unique then? Any prophets (like John the baptist) can call God’s people to repent and return, why Jesus? How can we stress the continuation of Israel-Church, without undermining the work of the Messiah?

MAINTENANCE OR MISSION?
Weekly Message from Bishop Will Willimon 10.23.2006

From http://www.crossmarks.com – an article by Harold Percy, “Good News People.” I very much liked its contrast between “maintenance” and “mission” as well as its stress on “effectiveness” being a mutually shared matter between pastor and congregation. The only thing I would add is that “effectiveness” is not only a matter of the faithfulness of pastor and congregation but also of God’s Holy Spirit working through us and our shared ministries!

1. In measuring the effectiveness, the maintenance congregation asks, “How many pastoral visits are being made? The mission congregation asks, “How many disciples are being made?”

2. When contemplating some form of change, the maintenance congregation says, “If this proves upsetting to any of our members, we won’t do it.” The mission congregation says, “If this will help us reach someone on the outside, we will take the risk and do it.”

3. When thinking about change, the majority of members in a maintenance congregation ask, “How will this affect me?” The majority of members in the mission congregation ask, “Will this increase our ability to reach those outside?”

4. When thinking of its vision for ministry, the maintenance congregation says, “We have to be faithful to our past.” The mission congregation says, “We have to be faithful to our future.”

5. The pastor in the maintenance congregation says to the newcomer, “I’d like to introduce you to some of our members.” In the mission congregation the members say, “We’d like to introduce you to our pastor.”

6. When confronted with a legitimate pastoral concern , the pastor in the maintenance congregation asks, “How can I meet this need?” The pastor in the mission congregation asks, “How can this need be met?”

7. The maintenance congregation seeks to avoid conflict at any cost (but rarely succeeds). The mission congregation understands that conflict is the price of progress, and is willing to pay the price. It understands that it cannot take everyone with it. This causes some grief, but it does not keep it from doing what needs to be done.

8. The leadership style in the maintenance congregation is primarily managerial, where leaders try to keep everything in order and running smoothly. The leadership style in a mission congregation is primarily transformational, casting a vision of what can be, and marching off the map in order to bring the vision into reality.

9. The maintenance congregation is concerned with their congregation, its organizations and structure, its constitutions and committees. The mission congregation is concerned with the culture, with understanding how secular people think and what makes them tick. It tries to determine their needs and their points of accessibility to the Gospel.

10. When thinking about growth, the maintenance congregations asks, “How many Lutherans live within a twenty-minute drive of this church?” The mission congregation asks, “How many unchurched people live within a twenty-minute drive of this church?”

11. The maintenance congregation looks at the community and asks, “How can we get these people to support our congregation?” The mission congregation asks, “How can the Church support these people?”

12. The maintenance congregation thinks about how to save their congregation. The mission congregation thinks about how to reach the world.

[link: John Mark Ministries]

「誰以為有誰偷走了他的教會，其實就是把基督的教會偷了，當作是自己私人的東西。」

羅牧的舊文，忽然想起，藉得再讀。

A thought-provoking sharing from Roger over at simplechurchjournal.com:

… As mentioned, starting house churches and discipling viral disciplers (who gather in house churches) might look very similar on the outside.  But the process is very different!  When we start house churches, our focus tends to be on the gathering—what to do, how to do it, what it looks like, etc.  We say to ourselves that we are learning to “be” the church 24/7 (and we may even go do missional things), but often our priority remains on developing the structure/form of simple house church gatherings.  When following Jesus and inviting others to follow him becomes our focus (discipling viral disciples), we will have to shift from the “gathering” mentality to the “lifestyle-going” mentality.  This shift changes the processes we walk out from top to bottom.  And, this shift will propel us from being church-starters to movement starters (where churches spring up along the way).

There is much more to share about the process of discipling viral disciplers, but suffice it to say that it does ask us to examine our own “followership” as a starting point.  Jesus, the adventurous, undomesticated, on-the-move God invites us to join him daily where He is working.  What does that look like for me today?  What does it really mean for me, today, to be the church (Jesus’ follower) in the world?  From that starting point, we can begin to look at and grasp a process that will “infect” others who will then “infect” others to fully follow Jesus.  Ah… a movement!

Read it all here.

If being gospel-centered and being gospel community-centered are the two overarching principles to govern the practice of church and mission, I guess what we need to ask is this: where should the gospel community be found today? Should they be found or confined to a building, or should they be going (individually and communally) out, making disciples of Christ? Is the community of faith formed through gatherings, or with practices and actions? Or both?

As a Christian, don’t you feel that you are constantly invited to para-church “fund-raising dinners”, “walkathons”, or “vision-sharing nights” throughout the year? Besides begging for more money to save their financial statements that are blinking in bright red, you would also hear endless complaints of lacking resources, lacking space, lacking staff, lacking volunteers…… even though they have already sucked up most of the time and energy of regular parishioners, leaving vacuums in church ministries.

Don’t you feel tired of hearing those “same old, same old” by Fall every year? Anson raised an interesting question on what it might mean to the numerous Para-church Organizations (PCOs) during the time of a Financial Crisis.

And don’t forget to follow the even more thought-provoking exchange between him and our friend Alan@afc in the comment section!

[Anson, stop playing your guitar and those Jenga/Tetris/99 bricks!! You need to write more posts like this!]

My good friend Anson on the idolatry of the glamorous church.

I had this experience just the previous weekend, when a few brothers and sisters from my church attended a wedding ceremony at another church. Many of them expressed a deep appreciation of the beauty of the church building, while to me, without denying the aesthetics beauty of it, I’m much more concern about the rotten theology and worldview of the church (ie. the people) itself.

On deeper thought, isn’t that the dichotomy we always found ourselves in? Either we look at the building at awe and assume the people likewise, or we look at the people and than negate the apparent beauty which the building conveys. A church building is just a space. Whether outsiders know what is really going on among those worshiping inside it, a church building can still arouse certain emotion just by entering it. There is no right or wrong here. Just impulses and responses. We just can’t link the aesthetics beauty of a building (or lack of) to the people, and/or g/God that they worship, and vice versa.

And on the theology side, I think we have a strong tendency to resurrect the Temple Theology back into our times — a physical building that symbolizes and signifies the presence of God. I have a problem with that. Like Anson, I am not against aesthetics; but if I understand the NT correctly, Jesus had, time and time again, fought against such an idea. The presence of God is not to be found in a building with a physical address attached to it; it is to be found in the person Jesus Christ. Jesus gathered his disciples not around the Temple in Jerusalem, he gathered them around himself.

There is a lot more to be said, like the way we think certain place in a church (building) is more scared than others (I was brought up not to eat or drink in the so-called “Sanctuary”). This is not a comment based purely on tidiness, there is something deeply theological behind it. Paul Stevens of Regent wrote some good (and to some, controversial) reflections on this.

One more thing, Anson mentioned “a trend in the postmodern church falling into the lure of glamor, vulnerable to its deception”, but I thought it is the other way around. Mega-churches and the prosperity gospel go almost hand in hand on this — both however, are very “modern” phenomena. The church that are more sensitive to the postmodern culture, tends to focus less on the building and more on its mission. I have yet to visit Mars Hill in Michigan, but from what I gathered so far their church building, even though it is a renovated old shopping mall and can seat a little less than 4000, it is really not that impressive or glamorous, compare to these.

[Related: What’s in a building?]

N.B. In protest, I reject the temptation to get an image with this post that depicts glamour.