The following reflections will be regarding the lectures from MC500: Church in Mission, in which I am currently enrolled at Fuller Theological Seminary and for which I am publicly reflecting in at least 50 words in fulfillment of my class participation assignment.
Today, much of what we covered was as an orientation to the class: context for its development, overview of its content and aims, details about the assignments, etc. Before this first day, I have considered the reading list to be worth the price of admission (though, of course, I could have found the list and read the books apart from the class). I'll add onto these benefits received the assignments that are required for the class, lots of interactive writing: these daily entries in response to class discussion, notes from the readings in view of the final paper, participation in a local church of a different culture/tradition/ethnic background with an accompanying 2000 word paper, and the final paper, 3000 words considering my church tradition and what it might learn from other traditions in terms of "nature, liturgy, community, mission, and organization". One of the main reasons I've been excited about going "back to school", believe it or not, is the task of writing papers. We'll see how long that holds up... ;)
The second half of our class time was given to the first unit of discussion: Jesus, the Kingdom, and the Church. Dr. Bolger led us through a discussion around certain parts of an ABC News special series with Peter Jennings called The Search for Jesus, which is essentially a documentary through much of the recent research surrounding the Quest(s) for the Historical Jesus. We discussed how the idea of the Kingdom of God was not original to Jesus, but instead it was a conversation and an expectation that Jesus entered into, albeit uniquely, but not originally. The Kingdom of God (or Kingdom of Heaven as Matthew emphasizes it in his gospel), was the hope of a Jewish people who were still in exile from the fullness of what YHWH had promised to them, not limited merely to the promised land, but also to full human flourishing within the nation under YHWH, which necessarily meant that Roman occupation was not all that God had intended for them. The occupation, in fact, reminded that they were still in exile and under YHWH's discipline. Jesus came to announce the end of exile, and to usher in the Kingdom of God, not over and against the Roman occupation, but under and within the Roman occupation, to subvert the reigning paradigm and transform the people of God into one that would be a "blessing to the nations" as was intended. So, in light of this, the question comes to mind, if Jesus' ushered in the 'end of exile' for the nation of Israel, to enable them to fulfill their calling to be a light to the Gentiles and a blessing to the nations, then what do we make of 'exile' language in the New Testament after the Gospels? If Israel was in exile from God's presence among them in the temple, which brought about full national flourishing, then how in fact was exile ended if the temple was destroyed just 40 years after Jesus' ascension?
So then, it seem the 'end of exile' rather refers to YHWH's return to his people in Jesus, followed by the opening up of and expansion of the kingdom to include the entire earth, with YHWH's presence not in the Temple in Jerusalem but in the temple of the church. This begs the question, why then do the NT authors refer to the church as still in exile, as aliens and strangers? Is there some sense in which humanity is still in exile from the Garden of Eden to which we will return in the New Heavens/New Earth? Or is the hope more specific, that New Humanity (the church) awaiting full return from exile in the descent of the New Heavens/New Earth? Hmmm... Maybe I'll find out in the next class.
One last thing from class that was interesting was to think about was that, with respect Jesus' actions - his offering forgiveness outside the temple, his healing on the Sabbath, his sharing table fellowship with sinners and Gentiles, his valuing of women, his teaching in the sermon on the mount - Jesus was a destabilizing force in the religious, political, economic, and social structure of the time. How might our teaching, working, serving, relating be a kingdom-centered destabilizing force in our current contexts?
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