Prayer for the Week

Almighty God, you have given your only Son to be for us a sacrifice for sin, and also an example of godly life: Give us grace to receive thankfully the fruits of this redeeming work, and to follow daily in the blessed steps of his most holy life; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Reflections on... Jesus, the Kingdom, and the Church (FTS_MC500)

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?

Jesus, the Apostle

Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. Simon and his companions went to look for him, and when they found him, they exclaimed: "Everyone is looking for you!"
Jesus replied, "Let us go somewhere else - to the nearby villages - so I can preach there also. That is why I have come." So he traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons.
- The Gospel According to Mark, Chapter 1

In his letter to the Ephesian church, Paul says that Jesus gave apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds and teachers to the church for the equipping of his people for "works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ." Implicit in the analogy is that Christ, as the head of the body (the source from which all the rest grows), is the fullness of the roles of apostle, prophet, evangelist, shepherd, and teacher. So, it goes to reason that we would be able to see these roles active in the ministry of Jesus during his first 33 years of redemptive activity.

Someone recently commented to me that those with apostolic calling and gifting are normally pretty busy, under constant demands from others to be and do for them. It's evident that Jesus' life was no different. "Everyone is looking for you!" seems to be a consistent refrain in Jesus' life. Though I might have seen it as a scratch that causes the record to keep playing the same part of the song over and over, Jesus embraced his chorus much better than I.

That being said, it's instructive to see how Jesus, as the chief apostle, handled the constant draw on his time. First, after a full day of casting out demons and healing the sick, Jesus got up early in the morning to find a solitary place to pray. I've often had those plans in the back of my mind, to get up early, before everyone else, just me and God, a cup of coffee, a journal and my Bible. But, rarely does it happen like I imagine, not usually because I get interrupted, but because I never make it up in time! It is encouraging to think of our Lord, as a man, breaking through the weariness and grogginess of the morning to find a solitary place to pray before the day gets crazy. As many have noted, Martin Luther said that he had so much to do during the day that he must spend at least three hours a day in prayer beforehand!

Of course, when "found out" by his disciples (Peter taking the lead, of course, which reminds of the "let us build tabernacles" situation later on...), did Jesus tell them to go away because he was praying? Did he drop everything and go back to all the people according to their requests? Nope. He bolted! He said, "Let's get out of here!" So, secondly, Jesus stuck to his apostolic (and prophetic) mission. If he was only acting as a shepherd, evangelist, or teacher, it would have made sense just to stay there and care for the flock, teach them about the kingdom, and bring more people into his care. But, Jesus just left them there and went to another village! He knew that there would be a time for more shepherding, evangelizing, and teaching, but it was not the time for him. He had a mission to accomplish, that being proclaiming the kingdom in word and deed and accomplishing the initial stage of it through his crucified life and death. His vision was not first for individual villages but for the entire nation of Israel, thereby accomplishing his mission for the entire world.

Another thing that I recently was told about people that are apostolic, is that in their busyness, they frequently appreciate and respond to those who "don't take 'no' for an answer." You can see that when Jesus goes to the next village, and a leprous man comes to him and begs him, "If you are willing, you can make me clean." So, Jesus, indignant on account of the man's believing that Jesus might not be willing to heal him of his leprosy, said, in my paraphrase, "Of course I am willing! Be healed!" Then, in another apostolic move in keeping with his clandestine mission to proclaim an alternative messianic kingdom than what people were expecting, he told the former leper to keep quiet about his healing so that he, Jesus, could keep traveling from village to village without too much trouble and commotion. Of course, that didn't happen, and, as it says, after that "Jesus could no longer enter a town openly but stayed outside in lonely places. Yet the people still came to him from everywhere." It seems that even Jesus still had trouble aligning people to his plan of how he wanted his mission to develop!

It seems, just from a cursory reading of this section of Mark, that Jesus fulfilled the role of shepherd, evangelist, and teacher as he went from town to town caring for people through healing and the like, gathering them together, and teaching them about the kingdom, but it was his apostolic (and possibly his prophetic) mission that kept him going from village to village rather than staying in one place. Like Robert Coleman demonstrates in his book The Master Plan of Evangelism, the entire time he was raising up the twelve disciples, primarily, to extend and establish through all the five roles the Gospel of the kingdom. Those disciples, and theirs that followed, were the ones that continued to expand, extend, and establish in a way that even Jesus could not have done on his own as one man. How good it was for him to go away and send the Helper!