The Seal of the Church

I was arguing (in the traditional sense) with someone earlier today about the nature and purpose of the Church, and naturally the topic of non-Christians came up. What is the Church's function toward those who don't follow Christ? Do we turn them away? shall we be seeker-friendly? of course a church can not satisfy both Christians and non-Christians, as it will be inevitable that they will either conform to one or the other, but what about separate functions in order to accommodate both (i.e. church for Christians on Sunday, and church for non-Christians on another day)? Well, in search for an answer to this question, I came upon this outstanding quote from The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

The sanctification of the Church means its separation from all that is unholy, from sin; and the method by which it is accomplished is by God's sealing the Church and thus making it his own possession...The Church's claim to a place of its own in the world, and the consequent line of demarcation between the Church and world, prove that the Church is in the state of sanctification. For the Spirit seals off the Church from the world. This seal gives the Church the strength and power to fulfill its duty of vindicating God's claim over the whole world...Because it is sanctified by the seal of the Holy Spirit, the Church is always in the battlefield, waging a war to prevent the breaking of the seal, whether from within or without, and struggling to prevent the world from becoming the Church and the Church from becoming the world. The sanctification of the Church is really a defensive war, for the place which has been given to the Body of Christ on earth. The separation of the Church and the world from one another is the crusade which the Church fights for the sanctuary of God on earth.

The Church is designed to be purposely and perfectly sealed off from the world, aided by the Holy Spirit, to directly maintain sanctification. Bonhoeffer states that sanctification means "that...Christians have been judged already, and that they are being preserved until the coming of Christ and are ever advancing towards it." It is one of the utmost duties of the Church to remain pure, in this sense; to preserve sanctification. When churches sacrifice this sanctification and training in order to be 'seeker-friendly,' they are going directly against God's design for his holy Church; they are breaking the seal that the Holy Spirit protects. Isn't it ironic, in this age, how this seal is usually broken from the inside of the church rather than from the outside?

Any thoughts on the matter? Am I looking too far into this?

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Emerging Church Spoof

Inspired the wildly funny demotivators posters: (http://www.despair.com/viewall.html), there is a new version spoofying the emerging church.

http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/posters.htm

They are painfully dead on. Enjoy.

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Godric, Time, Storms, and the Lord of Heaven

One of the best things about moving to San Antonio is I get to spend a lot of time with Rob (I think the comments should be directed towards how Rob might respond to this statement). One of the best things about spending time with Rob is I have someone to suggest what book I should read next—although, it’s rather like a strong exhortation; ok, a command!

One book that Rob recently lent me is Godric, by Frederick Buechner (BEEK-nur). This is a fascinating tale about a 12th century saint (Perhaps one might wonder whether the word “fascinating” can be used of a 12th century saint?)—written from the perspective of the saint: Godric. This is all I am going to tell you about the plot because I want all of you, I mean Rob wants all of you, to read this yourselves. You bunch of lazy @$$*$! Actually, I do not want to feel obligated to write one of those plot spoiler warnings at the beginning of this post...Ok, I will tell you a little bit simply because I am trying to make a point.

Just near the middle of the book (60-61), as Godric is making his way to Rome, he is plagued with one seeming disaster after another—the portrait of which Godric paints with these words,

Except that there they have no end, the pains of Hell can be no sharper than the pains we suffer here, nor the Fiend himself more fiendish than a man. Oh Queen of Heaven, pray for us. Have pity on the pitiless for thy dear Son our Savior’s sake.

At home the leaves are falling sere when we behold at last the hills of Rome.

I love the line from his prayer—‘Have pity on the pitiless…’

Anyhoo…Right in the middle of his ranting (this is what I think it is) Ailred, Abbot of Rievaulx, staring into the sky as the rain has now stopped and the sun is shining through, says this,

‘You speak of time, Godric,’ Ailred said. His cough for once was gone. ‘Time is a storm. Times past and times to come, they heave and flow and leap their bounds like Wear. Hours are clouds that change their shapes before your eyes. A dragon fades into a maiden’s scarf. A monkey’s grin becomes an angry fist. But beyond time’s storm and clouds there’s timelessness. Godric, the Lord of Heaven changes not, and even when our view’s most dark, he’s there above us fair and golden as the sun.’ And so it is.
‘God’s never gone,’ my gentle, ailing Ailred said. ‘It’s only men go blind.’

As I sat at my desk this morning thinking about Godric, thinking about the Lord of Heaven and Time, the following thoughts came to my mind:

Time is tricky just as storms are tricky. At one moment we cry out and beg God to slow down time—just as farmers cry out to God for a few more inches of rain! Yet at other moments we wish that time would fade away, leaving no trail behind to follow—just as the disciples cried out to Jesus, ‘Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?’

In the midst of these various periods of time we have at least two choices. We can, as Godric did, and as the disciples did, see only the storm itself. That is, we can choose only to focus on the circumstance itself. This, I think, will lead us to react in much the same way Godric, the Israelites, the disciples did. Or, in the midst of the storm, we can see through the clouds and look for the light that will shine through as Ailred did. We can choose to remember in those circumstances that God is never gone. We can choose to see, or we can choose to remain blind.

Thoughts?

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Getting Past the Christianese

In my previous post, I looked at the idea that “good news about the son of God” in the first century Greco-Roman world would have brought about ideas of emperor worship. And we saw that Mark, in the opening sentence of his gospel, was making the bold statement that the real good news was that Jesus was the true Emperor who was bringing peace and new creation through his kingship.

So, what would the Jews have heard when someone mentioned the term “son of God?”

We modern American Christians often allow terms like this to fit comfortably within our Christianese vocabulary without any thought, and therefore we give answers like, “Well, they would have thought of the second person of the trinity, of course.”

In reality, it is much more likely that the original audience of Mark’s account would have immediately thought of YHWH’s anointed one, His servant. They would have remembered Judas Maccabaeus, and how they were sure that He was the messiah, the son of God, sent to free them from exile and tyranny. But ultimately, that effort had failed, and the kingdoms of this world had prevailed. So on and on they waited for YHWH’s servant, a descendant of that great son of God, King David, to come and vindicate His people.

Therefore, in Jewish thought, as in Greco-Roman thought, “Son of God” was a title- more like “King” or “Emperor” than the associations to the trinity/divinity that come to our minds today.

This then begs the question, when he was born, was Jesus the Son of God? And my answer is [wincing] No… sort of. Before you stone me, let me explain.

My answer would be yes, if you would also say, for example, that George W. Bush was born as the President of the United States of America. And my answer would be no, if you would say that George W. Bush was not born as the President. In other words, if we look back in the history books, we will not likely distinguish G.W. from his office and say that he was not the President. However, we can look back at an earlier chapter in his life, to a time before he was declared and appointed as President.

[Please don’t jump to conclusions here. Let me state emphatically that I believe that Jesus is God. We are simply looking at what Mark meant by the title “Son of God,” and what his readers would have understood.]

So when did Jesus become the son of God? At his baptism, of course.

And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens opening and the Spirit descending like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, "You are my beloved Son; with you I am well-pleased” (Mk 1:10-11).

Much more needs to be said, and many assertions have been made, but this post is already too long. So... thoughts?

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Aristotle and the Church

Aristotle in his Nicomachean (pronounce: nicama-KEE-an) Ethics groups types of friendship into 3 categories:

1. Pleasure – I am your friend because I find you fun.
2. Utility – I am your friend because I find you useful.
3. Respect – I am your friend because I admire you and wish to be like you.

The more I thought of these categories, I realized that they were useful for analyzing the business of the church. It seems to me that many churches develop themselves around groups 1 and 2, and for the most part neglect group 3. We try to orchestrate church so that it is fun and practical but rarely model the abundant life Christ came to bring us. We tell children and youth: Be a Christian because it is radical, awesome, off the hook, extreme. We tell adults: Be a Christian because it will help you balance your check book or keep your kids out of trouble.

We are so busy copying the world that we never model the transformed humanity that the body of Christ is supposed to be.

Oliver Goldsmith once wrote:

At church, with meek and unaffected grace.
His looks adorned the venerable place;
Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway,
And fools who came to scoff remained to pray. (The Deserted Village)

Instead of showing ourselves worthy of respect and imitation, we attempt to convince the lost that we are capable of entertaining and assisting. I think we need to follow 1 Cor. 11:1 and focus on imitating Christ and on being ourselves worthy of imitation.

So what do you think? Am I way off base?

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Good News

My professor brought up something today at class regarding the book of Mark, which I found compelling. Mark 1:1 states, "The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

The word for "good news" in this passage is, of course, euaggelion. This word does not have a Christian origin, or even a biblical one. In fact it is found only once in the whole OT (2 Sam 4:10, LXX). So then, where does it come from?

The answer Dr. Brown gives is that it is to be found in numerous inscriptions connected with Roman emperor worship. For example, the ancient city of Priene in Asia Minor (9 B.C.) preserves a calendar which is proposed to begin on September 23, or day of Caesar Augustus’ birthday. The proposal says that this day "marks beginning of new era." It goes on to say that "It is the good news of the birth of the God, the emperor."

So then what is the beginning of Mark’s gospel saying? The answer is that the real good news is not birth of Caesar Augustus, rather it is the good news of the birth of Jesus. The real son of God is not Caesar, rather it is Jesus Christ. This verse is making a challenge to the Emperor worship of Mark's day.

So at the end of Mark's gospel, we have in the centurion's statement regarding Jesus, not a personal confession of faith, as has been traditionally taught. Rather, we have a cry of defeat, an acknowledgment that the kingdom of this world has been vanquished.

“Truly this man was son of God.”

Thoughts?

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