From Unity to Diversity
Paul’s “Membership Manifesto” in 4:1-6 stresses the unity, the oneness, of God’s church. Unified around the conviction of and hope for God’s plan to gather all things up in Christ (Lord) and inducted (baptized) into one body through the Spirit, he urges his people to “eagerly keep” this gift of unity through the humility, gentleness, and patience of love.
Just about the time we might start to suffocate from the unity, though, Paul leads us to a consideration of diversity and individuality in this body. He does this in terms of spiritual gifts (vv.7-12) and the growth into maturity (vv.13-16) of the body.
4:7-12
“But each of us was given grace” (v.7) – Paul jumps right into diversity. “Each of us” in the body has a role to play, a gift or function to offer for the health and well-being of the whole (see 1 Cor.12:7). And this is by God’s design and Christ’s donation (v.7). And that’s what Paul quotes Ps.68 to show. The only problem is he seems to get the quote wrong! Whereas the Psalm says God received gifts in his victory procession to Zion (Ps.68:18), Paul says Christ gave gifts to his people (v.8). What’s happening here?
Tim Gombis,[1] I think, has resolved this satisfactorily. We have adopted the Divine Warfare pattern he has identified as a key structural feature of Ephesians. The pattern ran from 1:20 – end of chapter 2. Then, in ch.3, Paul digresses to reflect on his own role as a model “subversive agent” in God’s counter-revolutionary movement and to pray for his churches to grow into such agents. Now, in ch.4, Paul resumes his exposition and we meet here another feature of the Divine Warfare pattern, the victor giving gifts to his people.
Enter Ps.68. One thing about quotations from the Old Testament we have learned in recent years is that though only one or a few verses may be explicitly quoted, the writer usually has the whole psalm or the movement of thought in the section quoted in mind. That is, the quoted material brings with it the whole story or setting from which it comes into the new setting in which it is quoted. If so, and Paul intends us to understand the whole flow of Ps.68 here, when we read in Ps.68:35c, “(God) gives power and strength to his people,” we meet the point Paul hoped to make. These gifts of the victorious Jesus of “power and strength” are what he has in mind and, when he enumerates them shortly, it is gifts of “power and strength” for the church he lists.
So, has Paul twisted the psalm to suit for own purposes? No, rather: “We see that Paul is not quoting Ps 68.18 in Eph 4.8 but is calling the entire Psalm, one that is also structured by Divine Warfare, to the memory of the his readers, so they will see how Christ, just as Yahweh, is a triumphant Warrior who blesses and gifts his people for participation in warfare and victory.”[2]
Before getting to the listing of the gifts of “power and strength”, Paul digresses briefly to further specify this victorious Jesus, the one who “ascended” in v.8, in vv.9-10. There are a number of different views of the language Paul uses here, but the best seems to be the following: Paul identifies the one who “ascended” with the one who “descended,” that is, came to earth (“descended”) and after his resurrection “ascended” victoriously “far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all in all”. Here Paul harks back to the language he used in 1:21-23 to similarly describe the victorious and reigning Christ.
In vv.11-12 Paul sets forth one of the most important convictions for the life and ministry of the church – and one of the most overlooked or ignored!
He details the gifts of the victorious Christ first. There are five of them: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. Paul does not mean that every member in the church has one or more of these five gifts. They are gifts “to” the church. That is, the whole church benefits from these gifts, indeed requires them if they hope to be faithful and effective followers of Jesus. In this sense, the “each of us” in v.7 is every member of the church in that they benefit and grow and thrive under the direction and tutelage of this five forms of ministry.
However, in light of Paul’s teaching on gifts elsewhere (1 Cor.12:7) and the mention later in this section of the necessity and importance of each member’s role and function (4:16), we are justified in seeing this section also teaching that every member of the church is gifted to benefit the growth and maturity of the whole.
Most of the church in the west is familiar with the latter two gifts: pastors and teachers. Living in a largely Christianized area of the world we have assumed everyone else were Christian or at least church members, thus there was no great need for evangelists. Likewise, planting new churches and ministries, an apostle’s task, was not until recent years considered a major task of the church and then was not normally carried out by local churches but by regional or national agencies. Prophets, those annoying disturbers of our peace, are seldom welcome though always needed. Our desire for “peace and harmony” in our churches makes it easy to ignore the prophets. Thus, these other three “gifts” to the church – apostles, evangelists, and prophets – are virtually unknown to us as biblically-mandated leadership roles and thus not acknowledged or sought for.
It’s always perilous to regard as no longer needed or functioning gifts that the scripture nowhere tell us are superseded and revoked. A recovery of this full grouping of gifts and a rethinking of their place in the church today is underway on a number of fronts.
Foremost among those rethinking this fivefold ministry Paul lays out here in Ephesians 4 is Alan Hirsch. His book Forgotten Paths: Reactivating the Missional Church[3] fore-grounded it in a decisive way. I’ll use an article of his[4] as a commentary on what and how Paul envisioned this set of gifts working in his churches.
Hirsch uses the acronym APEST (Apostle/Prophet/Evangelist/Shepherd/Teacher) to indicate this fivefold ministry. He substitutes “shepherd” (the literal translation) for the NRSV’s “pastor”. He believes the virtual elimination of the A/P/E during the period of Christendom[5] is the critical factor in Christianity’s decline over this period and that its recovery is essential for the church to be what Paul says God calls it to be in this letter.
Here’s how Hirsch expounds APEST.
Apostles: these leaders take the gospel in to new settings; continuously envision future possibilities, crossing boundaries, developing leaders, and trans-local networking. Without the presence of other leaders, especially the S and T’s, A’s can drive people in an unhealthy manner.
Prophets: discern God’s will and its implications for today. P’s constantly challenge the prevailing assumptions the church absorbs from its culture and insist on the necessity of obedience to God’s will. Their incessant questioning of the status quo can become unnecessarily abrasive or distant without the other leaders to remind them of the church’s humanity and sinfulness.
Evangelists: are the communicators/recruiters of the gospel. E’s can become so outwardly focused that without the others the necessary care and development of the inner life of the church might be neglected.
Shepherds: are the caregivers and nurturers of the community. S’s focus on developing relational networks and disciple-making. Without the other leaders S’s can overly focus on the inner life of the church and value stability more than is healthy for the congregation.
Teachers: T’s understand, explain, and clarify the content and meaning of the faith. T’s keep the community attentive to God’s Word and will and developing a biblical-theological framework that helps others see and respond to their lives in the world in faithful and fruitful ways. Intellectualism and arrogance are potential pitfalls here that the other leaders can protect them and the community against.
Hirsch provides a snapshot of the synergy between these five leaders using parallel models from the business world to facilitate understanding. I’ve included the appropriate acronym so we can clearly identify Hirsch’s leadership models.
Imagine a leadership system in any setting (corporate, governmental, non-profit, educational, etc.) where the entrepreneurial innovator (A) interacts dynamically with the disturber of the status quo (P). Imagine that both are in active dialogue and relationship with the passionate communicator/recruiter (E), the infectious person who carries the message beyond organizational borders and sells the idea/s or product/s. And these in turn are in constant engagement with the emotionally intelligent humanizer (HR; S) and the philosopher-leader (T) who is able to articulate core ideas and pass them on. Clearly the combination of these different leadership styles is greater than the sum of its parts.
I think this is an instructive snapshot to consider. If your organization lacks an entrepreneurial innovator, someone who will ask the hard and disquieting questions, and someone anxious to get the word out and network people into the work you are doing, and has only the HR person with high emotional intelligence and the philosopher-leader, what do you have? You have the church as we have known it in North America! Having lost any missional mindset, mandate, or mentoring we have become the parody (yes, I believe that’s the right word for it!) of the church God intended. The vision, energy, adventure, and courage evoked by the Apostle, the Prophet, and the Evangelist has gone with them. What is left is what we see – something scarcely identifiable with the subversive counter-revolutionary movement God started!
And speaking of movements, note that the three missing ministry gifts correlate with the first three elements for building a movement:
-a white-hot faith (the Apostle),
-channeling that white-hot faith into a durable commitment to the cause (the Prophet), and
-someone who generates contagious relationships with others, effectively recruiting and networking for the movement (the Evangelist).
And these are the three gifts that best enable the rapid mobilization of the church! Another telling indicator of the crucial importance of all the gifts for ministry the risen Christ gives us!
Again I reiterate that Hirsch is doing nothing new here; he’s recovering the template of ministry that Paul laid out for the early church and which has never been revoked or superseded though it has often been ignored or unknown. Doesn’t it seem likely, then, that a recovery of these divine gifts for ministry will have a substantial positive, if also initially unsettling and deconstructive, impact for us?
The scope that impact Paul unfolds in v.12. This verse shows how easy it is for the concept of church and ministry we already have to impact our translation and understanding of scripture itself rather than the latter shaping the former (as ideally should be the case). The Greek manuscripts of New Testament documents have no punctuation marks. The reader has to supply them. Most of the time this is not a problem and those proficient in New Testament Greek usually agree what kind of punctuation is needed and where it should go. But there are places where they disagree and where it makes a difference to how the text is (mis)understood. And in our text the misunderstanding has been and continues to be disastrous. Let me show this difference to you by comparing two versions of the famous and most widely read version of them all, the King James Version (KJV).
The original KJV was published in 1611 by commission of King James I of England. Here is how those original translators put our verse into English:
11And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; 12For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: (KJV)
Here, the passage is read as if, to use a sports metaphor, those who are APEST’s are the coaches, trainers, equipment managers, and players of the game while the rest of the church are spectators watching them perform.
And, of course, that is how they had experienced church and how many of us event today experience it: a group of gifted and trained professionals leading worship on Sunday and carrying out the ministry of the church the rest of the week. The church itself observes and pays for these services done in their name and largely in their stead. This is the model of Christians as consumers and the church as a “vendor of religious goods and services” (as my friend George Hunsberger has famously put it).
This has been the default model of church and ministry throughout the west and here in the U.S. until last quarter of the 20th century. In the light of the wrenching reevaluation of our society undergone in those turbulent years in 1960’s and 70’s some began to wonder whether this model of church and ministry owed more to the pervasive consumer mindset of our culture rather than to the Bible. They undertook a review of the biblical material, and when they came to our passage they noticed a difficulty in the translation.
After listing the five gifts, Paul uses three phrases to designate the nature and scope of their work. The KJV, as we have seen, reads all three as applying to the APESTs. Though all these phrases in English begin with the preposition “for” Paul uses different Greek prepositions for the latter two phrases than he did for the first. These latter prepositions suggest purpose of result, leading to the translation adopted in the 21st Century KJV and virtually all other translations now as well.
To capture the sense of the Greek more accurately the punctuation is changed. No longer is there a comma after saints, as in the old KJV. Rather the significance of the latter two prepositions is captured by removing that comma and leaving us with a drastically revised notion of church and ministry! The NRSV translation uses different English words for the different prepositions: “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.”
Now we see that Paul means us to view the APESTs as the coaches, trainers, and equipment managers of the team (“for the perfecting of the saints” in the translation above). Now the church, the beneficiaries of the work of the coaches, trainers, and equipment managers, who are the players, those who do “the work of the ministry” and “the edifying of the body of Christ”! The spectators are the world which sees us in action and themselves benefit from our ministry.
Though nearly all translations and many pastors and lay people have come to see this different way of seeing church and ministry relate, it remains a slow and difficult process to actually live in it in day to day church life. The old consumer model is alive and well and deeply-rooted in our psyches. Many use the language of “Church shopping” to describe their effort to find a new church. What else can this mean than that the church that delivers a better set of “goods and services” will likely get their membership (as long, that is, as they continue to deliver the same high quality “goodies). This forces the pastor(s) into the role of performer whether they want it or not (which most do not) in order to “attract” these potential church buyers. And on it goes . . .
So we still have a ways to go in rooting Paul’s vision of church and ministry in our hearts as well as in our minds. In terms of the image of church as God’s subversive counter-revolutionary movement I have been developing Paul’s vision would mean that the APESTs serve as those who spread the vision, develop strategy and provisions, train and equip the people, comfort and heal the hurt, and then together with the people march out to do the work set before them.
The APESTs help identify and ignite the various other gifts God has given members of the church in order to aid in the body’s growth to maturity and to maximize its impact in the wider world. It is to such matters that Paul turns to next.
4:13-16
Paul has given us his manifesto on membership in the body of Christ, which focused on unity, and counterpointed that with the diversity of gifts the risen and ascended Christ gives to strengthen and empower his people. Now he brings the two together in a brief reflection on how this diversity in unity serves the growth and maturity of the whole.
He begins with unity, “until all of us come to the unity . . .” (v.13). Unity was a given we are called to maintain in v.3; here it is a hope or reality toward which we move. This is another example of Paul’s pervasive “already/not yet” dynamic we have seen in other places. Unity, we might say, is in the process of being realized. It is a gift. That means we do not start from disunity and on our own or even with God’s help try to work toward unity. No, we begin from the unity given us in Christ. We are to become what we already are – united, uniting, united.
What we are growing from and towards is fulsomely defined by Paul as coming “to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.” These four expressions, unity of the faith, knowledge of the Son of God, maturity, and the measure of the full stature of Christ, overlap and a largely synonymous. We might, however, notice some nuances between them. “Unity of the faith” refers to a growing grasp of and commitment to the charter of membership Paul laid out 4:4-6. Lest we take this as an intellectual matter only, the knowledge of the Son of God reminds us that the maturity we move towards in relational through and through. When the scripture speaks of this kind of “knowledge,” it has in mind an intimate and personal knowledge of the other.[6] This maturity is a corporate reality (lit. “to a perfect or complete man). Maturity is not fully realized until “all of us” get there. And the “there” is our old friend “man”. Its other uses referred to the community of Jew and Gentile reconciled in Christ, the “new man”. There is no reason to think Paul means any different here.[7] Maturity is Christ is irreducibly corporate. Maturity is the disposition, demeanor, and deeds of his new reconciled humanity more and more fully leaving out their new identity and vocation. And in a final flourish Paul styles this maturity “the measure of the full stature of Christ”. He has prayed that we be filled with “all the fullness of God” (3:19); and asserted that in Christ we are “a dwelling place for God” (2:22) and Christ’s “body, the fullness of him who fills all in all (1:23). These other descriptors give us at least a feel for the grandeur and depth of what we are involved in here. Humbling and ennobling at the same time, isn’t it?
Two marks of maturity, surely perennial points of growth for God’s people in every time and place, are adult discernment of the maxims and motives of those who proffer “wisdom” and “truthing it in love” (vv.14-15).
Discernment is crucial for subversive counter-revolutionaries. We must have a clear sense of what our counter-revolution is about and what and why we seek to subvert the present order. I’m old enough to have actually known some honest-to-gosh communists. If you have as well, then you’ll know that you never met one who didn’t know what they were aiming to do and why. They’d give you their version of Marx 101 in a heartbeat. Seems to me Christians ought to be willing and able to do the same for the gospel.
Discernment is more than knowledge. It is the ability to not only look at “the faith” (4.4) with understanding but through it to read the world and culture around us. The great reformer John Calvin of the 16th century spoke of scripture as “spectacles” which once donned brought truth and error into clear focus but without which everything seems blurred and fuzzy.
Paul wants us neither unsettled, tricked, or naïve. “Theology” (or whatever other word you might prefer) matters. The church needs to be aware of where it stands, where the unholy trinity of “Mars, Mammon, and Me” will attack it, and the wisdom to know that we must live “as though we have enemies.”[8] In the “Practicing” section for this material I will offer for your reflection an issue for consideration of quite current interest and importance as an example of the kind of thinking I believe the apostle is calling us to.
Next comes the tricky phrase which literally reads “truthing in love.” Snodgrass gives a good explanation:
“The Semitic concept of truth focuses on that on which one can rely. It is primarily a relational term for covenant loyalty and is sometimes translated by “faithfulness.” A truthful person is one who lives out his or her covenant obligations, which includes both what is said and what is done. Therefore, both truth and love bind us to the other person, for we cannot live truth and violate covenant relations. Truth involves a true assessment of the facts and a consideration of what is real as opposed to illusion, but it is much more holistic than what is done with the mind. At the least, it joins the coherence of act and word with relational fidelity.[9]”
The old adage that people “will not care how much you know until they know how much you care” seems applicable here. This joining of truth and love is characteristic of the Bible and essential for the church’s life in the world. “Congruence” is perhaps a good contemporary rendering. Words and deed are congruent when each support and enhance one another. And such congruence manifests the integrity which is the lifeblood of any Christian witness and ministry.
Such congruence, such integrity, is the way we “grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ”. Paul crams about as much as is possible into this sentence to bring this section to a glorious climax.
Christ is the “head” of the body. “Head” has two senses, authority and source, both of which are relevant here. Christ is the Lord of the church as well as its source and goal.[10] He has “equipped” his body with everything needed (ligaments) for growth; and he is the source of its growth (“Christ . . . promotes the body’s growth”). Yet, this does not eliminate nor diminish our participation (“as each part is working properly”) and contribution (“the body’s growth in
building itself up”).
Paul begins with the call for God’s people to “walk” worthy of their calling (4:1) and he ends this section with “in love”. This is only appropriate for our “walk” is only “worthy” if it is done in and with “love. Paul envelopes his whole discussion in this section within the dynamic that pervades every part of it: the integrity of congruence that gives clarity and coherence to the subversive counter-revolution God calls us to implement.
We Practice “Walking” as God’s Subversive Counter-Revolutionary People (8)
1.
It is as blessed to receive as it is to give.
Our life is a gift and we live each moment by the gifts God gives us through others. This is especially the case in the church. Here it is that we intentionally focus our awareness of the pervasive presence of “giftedness” that attends our lives. Paul zeroes in on the gifts of leadership the risen Christ gives to his people to enhance and extend our life and work as his people.
It’s not easy to receive gifts! It should be, but it’s not. Especially for those gifts that come to us unbidden and undeserved (which is the case with all God’s gifts). Think about a time when someone brought you a gift and caught you by surprise with, and you had nothing with which to reciprocate.
-how did you feel?
-what did this unbidden/undeserved gift make you want to do?
-was gratitude you primary response?
In our competitive, quid pro quo, meritocratic culture genuine gift-giving is an anomaly. Most gift-giving we experience is motivated or at least mixed-motivated by external and instrumental expectation, obligation, or self-interest. It’s what we should do, ought to do, have to do, or will gain from doing. We receive such gifts in perfunctory, half-hearted ways. They feel like a transaction – something given, something expected. And the cost of failing to meet those expectations can be quite high!
God’s gifts are genuine gifts. They too bring expectation, obligation, and self-interest with them. But these are internal and intrinsic to the relationship of grace God himself has established with us. The expectation of his gift-giving is for deeper union and communion between us, the obligation is our loving response, and God’s self-interest is for our best fulfillment as his creatures.
Reflection of the difference between these kinds of gifting and especially of God’s gifting as the second kind may be quite useful for our response to those God has gifted in our communities – and that means you and everyone else, since all are gifted by God for the benefit of all!
2. Discernment in the Body.
Here’s a sample of the kind of discernment we must practice today if we are not to be tossed about by every wind of doctrine. There are two pieces, one by myself and one by Lillian Daniel on the mantra “I’m spiritual but not religious.” These pieces appeared within a couple of days of each other but were written independently.
A Case for Christians Being Neither Spiritual Nor Religious (an occasional series on matters of current concern)
“I’m spiritual, but not religious.”
So goes the by now banal mantra of that portion of postmodern folk who gravitate to such things.
No one I am aware claims as a person of faith to religious but not spiritual. Yet such is the equally common critique of the above-named group to most churchly-Chrisitians.
There’s been a bit of a backlash from the churchly group that genuine Christianity is indeed a matter of being religious either instead of or as well as spiritual.
I, however, want to make a case that Christians, as well as the church, should be neither spiritual nor religious!
The context for this reflection is North America. Each of the terms, spiritual and religious, carry connotations with this context that I argue make neither suitable descriptions for what it is that the church is up to.
Plato (and his less adept followers) has ruined the first word; the North American pragmatic, “can do” mentality has ruined the latter.
Plato led the charge to divide reality into two parts: the material/physical and the spiritual realm. The former is the outward, lesser, inferior, and even evil realm which hinders and/or thwarts the spiritual. The latter is inner, immaterial, good, and desirable realm. In the case of the elite, those “in the know” long for and seek ways to nurture the spiritual in us until death, at which time it can finally flee the “prison house” of the body and find its way “home” to the realm of the purely spiritual.
It’s not difficult to see how, under the influence of this kind of division of reality, Christians started to understand their life with God in similar ways. The spiritual life came to be identified with what happened inside us, in our hearts, where Jesus lived. The key was knowing and assenting to a set of “truths” that opened the door to a relationship with God. This inner, spiritual realm was God’s area of interest and his goal was to save “hearts” or “souls”; our job was to help God do this through the sharing of these “truths” in preaching and evangelism.
The material world was either diminished as unimportant or demonized as a negative hindrance to Christian living . This kind of “spirituality” won the day in the west and has carried right on through to the present day. There has been in this tradition a minority stream which did not treat the material world and the physical circumstances and needs of human beings with such disrespect, but . . . they have been a minority!
This platonic, dualistic sheen taints virtually all forms of spirituality in our culture. They tend to be individualistic, gnostic (focused on special knowledge or truth), and dualist (trying to nurture the “spiritual” part of us). Thus, being “spiritual” in North America, whether as a Christian or some other type, runs counter to Biblical Spirit-uality (that produced in us by the Holy Spirit which is radically communal, open to all by faith, and non-dualistic (or earthy).
Religious, or religion, on the other hand, is a different animal altogether. Religion, in our context, has been most aptly described by the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer as “Protestantism without Reformation”. He means that our religion is the tradition of the Protestantism that grew out of the 16th century Reformation in Europe but without the shaking, shattering, awe-full encounter with the living triune God through his Word. Thus our religious observance has developed form and ritual in line with our inherited tradition (whether low or high church) but its substance has been shaped by American pragmatism, good ole’ Yankee ingenuity and “can do”.
Thus, American religion tends to be functionally Unitarian (no need for all that intellectually confusing “Trinity” stuff!), at least semi-Pelagian (we save ourselves or contribute to our own salvation by our works; “God helps those who help themselves,” you know), and focused on ethics (defined by our North American ethos).
Thus, Biblical faith, with its Trinitarian understanding of God, uncompromising commitment to grace (the undeserved favor and love of God for the undeserving), and its call to radical, often counter-cultural witness stands at a fair remove from religion culturally understood.
Where folks who adopt an “I’m religious not spiritual” or “I’m religious and spiritual” have a point is their commitment to the necessity and importance of an institutional form of religion, the church. This is true even though the institutional form of “church” most of us have experienced in our culture is a major hindrance to others joining it!
This is why I claim to be neither spiritual nor religious. And furthermore, you should be too, if you if want to discover a faith and a community that more faithfully and fully reflects the character and calling of the triune God who calls us to be his people! What that means concretely is not yet clear; many people and groups are praying and experimenting with fresh ways to be and do church in our time and place, ways that are neither spiritual nor religious. Why not join in?[11]
“Spiritual but Not Religious? Please Stop Boring Me.”
August 31, 2011
August 31, 2011
Matthew 16:18
"And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it."
Reflection by Lillian Daniel
On airplanes, I dread the conversation with the person who finds out I am a minister and wants to use the flight time to explain to me that he is "spiritual but not religious." Such a person will always share this as if it is some kind of daring insight, unique to him, bold in its rebellion against the religious status quo.
Next thing you know, he's telling me that he finds God in the sunsets. These people always find God in the sunsets. And in walks on the beach. Sometimes I think these people never leave the beach or the mountains, what with all the communing with God they do on hilltops, hiking trails and . . . did I mention the beach at sunset yet?
Like people who go to church don't see God in the sunset! Like we are these monastic little hermits who never leave the church building. How lucky we are to have these geniuses inform us that God is in nature. As if we don’t hear that in the psalms, the creation stories and throughout our deep tradition.
Being privately spiritual but not religious just doesn't interest me. There is nothing challenging about having deep thoughts all by oneself. What is interesting is doing this work in community, where other people might call you on stuff, or heaven forbid, disagree with you. Where life with God gets rich and provocative is when you dig deeply into a tradition that you did not invent all for yourself.
Thank you for sharing, spiritual but not religious sunset person. You are now comfortably in the norm for self-centered American culture, right smack in the bland majority of people who find ancient religions dull but find themselves uniquely fascinating. Can I switch seats now and sit next to someone who has been shaped by a mighty cloud of witnesses instead? Can I spend my time talking to someone brave enough to encounter God in a real human community? Because when this flight gets choppy, that's who I want by my side, holding my hand, saying a prayer and simply putting up with me, just like we try to do in church.
Prayer
Dear God, thank you for creating us in your image and not the other way around. Amen.[12]
"And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it."
Reflection by Lillian Daniel
On airplanes, I dread the conversation with the person who finds out I am a minister and wants to use the flight time to explain to me that he is "spiritual but not religious." Such a person will always share this as if it is some kind of daring insight, unique to him, bold in its rebellion against the religious status quo.
Next thing you know, he's telling me that he finds God in the sunsets. These people always find God in the sunsets. And in walks on the beach. Sometimes I think these people never leave the beach or the mountains, what with all the communing with God they do on hilltops, hiking trails and . . . did I mention the beach at sunset yet?
Like people who go to church don't see God in the sunset! Like we are these monastic little hermits who never leave the church building. How lucky we are to have these geniuses inform us that God is in nature. As if we don’t hear that in the psalms, the creation stories and throughout our deep tradition.
Being privately spiritual but not religious just doesn't interest me. There is nothing challenging about having deep thoughts all by oneself. What is interesting is doing this work in community, where other people might call you on stuff, or heaven forbid, disagree with you. Where life with God gets rich and provocative is when you dig deeply into a tradition that you did not invent all for yourself.
Thank you for sharing, spiritual but not religious sunset person. You are now comfortably in the norm for self-centered American culture, right smack in the bland majority of people who find ancient religions dull but find themselves uniquely fascinating. Can I switch seats now and sit next to someone who has been shaped by a mighty cloud of witnesses instead? Can I spend my time talking to someone brave enough to encounter God in a real human community? Because when this flight gets choppy, that's who I want by my side, holding my hand, saying a prayer and simply putting up with me, just like we try to do in church.
Prayer
Dear God, thank you for creating us in your image and not the other way around. Amen.[12]
These kinds of attempts to “read” of culture through the scriptures are necessary for the well-being of the church and the health of our witness to the world. They are integral to that congruence with which we are called to live out our lives.
[1] Gombis, The Drama of Ephesians, 139-40.
[2] Daniel Doleys, “Psalm 68 in Eph 4.8 – Comparison of Divine Warfare in Psalm 68 and Ephesians & Conclusion” at http://textcommunitymission.wordpress.com/2008/08/03/psalm-68-in-eph-48-comparison-of-divine-warfare-in-psalm-68-and-ephesians-conclusion/
[3] Alan Hirsch, Forgotten Paths: Reactivating the Missional Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2009).
[4] Alan Hirsch, “Three Overlooked Leadership Roles,” Leadership Journal, Spring 2008 at http://www.ctlibrary.com/le/2008/spring/7.32.html.
[5] The period between the Emperor Constantine’s legalization of Christianity in the 4th century and the 1960’s in the West.
[6] When the Bible speaks of a man “knowing” his wife in sexual intercourse, it is to this kind of intimate and personal knowledge it speaks.
[7] Even though he uses the gender specific andra, “male,” here rather than anthropos as in the other instances, this is because he is referring specifically to Jesus Christ here (as the two references to him in this verse attest), not simply the group. See Yoder Neufeld, Ephesians, 185.
[8] Play off the title of Stanley Hauerwas’ essay “Preaching as Though We Had Enemies” at http://www.leaderu.com/ftissues/ft9505/articles/hauerwas.html
[9] Snodgrass, Ephesians, 206.
[10] Yoder Neufeld, Ephesians, 189.
[11] http://godswordourwordsandtheworld.blogspot.com/2011/08/case-for-christians-being-neither.html.
[12] http://www.ucc.org/feed-your-spirit/daily-devotional/spiritual-but-not-religious.html.
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