Brueggemann expresses that lament language is evocative, rather than descriptive (cf. Praying the Psalms, pp. 29ff).

“The function of such lament speech is to create a situation that did not exist before the speech, to create an external event that matches the internal sensitivities. It is the work of such speech to give shape, power, visibility, authenticity to the experience. The speaker now says, ‘It is really like that. That is my situation.’ The listener knows, ‘Now I understand fully your actual situation in which you are at work dying to the old equilibrium that is slipping from you.’ The language may even run ahead of the event. Ricoeur (to whom much of this discussion is indebted), following Freud, has seen that the authentic artist is not focusing on old events for review (after the manner of the analyst) but is in fact committing to an act of hope. Art therapists know that persons who draw and paint are not simply announcing the old death but are choosing a future they are yet to embrace. Thus the lament Psalms of disorientation do their work of helping people to die completely to the old situation, the old possibility, the old false hopes, the old lines of defense and pretense, to say as dramatically as possible, ‘That is all over now.’

When we hear someone speak desperately about a situation, our wont is to rush in and reassure that it is not all that bad. And in hearing these Psalms, our natural, fearful yearning is to tone down the hyperbole, to deny it for ourselves and protect others from it because it is too harsh and, in any case, is an overstatement. And likely we wish to hold on a bit to the old orientation now in such disarray. Our tendency to such protectiveness is evident in the way churches ignore or ‘edit’ these ‘unacceptable’ Psalms.

Our retreat from the poignant language of such a Psalm is in fact a denial of the disorientation and a yearning to hold on to the old orientation that is in reality dead. Thus an evangelical understanding of reality affirms that the old is passing away, that God is bringing in a newness (2 Cor. 5:17). But we know also that there is no newness unless and until there is a serious death of the old (cf. John 12:25, 1 Cor. 15:36). Thus the lament Psalms of disorientation can be understood, not in a theoretical but in a quite concrete way as an act of putting off the old humanity that the new may come in (cf. Eph. 4:22-24)” (Praying the Psalms, pp. 30-31).

Lent is more than a time of expressing sorrow for our sinfulness, it is indeed to be a missional journey requiring courage to embrace disorientation so that we might be reoriented to a new way of being human, particularly a new way of being human as exemplified by Jesus, and so being demonstrative of what God’s redemptive mission seeks to bring about in all of creation.

So often we regress from such a missional journey by succumbing to the temptation of going back to our old orientations. When we are disoriented we want to go back to the way things were – no matter how bad they might have been because at least we know what to expect, rather than looking forward to a future we have no idea about. Like the Israelites in the wilderness, we would rather go back to Egypt and slavery, than to head out in the desert, discover what it means not to be in control of our lives, learn dependence upon the Spirit of God – and through this journeying, even if it takes 40 years, be reoriented to a new way of being human in relationship with God, trusting God, open to God’s participation in our lives, and open to participating in the life of God and in God’s mission in the world.

Reorientation can never come through our holding onto our old orientations – they will only rot in our hands. Reorientation can only come through the dying of our old orientations as we dare to journey through our being disoriented. Resurrection life only comes after death, it can never come by way of clinging to ways of living that can never result in newness of life.

Therefore, Lent is a time not to conserve what we have nor a time to hold onto our mere perceptions of life, but, rather Lent is a time to dare to journey with the Spirit of God, to allow the Spirit to lead us out into the desert, to experience, even embrace, disorientation rather than fighting it, so that we might be open to seeing our old orientations for what they are – dead – as we come to a new place of being reoriented to the life of God in us – and grow, mature, in becoming human in ways that we are only able as we identify with Jesus Christ and live in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.

May we this Lent embark on a journey that embraces death, but reorients and leads us into life.

This is a further reflection on Craig Van Gelder’s and Dwight J. Zscheile’s The Missional Church in Perspective: Mapping Trends and Shaping the Conversation. To reiterate, in this book, Van Gelder and Zscheile explore how the missional conversation has unfolded since the book Missional Church was published in 1998.

On p. 159, the authors express “it is vital to keep at the forefront of our imaginations the creative power of the Spirit in shaping church organizations. . . . The creativity of the Spirit animates and renews forms of church organization as part of God’s dynamic and ongoing creation.”

I agree with this statement, though I have discovered it is not easy to let go of our inclination to control outcomes or directions in seeking to lead the churches we are called to serve as pastors.

On the Church Board of my congregation, we have talked about how ministry is developed by the leading of the Spirit. In the early days of this dialogue – over a year ago, it was often expressed as to how chaotic this seems to be – “how can we control or give shape to what we need to be or do if we are led by the Spirit?” Being open to the leading of the Spirit seems like chaos to us because we want to shape the way our churches are organized and how we engage in ministry and in what kind of ministry we are to engage.

But after a year or so of growing in learning to be open to the leading of the Spirit in our daily lives, in the life of the church, in seeing the kind of ministry involvements the Spirit has opened up, we as a community are discovering that walking and depending on the Spirit is a rhythm that relieves us of much anxiety in organizing ministry and the church. The Spirit seems to know how to lead us as a community of Christ.

We are learning to express this in a number of ways:

1. We have the attitude in our community that whoever comes into our community – to join us in worship, or to participate in some other way, in an ongoing basis, they are ones whom the Spirit of God is bringing into our midst. That means whoever comes, changes the structure and personality of the community. Likewise, as people leave – move to other towns, go off to school, etc, our personality and structure changes as well. As we receive these whom the Spirit brings into our midst, we realize that they bring new questions, new ways of seeing things, new ways of doing things – which we are learning to be open to – because we believe this to be a moving of the Spirit in our midst.

2. In receiving those whom the Spirit brings into our midst, we realize that they are not just brought into our community to back-fill our ministry openings, as if the gifts they bring may somehow be utilized in our established ministries. Rather, in recognizing their being present with us as the moving of the Spirit, we receive these persons as gifts of the Spirit – not that they only have gifts, but that they themselves are gifts of the Spirit to the community – to shape our life, to shape our ministry, to shape our witness, to shape our organization, to shape our noticing and participating in what God is doing through God’s redemptive mission in the world.

3. In this being open to people as gifts the Spirit is bringing into our midst, we find ourselves learning to be more open to what the Spirit desires to do in each of our lives – as individuals and as a community. We are talking about old issues and new issues in new ways that had never before. These gifts of the Spirit give us fresh eyes to look at ourselves, our practices and invite us into exploring new practices that lead us to grow deeper in Christ.

4. We are coming to recognize that what is going on in our midst cannot be readily depicted on an organizational chart, because what is going on is more like a rhythmic dance in which the Spirit is teaching us how to dance in partnership with God as God is active in the world bringing life and wholeness in the reconciling of humanity and the re-creation of the world. Organizational charts or dance instructions are helpful as we begin to learn to dance, but once we catch the rhythm of the dance we are invited into by God, we learn new steps, new moves that have more to do with the Spirit than a mere instruction or organizational manual. Essentially, what we are discovering is learning how to trust the Spirit to lead us as we participate with God in dancing with God in God’s mission.

I am sure we will be learning more as we grow in being open to the Spirit of God, and I am looking forward to such discoveries – but I hope these few insights can serve as a catalyst for your community exploring being involved in ministry and organizing yourselves around the moving of God’s Spirit.

This week I reflect further on Craig Van Gelder’s and Dwight J. Zscheile’s The Missional Church in Perspective: Mapping Trends and Shaping the Conversation. To reiterate, in this book, Van Gelder and Zscheile explore how the missional conversation has unfolded since the book Missional Church was published in 1998. The conversation has moved in different directions, many which are indeed not very missional, but reframe perspectives, in missional language, which have little to do with discerning where God is active in the world.

On p. 155, the authors express that in order for leadership to be understood missionally, it needs to be expressed as participatory leadership. However, I think we need to go further than that in reframing a missional understanding of leading. We will never escape the temptation of taking charge or taking control, even when using participatory as an adjective, as long as we continue to be preoccupied with describing what we do in terms of leadership.

Okay, you are confused, so let me unpack my thinking a little.

Van Gelder and Zscheile express that “leadership is one of the gifts of the Spirit (see Rom. 12:8)” (p. 155). But they do not have that quite right. It is not leadership that is a gift, it is leading. What we have done for the past 20-30 years is reframe this gift of leading into a status, a role and named it leadership. Church Growth made leadership the primary gift for accomplishing the success of an attractional ecclesiology and we have not even questioned whether this focus is adequate as we seek to lead missionally. Could it be that we are comfortable with the temptation to be leaders who excel at leadership? And to the extent that we succumb to this temptation of being a leader, we will miss what it means to be involved with God in God’s mission.

In all my exploration of Jesus and his ministry it is obvious that he exercised the gift of leading, but I think it is to completely misunderstand Jesus and his ministry by identifying what Jesus did in terms of leadership; he never advocated a role of leadership – he was always a servant (cf. Matthew 20: 20-28; Mark 10:35-45; John 13:10-17)

As long as we, in the missional church, seek to describe the gift of leading in terms of leader and leadership, we will never really get away from leadership’s tendency to control or to take charge, no matter what adjectives we seek to utilize. We try to ameliorate our deep sense that leadership expresses something antithetical to the Gospel and the mission of God by using a whole host of adjectives to soften its negative characterization: pastoral, participatory, spiritual, servant, etc. Yet, merely placing an adjective before the noun of leadership, does little to change what eventually leadership becomes – a way to lord it over others.

At issue is the noun that we use. Not even servant leadership is adequate enough – because servant is still merely an adjective – what we need to do is discover a new noun for describing what we are called to do as pastors in the missional church.

I propose that we use the nouns of servant and servantship, rather than leader and leadership, to describe what we are to do in leading the communities we are called serve in participating with God in God’s mission – after all it is how Jesus described his participating with God in God’s mission.

I know that whenever I bring up such a need for a paradigm shift, I get more or less a negative reaction. I think I know why. I contend that we really do not want to give up control, no matter how we try to soften the concept of leadership with an appropriate adjective. This is a temptation just as insidious as Satan’s temptation of Jesus – for him to take control of his ministry by tapping into his divinity. But Jesus knew that participating with God his Father in God’s redemptive mission required him to empty himself of his divinity, and with it every temptation to take charge – and instead he lived and led by serving as a servant among us.

I think if we were to take the time and energy to explore servantship as we have explored leadership in the past 20-30 years, we will begin to embrace a much more missional approach to leading than we ever will be capable of doing in maintaining our grasp on concepts of leadership. So, I suggest that we find ways to stop talking about leadership or even participatory leadership and begin to learn a new vocabulary, and a new way of being the people of God, as we seek to participate with God in God’s mission as servants.

I would really be interested in your comments and taking this conversation further.

[For more of my thinking on this, connect to my article entitled: What is Pastoral Leadership? under the Resources tab.]

On p. 144, the authors raise this question: “One key question for Christian communities today is how to pursue their prophetic vocation within society apart from the framework of Christendom.” This question asks how we are to be missional church without the privileges of Christendom upon which we have become dependent?

Drawing on insights from Lutheran theologian Gary Simpson, in which he expresses that missional communities need to exist at the intersection of public and private life, Van Gelder and Zscheile express that “congregations should see themselves as participants in God’s wider work in the world and society. This takes place not only through the church but also beyond it in such civil society organizations as social service institutions and charities. Congregations need to partner, collaborate, and participate in what God is doing in the world” (p. 144). They further clarify this by stating that churches “be spaces where the questions of human flourishing in a given community are brought for critical discussion that leads to action” (p. 144) that foster the common good.

The nature of this collaboration is different from the kind of collaboration in which churches wrap themselves in a nationalistic identity in order to seemingly have relevance within society – where often it becomes starkly clear that a Christian group is more aligned with an American agenda than a Gospel agenda. The missional call is a call to be collaborative in society, but not as a community that loses its identity, or sells out its identity, but rather collaborates and partners as a community of character with other societal organizations as a participating with God in mission, who is already active in the world through the Spirit.

In such missional collaborations, there is a making space for the Gospel in society, rather than a selling out or a diminishing of the Gospel in order to be deemed as relevant. Our relevance is in our participating with God as God is active in the world. In participating with God, we need to realize that we do not partner or collaborate on our own – but rather in our collaborations, we are conduits for the continuing work of the Spirit of God in re-creating human life, societal life, so that all may be made new.

In making space for the Gospel through partnering and collaborative efforts, we will need to find new ways of expressing the Gospel narrative – it is much more than merely engaging in evangelism telling people that they need God. I believe it is through evangelism that we make space for the Gospel, but in ways that live out the Gospel rather than only give words to the Gospel – we proclaim the Gospel by actions, as well as words. As one of my mentors noted – Jesus words are not the only revelation we have in the Gospels, his actions are revelation as well.

So in our partnering and collaborating as missional communities, we make space for the Gospel – we level mountains and fill in valleys, making a highway for the Lord, so that God has transformational access into people’s lives. In partnering we reveal who we are as a new community, revealing the Gospel through our actions of advocating for justice, of healing the sick, the blind, of setting the prisoner free, of expressing the year of Jubilee for the 99%.

Making space for the Gospel is a walking with the Spirit, for the Spirit to have unimpeded access into the lives of humanity. Making space for the Gospel challenges missional communities to not separate themselves from the world, but to engage the world in relationship, being in and among the world as communities of character, as communities of the Gospel – who live out the Gospel in such as way that observers may express the reality of the Gospel by witnessing the way we live and act for the common good of society.

Whereas, Christendom gave us a false sense of our privileged status, being missional leads us to be a different kind of community that seeks to love the world as God loves the world, that relates to and engages the world as God does – from a place of servanthood and humility. As we have eyes to notice what God notices, and in noticing develop collaborative relationships, missional relationships, we partner with God in bringing about God’s redemptive purposes in the world. Such a posture helps us live into the reality that this mission is not about us, but about God’s love for the world and what God desires and is bringing about in making all creation new.

Dare we be such missional communities of character that make space for the Gospel in the world, by partnering and collaborating with groups, organizations, peoples in whom we see God at work?

If so, we will become a new kind of Christian community in the world – in the world, re-envisioning a new way to be the world because we partner with God who has a vision of a reconciled and recreated world.

This week I would like to offer some reflections, perhaps even some questions for on-going study, regarding a critique they have regarding Christology as a starting point for participating with God in God’s mission.

Referring to Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch’s ReJesus, Van Gelder and Zscheile express that “Frost and Hirsch fail to realize that the trinitarian understanding of God’s mission they use to frame their Christology is in fact a theological missiology – a missiological framework that defines the interrelationship of God, church, and world. They choose instead to make Christology [rather than Trinitarian theology] their starting point . . .” (p. 80).

As an Anabaptist this is also a critique I need to ponder since Anabaptists have a Christological preference in expressing what discipleship and mission entails.

As they continue their critique, they argue that having Jesus as the starting point for engaging in mission “tend[s] to (1) diminish the role of the Spirit in the life of the church as well as in the world; (2) foster an understanding of church as a contrast community within the world that seeks to emulate the example of Jesus; and (3) reduce missiology to an applied discipline, thus eclipsing its richer biblical and theological assertions” (p. 80).

For me, I believe the only way we can begin to participate with God in God’s mission is through Christ – and therefore, in desiring to participate in the Trinitarian mission, we can only enter into that mission through a Christological engagement and understanding – because as John reveals, Jesus is the only one who has seen God, is God, and is in closest relationship with God, who makes God known to us (cf. John 1: 18). Likewise, Paul expresses in Colossians 1: 15 that Jesus is the image or the icon of the invisible God. We cannot know God, participate in God, or participate with God in God’s mission unless we enter into relationship with Jesus and participate with Jesus in his participation in the mission of God.

Christology, then is key, but perhaps it depends on what kind of Christology we hold.

I believe the starting point for engaging in God’s mission is Christology, but the kind of Christology that is necessary is one that engages us, through Christ Jesus, to participate with God in God’s mission in the manner in which Jesus was involved in mission.

I think Van Gelder and Zscheile rightly express that this requires more than an emulation of Jesus – it requires more than following the teachings of Jesus in the expression of our discipleship – it requires our participation in Jesus. What this leads to is our continuing the ministry of Jesus in the world – what Ray Anderson, in The Shape of Practical Theology, describes as christopraxis.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a pastoral colleague a couple of weeks ago. He is in the midst of writing a monograph on comparing Micah 6:8 with John 14:6, comparing mercy, justice and walking with God in relation to Jesus being the way, truth and life. Our conversation that afternoon, over coffee, reflected upon Jesus being the way and demonstrating the way we are to participate with God in God’s mission. This requires more than a mere emulating of Jesus, because mere emulation still leaves us to try and engage in God’s mission in our own ways. Only as we participate in Jesus do we begin to be integrated in the way of Jesus, in which Jesus is the way.

Such a Christology rooted in participation of Christ – as Christ participated with God the Father in mission, must then be the starting point for our engagement of the mission of God. Such a Christology does not diminish the role of the Spirit, because the way of Jesus embraces the Spirit of God – all that Jesus did in ministry was by the power of the Spirit – how can we do otherwise, unless we only emulate Jesus and not participate in Jesus.

Further, such a participation in Jesus, shapes us to live as the incarnate people of God, the incarnate body of Christ within our world, within our cultures. We are not merely a contrast community, as Van Gelder and Zscheile critique, as if we could separate ourselves from the world – but like Jesus, as we participate in Jesus, we are engaged with the world and in the world – we are instead a new kind of humanity in the world. In the expression that Stan Hauerwas uses – we are a community of character in the world, demonstrating as Jesus demonstrated, a different way of being human, a different way of being a human community in the world. Being different is not merely being a community in contrast, we are a community showing a new way of being human in the midst of the brokenness and death narratives of the world. This also is dependent upon the Spirit of God – for Jesus was dependent upon the Spirit to demonstrate the character of new creation.

And in light of this, such a missional understanding of Christology frames missiology as being no mere applied discipline. Rather, it seeks to give expression to the way we are a new human community in the world because we participate in Jesus, who participates in the trinitarian mission of God. Jesus, and Jesus alone, is our entry into participation with God in God’s mission – and so a missional Christology is the rightful starting place – in fact the only starting place for our participation with God in God’s mission.

I realize that what I am expressing here is a quick overview and just a beginning of my exploration of the connection between a trinitarian understanding of mission and Christology – and I realize it requires more in depth investigation, yet, I believe we cannot understand God and God’s mission without a missional Christology.

So, I invite your reflections as well – that we may engage in theological dialogue together.

Last night Brueggemann said something that got my attention – we live in a society, an empire, that necessitates that its citizenry embraces a narrative of accumulation. This narrative of accumulation involves a spiritual attraction to money and demands our loyalty. Our North American empire tells this story so pervasively through media, through advertising, through the political and economic systems, through the military machine, making it so visible that we all want to be part of it. In order to maintain this narrative of accumulation as the only viable narrative, the Empire states that all other narratives, all other stories are fictions – even the Gospel.

In fact, the Gospel is a fiction, by the norms of the Empire. The Empire claims that it has the only truth – the truth that perpetuates the narrative of accumulation.

So how do we who seek to participate with God in God’s mission respond?

Brueggemann states that we need to display a different narrative – we need to challenge the epistemology (or way of understanding) of the Empire. We are called to live out our being human, under the rule of Christ, in missional communities in radical different ways which reveal a different story, a different vision – in fact, embracing God’s Story and Vision, so that in our living, our speaking, our doing of all that we do, what is revealed is that the narrative of the Empire, the narrative of accumulation, is indeed a fiction in light of the narrative of the Gospel, in light of the active mission of God in the world.

In that the Empire seeks to make its fiction real, God’s missional people commit themselves to partner with God in living in such a way as to unmask the falsehood and deceptive nature of the Empire’s narrative. It is about making a spectacle of the principalities and the powers, which Jesus did by embracing the violence against him and against humanity thrust upon him on the cross.

This involves more than merely declaring that the Gospel narrative is a better narrative. In the face of the narrative of the Empire, we are being called to live as a community of character (Stanley Hauerwas’ term) that so lives out the Gospel narrative that it puts on display the system of death that is inherent in the Empire’s narrative of accumulation. It is not merely finding God’s mission in the midst of our culture, but to so participate with God that we demonstrate, in the power of the Spirit, that God’s mission in the midst of culture actively re-creates humanity and creation, so that humanity is no longer subject to the powers of sin and death.

Perhaps a first step in doing so, as the people of God in North America, is in confessing our collusion with this narrative of death, this narrative of accumulation, this narrative of the Empire – for we have found comfort in this narrative. Confessing and living out the narrative of the Gospel – the only narrative of life – in contrast to the narrative of the Empire will be a costly confession, a costly living out of our discipleship.

But only such a costly discipleship will unmask the fictional nature of the Empire’s narrative.

They make clear, and I agree, we cannot understand or engage in God’s mission unless we embrace a theological understanding of the Trinity. They express that a major facet of a theological focus in Trinitarian renewal “is the fresh attention being given to the relationality of God” (p. 105). Which they state, “represents a crucial complement to the sending emphasis so characteristic of the West” (p. 105).

They relate “that theologians such as John Zizioulas have argued that the Cappadocian fathers . . . made a revolutionary move against the backdrop of Greek philosophy by asserting that relational personhood . . .” (p. 105) is an inherent aspect of understanding God as Trinity. Stating further, “in this view, God’s very being is not an abstract divine substance characterized by certain attributes, but rather is profoundly personal. There is no personal identity without relationality” (p. 105). What this means is that Trinity is to be understood more in terms of the relationality inherent within the Godhead – expressed by the concept of perichoresis, than an abstract defining of God by God’s attributes or functions. In essence, we begin to grasp what it means for God to be Trinitarian when we realize that “Trinity is seen as a community” (p. 105).

This reveals the relational character of God’s mission in which we, as the people of God, are invited into relationship with God to participate with God in God’s mission. As the Van Gelder and Zscheile express, “in this Trinitarian perspective, to be a person is to participate in others’ lives, to have an identity shaped by other persons, rather than to be an isolated individual” (p. 105) – each person in the Trinity is in relationship with and involved in each person of the Trinity and God’s mission is an expression of the relationality inherent within Trinity.

One of my take aways from this, in the brief space of this blog, is that for God, the mission of God is not merely a “task.” Mission is not just something God merely does – as an act outside of the personhood of God – God’s mission matters to God. Because God is relational, God’s mission involves God in all of God’s Trinitarian relationality – God cannot be any other way. Mission is something personal for God; mission is something that does not happen outside of God, but involves God’s heart, involves God’s character, involves God’s love. God enacts God’s mission not as an act outside of God, but rather God is personally involved in bringing about what God is purposing in reconciling humanity to God and recreating creation – bringing about God’s eschatological telos.

This helps me to understand my participation with Jesus in the mission of God. It has often been said that to be adept in ministry that we need to exercise professional boundaries in relation to those we serve. To me this is merely an excuse for being impersonal (though I understand that “boundaries” are essential if we are not abuse others – but that is another discussion about a different kind of understanding of boundaries). The result of being impersonal is that we are apt to exercise our own ministry, but not God’s mission. To be involved in ministry that participates with God in God’s mission has to be inherently relational and personal. I believe, ministry to others must not maintain a professionality, but must involve all of who we are as persons, in relationship, taking the risk of being hurt by the love we extend to others and receive from others – ministry, like God’s mission, must be intensely personal and relational. To minister in any other way is to not participate with God in God’s mission – because to minister in any other way is to minister in ways which are foreign to God’s Trinitarian relationality.

I know I need to develop this line of thinking some more – and so I am open, as always, to your constructive comments.

God’s incarnation in Jesus is all about God coming to be among us, to dwell among us in ordinary ways – perhaps even in obscure ways. After all, though the scribes who knew the Scriptures were on the lookout for the coming Messiah, it was not until about two years after Jesus’ birth that astrologers from the east, following a star, asked the question, “where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him” (Matthew 2:2).

God’s incarnation in Jesus was not meant to shine a spotlight on God so as to garner celebrity status for God in Jesus – though this is what Satan was trying to do through his tempting of Jesus (cf. Matthew 4:1-11). Rather, it seems that God purposes to be manifest, to be revealed in obscure ordinary ways that permeate the ordinary goings and doings of people’s lives with God’s presence. God came to dwell among us in ways which those following the headlines would not notice, but only those crying out for re-creation.

The idea of incarnation as an act of re-creation in the ordinary goings and doings of people’s lives is evident in Mark’s gospel as he describes the appearing of John the Baptist. The word used for his appearing, an appearing which pointed to the coming Messiah is egeneto (root: ginomai). It is the word for genesis in the New Testament and has multiple meanings depending upon context. It is a creative word which can mean being born or begotten, to be created, to take place, for something new to happen to someone – and here it means “to appear” – as a creative presence coming onto the world stage in the wilderness to reveal something new that is redemptive, reconciliatory, re-creative of creation – light in a dark world!

John participated with God in God’s mission by pointing to, revealing the coming of the Messiah, through whom God would make all things new (cf. Colossians 1: 15-20).

It is evident from Jesus’ ministry that he lived out God’s incarnation in the brokenness, ordinariness, mundane reality of our humanity. He hung out where the most of us hang out. Jesus did not frequent venues that got him noticed by People magazine, but instead was with people in places in which he was called a glutton, a drunk, and a friend of sinners (cf. Matthew 11:19).

The significance of understanding the ordinariness of God’s incarnation – God living out his humanity in ordinary places, is that God’s mission happens in the broken, ordinary, everyday places of our humanity. And, in light of that, our participating with God in God’s mission encompasses the ordinary rhythms of our lives, the ordinary places of our lives, the ordinary activities and duties of our lives – as we encounter others doing ordinary things and going to ordinary places. Participating with God in God’s mission is a low calling – and by that I mean that we are called to the low places, the ordinary places.

For it is in the low places, the ordinary places that we participate with God in God’s mission as Jesus did. May we discover how to participate with God in God’s mission in the same ordinariness, brokenness as Christ Jesus:

“He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death – and the worst kind of death at that: a crucifixion.” (Philippians 2: 6-8, The Message).

And because he participated with God in God’s mission in this way, and enables us through the power of the Spirit to participate with God in a similar way, we worship him who continually reveals and manifests God to us in the midst of our brokenness and ordinariness:

“Because of that obedience, God lifted him high and honored him far beyond anyone or anything, ever, so that all created beings in heaven and on earth – even those long ago dead and buried – will bow in worship before this Jesus Christ, and call out in praise that he is the Master of all, to the glorious honor of God the Father” (Philippians 2: 9-11, The Message)

May we see more clearly the presence of God in the ordinariness of our lives – because that is where God is to be seen!

Anderson notes that in Christianity that we rightfully make much of the cross – the cross is essential to the mission of God, but then he remarks that the cross is the end, it is not the beginning – Resurrection is the beginning.

As we celebrate Christmas this week and focus on Christ and his incarnation, we realize that his participating with God in God’s mission put him on a trajectory that leads him to the cross. Yet, the good news of the Gospel, of God’s reign, of the outworking of God’s mission, is that it does not end at the cross, God’s mission through Jesus is fully manifested through the Resurrection.

Hear Anderson’s reframing of our understanding of the cross:

“The cross is the end of our life as mere sinner, not the beginning. The cross put an end to the law which condemns, says Paul. The cross is not a place to revisit time and time again in morbid fascination with the things that weigh us down and destroy our worth as God’s children. ‘I died to the law so that I might live to God,’ wrote Paul. ‘I have been crucified with Christ’ (Galatians 2:19). What Paul says of himself is true of every human being. In the cross all of humanity died when Christ died. That is, through Christ God brought the consequence of sin upon himself, so that death no longer has power to determine human destiny. ‘It is no longer I who live,’ added Paul, ‘but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life that I live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me’ (Galatians 2:20). Not every person can say that, but only those in whom the spirit of the resurrected Christ dwells (Romans 8:9). ‘The world behind me, the cross before me,’ we assert when singing the familiar song, I Have Decided to Follow Jesus. That is so wrong!! I would rewrite it to say, ‘The cross behind me, the world before me!’ No one should think that following Jesus leads back to the cross. That is finished! Once and for all. . . . The Lost Lane-end Into Heaven, as the novelist, Thomas Wolfe, wrote, is not found at the foot of the cross but in the pathway marked by the light shining out of the empty tomb. There is indeed a cross in my past, but not in my future. I want to walk in the light and be singing of a Risen Savior when Jesus walks in the door!” (pp. 115, 116).

Yes, those of us who have been set free through Christ have a cross in our past, but now as we live, identifying with Christ, continuing the ministry of Christ in the world, we live participating with God in God’s mission in the light of the Resurrection. We are a resurrection people, a people who still have stuff in our lives that needs to be crucified, but the trajectory of our lives now is beyond the cross, living in light of the resurrection of Christ – which in being identified with him through our baptisms, we are living as ones who have been resurrected into the life that is God (I say this because in Exodus 3 we discover that God’s name is not a noun, but a verb meaning Being, Life, Is – God is Life, because God is the Living One from whom all living emanates!)

And in being resurrected, we are living participants with God in God’s mission of bringing life, peace, hope, joy – life to all of humanity and to all of creation. Mission is not something we do, but rather how we now live because we are a resurrection people connected to God, in relationship with God, through Christ Jesus in the power of the Spirit of God. The mission of God is about transforming all of creation. And as we live as transformed ones, being infused with resurrection life, we participate with God in God’s mission, because we now share in the life that is God. The resurrection has re-created us and prepared us, so that our living as human beings is all about what God is accomplishing in this world to make all new.

What a Christmas gift – a gift of God that began in the incarnation of God in Jesus, that led to the cross – Jesus taking on all the violence thrust against humanity, and culminated in the victory over sin and death through Jesus’ resurrection. Because of this gift in Jesus, we now are empowered and filled with the Spirit of God to participate with God in God’s mission of making all creation new. Merry Christmas!

[I will be taking a break next week, so my next posting will be during the week of January 6, 2012 – see you next year.]

Anderson begins with some hard to receive words: “The grace of God must first kill before it can make alive” (p. 101). He continues: “The grace of God requires barrenness not our belief as a precondition. True faith and true obedience come as a gift of God’s grace, and the inner logic of that gift requires that where we have inserted a human possibility the grace of God must remove it. This was true for Moses, as he experienced his own failure and futility, only to witness God’s power and grace through his weakness” (p. 101).

Anderson also reminds us of Abraham and Sarah – Abraham believed he could fulfill God’s promise to him through Ishmael, rather than through the impossibility of Sarah bearing a son. But it is precisely in the midst of Sarah’s barrenness that God’s grace is manifest.

And this is what we need to embrace as well if we are to be a people who are transformed by God’s re-creative work in us as God makes all things new. We not only participate with God in God’s mission, but we are also transformed through God’s mission taking hold of us. When we think we have something to offer God as a precondition to our being involved with God in God’s mission – the mission becomes about us, rather than about what God is accomplishing. But the mission is not about us – because God’s grace presupposes barrenness, not fertility (as in the case with Sarah).

It is in our weakness – read through the narrative of God’s encounter with his people throughout Scripture, it is always in our weakness that God’s presence, God’s activity is manifested. It is when we say to God, “I’ve got this, take a break,” that we no longer are in need of God’s grace, nor of God’s hope, love, nor mercy – and as a result, we fail. Such failure is indeed a grace, because it realizes that we have nothing to offer to God except our brokenness, our barrenness – so that all God does in us, and all God does through us is indeed the active outworking of God’s mission.

And so Anderson concludes: “We must understand that the grace of God presupposes barrenness, not fertility; that impossibility from the human side is the condition which demonstrates most clearly the inner logic of grace. We must also learn that humans have a share in the grace of God; that human obedience and faith are not set aside by grace, but are drawn into the grace of God as an indispensable aspect of God’s ministry, [God’s mission]. After all, Isaac did not drop down from heaven on a supernatural parachute! Rather, his birth resulted from a human act as much as did the birth of Ishmael. Grace is not a supernatural addition to a natural life, but the empowering of natural life to realize and produce a divine potential. The miracle of God’s grace is not that Abraham could disseminate his seed, but that a barren woman could conceive from it!” (p. 102).

This Advent and this Christmas, as we think of what gift we can give God – we realize that what we give are things that the world discards – our failures, our barrenness, our brokenness. In offering such “gifts” or “non-gifts” to God – these are indeed acts of faith, acts of obedience, recognizing that the nothing we have to offer is exactly what God needs to carry out God’s mission, and graciously to work through us to transform the world.

May we give God all of our nothingness and be open to receive the gift of God’s grace – that, as the Gospel reveals, is fully manifested in Jesus Christ – the content of God’s grace.