Below are some points of interest from our discussion of Scot's thirteenth chapter of Embracing Grace.
Faith Acts
"The embrace of faith, like any embrace, is visible" (p. 152). Scot's examples here make the point clearly. "A genuine embrace is a bodily thing" (p. 153).
Jesus taught us that if we love him, we obey his commandments (John 14:15). James taught that faith without works is dead (Jas 2:14-26). The writer to the Hebrews shows us that faith is anything but passive (Heb 11:1-12:2). The bible is clear on this point: Faith acts.
As we've mentioned in earlier discussions, the Greek word for faith (pistis) can be translated as 'faith' or 'faithfulness.' Keeping this fuller translation in mind helps us avoid mistaking 'pistis' as simply a cerebral affair. Faith is faithful. And that requires activity!
Joining God's Dance
What is Scot getting at when he speaks of our dance with God? The dancing metaphor communicates that our relationship with God involves participation, cooperation, collaboration, partnership, teamwork. But it's not only relational, it's also directional. The "dance" in which we participate is going somewhere. Dancing with grace, then, speaks of participating intimately with what God is doing in the world to restore shalom to his broken creation.
"But dancing with Jesus means dancing with the plan of God for the redemption of the world in his cross and resurrection" (p. 154). The Christian life, in great part, is simply participating in the work of God in the world, both as recipient of grace and as mediator of grace. We covered this more extensively in our four sessions called "God's Community with God's Commission" (see the session titles on the left).
During one of our first discussions on "the cycle of grace," we explained how grace starts with the individual, then expands out to form a community, then works through the community to impact the nations, then one day will encompass the whole of creation. Below is a cut-and-paste from that discussion.
The Expanding Spheres of the Gospel’s Reach
a. Me
Grace starts its work in the individual, bringing a process of transformation of heart and mind, and incorporating us into his family, which turns a “me mentality” into an…
b. Us
We then, as the people of God, learn to function as a community, as a family. We help express his love and wisdom in tangible ways to one another, but also to…
c. The World
God’s people, since the days of Abraham (circa 1900 BC!), have been both the recipients of blessing, and then the agents of blessing, in the world (see Gen 12:1-3). This world is a mess, and God uses his people to help spread justice, peace, truth, mercy, and ‘the embrace of grace’ is a sin-torn and fragmented world. God’s concern for his creation doesn’t stop with the people of the world, but extends to the entirety of…
d. The Universe
We anticipate the day when the Lord returns to renew all things, including the heavens and the earth, as well as our broken, decaying, disease-ridden bodies.
In this chapter Scot reiterates these spheres, but in reverse order. He starts with our embrace of the world (p. 155), then moves closer in to our embrace of the faith community (p. 158), the closes with our personal embrace of Christ (p. 161).
Embrace the World God is Restoring
The impact of the gospel on the world around us is holistic, not just restricted to apparently "spiritual" matters, but inclusive of "secular" affairs. The gospel reaches into all of life, from the mundane to the marvelous, from the difficult to the delightful, in order to bless it and make it whole. Scot's examples from the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran Church are fitting, and illustrative of the far-reaching effects of the Spirit.
Being Missional, once again
Scot quotes an excerpt (p. 157) from Brian McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004). The larger context from Brian's chapter "Why I Am Missional" is worth quoting. What follows is taken from pp. 107-111. (Two diagrams from this section couldn't be reproduced here, so I have described them in the inserted bracketed texts.) (Note also, Brian wrote a blurb to Scot's book that is on the front cover of Embracing Grace.)
To be and make disciples of Jesus Christ in authentic community for the good of the world.” That last phrase brings the essence of the missional life into the equation.
It says that Christians are not the end users of the gospel. It says that the gospel of Jesus is not "all about me." Two diagrams may help show the difference between Christianity as we know it and missional Christianity.
[This first diagram depicts three circles in a horizontal row, in descending size, left to right. The first circle on the left, and the largest, has the word ME in its middle; the second smaller circle, in the middle of the three, has the word CHURCH inscribed within; the third, last, and smallest circle has the word WORLD at its center. An arrow pointing to the right sits between the first and second circles, and another arrow sits between the second and third circle.]
In this diagram, my largest concern is me, my soul, my personal destiny in heaven, my maturity, and my rewards. Occasionally, after "winning" people based on personal selfinterest, churches can entice people to care a little about the church—but is it any surprise that people "won to Christ" by self-interest come to the church asking, “What's in it for me?"
Is it any surprise that with this understanding of salvation, churches tend to become gatherings of self-interested people who gather for mutual self-interest—constantly treating the church as a purveyor of religious goods and services, constantly shopping and "trading up" for churches that can "meet my needs" better? Is it any surprise that it's stinking hard to convince churches that they have a mission to the world when most Christians equate "personal salvation" of individual "souls" with the ultimate aim of Jesus? Is it any wonder that people feel like victims of a bait and switch when they're lured with personal salvation and then hooked with church Commitment and world mission?
The following diagram shows a radically different alternative:
[This second diagram depicts three circles embedding within one another. The first and smallest is labeled ME, which sits within the medium-sized circle labeled CHURCH. The second circle then sits within the largest circle labeled WORLD. Arrows extend from the edges of the ME circle out into the CHURCH circle. Arrows extend from the edges of the CHURCH circle out into the WORLD circle.]
In this diagram, Jesus comes with saving love for the world. He creates the church as a missional community to join him in his mission of saving the world. He invites me to be part of this community to experience his saving love and participate in it.
This missional approach changes everything. In fact, I don't think I realize how much it changes yet because I'm still getting used to it.
Among other things, it eliminates old dichotomies like “evangelism” and “social action.” Both are integrated in expressing saving love for the world. Those who want to become Christians (whether through our proclamation or demonstration), we welcome. Those who don't, we love and serve, joining God in seeking their good, their blessing, their shalom.
This approach gets rid of distinctions like ministry (what we do in the church) and mission (what we do outside it), since ministry is for mission from the start. For example, I seek to develop virtues not just for my own benefit, but so I can inflict less damage and more blessing on the world. I seek to better understand Scripture not just for my own sake, but so I'll be better equipped to serve God and my neighbors.
It also gets rid of terms like missionary and mission field, since now every Christian is a missionary and every place is a mission field.
Perhaps most profound and yet most troublesome, it gets us beyond the us-them thinking and in-grouping and out-grouping that lead to prejudice, exclusion, and ultimately to religious wars. It opens up a third alternative beyond exclusive and universalist religion. Exclusive religion says, "We're in, and you're out." Good news for us, bad news for you. Understandably, universalist religion reacts and says, "Everybody's in!" That's good news for everyone at first blush until you ask, "Why is there so much injustice then? Why are so many sad, cruel, harassed, and helpless? If everybody's in—is this as good as it gets?" Saying that "everybody's in" can too easily lead to complacency about injustice here and now and can create a kind of nice, relaxed, magnanimous apathy. This magnanimous apathy may be better than the narrow antipathy often associated with exclusive religion, but I think we need a better alternative…
Missional faith asserts that Jesus came to preach the good news of the kingdom of God to everyone, especially the poor. He came to seek and save the lost. He came on behalf of the sick. He came to save the world. His gospel, and therefore the Christian message, is Good News for the whole world.
The idea that the Christian message is universally good news for Christians and non-Christians alike is, to some, unheard of, strange, and perhaps heretical. To me, it has become natural and obvious. Let me explain.
Jesus was a Jew and so saw himself as one of Abraham's descendants. Abraham's original contact with God involved a kind of identity statement or mission statement: I will bless you, God said, and I will make you a blessing to others. I will make your name and nation great, God said, and through you, all nations will be blessed.
Lesslie Newbigin, one of the theologians who has helped me most (and whose first name often misleads people regarding his gender), used to say that the greatest heresy (false, destructive, divisive belief) in monotheism results from taking the first half of God's call to Abraham (I will bless you, I will make your name and nation great) and neglecting or rejecting the second half (I will make you a blessing, all nations will be blessed through you). Do you see the tragic difference? Any form of Christianity that takes the first part of God's call to Abraham more seriously than the second is not missional, as I'm using the term here. Neither is it generous or truly orthodox!
One of my mentors once said to me, "Remember, in a pluralistic world, a religion is valued based on the benefits it brings to its nonadherents. This surprised me, and I thought about it for days. Many people think the opposite of what my mentor said: that religions offer benefits to adherents and catastrophic threats for nonadherents. This offer/threat combination motivates people, they assume, to become adherents out of fear of catastrophe and desire for benefits. I think that the missional way is better: the gospel brings.blessing to all, adherents and nonadherents alike. For example, if Jesus sends people into the world to love and serve their neighbors, their neighbors benefit, and so do the people sent by Jesus, since it is even better to give than to receive. Or imagine a medical analogy: if followers of Jesus are like hospital employees, the sick who come to them benefit by their care, and the hospital employees benefit by being part of the hospital staff, which is rewarding in many ways.
How did he do it? The Gospels tell us. He selected 12 and trained them in a new way of life. He sent them to teach everyone this way of life. Some would believe and become practitioners and teachers of this new way of life, too. Even if only a few would practice this new way, many would benefit. Oppressed people would be free. Poor people would be liberated from poverty. Minorities would be treated with respect. Sinners would be loved, not resented. Industrialists would realize that God cares for sparrows and wildflowers—so their industries should respect, not rape, the environment. The homeless would be invited in for a hot meal. The kingdom of God would come—not everywhere at once, not suddenly, but gradually, like a seed growing in a field, like yeast spreading in a lump of bread dough, like light spreading across the sky at dawn.
Embracing the World Locally
We as a community of Christ and as individuals are situated in a particular time and place in history. Around us are various needs. We collectively and individually have been equipped with certain skills and various resources that can help address the needs around us. How we live out the gospel in our little section of the world is unique. There is no cookie-cutter answer to what it looks like to express grace in each and every home, neighborhood, city, state, country, culture, time, and place. We must exercise discernment to know how to live the Jesus Creed in our little part of the world. See John Stackhouse's article on Promoting Shalom (here on our resource page). For a fuller academic explication of this, I recommend his new book Making the Best of It: Following Christ in the Real World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
Embrace our Faith Community
Scot's observation is on-target that for every 1 text in the Bible on the afterlife there must 1,000 on community. In three short pages (158-160) he emphasizes that community life for the follower of Jesus is not optional. It is indispensible. And it is not done passively, as a spectator. It is engaging, active, participatory.
Life in the Kingdom, life as an apprentice to Jesus, is inescapably communal. The words from Leonard Sweet are choice:
Faith is more than beliefs to be learned; it is bonds to be lived. Faith is more than holding the 'right' beliefs; it is holding the 'right' (that is, the 'least of these') hands.
Paul speaks of this corporate dimension of faith in almost every paragraph within his 13 letters. I'll just provide one example from Ephesians. After explaining in chapters one through three about all the blessings that God has bestowed in us his beloved, he turns in chapter four to spell out what our response should be. The very first thing Paul mentions is our humble, forgiving, grace-filled engagement with fellow believers. Here it is: unifying with Christians is the first thing we should do to respond to the overwhelming abundance of God's grace. How do we live a life worthy of our calling in grace? Paul explains:
Eph 4:1-6. Therefore I, a prisoner for serving the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of your calling, for you have been called by God. Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love. Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace. For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father, who is over all and in all and living through all.
I wonder what contributes to followers of Jesus stopping to walk with him as he walks and works among his people? Ignorance of the Bible's teaching? That's hard to claim for any reader of the Bible. Difficulty being "humble and gentle" and "making allowance for each other's faults"? It bet that's common. Refusal to rejoin the community, any community, after being mistreated by someone in the church? I bet that too is common. Perhaps it's the attitude of pride and superiority we saw with Simon last week. I bet it's a complex mixture of many things. Whatever the cause, it's a tragic loss of for both the self-removed person and the church.
Embrace Christ Personally
Here Scot mentioned two Christian ordinances or sacraments: Baptism, which initiates us into the community of faith and symbolically represents our union with our Christ in his death and resurrection, and the Lord's Supper. For more on baptism in the NT, see our little summary here.
Scot then closes with a short story from Tolkien. |