The Pentecostal Scholar
Simon Chann of Singapore has made some surprising statements, surprising
because they come from the Pentecostal expression of the Christian Faith. The statements,
as I read them through my own filters, are:
“Worship is not just a function of the Church, but the Church’s very
reason for being;” and “What is the mission of the Trinity? And the answer to that question is
communion. Ultimately all things are to
be brought into communion with the Triune God.
Communion is the ultimate end, not mission. Communion …is ultimately, seeing God and
seeing the heart of God as well, which is his love for the world.” [i]
That takes me back to the rhythm
of personal renewal reflected in the flux and reflux in the writings of Van
Ruysbroek. As we empty ourselves in the
service of God and in the warfare between the kingdom and the world we reach the
end of ourselves and personal Depletion.
We, then by pure grace and pure gift return to him. Being restored by communion with God we flow
back out into the world, sharing in the self-emptying and incarnate love of the
Logos, the Christ, even Jesus, whom we adore.
We then flow back into the world and into the holy warfare of making
disciples of all nations, baptizing them into the name, and into communion
with, “the Father and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey
everything the Logos has commanded, for lo, he is with us always even to the
end of the age.” In an act of further Incarnation
he is not only with us but in us, even in our own self-emptying mission into
the world.
In Hebrews 12:22, he tells us that we have come to
join in the heavenly communion…and together, hand in hand, “have come to Mount
Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God. We have come to the thousands upon thousands
of angels in joyful assembly, to the Church, the Church of the first-born. We have come to God, the judge of all men, to
the spirits of righteous men made perfect.
We have come to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, to the sprinkled
blood that is our at-one-ment with the Triune God who loves us.
In coming we receive a Kingdom that cannot be
shaken. Thus “let us offer to God
acceptable worship with reverence and awe for our God is a consuming fire,” and
all that is not holy love within us will be burned up that we might be
purified, and thus purified and united with his holy love we flow back into the
world, his own creation which he loves and seeks to restore to himself.
The other paradigm that fits with
this is the classic “God initiates and man responds.” God in his love, reconciling justice and
mercy, sends the Logos incarnate into the world. We ourselves are ransomed by his action: “Truly
no man can ransom another, or give to God the price of his life, for the ransom
of their life is costly and can never suffice, that he should live on forever
and never see the pit” (Psalm 49:7-9), and “But God will
ransom my soul from the power of Sheol, for he will receive me” (Psalm 49:15). We receive our
at-one-ment and in holy and exuberant joy are drawn out of ourselves, out of
our locus in the world, and drawn into the holy fellowship of the saints and
angels, and for a few moments, by grace often repeated, we are united with him
and with his redeeming love. That is the
first motion.
The
second is this: Now that we are in him and he in us; we, with joy, join in his
redeeming work and through us and our love he reaches out to the world around
us. This happens, even to the extent,
that Paul can state an oft experienced pastoral reality and say: “I make up in
my own body that which is lacking in the sufferings of Christ on behalf of the
Church, which is his body” (Col. 1:24).
This empowering
union becomes a complete reality in the sacramental union that we celebrate in
Holy Eucharist. Gathered ‘round the altar in the fellowship
of saints and angels, we kneel, and in humble adoration we receive the body and
blood of Christ. Do not explain away his
simple, but profound, declaration, “This is my body. This is my blood.” Most of the American Protestant world misses
the reality claiming perversely that it is a memorial only. That is a phenomenal and costly error. There is a reason why the proverbial
mega-church is a mile wide and a quarter of an inch deep.
There is little cost to Christ, or to us in such
bloodless gatherings. In the body and
the blood we receive the very substance of God incarnate. He who is one substance (homoousios) with the Father as regards his Godhead, becomes of one
substance with us, not only in His incarnation, but also in the giving of His
body and blood. He becomes one substance
with us as regarding His manhood and His Godhead, which is undivided (Council
of Chalcedon Definition, 451 AD, as applied to the Eucharist)[ii]. We receive him Himself, more than the mere
experience of praise, more than in the discipline of daily offices, we receive Him
and enter into a mutual indwelling with the Holy God. It receiving Him we take him in us back into
the world.
Peter Kreeft remarks, “How irrational to swallow a
camel and strain at gnat!—to believe the greater miracle, the oneness of the
man Christ with God, and not the lesser one, the oneness of the bread with his body. If God can leap the infinite gap into man, he
can surely leap into the appearances of bread and wine.” [iii]
For that matter, how irrational to believe that that
God can leap the infinite gap into man, and not believe that through Christ he
can make that infinite leap into each one of us.
Every
Sunday we are dressed in white and surrounding the altar, we lift up holy hands
as liturgists (leitourgos - liturgist = minister) in praise and worship of Him
in the liturgy of communion, in the heavenlies, receiving again his very
substance.
In those moments
sacramentally and really we feed upon the body and blood of the Christ who
said, “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him
(John 6:56). And again, “The cup of
blessing that we bless, is it not a participation, a communion, a fellowship, a
koinonia, in the blood of
Christ? The bread that we break is it
not a koinonia in the body of
Christ? Because there is one bread, we
who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread (I Cor.
11:16-17).
We do not come to
worship to be entertained. If anything
we are the entertainment for the Lord.
Now united with him, in union with him, we join in his holy mission out
into the world. Through such worship,
ministry, liturgy, through the body and the blood we receive the Spirit of
power.
Hence
in our congregation, before the sermon we pray, “Holy Spirit, it is your
purpose to reveal to us the living God and his only Son, Jesus Christ our Lord:
Pour on us the fire of your love. Warm
our hearts, challenge our minds and gently draw our wills along your paths,
that your presence and power may quicken our love, deepen our joy, and equip us
to meet the challenges of our daily lives, through Jesus Christ our Lord.” This happens not only through proclamation,
but also through the union of word and sacrament. We proclaim the Word to the world, and draw
those who are being saved into union with him in the sacrament of Holy
Eucharist.
St.
Paul expresses this mission of the church in this way: “I
have written to you very boldly by way of reminder, because of the grace given
me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly
service of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable,
sanctified by the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:15-16). The language is sacramental language. The minister is the liturgist, the priestly service
is precisely that which the priest does Sunday by Sunday as the liturgist of
God at the altar. The word for offering,
is prosphora, that which is offered on the altar of God. This offering is sanctified, made holy by the
Holy Spirit, the Ruach Elohim of the Old Testament and the New.
The offering that we offer is
actually the “offering of the Gentiles.” specifically the fruits our work of
evangelism. In love and adoration we
present to the Father those whom we have brought to salvation in his Son Jesus
Christ. This offering is possible only
through Christ, and is a work directed by the Holy Spirit. What strikes me is the awesome responsibility
we bear in this matter. If we are
insensitive to the call of the Spirit, we will be left standing on the road
that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza while the eunuch makes his way back to
Candace the pagan queen unconverted.
Worship, communion with the God
of love should awaken the love of God within our hearts. When that does not indeed happen it signals
that our communion with God is actually abortive and all our religious
posturing is precisely that. We are
hypocrites, in the Biblical sense of that word, wearing the assumed mask of
piety. To us, then the Christ will say,
“Would that you were either cold or hot!
So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you
out of my mouth (Rev. 3:15,16). If you
think that is harsh, consider this, that without Christ as his ransom, the
eunuch will go to hell, and we will have no offering to bring to the Father.
The two paradigms are
completed in our personal and corporate experience, in the flux and reflux, the
rhythm of personal renewal, and in the responsive action in which God initiates
and man responds by returning his love to him, and joining his love in his
ministry and warfare in the world, the kosmos.
[i] (Christianity Today, June 2007)
[ii] “The Definition of the Union of the Divine and Human Natures in the
Person of Christ” in The Book of Common Prayer, p. 864
[iii] Peter Kreeft, Christianity for Modern Pagans: Pascal’s Pensées,
(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), p. 274
Copyright © 2012 Robin P. Smith
