My New Project Post-Theological Journal

 Hi! I want to announce my new writing project - "Reading the Bible A.S.A.P* (As Simply as Possible) Which may not Always be Simple And Never Simplistic."

This is the culmination of decades of reading, reflection, and writing on various parts of the issue titled above. It's not an elegant title, I grant you, but it lays out what I believe remains near the center of what troubles the church in the western world in an increasingly more intense way: our relation to scripture and to God through scripture.

I will try to go at this work with a no-holds-barred approach. I will try and clearly state my assumptions and faith commitments, do my best not to avoid, side-step, or diminish issues or problems, take advantage of what I take to be the best scholarship on these matters, in ways I hope will provoke readers to think or rethink important matters to their life and faith.

I am not and have never been an academic. I am a pastor. One who calling has been to try and keep one foot in the pew and one in the academy in an effort to help and encourage the church to engage scripture more deeply and responsibly. That remains my goal in this project. 

I have a lot to say about these matters, opinions aplenty. And if you don't like these, I have plenty more. I have developed a perspective on all this from which I write. I hope to convince readers that it is a way to approach and read scripture that has merit and is worth considering. 

I will publish each section here as I finish it. The serial will, I hope, encourage more to read it than if I published it whole. I will do that in some fashion, probably as an ebook, when finished (should God grant the time, strength, and health to complete it).  The first post will appear shortly and I hope to issue at least one post a week till it is done.

To all readers, then, I say read what I write, pray over it, and may so doing find you better able to sense, hear, and respond to God's claim and call on your life in your time and place.

In Christ,

Lee Wyatt

P.S. I am using an old blog I haven't used in a while. I'm drawn to issue this material under the warning of Walker Percy's text that serves as its title. That's worth considering as a preface to reading my text.

MLK - Dream or Nightmare

Dear Martin,

It’s the anniversary of your “I Have a Dream” speech. It’s eerie to hear that speech in today’s world. The only dreams on our horizons are nightmares. I say “our” because since your death the world has truly become a global community. And these nightmares trouble all of us.

At the root of much of it lies our continuing failure to judge one another by the “content of our character.” We still judge others by the “color of our skin,” that sadly has not gone away. But even more troubling is the pervasive presence and power of image. Image rules from the personal to the public to the global. It’s not who we are but who we present ourselves to be that counts. And the power of our communicational media (you wouldn’t believe the internet or today’s smart phones, Martin) allow us to project, change, and reinvent our image continuously.

On top of that, we live such fast paced lives with so many demands on us that we are tempted to project a different image of who we are for all the different worlds and roles we move in and out of. Consequently we are fragmented, with so little sense of a coherent “self” that the only sense of “character” we can imagine these days is the theatrical one of a person playing a role. For that is how we experience our life so much of the time these days. The old adage says “character” is who you are when no one is looking. We are lost when no one is looking, because when no one is looking we have no role to play, no one to whom we need to project an image and we face our own emptiness

The other side of our dilemma is related to image as well. You might say it’s the public side of our dilemma. If our sense of self and character lies submerged beneath the litter of images created, projected, reinvented, and discarded, our mind (personal and corporate) has been eroded by the avalanche of images bombarding us at every moment and the plethora of information now available to us. You spoke of the “paralysis of analysis” in your day. We need an “analysis of paralysis” in our own.
For we are mentally paralyzed these days. There is too much to know for anyone to know too much. But there’s always someone at our elbow to tell us what we need to know and think. Yet they do not give us grounds, warrants, evidence, and argument for their ideas, they give us images. And not images that might be icons leading us into the substance of the issues at hand. No, they give us images the divert us from the substance and reality of those matters and influence us by promoting images of the people involved or exploiting fears around possible consequences of actions taken about those issues.

Really, Martin, you would not believe the level of public and political conversation today. It consists in little bits of rhetoric carefully crafted to create a particular impression or evoke a certain feeling. We call them “sound bytes” today but you would know them as propaganda. And that’s about all public discussion is now. We hurl our “sound bytes” at each other or the television camera and hurry off to check our poll numbers. The noble ancient ideal of politics as discussing and ordering the life of the community for its citizens’ well-being is virtually non-existent.

We are so mentally paralyzed or impaired in our ability to critically assess the information and images that assault us that for us to make up our minds about these things is well neigh impossible. For at least in terms of our perception and processing of public issues, we scarcely have a mind worth making up!
Civility is a non sequitur these days, Martin. For civility requires a “civil” realm. One in which we must all live our lives and make our way together. A civil community, as you so eloquently reminded us again and again, requires a common good, or at least a common goal. Yet, by common consent we have neither at present. Each seeks their own good and uses whatever power they possess to enforce that good. Civility only prevails when it serves the individual goods of the people involved in any interaction. Otherwise, almost any kind of behavior, verbal or physical, goes. One member of congress actually interrupted the President’s State of the Union address to call him a liar!

Sad to say, things in the church are no better. One prominent theologian has said, “God is killing the mainline church in America, and we goddamn well deserve it.” I think he’s pretty much right, Martin. Only it’s not just the mainline church but the evangelical one too. We’re afflicted with “sound-byte” theology and a sentimentality named “tolerance,” that has robbed us our theological will and nerve. We also are committed to our nation and its interests in a way that in passion and practice precedes and supercedes our commitment to God.
And to top it all off, economics and our quest for economic security overrides everything else and has corrupted the priorities, passions, and practices of us all!

Yet, and I think you of all people will understand what I mean, it may be that God has us right where he wants us! It’s only when you’re dead that you can be raised to new life. And the God we know in Jesus Christ specializes in resurrection! Therefore, I cannot give up hope; I cannot escape that sense that God is not done with us yet, certainly as a church, and, who knows, even as a country. So I will keep on dreaming your dream with you, Martin, on this “I Have a Dream” anniversary day for you and I know that the God who has claimed us in Jesus Christ never ever fails to keep his promises.

Peace,
Lee Wyatt

If Your Prayer Life is Good . . . You Don't Have to Read This

If Your Prayer Life is Good . . You Don’t Need To Read This!

If, however, like me, you struggle to start or sustain a life of prayer, the following thoughts might be worth considering.

1. Prayer and hope form a feedback loop with each other.

The practice of prayer strengthens hope; the practice of hope whets the desire for prayer. Maybe our problem is not with prayer but with the character of our hope!

-do we believe/know that God attends to and knows our prayers?
-do we believe/know that our input in prayer makes a difference to God?
-do we believe/know that God wants his best for us far more than we do?
-do we believe/know that God intends to use us in working out his purpose?
-in short, do we believe/know that God loves us, desires our friendship, and will keep all his promises to us?

2. We only learn to pray . . . by praying!

Put away all your books on prayer. Forget all the sermons you’ve heard on prayer. Put out of mind whatever formulas, patterns, or prescriptions on prayer you have learned. Prayer is simply talking to God and growing into a relationship, even a friendship, with him. So just start talking to God. Don’t be constrained by formality or form as you get started. Seek to develop your own pattern of conversation with God. When you’re struggling with prayer, the only wrong prayer is the one not spoken!

3. Spend some time reading and pondering Jesus’ great prayer for the church in John 17.

Did you know that Jesus prays for you specifically in this prayer? Do you see where he does this? See vv.20-24. Who is the “them” or “they” he prays for? What does he pray for “them”? Do you think the Father hears and answers Jesus’ prayers? What does that mean to you? Does that motivate you to want to talk to him?

4. Read, reflect on, and use the great prayers of the Bible.

Google “Prayers of the Bible” and I am sure you can find a list of them. Read them. How do they address God? What do they pray for? How do they integrate particular personal concerns with the larger concerns of God’s work in and for the world (see Hannah’s prayer in 1 Sam.2 in particular). What can we learn about praying for God’s people, the church, from Daniel’s great prayer for God’s people, Israel, in Dan.9? Paul’s prayers for his churches are rich in material to reflect on. Remember as you read them that they are his prayers for you here and now as well as for them then and there!

5. Use a Prayer Book or book of prayers by experienced and exemplary pray-ers.
There’s no particular virtue in spontaneous prayer. It may seem more “spiritual” than using the prayers of others or those prepared for us in prayer books. But that’s a false impression. In learning to pray or re-igniting our prayer life in particular, it is a mark of wisdom and humility (ever notice how often these two go together?) to apprentice ourselves to those who are better at it than we are. Prayer books typically use and contain many of the great prayers preserved for us through the history of the church. Most denominations have their own prayer books. The Episcopalian Book of Common Prayer is widely available and widely used by Christians of all traditions. The Divine Hours by Phyllis Tickle is also a great source for wonderful and classic prayers (it is available online at www.annarborvineyard.org/tdh/tdh.cfm).

What is the Missional Church (Part 9)

What is the Missional Church? (Part 9)
Revelation

Revelation brings the biblical story to a rousing climax with its strange but oddly compelling visions of God’s sovereign love finally reaching its rousing and exciting finale. All its weird and eccentric (to us) imagery and visions serve its fundamental gospel announcement :

“‘The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign forever and ever.’” (11:15)

The circle is now complete. The kingdom Jesus announced and inaugurated as recorded in the gospels reaches its glorious fulfillment in Revelation. The reality and centrality of this kingdom “bookends” (as it were) the whole New Testament. This reminds us that it’s God’s kingdom that finally and fully matters and that all the “church” stuff dealt with between the gospels and Revelation serves God’s kingdom agenda too!

We can develop a missional profile for the church out of Revelation in two ways. The first is to consider the way Revelation as a whole critiques and contests “The Roman Way of Life.” The Roman Empire was “the” empire in the world of the early church. They sought to export their way of life to the rest of the world, whether they wanted it or not! Their ideology had six key ideas, each of which the gospel contests and replaces with God and God’s kingdom.

1. Empire: Rome and its emperors claimed and celebrated worldwide dominion. They, and they alone, were the uncontested rulers of the world. John in Revelation makes the same claim on behalf of God’s “Empire.”
2. Peace: the Pax Romana (“peace of Rome”) blanketed and pacified her empire with its claim to benign rulership. It was, however, based on a strategy of “peace through strength” and enforced order. The Pax Divina of God, which John reveals, is in these and every other respect Rome’s opposite.
3. Victory: Rome claimed to be victorious over all. This claim is embodied in the emperors and based on their use of military, economic, and social force. God’s “Empire” also claims victory over all (including Rome). It is embodied in the Lamb who was slaughtered (Rev. 5:6) and based on his non-violent way of life and life-giving death for all.
4. Faith: Faith is the kind of exclusive and reciprocal loyalty of the citizenry that held the social fabric of the Empire and its way of life together. John likewise seeks to inculcate this “glue-like” faith in his counter-imperial communities.
5. Eternity: both empires, Rome’s and God’s claim to last forever.
John’s churches would be expected to share in his critique and contestation of “the Roman Way of Life” not only in word but in action. Indeed, they were called to live out the ethos and ethics of God’s Empire as they had seen it modeled for them in Jesus, the victorious Lamb. His non-violent, cruciform way of living was to become, through the Spirit, their own as they too shared in his sufferings for the sake of the world.

That’s a “macro”- look at what’s going on in Revelation to shape the profile of God’s missional people. Chs 2-3, the so-called “Letters to the Seven Churches” in
Asia Minor provide us with a “micro”- look into the life of seven actual congregations. In them the way the struggle to live out the ethos and ethics of God’s Empire is portrayed in ways that we can easily relate to in our own time and place. After all, that’s why there are “seven” letters – the number seven being the number of completeness. This sevenfold profile of faithfulness and unfaithfulness in these churches in Asia Minor offers a complete profile of the dynamics and difficulties that attend becoming and remaining a missional church.

The Risen Christ tells the church in Ephesus that they have “taken their eye off the ball” and forgotten or neglected the one that that makes and keeps them a loving and hospitable community – that intimate fellowship with Christ. They have allowed the good to crowd out the best, “lost that lovin’ feelin’” and consequently no longer practice either of the two great commandments (Mk.12:28-34)!

To the churches in Smyrna and Philadelphia, however, the risen One has only words of praise and comfort. Though slandered, rejected, poor, and soon to be imprisoned, both are alive in Christ and they serve him wholeheartedly, whatever the cost. They need only to “keep on keepin’ on.”

Pergamum and Thyatira faced related though not identical pressures and responded in similar though not identical ways. Pergamum reflected and reveled in the power of the Roman Empire and Thyatira was a thriving commercial center. Both are holding firm to the faith but within each of these churches false teachings were gaining traction that advised them “to give a little to get along.” In other words, try to reach some accommodation with the culture even if it meant trimming back full allegiance to God’s Empire.

The risen Christ pronounces the church in Sardis “dead”! Their works bear only a veneer of living faith (even though a few individuals there are faithful). He warns them to get back to basics and “just do it”! Start practicing what they know else they’ll forfeit their status as one of God’s churches.

Laodicea has the megachurch among these seven. Wealthy, productive, creative, both the citizenry and the church there had it all and were proud of it. And this prideful self-sufficiency robbed the church of any sensitivity to God, to their true spiritual state, and to the presence and needs of others. It was “lukewarm,” like the water it had to get from Hierapolis through six miles of clay pipes - good in that state only for inducing vomiting. Neither hot (like the hot springs of Hierapolis) nor cold (like the springs of Colossae). This church, says Christ, is neither healing and soothing nor fresh and vibrant in its ministry. Only lukewarm, which makes God sick at his stomach! They too must return in humble repentance to the Christ they have effectively excluded from their church!

In sum, if you’re going to be a “good Roman,” you can’t be a “good Christian,” and vice versa. This is where the battle for Empire is joined. In the daily discernments and decisions we make about where our significance and security comes from, the story we want our lives to tell, and whether we have something to live for that is also worth dying for. We are on mission from and with God to point to his Empire in everything and to everyone!

What is the Missional Church (Part 8)

What is the Missional Church? (Part 8)
Epistles: 1 Peter

1 Peter is a companion piece to Ephesians (see last post). The two letters share a number of similarities.

-both are disputed in terms of authorship. As in the case of Ephesians, though, I am not persuaded by the critics.
-both are circular letters to various churches in a region.
-both share a number of similarities in form and content, and
-both are tracts dealing directly with missional theology.

The difference between them, and what makes them companion pieces, is that whereas Paul addresses a group of churches that need an overview and introduction to missional theology, Peter’s churches are in the thick of the battle. They are living it out and some of are taking their lumps. Thus Peter writes to encourage, support, and nurture their continued commitment to the missional struggle. He offers them invaluable direction and insight to the nature and dynamics of what often happens when the rubber hits the road in missional living and witness.

Peter uses different language than Paul did in Ephesians to point to the great and gracious reality at the heart of our lives as God’s people and which captivates our hope as we live for Christ now. Paul named this “mystery” as God’s plan to gather everything up in Christ, the risen and victorious Christ, into that harmonious, interdependent abundance of generosity and well-being between all creatures, the creation itself, and the God whose very glory is “humanity fully alive”! Peter sees this reality too and he calls it our “living hope,” an “imperishable, undefiled and unfading” inheritance God holds for us in heaven (1:3-4), our “salvation” (1:5). This is the new world, the new creation opened up for us through Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. Like Paul’s “mystery,” Peter’s vision of our “inheritance” entails the union of Jew and Gentile in a new body of humanity, a new people, one that transcends all the old divisions and differences. The existence of this people, faithfully living out this new reality, is the chief mark of truth and credibility of the gospel.

This salvation we await is also the salvation we presently receive (1:8-9) as we live out our love for Jesus and endure the suffering such faithful witness generates (1:6-7) . Suffering in 1 Peter, it must be clearly understood, is suffering generated by living and loving as a follower of Jesus. It does not here refer to the various struggles and difficulties that befall each of us in our journey through life. No, the sufferings Peter addresses are those we would not have had except for following Jesus.

The Bible’s chief plot line stemming from God’s promise to Abraham and Sarah in Genesis 12:1-3 runs right to and through 1 Peter. Just prior to the giving of the Law at Mt. Sinai God gives his people a new name befitting their coming nationhood. This people, whom God promised to Abraham and Sarah, the people he would use to bless the world, he now calls “my treasured possession . . . a priestly kingdom and a holy nation” (Ex.19:5-6). Peter applies just this passage to the church in 2:9! This gathering of Jew and Gentile into this new body of people in Christ is fulfillment of God’s ancient promise! And their mandate to bless the world is ours as well: “that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

But the reality isn’t always as grand as the vision! We still fight with ourselves, you see, over whether we really want God to be in charge of our lives or not. This inner battle (Rom. 7:14-25), what Paul calls the struggle with our “flesh,” as one source of resistance to missional living. And then there’s the “world” ; it did not welcome Jesus and it does not will not always (or even often) welcome us either. Finally, there is the “devil.” And Peter assures us that this malignant power is still on the prowl, in its death throes (as it were), seeking to inflict whatever damage it can before the end. This unholy “trinity” – the flesh, the world, and the devil – are the missional menaces every church desiring to live faithful to Christ has to face.

And that is how Peter outlines the task facing missional churches. These communities will face continual temptations from “the desires of the flesh” (2:11-3:12). Following Jesus’ way will not likely enhance our reputations in the world or indulge our passion to assert ourselves, go our own way, and make our own mark. In other words, we might well not look good to others or “be all that we can be” because of Jesus. For like him, we too are called to “submit” – to God, for Jesus’ sake, and to others, for the sake of the world (2:20-25).

In the next section Peter addresses our temptation to want to set the world. We want fairness and justice to prevail. We want our good conduct to be rewarded and accept that our bad conduct ought to be punished. And when it isn’t, when we suffer some outrage or injustice, we seek redress and demand a hearing. Except if we follow Jesus, Peter says. In the new world of resurrection he calls us to bearing just injustice is “blessed” and often offers us an opportunity to bear witness to Jesus, with “gentleness and reverence” (3:14-16). Indeed, such miscarriages of justice and decency usher us into the “sharing of Christ’s sufferings” (4:13) and to glorifying God (4:16), chances we might never have if we insist on adjudicating our own settlements for this slights and burdens!

Finally, we meet the “devil” (5:1-11). Our enemy seeks to stir up our pride, our resentments, our sense of offense at outrage at one within the church as well as without, thus making hash of the quality of the church’s community and its credibility before a watching world. Nurturing genuine humility, turning all our anxieties over to God, and remaining vigilant in these disciplines are our only hope. When we do this we put a bulls-eye on ourselves and become targets for the devil’s wrath (5:8-9). Thus it is with the church everywhere, Peter tells us (5:9) and we join in solidarity with them in the hope of God’s promise to “restore, support, strengthen, and establish” us (5:10-11)!

Jesus died for us that we might die to ourselves and love and serve the world!

What is the Missional Church? (Part 7)

What is the Missional Church? (Part 7)
Epistles: Ephesians

The next three posts in this series will carry us on through the New Testament. Ephesians will give us a Pauline view, 1 Peter a Petrine view, and Revelation will afford us a last look at the missional church.

In Ephesians Paul gives us the most comprehensive, wide-angle, big picture view of God’s plan and the church’s role in that plan. God’s plan is, of course, his mission. This mission, God’s “eternal purpose” (3:11), Paul declares is “to gather all things up in (Christ), things in heaven and things on earth” (1:10). The resurrected, ascended, exalted, ruling Christ is the center point of everything God is doing. All things and people will find their place in and in relation to him. This “mystery” now to be made known to the world is that in and through this crucified and resurrected Jesus Jew and Gentile have found a unity beyond their ethnic, religious, social, political, and economic enmities (2:11-16), a unity that will ultimately be God’s eternal habitation (2:19-22).

Paul’s share in this divine mission is to make this “mystery” known everywhere and to everyone (3:7-9). Our share in this mission is, through the church’s living out of the “mystery,” this profound and profoundly counterintuitive unity of Jew and Gentile in Christ, to make known ”the wisdom of God in its rich variety” to “the rulers and authorities in heavenly places” (3:10). Somehow, someway our life together as the one new person in Christ (2:16) announces to the rebellious powers (unruly spiritual creations/creatures) that disorder our lives and creation itself that their reign of “discreation” is over, they have been defeated, and beginning with the church but ultimately encompassing all things order, harmony, beauty, and justice is and will be restored. Being this “announcement” of God’s plan and the fruit of its achievement is the mandate and ministry of the “missional” church! The remainder of Ephesians is Paul’s detailing of central dynamics and issues the church faces in being such a community.

Ephesians is governed by what I call a Pattern of Grace.” Paul articulates it in terms of three posture images: Sit (2:6), Walk (4:1), and Stand (6:11). Within the three posture images, Paul embeds what I call the “Missional Matrix,” the dynamics and structures that make and keep Christian existence missional. Each of these five elements of the Matrix begins with “M”: the Mystery of God’s gracious plan (ch.1), the Memory of God’s gracious work (ch.2), the Mission of God’s people (ch.3), the Milieu of Missional growth (4:1-6:9), and the Mode of God’s people’s work in the world (6:10-20).

To “Sit” is to assume a posture of receptivity. The first three chapters of Ephesians are governed by this image (2:6) along with the first three “M’s” of the Missional Matrix. In them we receive the gifts and calling of grace. Paul paints this divine grace, this “mystery,” in lavish, extravagant terms, spanning eternity past (1:4) to eternity future (2:7) and leaving no aspect of life unseasoned by his mercy, forgiveness, acceptance, and welcome (see especially the classic passage in 2:1-10). He dazzles us with an unveiling of God’s plan, a gracious and wise plan that none would have ever guessed or predicted. The means of our appropriation and participation in God’s plan is “memory” – the embracing and internalizing of what God has done and promises to do as the story of our lives (Ch.2). And we discover the “mission” that will henceforth claim all that we are and all that we have in its service (3:10) with Paul himself a chief example and mentor in living out this missional way of life 3:1-8). All this we must “receive,” that is, take it in, ponder it, reflect on it with others, “remember” it in study and worship, and internalize it as the new reality in which we live.

To “walk” is to actively live within the community of faith (4:1-6:9). Here we learn to share our gifts, receive the gifts of others; to be accountable to the community for growth in living out God’s mission; and preparing for the struggle of actually engaging that mission. This community of faith is the “milieu,” the only “milieu” in which we can grow into the kind of people who can announce and model the victory of God’s wisdom to the powers (3:10).

Finally, and this is where Paul has been leading us all along, the “mode” of our engaging the powers and the world is conflictual (6:10-20). We are in a battle and, thus, need proper equipping. Astonishingly, God’s gives us his very own “armor” so we might “stand” and “stand firm” in the struggle with the powers. For it is they who are behind human movements and their leaders that contest God’s will and way. The human beings caught up in these movements and practices, even if they lead them and think they are in charge, are in truth captives and slaves of these powers and do their bidding, wittingly or unwittingly. Therefore we seek to rescue them as well as resist the plans and pogroms of the powers.

The New Testament epistles give texture to the profile of a missional church. We can fine tune our grasp of its character through the guidance the author gives the particular community in light of the salient dynamics. structures, and values of the places where we live. For North Americans, I suggest that Ephesians teaches us that missional communities who incarnate the Pattern of Grace we identified will

-live a rhythm of “being/doing” in which each aspect feeds, leads to, and calls forth the other – a sort of continuous feedback loop with two foci. Thus neither “prayer” nor “practice” is at odds with each other, being two sides of the same coin.

-speak “Southern,” that is, will emphasize “Y’all” over “you” and “me.” A missional church will recognize that the community is the “incubator” for personal growth, that individuality only matures in interacting with others in pursuit of a common purpose Thus the ideology of individualism is ruled out as a way of life for such groups.

-exist in some measure of tension or conflict with their context. Any culture or society the church finds itself in will fall short of God’s intentions for it. While eager to affirm signs and traces of beauty, justice, and compassion in our communities, missional churches know they will have to resist and oppose the encroachments of the dehumanizing, divisive, destructive, and death-dealing ways they pursue.

What is the Missional Church? (Part 6)

What is the Missional Church? (Part 6)
The End of the Gospels: Summary

In the providence of God we have four stories recounting and interpreting the event of Jesus. They are best likened to four portraits of Jesus. Unlike photographs, portraits attempt to capture the substance or character of their subjects rather than striving simply for exact reproduction of likeness. Four artists portraying the same figure would produce works that are clearly of that figure yet each would have its peculiarities of setting, shading, perspective, and emphasis on certain features that would make each different from the other. The four portraits could not be homogenized into one yet, if they are each recognized as faithful renditions of their subject, they can all be recognized as true!

This, I suggest, is the case with our four “gospel” portraits of Jesus. They cohere with each other in that they are clearly about the same figure, on the one hand. And on the other hand, the church under the guidance of the Spirit has acknowledged that each in their differences from the others are faithful renditions of Jesus. Thus there is no need to homogenize them into one (as harmonies of the gospels try to do) or choose one over the others as “most true.” Instead we need to install all four in our “Gospel Gallery” and spend time mulling over each of them, both in their similarities and their difference to gain a fuller, more nuanced, and more adequate vision of this Jesus. We have seen this difference in similarity or similarity in difference in our brief surveys of the resurrection and commissioning stories in each gospel.

We will need a way of honoring both the similarities and uniqueness of each gospel’s “end” if we seek a well-rounded profile of the kind of community or church, what I have called the “Missional” church, that emerges from them. On an end table in our living room sits a decorative piece that I believe offers an apt image for this task. It is a Russian doll that comes apart in the middle revealing another, smaller doll inside. That second doll comes apart too and contains a third yet smaller one and so on. There are five dolls in total embedded in the one doll that sits on my end table. They bear images of key Russian leaders from Lenin to Gorbachev in chronological order. I believe we can helpfully conceive the profile of the “missional” church that emerges from the four gospels in a similar fashion.
The innermost figure in our “Gospel Doll” is Mark. In his unusual and provocative ending limns the basic, non-negotiable response to the resurrection that alone yields knowledge of and relationship to the risen Jesus – go and join him in cruciform, servant ministry in the world of suffering and need.

I would place Mark inside the next larger doll, Matthew. Thus we embed Mark’s radical call to action – “if you want to know, you’ve got to go” – at the very heart and core of any faithful profile the “missional” church. Matthew adds to this call another layer of meaning – “If you want to go, you’ve got to know.” In our going, he shows us how through his risen presence and power, we are equipped and reconstituted as God’s people, a “new Israel” as it were, to fulfill than ancient purpose for which God’s people were first called – to be the vehicle through whom God would bless everyone else (Gen.12:3)!

Our Mark/Matthew doll would go in the next larger figure, that of Luke. As God’s people, heirs to the great promise to Abraham and Sarah, this promise is intended not just for us but for the world. Luke highlights that it is to all of Adam’s progeny that we must go if we are to be faithful to our commission. Especially, Luke emphasizes, the last, the least, and the lost.

Finally, Mark/Matthew/Luke is embedded in John. John reflects the most expansive horizon of meaning for the “missional” church – the cosmic. John tells us, “the Word made flesh – a world made fresh.” New creation has dawned in Jesus’ resurrection and the whole world, the cosmos, is remade. This is the bold announcement we make to the world, that “the hopes and fears of all the years” along with “groaning of creation in travail (Romans 8) are indeed met and resolved in Jesus, the Word who was God (1:1) made flesh! All the other layers of meaning are taken up and set in their largest context and each gains texture and meaning that none alone possesses. And this process moves both directions: from Mark to John and John to Mark.

A “missional” church then, will in a manner appropriate to its context, embody something of each of these features the gospel endings reveal to us. One aspect may be more prominent in one context and another in an different context. These churches will share the same “difference in similarity” or “similarity in difference” that the gospels themselves have. These features may be recurring “seasons” in a community’s life when the particular focus of each gospel needs to be revisited as the life and context for ministry changes. But “missional” churches will share this “family” resemblance. Their lives and ministries will be

-as wide-ranging and all-embracing as John’s ending,
-as pointed and prodding as Mark’s call to follow,
-as constitutive of the community’s identity as Matthew’s, and
-as expansive and inclusive as Luke’s.

In the next post we’ll look briefly at Acts as the sequel to Luke’s gospel.