What is the Missional Church? (part 5)

What is the Missional Church? (Part 5)
The End of the Gospels: John

As we might expect, the ending of the fourth gospel is similar yet different from the other three. Like the gospel as a whole, John’s ending places Jesus’ followers, the missional church, in the largest perspective possible.

-Mark places Jesus and his church in the prophetic tradition of Isaiah’s New Exodus, thus he begins his Jesus’ story with a quote from the prophets.
-Matthew places Jesus’ story within the great promise of God to Abraham and tells his story as the reconstitution of the new missional people of Abraham and stresses the formation and nurture of that people.
-Luke puts Jesus in the line of humanity going all the way back to Adam. He stresses the significance of Jesus for all humanity and sees the missional church going out to the world announcing God’s great of deliverance for the world and recruiting everyone to join the movement.

With John we move on to a whole different plane, a cosmic plane. The fourth evangelist reveals this in the very first verse: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” In dealing with Jesus, the world is dealing with God, God come in human flesh to dwell among us and live as one of us. Incomprehensible as this seems, nevertheless, this fundamental conviction of John’s that the God who works in, with, and through Jesus is the God who encounters us as Jesus, is the heart of the New Testament’s gospel.

Incarnation is the word we use for this claim that God has “moved into the neighborhood” and that in Jesus of Nazareth we come face to face with reality and discover in this human face the face of God’s own grace and truth. Straight from the heart of God (1:18) Jesus enters the heart of rebellious humanity (1:10-11). He becomes the focal point for a cosmic struggle for the world’s future (though John makes it clear that the outcome of this struggle is never in doubt). In the aftermath of his victory over the “ruler of this world (12:31) Jesus sends his people out to spread and implement his victory throughout the world (20:21).
The end of John (chs.20-21) unfolds in two stages. Jesus’ resurrection and appearances to his disciples occupy ch.20 while the mission of those disciples to the world occupies ch 21. In ch.20 John emphasizes that Jesus’ resurrection occurs on “the first day of the week” (vv.1,19). Combine this with the symbolism of the man (Jesus) and the woman (Mary Magdalene) in a garden and it is clear John evokes here Genesis creation imagery. He means us to see that with Jesus’ resurrection God’s New Creation has dawned. Everything has changed with this event. A cosmic reshaping has occurred. Nothing is the same as it was – for us personally and for us as part of God’s creation. This setting of New Creation, then, is the setting in which the ongoing work of the missional church is placed.

Let’s look back for a moment. Mark places the mission of God’s people within the setting of the New Exodus, the historical act of God to finally and fully deliver his people from slavery and restore them to their proper calling and vocation. Matthew places this mission in the context of God’s promise to Abraham to get a people through he and Sarah, to bless that people, and through them bless everyone else (Gen.12:1-3). Luke puts it in a universal context of outreach to all humanity, Adam, and all his posterity. John extends the horizon to cosmic dimensions with his setting of the missional church in the wake of the dawning of the New Creation in Jesus’ resurrection.

This breathtaking expansion of scope in which the church’s mission is set changes everything for us. God’s drive to enter fully into humanity and or experience becomes the sine qua non of our existence. This is henceforth what we live to do – enter into the life and lives of those around us as deeply and fully as possible.
This is not possible, of course, on our own power. We require and receive from the risen One the very breath of life (another creation image!) when he “breathed on them” and they were enlivened and energized by his Spirit. Thus we can go forth into the world “walking the talk” of the new life God has given us, forgiving and spreading Jesus’ “peace” as we go.

And such mission will not be fruitless! In fact, it will brim with abundance. Not because we are so “healthy, wealthy, and wise” that we can make it happen or project such success based on our own prowess. The disciples tried that and came up empty (21:5)! No, our mission to live the life of the New Creation in the midst of the old life that is passing away will bear fruit because Jesus promises it will. God is in control and God’s will will prevail!

In obedience to his command to cast their nets on the other side of the boat, the disciples are astonished at their catch – 153 fish. This seems to refer in some fashion or another to a full catch among the peoples of the earth. From nothing to fullness, from our own strength to the strength of Jesus’ promise, that’s the direction of faithfulness for Jesus’ missional church.

Jesus’ threefold restoration of Peter is a model example of the kind of evangelism we should practice. Jesus meets Peter where he is, in the bitter shame of his heinous betrayal of his Lord. Instead of judgment, however, Peter is offered the chance for restoration. He, whom Jesus addresses with his old name “Simon” (because that’s who and where he is at this moment) is called again to become “Peter,” the person God always intended him to be! And as such, Jesus’ evangelism of Peter ends not simply with the assurance that he has been reclaimed for God but that he is restored to the duty and dignity of his vocation to be one who “feeds” and “tends” Jesus’ sheep! Both reclamation and restoration come together here in Jesus’ practice of evangelism but with a decided emphasis on the latter.

So our profile of the missional church that emerges from the ends of the gospels looks like this. Mark tells us: “If you want to know, you’ve got to go.” Matthew’s ending adds: “If you want to go, you’ve got to know.” Luke’s more involved story provides a triple focus for our discernment of the missional church: “If you know the plan, you’ll know the man”/”To know the man, you’ve got to know the plan,” “Don’t just talk the talk or walk the walk, walk the talk,” and “If you don’t wait, you’re going to be late.” John’s chief contribution is this: “The Word made flesh – a world made fresh.”