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.