Who is the Prodigal God, What is his Prodigal Mission, and How Can We become His Prodigal People? (4)
The first
four signposts F & H identify for our search for a prodigal Christianity
deal with a journey into the life of the missional triune God – our context,
God’s mission, missional Jesus, and missional witness. How we make this journey is the subject of
the next three signposts: scripture,
gospel, and church.
Signpost
Five takes on the contentious issue of scripture. F & H begin to develop a new approach in
line with the narrative and missional theology they deem integral to prodigal
Christianity. Scripture, contrary to the
tenor of much biblical study in the last three hundred years, is a source/resource
for our journey that we cannot control but must proclaim and live. No matter how closely we read the text and
grasp its language and teaching in detail, the text never becomes an object we
can domesticate and (worse) use for our own purposes. Rather scripture, God’s Word, remains
irreducible subject, a sovereign Word to us that we must “hear” (in the sense
of the Hebrew shama which means both
to hear and to heed).
That
raises the vexing matter of authority. Does
the authority of the Bible lie in its inspired propositions of truth? Or its historical accuracy? Or ethical rules? None of these according to F & H. Rather, they locate scripture’s authority
within the story of the missional prodigality of God. No other approach allows this divine prodigality
to show through it.
Within
this story and its articulation of God working out his purposes through Adam, Israel,
Jesus, and the church God’s authority is manifest in his “authoring” (my word,
not F & H’s) of people through whom he will bless the world. They write, “If the authority of scripture
becomes disconnected from God’s mission in the world, it becomes disconnected
from God. It becomes a disincarnate collection of facts or feelings, lacking
the ability to participate and extend the incarnation of God.” (2588-2590)
The Spirit
uses the scripture to confront each of us with the claim of God on and over us
to be a part of the people through he intends to bless the world. It becomes a book whose story both looks
ahead, looks at, looks back at the story’s (and the world’s) main and supreme
character, Jesus Christ. His call for
our participation in the ongoing movement of his story carries the authority of
his own enactment and embodiment of God’s prodigal mission. Thus, “we should rarely find ourselves
defending the Bible’s authority. Rather, its authority becomes undeniable when
its compelling reality becomes visible among us. The story of God as displayed
in a people speaks for itself.” (2645-2647)
Granted the
importance and centrality of this story, they turn in the next signpost to its
contents and impact.
Signpost Six delves into the gospel as the
answer to the “so what” question about the biblical story. What does this story “do” to set right the
mess we have made, heal our hurts, resolve our inner and intra-personal
difficulties, deal with our sin and guilt?
Since
Martin Luther’s question “Where can I find a gracious God?” as he wrestled with
his guilt for failure to please God in the 16th century, we in the
west have worked within that framework.
However, the questions we struggle with have changed, especially in the
last hundred years or so. The great question
of the 20th century was “Where can I find a gracious neighbor?” while in the
early years of the 21st century it seems to be “Where can I find a
gracious church?” The gospel that effectively
addressed the question of the 16th century, and remains a vital part
of any biblical version of the gospel, has not effectively addressed these
changing questions. F & H conclude:
“But the prodigal God
chooses to enter recklessly into the sin and struggles of our everyday lives.
The Son does not come as a distant judge, but as one who is reestablishing a
kingdom of renewal, reconciliation, and blessing. The gospel that only
addresses a person’s guilt before a detached God is not prodigal enough. The
entire person, the entire human existence, is being renewed in what God has
done in Jesus Christ. (2796-2799)
In responding to these
changing questions theologians and missiologists have recovered the centrality
and importance of the “kingdom of God.” Central
to Jesus’ proclamation, and indeed, the entire biblical story, this reality had
too lost or reduced to the inner life of the individual under God for much of
the history of the church in the west.
Biblical scholars rediscovered it in the early 20th century
and theologians and missiologists built on that rediscovery to find the shape
of biblical, gospel, answers to our search for God’s peace and healing in
spheres beyond the personal.
As with every swing of the
pendulum, the reaction often goes too far in the other direction. This may well have happened with the use of
the kingdom of God by emerging church leaders such a Brian McLaren and Tony
Jones. The cross, as a symbol of Jesus’
death for the forgiveness of sins, and the kingdom, as a symbol of God’s
intention to birth a new humanity and new creation of reconciliation and
justice, get separated and are liable to be played off against each other. But according to F & H this is a fatal
error:
“the cross has been
ignored as the place where God’s final victory is accomplished. The prodigal
gospel (of the Son sent into the far country) affirms God’s victory in the
cross and the resurrection as the inauguration of the kingdom, new creation, a
kingdom of love and justice. Here, on the cross, God has definitively dealt
with sin in such a way that not only are our sins forgiven but the power of sin
and death has been overcome. The gospel holds together both the cross and the
kingdom.” (2836-2839)
The gospel in thrall to 16th
century questions of personal sin and guilt constructs it presentation of it in
the form of God’s love of us, our sin problem, and Jesus’ death to resolve that
problem. A more kingdom-focused view of
the gospel runs (based on 1 Cor.15:1-5) the death of Jesus, his burial, and his
resurrection and appearances. In other words,
the gospel is not a “plan of salvation” centered in the individual’s need for
forgiveness, but a “story of salvation” centered in Jesus’ work for us and
world and how through him and his work “God has become King” (N.T. Wright) over
all creation.
“The gospel is the good
news that in Jesus, God has fulfilled the story of Israel for the nations. God
is now reigning over the whole world, making the world right. In the victory of
the cross, he now rules over all sin, death, and evil. Wherever his rule is
extended, the world is reordered and restored. In Christ, the promised
blessings through Israel are now making their way to all nations. And in this
way, God is making all things right.” (2927-2929)
This answers the “so what”
question posed to the gospel above. This
is what God has done through Jesus Christ and is doing through Jesus’ people and
in the world at large in the power of the Holy Spirit.
If this is the gospel,
this story of salvation, how do we share it and invite others to come to
Christ? Clearly, the “plan of salvation”
approach most of grew up with is too small and finally misleading on this
point. But, as F & H confess, this
is no simple task. We’re on new ground
here. They write, “We should be asking
something like, ‘Have you entered the salvation already begun in Jesus Christ
that God is working for the sake of the whole world?’” (2934-2935) While certainly some refinement is needed
here, I believe they are on the right track.
I’ll have more to say about this in the review post which will be the
last post in this series.
Growing out of a lengthy
process of listening and discernment in their church, F &H report the four “on-ramps
to the kingdom” they discovered for this church in Chicago:
-“God is reconciling you
in all your relationships”
-“God is at work”
-“God has put the power of
sin to death and is calling you into life”
-“God is calling you into
mission”
In this
way their church seeks to announce, enact, and embody the multifaceted gospel
found in the biblical story. These four
on-ramps give them a way to address the many concerns they encounter without
lapsing into a reductionist gospel or becoming simply one more social service
agency in the city.
The
first set of signposts on life in the triune God culminated in the fourth
signpost of witness – a total way of life oriented to and animated by the
prodigal love of the prodigal God seeking and saving his world. The second set of signposts culminates with
the church, the community in which alone this way of life can be lived in a way
that gives our witness credibility and marks a space in which the God who has journeyed
to the far country may be encountered.
Once
more the reduced “gospel” we met in the last signpost plays us false. As F & H see it,
“The gospel becomes about
individual status before God, witness becomes limited to verbal proclamation,
and the church becomes a collection of individuals who can get the right
information about salvation in order to believe and follow. These believers
then have a job to do: give this information about salvation to others. God’s
mission becomes something we do. The gospel becomes secret information. This
approach to gospel, Scripture, and mission sequesters the kingdom of God to the
interiority of our hearts. It can quickly turn defensive because it is based on
knowing the right information. And because this Christianity focuses on our
personal status with God, it can devolve into “being about me” and become
narcissistic.” (3141-3146)
On
the other hand, many who have turned toward a more holistic gospel of social
transformation run a danger of another sort.
F & H explain:
“People like McLaren and
Jones push us toward an understanding of God’s kingdom that looks for its
presence beyond the church. But it is hard to tell just how Jesus would or should
make a difference outside the church. Has the church merely become another
social service institution amid the many others in the world? And if it has,
how do people like Austin and his volunteers keep from burning out as they try
to do some good in the world? How do we keep such an institution from becoming
just another thing we do? This kind of church, we fear, becomes a “kind of
spiritual gas station from which all and sundry [can] draw energy for a great
variety of worthwhile projects.” And it eventually runs out of gas.” (3182-3188)
The problem here is
another version of separating the cross and the kingdom. The authors claim that in McLaren’s vision of
the cross there is no victory over evil, sin, and death, rather it is a
consequence of living faithfully in a violent world. Jones, for his part, turns to the “God
everywhere” strategy, critiqued in an earlier signpost, and fails to show how
God is at work “everywhere” thus hindering the incarnational thrust of prodigal
Christianity.
Another pair of well-known
authors Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch are applauded for the main thrust of
their work in missional directions.
However, F & H find an individualizing tendency in them. The individual needs a fresh encounter with
the living Christ to catalyze for mission.
But apart from the church and its practices, how do we know “the living
Christ” when we meet him?
In each of these positions
a robust, prodigal church is missing. F
& H summarize their view like this: “The
church is nothing if not local, incarnational communities practicing the
kingdom.” (3258-3259) They hold the
church, the kingdom, the incarnational, and the communal together is ways
appropriate to both the scripture and the gospel and that impel churches into
prodigal missional practice.
New churches, they claim,
ought to be started around the fundamental practices of the church, not
programs. “These practices shape a
community of people into his kingdom within a neighborhood and enable us to
come together and submit ourselves to the reign of Christ in any context.” (3262-3263)
Indeed, it is through such practices that we meet Christ and are nurtured by
him into becoming a church.
Such time-honored practices,
the Lord’s Table, proclaiming the gospel, reconciliation, being “with” the
least of these, being “with” children, the fivefold ministry, and kingdom
prayer, have marked genuine missional engagement with the world throughout the
churches history. Our authors claim that
“These six practices,
together with the Lord’s Table and the founding practice of baptism, shape our
life together in neighborhoods. . . This not a shapeless church that joins in
with whatever is going on in the world. It is a church that extends the
presence of Christ from the times we gather in worship, to the times we gather
in our homes, to the everyday interactions we have in the neighborhood. This is
the church that extends the in-breaking kingdom: the prodigal church.” (3428-3433)
If they are right, and I believe
they are, one can only hope that we will listen to them!
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