Chapter 34
Good Monday Morning to this week 34 of 2022.
What sort of people belong to Jesus’ church community? Jesus said it is those who are committed to doing God’s will. He talked about the importance of doing God’s will on many occasions. Here is just one example:
“Whoever does the will of my father in heaven is my brother and sister, and mother” (Matthew 12:50; see also Luke 8:21).
From one view, the center of Jesus’ teaching and the early church’s vision is a radical form of discipleship in tension with, or even in confrontation with, the world around it. But this teaching and vision is fundamentally lost in the Christendom paradigm that turns the church into a master in the world and mutes its prophetic voice.
As Christendom or more the “Sunday Church” collapses in the West, it again finds itself marginalized, even exiled, in society and culture. An increasing number of church leaders are calling on the church to recover the lost vision of the early church and return to a mode as a faithful minority in a not-so-friendly world.
Did Jesus give us, any practical guidance as to how we should organize our communities or our community activities? Not really! Members of Jesus’ family/community, in different places and times, can develop ways of meeting that are appropriate to our own cultures and our own needs. We do not need to do things the way others do them, and we do not need to do things the way others have done them for decades, or centuries.
On the contrary, Jesus did have a vision for his family/community in regard to values. It is set out in a prayer he prayed shortly before his arrest:
“I ask not only on behalf of these but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” (John 17:20-23).
This is a wonderful prayer for the present and future community. It is regarded in anticipation as already in existence.
This short text this morning is a call regarding spirituality, it may not be the momentum or the quantity but much more a question of quality in regard to living the faith as a Christian and in the context of our lives and community.
Wishing you a great start to this day and week.
Philemon