Go out into the world...

Walter Brueggeman, in his book, Israel’s Praise, (Foretress Press, Philadelphia, 1988) explores the world-making task of liturgy. He suggests that the words that we use in worship help shape our perception of reality and therefore organizes how we interpret the experiences that we have in our lives.

Note how the words that we use in our daily life affect our perception of reality. We currently live in a world which is dominated by the language of business and technology. Our viewpoint is shaped by references to “the bottom line” and “bytes of information” and “overload.”

Our worldview determines how we interpret the experiences that we have. Someone tries to provide us information that we do not want to hear and we say that we are on overload and shut down. Our child wants to be an artist and we ask what the bottom line is on how she intends to support herself. This, we consider, is the real world.

Liturgy provides an alternate vocabulary and helps us become aware of an alternate set of lenses through which we can interpret our experiences. There is a lot more power to litrugy done well then we often recognize.

The members, who experience the address of Christ when they are called together as the Body, give testimony to that Body as they respond to that call in their other activities.

The power of the church’s witness is seen in transformed lives within the community and the mission of the church is to offer to others that contact with the eternal which can cure their souls and result in their transformation as well. Sometimes such transformation does require strong sacrifice and other times it is simply an enhancement of an already good life. It is always the offering of our “bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” (Romans 12:1)

In a less radical vein, the church accompanies all of its members as they move out into their world of home, work,and play. Every interaction that they experience is an opportunity to respond to the image of God in other people and thereby affirm the worth of their souls.

It may be in the quiet refusal to participate in a pattern of discrimination in relation to someone who is different from his or her co-workers. The battles that we fight to change the structures of injustice and oppression are a way to honor the goodness of God’s creation. It may be the public protest against sexual harrasment in the workplace or the encouragement and support of your company as it adopts policies that protect the environment.

Different members are called to different missions, some very public and some very private, but they are all a way of being obedient to the address of Christ.

Consider who might be seen as not only outsiders but enemies of the good of the community in our time. It might be those involved in drugs, gangs, the gay community, ex-prisoners, prostitutes, gamblers, etc. Nothing that Jesus did indicated approval or disapproval of the centurion’s life.

Picture the impact of the Body of Christ demonstrating that same sense of God’s grace. Consider the impact of even praying for such people on a regular basis in worship. Consider also the likely resistance of the larger community to such acceptance and you have some sense of the cost of loving one’s enemies.

Demonstrating the forgiveness of God is not a comfortable form of the mission of the church. Yet the more the church is capable of exhibiting that love, the more it is demonstrating the reconciling love of God. This is a living out of Paul’s admonition, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” (Romans 12:21) It is trusting that good contaminates evil rather than the reverse.

According to Matthew, immediately following Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, he came down from the mountain and performed two acts of healing which demonstrated radical forgiveness. The first was an encounter with a leper. (Matthew 8:1-4) It was customary to assume that leprosy was a sign of God’s disfavor and the leper bore full responsibility for keeping separate from the community. His condition was seen as a sign of his sinful life and anyone who touched him was made unclean with him.

This leper violated the rules and came up to Jesus. Jesus, in the eyes of the faithful, made himself unclean by reaching out and touching him. In contrast to the world’s assumption that associating with bad people will contaminate you, Jesus assumed that good can contaminate the bad and make them well.

By his act, he cleansed the leper and restored him to the community of the people of God. Certainly a contemporary parallel for the church today would be people with AIDS. Society generally treats such people as bearing the punishment for their lifestyle and our fear of contamination often separates them from community. Could their souls be cured by the church community’s radical acceptance?

The second act of radical forgiveness performed by Jesus was in connection with a Roman centurion and his servant. (Matthew 8:5-13) The actual word translated servant can also mean child. The centruion’s compassion for this young man would indicate that his relationship may have been closer than one strictly of master and servant. In the Roman world, it was not uncommon for an adult to find intimate companionship with a young boy. If so, this would reinforce even more Jesus’ radical act of forgiveness.

In either case, the Roman would have been considered an outsider and even at his best a representative of the enemy which oppressed the people of God. In Luke’s version of this story, there is indication that the centurion was well loved by the community but here there is no such indication.

Jesus’ first response was to offer to accompany the centurion to his home which would have violated the rules of separation between Jew and Gentile. Jesus’ actions included the Gentile centurion and his servant within the fellowship of God’s healing love. In doing so, Jesus offered a radical demonstration of God’s grace.