We spent the weekend at the (six-yearly) global gathering of The Order of Mission. If the New Wine National Leaders Conference a couple of weeks back was an opportunity to get together with our closest friends, a gathering of TOM members is when we get together with our spiritual family. I am deeply thankful for both friends and family; though it is a bitter-sweet thing that both are so dispersed, and when we get together there is never enough time to spend with everyone. But it was a joy to be with brothers and sisters we have known for many years, and to meet other brothers and sisters for the first time.
Among other things, our Senior Guardian Mike Breen helped us look together at the Lord’s Prayer, through two familiar lenses, as a tool for attending to our personal and communal lives. Here are my notes/reflections on Mike’s structure/connections.
Lens 1: The two strands that run through Scripture: Covenant and Kingdom: relationship and responsibility, being and doing, identity and activity, coming to Jesus and being sent out by him.
Lens 2: Jesus sums up how to live life well in this way: love God (UP, passionate spirituality), love one another within your household (IN, radical community), and love those beyond your household (OUT, missionary zeal).
The pattern Jesus gave for prayer addresses these three dimensions of life (the flow is from UP to IN to OUT), each expressed in both Covenant and Kingdom terms (again, there is a flow: we need both covenant and kingdom, but responsibility flows from relationship, doing from being, activity from identity – not the other way around).
UP: Covenant: Father
God is our loving Father, who longs for intimate relationship with us as his children. He is not distant, absent, aloof, or abusive. We are children, not slaves.
UP: Kingdom: King
God is also King of the Universe. Never less than Daddy, but more than just Daddy: “our Dad has a very important job” and we need to recognise his kingship over our lives.
IN: Covenant: Provision
Jesus reveals to us that God our Father wants to give us good gifts, that he is generous, that all he has (and he owns everything) he shares with us; we do not earn access to his provision.
IN: Kingdom: Debt
We tend to think of forgiveness as coming to our father, but Jesus describes it as needing to deal with the king, to whom we are in debt. The question is whether we are under the king’s judgement, or whether our debt has been cancelled. Jesus is clear that unless we show mercy and cancel the debts of our debtors, a just king cannot cancel our greater debt to him.
OUT: Covenant: Protection
One of the roles of fatherhood is to offer protection – sometimes by physical presence, and controlled aggression (having learnt mastery over our physicality); sometimes by establishing boundaries within which freedom can be enjoyed. As a personal example, on holiday recently I spent time climbing over rocks with my children, sometimes leading ahead of them to follow my example, sometimes telling them where it was not safe for them to venture. In this way, my children grow in confidence (especially the less adventurous) and wisdom (especially the more adventurous).
OUT: Kingdom: Deliverance
One of the roles of kingship is to deliver your people when they are in danger of being taken captive, or have been taken captive – as will be the case from time to time, given that another role of kingship is to deploy ambassadors who will represent him in the world and soldiers who will stand firm against his enemy.
As people (especially as people shaped by western society?), we tend to be creatures of division and over-reaction and demarcate our lives in ‘either/or’ polarities, but living life well generally requires of us that we see life in terms of ‘both/and’ continuums, not polarities. Polarised categories tend to be our way of trying to create and maintain control over our lives; continuums – living with tension and paradox – bring us to the place of acknowledging our need for God, and allow the conditions needed for his creative new life to emerge.
Passionate spirituality is nurtured in the paradox of experiencing God as both Father and King; refusing to settle for impersonal legalism on the one hand, and cheap grace on the other.
Radical community is nurtured in the creative tension of experiencing the Father’s provision and the King’s cancellation of our debts; as we learn to be generous, and practice our responsibility to cancel debts.
Missionary zeal is nurtured in the continuum of experiencing the Father’s protection and the King’s deliverance; giving us confidence to go out into the world, and the backing we need to be ambassadors of heaven and soldiers in the spiritual battles we are engaged in.
If passionate spirituality, radical community, or missionary zeal is lacking in our lives, we have in the Lord’s Prayer a Jesus-given framework for conversation with God, a means of identifying together what we need to address...
As you create space to listen, what does the Spirit want to say to your spirit today?
For anyone who was at the New Wine National Leaders Conference two weeks ago and heard Alan Hirsch so graciously honour me from the stage but didn’t know why, it was for my interpretation of Paul’s use of Psalm 68 in Ephesians 4:7-11.
Psalm 68 is a multi-layered depiction of God descending from Mount Sinai and ascending Mount Zion; a victorious figure returning home with those taken prisoner by his enemies, whom he has set free; leading a procession of captives, who present him with their tribute; and distributing gifts, including the gift of relationships and the gift of spacious and secure territory to settle, to his people. As a result, God’s reign is extended over the nations, to his glory.
Why does Paul make use of this Psalm in this context? My contention is that he is interpreting it as an image of Jesus’ incarnation and ascension, to explain how Jesus has set prisoners free, received them as tribute, and given them to his people, for the purpose of the expansion of his family and extension of his kingdom.
Moreover, the implication of this is that everyone being an apostle, a prophet, an evangelist, a pastor or a teacher – the text makes it clear that these are all people-as-gift – is not something that we become at the point of liberation but something we are, that is liberated. In other words, being an apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor or teacher is what Jesus created you as; and – as a result of his incarnation and ascension, following the triumph of his resurrection – when we recognise Jesus as King, when we offer ourselves to his service (kingdom), when we are set free to be his family (covenant), then he gives us to his body (covenant relationships and kingdom purpose; being and doing).
Clearly there are those who pioneer beyond the known and reform the known, who pursue justice and creativity, who spread good news, who heal the broken, and who hand on wisdom to the next generation, who are yet to meet Jesus for who he is.
And this means that we need to re-frame discipleship:
from ‘following’ Jesus in an abstract sense to growing into our identity in him; and
from something that begins at conversion to something that begins way before that point.
Making disciples is about helping others discover who God created them to be, to step into and live in the freedom God intended, and to engage with the – at times messy – dynamics of inter-dependence.
It is well established that I am of the opinion that Ephesians 4:1-16 is key to the reimagining of our ecclesiology – what church is and does, both gathered and sent – that is needed as we move into a future of increased economic, political and social instability as the times God has called us to live in.
Ephesians 4:1-6 is concerned with unity: one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all. Ephesians 4:12-16 is concerned with maturity: with the community of faith growing, more and more, into what it would look like if Jesus was present in and through us...I know of no Christian tradition or denomination or indeed persons who would argue that these verses are anything other than enduring, of as much relevance to us today as to the believers to whom they were first written.
Ephesians 4:7-11 present for us the Jesus-given means of growing from unity to maturity. And yet, for a host of reasons, the Church has largely come to believe that these verses – unlike those that form their immediate context – are provisional; that they no longer apply; and that we can somehow expect to reach maturity while by-passing the process...
The context to which I am sent is the Church of England. As a tradition, along with other traditions, we have made a number of moves. We have claimed that apostles and prophets are discontinued, serving a limited role in the birthing of the Church, not an ongoing role in her maturing. Their legacy is seen as contained in a body of writing handed-down and interpreted (controlled) by pastors and teachers, not the authentic reproducing of apostles and prophets. We have also reapplied the role of pastors and teachers as being oversight positions, whereas the text itself speaks of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers as encompassing everyone: it does not address oversight at all. These are paradigm shifts away from the insight of Paul’s reflection on the body of Christ.
In practice, we have elevated a two-fold ministry model as our model of oversight, our criteria for selection and for job description. Moreover, my observation (and I think I have observed enough over many years to offer this insight) is that we view the local on-the-ground in-the-parish role as that of the pastor, and the trans-local role (the apostolic and prophetic roles?) as that of the teacher (conference speaker, author).
[I recognise that there are linguistic grounds to combine pastor and teacher together in this text; but I do not think that there are theological grounds or phenomenological (observation of the church today) grounds to do so, and that linguistic grounds on their own are insufficient. I would suggest that the majority of parish priests are not especially gifted teachers (whether in formal delivery, such as preaching, or informal settings, such as group discussion) and that a majority of clergy with well-developed teaching ministries are not especially gifted in pastoral care. Where we do see the two together, I would want to speak of pastors with well-developed teaching skills (a good thing!) and teachers with well-developed pastoral skills (likewise, a good thing!), rather than pastor-teacher as something that comes as a given combined unit.]
So, I would suggest, the majority of our local church leaders are pastors. And pastors are people-people. That is, their particular and God-given focus is people. As opposed to apostles, whose focus is shaping environments; prophets, whose focus is God’s voice, and the gap between God’s intentions for human society and our present structures and experience (as such, prophets are often considered idealists rather than realists); and teachers, whose focus is God’s written Word. Pastors are focussed on people (and in particular their healing and nurturing)...and so are evangelists. Evangelists are people-people too: that is, their passion is gathering and distributing good news, not for the news’ sake but for the benefit that it might bring to people.
Here, then, is what happens when a local church leader seeks to encourage their congregation to engage in mission to their parish:
As people-people, they most naturally look to that other people-person gift, the role of the evangelist (at any rate, apostles and prophets are ruled-out; and teaching has come to be seen as a technical role requiring years of training). They may even see pastor and evangelist as two sides of the same coin – an inward and outward expression – though if they do, they are wrong: you can be a pastor to Christians and non-Christians alike; and an evangelist – someone who brings good news – to non-Christians and Christians alike; pastors and evangelists are different people-focused people types, not the same type in different contexts. So they encourage – perhaps more with the stick than the carrot – the congregation to be evangelists (the PointFive in the TwoPointFive-Fold Ministry: what everyone who isn’t in oversight does to expand the community under oversight). Which is a great permission-giving release into who God has made them to be for any evangelists...and ill-fitting armour for everyone else.
Just yesterday, I attended a meeting of representatives of the various Anglican churches in our town, where we were exhorted at length and with some passion that we needed to mobilise our congregations in evangelism – mission with no apostolic or prophetic strategy, no natural role for pastors or teachers.
In my experience across several churches, evangelists are relatively rare but nonetheless extremely effective in bringing people into the orbit of the life of the church community. We do not need more evangelists – though at times and in places those who are not by fundamental nature evangelists may be called to do the work of an evangelist, and in so doing become more rounded in our Christlikeness (which is carried, in potential, in every Christian; but expressed most fully in community not isolation). We need to release evangelists to be evangelists, and apostles to be apostles, prophets to be prophets, pastors to be pastors and teachers to be teachers...in order that we might do those works which God prepared in advance for us to do, and that the body of Christ may be built up. One of the first things this does – not just in theory, I have seen this in practice – is release people from the burden of guilt of not being what they are not, into the liberating freedom of being who they were made to be. Then, of course, comes the work of learning how to live in inter-dependent freedom.
This truncated and ill-conceived present understanding reveals the extent to which a reverse paradigm-shift in our imagination is required, if we are to recover the ways of being church that carries the potential to grow into maturity, defined not as head-knowledge of creeds and doctrinal statements but as the ongoing dynamic redemptive work of Jesus in his world.
It has been a while since I posted last. Immediately following Pentecost, Jo and I had three days away at the New Wine National Leaders’ Conference in Harrogate, which was a real gift. Both keynote speakers are personal friends of ours, and among 1300 conference attendees both took time to hang out with us, a curry with one and a bottle of wine with the other. We attended the plenary sessions, but skipped the seminars, ducking back to our hotel to enjoy the steam room and hot tub. In addition, we got to catch up (and catch a coffee or a beer) with a long list of dear friends. Three days of rest and food for heart and mind and soul and body.
Then last week we took off on family holiday, to a stunning beach in the far north west of Scotland – a first outing for our trailer tent – with Jo’s mum and dad, via two nights in Glasgow celebrating Jo’s birthday with my sister and her family, my brother over from Edinburgh, and my mum and dad.
One of the things we were inspired by in Harrogate was the need to embody the Christian life, the need to shift from defining core values to defining core practices. (Core values are meaningless unless expressed through core practices; indeed, they are worse than meaningless, because they trap us.) Life is a matter of observable practices, that are achievable, measureable, manageable – and shared with others, that is, to which we can be held and hold one another accountable. Being a disciple isn’t something in addition to life – life takes up 100% of who we are; we have no more to give – but is a way of living; an integrated thing. And something accessible and flexible enough for the whole family to join in.
So we have come up with our family framework for core practices: LOVE.
L is for Learn, about Jesus. In creative and tailored ways. Stories from the Gospels. Reading other books. Observing creation and asking what it reveals to us about the nature of its creator. So on holiday we scrambled over what geologists believe are perhaps the oldest rocks on earth, and experienced the revelation that Jesus created them in the intention that one day a little boy would get so much pleasure from adventuring over them. We found a headland strewn with tiny yellow flowers, scattered like confetti, lasting perhaps only days and seen by hardly anyone, and discovered that Jesus is extravagant and free.
O is for Offer. Ourselves. Our time. To others. In flexible but measureable – accountable – ways. Isn’t this how Jesus lived? Perhaps, as a minimum practice (the youngest member of our family is five), once a week within our immediate family, once a week within our church family, and once a week within our wider community. Not in addition to what we do but as part of what we do anyway because this is how we live. So, for example, I regularly go in to school to listen to children read once a week. I am not able to do that every week, but it is part of my rhythm, as much as I am able. For Jo, Offer may look like being proactive about hosting an after-school play-date for each of three children over the course of each month.
V is for Value, in particular, value the things God has given us. Take care of what we have. In part, this is about contentment, about refusing the idolatry of consumerism that craves something until it possesses it and then no longer wants it, but craves the newer model...and the equally idolatrous poverty spirit that ‘makes do’ in a way that denies the generosity and goodness of God: the path between discarding too lightly and hanging on too tightly. There is a time to save your alabaster jar of perfume, and a time to pour it all out in one go. In part, this is about our attitude towards the houses that are provided for us, which we do not own: that we invest in them nonetheless and focus on the gift rather than on the downsides. And value people, through our attitude to what we have, our willingness to use our belongings to bless, as expressions of belonging. So, we will look for opportunities each week to live this out. For the kids, in particular, this includes embracing the discipline of tidying up after themselves...
E is for Enjoy. Enjoy life. When we look at Jesus, in the Gospels, we see someone who enjoyed life – yes, not every aspect, but nonetheless – who was the guest at many parties and the host on other occasions; who lived gratefully, with much gratitude for every good gift from heaven; and who came that those who responded to him might experience life in its fullness. Some Christians live as if they believe that life is not meant to be enjoyed, that to do so is somehow improper, whether because they believe that we are fundamentally sinners and therefore meant to live under judgement (whereas the life-in-all-fullness Jesus speaks of is, first and foremost, living post- God’s judgement) or because the spiritual warfare we are caught up in (Jesus contrasts his coming that we might have life with the thief who comes to steal and kill and destroy) is very real. But Jesus, who was more aware of that spiritual struggle than anyone, still chose to enjoy life. So Enjoy is one of our core practices. To enjoy the place God has sent us, as fully as possible. So, for example, we will go out for breakfast on a Saturday morning, to one of the local cafes, as a regular discipline; and Jo and I will go out for lunch, whether on my day off or on another day in the week, regularly. We will look to go out of an evening; and look to do so on a reciprocal babysitting arrangement so that another couple, ‘tied’ by young children, can also go out. We will holiday. Life is to be enjoyed.
To LOVE is simple enough to live, and flexible enough to be lived in ever-changing ages and stages and contexts. To LOVE is simple enough to reproduce, so that others might express the same core practices, in ways that are unique and appropriate to their ages and stages and contexts, in just the same way as our children share our DNA and our features are discernible in theirs while they are nonetheless unique and beautiful people. To LOVE is simple and flexible and practical enough to be multiplied out across a community, as common core practices expressed at personal, nuclear and extended levels. And as common core practices, love covers – or makes up the lack in – a multitude of shortcomings.
Visual aids from our Pentecost service this morning, engaging with Ezekiel’s vision of a valley of dry bones and God’s intention to work, through his people and his Spirit in partnership, to bring life where there is no life and hope where hope has died...
Lungs: do we welcome the Spirit, breath God’s life in and out, in prayer?
Heart: do we live in God’s love, loving God, one another, and those who live around us with whom we share God’s world?
Liver: do we deal with the toxins that build up within us, by a regular practice of extending and receiving forgiveness?
Stomach: do we feed on God’s Word, in bread (and wine) and the Spirit-enlivened written word?
“I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.” Acts 2:17, Peter quoting from the prophet Joel.
Visions and dreams. The young shall be given visions; the old, dreams. Is this simply a poetic and inclusive way of saying the same thing? Perhaps; but I don’t think so. Here’s my response to the Spirit’s voice:
A vision is something God gives us, to do. Something we could not accomplish in our own strength, but with God enlivening us, something we will see come to pass in our lifetime. Our leg of the relay; our part to play; our call to own.
A dream is something God gives us, that is not ours to do, but ours to point to. Something we will not see with our own eyes; hope that extends beyond our lifetime; that reminds us that we are not the be-all-and-end-all of the matter; that reassures us that it doesn’t all depend on us. Martin Luther King said “I have a dream”: and in as much as that the current President of the United States embodies the coming-together of previously segregated people, some of those who marched with Dr King saw a partial fulfilment of his dream.
For lack of vision, the people perish (Proverbs 29:18; Isaiah 5:13; Hosea 4:6). Without vision, we merely exist, lacking direction and purpose.
But vision alone is not enough. Without dreams, the people perish within a generation. Because our dreams sow the visions of those who come after us...
All of us are only getting older. Pentecost is as good a time as any to look back, to take stock of the visions God has given us, to celebrate where we have seen those visions – for our family, our workplace, our neighbourhood, our city, our world; whatever those visions pertain to – come to fruition; and to renew our trust that God is Sovereign and faithful where we have not seen vision come to pass, where we must recognise that in creating a world with free will, God’s plans do not necessarily run as smoothly as he might choose and certainly less smoothly than we might choose – God is working to a long arc.
All of us are only getting older. Pentecost is as good a time as any to look forward, to ask God to give us dreams, increasingly as we age, in order that we might sow the seeds of vision for those who come after us. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if many years from now, when we are long gone, an old man might testify to something God has brought about in the midst of his people and say, I remember, when I was a boy, an old lady – as I come to think of it now, she probably wasn’t so very old, but I was a child, and she seemed old to me at the time – told me that this would come to pass, not in her time but in mine...?
The best way to stifle any vision is to recruit volunteers to your cause. Most churches in the UK are run by volunteers – that is, their engagement with the wider community is facilitated by volunteers. We work hard to recruit volunteers for children’s work, for youth work, for the distribution of food or clothes or furniture, for...And this is perhaps the most effective constraint possible on the effectiveness of that engagement.
One flaw with a culture of volunteers is the difficulty that can arise when someone volunteers for something for which they are quite unsuited. That is to say, everyone has gifts and a role to play, but not everyone has the same gifts or is called to the same roles. Willingness is not, in itself, enough.
But there is a far greater, indeed fatal, flaw. In a volunteer-culture, people volunteer for whatever they believe is important, because if they don’t volunteer, the important thing won’t happen. And, of course, people volunteer for the new thing, because the new thing has a certain excitement and energy to it. What this results in is volunteers who serve in multiple capacities, juggling commitments, and unable to give very much time or effort to any of those things. This gives the church barely-sustainable breadth without depth. It results in frenetic lives, rather than fruitful lives. And it is perpetuated by the false belief that if everyone took an equal share in volunteering, no-one would serve in multiple capacities. They still would: because hole-plugging is integral to a volunteer-culture, which will expand the number of holes so as always to be greater than the number of people to plug them.
By volunteer, I don’t mean unpaid worker. I am not suggesting that we replace volunteers with paying people to do things: that in itself doesn’t address volunteer-culture. By volunteer, I mean something closer to what Jesus called a hired-hand. The things I do as a member of my family, I don’t get paid for, but I’m not a volunteer: I’m a fully-committed stake-holder.
Sometimes in life we have to make a choice between two or more options, and the choosing of one rules out involvement in the others. In marriage the partners make a commitment to ‘forsaking all others,’ not in the sense of abandoning community but in the sense of ruling-out their option of involvement as a marriage-partner with anyone else until released from their present responsibilities by death. Or consider this example: for most of us, choosing to buy one house means we don’t live in several houses; though after a period of time we might sell our house and move to another. In a you-can-have-it-all-and-have-it-all-at-once culture, there are certain things we can’t have all at once. Beyond consumers, we need contributors: but beyond contributors, we need stake-holders.
I have observed volunteer-culture churches where commitment is measured – whether intentionally or unconsciously – by the number of different areas within the life of the church that a given person is involved in. I have witnessed the burn-out that results. I have seen the ability to do many things, not particularly well, and all without capacity to grow.
I have also observed a different culture, one where community is built around shared vision: where people commit to involvement in one ‘extended family’ (at a time), a ‘family’ that shares every dimension of life – loving God, loving one another, loving their neighbour – in an integrated whole. Where team doesn’t simply plan and deliver a programme of activities, but eats and prays and has fun and cries together.
Such a culture has its own challenges, its own messiness. It involves not simply restructuring but a paradigm-shift; and that takes a minimum of five or six years. It almost certainly involves doing less in the short- and medium-term than we might be doing in the present or hope to do in the long-term. It is almost unimaginably costly. But I am absolutely convinced that the volunteer-culture on which most churches is built is the single greatest constraining factor in our seeing the kingdom of heaven take ground.
I just finished reading the Hunger Games trilogy (The Hunger Games; Catching Fire; Mockingjay). The story-arc is very good indeed, and I’m looking forward to seeing how parts 2 and 3 will be translated onto the screen. What makes it good is that, like all good stories, it is true. Fictional, yes; but true...
There is a moment, a third of the way through Catching Fire, when Katniss Everdeen finds herself trapped outside of the fence that surrounds District 12. She has long enjoyed stolen, risky moments of personal freedom beyond the enclosing fence, because it is rarely electrified and she has both the need (to feed her family) and the courage to refuse to be confined. But now the fence is alive. Unbeknownst to Katniss, two Peacekeepers wait at her house; wait to inform those who care about her that she is dead; wait to ensnare them, too. Even though she does not know this, she knows that she must re-enter District 12 and get home; that she cannot allow the Capitol any capital here. Her only hope – and the odds are not in her favour – is to climb a tree that has a branch which extends over the fence; to hang from the tree, and drop from the branch, a fall of 8m, hoping the snowdrift below will sufficiently break her fall. It does, but in landing Katniss seriously damages her left heel.
This scene gains added significance when it is remembered that the President of Panem is called Snow. (Indeed, his shadowy hand, for good or ill, or intended ill subverted for good, stirs the snowflakes wherever the fall in the story.) It gains even more significance if we recognise that Snow is the perennial poison-tongued Prince of the world in which the story is set; and if we are familiar with the promise of Genesis 3:15, that the offspring of the woman whose husband has been returned to the ground will crush the serpent’s head while at the same time being struck in the heel by the serpent. In her descent from on high, which results in the snowdrift being crushed and her heel being broken, Katniss – whose father died in a mining incident, and whose body was not found; who was returned to the ground – triumphs (not for the first time, nor the last) over death – the impassable fence that cut her off from the community – and over the powers that use death as a means of controlling people’s lives. It is a Christological moment.
Jesus engages people through invitation and challenge: extending grace and affirmation and access, and requiring change. We see this time and again in the Gospels, both with his closest disciples and with more passing encounters. Those who respond to Jesus respond to invitation and challenge (consider Zacchaeus, whom Jesus affirms in the face of being ostracised, and who makes a radical and costly turn-around) and the on-going process of invitation and challenge separates out those who want to follow Jesus from those who want Jesus to follow them (consider the crowds who fall away when he increases the challenge element).
Where invitation and challenge are both low, the defining characteristic of a relationship (between two persons, or within a community) is boredom.
Where invitation is high and challenge is low, the defining characteristic of a relationship is cosiness.
Where invitation is low and challenge is high, the defining characteristic of a relationship is stress/discouragement.
Where invitation and challenge are both high, the defining characteristic of a relationship is empowerment.
With this in mind, let’s revisit the ‘field of discipleship’ I suggested yesterday. Each quadrant is explored and mapped in increasing detail where we experience high invitation and challenge. (Boredom is unaware of its surroundings; cosiness, unconcerned with them; and stress, too agitated to appreciate them.)
Consider the ‘come, and be’ quadrant, where the question is, ‘who am I chosen to be with?’ For me, this question is answered in several ways. There is my life-long covenant relationship with my wife. Then there are our children: and while that is also a life-long relationship, I certainly don’t envisage that they will always live and move with us, so we might consider the present dynamic to be a long-term season. But I also have long-term and/or for-life relationships with a number of friends; and then there are shorter-term friendships and working relationships: those I am chosen to be with for now.
I think it would be fair to say that at times I have related to my wife with low invitation and high challenge, causing her stress; at other times, have retreated into high invitation, low challenge, resulting in a cosiness that does not empower her; or (and it is easy to slide from cosiness to this) with low invitation low challenge, resulting in boredom. But I trust that there are times when, through high invitation and high challenge on my part, she has been empowered to fulfil her God-given potential, to grow into the person she was created to be. To live habitually in that place requires a determination of the will, and a continuous pattern of repentance and belief.
When it comes to our children, I know that my natural tendency is to extend low invitation high challenge, causing them stress; and that I need to extend more invitation – find ways of spending time together, having fun – and step back from inappropriate challenge (they are children, not adults), while not abdicating appropriate challenge (without which it is not possible to move from immaturity to maturity). So often we expect parenting to be easy and find it overwhelmingly complicated, when the truth is that it is very simple and very, very hard.
Many of my working relationships and short-term relationships bore me – not because I want to be entertained, but because I want to be engaged – because the other person does not extend invitation (access to their lives) and challenge (leading me out of my comfort zone) or does not respond to my offers of invitation and challenge. On the other hand, responding to invitation and challenge is a key indicator of a Person of Peace – someone open to you, someone who responds to Jesus in you – and helpful in discerning which people to invest most in.
The same principles apply to the other quadrants: without high invitation high challenge, one will never discover and grow in what they are challenged to do, what they are given to contribute, or where they are invited to go together with others...
Let us consider a visual representation of the field of discipleship, the scope of its concerns.
Jesus calls disciples to come to him and be sent by him into the world. This spectrum, along which the disciple moves back and forth, provides us with our first axis.
Jesus calls disciples into community and to a distinct part within that community. Personhood exists within covenant relationships, within which we have a specific vocation or kingdom roles. For Jesus himself, his personhood exists in unity with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and his mother, Mary; while his particular vocation is to be the Son (of God, of Man). Paul writes about the Church as the Body of Christ, one body made up of distinct members, each of which play a part on which the body as a whole depends and which is meaningless in isolation/amputation. So inextricably linked personhood (covenant relationships) and vocation (kingdom roles) provides us with our second axis.
We can now consider the field of discipleship as comprising four quadrants.
The bottom-left, framed by coming to Jesus and our personhood – come, and be – is concerned with the question: who am I chosen to be with? (Biblical example: Jesus giving Mary and John to each other from the cross.)
The top-left, framed by coming to Jesus and our vocation – come, and do – is concerned with the question: what am I challenged to do? (Biblical example: the disciples learn to do what Jesus does.)
The top-right, framed by our vocation and being sent by Jesus – go, and do – is concerned with the question: what am I given to contribute? (Biblical example: Erastus was an urban director of public works.)
The bottom-right, framed by our personhood and being sent by Jesus – go, and be – is concerned with the question: where are we invited to go together? (Biblical example: Paul and his team being led into Europe from Asia Minor.)
Each of these questions can relate to more permanent or more provisional, and more general or more specific, calls; and our response will involve attention to both character and competence (skills).
The other day a younger friend asked me a really good question: what is the difference between discipleship and mentoring? In fact, this is a great question, and one that arises from my insistence that discipleship is not primarily about the Christian’s personal and largely unmediated relationship with Jesus but about interpersonal human relationships, the participation in the missio dei (God’s mission) Jesus has delegated to us. If my understanding of discipleship is that it is relational and directive and handed on, is what I mean by ‘discipleship’ mentoring? An older acquaintance who asked me my views on discipleship recently thought so.
There is certainly a degree of overlap, but in my view discipleship and mentoring are not coterminous. While I am aware that there is a (growing) range of nuance to how the term ‘mentoring’ is applied, my understanding of mentoring is that it is vocational and that, while the mentor may certainly address character issues and facilitate networking, the relationship is primarily concerned with passing on specific skills to their protégée.
Another related-but-different field is that of life-coaching, which, unlike mentoring, is not vocational. The aim of the life-coach is to help someone identify changes they want to see in their life and to put in place changes towards that life. They are more concerned with values than particular skills: with helping their client to align their actions more closely to their ‘ideal world’ lifestyle. Life-coaches tend not to be directive: the impetus for change comes from the person who has engaged them; they act as a sounding-board to help that person articulate what they seek. As such, life-coaches – in contrast to mentors - do not necessarily model something they have learnt and are now handing on.
Discipleship is concerned with becoming Christ-like (“imitate me as I imitate Christ”) in every part of life. It is concerned with vocation – that is, our kingdom roles – as inextricably linked to personhood – that is, our covenant relationships. Therefore, discipleship involves a distinctively Jesus-centred form of life-coaching and mentoring, while adapting and exceeding both.
Discipleship as mentoring (as when a Christian businessperson mentors younger businesspeople in engaging in business according to kingdom values) puts one person between me and the place I want to go to – a person who will help me take that step. It may relate to a specific job or employment, or unfamiliar location; or more generally to the unchanging, developing vocation that is expressed through a series of jobs and in a series of locations. While discipleship must always take into account both Christ-like competence and Christ-like character, here competence takes the ‘leading beat.’
Discipleship as life-coaching puts one person between me and the person of Jesus – someone who will bring me to Jesus, just as I am called to bring others to Jesus. While discipleship must always take into account both Christ-like character and Christ-like competence, here character takes the ‘leading beat.’ It may be significantly removed from mentoring – a key observation for church leaders in inherited traditions: we are not primarily called to raise up the next generation of clergy or licensed lay ministers, but to create a culture of discipleship by making disciples – regardless of their vocation – who make disciples.
Both are counter-cultural to the extreme individualism of our age. Both are necessary, as the life of discipleship is a shared life of being called to come to the person of Jesus and be sent ahead of him into every place.
I shall develop these ideas in my next post, The Field Of Discipleship...
Recently I wrote a post on the book The Hunger Games, and in particular the way in which the motif of ‘grain’ as a strategy of control and ‘bread’ as a tactic of subversion recalls the use of grain by Rome and use of bread by the Christian community within that world of ‘bread and circuses.’ In Panem, the Capitol controls the distribution of grain to the 12 Districts as both carrot and stick; and the Districts each make their own forms of bread, in distinctive shapes that reflect their primary employment and with regionally-available additional ingredients, so carrying their own identity in a way the Capitol cannot crush. Moreover, bread is used as gift, a way of sharing meagre resources to ensure that the Capitol does not crush someone else: it is the ultimate symbol of solidarity, of refusing to put oneself before another.
In the film version, this motif (along with most of what makes the book interesting and disturbing) is largely lost. Bread combines the lives of the two boys who are in love with Katniss – without her being aware in either case – when, near the start of the film, Gale offers Katniss a small loaf sold to him by Peeta’s father, the baker, which she breaks in two and shares with him. But the act is easily overlooked, in a scene which struggles to convey a gesture of unconditional love being returned with a gesture of conditional friendship. The significant moment when Peeta provided Katniss with bread recurs in flashback several times; but its story-telling power as testimony to the depth and length of his love is almost entirely negated by setting it in the very recent past rather than some years before, not long after her father’s death, when Katniss, her mother and sister were close to starving.
There is a moment in the film where grain – used by the Capitol as a strategy of control – is directly appropriated as a tactic of subversion; a moment we do not see in the book, told as it is from Katniss’ perspective, trapped in the Games arena. When she shows solidarity with another District, honouring Rue’s life and death by placing flowers around her body and signing respect to the girl’s community forced to watch on a big screen, a riot ensues in District 11 in which the trappings of the Capitol are targeted and grain silos are opened with the grain, pouring out, becoming a means of obstructing the ‘peacekeepers’ and even a weapon to crush and drown them.
Whereas the book is narrated by Katniss, the film is mostly presented from the perspective of the Capitol. This has the effect of turning the story on its head. Rather than side with the oppressed people of the outer Districts, we are encouraged to identify ourselves with the privileged, self-indulgent, but morally complex (as opposed to one-dimensional villains) population of the Capitol. Indeed, they are a hyper-real vision of our own culture; and so such identification is closer to the truth, however disturbing that truth may be. Such a directorial decision may itself be seen as a tactic of subversion intended to undermine bread and circuses as a strategy of control. If so, it is a gamble...
Further reflections on conversations with Mark Carey.
As noted in my previous post, discipleship is relational, directive, and involves both being a disciple (being led, or following) and making disciples (leading, and being followed). This post is concerned with the stages of leading, and the styles appropriate to each stage, as we seek to lead according to the pattern of Jesus.
The first stage of leadership is an apostolic phase. Its focus is casting vision. The primary work is setting out revelation (this is what we are going to do) and the restraint (what we are not going to do) that comes with revelation (without revelation, restraint is cast off, and the potential for momentum dissipates).
The second stage of leadership is a pastor/teacher phase. Its focus is embedding values. The primary work is encouraging those who have responded to the first-stage vision to stay within the restraints established then, coaching them in the core values of the vision. So, for example, if hospitality is a core value, we model what hospitality looks and feels like, in our context, with gradually increasing teaching following experience.
The third stage of leadership is an evangelistic phase. Its focus is shared vocabulary. By ‘evangelist’ I mean someone who, by natural preference, cannot help but communicate good news stories; and by evangelistic phase I mean taking on this discipline whether it is our natural preference or not. In this stage of leadership, Jesus sends his disciples out to do the things he has been doing. They can be entrusted with this because they have a shared understanding, a common ‘vocabulary’ for describing the in-breaking kingdom of heaven. But they return to Jesus as the one who gathers-up their good news reports. The primary work of third stage leadership is passing-on the good news stories concerning those we lead: no longer telling our stories, but telling theirs; the leader as collector and distributor. So, for example, by the third stage of transitioning a church to missional communities, a key role for the bigger gatherings is telling the stories of the pilot communities.
The fourth stage of leadership is a prophetic phase. Its focus is releasing vehicles, as one community of disciples multiples. The primary work is supporting those you have led (your disciples) to develop their own vision (that they will cast, becoming first-stage leaders) as they listen to what God is putting on their hearts, ensuring that the necessary ‘cover’ (or structure for ongoing accountability) is in place for them as your own relationship with them changes from day-to-day discipler to more removed mentor or overseer (Jesus leaves his disciples, but sends the Holy Spirit). Note: the question of providing the right cover for those leaders we release is one that, to date, the fresh expressions and pioneer ministry movements have not adequately engaged with; it is also the key element of fourth-stage leadership that, in failing to put it in place, led to the most costly relationship breakdown with people we had led Jo and I have experienced.
It is important to go through the stages – not in a mechanistic sense, but not attempting to short-circuit the process Jesus models. Short-cuts (such as attempting consensus decisions from the outset) result in the people we lead having a vehicle for discipleship without understanding the values that drive discipleship (akin to a car without an engine – which is an expensive box), and this leads to problems that undermine the whole process of discipleship. Short-term gain ends in long-term loss.
Which stage of leadership is most suited to your natural preferences?
Which is least suited?
From whom can you learn (be discipled by) how to grow in competence within your strengths?
From whom might you learn (be discipled by) how to grow in competence in those stages/styles that lie further outside of your comfort zone?
(Not because we are one-man bands – I believe in complementary leadership teams – but because we are all called to grow more into the likeness of Christ, personally as well as corporately.)
Three key observations concerning discipleship:
Discipleship is relational
Jesus models a life-on-life relationship of invitation (“come and spend time with me”) and challenge (the call to repent of an earth-bound perspective on life and believe a kingdom-of-heaven perspective). Paul models the same approach, inviting others into relationship, and challenging them to imitate him as he imitates Christ.
Discipleship is relational...contrary to the belief that Jesus disciples us directly through the Holy Spirit (Jesus explicitly charges disciples with the responsibility of making disciples); or that we can be discipled remotely by Christian authors (they can be helpful to us, undoubtedly, but it isn’t discipleship – not least because they cannot engage us in discussion or hold us accountable, essential ingredients in the difference between passing on information and handing on transformation); or that we can deliver discipleship through packaged courses.
Genuine discipleship consistently points the disciple to Jesus, not through abstract ideas, but through embodied evidence of transformation – imperfect yes, but real life examples. The good news (the invitation here) is that we all have relationships, and that you don’t need to be an expert. The challenge is to make some of our relationships intentionally discipleship relationships.
Discipleship is directive
Again, this is because discipleship is concerned with handing on transformation, not passing on information (which can be passed on in other ways). The key questions of discipleship are: what has the discipler learnt, that the disciple needs to learn at this moment? and, how might the thing that the discipler has learnt be applied in the life of the disciple? This second question is important for two reasons: firstly, because we are not concerned with the acquisition of knowledge (what to believe) but with the application of wisdom (how to believe); and secondly, because the outworking of the same wisdom will look different in two different lives.
The implication of discipleship – disciples who go and make disciples who go and make disciples – is that it is not a peer relationship, not a mutual discipling of one another (however valid mutual edification is). In over-prioritising mutual edification, we have effectively contained the momentum of discipleship (rather than one discipling a few, each of whom disciple a few, we tend to gather in groups that ‘disciple’ one another within the contained group, or to seek – potentially conflicting – investment for ourselves from several other voices at once). Discipleship is directive: it is about being led, about following, and about learning to lead, to call others to follow.
Andrew was John the Baptist’s disciple before becoming Jesus’ disciple: I would suggest that Andrew and John were not simply filling time, but that John took Andrew as far as he could – teaching what he had learnt, pointing (literally) to Jesus – at which point someone else (in this case, literally Jesus) took over the role of his discipler – a relationship which lasted three years, before the nature of that relationship, too, moved on.
Likewise, I would suggest that our expectation should be that we learn from someone who is sharing their life with us, and that we invite a few people at a time into our lives to learn from us...and that both the person who is discipling us, and the people we are discipling, will change from time to time as we each in turn journey through the process of becoming disciples who make disciples (a process that moves from unconscious incompetence in any given aspect of our lives, through conscious incompetence and conscious competence, to unconscious competence).
Discipleship involves both being a disciple and making disciples
You can’t make disciples outside of the parameters you have been discipled in (again, not least because all you can do is pass on information rather than hand on transformation)...and you can’t be a disciple unless you are learning to make disciples (that is, you are not the end product or point of this process).
Who is discipling you? Who has discipled you in the past? Who are you inviting into your life, to disciple?
The amazing French mechanical marionette street theatre company Royal De Luxe has been in Liverpool over the weekend, as part of the centenary events marking the sinking of the Titanic (the Titanic was registered in Liverpool, and many of her crew came from the city).
Over three days, their giants walked around Liverpool in an unfolding story inspired by a real little girl who wrote a letter to her father, a crew member on the ship, telling him how much she missed him. He never received the letter – the Titanic having sailed from Southampton before it could be delivered – but in Royal De Luxe’s magical tale ‘Sea Odyssey : Giant Spectacular’ her uncle walked the seabed for a century to bring back the ship’s postal crate and the father’s reply, before an emotional reunion.
We took the train in to the city to see them yesterday, and it really was...spectacular. The crews operating the Little Girl, her dog, and the towering Diver were mesmerising – especially the pairs jumping off the Diver’s rigging and running round to jump off again, in a conveyor-belt of motion that powered him forward. The teamwork involved was quite simply absolutely inspiring.
I’ve added a set of photos on my flickr account.
I’ve just read ‘The Hunger Games,’ the first part in The Hunger Games trilogy.
Pitched at young/teen readers, here in the UK the target-audience is now three generations removed from the church (the USA, where the trilogy was written, is behind us in this, but heading in the same direction). My contention is that:
the very universe God created insists that the Story that is centred on Jesus is told, even where familiarity with the biblical story – and, indeed, subsequent church history – is absent;
and that therefore it is no surprise that popular culture is full-to-bursting with fragments of the Story (consider, for example, Dr Who; or the major story arc of the Harry Potter series, which – quite apart from Harry Potter laying down his life to defeat evil, and receiving it back again – is concerned with the deceiving of Severus Snape by Voldemort, and his subsequent redemption through the loving actions of Albus Dumbledore);
and that if we are to engage in Christ-centred mission to my children’s peers, we need to enter-into the stories they are told and tell, affirming the fragments, and building bridges from the testimony they carry to Jesus.
‘The Hunger Games’ is full of echoes of the Story. Perhaps one of the less familiar, but to my mind most striking, is the motif of bread as strategy of control and tactic of subversion. I don’t intend to offer a synopsis of the plot, but read – or re-read – the book with an eye out for the role grain/bread plays as both strategic means of exercising control, through a balance of bribe and threat; and in inspirational, guerrilla, tactical acts of flaunting independence of spirit, and exposing injustice and shaming the oppressor. And compare this with the way in which early Christians engaged in bread-focused tactics of subversion to counter the claim of the emperor to be their Lord and provider; the demonstration – both symbolic and concrete – that Jesus is a very different kind of Lord, and true provider...
Bread as Strategy of Control and Tactic of Subversion
Earlier this week we watched a fascinating programme, ‘Meet the Romans with Mary Beard’ (BBC2, part 1 of 3; Mary Beard is Professor of Classics and Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge University).
2000 years ago the population of Rome exploded, doubling in size and doubling in size again, becoming a city of 1 million people, a city larger than any Europe had ever known, or would know again until Victorian London.
Rome was not a place you came from, but a place you came to; and, more than that, an idea people were drawn to, from all over the ancient world. Anyone from anywhere could become a citizen of Rome. It even became a common practice for slaves to be given the money to buy themselves citizenship at the completion of their contracted service, if indeed they had not saved the sum already from out of their wages.
It struck me that the Romans – by which I mean the people who lived in Rome itself – were incredibly tolerant of anyone from anywhere; as long as they were willing to be assimilated into the Roman way of doing things. But – quite understandably, given how the city’s life depended on surfing the very edge of chaos – the Roman ‘idea’ or ‘genius’ was firmly (and when deemed necessary, violently) intolerant of anyone from anywhere who resisted assimilation: which is why both the Jewish and the Christian population experienced the unwanted attention of expulsions and persecutions from time to time.
Almost all of the population lived in the new high-rise apartment blocks (insula, a Roman architectural development), separated – for the first time in history – from the means of growing even some of their own food. The emperor bestowed upon every Roman citizen, rich or poor, a monthly grain dole. Some 200,000 received the dole, which was enough grain for bread for two people for a month.
In this way, a sizeable proportion of the population were appealed to – in much the same way as our own politicians appeal to different groups within our society – and the rest had an incentive to aspire to citizenship. As insula accommodation was predominantly one-room apartments without even kitchen facilities, let alone land, most people relied on professional bakers to turn their grain into tear-and-share bread for them.
Through the grain dole, the emperor was making the claim, “I am your Lord, who provides for you.” Though not mentioned, what struck me was how highly political the Christian act of sharing broken bread was in this context, a threat to Rome itself. In this act, they were refuting the emperor’s claim with the counter-claim “Jesus is our Lord, who provides for us.”
More than that, this is a classic example of de Certeau’s observation of strategies of control and tactics of subversion. Many of the Christians were themselves Roman citizens. They took the emperor’s strategy of control – the grain dole he bestowed – and employed a tactic of subversion – using the very grain to create the very symbol that refuted the power play at work.
This causes me to wonder how subversive Communion is in my own context. Does breaking bread retain any subversive creativity at all? Or has it, ironically, become a strategy of control, a means of reinforcing the status quo (to borrow a Latin phrase from the Romans)? How might we reclaim Communion as a tactic of subversion, within the State, and within the Established Church?
Moreover, do we view that which the State bestows on us as our right, that to which we are entitled; that which we must fight to retain for ourselves, in the context of national, regional and civic budget cuts? Or might we view what we are given as raw material that can be refashioned into the statement “Jesus is our Lord, who provides for us” as we share one another’s burdens and meet one another’s needs in ways that do not absolve the State of responsibility but undermine its position as false god we have entered into co-dependent benefactor-beholden contract with?
(read Invitation first)
What do you do when your life hasn’t turned out the way you thought, the way you hoped? What do you do when you find yourself in circumstances, day-after-day, that you would not have chosen, that you did not think you had signed-up for? What do you do when life is...death?
That would be the place we find Jesus’ first disciples in John 20; and not only when Jesus was dead, but also when the risen Jesus appears to them and sends them into the world as – in the same manner, the same pattern, the same mission - the Father sent him. That would be the place anyone who sets out to be a disciple finds themselves, sooner or later.
In just these circumstances, Jesus extends invitation and challenge to his disciples.
Alongside invitation, Jesus extends challenge.
The challenge to go, to be sent after the model of Jesus (v21): to be sent to die to self, to take up our cross and follow him, in order that God might bring life to others.
That life we didn’t think we had signed-up for...we had.
The challenge to forgive...and to not forgive sins (v23)? What is that about? I don’t think it is about withholding forgiveness, but about God’s forgiveness being exercised through Jesus’ disciples; about God’s commitment to partnership with his people; about our responsibility to set people free, because if we don’t, they remain bound.
Sometimes we are wounded simply by circumstances, and sometimes our wounds are self-inflicted, but often we are wounded by other people – or come to believe that we have been wounded by other people, even if we were wounded by circumstances or by ourselves. Because wounds are inevitable, exercising forgiveness is essential: to loose the chains on others (rather than add to them), and to free ourselves from our own chains.
Finally, the challenge to stop doubting and believe (v27). By ‘stop doubting,’ Jesus isn’t saying we can’t ask questions, isn’t saying we should suppress unanswered questions with denial. Denial is never healthy: that is why Jesus does not hide the wounds that have been inflicted on him. That which we struggle to believe, we need to bring out into the open – again, in a safe place, with trustworthy people – in order that doubt might die and belief have life breathed into it. It is doubt that is denial: the whispering voice of the accuser telling us that death is the final word, that God will not bring new life out of our present circumstances.
In the hard times, we need those who will hold out hope. Not candy-floss and kittens, but flesh-and-blood bearing-the-scars Jesus-in-our-midst changing our whole perspective. Because we do not see him in the physical sense he was seen between his resurrection and ascension, we need to help one another observe his presence, which may not be immediately recognised; to reflect on his woundedness, and discuss the implications for our own wounded lives. We need to help one another to ‘have life in his name’ (v31), forming a plan to live out that (resurrection) life in our present circumstances, however bleak; and holding one another to account in our response, so that we act in a way consistent to our confession.
What do you do when your life hasn’t turned out the way you thought, the way you hoped? Whatever you do, don’t try to live it on your own...
What do you do when your life hasn’t turned out the way you thought, the way you hoped? What do you do when you find yourself in circumstances, day-after-day, that you would not have chosen, that you did not think you had signed-up for? What do you do when life is...death?
That would be the place we find Jesus’ first disciples in John 20; and not only when Jesus was dead, but also when the risen Jesus appears to them and sends them into the world as – in the same manner, the same pattern, the same mission - the Father sent him. That would be the place anyone who sets out to be a disciple finds themselves, sooner or later.
In just these circumstances, Jesus extends invitation and challenge to his disciples.
He invites them to see, to touch, even to enter-into his woundedness (John 20:20 and 27). For even his resurrection body bears the wounds of his crucifixion; they may be healed, but they are not erased. They are a part of his story, his testimony to the faithfulness of the Father, who did not deliver him from death (avoidance) but through death and out the other side (victory). They are a key part of his story. And our wounds are a key part of our story, our testimony. Indeed, if we have no wounds, we have no share in Jesus’ story.
In the place where we are being wounded, the (self-inflicted as well as inflicted by others) wounds we have received in the past are a testimony to us of God’s (forgiveness and) faithfulness. The way we bear our wounds – not hiding or denying them; not keeping them to ourselves (to fester, to feed resentment and anger) but being vulnerable before others and inviting them in, even knowing that they might further hurt us – is a testimony to others of God’s faithfulness.
Jesus also invites them to receive the Holy Spirit (v22). He literally breathes God’s life into their bodies, animating what would otherwise essentially be dust. He invites them into a covenant exchange: God’s life at work in and through them (which also comes with a challenge).
In the place where we feel that we can do nothing, or at least none of the things we would choose to do, we need to learn the discipline of letting God work through us, bringing life to those who respond to his life in us. We need to learn to discern what God is doing, and rejoice. And like any discipline, this is thoroughly unpleasant to begin with...
And, of course, the invitation to receive, to enter-into, to live out of a place of peace (vv19, 21, 26). Note that having spoken peace to the disciples, the next time Jesus appears to them he speaks peace again. Note that, having received the Holy Spirit and been sent (John’s account does not share the chronology of Luke-Acts), the disciples are once again in the locked room.
It would appear that peace is not a one-off gift, but something we need to have spoken into our lives over and over. And that, too, is worth knowing when life is not as we had hoped. That we need a safe place, and people with whom we share experience, to return to and be sent out from, to have peace (reconciliation, with God, one another, and those to whom we are sent) ministered to our hearts. At times, we might need to be able to return to that locked room, that safe place, on a regular basis: not to stay there, but to visit often.
John 20:19-31
Here John records for us two occasions on which the risen Jesus appears to his disciples. Running through the account is Jesus’ phrase, spoken three times over, “Peace be with you!”
The word peace sums up reconciliation with God, one another and those around us. This is what the resurrection has achieved: not only the possibility of peace, but the start of a new day, a new humanity, characterised by such peace. Rowan Williams describes the church as God’s “pilot project” for this new humanity, as the peace Jesus speaks to us is worked out in our lives. In this passage we see that there is both a flow to peace – from Jesus to his disciples, and through them to the world – and a purpose to peace – setting us free from our fear of the death of our self; sending us into the world; and enabling us to believe in Jesus as Lord and God. Note also that the flow is continuous: i.e. that those who believe in Jesus as Lord and God are now themselves disciples who are sent into the world...
