Missional Viewpoints 1: Mission as Liberation
How does the image of mission as liberation help us in understanding how God is at work in the world around us, and how we can get stuck in alongside him?
Welcome to the long awaited (it’s been what… two months?) first part of my (late) summer blog series – Missional Viewpoints. If it helps those who have been waiting in anticipation – I had an amazing summer, and I hope this is worth the wait. Each post will look at a different metaphor for mission from three different angles:
- Theological/biblical – with the bible as a starting point.
- Sociological – with the culture around us as a starting point.
- A practical angle – looking at how to apply the metaphor to normal life (mainly focusing on the local community).
This series utilises two powerful tools – image and story. Each “metaphor” is both an image to represent the mission of God which we can look into and around and examine, as well as representing an important part of the Grand Story of human existence, as well as the grand narrative we find in the bible.
A Theology of Liberation
The most obvious part of the liberation story in the bible is the exodus narrative, where Yahweh delivers his people from slavery in Egypt. There’s a couple of really good books that cover this – if you’re academically minded then Chris Wright’s The Mission of God is a great book to read and to have around to refer to, as well as Rob Bell’s recent book – Jesus wants to save Christians – which looks closely at the Exodus narrative and reading the new testament in the light of it.
I would argue that the most important implication of the Exodus narrative – at least for the purpose of this post – is that it has a huge effect on who the people of Israel understand God to be. Their whole understanding of Yahweh is built on this earliest encounter they have with him – the first time that God interacts and communicates with the whole people, the whole tribe.
The Israelites’ core understanding of Yahweh is that he is the God who saves. The God who liberates.
This colours the Israelites/Jews whole understanding of how God interacts with his creation – in particular his people. This is a God who hears the cries of the oppressed and responds by liberating them. So later in the Old Testament when everything goes so badly wrong for the Jews, what’s their response? “God, liberate us, save us, deliver us from the hands of our enemies”.
The expectation is that when the Messiah comes – he will come to liberate. The only problem is that he doesn’t come to liberate them in the way they expect, but instead perhaps to bring a different kind of liberation. But is Jesus’ kind of liberation simply about a kind of spiritual enlightenment – or is there some greater, grittier, “real” liberation that Jesus brings about?
The Jesus response seems to be an exact opposite to the Exodus response which God makes to the people’s oppression and suffering. The Exodus response is to bring the people back out towards God – where as the Jesus response is to bring God to the people.
God reaches down and joins the oppressed, enslaving Godself within humanity itself.
This poses a difficult question for us – as it leaves two possibilities:
- Did God send Jesus to show us how to liberate ourselves for ourselves?
- Or did God send Jesus to show us not to liberate ourselves, but instead to enslave ourselves?
Perhaps it is in this self-enslavement that we can truly be liberated? Is the cross the ultimate sign of this surrender – leading into a new liberation in the resurrection?
These words hit me hard at Ikon’s Pyro-theology at Greenebelt. It’s taken from the writings of the 17th century mystic, St Cosmos of Aetolia:
“If you want to find perfect love, go sell all your belongings, give them to the poor, go where you find a master and become a slave.”
Liberation Culture
What does this liberation narrative/metaphor mean for our culture?
There’s still a huge romanticism that sounds the idea of liberation, particularly surounding the idea of revolution. The other week I watched Steven Soderburgh’s Che parts 1 and 2 – which looks at the character of Che Guevara, who is surrounded in mystery and drama for most young people in my generation. And I’m sure that this imagery around “the revolution” is something that still drives young activists today – although they might deny it.
But have we perhaps lost something of the core of this ideal – instead exchanging it for something which has become tamed by a culture of consumerism?
Perhaps what we have lost is an idea of the cost.
We’ve exchanged a revolution that costs, instead settling for something that costs us far less – and perhaps as followers of Jesus we’ve done the same with Christianity. I think perhaps we’ve lost the deep challenge that comes from truly knowing the cost of the revolution, the core of liberation.
“If you want to find perfect love, go sell all your belongings, give them to the poor, go where you find a master and become a slave.”
Practice Liberation
So – how could we take some of this abstract thought and build something practical from it? Some what ifs…
- What if we really challenged ourselves with the cost that comes from joining the Jesus revolution?
What if we raised the bar on discipleship in churches – challenging people properly about things like material posessions, that guy in the office they’ve never spoken to, to love the people who are unlovable?
- What if we began to ask the question: who are the oppressed in our neighbourhood who need to be set free?
What if we took the challenge to follow Jesus to the oppressed and the marginalised seriously, and began to look out for the people who most need someone to come alongside them, rather than the people who seem most receptive to relationships/the gospel?
- What if we took seriously the call to activism as churches?
What if we began to organise protests – to talk politics rather than to shy away from it? What if we began to think about subversive ways to make a prophetic shout for the oppressed into the society around us?
“If you want to find perfect love, go sell all your belongings, give them to the poor, go where you find a master and become a slave.”
-
Chris
