How does the image of mission as healing affect the way we understand the mission of God?
So, after a long sabbatical it’s time to resume our Missional Viewpoints series. I almost let this series go, but I still think it’s something worth continuing so it’s time to revisit it and press on further. Just to jog your memory, here’s what I wrote as the brief for this series last Summer:
Caught up in the Christian understanding of mission and particularly evangelism, is this concept of salvation and what it means. In recent times, the Church’s understanding of salvation has been fairly straightforward and in some ways quite a shallow image. Will a deeper image of salvation help to propel us towards a deeper understanding of the mission of God?
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?
Over July and August, on the blog I’ll be going through a series looking at our definition of mission, and particularly some specific keywords that inform our understanding.
With university work finally out of the way after the final push to get everything finished, and with The Lab beginning to quieten down for the summer, I thought it was about time to get back into blogging. So, in order to become more focused, and to get myself “back into shape” in terms of blogging, I thought it’d be good to work through a fairly simple, but quite interesting summer series.
Just put the finishing touches on my sermon for tomorrow morning. Here’s a Wordle of my script:
I’ve been thinking recently, inspired by some stuff from a recent lecture at CYM, about the whole biblical meta-narrative – and in particular this idea of the story beginning with the garden and ending in the city. Beginning with Eden and ending with the new Jerusalem. I think I’ve read a few authors who have pointed this out and tried to draw observations from it – in particular recently Rob Bell’s new book and NT Wright’s Surprised by Hope.
It’s really interesting to see how we can play around with the interaction between this little bit of theology and all kinds of ideas about the way society and culture develops.
Here’s my notes and audio from my sermonizing at St Paul’s last Sunday. Found the topic pretty difficult, especially coming from a place of becoming more and more suspicious of the “worship” word – especially when it isn’t together with other words like life and mission. So I definitely took the more tame route of appealing to spirituality (essentially the Rob Bell route). Bit of a shaky start to this one as well just warn you.
Feel free to listen (hope you find some of it interesting at least) and comment.
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I was watching Batman Begins a couple of weeks ago (in preparation for the Dark Knight), and was hit by a weird quote. When Bruce talks to Rachel about his desire to avenge his parents' killing, she says something like "Justice is about harmony. Revenge is about you making yourself feel better."
But when we think about justice in this day and age, definitely in a secular sense and usually in a religious sense, we don't think about harmony, but instead about people getting what they deserve. People who do bad things deserve to have bad things happen to them to achieve justice. To balance the scales.
Even in a biblical sense, when we think about justice (or God's justice) a lot of people think about people getting what they deserve for sin. Jesus and grace are the way out of justice.
But what if the biblical concept of justice is actually something much deeper. What if when God speaks about justice it is much more closely related to harmony – to everything being in it's rightful place in relation to God (shalom)? Is justice the process of God achieving Shalom in His world? And how does this alter our understanding of what justice should be?
Was justice what the Jews were trying to achieve by stoning the woman caught in adultery, or was it achieved when Jesus set her free?
Another idea I've been thinking about a lot is the Old Testament idea of the Jubilee – when every fifty years debts are forgotten, land is given back, and a giant reset button is pressed for Israel. Surely the point of the Jubilee year is justice, harmony, peace? The rich would give up some in order to bring the poor back into the right place – and bring themselves back into that place as well.
And what if we look at the cross through the lens of justice? The law could never truly achieve justice – it could only give people what they deserved, but not bring them into a right place – and so Jesus sacrifices. He sacrifices of himself to restore relationships. And this is also how the community of faith achieves peace – we sacrifice of ourselves for each other. Especially the early church (Acts 2:42ish), who devote themselves and their possessions to becoming a community of peace together.
Think I'm about spent – it's been a long day. So…
Justice is about harmony/peace, achieved best through self-sacrifice.
How does that sit with you?
Welcome to the blog of James Henley. I'm a young church leader / youth worker and student based in Newport, South Wales.
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