For the Good of the Body

Much ink has been spilled discussing the gifts of the Spirit. To look at only one small aspect of this complex topic, we will recall that gifts are given to an individual for benefit of the community. The bestowal of a spiritual gift is not about the individual upon whom it is bestowed, but rather about the community's need for that gift. This can be seen in the case of Moses, as Walther Eichrodt describes:

This organizer who enjoyed no proper political power, this national leader who boasted no prowess in war, this man who directed the worship of God without every having received the status of priest, who established and mediated a new understanding of God without any of the credentials of prophetic powers of prediction, this wonder-worker who was yet far above the domain of mere magic, confronts us from the very outset with one ineluctable fact: Israelite religion is not the product of scrupulously guarded tradition, swollen with the accretions of history, nor does it rest on any sort of organization, however cleverly or successfully devised, but is a creation of that spirit which blows where it is inclined to do so, and which in mockery of our neat arrangements unites in the richness of marvelously equipped personalities things patently incompatible, in order that it may forward its own mighty and life-giving work. At the very beginning of Israelite religion we find the charisma, the special individual endowment of a person; and to such an extent is the whole structure based on it, that without it it would be inconceivable.

God planned the building and expansion of His kingdom, including the manifestation of spiritual gifts (I Cor 12:7). In discussing these gifts, the focus must be on the community, not the individual. Within dogmatics, some topics have an individual emphasis, and others a corporate emphasis; spiritual gifts must fall into the latter category. Attempts to analyze these gifts under the former category have caused significant confusions.

Both Testaments

Pious believers have, for centuries, stressed and experienced the necessity of studying both the Old Testament and the New Testament - and of the devotional reading of both, as well - to hear ever more clearly the voice of God, and to see His grace. There is absolutely nothing new in this: it began in the teaching of Jesus, in which He stated clearly His continuity with the Hebrew Scriptures. Walther Eichrodt put it well, writing that we are most confronted with the urgency of experiencing the text of the Old Testament

when we enter the unique spiritual realm of the New Testament. For in the encounter with the Christ of the Gospels there is the assertion of a mighty living reality as inseparably bound up with the Old Testament past as pointing forward into the future. That which binds together indivisibly the two realms of the Old and New Testaments - different in externals though they may be - is the irruption of the Kingship of God into this world and its establishment here. This is the unitive fact because it rests on the action of the one and the same God in each case; that God who in promise and performance, in Gospel and Law, pursues one and the selfsame purpose, the building of his Kingdom. This is why the central message of the New Testament leads us back to the testimony of God in the old covenant.

Eichrodt's powerful formulation here might be improved only in the understanding that, as Jesus said, the kingdom is "not of this world" - meaning not only that the kingdom includes the metaphysical beyond the physical, but meaning also that God's concept of kingship, as the ultimate concept of kingship, has been elevated to the extent that it includes, and more than includes - it operates with the foundational axioms of those notions - mercy, grace, love, agape, forgiveness - which are understood be the core of the Gospel.

Correctly Eichrodt writes about the building of the kingdom: it is built as God's Spirit pours out the gift of faith. The irruption of God's Kingship is the emergence of God's unearned love, His unmerited grace and mercy toward humans. The building of God's kingdom is, then, the deconstruction of power structures, meritocracies, as humanly understood.

Just as God called people to be His people - Abraham did not in any way earn God's favor, nor was he righteous or obedient prior to God's call - in the Old Testament, so in the New Testament it is "not because of our righteous deeds" (as Paul writes to Titus), but rather because of a unilateral giving impulse on God's part that His Kingdom is built.

The Essence of the Gospel

Scholars and historians over the centuries have made numerous attempts to crystalize the core of the Gospel message, or to define the center of Scripture. What is the one underlying idea in the Christian faith?

Many persuasive and plausible notions have been put forth in this quest; perhaps more than one is correct - there might not be a single center to the text, but a set of them. In any case, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's approach is novel, asserting more about what the core of the Gospel is not, rather than what it is.

He notes that

factually speaking, Christ has given scarcely any ethical prescriptions that were not to be found already with the contemporary Jewish rabbis or in pagan literature.

Bonhoeffer concludes, then, that the primary message of Jesus is not about ethics - not about what we ought to do, or what we should avoid doing.

He goes on to note that, speaking of religious institutions, Christianity is in many ways similar to other religions, and that Jesus made a habit of attacking religion and religious institutions. Religion, seen in this light, is merely a man-made institution and tradition: "Christianity conceals within itself a germ hostile to the church."

He concludes:

Thus the Christian message is basically amoral and irreligious, paradoxical as that may sound.

While ethics and traditional religious institutions may have their uses, or benefit society, they are not the center of Christ's message, or of the Christian vision. Bonhoeffer has eliminated these two candidates, leaving the door open for a more profound center to the Gospel message: it is primarily about a relationship between God and humans, between Jesus and ordinary people. Relationship exceeds merely moral prescriptions, and transcends traditional institutions. It is a meeting of the minds: in this case, a meeting of mortal finite flawed minds with an eternal divine perfect mind. The opportunity to be in relationship with the Creator of the universe - a relationship which is a harmonious uniting of all things, including forgiveness for my transgressions - is the core of the Gospel message.

How We Teach Our Children

The most complex questions of theology or church politics can be influenced by the most simple lessons which people have learned as children. For better or worse, those who teach Sunday School, Vacation Bible School, and other programs for small children may have as much influenced as the most eloquent preacher or the most educated theologian.

I happened to walk down the hallway of a Christian elementary school recently. I won't disclose the denomination, because this situation could easily occur in many different branches of Christendom. Outside the Kindergarten classroom, a series of worksheets were displayed on a bulletin board. The activity is called "scripting," and is a fruitful pre-writing technique: a method used for students at the level before they are expected to be able to write fluently. The student simply speaks, and the adult transcribes exactly what the student says. This is a good way help children understand the power of writing.

In this particular case, the teacher had printed at the top of the worksheet, "Jesus loves me because ..."

The students then completed the sentence. Although successful as a technique for teaching writing, this particular example was a spiritual disaster. The ways in which the students finished the sentence betrayed a shocking world view:

Jesus loves me because ... I pray often ... I'm nice to people ... my family is in church every Sunday ... I don't use bad words ... I stopped hitting my little brother ... I help people.

While an admirable display of virtue, these statements display a complete lack of grace. I do not want to sound too harsh, but the intuitions presented by these Kindergarten students are essentially pagan. If not corrected, what mayhem will these children produce thirty or forty years into the future, when they are adults - and some of them will be presidents of parish counsels, elders, lay ministers, Bible study group leaders, etc.?

Although though certain developmental stages of intellectual development may make the task more difficult, it is nonetheless essential that we teach even small children the principles of unearned grace. Children tend to divide the world into "good people" and "bad people" - and they find it difficult to see that the moral reality is much more complex than that. In any case, however, they can begin getting used to the idea that God loves all people.

We can teach children that all humans are created in God's image - something good - and that all have sinned and fallen short of the God's standards - something bad. Thus all of us are in the same spiritual situation, and Jesus tells us to "call no man good." From this point, we can explain that God's favor toward us is totally unmerited: not "Jesus loves me because I ..." but rather "Jesus loves me because He ..."

How can we expect a fifty-year-old man to display grace, when as a five-year-old boy he was allowed to imagine that God loves him because of what he does?

Balanced Ministry

Peter, James, and John saw amazing and miraculous things at the Transfiguration. But on that mountainside, it was also a frightening experience - a glimpse of the glory of God. Note how Jesus ministers to their fear:

When the disciples heard this, they fell facedown to the ground, terrified. But Jesus came and touched them. “Get up,” he said. “Don’t be afraid.”

First, He notices and cares about them. They have His attention. He approaches them - He comes to them, not they to Him: God is the initiator of ministry. Then offers a twofold blessing: He touches them, and speaks to them. This acknowledges both their physical dimension and their spiritual dimension, and is the pattern for subsequent ministry.

Today, Jesus blesses us with Word and Sacrament - the same duality. The Word, written or preached, touches our spirit, and the sacrament is a physical event to honor God's creation of our physical bodies. We, in turn, minister to our fellow human being on both levels: material acts of charity are an extension of the principle of incarnation, and sharing the Good News about Jesus is a ministry of the Word.