TOGETHER

Eugene Peterson writes in his book ‘Subversive Spirituality’,
After we become Christians, there comes a time, sometimes shortly after, sometimes long after, when we realize that something has happened to us that requires vocational expression.
We come to the place where it is not enough to be saved- we want to share the salvation life and find ourselves assigned to positions in our neighborhoods, in our communities, where the ways of God and men and women intersect. People show up at these crossroads lost, discouraged, fatigued, and confused. The task of Christians assigned duty at these intersections is to give direction to people on the way, encourage and exhort them, provide information about the weather and the road conditions and serve up refreshments. It is an incredibly busy place, traffic hurtling this way and that, and there are a lot of accidents, a lot of injuries, and therefore much caring to be done’.

In our production-oriented, short visioned culture, it is often easy to focus on tasks and programs in this ‘vocational service’, rather than who we are and who we are becoming. To perhaps summarize something of the first posting, I might say that our first ‘task’ as followers of Jesus is to be forming ourselves. This is actually done by God as we present ourselves open and obedient to him. It takes place primarily within the context of relationship.

It is interesting to see that the formative practices, which God instructs his people to observe, are communal in nature. Remembering is not done well alone. In fact, the apostle Paul seems to imply that knowledge and understanding itself comes out of a communal context. In Colossians 2:2 he writes, “My purpose is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding.”

N.T. Wright explains in his commentary, “ the term ‘united’ properly governs not only ‘in love’ but also the next phrase which literally means’ and unto all the wealth of conviction of understanding’. In other words, while the process of knitting together the church into a unified body clearly includes the growth of love, it also includes the growth, on the part of the whole community, of that proper understanding of the gospel which leads to the rich blessings of a settled conviction and assurance. Living in a loving and forgiving community will assist growth in understanding, and vice versa, as truth is confirmed in practice and practice enables truth to be seen in action and so to be fully grasped. All of this promotes the encouragement, comfort and strengthening of the heart, regarded metaphorically then as now as the seat of affections and the mainspring of actions.”