We are strangers in this world. This was a world view that many early Christians held. In Ancient and Postmodern Christianity: Paleo-Orthodoxy in the 21st Century (2002. Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press) Amy Oden wrote a chapter titled “God’s Household of Grace: Hospitality in the Early Church.” She wrote: “Many Early Christian texts insist that Christians understand themselves first as strangers in order to then extend hospitality as strangers in the world” (39).
Christians today should be sharing fellowship in homes where they show up as guests but end up serving as hosts. This is the way Christians should behave. If so, why is this often not the case? What forces or influences push against such notions? Jesus shows us the way in stories like the one found in John 2. Here we read that he shows up at the wedding in Cana as a guest and ends up providing an important element for the wedding celebration, an element that is the best of all that is served up until the point when Jesus provides this best wine from common water.
Oden notes that this practice of hospitality, this gracious way of living, “is sometimes accomplished through the deliberate confusion of roles of host and guest” (39). This “stranger” notion in Christianity has its roots in biblical history, not the least of which is that the people of God once found themselves as strangers in Egypt. This history made them more conscious of the stranger, made them more aware of the needs of the stranger, and called them to be the agents of God who were to provide for the stranger. Some of this call to provide for the stranger is found in Leviticus 19.
Perhaps, the Church in contemporary practice has forgotten this, or at least has moved away from such a notion. I believe it has. Current worship practice often displays this as its creates worship services for “home” folks, almost mindless of guests in the midst, strangers who are present. This needs to change. None of this is done without the gracious initiative of God, but it also needs the gracious response of God’s people.
We are to be strangers who recognize the needs of others who can only be provided for through the cooperative venture of God and God’s people. We are called to be servants in the household of God, strangers in this world who purpose to host the stranger to the feast. Oh that we might become stranger hosts who are responsive to the leadership of the Holy Spirit who are living out the example of Jesus.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
On Friends and Friendships
In the book Christian Friendship in the Fourth Century, Carolinne White serves up a basis for understanding what may have been what the early Church thought about the concepts of friend and friendship. Along with this, we may accept from White’s book, and in particular her chapter on Aristotle’s concept of friendship as found in Nicomachean Ethics (Chapter two of White: “Classical Theories of Friendship”), that Greek culture would not have prohibited self-love as a valuable part of friendship. From this, then, we can support a view that includes the notion of love of self along side of and as a valuable part of loving God and loving people. Such a view would likely have been part of the understanding of the early Church in regard to friendship with God and other people.
Aristotle’s influence on early Greek culture affected the culture into which the early Church was born, even though its birth was almost four centuries later. It is easy to accept that the culture in which the early Church began was part of the shaping influence of the Church. It affected the way the members of the early Church thought and behaved. We may conclude that these concepts included an understanding that self-love was retained as a value in the way the Church lived out how to love God and other human beings. Such a view holds that self-love is healthy, as it is proportional to love for the other.
The Scriptural context for a view of Christian friendship can be found in the law of love as provided in the Gospel of Luke. The lawyer of Luke 10 summarized for Jesus what was found in the Law regarding the answer to the question of how one might “inherit eternal life” (Luke 10:25). The lawyer’s answer included the co-alignment of texts from Deuteronomy 6:5, “You shall love the Lord Your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might,” and Leviticus 19:18b, “you shall love your neighbor as yourself,” and along the way added the phrase “with all your mind” into one verse that now reads: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27). This verse became and remains the standard for holy living.
In current practice, as perhaps it has been in the past, the last phrase of this verse, “as yourself,” often seems to struggle in a tension of being over emphasized or under emphasized in the life of the Church. Self-love is not a concept of constant, equal proportions. It should be understood as a continuum in which love for the other is sometimes greater than love for the self – promoting sacrifice – and at other times love for the self is greater than love of the other – promoting health, which can lead to life! To love God is to love the other (Matt 25:40). To love God without the love of the other is empty ritual and life which is unacceptable to God (Rom 12:1). To love the other without loving God is idolatry – loving the created apart from loving the Creator (Ex 20:2-6). The interlacing of these three is life lived abundantly.
This tri-parte way of living – living lovingly toward God, others, and self – is the form that Jesus offers as the pattern for the Church to live in the real world. It is a pattern in which human beings are to be shaped in order to be conformed to the image of the Son as they experience and live out the love of God. For Christians, living out this loving pattern is done through the rituals of their daily life. These rituals are reflections of the very pattern of the gathered worship of the Church. This worship is meant to be extended from the gathered experience as the Church scatters and becomes a benefit to the world as well as a benefit for those who live these patterns.
A daily worship which is lived is composed of the various elements of gathered worship. These become the rituals of the daily living. It is living out the creative worship of God. This is a pattern to which all humanity is invited to join every day throughout the day as the Spirit of God incessantly woos all people everywhere, inviting all to join in response to the love and friendship that God offers to all, love that is best exemplified in Christ who came to be our friend even while we were yet enemies of God! How can the Church do less than offer such daily, scattered worship, and in the process offer friendship both toward those in its ranks, as well as to all who fall under its influence?
Aristotle’s influence on early Greek culture affected the culture into which the early Church was born, even though its birth was almost four centuries later. It is easy to accept that the culture in which the early Church began was part of the shaping influence of the Church. It affected the way the members of the early Church thought and behaved. We may conclude that these concepts included an understanding that self-love was retained as a value in the way the Church lived out how to love God and other human beings. Such a view holds that self-love is healthy, as it is proportional to love for the other.
The Scriptural context for a view of Christian friendship can be found in the law of love as provided in the Gospel of Luke. The lawyer of Luke 10 summarized for Jesus what was found in the Law regarding the answer to the question of how one might “inherit eternal life” (Luke 10:25). The lawyer’s answer included the co-alignment of texts from Deuteronomy 6:5, “You shall love the Lord Your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might,” and Leviticus 19:18b, “you shall love your neighbor as yourself,” and along the way added the phrase “with all your mind” into one verse that now reads: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27). This verse became and remains the standard for holy living.
In current practice, as perhaps it has been in the past, the last phrase of this verse, “as yourself,” often seems to struggle in a tension of being over emphasized or under emphasized in the life of the Church. Self-love is not a concept of constant, equal proportions. It should be understood as a continuum in which love for the other is sometimes greater than love for the self – promoting sacrifice – and at other times love for the self is greater than love of the other – promoting health, which can lead to life! To love God is to love the other (Matt 25:40). To love God without the love of the other is empty ritual and life which is unacceptable to God (Rom 12:1). To love the other without loving God is idolatry – loving the created apart from loving the Creator (Ex 20:2-6). The interlacing of these three is life lived abundantly.
This tri-parte way of living – living lovingly toward God, others, and self – is the form that Jesus offers as the pattern for the Church to live in the real world. It is a pattern in which human beings are to be shaped in order to be conformed to the image of the Son as they experience and live out the love of God. For Christians, living out this loving pattern is done through the rituals of their daily life. These rituals are reflections of the very pattern of the gathered worship of the Church. This worship is meant to be extended from the gathered experience as the Church scatters and becomes a benefit to the world as well as a benefit for those who live these patterns.
A daily worship which is lived is composed of the various elements of gathered worship. These become the rituals of the daily living. It is living out the creative worship of God. This is a pattern to which all humanity is invited to join every day throughout the day as the Spirit of God incessantly woos all people everywhere, inviting all to join in response to the love and friendship that God offers to all, love that is best exemplified in Christ who came to be our friend even while we were yet enemies of God! How can the Church do less than offer such daily, scattered worship, and in the process offer friendship both toward those in its ranks, as well as to all who fall under its influence?
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