Psalm 1:1a, 2-3 Happy are they who have not walked in the counsel of the wicked…Their delight is in the law of Abba God, and they meditate on that law day and night. They are like trees planted by streams of water, bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither; everything they do shall prosper.

Introduction

The church visible is a specific community of human beings with a specific summons in the world; and as the church invisible it is called to be in the world but not of the world because its fabric and substance is cultivated from and of divine spiritual essence. People both make and do not make the church. There is no church without the people (visible), but the church is not restricted to a certain group of people (invisible). Every church is called to participate as a locus of the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation in the world and in this way the church visible partakes of the long surging presence of the church invisible. We as a visible church are yoked to the larger invisible church extending through time, and we find our place in this history as we are, where we are holding space for God to show up and work through us as a site of divine revolution of love, life, and liberation.

In this way, the church cannot find its comfort in the material realm, but rather it must find it in God through dependence on Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. It’s from this posture that the church can bring comfort into the world. Thus, the metrics of success offered by the world fall flat when judging the church; it is not always the largest, the wealthiest, and the building with the most things that is the one most closely aligned to the reign of God. To be in the world and of the world is to relinquish the message of Christ for the message of the world and therein stifle the life-giving proclamation of Christ crucified and raised; a message that breaks in and interrupts the messages of the world. To sacrifice the message of Christ for an acceptable message according to the world is to sacrifice a true message of a substantial and enduring comfort for the saccharine and temporary comfort of the world.

But the church, which is built from the dust of the ground, is animated by and dependent on the breath of God, the Word of God, the Spirit of God found in the encounter with God in the event of faith in Christ. The church is to be in the world and not of the world because the world and its inhabitants need a good word, a new word, a word of love, life, and liberation, one they didn’t come up with themselves.

John 17:6-19

Jesus prayed…“I am no longer in the cosmos and they, they are in the cosmos, and I, I come to you. Holy Elder, take care of them in your name which you have given to me, so that they are one just as we [, we are one]. When I was with them I, I was taking care of them in your name which you have given to me, and I guarded [them] and not one of them was lost if not the son of destruction…I, I have given to them your word, and the cosmos detested them, because they are not of the cosmos just as I, I am not of the cosmos.” (Jn 17:11-12b, 14)

This is the “Farewell Prayer.” Here, Jesus prays for his disciples, the ones he called to himself and thus to God and the same ones he is leaving. Jesus called each one by name and ushered them into the reality of God; they have been given new eyes to see, new ears to hear and thus they are now no longer of the world even though they are in it. The goal of the prayer is to make sure that the disciples whom Jesus is leaving behind in the world will remain in the truth that is God’s self-disclosure revealed by Christ (vv. 17, 19), and not fall prey to the oppression and hatred of the world thus cease remaining in Christ to seek comfort in the world.[1]

A thread that runs through the prayer is “oneness.” This oneness is part of the truth of God revealed in Christ: Jesus and God are one thus those who encounter Jesus encounter God; where Jesus goes, God goes, too.[2] When Jesus called the disciples, God called them. When they followed Jesus, they followed God. In being so summoned and in following, they become the community whose beginning is not of the world but of God even if they are in it.[3] Through Christ they have come to know God and are thus taken out of the world because they are substantiated by the word of God incarnated in Christ whom they follow and from whom they received the word of God.[4] The disciples—the ones called to form this community—make up the community that is of Jesus thus of God and this belonging to Jesus is the unique source of the community and the unique essence of its presence in the cosmos. Thus, the community cannot be of the world because its source and foundation is not temporal but spiritual; it is literally born of the spiritual substance of the word of God that is Jesus Christ and is made to be God’s incarnate presence in the world but not of the world.[5] Therefore, to try to exist outside of this divine source and be in the world and of the world will render the fledgling community nothing but a social club.

Now, as the prayer goes on, the community so prayed for by Christ is to take up the mission of God in the world that was revealed in and through Jesus’s self-witness in the world; the community is, like it’s source and forebear, to call into question the things of the world, to challenge the domination of the kingdom of humanity.[6] This is the hardship for the disciples left behind by Jesus; they will be homeless in the world but by being thusly homeless they will find their home (their being and substance, their source) in God. Here, nothing of the world can comfort them or justify their existence; they are solely and completely dependent on the Word of God in Christ.[7] And in this way they are perpetually at risk for falling into the lure of the world, thus why Jesus prays for them. They must resist the urge, and they must abide in the vine.[8]

It is through remaining and abiding in and with the vine (ch. 15), clinging to the Word of God, and being recipients of the divine, life-giving sap that is the fulfillment of the joy of Christ that is made complete in the community left behind.[9] The holiness (the consecration, the sanctifying) of the community is found in ὁ λόγος ὁ σὸς ἀλήθείᾳ έστιν (v. 17b). The identity of the community in the world is formed by the word of God that is truth; thus, it is not defined by the word of the world that is not truth. Anything apart from this word, for this community, disempowers its presence and leads it astray from the source of its life and identity and renders it merely pruned kindling; the holy community cannot depend on anything but the word of God for its love, life, and liberation in the world for the world.[10] From here and only from here anchored in the Word of God, like Jesus, can the community of Christ take up God’s divine proclamation of life, mission of love, and revolution of liberation in the world.[11]

Conclusion

Our hope as the church visible today is not to forget the source of the life of the invisible church. Now is the time to push more into the Word of God, to recall and retell the stories of Christ and the radical divine action made known through him. It is in pressing into this identity as the holy community formed and founded on the radical proclamation of God’s Word incarnate that is how we find ourselves further in the world though never of it. To press into God and God’s word is not to go backwards to some archaic time or to cling to legalism or fundamentalism; this is death because God’s word is living and breathing, not something of a year now long gone (this is to live under the kingdom of humanity). To press into God’s word and God is to press into life and movement forward into something new, different, and something that can summon the world to look up and forward (this is to live under the reign of God).

As tempting as it may seem at times to jettison this ancient and rather whacky proclamation for one a bit more tolerable to the world, I assure you that is the surest way to forfeit our identity as the Christian church in the world and give up our seat in this history. Without the foundation of the Word of God in Christ, we no longer have a unique message to bring into the world and will just blend into the background of the world’s cacophony. We cannot depend on our doctrines and institutions, some claim to God’s law, or some static conception of God of another era; recourse to this language is just the same as the world’s language…it’s recourse to temporal things that have no part in establishing spiritual realities. It is to try to grasp at dust returned to dust.

Rather as part of this long-ago prayed for community, we must hear the divine summons, dare to let go of the rope, and fall deeper into God. We must let ourselves become consumed with God’s passion for the world, for the beloved. It’s in this full dependence on God and God’s word that brings us in line with God and begins to spark the flames of divine revolution in our midst; reformation (revolution) always starts in God’s church with God’s word. In this we can join our voices to the celestial symphony and demand life where there is death, love where there is indifference, and liberation where there is captivity in the name of Christ to the glory of God.

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[1] Rudolf Bultmann, The Gospel of John: A Commentary, trans. GR Beasley-Murray, Gen Ed, RWN Hoare and JK Riches (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971), 498. Originally published as, Das Evangelium des Johannes (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964, 1966). “For the evangelist—and for the source too—the imparting of the name of God is not the transmitting of a secret, power-laden word, such as in the mysteries, or in the soul’s heavenward journey, or in magic, take effect by being spoken; rather it is the disclosure of God himself, the disclosure of the ἀλήθεια.”

[2] Bultmann, The Gospel of John, 498. “In the work that Jesus does, God himself is at work, in him God himself is encountered.”

[3] Bultmann, The Gospel of John, 498. “…by [the disciples’] faith they testify that their origin does not lie in the world, but that from the very beginning they were God’s possessions. As those who preserver God’s word, mediated through the Revealer, they form the community for which he prays.”

[4] Bultmann, The Gospel of John, 499. “From this kind of faith grew the true knowledge, και ἔγνωσαν ἀληθῶς…, which in turn is the means whereby faith comes to itself, καὶ ἐπίστευσαν. For what is known and what is believed are in fact the same; ὅτι παρὰ σοῦ ἐξῆλθον and ὅτι σύ με ἀπέστειλας mean the same thing. And the meaning is this: to understand Jesus as the revealer and so to come to know God (v. 3). This therefore is the Christian community: a fellowship, which does not belong to the world, but is taken out of the world; one that owes its origin to God, and is established by the Revealer’s word, recognised as such in the light of the Passion. i.e.. in the light of rejection by the world; a fellowship, that is to say, which is established only by t the faith that recognises God in Jesus.”

[5] Bultmann, The Gospel of John, 500. “The community belongs to God only in so far as it belongs to Jesus; i.e. it has its origin in eternity only in so far as it holds fast to its origin in the eschatological event that is accomplished in Jesus. To say that it belongs to Jesus is significant only in that it thereby belongs to God (τὰ ἐμὰ πάντα σά έστιν) that it belongs to God becomes a fact only in in that it belongs to Jesus (τὰ σὰ ἐμά).”

[6] Bultmann, The Gospel of John, 501. “But what is he?  As the revealer of God he is the Judge of the world, through whom the world is called in question; and he has his δόξα in the community inasmuch as it too means judgement for the world, and that through it the world is called in question.”

[7] Bultmann, The Gospel of John, 501. “His δόξα cannot be seen at the present time like the glory of a Messiah. There is no way of point to it in the world, except paradoxically, in that the community which is a stranger to the world is also an offence to it. Thus the community cannot prove itself to the world. Nor can its members comfort themselves in the things they possess…”

[8] Bultmann, The Gospel of John, 502. “From what has gone before it is at once clear that the prayer for their protection is the prayer that the community which stands in the world be protected from falling back into the world’s hands, that it be kept pure in its unworldly existence.”

[9] Bultmann, The Gospel of John, 506. “To say that this joy is to be shared by the disciples πεπληρωμένη, is to say, as in 15:11, that the joy they have already received through him will be brought to its culmination; the significance of turning to him in faith is found in the believer’s life becoming complete as eschatological existence.”

[10] Bultmann, The Gospel of John, 509. “Marked off from the world, the community is to live in the world as holy community. But it can only enjoy this state of separation from the world in virtue of the revelation on which it is founded, which is nothing other than the word of God transmitted to it through Jesus. Hus its holiness is not due to its own quality, nor can it manufacture its differentiation from the world by itself, by its rite, its institution, or its particular way of lie; all this can only be a sign of its difference from the world, not a means of attaining it. [The community’s] holiness it therefore nothing permanent, like an inherited possession: holiness is only possible for the community by the continual realisation of tis world-annulling way of life, i.e.. by continual reference to the word that calls it out of the world, and to the truth that sets it free form the world.”

[11] Bultmann, The Gospel of John, 510. “The community has a task analogous to his, and rooted in it…But it does not take over this assault or the duty to win the world solely by embarking on missionary enterprises; it does so simply by its existence.”