bearing the consequence of God - triple play

concealed in order that the Church might now be used to display to the powers and authorities in the heavenly realms the innumerable aspects of God's wisdom.
Ephesians 3:10

[going for the triple-play with my "bearing the consequence of God" thoughts. check out part one and part deux...and now, for the triple play:]

thus another aspect of bearing the consequence of God is one of my favorite things: the depths and riches of God's manifold wisdom and knowledge...which He reveals through...what? waitaminute...through the Church?

scary and scandalous propostion in a post-Church season in America, huh Mr. Barna? i love how God scandalizes us all like that...God is the most free Person i know, and He doesn't play by most of our manmade rules we make up for Him...

[sidebar 1: i realize and witness to the fact that God does this through a multi-varied expression of "Church" and "how we do church" has less to do with it perhaps than "how we follow Jesus", although some would argue that those are the same question (i wouldn't) and that it's merely a matter of semantics (i wouldn't)...there is much more depth and texture and manifold wisdom and knowledge going on...which is a very encouraging thought indeed]

so...if indeed we are bearing the consequence of God, He lives in us as we live in Christ through the Holy Spirit...together

and thus as a consequence the quality of our shared life takes on a texture that is deeper, richer...for surely if Jesus lives in us, our lives somehow reflect His Life, right?

[sidebar 2: and yet, another piece of this scandal is that this ekklesia of Jesus must face the scandalously hard fact of being the bearers of good news about Christ Jesus...this bigger-than-life, eternal, infinite (thus not-completely knowable)-yet-revealed-loving Person...a Person that not all the books in all the world could describe...and yet in our relativeness and finiteness we are commanded to seek the truth together and communicate it somehow about this Person who, as douglas john hall quotes karl barth and then goes on to say: "'The Word of God is at once the necessary and the impossible task of the minister.' Human words, even the words of Scripture, can only point. But point we must - while believing and hoping that God, who permits this risky business of theology, will use our strictly relative testimonies to be vehicles of the absolute that only the triune God is...concealedly revealed, revealedly concealed!" ay de mi...Dios mio]

...yet notice i used all "we" and "us" and "our" in this (much like Paul in most of his letters...he using the plural of "you"...did you realize that?)...

because i believe to walk in the fullness of Christ, we walk as "the gathered" or more appropriately: "His gathering"

ok, so i've been reading a bit of the wisdom of the desert fathers ... (there were desert mothers as well...

those seemingly ol' crotchedy hermits that sought extreme solitude in their radical faith...and lived out in the harsh wilderness of the Egyptian desert environs. these were radical individuals who shunned the community of a society they saw as corrupt and corrupting...

[sidebar 3: is it ok to do this in an age where all the talk is of 'missional' this and 'missional' that? i have been wrestling with that...and yet it seems to me i read about one such, who went out to live this radical kind of life, yet ended up feeling called back into the larger society...and when they came back they realized their time away had kind of 'cut the strings' and they had new vision and could better see the culture/society with both a 'from within and a 'from without' perspective...which proved very powerful...anyway, i'm still wrestling with this...any words/perspectives from others?]


...and yet as thomas merton points out in 'the wisdom of the desert' (see link above) it is utterly a mistake to think that these hermitical desert fathers and mothers were rugged isolationist individuals, on the contrary my good watson, they had their own communitas: '...the very fact that they uttered these "words" of advice to one another is proof that they were eminently social.'

i suppose, there have always been some super, extreme "radicals" in there somewhere...yet their radicalness left no imprint through the ages for their "experience" and "wisdom" died with them...yet some, if not most of these 'desert fathers' were welcoming toward those who humbly and genuinely sought them for instruction and wisdom...and - dare i say - companionship

which maybe proves the exception to the rule proves the rule: God is a social Being...and those made in His Image (although fatally flawed and broken and walking around wounded and wounding others out of our woundedness) are given to being social too...

...and "His Gathering" is messy and beautiful and wonder-filled and difficult...and He wouldn't have it any other way

finally...i think mike safford has some interesting thoughts on this in 'the necessity of community' part-5:

"So we see that mankind is actually created by God to live as God does. This existence inherently necessitates being in community. Yet in our current Christian culture we see Community offered up as a supplemental type support to the individuals life in God. If however, we are created like God in his relational nature, then relationship itself takes a much more prominent place in our spirituality than we may currently ascribe to it. Relationship laterally with one another is fundamental to our faith, because we are fashioned by God to operate at full capacity only within the context of community."

[mike safford has an on-going (5-parter thus far) series on the necessity of community at kingdomrain.net ...here is part 5 ]

They included all the little ones, the wives, and the sons and daughters of the whole community listed in these genealogical records. For they were faithful in consecrating themselves.
2 Chronicles 31:18