The Word That Redescribes the World: The Bible and Discipleship

10. Vision for a New Church and a New Century: Part II: Holiness Becomes Generosity

Vision for a New Church and a New Century Part II: Holiness Becomes Generosity Ihave suggested that Jesus’ summons “Do not be anxious” (Luke 12:22) is an indispensable piece of homework for a sustainable economy of generosity and abundance. Without that homework in faith that commits to a conviction that there is enough, revolutionary or progressive economics has no chance. That judgment about the joining of the parable to the crowd (Luke 12:13-21, or more precisely vv. 16-20) and the instruction to the disciples (vv. 22-31) set me to thinking about homework. I judge that for ethics in the world and for the shape of humane and generative public policy, homework must be ecclesial. That is, good public policy requires the formation and the nurture of subcommunities of courage and passion that are about the daily business of praise and obedience, that are devoted to the will of God, meditating on it day and night, and that actively await the full and soon coming of God’s governance. Such ecclesial homework is a major and central task of Union Theological Seminary, both the tough thinking that is required and the daily, patient practice of nurture in such homework for those who will lead and nurture communities of praise and obedience. I I suggest that in largest rubric, intentionality to form subcommunities of praise and obedience is nowhere more clearly or succinctly put than in the mandate: You shall be holy for I the Lord your God am holy. (Lev. 19:2) 177 chapter ten 178 D The Word That Redescribes the World That mandate, rooted, as we say, in the Priestly tradition and writ large in the Torah of Moses, includes three immediate subpoints: a. Revere father and mother, thus reference to what has become the fifth commandment; b. Keep sabbath, thus reference to what has become the fourth commandment (v. 3); c. Reject idols and images, reference to what has become the second commandment (v. 4). This triad we may take as representative of the core command of Sinai. The critical mandate of the community of Torah, as this tradition voices it, is to be a community matched in its life and practice to the very character of YHWH.The tone of that obedience is command; the substance is holiness , utterly, singularly, peculiarly devoted to and matched with the very character of YHWH. This Torah tradition takes as the central ecclesial task the formation of a holy community, to be weaned from the fears and the hopes of the world, a necessary prerequisite to a radical socioeconomic practice.This discipline, moreover, is surely what has been neglected in the spasms of radical Christian social ethics in recent decades. But the formation of holiness is not simply instrumental to public policy; it is a characterization that is intrinsic to the very being of the church, there being no intended gap between the public engagement of the church and the identity and character of the church as a distinct body in the world.This ecclesial agenda being a holy people of God is worth a rethink among us for quite practical reasons. In the two church traditions I know best, such ecclesial awareness and discipline are largely absent. In the United Church of Christ, there is almost no ecclesial intentionality at all, having evaporated into public policy agenda; in Presbyterianism, the matter has been transposed into judicial management that on the whole lacks the buoyancy or discipline of holiness. As a result, I offer a rather subjective reflection on the emergence of the recovery of ecclesial self-awareness and intentionality in the church body that is roughly the long-term constituency of Union. II From the perspective of biblical faith, it was an inexplicable and irreversible moment when YHWH, the God of Israel, entered into a special relationship with Israel by choosing and forming a community that had not been until that moment of God’s choosing and forming. Whether that is Vision for a New Church and a New Century: Part II d 179 taken to be in the abrupt divine address to Abraham, in the transformative engagement with Egyptian slaves, or in the solemnity of Sinai, it is confessed that the creator of heaven and earth has entered into the human, historical arena and has allied God’s own self with this peculiar people: Now therefore, if you obey my voice and...