Sanctified Vision

Judging by readers' comments, much of what I've written to this point resonates with them -- "community of radical discipleship", "to steward God's image with reckless abandon", "a community who lives in the hope that frees them to love and to fear"-- even though they'd like to know what that would actually look like in congregations. In addition, I also had a wonderful personal exchange with my friend, colleague, and team member of this blog (Rev. Craig Richter) after he recently heard Dr. Douglas John Hall's presentation at Gettysburg Seminary for the Luther Colloquy. Pastor Richter's lingering question following Dr. Hall's presentation on stewardship, which he asked me to answer is this: "What does an incarnational Christian stewardship of creatio crucis (creation of the cross) look like in an ideological capitalistic culture that consumes, abuses, and misuses creation to feed its over-abundant appetite for the globe's resources?" Not that I think I could possibly represent Dr. Hall's genius in response, but allow me to answer Pastor Richter's question by simultaneously responding to reader's concerns that my ecclesiological statements need some practical illustrations.

As leaders of the church, we equip the radical community of Jesus' disciples to steward God's image with reckless abandon by coaching them to see the world with a sanctified vision. The inspiration for this phrase "sanctified vision" comes from a book by that title which I read recently by John J. O'Keefe and R. R. Reno about the church fathers' methods of exegeting scripture. While the authors explicitly refrain from applying ancient exegesis to the contemporary church, nevertheless their insight is helpful for us:

"The rule of faith [i.e. regula, c.f. my previous post] was a rule for life as well as a rule for reading scripture and teaching its meaning. It was a spiritual rule that guided the whole person toward fellowship with God. Not surprisingly, then, the church fathers argued that a reader must have spiritual discipline to control exegesis" (128). "Thus disciplined by the body of scripture, our vision is sanctified and prepared for us to enter into the narrow footpath. . . . Vision must be sanctified if one is to see rather than be blinded by the mystery of God" (139).

I suggest that we learn from our faith ancestors. Their approach to reading scripture through spiritual discipline is the same approach we should take for cultural architecture within our congregations. Recognizing that Lutherans in particular shy away from spiritual discipline for fear of works righteousness, allow me to outline how the church today can story people in the gospel narrative with spiritual disciplines that even Lutherans can accept.

• Worship -- it's the main thing, specifically Word and Sacrament. Commune weekly at least, if not more frequently. And expect God to work through the bread and wine. Expect Holy Spirit to call people to the table who we might think don't belong there for reasons of age or theological correctness. Expect Jesus to heal, to liberate, to forgive, to empower. Expect God's reign to come and to shape your worshipping community. Preach in such a way that announces the decisive victory we share in God's reign, that illustrates God's reign transforming our lives presently, and that challenges disciples in the congregation to appropriate their whole lives according to the hope we share in God's reign.
• Pray -- for God's reign to come to us (see Luther's explanation to the Lord's Prayer in the Small Catechism). All action begins with prayer, and all prayer is taking action. Teach people how to pray. Not that one way of praying is inherently better than another, after all the key is simply to pray. Nevertheless, teaching people how to pray encourages them to pray regularly and helps them to put the eschatalogical expectation of the Lord's prayer into their own words in relation to each specific prayer concern.
• Read Scripture -- to encounter the salvation narrative. Christian education for adults in many congregations focuses on topical lessons such as how to be a Christian parent, Christianity's keys to business leadership, a Christian response to the latest best seller, etc. Often scripture is not even discussed, and when it is, it is as a user's manual of proof texts. Stop assuming adults in our congregations bring with them familiarity with scripture. Even those that do will grow in discipleship by focusing their learning on scripture. Those who are most familiar with the salvation narrative continue to be shaped according to God's reigning through continual reading of the texts.
• Serve -- beyond the walls of the church building. Allow ministry within a local community to be your congregation's evangelism. Service ministry is more than social activism. Disciples of Jesus don't serve others because it seems like a good thing to do. They do it, because that is precisely where they meet their Lord. Jesus' followers encounter him in serving others amid the brokenness of the crucified world.
• Give -- the first fruits of your income. The check book, savings accounts, and investments are typically the last aspects of a person's life to be converted into the salvation story. Coach people how to give their financial resources to the church's mission to the point that it challenges their priorities in life. Tithing is not a flat tax. Some may be challenged to change their priorities by giving 5% of their annual income, others 10%, still other 20%, perhaps 60% and up for those who have exercised this spiritual discipline for some time. Every year provides a new occasion to re-examine our priorities to appropriate our lives even further according to our hope in the good news of God's reigning.

Congregations who cast a vision to shape their life together through these five spiritual disciplines are constantly discerning Holy Spirit calling them into the mission of God's reigning and equipping them with a sanctified vision in the world. Notice that nothing in this outline can be pursued -- let alone accomplished -- in isolation. It requires coaching and accountability within a community of faith. When I speak of a community of radical discipleship, I don't mean by that an ideal utopian congregation. We Lutherans are much too familiar with our bondage to sin to follow that temptation. Rather, a community of radical discipleship is a congregation who takes seriously its vocation of coaching, encouraging, and holding one anther accountable to our hope in the Messiah. This draws into question all aspects of our congregation's life together, but particularly the ways we do new "member" orientation and "confirmation". (More about how these relate to our expectations for baptism to come in following posts, I'm sure.)

Stewarding God's image in the creatio crucis demands the constant appropriation of our whole lives, not just what we place in the offering basket or even how we treat the environment. When the salvation story grabs hold of us so that we constantly discern how God is calling us to appropriate our lives more and more accordingly, then our sanctified vision clearly sees the failures of other narratives that compete with the gospel and the limits of narratives that compliment the good news. Whether those narratives are capitalism, military and economic empiricism, democracy, the war on terror, the American dream, or any other story a society tells about itself -- all of them fall short of the glory of God, even those for which we want to argue some how compliment the values of God's reign. An incarnational stewardship of creatio crucis looks like a congregation of Jesus' disciples striving to engage the crucified world with a vision sanctified by Jesus' resurrection.