“In Christ there are no Outliers” by Fred Taylor
11 March 2012
The Third Sunday in Lent
The term “eschatological” has gotten a bum rap. It is usually taken to refer to a catastrophic end of time, to death, judgment, heaven and hell. What the term “eschatological community” really means, however, is a community that is grounded in a particular future – that is, the future when and where God has his way. Jesus prayed, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.”
· An eschatological community is where the power and intent of Jesus’ prayer is manifesting.
· An eschatological community is one that is being shaped by that future toward which God is working, the future that expresses God’s heart.
· An eschatological community is being empowered to give visible expression to Jesus’ message that the Kingdom of God is at hand; that we can repent and believe this good news.
· An eschatological community demonstrates that the good news of the Kingdom of God is breaking in – now in ordinary existence and among ordinary people.
When I first became exposed to the Church of the Saviour I had a sense of touching an eschatological community without having heard that term. In its preaching, teaching, affectionate, healing relationships, laughing and having fun together, and seriousness about things that really matter, being on mission together, I who had grown up in the institutional church experienced something special. As we came together as a community I felt the same thing in Seekers.
I also discovered that it was not all sweetness and light, and the deeper I got into community the more pain and brokenness I saw in the community and recognized in myself.
At the same time I saw and felt contagious joy. Christian community is conscious of being grounded in a reality bigger than itself. I wanted that.
Christian community to the extent that it is grounded in Christ is counter cultural. Secular culture which persistently seeps into Christian community invites, tolerates and reinforces social division– division by wealth, by achievement, by race, religion, politics, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, even by piety. The culture calls this freedom. Christian community is grounded in another freedom, the freedom to be in solidarity.
In the faith communities gathered by Paul there was a common baptismal formula which was explained in depth to every new person entering the community and recited at their baptism. It is found in Gal. 3:27-28 “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” In sum, no dividing walls, no insiders and outliers.
This even applied, amazingly, to theological differences. For example, there were some in the Corinthian house churches who didn’t believe in the resurrection. Read I Corinthians 15 carefully. Paul disagrees passionately with those who deny the resurrection and at the same time addresses the dissenters as part of the body. He addresses their differences by telling his story.
For Paul, the eschatological community is more than a collection of individuals. It is a living, breathing body shaped by Christ where each individual has a God given uniqueness. People are safe in an environment grounded in Christ and by experiencing safety they are free to go deeper, down into the bowels of what the Bible means by salvation for themselves and the world.
Paul taught solidarity, the solidarity of God with Jesus, of Jesus with the community, members of the community with one another and solidarity with neighbor. One example was the weekly gathering for worship of the house churches which featured a pot luck meal. People who got there on time wanted to eat while their food was hot. If they did this the slaves who had to finish chores in the homes of their masters before leaving would get the leftovers. Paul said that was unacceptable. That was not solidarity.
Let me close with a brief discussion of an example of getting off the track of solidarity. It can happen without anyone recognizing it. The example I have in mind involves Seekers at the time when the New Lands era was unfolding.
Recently my friend David Hilfiker helped me find a word to express some painful memories. David Hilfiker and his family attended Seekers for a time when the Church of the Saviour was dividing into small scattered communities because we had a strong Sunday school. He noted that soon thereafter he heard conversations around the Potter’s House that portrayed Seekers as an “outlier” faith community – that is at a distance from the center. He heard in the comments a touch of disdain.
I felt this at the time. Sonya did too, as did many of you. It was more of a feeling than anything I could describe in words. I wondered what was at the bottom of it. Was it because most of the emerging faith communities formed around a specific mission or the support of missions already in existence while we in Seekers defined our call simply as to be church? We believed in call and mission too. Or did it have something to do with requesting use of the headquarters building at 2025 for worship and educational space? Could there have been feelings about that? Whatever it was, there developed a subtle undercurrent almost like a dividing wall.
Paul knew the feeling. He knew that some people in the mother church in Jerusalem saw him as an outlier, questioning “Who is this new guy who makes no distinction between Jew and Gentile?” Paul took the tension head-on. He requested and got a meeting with the leaders of the mother church in Jerusalem, put his cards on the table and asked for their response. When they heard him out they were compelled to acknowledge that his outreach to Gentiles and his inclusion of them without requiring that they first become Jews was the leading of the Holy Spirit. They affirmed his call after agreeing upon mutually acceptable guidelines. .
I wish back then that I had had the clarity and confidence in Christ of Paul and along with Sonya and some of you called a meeting of representatives of the scattered churches, Gordon, Mary, Elizabeth and Bill Branner and put our call on the table and asked does this put us at the center or make us an outlier? What does it mean to fully belong to the Church of the Saviour in this era of the New Lands? There is an issue here of solidarity, and if we are missing something we need to know what it is.
I don’t pick up that feeling about Seekers as outlier today. Instead I pick up acknowledgement and appreciation for the generosity of Seekers such as Kate Cudlipp’s leadership of the ecumenical council, Peter’s work in surveying the needs and costs of preserving 2025, Marjorie’s leadership of discernment on the future of Wellspring, etc., etc.
My concern is that the dominant culture is always infiltrating Christian community and one sign of its infiltration is the subtle kind of judgment that undermines and erodes solidarity. We are keenly aware of the value of annual recommitment individually. Might the time be at hand to extend that to our belonging and our solidarity as communities?
The time has come for all of us, following Paul, to say boldly, “In Christ there are no outliers.” The time has come because our city, our country and our world are in trouble.
Our political system is broken so far as unifying us to work on the long term issues that spell hope or catastrophe. The need for eschatological communities is profound. A lot of rethinking is needed within the Church of the Saviour tradition, and we need to cultivate solidarity between the outposts of our movement. That is what the scattered churches of this tradition are – outposts of a movement – the Seekers outpost in Tacoma Park, the Dayspring outpost in Montgomery County, the New Community outpost in Shaw, the Church of Jesus Christ Right Now in prison ministry, the 8th Day outpost, and so on. The time has come for us to grapple with the metaphor of new lands in fresh ways. I challenge this blessed community to help lead the way.