GROWING EDGES

"The Church exists by mission as fire exists by burning." So declared Emil Brunner, and in saying this he rightly saw that the idea of mission is at the core of the Christian faith. It is far from being something peripheral or incidental to who we are and what we are about. The Church of Jesus Christ does not have missions; its very life is mission.

And this mission is truly an astonishing phenomenon. Starting with a rag-tag band of men and women from a Middle Eastern cultural back-water, the Church has literally gone into all the world. It is popular today to talk about "world religions" but, in reality, it is more accurate to speak of "religions of the world," for the Christian faith alone is worldwide in scope. There are two other missionary faiths—Buddhism and Islam—but neither of these has yet made serious inroads into the cultures outside of their origin. Only the followers of Jesus have penetrated every major culture group in the world.

The Call to Penetration
Jesus used numerous metaphors to describe the mission of his Church: "light," "salt," and "leaven" are among the most striking. On the surface these seem quite different from one another, but with a little reflection we see that they all deal with penetration. Light exists to penetrate the darkness, salt exists to penetrate the meat, leaven exists to penetrate the dough. And we exist to penetrate the world.

In this task of penetration, however, we must constantly remember what it is we are to bring to all the peoples of the world. This is not the ordinary penetration of one culture into another in which one eventually overwhelms the other. We share simply and joyfully the good news and presence of Jesus as redeemer and deliverer of all human beings and see God draw people to himself on the basis of that message. God loves all manner of human beings, and we love God by participating in this love of his for all people alike. We do this without proselytizing people for our culture where it is not necessary—and seldom is it necessary—as an expression of love of God and neighbor.

The Heavenly Treasure and the Earthen Vessel
The Apostle Paul declares that "we have this treasure in earthen vessels," and in our mission efforts we must continually distinguish the heavenly treasure from the earthen vessel in which we carry the treasure (2 Cor. 4:6-7). The heavenly treasure is "the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." The earthen vessel is our body and the culture which enshrouds it, i.e. the economic, political, social, and religious systems by which we live and function. Our task is to bring other people the treasure, not the vessel.

We hinder God's redeeming of people by imposing our cultural vessel upon them, including much of the doctrinal and ritualistic forms by which we concretely express our apprehension of the treasure. In fact, cultural proselytizing only enslaves people all the more. Of such Jesus says, "you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourself" (Matt. 23:15). And so, rejecting all cultural imperialisms, we humbly and boldly proclaim Jesus—the Logos who is present everywhere, who overcomes the powers of darkness, and who brings release to the captives (John 1:1-14).

Peace and joy,

Richard J. Foster