CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 5
Sharing the Life of the Son:
Mission as Love in Action
JESUS proclaimed the reign of God and sent out his disciples to do the same. But that is not all. His mission was not only a matter of words, and neither is ours. If the New Testament spoke only of the proclamation of the kingdom there could be nothing to justify the adjective "new." The prophets and John the Baptist also proclaimed the kingdom. What is new is that in Jesus the kingdom is present. That is why the first generation of Christian preachers used a different language from the language of Jesus: he spoke about the kingdom, they spoke about Jesus. They were bound to make this shift of language if they were to be faithful to the facts. It was not only that the phrase "kingdom of God" in the ears of a pagan Greek would be almost meaningless, having none of the deep reverberations that it evoked for someone nourished on the Old Testament. It was that the kingdom, or kingship, of God was no longer a distant hope or a faceless concept. It had now a name and a face -the name and face of the man from Nazareth. In the New Testament we are dealing not just with the proclamation of the kingdom but also with the presence of the kingdom.
I
At this point we have to pause to take note of the familiar fact that for nearly two centuries there have been scholars who maintain that the shift of language marks a rift in thought: that the "real" Jesus was the one who talked about the kingdom and that the "other" Jesus, who was himself the presence of the kingdom, was a creation of the early church, a myth modeled on contemporary pagan speculation, a product of the untutored piety that, not having been trained in the methods of nineteenth-century science, was incapable of distinguishing between facts and fables. On this view the fourth Gospel is regarded as conveying a portrait of Jesus that is almost wholly the product of this untutored piety. The lineaments of the "real" Jesus are to be deciphered only in the first three. and can be traced here only if the reader is alert and watchful to eliminate all intrusive matter from the imagination of the "primitive community."
Much might be said, if this were the occasion, about the unstated presuppositions that underlie many of the critical judgments about what could and could not have been said by Jesus. It is not difficult to show that in many cases these judgments rest upon unexamined assumptions about the nature of God and man that do not arise from the gospel itself. A little research will disclose the hidden credo. That is not my point here. My point is that if it is true that the mission of Jesus was not only to proclaim the kingdom of God but also to embody the presence of the kingdom of God in his own person, then it is understandable that the switch from a Judaic to a Greek environment should have entailed a switch from proclaiming the kingdom to proclaiming Jesus.
Does the evidence warrant the statement that Jesus "embodied in his own person the presence of the kingdom"'? Let us exclude, for the present. the evidence of the fourth Gospel and look only at the Synoptics.
When John the Baptist sends messengers to ask "Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?" Jesus answers with a catena of sayings drawn from Isaiah 35:5-6 and 61:1-2, both of which are descriptions of the coming day when God will personally intervene for salvation and judgment. And Jesus adds to these words of Scripture the warning "Blessed is he who takes no offence at me" (Matt. 11:6). The day of the Lord is a day both of salvation and of judgment. In the presence of Jesus that day is present, and therefore the warning also must be given. It is in the personal presence of Jesus himself that both the outpouring of salvation and the possibility of "stumbling" are present.
The same passage from Isaiah 61 is quoted by Jesus in the synagogue at Nazareth, followed immediately by the words "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing" (Luke 4:21). But here also we learn immediately that the presence of the promised salvation is also the occasion for "stumbling." Jesus is rejected and cast out of the city.
A central feature of the expected day of salvation was the promise that God would forgive the sin of his people. Jesus embodied the fulfillment of that promise in his person. To the paralytic in the house at Capernaum he says, "Son, your sins are forgiven" (Matt. 9:2). This is not the harmless intoning of a familiar cliche: it is an act of awesome authority that immediately provokes the charge of blasphemy. The coming day of the Lord is present - for blessing and for stumbling.
Jesus' conviviality was in obvious contrast to the asceticism of John and provoked the predictable criticism (Matt. 9:14). The reply of Jesus implies that the wedding celebrations have already begun. The feast that the prophets promised has started. it is not the time for fasting. The kingdom is here.
When Jesus sends out the disciples (Matt. 10), they are commissioned to announce the presence of the kingdom and to perform the works that authenticate its presence. At the same time they are authorized to communicate the judgment that comes with the kingdom by shaking off from their feet the dust of any unbelieving town or household. In their coming as his messengers the kingdom itself is present for blessing and for judgment.
So complete is the identification of the presence of Jesus with the presence of the kingdom that a man's or a woman's acknowledgment or denial of Jesus settles the question of that person's acceptance or rejection by God. "Everyone who acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven; but whoever denies me before men, I will also deny before my Father who is in heaven" (Matt. 10:32-33). Once again the reality of the reign of God is effectively present in Jesus in its double character of blessing and judgment.
And those who are sent in Jesus' name are also the bearers of that presence, for "he who receives you receives me, and lie who receives me receives him who sent me" (Matt. 10:40). This typically "Johannine" phrase (John 13:20) prepares us for the famous passage that has been such an embarrassment to those who would drive a wedge between John and the Synoptics.
At that time Jesus declared, "I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes; yea. Father, for such was thy gracious will. All things have been delivered to me by my Father: and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Matt. 11:25-30)
Joachim Jeremias has (given powerful reasons for affirming (on grounds of language. style. and structure) that this saying comes from a Semitic-speaking milieu and for excluding the possibility of regarding it as a "Johannine" saying imported into Matthew's Gospel.' Here Jesus in his own person invites all who will to share in the blessings of the reign of God because he is the one to whom its secret has been entrusted. If, as seems reasonable, one accepts this and similar sayings quoted as being authentic recollections of the words of Jesus. one has a clue to the later developments that make Jesus, rather than the kingdom, the center of the Christian message. The unwillingness of some scholars to believe that Jesus actually spoke such words appears to rest upon dogmatic rather than upon historical or literary grounds.
Continuing to use only the Synoptic material, one could refer to the passages in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus handles the teaching of the Torah in a way that implies an authority equal to that of the author of the Torah. He does not use the language of the prophets. "Thus says the Lord," but the language of unique authority. "You have heard that it was said [in the laws, . . . but I say to you" (Matt. 5:21-48). One could refer also to the words at the end of the Sermon, which assume that Jesus will he the judge on the last day and that obedience or disobedience to his words will decide a person's final destiny.
One could continue to illustrate with other examples the fact, which I find impossible to doubt, that in his mission and ministry the reign of God was present - in other words, that the "Day of the Lord" to which prophets and psalmists had looked forward. the day of God's decisive intervention for blessing and judgment, had dawned with his coming. I believe that not only was this so. but that Jesus knew it to be so, and that the writer of the fourth Gospel, though he uses his own language to convey the message of Jesus, was not misrepresenting the "Jesus of history" when he portrayed him as one who knew that he was the one "sent from the Father." It is Luke who gives us the deeply significant words of Jesus, speaking to the disciples, with which I must close this part of the evidence: "Blessed are the eyes which see what you see. For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it" (Luke 10:23-24). The longed-for kingdom is not only proclaimed: it is present.
But at this point we have to raise a new and vitally important question: Does this presence of the kingdom end with the end of Jesus' earthly ministry'? After the removal of Jesus from the reach of sight and sound and touch, are we back again with John the Baptist and the prophets'? Is the reign of God once again only something to be proclaimed and prayed for? Or is the presence of the kingdom in Jesus continued through history? What, if anything. do we learn of Jesus' intention in this matter from the records?
It is notorious that references to the church as a body commissioned to continue the ministry of Jesus after his death are very sparsely scattered through the Gospels and are of very questionable value. It is also commonly said that because Jesus expected the immediate advent of the end, a continuing institution cannot have been, and was not, part of his intention. There is a very large literature directed to this question, and I can do no more that state in a summary way what I believe about it, in order to open the discussion of this aspect of missionary theology.
1. It is beyond question that Jesus saw the final consummation of God's purpose of blessing and judgment as an imminent, pressing, immediate reality, something that called for decisive action now and that gave no room for procrastination or indecision.
2. The earliest documents of the New Testament (earlier than the Gospels) show us a church already in being, with an ordered and continuous life, a church that understands itself as having Jesus Christ as its foundation (I Cor. 3:11 ), that practices baptism "into the death of Jesus" (Rom. 6:3), and that regularly shares a meal that is understood as a participation in the body and blood of Christ (I Cor. 10:16). I cannot find in these early letters any trace of the idea that the existence of this church is the result of an improvisation undertaken to repair the breach made by the collapse of the original expectation.
3. The popular opinion that the existence of the church as an institution continuing through history is a contradiction of Jesus' vision of the immediacy of the end rests upon a failure to grasp the central point of the Christian view of the "last things." To the discussion of this we shall have to come later. It is essential to a true theology of mission. At this stage it is perhaps enough to put this point sharply as follows. Paul expresses the mind of the earliest Christian community when he speaks of us "upon whom the ends of the ages have come" (1 Cor. 10:11). But Christian believers today also know themselves to be in the same situation. For them, too, it is the last days, though they are separated from the early church in the continuing life of the body of Christ.
4. In seeking to answer the question about Jesus' intention for the period that should follow his death, we must look to one of the most ancient and impregnable elements in the tradition of his words and deeds that has come down to us. It is part of the tradition that Paul received and that he delivered to the churches he founded within twenty years of Jesus' death:
that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, "This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me." For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. (I Cor. 11:23-26)
While there is debate about the precise wording of these sayings, there can be none about the substantial authenticity of the tradition. Here is a piece of hard evidence. It shows Jesus looking toward the future of this community of his disciples. They are to continue to break bread together as they have done so often with him and with the sinners and rejects whom he welcomes into his company. But now these common meals will have a new meaning. He is to be parted from them. They for their part are eager to stay with him, even if it means death. But they cannot do so. What is to be done. i> to be clone by him alone. Nevertheless they are to be his partners in it -- afterward. The bread that they break will be his body given for them. The cup that they share will be his blood shed for them. Their repeated sharing in this common meal will be a continually renewed participation in his dying and, therefore, in his victorious life. At the point of separation, when they are still far from beginning to understand what "the reign of God" means (Luke 22:24), Jesus does a deed and gives a command that will bind them to him in a continually renewed and deepened participation in the mystery of his own being. His life, his cruel death, his resurrection will not only be a story to he proclaimed. recorded, studied: they will be something to be lived. The disciples will thus themselves become part of the revealed secret of the presence of the kingdom. They will be those who, in Paul's words, are "always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also he manifested in our bodies" (11 Cor. 4:10).
The fourth Gospel does not repeat this account of the words spoken at the supper that is given, with some variations, in the first three. In its place we have the long discourses (John 13-16) that lead up to the great prayer in which Jesus, in consecrating himself to the Father, consecrates his disciples to be sent out into the world to continue his mission. These discourses give a sketch of the way that lies before the disciples as they go out to represent Jesus in the world. They are to be servants one of another just as Jesus has served them (13:1-20). They are to show whose they are by their love of one another (13:34-35 ). They will find abiding places that the Father provides for them on the way, and they know the way - Jesus himself'( 13:36-14:1 1 ). His going to the Father will open the way for a much wider ministry, which will be marked from their side by love and obedience and from the Father's side by the gift of the Spirit, his abiding presence, and his peace (14:12- 31). Through this mutual abiding they will bring forth fruit (15:1-17). The world will hate them. but the hatred of the world will he the occasion for the witness of the Spirit (15:18-27). The Spirit will in fact go before them to convict the world and to guide them into the fullness of the truth (16:8-15). They will share in the travail of the worlds new birth, but they will have peace in him (16:16-33). And so these men, to whom Jesus has made the rather fully known (17:1-8) and whom he has guarded from evil ( 17:9-14), are to be launched into the life of the world as the continuance of his mission and in the power of his consecration (17:15-19). In fact, the glory of God, the glory that tabernacled in the midst of Israel in the wilderness and that dwelt in Jesus (John 1:14), will dwell with the disciples so that the world may recognize in them the sign of the divine mission of Jesus (I7:20-23).
There are parallels to the material of these discourses in the Synoptics, especially in the "Little Apocalypse" (Mark 13), which is also concerned with the future mission of the church. But these Johannine discourses are the fullest exposition we have of Jesus' intention regarding the future of the cause which he entrusted to his disciples and for which he prepared and consecrated them. As I have said, we must assume that the actual wording has been shaped by the evangelist, although from the many echoes (and actual duplicates) of sayings recorded in the Synoptics we can believe that he is not engaging in free composition but is interpreting the intention of Jesus as the memory of it had been preserved and treasured in the church and, very specially, in the memory of the "beloved disciple." Above all, the "placing" of these discourses at the point where one would expect the repetition of the words spoken over the bread and the cup points to the true ground of confidence. This is an exposition of the meaning of the supper. and it is upon the institution of the supper itself that we can most surely ground our certainty about Jesus' intention for the future of his cause. Put briefly, it seems clear that he entrusted the future of his cause to the group of disciples, gave himself completely to them. admitted them into the intimacy of his union with the Father, bound them to himself in the sharing of a meal that, having been part of his shared life with them, would continue after his death, and sent them out to be not only the teachers of his truth but the bearers of that glory which he had from his Father. In them the reign of God would not only be proclaimed: it would be present.
5. It is in line with this that the fourth Evangelist gives us his account of the launching of the church upon its mission (John 20:19-23). The words addressed to the Father in the consecration prayer (17:18) are now addressed to the frightened disciples. "As the Father sent me, so I send you" (20:21). He who speaks is recognized by the scars of his passion (20:20). These will be the authentic marks of the body of Christ until the end. His mission is to be their mission. And so also his Spirit is to be theirs (20:22). The Spirit had anointed Jesus for his mission at his baptism in the Jordan. But that was only the beginning. It had to be completed when, on Calvary, he was made completely one with the sin of the world. The cross was the fulfillment of his baptism. Until then we hear nothing of a gift of the Spirit to the disciples. In the Synoptics, even when the twelve are sent out on their mission and given authority to preach and to heal, there is no mention of the Spirit. And John is quite explicit that during the days of.lesus' earthly ministry "the Spirit was not yet given because Jesus was not yet glorified" (John 7:39). Now, however, the baptism is complete. The way is open for the disciples to share in it - in the complete baptism that is baptism in water and the Spirit for the bearing of the sin of the world. The disciples are now taken up into that saving mission for which Jesus was anointed and sent in the power of the Spirit.
And therefore, also, they are entrusted with that authority which lies at the heart of Jesus' mission - the authority to forgive sins (20:23). The authority is given to the church (not to a ministry distinct from the church). What is being communicated here is not the revelation of a timeless truth, namely, that God forgives sin. It is the giving of a commission to do something that will otherwise remain undone: to bring the forgiveness of God to actual amen and women in their concrete situations in the only way that it can he done so long as we are in the flesh - by the word and act and gesture of another human being.
The forgiveness of sins is what makes possible the gift of God's peace. The simplest and most comprehensive way of stating the content of the commission given to the church is therefore to be found in Jesus' initial word: "Peace be with you." Peace, shalom, the all-embracing blessing of the God of Israel -- this is what the presence of the kingdom is. The church is a movement launched into the life of the world to bear in its own life God's gift of peace for the life of the world. It is sent, therefore, not only to proclaim the kingdom but to bear in its own life the presence of the kingdom.
II
At this point any sensitive person will be tempted to cry "Halt!" By what right can we dare to speak of the presence of the kingdom in the life of the church? When we survey the church as we know it and when we look back upon its long history of shameful betrayal, cowardly compromise, and outright wickedness, how can we dare to speak of the church as the place where God's reign is present? Are we not forced rather to remember, and to hear for ourselves, God's ancient word to his congregation: "You are a stiff-necked people: if for a single moment I should go up among you, I would consume you" (Ex. 33:5)? How can a holy and righteous God dwell in the midst of a people like this? In what sense, if at all, can we speak of the presence of the kingdom in the church? If the reign of God means the overthrow of evil and the establishment of justice, mercy, and truth, in what sense can we dare to speak of the presence of the kingdom in the church?
If we are to attempt an answer to that question, we must begin at the point that is the center of our faith - the cross. According to the witness of the New Testament, the cross is the place where to eyes of faith the reign of God is manifested in what seems to be its defeat; the power of God, in weakness; the wisdom of God, in foolishness. The faith by which the church lives is that in this happening the whole frame of things has been irreversibly changed and that this is the place where the meaning of the original gospel announcement is disclosed: the kingdom of God has drawn near. The church can hold and live by this faith because this Jesus, crucified in weakness, was "designated Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead" (Rom. 1:4).
Concerning this happening, three points have here to be made:
1. We are speaking about a happening, an event that can never be fully grasped by our intellectual powers and translated into a theory or doctrine. We are in the presence of a reality full of mystery, which challenges but exceeds our grasp. A simple kind of faith has always seen the coming of the reign of God as the rejection and destruction of the enemies of Israel and the church and as the deliverance of God's people from oppression. This faith is expressed in the vox populi that sounds loud and clear through many passages of the Old Testament so as almost to drown the voice of the authentic prophets, who spoke often in riddles and paradoxes. It is expressed in the political messianism present among Jesus' contemporaries.
Jesus could not satisfy the vox populi. I-Ie outraged it. He rejected the "righteous" and accepted the "sinners." Or, to put the matter more accurately, the coming of Jesus is the shini_lg of light (I John 1:5) in which all are exposed as God's enemies, and all are accepted as God's beloved. Both the "righteous" - the representatives of religion, of morality. of social and political order, of sacred traditions - and the "sinners" - the "man in the street," the thoroughly "conscientisized" crowd demonstrating outside the governor's mansion --• are revealed in the final showdown as the murderers of God, and both are accepted as the beloved of God. "Father, forgive them; they know not what they do." Jesus is not for one against the other. He is against all for the sake of all. Faith sees, then, in this happening the wrath of God and his love, the judgment of God and his mercy, the curse of God and his blessing. In the agony in the garden and in the cry of dereliction from the cross, where God was bereft of God for our sake and the loving obedience that mankind refuses to give God was offered on our behalf, faith sees the decisive event by which all things were changed, the powers (of state, of law, of tradition) that falsely claim absolute power were unmasked and disowned, and the reign of God was established.
Down the centuries, from the first witness until today, the church has sought and used innumerable symbols to express the inexpressible mystery of the event that is the center, the crisis of all cosmic history, the hinge upon which all happenings turn. Christ the sacrifice offered for our sin, Christ the substitute standing in our place, Christ the ransom price paid for our redemption. Christ the conqueror casting out the prince of this world -- these and other symbols have been used to point to the heart of the mystery. None can fully express it. It is that happening in which the reign of God is present.
2. Because it is a happening, it is part of history. It is located at a particular point of place and time in the whole vast fabric of human affairs. It happened outside Jerusalem and not outside Tokyo or Madras, in the first century and not the tenth or the twentieth. The necessary particularity of the happening is a cause of offense to millions of devout people. To millions of people and this is especially true of those nurtured in the Indian tradition it seems self-evident that God's presence must be equally available to all people of all times in all places. God cannot be in one place or time rather than another. God must be near to everyone who turns to him. We shall have to consider the issues that this raises when we come to discuss the doctrine of election. But a preliminary word must be said here. The question at stake is as follows: Is the human counterpart of God's reign the human soul considered as a distinct monad having an eternally unsharable destiny, or is it human history as a whole, considered as one interlocking reality in which human life has its meaning and destiny'? If the former, then it follows that contingent happenings at particular times and places cannot he of ultimate significance for all human souls: the way of entry into full fruition of God's reign must be equally available to all and to each in his time and place. ""Lit if the latter is the case, if the object of God's reign is human (and cosmic) history as a whole, then the working of his reign must be such that it hinds each of us to all as part of its very character. In that case a single happening in a particular time and place can be of decisive significance to all.
The implication of what has been stated in a summary form must he explored in Chapter 7, but at this point we look at the one immediate consequence of our understanding of the presence of God's reign.
3. The consequence is this. The particular happening of the living, dying, and rising of Jesus. the "fact of Christ" as a happening at one time and place, must, so to say, enter into the stream of historical happenings and become part of its course. In other words, if it is true that God's reign concerns history in its unity and totality, we who live nineteen hundred years after the event must be related to it. and must share in its power, not merely by reading of it in a book or hearing it in a verbal report, but by participating in the life of that society which springs from it and is continuous with it.
That this should he so is confirmed by the following facts. Jesus appears to have taken no steps to embody his teaching about the kingdom in a written form, which would be insulated against distortion by the fallible memories of his disciples. The Christian church possesses nothing comparable to the Qur'an. The teaching of Jesus has come to us in varied versions filtered through the varied rememberings and interpretings of different groups of believers. What, on the other hand, did occupy the center of Jesus' concern was the calling and binding to himself of a living community of men and women who would be the witnesses of what he was and did. The new reality that he introduced into history was to be continued through history in the form of a community, not in the form of a book.
That this is so is further confirmed by the language of the earliest Christian documents. Paul's correspondence with his Christian friends is filled with phrases that express the experience of a life that is the continuing, the carrying forward of the life of the crucified and risen Jesus. We are "always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our bodies" (II Cor. 4:10). Our baptism is an identification with the dying of Jesus, so that we may walk in the new risen life that is his (Rom. 6:3-4). We died with Christ, we were raised with him, and our life is hidden in his (Col. 2:20-3:4). We are the members of the "body of Christ" (I Cor. 12). All this language bears witness to the fact that there is a society in which the life of the crucified and risen Jesus lives on and his mission continues, not only as the proclamation of the kingdom but as the presence of the kingdom in the form of death and resurrection. It is not simply the continuance of a teaching. It would be impossible to imagine the disciples of Buddha or of Muhammed using the phrase "in Buddha" or "in Muhammed." The presence of the kingdom, hidden and revealed in the cross of Jesus, is carried through history hidden and revealed in the life of that community which bears in its life the dying and rising of Jesus.
4. Hidden and revealed? Certainly no one will question the first of these two words. One need not be a cynic to ask whether the church's long history of betrayal has not hidden the presence of the kingdom so effectively as to destroy it. It is important to remember how relentlessly the New Testament emphasizes the reality of sin in the church. In every strand of the New Testament we are confronted with the fact that sin, betrayal, or compromise is no accidental or subsequent or unoriginal accretion but has been at the heart of the church from the beginning. In the Synoptic traditions Peter, who is the first to confess Christ, is also the first to reject the way Christ must go - the way of the cross. The great promise that played so central a role in the teaching of the church, "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church," is followed instantly by a terrible rebuke, "Get behind me, Satan" (Matt. 16:18, 23). Would that Michelangelo's great dome at St. Peter's had been designed to make room for both of those texts, for one without the other can only deceive! Paul's letters, likewise. are relentless in exposing the sin of those very communities that in the same letter he hails as the temple of God (I Cor. 3:16-17) and the body of Christ (I Cor. 6:15). Above all, the Fourth Gospel insists with almost unbearable reiteration that in the person of Judas the devil has been at work from the foundation of the church.
But not only in the person of Judas is this true. A comparison of John 6:66-70 with Matthew 16:21-23 suggests that the identification is not so simple. The same dark shadow plays across the scene in the upper room when Jesus solemnly foretold his betrayal by one of his chosen friends, and "the disciples looked at one another, uncertain of whom he spoke" (John 13:22; cf. Mark 14:19 where the disciples "[began] to say to him one after another: Is it IT "). If the church is the bearer of the presence of the kingdom through history, it is surely not as the community of the righteous in a sinful world. To imagine that would be to fall victim again to the seduction of the vox populi against which the prophets testified and of which the cross of Jesus is the final repudiation. The presence of the kingdom is a hidden presence, hidden in the cross of Jesus, but precisely in its hiddenness it is revealed to those to whom God through his Spirit grants the gift of faith. If we say - as we must - that the reign of God was present in Jesus, that it was present in his living, his dying, and his risen life, we have to go on to say that in a secondary, derivative, but nonetheless real sense the reign of God is present (hidden yet revealed to eyes of faith) in the community that bears his name, lives by faith in his person and work, is anointed by his Spirit, and lives through history the dying and rising of Jesus. It is a sinful community. It is. during most of its history, a weak, divided, and unsuccessful conununity. But because it is the community that lives by and bears witness to the risen life of the crucified Lord, it is the place where the reign of God is actually present and.at work in the midst of history. and where the mission of Jesus is being accomplished. This affirmation is not made as the conclusion of a survey of the history of the church and its present reality. On the contrary, it is made as an integral part of the confession of faith. Because I believe in one God the Father, one Lord Jesus Christ, and one Holy Spirit, I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church. And I believe that the reign of God is present in the midst of this sinful, weak, and divided community, not through any power or goodness of its own, but because God has called and chosen this company of people to he the bearers of his gift on behalf of all people.
At the heart of the life of the church is, the eucharistic celebration, in which those who gather around the Lord's table are taken up again and again into his sacrificial action, made partakers of his dying and of his risen life. consecrated afresh to the Father in and through him, and sent out into the world to bear the power of cross and resurrection through the life of the world. This is how the Eucharist is interpreted in the great consecration prayer (John 17). The church represents the presence of the reign of God in the life of the world, not in the triumphalist sense (as the "successful" cause) and not in the moralistic sense (as the "righteous" cause), but in the sense that it is the place where the mystery of the kingdom present in the dying and rising of Jesus is made present here and now so that all people, righteous and unrighteous, are enabled to taste and share the love of God before whom all are unrighteous and all are accepted as righteous. It is the place where the glory of God ("glory as of an only son") actually abides among us so that the love of God is available to sin-burdened men and women (John 17:22-23). It is the place where the power of God is manifested in a community of sinners. It is the place where the promise of Jesus is fulfilled: "I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself" (John 12:32). It is the place where the reign of God is present as love shared among the unlovely.
There are places, as there always have been, where the church is precluded from any kind of public proclamation of the gospel or any kind of public service. Such was the situation for almost three whole generations in the former Soviet Union, and for several decades in China. The experience of those churches in the course of the present century has given a powerful demonstration of the fact that it is through no human power but through God's living spirit. Throughout these long dark years, the mission of Christ continued. In Russia the weekly celebration of the eucharistic mystery in Orthodox churches and the reading and preaching of the Bible in Baptist and Pentecostal churches, even if only small numbers of elderly people could participate, bore witness to the real presence of the reign of God in the midst of a world that denied it. At the height of the cultural revolution in China small groups of Christians met secretly for prayer, often in the fields out of sight of their villages. Through this silent witness to the real presence of the reign of God, men and women were drawn into faith, and the church emerged even stronger than before. These recent experiences remind us, even and perhaps especially when we are free to develop vigorous missionary programs, that the mission is not ours but God's. They may serve to sustain those who today, in countries such as Saudi Arabia, remain faithful when explicit witness is forbidden.