It's time to take on chapter 3, the first chapter in the section on the heart of apostolic genius. As I mentioned yesterday, this chapter is on the Lordship of Christ. Are we going to get something like Walsh and Keesmaat treatment of God's people living under the influence of Empire as in Colossians Remixed?

"The highest form of theology is when it blossoms into prayer." I think that was coined by Karl Barth, and it's a good reminder that the point of all this is God. We aren't learning for the sake of learning, we are learning for the purpose of growth in grace for God's glory and ongoing participation with Him in His work of redemption. In all things we pray, "Your kingdom come..." Frankly, it's difficult to appreciate the truth of a chapter like this one unless one has spent recent time in the closet. "Have you seen the one who my heart loves?" (S of Songs 3:3) When the journey becomes a romance a lot of things change.

This is where we take off our shoes and kneel.. it's holy ground. This is where pluralistic appreciation ends, and we announce to all who will listen that "Jesus is Lord!" This is a moment of surrender.. and there is no going forward to appreciate mere propositions.. we come into the Presence of Him without whom there would be no "movement," no "apostolic genius," in fact, there would be nothing at all because "From Him and to Him and through Him are all things." Alan is right that it's easy to examine vital spiritual movements and find their characteristics and qualities. But it's not easy to know or imitate their faith except by putting ourselves in their place and reaching for the same personal knowledge of Christ. One of the by-products of persecution is that believers learn to "travel light." They learn what is really important, and their eyes become fixed on a "city they have not seen." In this process the true message is rediscovered, because a true Love is recovered. There is no holding back the message or the messengers any more. As one of the old Puritan divines was fond of saying, "you don't have to advertise a fire."

What is the message? The message is that "Jesus is Lord." Alan draws on his Jewish roots to remind us that this is a profoundly universal claim - profoundly narrow and monotheistic. The context of First Testament Judaism was pluralistic and polytheistic, not unlike the context that Jesus was born in, and not unlike our own context today. Part of the impact of the Jewish claim that "God is one and there is no other" was an integrating and unifying movement. No longer did one have to worry about the god of the water and the god of the fire, the god of fertility and the god of war.. all meaning and all power was found in one God. Yahweh's Lordship was complete. The process of conversion is to bring all of life under His direction. The Torah was designed as a guide to help this process along and it related all of life to God.

The Incarnation didn't alter this central truth, but made its claim more immediate and more personal. Moreoever, monotheism was modified into Trinitarian monotheism, and the Lordship that was associated with the Father is passed to Jesus. Alan relates this movement to a Messianic monotheism, part of whose task is to bring together the sacred and "secular." In a way similar to David Fitch in The Great Giveaway, Alan decries any worship practice that attempts to create sacred space apart from incarnational mission. Dualism continues to assert itself in our faith practices, but if "God is One" and "Jesus is Lord" this is simply not acceptable. Using the diagram that appeared in The Shaping of Things to Come, Alan decries dualistic spirituality that separates Sunday from Monday.

Alan closes the chapter with a consideration of how the central force of mDNA actually guides our missional activity. One of the questions he is often asked relates to contextualization: how far is too far? At what point do we become syncretists? He explores the apartheid system as an example of a theological legitimation for sin and a refusal to live under the claims of love and justice. A second example is the Rwandan genocide. Christianity finally served as a brand name but made little claim on most of the Rwandan Christians. It's at this point that we could proceed into a fruitful discussion of Colossians Remixed and the claims of Christ versus the claims of Empire. Related, Mark van Steenwyk recently penned this:

There is a fad in some quarters about a “theology of incarnation,” meaning that our task is to discern what God is doing in the world and to do it with him. But that is only half the truth, and the wrong half to start with. John’s theology of the Incarnation is about God’s Word coming as light into darkness, as a hammer that breaks the rock into pieces, as a fresh word of judgment and mercy. You might as well say that an incarnational missiology is about discovering what God is saying no to today and finding out how to say it with him. That was the lesson Barth and Bonhoeffer had to teach in Germany in the 1930s, and it’s all too relevant as today’s world becomes simultaneously more liberal and more totalitarian.


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