Finding What I Have Not Found
Searching the web for a quote from Resident Aliens by Hauerwas and Willimon, I came across this post a while back by Jordon Cooper. It just happened to be the exact section I was looking for in my search (I hate typing things if I can copy-and-paste.)

As Richard Lischer asks, "But why should the Teacher be crucified for
reinforcing what everyone already knows?"

What if all of this [Christ's teaching in the Sermon] is not new and more stringent rules for us to observe but rather a picture of the way God is? Of course, we are forever getting
confused into thinking the scripture is mainly about what we are supposed to do
rather than a picture of who God is. If Jesus had put forth behavior like
turning the other cheek when someone strikes you as a useful tactic for bringing
out the best in other people, then Jesus could be justly accused of ethical
naivete. But the basis for the ethics of Sermon on the Mount is not what works
but rather the way God is. Cheek-turning, is not advocated as what works (it
usually does not), but advocated because this is the way God is--God is kind to
the ungrateful and the selfish. This is not a stratagem for getting what we want
but the only manner of life available, now that, in Jesus, we have seen what God
wants. We seek reconciliation with the neighbor, not because we will feel so
much better afterward, but because reconciliation is what God is doing in the
world in the Christ.

The End of the World

We are confident that Matthew would say the Niebuhrian assertion that the
Sermon is only for isolated individuals, is perverse precisely because it as
individuals, cut off from the community which reveals to us the way things are
in God's kingdom, that we are bound to fail. The whole Sermon is not about how
to be better individual Christians, it is a picture of the way the church is to
look. The Sermon is eschatological. It is concerned with the end of things--the
final direction toward which God is moving the world. Matthew 4:23-25 sets the
context for the Sermon. Although delay of the parousia, the return of Christ, is
fully admitted by Matthew (24:48;25:5,19), this delay serves to underscore
Matthews' interest in the formation of community rather than to diffuse it. The
church is on the long haul, living that difficult time between one advent and
the next. In such times, we all the more dependent on a community that tells us
that we live between the times, that it is all too easy to lose sight of the way
the world is, now that God has come. Because we know something about the
direction in which the world is moving, we are encouraged by that pictures and
guided by the shape of its depiction of the way things are now that God has
redeemed the world in Jesus.

They go on to say...

The most interesting question about the Sermon is not, Is this really a practical way to live in the world? but rather, Is this a really the way the world is? What is "practical" is related to what is real. If the world is a society in which only the strong, the independent, the detached, the liberated, and the successful are blessed, then we act accordingly. However if the world is really a place where God blesses the poor, the hungry, and the persecuted for righteousness' sake, then we must act in accordance with reality or else appear bafflingly out of step wit the way things are. Is the world a place where we must constantly guard against against our death, anxiously building hedges that sad but inevitable reality? Or is the world a place where our death is viewed and reviewed under the reality of the cross of Christ? It makes all the difference, in this matter of ethics, what we are looking at. [emphasis added]

Through the Sermon (and His life), Jesus makes too clear what He meant by "be in the world but not of it". The values of the Sermon and His Kingdom are often completely at odds with those of the world. Most of American Christendom has switched this true contrast with the world for surface issues that have little impact on who we really are. When asked by friends what I'm "looking for" in Christian community, I think of passages like those above. I want to share as much as possible in relationships where the values of God's Kingdom are lovingly and mercifully practiced and pursued. I'm not looking for the idealistic "perfect church". As Wayne Jacobson puts it, "Perfection is not my goal, but finding people with God's priorities."

I haven't found an organized version of it--perhaps it exists only rarely in such form. But I've found pockets of friendships where I recieve it. I hear rumours of it in the lives of others. I hope deeply for the fulfillment of it in His return. It is present and hoped for...found and not found.

I'm beginning to be okay with that.

Resident Aliens is a book that I strongly encourage everyone who visits this blog to pick up and read. It was written in the 80's, but it's dead-on in its description and prescription for post-Constantinian Christianity. Stephen has my copy...

posted by Jimmy at 9:32 PM | |