3. Living Within God's Story: The Missio Christianus (cont.)
Becoming the Trinity? (Mystery and Dependence)
It must be emphasized that the missio Christianus is the mission of the Church as a corporate body. It is only as a part of a people that any particular person can participate in the missio Dei. To properly discern the Spirit, one must be a part of a corporate body; to be able to persist in cruciformity and in places of godforsakenness, one must be a part of the Church; and to exists as the revelation of the Father, one must be a part of the people of the new covenant that rules in the way that God rules. Of course, the fact that it is the community of faith that acts as the fullest revelation of God leads one to wonder if we can also speak of a movement into becoming the Trinity. Indeed, many theologians are making exactly this argument today, restoring the notion of a “social trinitarianism” to current Christian dialogue.
However, not all have embraced this notion, and Karen Kilby is an articulate and consistent opponent of it. Kilby argues that social trinitarianism engages in a particularly problematic form of projection that makes it distinctly problematic. As Kilby says: “what is projected onto God is immediately reflected back onto the world and this reverse projection is said to be what is in fact important about the doctrine.” Thus, the perichoresis said to bind together the persons of God, is simply an imaginative description of the best of what a given author thinks should bind humans together. Therefore, Kilby warns against attempts to make the Trinity “relevant” and argues that the Trinity is only important in the sense that it allows us to read Scripture in a way that recognizes the divinity of both Jesus and the Spirit, while maintaining that God is one.
Kilby’s desire to exercise caution in the application of trinitarian doctrines should be respected. Certainly this doctrine has been abused in the past. In particular, the notion of the “eternal subordination” of the Son to the Father, has been used to impose an eternal subordination of women to men. In fact, Hans Boersma holds to precisely this notion – even though he critiques social trinitarianism using precisely the same arguments as Kilby! Given such past abuses, it is understandable that Kilby is concerned about too rapidly applying the doctrine of the trinity to whatever gender-perspective is dominant at any given time. However, one must realize that the application of the doctrine of the Trinity to the subordination of women is essentially an abuse of the doctrine – the ecumenical creeds of the Church, and the witness of Scripture all emphatically affirm that the members of the Trinity are co-equal. To try and apply this doctrine to subordinate women is simply “obfuscating terminology to uphold male hegemony.”
However, not only is Kilby’s critique insufficient (she begins by dialoguing with Karl Rahner, Jurgen Moltmann, Colin Gunton, and Patricia Wilson-Kastner but only engages in a concrete critique of Wilson-Kastner -– perhaps the most insignificant of the four), she also overstates her case. The fact is that the triune nature of God is just as significant for Christian living as any of God’s other attributes. Shall we suggest that God’s holiness is only significant as a description of God’s character is it is revealed in Scipture? Certainly not, for we are called to be holy as God is holy. Shall we suggest that God’s love is only significant as a description of God’s character within the biblical story? Certainly, not for we are called to love as God loves, and thereby be perfect in the way that our heavenly Father is perfect. Therefore, as a part of our call to love as God loves, we are also called to model our communal living upon the triune nature for God, for we are called to be one with each other in the way that the Son and the Father (and the Spirit) are one. Therefore, although using the doctrine of the Trinity to affirm gender inequalities is a case of “the tail wagging the dog” the application of the doctrine of the Trinity to affirm a community of radical equality is a natural consequence of this doctrine.
Consequently, we can conclude that the Church, the corporate people of God, reveals the communal nature of the imago Dei. Furthermore, the notion of perichoresis, is an appropriate notion to describe the nature of this communal interaction – and, contra those who want to argue that appeals to social trinitarianism and perichoresis is a new (and, therefore, suspect or heretical) doctrinal fad, it must be noted that this notion dates back to the early Church Fathers. The Church is to be the Spirit-Empowered, cruciform, Father-like revelation of the Trinity as it participates in the missio Dei. All of these elements – empowerment, suffering, being God’s vice-regents and the true humanity -– are fundamentally communal in nature. Living within the story of God is not primarily something that individuals do, it is primarily something a group of people does, and individuals only participate as a part of this people-group. As Michael Gorman says in his concluding reflections on living within God’s Story: “The ‘Church’ lives the story, embodies the story, tells the story. It is the living exegesis of God’s master story of faith, love, power, and hope.” Therefore, the community of people so united with one another and with the broken world that they chose to travel into godforsakenness, actually become, in that process, the imago trinitas.
However, having arrived at these conclusions, the doctrine of the Trinity also forces us to retain a particular element of mystery when we speak of God and of the missio Dei. After all, as we have tried to note, every member of the Trinity is involved in every aspect of that mission. Father, Son, and Spirit all take part in the movements of creation, exile, out-of-exile, overlap, and consummation. Furthermore, the inner perichoretic relationships of the persons of the Trinity also go beyond what we can comprehend or experience, even in our most intimate relationships. Any missiological formulations or reflections upon God are only reflections upon a vision that we have begun to comprehend but will never fully comprehend. As with any human words, whether those be the words of theology, the words of biblical scholars (or even of the bible itself!), the words of missiologists can only bear witness to the Word – they are not the Word in and of themselves.
This reflection upon the mystery of God, should also lead missiologists to a radical dependence upon God – not only in places of godforsakenness, but also in all parts of the missio Christianus and in every form of proclamation. It is only God who can prove himself, and every encounter with God is dependent upon God’s initiative. Encounters with Jesus cannot be fabricated, they depend entirely upon Jesus’ “will to be recognized.” Just as resurrection is an act that entirely depends on God’s power to bring life out of death, so also the radical in-breaking of the new creation is something that can only be accomplished by God. These conclusions do not lead to any sort of fatalism, resignation, or abandonment of mission. Rather, they further the movement into humility that is required of the people who partner with the humble God.
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Sources:
Hans Urs von Balthasar, Mysterium Paschale, and Prayer.
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I.1: The Doctrine of the Word of God, and Dogmatics in Outline.
Kevin Giles, “The Trinity and Subordinationism: The Doctrine of God and the Contemporary Gender Debate.”
Michael Gorman, Cruciformity: Paul's Narrative Spirituality of the Cross.
Colin Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many.
Gustavo Gutierrez, We Drink from Our Own Wells.
Karen Kilby, “Perichoresis and Projection: Problems with the Social Doctrine of the Trinity.”
Jurgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, and God in Creation.
Karl Rahner, The Trinity.
Patricia Wilson-Kastner, Faith, Feminism and the Christ.

3. Living Within God's Story: The Missio Christianus (cont.)
Movement 4. Becoming the Father
However, the conclusion that Christians become the godforsaken in order to become the image of the Father, does not state our case quite strongly enough. As the godforsaken, Christians already are the revelation of the Father. This is so because the humble, crucified, dead, and then resurrected Jesus is the fullest revelation not only of the Son, but also of the Father. Thus, Moltmann argues, the crucifixion requires a “revolution in the concept of God.” Jesus’ choice to die in a place of complete abandonment is performed, as Gorman says, as an act of “family resemblance” and this means that “Cruciformity is the character of God.”
The corollary of this is that we must engage in an equally radical revolution in the concept of the imago Dei. Just as God and the cross are “inextricably interrelated” so now the imago Dei and the cross must always go hand-in-hand. Because Jesus is the imago Dei, Christians, by becoming the imago Christi, thereby become the revelation of the gloria Dei. By becoming the Son, in all of his godforsakenness, Christians become the presence of the Father in the godless places of the world. For as long as creation is broken those who are a part of God’s new and true humanity will be revealed as those who embrace godforsakenness.
Therefore, the Christian process of discipleship must not stop at emulating the Son –- is if such emulation is possible in isolation from emulation of the Father. Henri Nouwen insists that the ultimate question is that of becoming the Father. The Father cannot remain “the Other” as we move into our Christian identity. “My final vocation,” Nouwen writes, “is indeed to become like the Father… what greater joy can there be for me than to stretch out my tired arms and let my hands rest in a blessing on the shoulders of my home-coming children?”
Becoming the Father means that Christian share in the Father’s mission of reigning by creating life and goodness. Participating in the mission of the Father as Creator -– whose original act of creation was already an act of new creation, and whose act of creating goodness added new goodness to a state that was already good –- means that Christians cannot settle for simply sustaining goodness as it exists right now. The act of sustaining the status quo belongs more to the movement of exile and not to the movement of overlap within which the new creation is already breaking in. Christians will always be actively bringing forth new life and moving ever deeper into the processing of giving birth to that which is good. Therefore, becoming the Father means participating in a movement of ongoing transformation. In bringing forth life and goodness, Christians fulfill the mandate of God’s vice-regents and reveal the way in which the Father rules. As John Goldingay says: “As the exercise of God’s authority is designed to free human beings to be themselves, so the exercise of human authority is designed to free nature to be itself.” This is why the reign of God’s vice-regents is also marked by the humility of the Father, Son, and Spirit. God’s delegates affirm life to such a degree that they are never willing to take life – even if that means they must lose their own lives. God’s vice-regents affirm goodness to such an extent that they are never willing to settle for “the least of the evils” –- even if that means that they must suffer the consequences of evil themselves. Once again we discover a reign that contradicts, and stands in subversive opposition to, all other powers. Over against all the powers that argue that they are “Sons of God,” that they are the image of God, and that they share in the authority of God, Christians argue that God’s Sons, God’s image, and God’s authority is revealed in the form of humility that embraces abandonment. In this way, Christians become the revelation of God-With-Us. Christians, by becoming the Father, become the presence of God with creation!
Finally, becoming the Father means participating in God’s rest, pleasure and celebration in and with creation. Becoming the Father means becoming God’s festive Sabbath-people. Indeed, as Moltmann notes, the movement of the Sabbath is the necessary corollary to the movement out of exile, and they cannot be separated from each other –- no movement out of exile really brings liberation unless it results in Sabbath, and there is no real Sabbath without freedom from exile. Just as the creation narrative of Gen 1/2 culminates in God’s day of rest, so the missio Christianus will culminate in a time of universal shalom, and this is precisely what is anticipated when the people of God rest, play, and feast together and with the world. Such rest is possible, even within the hells of godforsakenness, because Christians realize that God is not only in the process of saving the world, God already has saved the world. God is not simply bringing us out of exile, he has already defeated exile once and for all. Rest is not an act of surrender or resignation – rest is a proclamation of victory! Therefore, even as we root ourselves within the last strongholds of death we can live there as a peaceful and joyful people that “only has to wait” for God to return and make all things new. Indeed, even this playful resting is subversive to all other powers that either do not allow rest, or use games to further their domination. In opposition to these games Christians play with the freedom of beloved innocence, and in this way becomes possible to anticipate liberation in playing and, as Moltmann says, “with laughing rid ourselves of the bonds which alienate us.”
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Sources:
Hans Urs von Balthasar, Prayer.
Walter Brueggemann, Old Testiment Theology: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy.
Michael Gorman, Cruciformity: Paul's Narrative Spirituality of the Cross.
Jurgen Moltmann, God in Creation, The Way of Jesus Christ, Theology and Joy, and The Crucified God.
Henri Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son.
Brian J. Walsh and Sylvia C. Keesmat, Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire.

3. Living Within God's Story: The Missio Christianus (cont.)
Movement 3. Becoming the Godforsaken
The ultimate movement of redemptive suffering is Jesus’ death as the Abandoned One. Jesus’ greatest triumph over exile comes through his descent into godforsakenness and hell. Therefore, it is also a part of the missio Christianus to enter into, and experience, this place. Indeed, the lonesomeness of Jesus on the cross, which gives birth to the Church, should also stamp a particular characteristic of lonesomeness onto the Church. As von Balthasar suggests, the Church is first truly born when, from the cross, Jesus gives his mother to the disciple that he loved, and gives that disciple to his mother: “this is the assembly of two acutely abandoned people gathered around the Abandoned One… How could the birthmark of this origin not continually brand such a community!” Indeed, there is a sense that, even as we live within the movement of the overlap of the ages, we live within a time of abandonment and loneliness because Jesus has departed and ascended into heaven.
At this point, it seems to be a general inclination to think of “the dark night of the soul.” However, I want to maintain a certain amount of distance from that notion for three main reasons. First of all, the notion of the “dark night of the soul” is far too individualistic. The notion of godforsakenness that we are exploring has far more to do with corporate experiences of exile where God abandons people, not just one person. Secondly, the notion of the “dark night of the soul” is far too internal and otherworldly. The notion that godforsakenness is an internal experience that one has within one’s “soul” is not very useful when one tries to explore notions of exile that have to do with bodies, with economics and with socio-political issues. Here, we are speaking of the dark night of the family, the dark night of the community, the dark night of a nation, the dark night of a people. Finally, we are distancing ourselves from the notion of “the dark night of the soul” because we feel that the more biblical notions of exile, and Jesus’ descent into hell, are more accurate lenses through which to explore our movement into godforsakenness.
Just as with our reflections on cruciformity, so now we discover that Christians have been saved from hell so that they can follow Jesus’ footsteps and descend into hell. Following Jesus means passing through death and darkness. By the Spirit’s power, Christians participate in Jesus’ descent and this culminates in “being dead with the dead God.” Some have tried to argue that Jesus’ godforsakenness has put an end to godforsakenness once and for all but, given the preceding argument, Jacques Ellul seems to be more accurate when he argues that Christ and the cross do not put and end to godforsakenness but reveal “the ultimate possibility of this abandonment.” God’s out-of-exile people are called out of exile so that they can move into the deepest places of exile in order to bring exile to an end. Just as we are called to “take the pain of the world into ourselves and give it over to Jesus so that the world may be healed” so also we are called to take the godforsakenness of the world into ourselves so that those in the hells of exile might be able to discover Jesus there with them.
By fulfilling this movement into godforsakenness, Christians simultaneously fulfill the commission that Jesus gives to his disciples to go out making disciples, and the creation mandate within which humanity is told to fill the world. Instead of being cast out Christians are now sent out as God’s heralds. Instead of being scattered, Christians go forth to gather people into the body of Christ. Instead of being torn from the Holy Land, Christians are commissioned to go forth and claim the whole earth as God’s Holy Land. Thus, the movement of the people of God into exile actually manifests the way in which Jesus overturned the exile of Israel, of the nations, and of humanity.
To discuss cruciformity and the embrace of godforsakenness within a prolegomena to a narrative spirituality of mission is one thing. To actually go forth carrying a cross, to actually descend into the hells of this world, is quite another thing altogether. Such notions may sound like a noble romance or an exotic adventure -– until one actually begins to experience such things. When one actually begins to experience places where God is absent and silent, when one experiences pain and sees one’s loved ones experience pain, such illusions are quickly dispersed. One quickly realizes that to be godforsaken with the godforsaken means journeying into a very real, and very devastating state of brokenness. This is not romantic, it hurts too much. This is not noble, it is too ineffective. This is not an adventure, it is a nightmare.
When Christians begin to come to these conclusions they can be certain that they are located where the Church should be –- in the depths of exile -– and, although it may seem impossible, they must remain in those places. Furthermore, Christians must absolutely refuse to manipulate or create the type of salvation that they claim can only come from God. Christians go forth proclaiming the salvation won by Jesus and, like Jesus, rely entirely upon God to bring that salvation to pass. The Christian movement into godforsakenness is, therefore, not a fundamentally pragmatic movement -– it is a movement entirely dependent upon God’s grace. Having observed how false saviors, and human attempts at salvation, consistently degenerate into further violence, as the oppressed go on to become the oppressor, Christians must rely entirely upon God for salvation. As is suggested in Isaiah, those who try to create fire through which to see and be saved, only ever end up burning themselves. It is God’s faithful servant who walks steadfastly into the darkness trusting entirely to God for salvation. The key characteristic of the servant is faithfulness, not relevance, pragmatics, or success as it is defined within the market economy.
Therefore, those who journey into godforsakenness will be defined by three actions: hoping, waiting, and crying out. Hope, so regularly neglected within the dialogue of comfortable Christian churches, is absolutely essential to Christian living and must be recovered. Of course, until Christians journey into cruciformity and godforsakenness, hope will be marginalized. When one is comfortable, when one is (mostly) satisfied, or when one is simply too busy to deal with other things, hope plays only a minor role – being mostly focused on the hope of “heaven.” However, once one journeys into places of pain, brokenness, and great discomfort, hope must become central; for, without hope, one cannot remain in those places. Hope is, as Jacques Ellul says, “an absurd act of confidence.” It is the affirmation that the God who is not with us, is no God at all. Hope, as Dan Bell Jr. argues, is “a wager on God.” The God who remains silent cannot be the God of the biblical narrative. Therefore, hope in places of godforsakenness borders on blasphemy. It rejects God’s silence and absence. In the provocative words of Ellul, hope says: “I summon you [God] not to be an idol, not to act like a false God, since I know that you are God. I summon you to speak, since you are the Word.” Furthermore, hope realizes that it is exactly our movement into exile that is the proof of God’s proximity. Secondly, just as the servant who walks into darkness, refusing to light his own fire, God’s hopeful people refuse to take matters into their own hands. They wait for the Spirit to come, they wait for the Word to speak, they wait for the Father to act. They are a people who have “bet their whole lives” on God’s promises, and they wait in expectation of the fulfillment of those promises –- realizing they cannot fulfill the promises themselves. Finally, God’s people who become the godforsaken are a people who cry out. Like Jesus (and the Psalmist) they cry: “Our God, our God, why have you forsaken us?” knowing that God will respond to that cry by coming with the power of the resurrection. Like Israel in slavery, they cry with groans that reach to heaven, knowing that God will “hear,” “see,” “remember,” and “come down” to bring an end to exile. Like all creation that still groans, they situate themselves at the groaning-places of the world and direct that groan to heaven, knowing that the Spirit takes up that groaning, and makes it salvific. The groanings and the tears of God’s people will persist for until the day when God is all in all. Of course, this waiting, hopeful, painful cry, that appears to border on blasphemy, is actually a cry of worship, for it recognizes that everything depends on God – it is a grabbing hold of God and refusing to let go. It is the kind of cry that only the people who live within God’s story can make, for the people who live within God’s story are those who remember what God has done and what God has promised to do.
Thus, by moving into the deepest places of exile and godforsakenness, by descending into hell, God’s Spirit-empowered cruciform people complete their participation in the mission of the Son. Marvelously, because this is the fulfillment of that mission, this is also the place where God’s people are most fully revealed as God’s true humanity. Shockingly, God’s people, when they move into places of godforsakenness, become, like Jesus, the fullest revelation of the Father and his glory! Christians become godforsaken so that they can become the Father.
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Sources:
Hans Urs von Balthasar, Mysterium Paschale, and Prayer.
Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline.
Dan Bell Jr., Liberation Theology after the End of History: the refusal to cease suffering.
Jacques Ellul, Hope in Time of Abandonment.
Michael Gorman, Cruciformity: Paul's Narrative Spirituality of the Cross.
Jurgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ.
N. T. Wright, The Crown and the Fire.

3. Living Within God's Story: The Missio Christianus (cont.)
Movement 2. Becoming the Cruciform Son
As the head of the body, as the crucified and resurrected Lord, Jesus, the Son, is the prototype of all those who are lead by the Spirit. Therefore, as we concluded in our previous section, following Jesus in a victorious manner, means following his road to the cross. Unfortunately, this approach seems to conflict with the actual practice of many contemporary Western Christians. As Moltmann argues: “The idea of following Christ has been neglected by bourgeois Protestantism, because it no longer recognized or wished to recognize the suffering church.” However, if we are to be a cruciform people -– a people conformed to the crucified Christ -– there must be a dynamic correspondence in our daily life to the story of Jesus’ death. Our life in Christ must be defined as Paul defines it –- as the koinonia of Christ’s sufferings. Therefore, if we are to truly demonstrate our faith in Jesus, we must be a cross-shaped people. As Moltmann argues, in response to his own lament about the state of “bourgeois Protestantism”: “To believe in the cross of Christ… means to let oneself be crucified with him.”
However, this suffering is not simply suffering for the sake of suffering. There is nothing masochistic about the Christian movement into cruciformity. Nor is the Christian movement into suffering an act of resignation to the notion that “all life is suffering, so we might as well embrace it.” Indeed, following Jesus on the road to the cross is exactly the opposite of all such forms of resignation. Moving into active suffering is actually an act of protest against any form of reality that simply accepts suffering as it is. Cruciformity is “suffering against suffering,” it is suffering that is embraced in order to contradict the “reality” of ongoing suffering.
It is through cross-shaped lives that Christians continue the mission of the Son. It is by becoming conformed to the cross of Jesus that Christians continue to reveal the end of exile. It is through conformity to the cross of Jesus that Christians fulfill Israel’s mission to be a light to the world and fulfill humanity’s role as the imago Dei. By participating in the sufferings of Jesus, God’s cruciform people are revealed as God’s faithful covenant partner. Just as Jesus ongoing faithful obedience lead him to the cross, and revealed him as God’s Son and covenant partner, so also the ongoing faithful obedience of Christians will lead them to the cross and thereby reveal them as God’s faithful covenant partner. Just as Jesus drew onto himself the pain of Israel (as Israel drew on the pain of he world) so also, the church, in the Spirit, attempts to be for the world what Jesus was for the world. By suffering in this way, Christians participate in the missio Dei in the same manner that God does – with a great deal of humility, undergoing a great deal of humiliation. This emphasis upon humiliation takes away any romantic notions from Christian suffering. Christians will suffer and be rejected, they should not expect to be praised or honored for traveling the road of the cross.
Yet Christian suffering is salvific. Christians face cruciform rejection so that the world might be saved. This is not to negate the complete and total victory won by Jesus on the cross. Christians suffering is not an identical replication of Jesus’ achievement. Rather, in their suffering, Christians cause the salvation won by Jesus to burst into the present moment. This is what it is to “make of what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions.” As Tom Wright so aptly puts it: “[The church’s] role is to be Christ-shaped: to bear the pain and shame of the world in its own body, that the world might be healed,” therefore:
this is the vocation of the Church: to take on the sadness of the world and give back no anger; the sorrow of the world and give back no bitterness; the pain of the world, and not sink into self-pity; but to return forgiveness and love, blessing and joy.
Christians have been healed so that they can take on the world’s sickness; they have been given joy so that they can share the world’s sorrows; they have been made victorious so that they can lay down their lives. Therefore, those who want to offer Christianity as a grand escape from all personal suffering have fundamentally misunderstood the Christian identity. Perhaps such a proclamation will fill churches, but it will fill churches with a people intent on fleeing from suffering –- and in this way the church will craft a people who are fundamentally incapable of fulfilling the call to become God’s cruciform Son through the power of the Spirit.
Finally, it should be noted that the suffering of God’s cruciform people will not only be a suffering that they encounter as they engage with secular and pagan powers, and with a world that does not know the one true God. Indeed, a great deal of the suffering experienced by God’s people will come from within the body of those who claim to be the people of God. Jesus was crucified by the Romans, but he was handed over by the Jewish leaders. Jesus realized that Israel’s leaders -– her kings and priests and so-called prophets -– were actually opponents of God and God’s true people! Furthermore, Jesus’ experience was the standard experience of many within Israel who understood what it truly meant to live as God’s covenant partner. Therefore, God’s Spirit-people, God’s cruciform covenant partner, should not be shocked if she discovers that much of the worst afflictions she encounters come from within the church. Yet this does not mean that the church should be abandoned. Just as Jesus did not abandon Israel, so also God’s cruciform people must continue to journey in the midst of a church that wounds them mortally. We must heed the words of von Balthasar: “Jesus died for and in Israel; why should not the saints to that for the Church?” The mission of God’s cruciform people is to heal both the world and the Church. They suffer, and do so salvifically, in both of these places.
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Sources:
Hans Urs von Balthasar, Explorations in Theology: IV, and Prayer.
Michael Gorman, Cruciformity: Paul's Narrative Spirituality of the Cross.
Richard Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament.
Jurgen Moltmann, The Crucified God, and Theology of Hope.
N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, The Resurrection of the Son of God, The Climax of the Covenant, The Crown and the Fire, and Following Jesus.

3. Living Within God's Story: The Missio Christianus (cont.)
Movement 1. Becoming the Spirit-People
To become a Christian is to become a Spirit-person. This is not to say that be become disembodied in any way, far from it. Being God’s Spirit-people means that those who are encountered by God, who proclaim the Lordship of Jesus, and who are part of the body of Christ (the communion of the Saints), are those who are filled with the eschatological Spirit of God. Possessing the Spirit of God allows believers to live the right sort of bodily existence. Thus, as Spirit-people, Christians are God’s eschatological people. Living within the overlap of the ages, they are a people in the process of becoming what they already are. As those who possess the Spirit, the first-fruits and down-payment of God’s in-breaking kingdom, God’s Spirit-people exist as an anticipatory sign to the world. But this is a sign that already embodies that for which creation longs. As Richard Hays says: “The Sprit-empowered church stands within the present age as a sign of what is to come, already prefiguring the redemption for which it [this age] waits.”
As God’s eschatological people, God’s Spirit-people are God’s out-of-exile people. They are adopted as God’s child-heirs and, therefore, are called to become a kingly and queenly people. They are forgiven and are, therefore, called to become a priestly people proclaiming the forgiveness of sins to others. They are given guidance and truth, and are, therefore, to be a prophetic people challenging the powers and providing direction. They are given comfort and are, therefore, to be loving and united people especially attended to those who have been abandoned by others. Finally, as mentioned above, they are given resurrection life and are, therefore, a powerful people. Indeed, God’s Spirit-people cannot be defeated, they are a triumphant and victorious people. Consequently, God’s Spirit-people are to be a joyful people. Therefore, in all of these ways, God’s Spirit-people participate in the Spirit’s mission of life, light, comfort, and transformation, and thereby act as agents of God’s new creation as the old age passes and the new age dawns.
However, the references to “power,” “victory” and “triumph” need to be developed. Too often the claims made in the previous paragraph have been used to justify a Christian empire on earth that (intentionally or unintentionally) forcefully dominates, exploits, abuses, and marginalizes others. To properly understand the way in which Christians triumph through the Spirit, one must first look back to Jesus the first person fully empowered by God’s Spirit of resurrection life. One must recall that the Spirit of resurrection was not something given to Jesus after the cross. The Spirit of resurrection life, the Spirit of victory and power, was poured out upon Jesus when he was baptized. This means that not only Jesus’ resurrection but his entire ministry, his crucifixion and his death are all a part of the manifestation of the victory won by an entire life lived through the power of the Spirit. This is precisely why the disciples are not able to share in Jesus’ Passion. Because they do not have the Spirit of power within them, they fall asleep in the garden while Jesus prays. Because they do not have the Spirit of victory within them, they flee when the soldiers come to take Jesus away. Because they do not have the Spirit of resurrection life within them, they can only watch from a distance as Jesus dies on a cross. It is only after Pentecost that the disciples receive the Spirit’s power – which is a power to suffer. It is only after they are empowered by the Holy Spirit that the disciples are able to drink from the same cup as Jesus, and they too go on to die the deaths of faithful witnesses – Stephen is stoned, Peter is crucified and Paul is beheaded.
This means that God’s Spirit-people today experience victory by sharing in the fellowship of Jesus’ suffering. As Moltmann so aptly puts it: “In the Spirit of the resurrection, eternal life is experienced here and now, in the midst of the life that leads to death,” therefore, “eternal life has been hidden beneath its opposite, under trial, suffering, [and] death.” Indeed, it is precisely this point that Paul spends so much time addressing in his letters, both in defense of his own apostleship and in his description of the vocation to which his churches are called. As Michael Gorman argues: Paul is not trying to discern whether or not the power of resurrection life is now available (Paul assumes that it is), rather, Paul is trying to explain how the power of the resurrection is present. Just like Moltmann, Gorman concludes that, for Paul, “present resurrection… is resurrection to ‘death,’” believers are raised but “the new life to which they are raised is a life of dying, of being co-crucified, of cruciformity.” Therefore, we are also in agreement with von Balthasar who writes: “ever anew the Spirit places the witness of the Church under the sign of Jesus Christ: humiliation, persecution, cross.”
Therefore, we can conclude that it is the resurrection Spirit that empowers believers to live lives that are strikingly similar to the life lived by Jesus. Exactly because they are powerful and triumphant, believers are able to move into places of humiliation, suffering, and death. The Spirit is the sign of our corporate adoption as God’s child-heir, and so we will now reflect the image of God’s firstborn Son, Jesus who was crucified. We receive the Spirit so that we can be empowered to become the cruciform Son.
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Sources:
Hans Urs von Balthasar, The von Balthasar Reader.
Michael Gorman, Cruciformity: Paul's Narrative Spirituality of the Cross.
Gustavo Gutierrez, We Drink From Our Own Wells.
Richard Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament.
Jurgen Moltmann, God in Creation, The Church in the Power of the Holy Spirit, and Theology of Hope.
N. T. Wright, Simply Christian.

3. Living Within God’s Story: The Missio Christianus
As has been mentioned several times now, a large part of the missio Dei is the delegation of that mission to God’s representative covenant partners – Adam and Eve, Israel, Jesus, and now, the Church. The Church is the body today that is assigned this vocation. Therefore, Christians must find a way to live within God’s Story, for, as Tom Wright says: “We are the people through whom the narrative… is now moving towards its final destination.” Or, as Richard Hays puts it: “The church is to finds its identification and vocation by recognizing its role within [God’s] cosmic drama.” Living within God’s Story, a missional story, means that the Church is fundamentally missional. She is called to go forth into the world. As Karl Barth says, “the Church lives by its commission as herald” and “when the life of the Church is exhausted in self-serving, it smacks of death.” Barth is not simply being hyperbolic and exaggerating his point. If the Church does not respond to her call to be God’s herald in creation, then death will continue to reign. Consequently, by moving into the biblical story of the missio Dei, we seek to fulfill the challenge issued by Tom Wright. We hope to be: “ferociously loyal to what has gone before and cheerfully open about what must come next.”
Tracing the movements of God’s Story in light of the Christian mission requires us to engage in an interesting reversal. Although the movement of God’s story goes from the Father, to godforsakenness, to the Son, to the Spirit, the mission of the Church traces this movement backwards. The missio Christianus is to become the Spirit in order to become the Son in order to become the godforsaken in order to become the Father. Furthermore, in this whole process we also become subversive gospel-bearers. It should be noted that this reversal of the trinitarian order does not mean that our model is cyclical in nature. We are not working back to the garden, we are moving forwards to the new creation of all things, the parousia of Jesus, and the descent of heaven to earth. Therefore, our mission within the story of God, as we move from the overlap of the ages to the consummation of God’s new creation, can be diagrammed as follows:
Becoming: [the Spirit]-[the Son]-[the Godforsaken]-[the Father]
———- [ —————– Gospel-Bearers —————- ]
As the true humanity of God’s new creation, already possessing the Spirit of the new age, the missio Christianus is to follow the cruciform road of the Son, proclaiming a subversive gospel and journeying into godforsakenness, so that we can in that very process, become the image of the Father.
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Sources:
Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline.
Richard Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament.
N. T. Wright, The Last Word.

2. God's Story: The Missio Dei (conc.)
Shortcomings and Summary
Shortcomings of this Schema
Any model imposed onto a narrative is bound to fall short in some way. The narrative must be read in its entirety and, just as it cannot be reduced to doctrines, it also cannot be reduced to any given number of movements, acts, or types. Such reductions are helpful in order to grasp the big picture but then all the details must be worked through again in light of the big picture. As this is done, the big picture will continually become more nuanced, it will shift a little here and there. Therefore, one must continually move back and forth between the big picture and the details. Furthermore, it must be said that there are other models that have been developed that are also excellent models and well worth using. This should be expected, especially when missiologies are understood as spiritualities. Tom Wright’s model of the biblical narrative as a drama in five parts is just one example of an excellent model that is gaining increasing use. Therefore, I do not think that this model is the only useful model to be used. Indeed, there is some benefit it comparing and contrasting models to see why various authors stress various elements of the story. Having said that, there are two particular critiques of this model that are especially strong.
The first critique comes in regard to the emphasis upon the movement of exile and the movement out of exile. Although the term “exodus” is deliberately avoided, it is easy to substitute the simple word “exodus” for the compound word “out-of-exile.” However, I would encourage the reader not to do so. Although the phrase out-of-exile may appear to be more awkward and less aesthetically pleasing, I would like to insist that the term “exodus” is not an appropriate substitute. History has shown us that an exodus paradigm has been regularly employed in order to justify the oppression and extermination of others. Perhaps nowhere is this more obvious today than in the way in which the exodus paradigm is used by the State of Israel to justify the systematic abuse, torture, and murder of Palestinians (and as of today, July 17, 2006, Canadian civilians and children). The problem with an exodus paradigm, as Naim Ateek, a Palestinian liberation theologian, notes, is that the notion of exodus is to intimately linked with that of conquest. Therefore, those who conquer others, tend to use the exodus narrative to justify the brutality of their actions. Thus, both the Christian Boers in Africa and the Christian British in Australia appealed to the exodus story in order to justify the atrocities they committed against the aboriginal people found in those places. By using the language of “out-of-exile,” I hope to avoid this sort of abuse. However, I recognize that this model, divorced form the explicatory content of this paper, still remains vulnerable to those abuses.
Secondly, there is an undeniable male-dominance to the language used within this model. Speaking of God as “Father” and as “Son,” and going on to speak of “becoming the Father” and “becoming the Son,” seems to leave women in a place of marginality – or even invisibility. But, to the best of my abilities, I have tried to avoid male-dominated language. I have spoken of all humanity, both male and female, as the imago Dei. Instead of referring to an Adamic covenant, I have spoken of God’s covenant with Adam and Eve. Instead of a Noahic covenant, I have spoken of a covenant with Noah and his descendants (both male and female). Instead of speaking of an Abrahamic covenant, I have spoken of God’s covenant with Abraham and Sarah. Even when I spoke of God as Father, I spoke of God giving birth and suffering labor pains – a distinctly female characteristic. I wholeheartedly want to be divorced from any notion of God as male or any theological argument the supports patriarchy and the ongoing abuse and oppression of women. However, I find the language of “Father” and “Son” to be unavoidable, not only given the way it functions within the ecumenical creeds of the Church, but because of the prominent role it plays within the biblical narrative itself. I only hope that my readers will be open to reading those terms in a way divorced from all contemporary notions of gender and sexuality.
God’s Story: summation of the missio Dei
Concluding our reflections upon these four movements within God’s Story, we can make the following summary of the missio Dei, from a trinitarian perspective. The mission of the Father, in the movement of creation and covenant, is to reign and subvert all opposition, to create new life and goodness, to love and to be loved, to rest and to take pleasure in creation, and, with a great deal of humility, to create a covenant partner to fulfill his mission. The mission of God, Father, Son, and Spirit, in the movement of exile and godforsakenness, is to sustain creation by withdrawing from creation, to continue to subvert other powers, and to continually rely upon God’s covenant partner. The mission of the Son, within the movement out-of-exile, is to be the Father’s faithful covenant partner, to fulfill the covenant made with Israel, to fulfill to covenant made with humanity, to enter into godforsakenness and bring exile to an end, and to embody God’s return from his exile, and to prepare the way for the Spirit. Furthermore, the Son, like the Father, continues to fulfill his mission in a way of humility and subversion that confronts all other powers. Finally, the mission of the Spirit, in the movement of the overlap of the ages, is to cause the new age to break into the present all over the cosmos, to bring resurrection life, to restore the people of God to the image of God, to bring light, prophetic truth, and practical guidance, and to comfort all who are afflicted.
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Sources:
Naim Ateek, Justice and Only Justice: A Palestinian Theology of Liberation.
Jane Doe, The Story of Jane Doe: A Book About Rape.
N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God.

2. God's Story: The Missio Dei (cont.)
Movement 4. Overlap: the Mission of the Spirit (sent by the Father and the Son)
The resurrection of Jesus is inevitably followed by the event of Pentecost. Because the resurrection is the eschatological events it necessarily follows that the eschatological Spirit, spoken of in the prophets (cf. esp. Joel 2), should be poured out. Therefore, on Pentecost, the Spirit of the new age is poured out in Jerusalem and, over the course of the Acts narrative, overflows into Samaria, Asia, as it moves from Jerusalem to Rome and inexorably on to the ends of the earth. Of course, the Spirit is only the first fruits of the new age, the Spirit comes only as a down-payment. It continues the process of transformation and new creation begun by Jesus within the present age. Therefore, this fourth movement is defined as a time of overlapping ages.
Within this overlap, the Spirit constantly proclaims to all other powers that their time is now up, that the one creational and covenantal God, revealed in the Lord Jesus, has now come and claimed the entire world as his own. As Karl Barth says, “[t]he game is won, even though the player can still make a few further moves. Actually he is already mated.” The Spirit continues the movement of opposition and subversion that we have now come to recognize as one of the fundamental elements of the missio Dei.
Particularly evident in the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost is the way in which the exile of the nations that occurred at Babel has been overcome. Where before God gave humanity new tongues in order to fracture humanity, God now gives his people new tongues in order to reconcile humanity and unite humanity in Christ. Where before God scattered humanity in exile over the earth, now he commissions his people and sends them out to the ends of the earth proclaiming the end of exile. Just as Jesus brought an end to the exile of Israel and of humanity, now the Spirit calls the Church to bring an end to the exile of the nations that were scattered over the earth. This is the movement in which we now live, it spans from the resurrection of Jesus to the present and on until the return of Jesus in glory.
From a missional perspective it can be said that the Spirit is poured out in order to bring life, light, and comfort. As the Spirit of life, the Spirit brings resurrection life. It transforms God’s people into more than simply “sinners” saved by grace – the Spirit transforms believers into God’s new creation, God’s new humanity incorporated into the crucified and now resurrected and transformed body of Christ. Therefore, the Spirit crafts a kingly people, a people capable of reigning over creation in the way that the Father and the Son reign. The Spirit of life also sets people free from bondage to sin, and allows them to live as forgiven and forgiving people. In this way the Spirit crafts a priestly people. As the Spirit of light, the Spirit reveals truth and provides guidance. The Spirit helps people to discern the times in which they live, and allows people to speak truthfully in a world full of deceit, lies, and manipulation. Therefore, the Spirit crafts a prophetic people. As the Spirit of comfort, the Spirit journeys intimately with all those who suffer and, in this way, the Spirit crafts a loving people. This is a people defined by unity. They are united with both the body of Christ that exists within the Church and the body of Christ that exists among those who are crucified today. The Spirit of comfort crafts a resurrection-people who possess, for the first time, the power to follow Jesus’ road to the cross and Jesus’ descent into hell. In sum, the missional task of the Spirit is to transform people of the old age into people of the new age, and to lead that people in the ongoing process of transformation – both of themselves and of the world around them.
The outpouring of the eschatological Spirit into the people of God introduces a further novum into the missio Dei that points to a consummation of creation that is greater than Edenic existence. At this point of the story, God has become so intimately with his people that he is actually dwells within his people, and causes his people to dwell within himself. Stated in trinitarian terms the Spirit indwells believers as they are incorporated into the body of Christ and therefore confirmed to the image of the Father. Whereas, in the beginning, humanity receives the breath of life and reflects the image of God, now, within the overlap of the ages, humanity is actually being incorporated into the inner trinitarian fellowship of the Father, Son and Spirit.
At this point we have completed our sketch of the major movements of the biblical narrative up until the present time. However, there is one final movement –- that of consummation and the new creation of all things, but we shall leave reflections upon that movement until the conclusion of this paper. Therefore, before continuing to discuss how Christians today are to live within this story and embody these movements it is necessary to reflect critically upon this model and then summarize the conclusions we have drawn from the biblical narrative about the missio Dei.
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Sources:
Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline.
Richard Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament.

2. God's Story: The Missio Dei (cont.)
Movement 3. Out of Exile: the Mission of the Son (commissioned by the Father, empowered by the Spirit)
But the Word, through which all things were made, is himself made flesh in the person of Jesus, and that changes everything. Into a world where darkness and death seem be winning a continual victory the light is born in order to bring life to all. This is the climactic movement of the story: the movement out of exile, accomplished by Jesus, the Son of God, Israel’s Messiah, the new prototype of humanity.
The story of Jesus reveals how God is able to remain faithful to all aspects of his covenant –with creation and humanity, with Abraham and Sarah – while also working through his covenant partners. Jesus fulfills both the vocation of Israel, and the vocation of Adam and Eve. He brings blessings to all people (as Israel should have done) and he reveals the true nature of humanity (as Adam and Eve should have done). This is why Jesus so often refers to himself as the “Son of Man.” The “Son of Man” was a title used in Jewish apocalyptic literature (like Daniel 7) to refer to the people of God, who were God’s true humanity, over against the pagan nations who are represented as ferocious beasts because they have lost track of their true humanity identity. This is also why, Mary mistakes Jesus for the gardener when Jesus first appears to here in the garden by the empty tomb. Mary mistakes Jesus for the gardener because he now appears as the one who truly fulfills the mandate of Adam and Eve – to care for the garden of creation. Thus, as Moltmann suggests, the eternal Son became human, not just to deal with sin, but to fulfill creation. Jesus, therefore, fulfills both the role of God’s faithful covenant partner, and the role of God being faithful to his covenant! Jesus is both the Son of Man and the Son of God. As Israel’s Messiah, as the faithful representative of Israel, and as the new and true prototype of humanity, Jesus is the true imago Dei. The Father is revealed in the Son, and, once again, we know God as Immanuel – God-With-Us.
Because he is bringing exile to an end, Jesus comes proclaiming the forgiveness of sin, healing the sick, and celebrating with even the most socially despised people – the tax-collectors and the prostitutes (those who were traitors to the cause of freedom and justice, and those who were morally degenerate). Exile, the consequence of sin, was being brought to an end as sin was being forgiven, and, concomitantly, the fracturing of humanity was being healed as the unclean and marginalized were restored to full fellowship with others. God was returning to be with his people and – wonder of wonders – his presence did not bring disastrous floods or damning judgments. His presence brought reconciliation, light, and life.
In Jesus we have the revelation of God with us, not bringing a judgment of hard and fast justice that destroys creation, but bringing a judgment of grace that makes all things new. This is so because Jesus comes, in humility, to serve and to suffer. Building on the hints of divine humiliation found in the movement of creation and developed in the movement of exile, the Son also travels a road of humiliation. The humiliation of God comes to a climax in the life, crucifixion, death, and burial of Jesus. Jesus overcomes exile by journeying to the depths of exile with those who are trapped in exile. He brings God to the godforsaken by becoming one of the godforsaken. Jesus so closely identifies himself with those who are in exile, that he experiences ultimate, hopeless, entire alienation from God. Indeed, the “torment in the torments” of Jesus’ death on the cross was his abandonment by God.
Yet, in his humiliation and his humility, Jesus goes silently as a lamb to the slaughter. Thus, the Jewish leaders, who should be leading Israel as a light to the world, condemn and hand over the one who is the true light of the world because he is thought to be a blasphemer; the pagan rules, who actually owe all their authority to God, crucify the one who is the true Lord of the world because he is thought to be a rebel; but most painfully of all, the Father, who has loved the Son more than all others and who has communed in unheard of intimacy with the Son, abandons him so that he can be handed over and killed.
Thus, exile climaxes in the exile of Jesus on the cross, and in the grave. As von Balthasar argues, the death of Jesus, and his descent into hell, complete his solidarity with all those who suffered the hell of death and godforsakenness. Yet it is this “solidarity until the end” that becomes that which brings exile to its shocking conclusion. Those who have been “doomed” by God, even those who have wanted to exist in this state, now discover God with them even in the midst of this experience. Moltmann sums it up well:
through his forsakenness Jesus brought God to the Godforsaken. The Father did not spare his own Son but ‘gave him up for us all’ (Rom 8.31ff), in order through him to be the Father of all the forsaken, the God of the godless and the refuge of those without hope.
Jesus refused to cease suffering, he bore sin and death, and by carrying it, he carried it away. It is the mission of the Son to move into exile. The missio of the Son is to be become godforsaken with the godforsaken and thus put an end to exile and godforsakenness.
This, too, is a subversive action, and the theme of the subversion of all the other powers that was already present in the creation and exile movements surfaces once again. Not only does Jesus overcome sin and the fracturing of the world, he also overcomes socio-political structures of sin and death. Indeed, the whole story of Jesus (and of God) is a gospel story, a story of subversive good news. Of course, in order to understand why good news is also subversive one must understand how the term gospel fits into the local context of Second Temple Judaism and the broader context of the Roman Empire in the first-century. The word “gospel” had two basic meanings then: to the Jew it meant the good news of Israel’s return from exile and the return of God to Zion; to the Greek it meant the good news of the victory, birth, or accession of an emperor. In the Second Testament the term “gospel” incorporates both of these meanings. Therefore, the gospel is not simply a description of how people get saved, it is the narrative proclamation that, stated most compactly, proclaims that “Jesus, the crucified and risen Messiah, is Lord” and that the God of Israel is the one true God over against all false gods and their followers.
The Son is able to become the new prototype of humanity because he fully suffers the consequences incurred by the actions of humanity’s old prototype. As James Dunn writes: “Jesus first shared in the actual destiny of the first Adam (death) before he achieved the intended goal for Adam (dominion over all things).” This is what is confirmed in the resurrection of Jesus. In the resurrection, God vindicates Jesus, in all of his humility, helplessness, and forsakenness. Jesus is revealed as the one true Lord of the cosmos. Not only in his resurrection body (which still bears the wounds of the cross), but also (and perhaps especially) in his broken, bleeding, and dying crucified body, Jesus is the true imago Dei and there is, therefore, a new covenant that takes place in and through Jesus.
Thus, by fulfilling his mission to bring about the end of exile (in all of its dimensions), the Son opens the door for the new creation of all things. The Son reveals the old age of godforsakenness, darkness and death is passing away, and the new age of intimacy with God, of light and of life, has already begun. The eschaton has begun. The exile of Israel is over, the exile of humanity is over, the exile of creation is over, and the exile of God is over! God has returned, God is once again God with us, and he is now in the process of making all things new and of becoming all in all.
Therefore, the mission of the Son is to fulfill the mission of Israel, embodying cruciform obedience, in order to bring light and life to the world. Furthermore, the mission of the Son is to fulfill the original Edenic mission of humanity, to rule over creation as the Father rules, and thereby reveal the Father to the world. Indeed, by fulfilling the mission of Israel and of humanity, the Son begins to fulfill the missio Dei which moves from creation to new creation, from goodness to greater goodness, from life to resurrection life. Of course, in order to properly fulfill all three of these aspects of his mission, the Son also becomes the Godforsaken One and is, therefore, vindicated as the Resurrected Lord. Finally, the mission of the Son is to prepare the way for the Spirit. The Son inaugurates the new age so that the eschatological Spirit can be poured out. Therefore, speaking in trinitarian terms, we can conclude that the Son, is both commissioned by the Father and the definitive revelation of the Father; and the Son is both empowered by the Spirit and prepares the way for the Spirit.
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Sources:
Hans Urs von Balthasar, Explorations in Theology: IV, and Mysterium Paschale.
Daniel M. Bell Jr., Liberation Theology After the End of History: the refusal to cease suffering.
James D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle.
Jurgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, God in Creation, The Trinity and the Kingdom, and The Crucified God.
N. T. Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, The Resurrection of the Son of God, Jesus and the Victory of God, The New Testament and the People of God, and Romans.