[I have been working on a rather lengthy paper and I will be posting it, as a series, over the next little while. I find the topic intriguing, and hope that others do as well.]
Becoming the Father through a Spirit-Empowered Cruciformity: Prolegomena to a Narrative Spirituality of Mission
Abstract
Premised upon the resurrection of Jesus and the biblical story of the missio Dei (which moves from the Father’s mission of creation and covenant, to the godforsakenness of exile, to the Son’s mission of ending exile and establishing a new covenant, to the Spirit’s mission of new creation, to the trinity’s mission of perichoresis and theosis), the mission of the Church’s members, as parts of the body of Christ possessing the eschatological Spirit, is to become subversive gospel-bearers living cruciform lives directed towards places of godforsakenness, so that they can not only become agents of God’s new creation, revealing the Father, but also, through the community of faith, reveal the trinitarian fullness of God.
1. Introduction
Christian Missiology as Biblical Theology and as Spirituality
Given the ways in which the church in the West has largely capitulated to mainstream cultural influences, and given the fracturing and compartmentalization of life that occurred, and continues to occur, with the rise of modernity’s secularity and postmodernity’s neo-paganism, it should come as little surprise to discover that the various disciplines of Christian study have also become deeply fractured. Today it is rare to discover a systematic theologian, who is also a committed missiologist, or a missiologist, who is a committed biblical scholar, or a biblical scholar who is a systematic theologian, or a person, who rigorously combines all three of those disciplines. Each one of these disciplines –- systematic theology, biblical studies, and missiology –- spirals into an increasingly specific, introspective solitude, and it is increasingly difficult to grasp even the basics of all three of these fields and hold them together in a stimulating and coherent manner. Indeed, within the halls of Christian higher education one can either pursue a degree in systematic theology, or biblical studies, or missiology – and each of these degrees come with their own separate chairs and faculty. Even those who desire to unite these disciplines will encounter a great deal of resistance in their efforts. Theologians, biblical scholars, and missiologists are playing increasingly divergent language games, and, despite their best intentions, they find that they have less and less to say to one another –- in a large part because the language of one is increasingly incomprehensible to the language of another.
However, such a fracturing is not only disastrous for each of these individual disciplines; it is also disastrous for Christianity as a whole. Christianity must reject the fracturing of life, and asserts that life, as a whole, belongs to God, is lived before God, and finds its unity in God. Therefore, any complete missiology, to be truly Christian, must also reflect a sustained engagement with both systematic theology and biblical studies. A Christian missiology will be an exercise in biblical theology. Unfortunately, what follows is not such a complete missiology. Rather, it is an attempt to sketch a missiology that is moving in that direction. By formulating a missiology through engagement with some significant theologians and biblical scholars, whose missional reflections have been largely neglected, this paper hopes to provide a challenging, provocative, and stimulating prolegomena to a complete missiology. In this regard I hope to highlight three scholars in particular: Jurgen Moltmann, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and N. T. (Tom) Wright. Engaging with these biblical and theological voices not only fills out our missiology, it also prevents missiologies from falling into two rather tempting, but erroneous mentalities. I am speaking hear of the hyper-pragmatism, and the closely related grand reductionism that can otherwise so easily overwhelm Christian missional efforts. Biblical and theological voices refuse to allow us to make the gospel too appealing or efficient, and they certainly deny us the right to presume that the gospel can be reduced to four “spiritual laws” or any such thing.
Furthermore, this paper does not only engage with particular scholars, it is also written from a place of missional engagement with the inner-city ghettos of Vancouver and Toronto. Indeed, all missiologies are written from within particular contexts and so a Christian missiology will also be a spirituality –- it will be a map to a particular way of following Jesus within a particular time and place. Therefore, all Christian missiologies will have contextual, experiential and contemplative elements. Indeed, there is no such thing as a purely objective, general missiology or theology. All theological endeavors always contain an element of subjectivity and are always shaped by the time and place in which they are written. For this reason there will always be an ongoing plurality of Christian missiologies rooted in various contexts. However, far from seeing this as a weakness in our theologizing, this must be seen as a part of bringing together the experiential and intellectual elements of life, elements that are wrongfully played against each other.
Yet, one must be quick to add that there are better and worse places to root a Christian missiology. Too often missiologists and theologians have been rooted in places of power, wealth, privilege, influence and compromise, and, in their attempts to formulate general principles of Christian faith and action from those places, they have often ended up condoning and engaging in decidedly unchristian activities (the ways in which Christian missionary efforts aided European colonialism is perhaps the best known, and most widely accepted, example of this). Therefore, although not being in a place completely free from corrupting influences, I believe that being rooted in a spirituality that emerges on the margins of society, actually provides a much better place for the development of a Christian missiology. Missional spiritualities that arise from the margins should be given a place of privilege within the Christian context – after all, Christ himself is rooted on the margins of society, and although God often rejects the prayers of the wealthy, he always remembers the poor. Consequently, I hope to write this prolegomena, first and foremost as a member of Vancouver’s downtown eastside, and only secondarily as a student at a Christian graduate school.

Because I have been carrying a rosary for some time now, and because of the liturgy I have developed to use around the rosary, I find myself praying the Lord's Prayer and praying through the Beatitudes at least once a day. A few thoughts came to my mind today while I was praying.
First of all, I was struck by how a people who pray the Lord's prayer should be incapable of singing any national anthem. This thought struck me while I was meditating upon the phrase, “deliver us from the evil one.” I prefer this translation because it is more concrete. It suggests that evil is not just an abstract force “out there somewhere,” but is something embodied — not that this means that certain people are pure evil, but this suggests that evil always has a concrete expression in actions or structures.
As I was praying I was trying to think about how the Lord's Prayer would sound if prayed by a liberation theologian today. This is an interesting exercise, by the way. Try praying the Lord's prayer in the language of a third-world liberation theologian, then try praying it as someone longing for liberation within your own country. Can't think of much to pray? Then maybe there's a problem.
Anyway, as I was praying in this manner, I was struck by the fact that for so many people in the world “the evil one” refers to Canada, the United States, Germany, Britain, and much of the Western world. Maybe people today are praying that God would free them from our nations. “Odd,” I thought. “How can I — as a person committed to the kingdom of God and as a person who has brothers and sisters defined by their citizenship in that kingdom and not by their citizenship in contemporary nation-states which have been created arbitrarily through violence — pray that God would deliver us (yes, that really means us and not just me) from evil, while simultaneously singing a song that commits me to aligning myself with, and supporting, evil?” Well, simply put, I can't. It really does come down to aligning ourselves with one or the other.
The national anthem is part of a liturgy that is an anti-liturgy to the Christian liturgy. We sing songs of worship to God so that we can be formed into the sort of people who are capable of developing habits that resist structures evil. Over against this form of Christian worship, the nation-state attempts to gather a people who will sing songs that support structures of evil. (Jord, if you happen to read this, I really hope you decided to continue to refuse to fly the flag at the Christian camp where you work. Gathering at a barren flagpole is a highly symbolic act of Christian commitment to the Lordship of Jesus. Gathering at a flagpole that flies the flag of any nation is an act that reveals capitulation to lords who attempt to be what only Jesus is.)
The second thought that I had while praying today is that the Beatitudes are beginning to make sense in a new way. I mean, if you really stop to think about it, praying the Beatitudes feels really strange (try it sometime, you'll see what I mean). When I pray the Beatitudes I first pray that I would be characterised by the trait described in the first half of the verse (i.e. that I would be poor in spirit, that I would mourn, etc.) and then I pray that I would receive the blessing promised in the second half of the verse (i.e. that I would have the kingdom of heaven, that I would be comforted, etc.). Of course, it should be noted that the Beatitudes should be prayed not only for oneself. One should pray that the Beatitudes become the identity markers of the people of God so that the world can be made new. Thus, my becoming shaped by the Beatitudes must fit into this larger narrative.
Anyway, praying some parts of the Beatitudes felt exceedingly odd. Lord, let me inherit the earth?! Lord, let me be persecuted for the sake of righteousness?! Yikes. Asking for the earth sounds horribly triumphalistic and vain; asking to be persecuted for the sake of righteousness sounds masochistic and, well, insane. However, I've been forcing myself not to leave anything out and it's been interesting how this has begun to impact my life. To begin with I'm realising a thing or two about the blessings God promises his people. There really is a power, a joy, a strength found in following Jesus. Yet I'm also beginning to realise how much ongoing suffering should be a part of the experience of God's people. Suddenly I'm finding myself able to persevere more easily, I'm finding myself not afraid to move into places of hurt, of stress, and of sorrow — going there just makes sense. Somehow through praying the Beatitudes I'm discovering a new-found strength in my daily life. Furthermore, I'm realising how much the two of these things go together. Those with the kingdom of heaven are those who suffer; those who inherit the earth are those who's experiences are like the prophets before us. The embrace of suffering prevents our embrace of God's blessings to turn into triumphalism or hubris, and the embrace of God's blessings prevents our embrace of suffering from turning into masochism or insanity.
What is also intriguing about all this is that it's not as though I've realised this and now I'm going to implement it. This reflection comes after prayer had already begun to change my life in these ways. This seems to add further weight to the thesis proposed by liberation theology that argues that theology is reflection upon ecclesial (and, therefore, prayer-ful) praxis.

I do not want to be “accepted” or “understood.” I want to be part of a community with the habits and practices that will make me do what I would otherwise not choose to do and then to learn to like what I have been forced to do.
~ Stanley Hauerwas, “Whose Church? Which Future? Whither the Anabaptist Vision?”
Not only should the Church be a community that practices the sort of discipline that Hauerwas describes, but this is the sort of discipline that should be present in family relationships, in friendships, and in any relationship involving any real commitment. Not that this is a movement away from loving others or anything like that. Nor is this any sort of act of condescension. Rather, this is simply recognising that it takes a community of discipline to create people who are made in the image of Christ. And sometimes the church functions as that community of discipline. And sometimes family members function that way. Really, if we have any sort of sense of true commitment in our relationships, there should be an element of this in every relationship that we are in.
Of course, it is ultimately the Spirit of God that creates new life and transforms us and so we should not use this quote from Hauerwas to support some sort of dictatorial or hyper-pragmatic regime. All that this quote is saying is that some sort of communal discipline is necessary for the formation of Christian virtues.

Mainstream Protestantism in America is dying. Actually I prefer to put the matter in more positive terms: God is killing Protestantism and perhaps Christianity in America and we deserve it.
~ Stanley Hauerwas, from a sermon preached on August 8, 1993.
Hauerwas definitely has a way of saying things that catch our attention. My question for you, dear readers, is this: Why is it more positive to think that God is killing Christianity than it is to think that Christianity is dying? Isn't the notion of God killing the American church more negative, tragic, and hopeless than the notion that the American church is simply dying? Despite his polemical nature, Hauerwas has chosen his words carefully here. Obviously he doesn't find this notion more negative, tragic, or hopeless. So why is that?
Naturally, I have my own opinions about all of this, but I am curious to hear what others may think about this quotation.