A bunch of blog time is being spent on leadership these last couple of days (see Darryl, Bob, Bill, Todd, Dave, Scot), and I thought I would add my unique, white-male voice… Actually this is from a talk I gave at Verge, LA last year.  It is a bit longish, but I believe gets to the heart of the issues.  If you would prefer the video, see below)

The Death of Leadership: Christ, Co-Leading, and Missional Living

In these postmodern times we are used to hearing of the death of the author, the death of the text, and even the death of the book (unless you have a Kindle).  Well, today, it is the death of leadership, for Christ our leader is the Crucified One, and what servant is greater that his master?  But many have not heard of this death.  It has been drowned out by the dearth of leadership books, even Christian leadership books, and I’m sure many of us, and myself included, have read them.  But while these leadership books, and conferences, and seminars tell of many helpful things, but they do not know of the Crucified Christ.  And this makes all the difference.  They lack a leadership that lives through the cross.  According to the pattern of the Crucified Christ I believe missional leadership must nurture new structures, new processes, and new people who will lead through living and dying in Christ.

Philippians Hymn

Few turn to the hymn of Philippians 2 as a leadership model, so hopefully we are on the verge of something indeed.  Here we find a pattern, or model of Christian leadership and community.  It is the narrative of Christ, of the incarnation, of the gospel.  And if leaders do not practice it, then the community will not follow it, and then the lost will not see it, and they will not get it even when they hear it.

Philippians 2:5-11

⁵ In your relationships with one another, have the same attitude of mind Christ Jesus had:

⁶ Who, although being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; ⁷ rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. ⁸ And being found in appearance as a human being, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross! ⁹ Therefore God exalted him to the highest placeand gave him the name that is above every name,¹⁰ that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,in heaven and on earth and under the earth,¹¹ and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

There is a three part pattern to this passage.  It is the pattern of although—did not—but. Although Christ has the very status, or being, of God, he did not take advantage of his status and use it selfishly.  But rather humbled himself in his incarnation (“being made in human likeness”) and crucifixion (“by becoming obedient to death–even death on a cross”).  And the result is that God works, God exalts, God saves in Christ.  This hymn to Christ reveals the pattern of our lives, the pattern by which we related with one another.  It is the pattern by which we learn the death of leadership.

Indeed, the apostle Paul who uses this hymn to exhort the Philippians to Christ-likeness.  But Paul did not leave them without an example, but rather understood and practiced his own apostolic ministry according to this same narrative pattern.  In 1 Corinthians 9 Paul speaks about the rights of an apostle to receive funds for their ministries.  But Paul did not exercise this right, but worked to pay his own way.  And he also claims that while he has the right of freedom in all things, he does not exercise this right selfishly, but rather became a slave of all for the sake of the gospel.  What does that sound like?  It sounds exactly like Christ in the Philippians Hymn.  And even within the very contentious issue of slavery Paul did not lay down the apostolic hammer on Philemon so that he would release Onesimus.  But instead he acted in love toward Philemon, seeking his consent on the matter.  This, then, is the death of leadership that Paul points us toward when he speaks of Christ, a cruciform leadership that lays down it rights and its status in love and becomes a servant to all.

At Life on the Vine

Because of this pattern in Christ I believe missional leadership must nurture new structures, new processes, and new people who will lead according to Christ’s example.  At Life on the Vine we try to live this out.

For us, leadership at the highest level is structured as a co-pastorate.  There is no ‘senior’ or ‘lead’ pastor where the buck finally stops, where the decisions are finally made, where final authority resides.  While our community was planted by one person, David Fitch, he very quickly brought me on as a co-pastor.  And then later we brought on a third co-pastor to balance out the giftings among us.  We did this in order to spread out the ministry, offer opportunities for younger leaders to grow, but most importantly, as a structured model of shared leadership.  As co-pastors we had to practice the pattern of although—did not—but.  Although we were called as pastors and therefore elevated by a certain authority, we did not, we could not practice unilateral power, but mutually submitted to one another as we lead the community.  This was embedded in our pastor structure because Christ-like leadership is not merely servant leadership.  It does not function on top but then not act like it.  Rather we have given up having a ‘lead’ anything at all by creating an alternative structure.

In addition to having a structure of co-leadership, we practice various processes of communal discernment that hand leadership to the entire community, or parts of the community.  For example, according to the same pattern, although all the pastors were in complete agreement regarding how we should move forward concern the issue of women in church leadership, and we had the authority of make a decision, we did not lead from position and privilege.  But instead we submitted to a year long process where different members of the community presented biblical perspectives on the issue, culminating in a 2-month long council to discern the issue.  In another case, an issue with someone on our shepherd board, the pastors were again in complete agreement in how to proceed, but the person involved was not receiving things particularly well.  So we brought the whole issue to our shepherd for their discernment, trusting that Christ would lead through this process and that all involved would both be formed into Christ-like character and that the issue would be resolved not through the imposition of a position, but through the constant relational work of the Spirit opened by practicing the death of leadership.

And while these types of processes are bolstered by a structure of co-leadership, it really comes down practicing the death of leadership on a personal level.  This is living without having to justify yourself, without having to constantly defend yourself to others.  It means not needing everyone to always understand you.  In the midst of arguments it means just sticking to the issues without getting personal or taking things personally.  It involves actively creating spaces for other to flourish while not receiving any credit and minimal appreciation.  It means giving over tasks and responsibilities that you really enjoy to someone else so they can grow.  It means submitting to others in the little things even when you have a sense they are wrong, and then only forcing issues when it is essential for the group to move forward.  In all these ways following Christ through the death of leadership entails overcoming personal insecurity and immaturity, so that one can rest in the work of Christ in the community rather than seeking to manage and control everything that is going on.

Now, you might be thinking that every Christian leader should exhibit these characteristics, the characteristics of the fruit of the Spirit.  Of course!  But it is much easier to hide immaturity and insecurity, to mask a lack of the Spirit’s work in your life in a hierarchical leadership structure which does not demand processes of communal discernment.  When someone knows exactly who is their superior and who is under them, then they know exactly how to get whatever “ego” fix they need, whether it is seeking approval or asserting authority, even while masking it as servant leadership, even while they excelling in various ministry results.  It is for these reasons that missional leadership, under the sign of the Cross, must nurture new structures, new processes, and new people who live, lead, and die, laying down their rights and status in love and becoming a servants to all.

Missional Leadership

So, then, how is the death of leadership also missional leadership?  First, the structure of co-leadership, the processes of communal discernment, and the practice of personal cruciformity are all ways of saying the same thing, namely, that this community is marked by the gospel, by Christ-likeness.  As I said before, if leaders do not it, then the community will not do it, and then the lost will not see it, and they will not get it even when they hear it.  Second, communities marked by the death of leadership will always be marked my brokenness growing into life.  When you lead this way it is impossible to put leaders on a pedestal, which opens the door for everyone to lead out of brokenness and into life.  When everyone is emptying themselves as Christ did, it has the strange effect of raising everyone up as they are deployed in creative expressions of the gospel.  Lastly, this is missional leadership, at least for us, because God moves in mysterious ways.  It is funny.  There are people in our congregation who literally say time and again to me, “I don’t know why I stay at Life on the Vine.  I don’t fit here, I’m not even sure that I like it hear, and I don’t like they way you do things.”  But it is those exact people whom God has used to bring others to Christ, and those people feel at home with us.  Isn’t that weird?  One man told me two years ago that he was discerning leaving our community.  But he had started a letter writing friendship with a man who was in prison for breaking into our sanctuary.  He eventually received Christ and was baptized on Easter Sunday.  There are at least two other stories I could share about people who really are upset with the leaders at Life on the Vine, but God is using them to bring people to Christ and then those people are finding a place among us.  I believe it is because the leaders at Life on the Vine have embraced a missional leadership of the cross, and out of that death the Father is exalting Christ and bringing others to life.

Conclusion

Some much more could be said, but my hope is that the next big thing the church is on the verge of will be the death of leadership as an expression of the gospel, as living in Christ-likeness, as a bearing the cross, not only personally, but structurally and procedurally.

This kind of leadership is certainly not from the top-down as in a hierarchy, nor is it merely from the bottom up, as some form of leaderless organization, nor is it a leading from the front as those who have gone before, as some missional books describe it.  But it is leading from below while running forward, as if one were trying to fly a kite when there is just not enough wind.  You are down on the ground, down below, yet moving forward, for the whole purpose of the church rising up on the breath of the Spirit, roaring high.  And people don’t watch the person holding the string, they watch the kite in its glory, rising to new life and love, and at the center of its frame it bears the sign of the cross.

—

My reading of Philippians is based on Micheal Gorman’s Inhabiting the Cruciform God.

Share

But is this a good way of talking about things? When mission grows up, does it become a church?

The problem with this is well considered by Hoedemaker’s summary of a missiologist from the last generation,

“Can a development of mission into church really be considered a maturing? Is it not, rather, a betrayal of the fundamental missionary meaning of “church” (the church happens as the Gospel of the kingdom is brought to the world)? “The Legacy of J.C. Hoekendijk (International Bulletin of Missionary Research, 19 no 4 O 1995, p 166-170)

Don’t many of us feel that way now, after the explosion of the missional church, after the critique of the inward focused church?  It’s the church really always already mission?

But it seems Hoekendijk, and others who follow him, overreact.  Not in their criticism, but in its result.

The criticism is right.  We ought not separate the church from mission, and mission doesn’t create a church entity, but rather the church is such as engaged in mission.

But the result of this theological emphasis tends to absolutize, or abstract, from the real, historical processes of, dare I say, actually planting a church.  While mission isn’t some great big arrow that points toward a church building (like the picture above), there is a necessary process of maturation and development.  It is this process, that while unfortunate, mission agencies hope to convey in describing a shift from a ‘mission’ to a ‘church’.

We must understand that while everything is mission, or that the church is missional, there still is the initial planting, the reaping, and the sending out to plant some more.  In the past the first part was considered missions and the latter parts a maturing church.  Does this mean a selling out to institutionalism?  Maybe.  Does it always mean this?  No.

It just means that some plant (a missionary, an evangelists, one gifted with apostolic fervor), and others reap (a shepherd, a prophet, a teacher).  All the gifts are used toward the maturing of the church for mission.  And at some point, a new church will begin to send out mature missionaries to plant somewhere else.  But to affirm this process is not to deny the missionary nature of the church.

Indeed, as Hoedemaker states concerning Hoekendijk,

there may be traces of an original evangelical spirituality in this suspicion, akin to the revivalistic mistrust of all ecclesial establishment.

I’m all for revival and pray for them myself, but I too worry of this too oft knee-jerk reaction against the establishment as a pietistic impulse.  And certainly, while John Wesley was saved by pietists, he also organized his movement and changed English-speaking ecclesial landscape.

Share

An unconference is a facilitated, participant-driven conference centered on a theme or purpose. The term “unconference” has been applied, or self-applied, to a wide range of gatherings that try to avoid one or more aspects of a conventional conference, such as high fees and sponsored presentations.~wikipedia

1) The unconference is becoming more common and more common: Anti-Cool Reflex. I think for many on the edges of the church, who for good reason engaged in the emerging church conversation or are interested in missional theology, we have created an anti-cool reflex, or dare I say, hipster reflex, that says once something starts catching on we must immediately distance ourselves from it.  Now that unconferences are catching on, many people just hit the cynical button and start poo poo-ing. So I’m calling this the Anti-Cool Reflex.

2) The unconference is connected to some ‘sponsor’: Anti-Sellout Reflex. Yes, note the scare quotes.  This I believe is a very selective knee-jerk reaction.  Just because an unconference is sponsored by something doesn’t mean it is selling out.  Sure the sponsor is hoping to gain something by sponsoring, but often they are also interested in helping, and maybe are themselves acting out of certain values or convictions.  I believe this is a very selective (self-righteous?) criticism because the money/marketing potential for a missional/emergent sponsor of an unconference is so minimal compared to the money/marketing info racing in/around/through all the technology that these critics are probably using (FB, Android/Google, Twitter, Apple, MS, etc…).  If we are so worried about being ripped off or controlled then logically we would need to unplug from most social networking and the internet. “But those things are essential carriers of my anti-sellout message!”  Yeah, exactly.  Case closed.  Can we please put the Anti-Sellout Reflex to bed.

3) The unconference takes so much organization: Anti-Institutional Reflex. Now, if you couldn’t tell, I have no time for the previous two reasons to be against the rise of unconferences.  But this one does have some merit.  There is certainly a link between business/organizational models and how one plans a conference.  And I’m all for have a different organizational model when it comes to being the church, and therefore you would think this would roll over to how one plans an unconference.  But having a different organizational model doesn’t mean not being organized.  Sometimes it is good to be anti-institutional, but that can’t be a general rule, and it certainly shouldn’t be a reflex that one throws around without first investigating.

The real question for me is, What are we for?

Well, moving from the abstract to the concrete, I would say the unconference I’m helping to plan (Missional Learning Commons) is attempting to be

1) for families.  Most church conferences are not geared toward having entire families participate.  Well, this is taking quite a bit of organization, but we felt the need to offer some form of childcare because we believe the missional church should engage families, not just men who typically leave their family to attend a conference. For this reason we have actually attached a fee (kryptonite for unconferences) to this year’s MLC. But the fee doesn’t go to speakers of rental fees, but toward offering childcare so that entire families can participate.  So if we are selling-out by charging a fee because we want families to come then we are guilt.  Of course I’d like to think it is us being innovative in sharing the cost of participants.

2) for places. We believe that place and embodiment are important, so when Northern Seminary offered use of their conference center we accepted.  Certainly Northern is hoping to associate their brand to the missional movement and maybe attract students, but they are accessibly located by several Chicago freeways, have local hotels, and other conveniences.

3) for hearing from ordinary people. I think the biggest benefit of the unconference is the typical use of local, engaged people rather than big names.  The unconferences I’ve been part of seeks just to hear what God is doing on the ground in and through ordinary communities.  The age of disconnect big names who ride in to inspire the masses are over.  Let’s learn from each other.

4) for relationship and networks. The MLC is also connected to Ecclesia Network because we believe in the formation of organized movements, of creating a web of local/regional/national relationships for the furthering Christ’s kingdom and the reformation of the church in North America.

Basically, if you are not for these thing, the please feel free not to come to the MLC or any other unconference.

But if you are for these things, and many others, we would love to see you on Oct. 29-30, and I would love to hear of your unconference too.

—

This post sponsored buy some caffeine (homemade double-shot), air, a desk, a comfy chair, electricity, Ben Sternke (donated the poster and MLC site), fb, twitter, google, wordpress, wikipedia, apple, Wadle and Silvy Show (radio) and other people and stuff.

Share

But I want to clear up one thing.  I’m not taking about guerrilla warfare against the more established church, or mega-churches or anything like that (although I think they perpetuate bad pastoral habits, or better, addictions).  But to think narrowly that way is just not helpful.  I’m thinking that our battle is within post-Christian, post-modern, consumer-theraputic-individualistic culture.  The warfare is in the terrain of our neighborhoods and families, our calendars and wallets.

So, to start this off, here are five thoughts.

Bi-vocational ministry is necessary:

1) not because missional churches are poor, but because they are rich. Some of the literature on bi-vocational ministry point to it being an option when churches are little, too poor for a full-time pastor.  In this scenario church finances are the determining factor.  Well, it know many missional churches that are small, and probably too poor for a full-time salary plus health insurance.  But the missional church is rich in resources, resources that are flowing outward into the neighborhoods and communities.  They are rich in leadership and talents that would go untapped if they was only one person (a man usually) who did everything and got paid for it.  My own community is actually big enough to support a full-time pastor, but we choose not to do that because we believe it would make us poorer as a community.  This is, then, is to use what the culture sees as a weakness (money, resources) as a strength, and therefore is a necessary attribute of missional guerrilla warfare.

2) not because missional churches have little work, but too much work. Sometimes you hear the complain from a bi-vocational pastor that there is so much work and too little time (oh, wait that was me!).   But we all know what the truth is.  There is always too much work.  No matter what.  But instead of allowing ourselves to believe (which doesn’t really happen), or worse, allowing our congregations to believe (which almost always happens) that one or several “full-time” people can basically cover the work of the kingdom, missional churches know that there is always way too much work for one (or even some), but that all are engaged in the mission of God’s kingdom.  Bi-vocationalism is an automatic safe-guard against thinking the work is manageable when really it is totally unmanageable outside of all entering the fields to bring in the harvest.  Therefore, missional churches use another perceived weakness (lack of impact or results by a visible few) as a strength because the mustard seed is growing.

3) not because we battle outside, but within ourselves. This one gets tricky, but follows from #2.  Too often people, organizations, nations, and yes, churches, come to think that the battle is outside, that all those in must conform to a certain image or idea, and then move outward and attack (this happens even for laudable causes).  Many churches have implicitly or explicitly adopted this organization/operational structure, and even for those churches that haven’t it is a constant temptation perpetuated by full-time ministry.  But we must always remember that the battle is within our churches, and within ever leader (I referred to it before as a power addiction).  I’m reminded of the lyrics from U2′s “peace on earth”: “And you become a monster / So the monster will not break you.”  Ministerial bi-vocationalism is the necessary spiritual discipline to ward off this temptation toward consolidation, and not just spiritual discipline, but relational, financial, and temporal discipline befitting those on the front lines (which are never front but always shifting) of the missional battle. In this sense you don’t fight fire with fire.  We must creatively resist.

4) because the culture is already fighting a guerrilla style war against us. Advertising, opinion polls, new television shows, iPhone apps, American Apparel, and on and on it goes.  They culture is an ever evolving parasite on others beliefs and practices, always moving toward how to make a dollar off you (see kinnon’s post regarding FB), or spin something a propoganda.  So it is necessary for missional churches to be just as nimble and creative, culturally creative even.  In this way it is necessary to fight fire with fire, guerrilla warfare again guerrilla warfare.

5) not because the missional church is against formal leadership, but because we seek to form proper leadership. I will not as much time on this because de-centralized leadership has been a common enough theme, especially in regard to actual guerrilla warfare, cell groups, and house churches.

So, those are five reasons off the top of my head that missional bi-vocational ministry is not a cute lifestyle decision, or something that we try for a little while but then abandon, or a missional accessory that so like an others don’t.   But I truly believe that if the kingdom is to fruitfully gain ground in this post-Christian context that we must adopted strategies for the long run.  Anything less will perpetuate the stagnation of the American church.

(p.s. I know I could qualify this a little and mention all those in larger churches who are legitimate following God’s call in a full-time ministry and such [many whom I know and love]…but I prefer to just let this start out more black and white without fading everything to gray too quickly).

Share

So often we forget one of these steps.  For some, the moment of blessing the world is so emphasized, of going to the poor and oppressed, of transforming, of advocating, that they neglect the preparation of the bread.  In the haste to bless the world, some feel the church is expendable, secondary, and often times positively a hinderance to God’s mission in the world.  “Why are you so focused on the church when God loves the world?” they often complain.  But this overemphasis often leads to burnout, self-righteousness, and the lack of a developed maturity in Christ.

For others, the moment of nurturing the church is emphasized, the moment of discipleship, of depth of wisdom and understanding, of community and spiritual formation.  In the excitement of nurturing the church it is mission that becomes secondary, an advance step of discipleship, or something that only those with the gift of evangelism do.  Or it takes the mentality that if we build it ‘they’ will come.  But this perspective often leads to stagnation and also keeps the full maturity of Christ from being manifested in us.

But the life of gathering, of baking, of contemplation leads to the life of scattering, of blessing, of action.  To neglect one is to ruin the other.  To bake bread and not share leads to its wasting and rotting.  But to bless the world with something other than the bread of life within us is not blessing at all.

“May the Holy Spirit fire take the individual kernels of our lives and bake us together into one loaf, that we might be the sweet fragrance of the gospel and a blessing to the world.”

Share

The mission of God has always been to pour out his mercy on all peoples, first to the Jews and then to the Gentiles.   This had always been the purpose of God’s promise to Abraham that through him “All nations will be blessed” (Gen. 22:18).  But this mission causes church conflict. In fact, you should expect and welcome conflict in your church.

Its true.  St. Paul says as much in Romans 15.  Verse 7 says that we should “welcome one another just as Christ welcomed you,” and the act of Christ welcoming us is the act of God’s mercy.  But how each person receives God’s mercy is based in exactly how it is they have been astranged from God.  For me, my pride and arrogance kept me far from God, but the humility of Christ finally overwhelmed me.  But for someone else living in fear, it might have been the love and power of Christ which expressed God’s mercy most potently.  Now, as I reflect and live in the the grace and mercy I’ve come to know, it is usually through a lense of pride because that is where I came from .  But for others it will be different.  Now extend this to entire cultures.

This is exactly what happened when Jews and Gentiles began worshipping together.  God’s mercy extended to the Gentiles and some Jews began wondering if they needed to be circumscribe and needed to follow the Jewish food laws, etc, etc (Read Acts 15 and Gal. 1 for more details, also Romans 14 and 1 Cor. 8 and 10).   God’s mission caused all sorts of church conflicts, the conflict between cultures, but also between individuals.

But often times we end up using God’s mercy against others, we use our faith history as a weapon against others who have experienced God’s mercy differently.  Some want to preach the gospel through social action, some through street preaching.  Some want to save the poor, others the environment.  Some see a besetting sin, others a disputable matter.

And these naturally cause conflicts.  But we must remember that God’s mercy is for mission, and the mercy we have received should help us to build up our neighbor (15:2) and our freedom should not become a stumbling block to a brother or sister (14:13).

Share

In our worship gathering the question is not if exposition happens, but where exactly it happens.  Someone new to our gathering, steeped in the traditions of expository preaching, commented to one of our co-pastors that while biblical exposition didn’t happen in the sermon (as classically understood), it instead happens throughout the entire service. I think this is absolutely correct.  Let me explain by walking us through last week’s worship gathering.

Our preaching text was Romans 8.1-8, 12-13, celebrating that for those in Christ there is therefore now no condemnation.  The rest of the lectionary was Isaiah 43.16-21, Psalm 126, and John 7.53 – 8.11 [the woman caught in adultery].

The Life on the Vine Liturgy (03/21/10):

• Before the service, at 9am, we have a teaching class which lays out the basic framework of the morning text to be preached.
• In the service, after the time of silence and invocation we sang the call to worship, Wake Up, (which we recently wrote based in the text of Roman 13), calling us to attend to the work of Christ.
• Then comes the Scripture readings, read from the four walls of the sanctuary symbolizing that we are being surrounded by the words of God, ending with a reading from the Gospel of John and how Christ did not condemn the woman caught in adultery. .
• Between the readings and the sermon is what we call the Liturgion (a litany and motion icon), which in this case was a guided meditation on the painting, “Christ and the Adulterous” by Jan Brueghel, focused on Christ’s non-condemning spirit.  The questions asked were: why is Jesus the lowest in the painting?  Who is at the center of the painting?  What is the significance of that?  Why is the crowd fading into darkness?  Notice that man who dropped the stone…notice that he is the second lowest.  What does his posture resemble?  Notice the shape of the woman’s hands.  What does all this tell us about Jesus?
  
• Only after all this comes the sermon (which for us is only one aspect of the dual apex of the service), which we conceive as a focused time of displaying the gospel of Christ and drawing everyone into the Kingdom of God.  In the sermon there of course will be information conveyed and reference made to grammar and genre.  But the true reference of exposition is always Christ himself and his saving work towards which all our preaching must speak.  This week’s sermon focused on living in the hope that while we are guilty, in Christ we are not condemned.
• After the sermon is a time of response through congregational prayer and two worship songs (Grace Flows Down, Wondrous Cross).
• Then comes the second apex of our service, the Eucharist, or Communion, or the Lord’s Table, which is itself a fully participatory exposition of the non-condemning hospitality of Christ, and a fully participatory congregational response in faith and hope.
• During this time of coming to the Table we celebrate the non-condemning love of Christ in three songs: You are My King, Kyrie Eleison (a song we wrote on Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension), and Let us Love and Sing and Wonder.
• Finally, in the Benediction, we are sent out as the non-condemned people of God, the Body of Christ, offered for the life of the world.

Of course, reading this pails compared to experiencing it.  But for us, at Life on the Vine, exposition happens throughout the entire service, not just in the sermon.  And it is done is a fully biblical, artistic, and immersive situation.  Instead of a 30 minute exposition of the grammar, structure, and meaning of Romans 8, we have a 75 minutes exposition engaging the heart, soul, mind, and spirit, rather than just the mind.

So let it not be said that this missional church doesn’t care about biblical exposition, but rather that we care so much that we make and entire service out of it!

So, then, where does biblical exposition happen for you in your context?  Is it similar or different?

Share

Abstract:
This paper explores the convergence of the Eucharistic gift and the theory of money.  It will argue that the gift of grace enacted in the Eucharist actualizes an alternative economy to that of the dominant exchange of commodities via money, otherwise known as capitalism.  This convergence will proceed between the realms of sacramental theology and political economy, represented by the French sacramental theologian Louis-Marie Chauvet and the Japanese philosopher Kojin Karatani.  Specifically, this convergence will move between Chauvet’s ‘sacramental reinterpretation of Christian existence’ centered on the symbolic exchange of the gift of grace, and Karatani’s critique of the trinity of the capitalist nation-state and its circulation of money.  It will show how Chauvet deploys the anthropological notion of the symbolic exchange to explicate the formation of Christian identity enacted in the Eucharistic.  Through the symbolic exchange of the Eucharistic participant are transformed into graced subjects through the circulation of the historical, sacramental, and ecclesial Body of Christ.  Set alongside this circulation of Christ, this paper will offer a reading of Karatani’s understanding of the four modes of exchange and the circulation of money, and how one might practice resistance to the capitalist nation-state.  In this way Karatani’s explication of the modes of exchange will enhance, by explicitly politicizing, Chauvet’s understanding of symbolic exchange, even while showing that Karatani’s project is untenable without the gracious and gratuitous circulation of Christ in the Eucharist, forming graced and gratuitous subjects.

Paper posted after the break.

Christ in Circulation: The Eucharistic Exchange and Money

Presented by Geoffrey Holsclaw

For Gift and Economy: Ethics, Hospitality and the Market, Wesleyan Philosophical Society, Azusa Pacific University, March 4, 2010

The practice of liturgy should never be separated from the life of production and consumption.  Liturgy draws from the ordinary and everyday products of life: water, bread, wine, table, book, and bodies.  But it also transforms these everyday objects by reading them another way, producing and circulating new objects and subjects in and for the world. The mutual reinforcement and interpenetration between liturgy and life suggest a reciprocity between liturgical theology and the human sciences, for while the liturgy cannot be reducible to any field outside itself, an understanding of the liturgy will necessarily traverse the human sciences, even, or especially, the field of economics.

This essay I will explore the convergence of the Eucharistic and the theory of money.  I will argue that the symbolic exchange enacted in the Eucharist through the Eucharistic Prayer opens avenues for an alternative economy by challenging the circulation of money.  This convergence will proceed between the realms of sacramental theology and political economy, represented by the French sacramental theologian Louis-Marie Chauvet and the Japanese philosopher Kojin Karatani.

Symbolic Exchange and Grace

To set the stage for the interaction between the Eucharist and the capitalist nation-state we must grasp the direction of Chauvet’s sacramental theology by understanding his use of symbolic exchange.   After the linguistic turn and the cultural situating of the subject, for Chauvet “the condition of being always on the way…is the fate of the human subject,” but this “is not an aimless wandering in a desert waste without landmark.”[i] The law of this ‘on the way’ of the subject is the symbolic order:

the system of connections between the different elements and levels of culture (economic, social, political, ideological—ethics, philosophy, religion…), a system forming a coherent whole that allows the social group and individuals to orient themselves in space, find their place in time, and in general situate themselves in the world in a significant way.[ii]

The concrete process of this law is through symbolic exchange, which exists beyond the order of value.  Relying on the work of Marcel Mauss and Jean Baudrillard, Chauvet outlines the different levels of value and exchange, governed by the over-arching distinction between value and non-value.  Beyond ‘use’, ‘exchange’, and ‘sign’ value, all of which occur within the logic of the marketplace in the form either of barter or exchange via money, is the non-value of symbolic exchange opens where what is being exchanged are not objects, but rather through the gift of yams, shells, spears, books, or a rose, “the true objects being exchanged are the subjects themselves” in a process of mutual recognition.[iii] Because every giving of a gift creates a relationship, it follows that every gift obligates the receiver to give a return-gift, minimally as a thank you, in order to complete the symbolic exchange, otherwise the relationship expressed would descend into that of the marketplace.[iv] Therefore, symbolic exchange, as the generation of subjects and the mediation of relationships, can be summarized as the process of gift—reception—return-gift.

For Chauvet, this symbolic exchange within the symbolic order is the proper arena for discussing God’s grace, and sacramental grace particularly, because from the beginning it situates grace within the realm of non-value.   The non-value of grace is seen in its graciousness and gratuitousness because grace can never become the “object of a calculation, of a price, of haggling” and because grace “can in no way be demanded” and “we can in no way justify” it.[v] Theologically, graciousness and gratuitousness belong not only to the initial gift, but also to the entire process of gift—reception—return-gift, such that “even the return-gift of our human response thus belongs to the theologically Christian concept of ‘grace.’”[vi] This return-gift is vital in constituting and verifying a true relationship between God and humanity.[vii]

Modes of Exchange and the Capitalist Nation-State.

Keeping Chauvet’s theological appropriation of symbolic exchange in mind, we turn to Kojin Karatani’s account of the market economy and its various irreducible, yet interrelated, modes of exchange.  Karatani distinguishes between different modes of exchange to show more fully how these various modes of exchanges have combined into the formidable trinity of the capitalist nation-state.

The first mode of exchange consists of the reciprocity of gift and return occurring within agrarian communities.  This mode is based on the principles of mutual aid and reciprocal exchange.  It is rooted in the functional exchange within families called love, and extended to the local community according to its own communal rules.[viii] This mode of exchange is very similar to, if not synonymous with, Chauvet’s symbolic exchange.[ix]

The second mode of exchange, rather than being within a single community, is between several communities, in the form of robbery and redistribution, or plunder and protection.  Although not the only example, a feudal lord’s taxation of local communities represents this type of exchange.  This is a mode of exchange because if a feudal lord hopes to keep plundering a community in the form of extortion/taxation, then he must protect the community from other plunderers.[x] Also, the feudal lord must restrict the amount of robbery to a level where the peasants can actually survive, and indeed needs to make provisions for the agrarian community so that it would survive.  These provisions come in the form of a redistribution of funds, in the guise of public works.  According to Karatani’s analysis, what initially occurred in the form of plundering transformed into a system of taxation, and the peasant’s compulsion to pay the feudal lord morphed into an obligation or duty in return for the protection and public works that the feudal lord provides.[xi] With time, what began as a lord’s extortion became a national tax, and his personal local armies and local bureaucracy eventually became state functions.  This mode of exchange is the basis for the emergence of the state.  The matrix of the modern nation-state emerges from a combing of these two types of exchanges.

The third mode of exchange is commodity exchange between communities via money, ultimately blossoming into capitalism.  This commodity exchange is “definitively different from the exchange of plunder/redistribution” and is irreducible to that of reciprocity and return even though it could not exist without either of them.[xii] The exchange of commodities via money occurs through mutual consent established by contract creating an asymmetrical relationship between commodities and money, giving privilege to money.  This asymmetry of money will be discussed below, but it is enough to say that money allowed for trade between communities outside of the type of exchange established by the plunder/redistribution by feudal lords, even if dependent on it.  It is dependent because if the contracts of mutual consent established between parties are to be valid, they must be enforced under threat of violence, a violence only held by feudal lord, and then later by the state.  Commodity exchange is also dependent on agrarian communities for the production of the land and the perpetuation of labor through biological reproduction, both of which occur outside the realm of value according to market exchanges.[xiii]

Between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, the emerging monarchies conspired with the merchants to topple local feudal lords, even while they sought to foster national identity both for the sake of consolidating power for the monarch and creating a homogeneous market for the merchants.  Since this point in history, each mode of exchange began mutually reinforcing the other, creating the formidable trinity of the capitalist nation-state, impervious to attack.  This makes it relatively impossible to undermine only one aspect of this unholy trinity of capital, nation, and state, for

when individual national economies are threatened by the global market (neoliberalism), they demand the protection (redistribution) of the state and/or bloc economy, at the same time as appealing to national cultural identity.  So it is that any counteraction to capital must also be one targeted against the state and nation.[xiv]

For Karatani, unless we truly understand how the exploitative trinity of the capitalist nation-state was formed and sustained, we will never truly know how it might be decomposed, a decomposition occurring at the site of the circulation of money rather than production of commodities.

Money, Circulation, Resistance

Karatani’s main concern regarding capitalism’s dominance through the nation-state is the asymmetrical relationship between money and commodities.  Commodities cannot be exchanged in capitalism without the mediation of money.  Adam Smith and others thought commodity exchange was similar to all other exchanges, moving from one commodity to another commodity through the mediation of money.  This process is represented as Commodity-Money-Commodity’, or C-M-C’.  But for Karatani, it is Karl Marx (a lesson which later Marxist overlook) who shows instead that the initiative of this movement is “seized and controlled by the possessor of money” such that in a capitalist economy money is always in search of more money; or rather, investors with money produce commodities in the hopes of receiving more money in return.[xv] This process is represented as Money-Commodity-Money’, or M-C-M’. The possessor of money has the advantage over the possessor of a commodity because those with a commodity need to sell their commodity in order to get money, while those with money can buy anything they want at anytime.  Likewise, those with labor-power commodity need to exchange their work for money in order to purchase the things they need to live, putting them in a lower position than the who buys their labor.[xvi] Therefore, while commodity exchange via money is freely entered into by mutual consent, it certainly is not equal, and quickly leads to distortion and exploitation such that the only true fraternity is between those who already have money or between those who do not have money, but never across the divide.

But this is not to say that capitalists hold all the cards in this game.  While those holding money carry an asymmetrical advantage over those without money, the return on an investment is not complete without the commodity being sold on the open market.  In other words, the value of the commodity is not realized unless it is sold, transformed back into money, that is, more money, M’.

Here lays the problem for the capitalist.  If a commodity is not sold on the market, then its value is not realized, and the flow of capital is arrested.[xvii] This is the problem of overproduction and the need for a consumer society.  In this situation, those workers who are exploited during the process of production return in a place of power as consumers in the process of circulation.[xviii] And if this is the case, then “resistance—the countermovement against the exploitation—must also take place…in the domain of the circulation process in which neither capital nor state can ever take control.”[xix] This domain consists of the boycott.  Rather than a general strike during production, which the state can break in favor of capital, or a revolution against the state, general boycotts of major capitalist products during circulation are “legal and nonviolent, at the same time as being most damaging to capital.”[xx]

If a general boycott functions within the circulation process to disrupt exploitation, Karatani also advocates consumer/worker co-ops that function outside of capitalist production through the use of an alternative means of exchange.  Borrowing from Michael Linton who developed the idea of “Local Exchange Trading Systems,” or LETS, Karatani explains how these would offer an alternative currency for the exchange of goods and services organized according to a sum zero count meant to ensure that the C-M-C’ process does not transform back into the M-C-M’ process.  In this way transactions are always equal, without the possibility of profit or interest occurring in circulation, ensuring that the only debt incurred is that between the actual commodities themselves, either objects or services.  This type of exchange, which Karatani names ‘associationism’, is similar to the “exchange of mutual aid in traditional communities and that of the capitalist commodity economy”, minus the psychological compulsion of traditional communities and the imposition of interest in capitalism.[xxi] This ‘associationism’ would consist of shared mutual aid without being closed within a traditional community, and it would be able to facilitate exchanges across time and space without requiring the asymmetrical relationships generated by money.[xxii]

Returning to Chauvet, in light of Karatani’s analysis, how might Chauvet’s utilization of symbolic exchange be supplemented?  How might the modes of exchange presented by Karatani, especially the commodity exchange via money, expand Chauvet’s conception of the symbolic exchange of grace, especially in its economic and political registers.  And more importantly, how might the symbolic exchange enacted in the Eucharist offer a proper basis for Karatani’s resistance to the capitalist nation-state.  Turning again to Chauvet and his textual analysis of the Eucharistic Prayer, I will outline how the Eucharist is not only offers a possible form of resistance to Capitalist exploitation, but is rather an actual witness to, and participation in, the divine economy of grace which restores and redeems the exploitative relationships between production and consumption.

Symbolic Exchange and the Eucharistic Prayer

In his analysis of the Eucharistic Prayer Chauvet notes how one principal theme is given in three narrative programs. This theme takes the form of the people (operating subjects) giving thanks (object) to God (receiving subject), expressed in the opening phrase and concluding doxology of the prayer.  However, it is not

natural for us to render thanks to God in a Christian manner.  To carry out the Eucharist requires that the Church first gain this competence.  It is precisely the text that allows the ecclesial subject to gain this competence. This text thus makes the assembly follow an itinerary which, by means of certain “transformations,” has for its goal the assembly’s conversion: it is not God but we ourselves who are changed by the Eucharistic prayers.[xxiii]

Because of this, the principal theme in which the participants give thanks and glory to God is supplemented by three narrative programs weaving together the historical, sacramental, and ecclesial body of Christ, rendering the participants competent to give praise to God.  The first narrative program (NP) begins with the initial thanksgiving and culminates in the Sanctus.  This thanksgiving narrates the Father’s gift in the gift of the Son in his historical body.

The second narrative program, in the form of a petition, consists of the epiclesis, the words of institution and anamnesis.  This petition “entreats the Father to send the Spirit of sanctification to transform the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ.”[xxiv] In the words of institution it is Christ himself who offers his sacramental body to us, and the anamnesis declares the accomplishment and offering of this sacramental body.

The last narrative program, in the form of a supplication, “begs the Father to send the Spirit over it [the Church] so that it may become what it has just received” such that the sacramental body of Christ might give rise to the ecclesial body of Christ.[xxv] Having received the sacramental body of Christ the church asks that it might indeed be the ecclesial body of Christ.

Through these three narrative programs it is noted both that it is God who creates in the assembly the capacity to give thanks and glory to him, and that this is done through the successive gift of the body of Christ to the people of God in historical, sacramental, and ecclesial form.  These narrative programs outline the basic structure of the circulation of Christ, mediated through the sacrament, within the church.  In the Eucharistic Prayer, and by extension, the Eucharist itself, God gives the gift of grace in Christ, enables the assembly to receive the gift by the Holy Spirit, and therein the assembly is begins to live in Christ such that they can offer the return-gift of love to each other, and therefore God.

In Chauvet’s summary of his analysis of the Eucharistic exchange the convergence between Chauvet and Karatani becomes clear:

“The ‘object’ placed into circulation in the exchange is Christ himself and that he comes to us in his threefold body, through the Spirit: he is the gratuitous gift announced in the Scriptures [historical body]… he is the object sacramentally received in the Church’s “giving thanks,” the entire liturgy of Christians [sacramental body]; he is the object entrusted to the ethical responsibility of believers—by the “spiritual sacrifice” of their agape, he raises up a body for himself within humanity [the ecclesial body].  This “object” does not change the structure of the game itself.  But…it demands another reading of this structure, and this changes everything…”[xxvi]

The structure of this game, however, is not only on the anthropological level of the symbolic exchange as Chauvet explains it, but also the economic level of exchanging commodities via money as Karatani explains it.  In this light, the circulation of the Christ ‘object’ demands another reading in relation to money and capitalism, which in return will offer another reading of money and capitalism itself.

Christ in Circulation

In this last section, I will note three ways in which the Trinitarian gift of grace within the Eucharist presents another reading of Karatani’s resistance to the trinity of the capitalist nation-state, offering seeds of an alternative economy.  Because of the limits of space these will be merely outlined.

The first concerns Karatani’s constitution of the worker/consumer.   Objectively Karatani argues for the worker/consumer to enter creative boycotts, but he never makes the case subjectively or personally why a worker/consumer would even desire to take up the burden of resistance rather than simply minimizing her own exploitation by passing it off down the chain of workers globally (from advanced to developing nations).  The reason for this problem is that, for Karatani, the moments of being a worker and then being a consumer are separated in time and space constituting a rather large gap to overcome in the minds and imaginations of these workers/consumers.  Yet in the Eucharistic exchange of grace, the very moments of being a consumer (reception) is marked within the moment of being a worker (offering).  Because the moments of worker/consumer are united in the Eucharist, living-in-grace means engaging in each act as a consumer with an eye toward its correlative action toward the workers of that commodity, no matter how far removed temporally or spatially.  This living-in-grace with each other, before God, would refuse the benefit of displaced exploitation (veiled by the supposedly neutral exchange of money), opting to spend more to ensure the transparency of production, knowing that each purchase is either a verification or invalidation of grace as return-gift to God.

The second way the Eucharist presents another reading of Karatani concerns the circulation of money within capitalism.  Just as the Eucharist unites the moments of the worker/consumer, the Eucharistic exchange also unites the production and circulation processes as God the Father and Holy Spirit put Christ into circulation as the historical ‘object’, the sacramental ‘object’, and the ecclesial ‘object,’ given for the life of the world.  In putting Christ into circulation the Father institutes an alternative economy where production and consumption are identical.  Here the object circulated (the body of Christ) is not exhausted but multiplied in consumption, and the object produced (the church) is not sold on the market but given away. This circulation functions according to the logic of abundance rather than scarcity, encouraging cooperation rather than exploitation at the level of production, and sustainability rather than profitability at the level of circulation.[xxvii] In each individual or corporate action as the body of Christ, the church ought not only to arrest the circulation of money through non-exploitative purchasing as a resistance to the capitalist nation-state, but as a continuation and fulfillment of its very identity as the body of Christ circulating in the world.

Lastly, turning from Karatani’s analysis of resistance centering on consumption and circulation, the final offering of another reading concerns Karatani’s concrete proposals.  As mentioned above, along with disrupting the normal flow of capital through a general boycott which directs money toward less damaging sectors and agents, Karatani advocates (1) creating an alternative currency which would not create interest and (2) creating producer/consumer cooperatives where the workers have full ownership of the means of production and transparent relationships with the consumers.  Both of these options seek to create an alternative space for non-exploitative production and consumption beyond the constraints of the capitalist nations-state.  From this perspective, it is again clear that the church, as constituted by Christ in its reception of Christ, is already governed by an alternative currency beyond currency propelled by the “continuing debt to love one another” (Rom. 13:8) which is perpetual living-in-grace.  Being governed by the debt of love, which is repaid in the currency of actions (and therefore assimilates all possible currencies), opens a space for halting the circulation of credit and debt created by money.  Concurrently, the church is the proto-type of a consumer qua producer co-op where the ‘object’ of Christ is consumed sacramentally and produced ecclesially so that Christ might also be produced/consumed ethically in the world.  Therefore, in the gift—reception—return-gift circuit of the symbolic exchange, the return-gift of ethics as the verification of grace in us joins together the separated poles of producer and consumer creating not only an optimal space from which to resist the capitalist nation-state, but indeed, the very in-breaking of the Kingdom of God.[xxviii]

In these three ways the circulation of Christ closely mirrors the reciprocity of gift and return in agrarian societies, but functions trans-nationally and without coercion (just as Karatani’s association would).  Indeed, living in Christ, for Paul, as the continuing debt of love, overcomes the bloodlines of traditional communities (the family of Abraham extends beyond the Jews: Gal. 3: 26-29; Rom. 9:7-8), as well as moves beyond statist taxation and capitalist asymmetry (via the Gentile collection for the Jerusalem poor: 1 Cor. 16: 1-4; Rom. 15:16, 26-27).  In these and other ways agape “is accomplished as an infinite exchange between peoples,”[xxix] because we have already been given the “possibility to love because we are given the true shape of love…within the series of Christ’s continuous and coherent actions, and in the series of exchanges between him and his followers.”[xxx] This obligation to love (as the circulation of Christ) resists the obligation of profit (within the circulation of money).  This agapic obligation functions on the consumer side of the circulation of money, fulfilling Karatani’s condition for the possibility of resisting the capitalist nation-state, but also replaces the object of circulation (money), not merely with a sum-zero currency as in LETS, but a currency of infinite abundance in Christ, which finally unites the worker/consumer positions in a Eucharistic subjectivity which materially discerns and enacts alternative valuations.[xxxi] With these unities the Trinitarian circulation of Christ unties the knot of the trinitarian capitalist nation-state woven by the circulation of money.

[ii] Ibid., 84.

[iii] Ibid., 106.

[iv] Ibid., 102.

[v] Ibid., 108.

[vi] Ibid., 109.

[vii] For some, the insertion of grace here, where a transcendent God guarantees the gift, constitutes ideology at its highest.  But this need not be the case because Chauvet understands grace and gift as “dispossession,” fitting easily within Slavoj Žižek’s Christian-atheist critique of ideology on an immanent level (because they are both drawing from the same Lacanian source).  Of course, John Milbank has argued in the other direction in “Can a Gift be Given? Prolegomena to a Future Trinitarian Metaphysics,” Modern Theology 11:1 (1995), 119-161.

[viii] Kojin Karatani, Transcritique: On Kant and Marx, trans by Sabu Kohso (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), 202.

[ix] Ibid., 12.  Karatani here sides more with Pierre Bourdieu’s suspicion of gift exchange as implicitly coercive. See Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Polity, 1992), pp. 98-111.

[x] Karatani, Transcritique, 13.

[xi] Ibid., 202.

[xii] Karatani, Transcritique, 13. For a similar argument see Goodchild, Theology of Money, 92-95.

[xiii] Ibid., 204.

[xiv] Ibid., 281.

[xv] Ibid., 208.

[xvi] Ibid., 201. Also Goodchild, Theology of Money, 94.  For an elaboration of this see Hutchinson, Mellor and Olsen’s discussion of the forced transition from self-provisioning on common lands without the mediation of money to the situation where one can only receive the necessities of life through money gained by selling one’s labor commodity (The Politics of Money: Towards Sustainability and Economic Democracy [Sterling, VA: Pluto Press, 2002], chapter 4, “Capitalism—The Elimination of Alternatives”).

[xvii] Ibid., 9-10, 154-156, 207-208.

[xviii] Ibid., 288.

[xix] Ibid., 296.

[xx] Ibid., 206.

[xxi] Ibid., 299.  It is exactly here that Karatani would disagree with the extension of the reciprocity of gift and return of agrarian societies to our society made by Marcel Mauss (The Gift, trans. W.D. Halls [London: Routledge, 1990], 65-83).  For Karatani, Mauss’ social democracy stems from the failure to distinguish the three modes of exchange.

[xxii] Karatani, Transcritique, 276.

[xxiii] Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 269 (emphasis in original).

[xxiv] Ibid., 270 (emphasis in original).

[xxv] Ibid., 271.

[xxvi] Ibid., 289 (emphasis added).

[xxvii] See Tanner, Economy of Grace, 105-139.

[xxviii] For an application of Chauvet to the practices of giving thanks, returning gifts, and consecrating property within capitalism see Beiler and Schottroff’s The Eucharist: Bodies, Bread, and Resurrection (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2007), 91-128.

[xxix] Milbank, “Can a Gift be Given?” 149.

[xxx] Ibid., 150 (emphasis in original).

[xxxi] For the helpfulness of Goodchild’s suggestion of creating alternative institutions of valuation to counter the valuations of money, and therefore regulate sources of credit beyond mere profitability (Theology of Money, 244-258), he structurally excludes the moment of subjectivity (36-45) and therefore creates an impossible demand.  Who will create and direct such institutions?

Share

It seemed that this group of people actually still loved the church even though we had all been wounded by the people in it; this group of people still worshiped though we have all been manipulated by music and technique; this group of people still preached even though we had all been merely talked at; this group still prayed even though we’ve all felt the abandoned silence; this group still sought the Spirit even though we have all been burned by those with a ‘word’.  And I could go on.

But for the most part, from what I can tell so far, the people in Ecclesia have not adjusted to what they lack or lost, but are still striving for what they hope.  Certainly we hope for what we lack, but when the lacking dominates, hope is always tinged by cynicism and ironic distance.  At some level with cynicism you begin to sneer at actual belief and practice.  Here’s an example.  Once, at another emerging/missional conference, a woman was asked (on the spot I believe) to lead a concluding prayer-slash-prayer for a meal.  She stood up and stumbled through the Aaronic blessing (equal parts uncertain of herself and how it might be received).  I felt bad for her, but more for the group because she was evidently effected by the pressure of the group and by not knowing whether people actually still prayed in this group.  The conference was so busy deconstructing everything that a cynicism toward actual belief was creeping in.  When I saw that I thought to myself, “I’m done with this.  If people can’t still pray without embarrassment then what is the point.”

But gladly, I didn’t get a whiff of that at Ecclesia, and it’s not like a fair share of the people there didn’t have reason to be cynical.  Because of all this I’m very exited for the future of Ecclesia Network, and look forward to being a part of it for a long time to come.

Share

The 9 wounds of Christ to which this order is devoted are the wound on Christ’s back, the two nail holes in Christ’s feet, the two in Christ’s hands, the wound from the crown of thorns, Christ’s pierced sides, the wound of a broken heart, and a ninth secret wound, known only to those in the order.

A high ranking official in this secret order leaked this information because she (yes, she!) feels the message has not be received properly.  In the hope of overcoming the wound of church division by devoting themselves exclusively to the 9 Wounds of Christ, this order actually desire to connect with the emerging, missional, liberal, and ecumenical dialogues so that all might experience the 9 Wounds of Christ from themselves, because as we know, “by his wounds we are healed.”

___

But in all seriousness, the church has been divided enough.  Let us remember the broken body of Christ, torn apart again at each Eucharist, so that we might be united.  As Thomas à Kempis says, “If you can not soar up as high as Christ sitting on his throne, behold him hanging on his cross.  Rest in Christ’s Passion and live willingly in his wounds.”  And as the old poem, Anima Christi, says,

Passion of Christ, strengthen me.
O Good Jesus, hear me.
Within Thy wounds hide me.

(The woodcut print at the top of the post is by Sigmund Grimm, Augsburg, Germany, 1520.)

Share