The Liturgy after the Liturgy

For a while we've been talking about the two-fold vitality of the communion meal for us (when we use the word vital, we mean both senses i.e. essential  and life-giving)  - vital in drawing and binding us a communion/community before and with God/each other (a process in which we are adopted into a God who is community) and vital in drawing and binding us into mission (a process in which we are adopted into a God who is incarnate and dynamic).  This is something which has arisen for us from our experience as a community rather than some applied theos-knowledge... it is not a strategy we have adopted but a reality we have experienced.  These experiences have moved me to fall in love with the Trinity in a new way, a way which now shapes my glimpses of God and my instinct for Church... the mutuality and the mystery, the love and the living, the forgiveness and the fruitfulness, the compassion and the connections... (this is one of the things I loved about "the Shack", the way God is most glimpse-able in relationship, the way the focus of each person of God wants to direct the eye to the wonder of the other persons etc. and what makes me uncomfortable when we sing things like "It's all about you Jesus")  The communion draws our eye to God incarnate and sacramental, to a sent God and a sacrificial God (was it any harder for the Son to be separated from the Parent than it was for the Parent to be separated from the Son?) A God who creates in community, who redeems in community and who sustains in community - source, word and breath...  I guess then that it is no surprise that I find myself deepest in God when I am in community, when I find myself loving others, forgiving others, seeing God in others, giving myself in surrender to others and significantly (and I guess mystically) breaking bread with others [we are one body because we all share in one bread].  Recently reading Bevans and Schroeder's "Constants in Context" I encountered the Orthodox idea of "The Liturgy after the Liturgy".  Most of us no doubt are familiar with the definition of "Liturgy" as "the works of the people", Bevans and Schroeder reference Orthodox Theologians Stamoolis and Ion Bria when they say,

Liturgy (The Eucharist) is always the entrance into the presence of the triune God and always ends with the community being sent forth in God's name to transform the world in God's image... Mission is concieved, in other words, as the "the liturgy after the liturgy," the natural consequence of entering into the divine presence in worship.

Bria (http://www.rondtb.msk.ru/info/en/Bria_en.htm) writes of "the Liturgy after the liturgy" as having four aspects,

1. An ongoing re-affirming of the true Christian identity, fulness and integrity which have to be constantly renewed by the eucharistic communion.

2. To enlarge the space for witness by creating a new Christian milieu, each in his own environment: family, society, office, factory, etc., is not a simple matter of converting the non-Christians in the vicinity of the parishes, but also a concern for finding room where the Christians live and work and where they can publicly exercise their witness and worship.

3. The liturgical life has to nourish the Christian life not only in its private sphere, but also in its public and political realm.  Therefore, the installation in history of a visible Christian fellowship which overcomes human barriers against justice, freedom and unity is a part of that liturgy after the Liturgy.

4. Liturgy means public and collective action and therefore there is a sense in which the Christian is a creator of community; this particular charisma has crucial importance today with the increasing lack of human fellowship in the society. The Christian has to be a continual builder of a true koinonia of love and peace even if he is politically marginal and lives in a hostile surrounding.

I am beginning to think that what these Orthodox Theologians are saying is what we have and are experiencing when we have found ourselves shaping our ecclesiology around the hospitality of the Trinity made manifest in the Communion/Eucharist.  Ian Mobsby introduced me to the phrase "Missio Trinitatis" yesterday.  We have been talking for some years about "Missio Dei" - the idea that Mission is an "attribute of God not an activity of the Church" i.e. God has a/is mission in which we are privileged to participate - but if we then say that if the nature of God is Mission and Community *AND* as Andrew Kirk says that that identity of Church is itself defined by it's participation in God's Mission ("If the Church ceases to be missionary it has not just failed one of it's tasks; it has ceased to being church"!) then how can we not see both our ecclesiology and our missiology as being rooted in community?  We can therefore say that Missio Dei *IS* Missio Trinitatis... God's mission is born and lives in community.  Or as Bevans and Schroeder say of Kirk,

[He] explains that God's mission is based on the very nature of God as such - a community of love and mutuality that overflows into the world in a presence that calls humanity to equality, mercy, mutuality, compassion and justice.

They continue,

The image of the church that resonates most closely with its trinitarian foundation would most likely be that of the people of God.  The church community, participating in God's life, is God's special people, a people living God's life of communion in a covenant of relation and love, a people convinced of it's fundamental equality through it's common baptism in the name of the triune God.  But as communion-in-mission, this image takes on a dynamic meaning as God's people on pilgrimage, God's people chosen not for themselves but for God's purposes, God;s people respectful of the Spirit's workings outside their own boundaries but committed to sharing the full implications of God's covenant with all humanity.

... the sacrament/liturgy of communion, we have found, draws us deeper in to community with each other, in to the God community, and in to community with/for all creation.  I can't help but smile when someone puts into words what we have found through our imperfect practise!

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[update] I found this document from the Reformed Eccumenical Council which says...

A significant shift in theology is the new emphasis on a consistent “trinitarianism” – some even call it a “trinitarian renaissance”: All theological reflection should flow from this basic doctrine on the very being of God. As three Persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – from all eternity, in his own being, God is relational. This has very important practical implications for our life before God, with one another and in the world. It has implications for the understanding of our participation in the mission of the triune God. To specifically and consistently understand Missio Dei as Missio Trinitatis Dei is to point to the nature of the very life of the triune God, life that is characterized by ecstasies, self-communication, mutuality, relationship, unity and love. The God whose mission is at stake is a God of love and of communion. Mission is the invitation to churches to enter into koinonia with the triune God, constantly inviting others to join and to share in this communion (koinonia). Paramount in the understanding of church and mission is thus the notion of relationality, mutuality, ever sharing in the koinonia with the triune God who once promised “I will be with you always,” and thus sharing a continued koinonia with one another (Venter 2004:5).

Technorati Tags: Christianity: Emerging Church: Mission: Missional: new-monasticism: Pilgrimage: Pioneer Ministry: safespace: Spirituality: theology

Comments

[Walking Wounded]

Wow ! Thats beautiful, maybe community in God is God in a roundabout way. I'm just learning that there is no heirachy within the wonder of the Trinity - all three are united in love as one, are one. On a wider note you are right mate about 'The Shack'. I hadn't realised that my own ideas of God were just that, my own ideas, and not the reality, just that most of the time as in the words of the song "Heaven seems so far away".

[Mark]

"there is no heirachy within the wonder of the Trinity - all three are united in love as one, are one"

indeed, I think that if we can glimpse the Trinity as neither subordinationalist (Heirarchy, with God the Father as the Chairman etc.) nor modalist (either one God doing three things, or three persons but each with their own independant task/action) but as a perichoretic community (mutual indwelling, co-participation, mutual self-surrender or as some put it "a dance") it seems to make so much more sense of the human condition, of family and of community. (It is a difficult concept for modernity which puts so much store in individualism and self-sufficiency, a culture which has made weakness a problem.) Then God's very nature leads us into and models community for us... and is transformational not just for individuals nor simply a future hope of escape but for culture right now.

[Mark]

Oh and thanks :)