Building A Community Of Hope In A Despairing World, Part 2

Novelist Ayn Rand mesmerized a student audience at Yale University with her prickly ideas. Afterward a reporter from Time magazine asked her, "Miss Rand, what's wrong with the modern world?"

Without hesitation she replied "Never before has the world been so desperately asking for answers to crucial questions, and never before has the world been so frantically committed to the idea that no answers are possible."

She said this at the beginning of the eighties. What she said then was true, but it is even more descriptive of our world at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Some have called our days a "hinge period" in history. Call it what you will, only the Rip Van Winkles of the world do not know that we live in an age of despair, alienation, and confusion.

The despair we are experiencing in our epoch of history is not unique. Two-thousand years ago the apostle Paul identified despair as a basic attitude of the human condition:

"....remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. (Ephesians 2:12)

It is found in the warp and woof of all our remembered past. It has been there since our first father and mother ate the forbidden fruit, but the despair in our period of history is unique. Most other national periods of despair have occurred when everything was going wrong. but, we are experiencing an "unprecedented crisis of hope" in a era when many things are going right. We have advanced in technology and economic growth. We are seeing an unprecedented embrace of democracy. We have extended the life expectancy by twenty to thirty years. We have experienced the end of the cold war, and have advanced in many other ways the enlightenment

promised. But the more we get of what we want the less we like of what we get. "As every category of the global graph is pointing upward, the graph of human hope has plummeted and continues to do so in all sectors of the human stratification." (Russell Botman, "Hope as the Coming Reign of God" in Walter Bruggman, Hope for the World, p.70)

It is absolutely vital for the church to understand that despair is the great negating condition in this epoch of world history. Despair is the bad news in our world. It is the dominant cause of anxiety globally. Paul Tillich identified three

dominant forms of anxiety in human existence under the conditions of the Fall. "Fate and death" were dominant in the classical period; "guilt and condemnation" in the medieval period; and "meaningless and despair" in the modern era. While all forms of anxiety are present at any time, one type usually predominates an epoch. Tillich insisted that the predominant anxiety of our present age is the third type - despair and meaninglessness.

If the gospel is to be good news in the twenty-first century, if it is to be relevant, it must address this predominant concern of the human predicament, the issue of despair.

We are at the end of a three hundred year epoch called the enlightenment. We live in a "non-present" era in history. Everything is "post.' It is post-modern, post-critical, post-industrial, post-metaphysical, post-colonial, post-socialist, post-patriarchal, post-ideological, post-imperial, post-socialist, and post-confessional. Everything is "post" - we do not know what the present is, we only know what it is not. Our period in history is like the velvet covered beast of Revelation 17 of which it was said: "It once was, now is not, (this is the post-beast era) and will come out of the Abyss. " (17:8)

Our hope is that as we come out of this "post period" that new demons worse than modernity will not emerge from the abyss to fill the vacuum of the present. We want God's Kingdom to come and make all things "post" as his eternal Kingdom is established on this earth. But the general attitude of the post-modern mind doesn't have this hope of a coming Kingdom. Camus' "No Exit" better captures the post-modern mind set. Men and women feel captured in the rat maze with no way out.

It is interesting that four of the five Academy Award movies nominated for picture of the year in 2003 - Chicago, The Hours, Gangs of New York, and The Pianists - all dealt with hopelessness and despair. It is further interesting that the other nominee, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers heralded a small community, fighting against impossible odds, as the antidote to the world's hopelessness.

Is this "post" phenomenon a passing fad like hula-hoops and disco dancing, or is it going to be around for a while? I believe the latter is true. We have entered into an epoch in history that is fundamentally at variance with anything we have experienced to date. This "post" era comes from a growing conviction that the modern world, characterized by sleek lines and ornate colors, has run out of gas before crossing the finish line. No one knows, apart from faith, who - if anyone - will move into the winning lane.

The "post" syndrome has led to a society of despair. Alain Touraine graphically captures the characteristics of the post-modern First World:

"We live ... in a "self-producing," "programmed," and "fully administered" society, run by giant industrial corporations under the direction of teams of technocrats. It is a totalitarian society, but its totalitarianism is hardly recognized, for it comes across as benevolent. Its presuppositions and spin-offs include centralization, bureaucratization, ecological damage, manipulation and exploitation of human beings, relentless consumerism, and chronic unemployment (further aggravated, ironically, by the termination of the Cold War and the arms race!). It is a permissive society, without norms, models, and traditions, an "immediate" society, without past and often without future: people live utterly in the present and seek instant gratification (or, in many parts of the Third World, survival just for today: "We'll see about tomorrow if and when we get there"). At the same time, people in the West are inundated by a veritable deluge of information and entertainment, mainly via television, a circumstance that gives rise not only to shattering pluralism but also to widespread pollution of the mind. The side effects of all of this are mind-boggling. (As quoted by David Bosch in Believing in the Future, pp. 2-3)

David Bosch goes on to say:

"All of this and much more has for millions of people created a gap between vision and reality that, in turn, has precipitated a crisis in their world-view and self-understanding. This has not happened at the level of the individual only, but also in respect of entire communities. And when such a crisis involves the dominant visions of a particular society, as is the case today, the entire society is prone to massive breakdown. The very scaffolding on which people are standing is collapsing, for, as we read in Proverbs 29:18 (King James Version), "Where there is no vision, the people perish." (David Bosch, Believing in the Future, p.3)

The Hope of the Early Church

Why are we at this place of despair two-thousand years after the announcement of the presence of the Kingdom of God in the words and works of Jesus? Did Jesus not say that the Kingdom of God would be like a mustard seed that would grow into a large tree that would provide shade for all the nations of the earth? Where is this tree of hope for the nations two thousand years later?

The tree of hope grew strong for three hundred years after the advent of our Lord. The mustard seed grew and grew. It grew so well that when Constantine saw his empire wilting on the vine, and saw the vitality of the mustard plant, he decided to cross-pollinate his vine with it. The mustard plant did not die, but it certainly lost its virility - its growth was stunned and its ability to bring hope

greatly diminished. Since that time, Christendom has been the fruit of that hybrid mixture of church and state.

The Hope of the Enlightenment

Another promise of hope came to the Western world some three hundred years ago in the form of the Enlightenment. It's promises were grandiose. It promised a rational world that would be rid of ignorance, war, and disease. It said that the world was coming of age and promised that scientific and technological progress would remedy every human problem. It also said that the promised Golden Age of the Ancient philosophers would be inaugurated. This new age would be characterized by human freedom, peace and joy.

David Bosch identified seven different ideas that characterized the Enlightenment and its counterpart, modernism. These ideas were offered as sources of hope in the modern world:

1. The emphasis on reason suggested that the human mind was the indubitable point of departure for all knowing.

2. All of reality was divided into thinking subjects and, over against these, objects that could be analyzed and exploited.

3. All reference to purpose was dropped. Every process was viewed only in terms of cause and effect.

4. Enlightenment and modern thinkers put a high premium on progress, expansion, advance, and modernization.

5. All true knowledge was assumed to be factual, value free, and neutral. Over against facts there were values, which were not objectively true, the holding of which was, therefore, a matter of taste. Religion was, in the course of time, relegated to this category.

6. All problems were assumed to be solvable in principle.

7. Finally, people were regarded as emancipated, autonomous individuals, no longer under the tutelage of "superiors." (Bosch, Believing in the Future, p.5)

These ideas were like cosmic bulldozers destroying the perceptual landscape of the Western World. Reason ruled supreme, even in the church. It's not that reason was unimportant before the Enlightenment. The church traditionally believed rationality and spirituality went hand in hand. The shift came when reason was no longer seen as a servant, but became a supreme master. The

Enlightenment was an epistemological coupe that exiled faith to the backwaters of knowledge.

The Great Divorce

In my judgment, the most negative consequence erupting from the Enlightenment is what I call the great divorce. The great divorce came as a result of the seventh characteristic listed above: people as emancipated, autonomous individuals. Here what God has put together, man has torn apart. Men and women are not looked at holistically in relationship to creation, others, and God. Rather, as rational autonomous persons they stand in opposition to the other. Charles Taylor calls this "disengagement" rather than divorce. "Disengagement", he says is, "standing apart from each other and the world treating the other as external, as mere object. The key is in the word instrumental: we use the other as an instrument, as a mere means for realizing our will, and not as in some way integral to our being." (Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity, p.155)

This great divorce or disengagement has deep roots in philosophical history but was reincarnated by Rene Descartes in the 17th century. Descartes was looking for a way to arrive at absolute knowledge that would give perfect certainty. His method was doubt. Only doubt, he believed, could purge the human mind of all opinions held merely on trust and open it to knowledge firmly grounded on reason. He looked for an idea that he could not possibly doubt. When he found this idea it would become the foundation on which he would build his system of irrefutable and certain truth. The one thing of which he was certain was that he thought. Since he knew that he thought then he knew he had to exist. That gave rise to the famous maxim that became the root and vine on which the Enlightenment was to blossom: "I think, therefore I am." Such simple words, but such a revolutionary impact. This is the beginning of the great divorce.

Autonomous, rational man, is now placed in the center of the universe. Submitted to reason, he no longer needs anything or anyone else. The old marriage agreements with past authorities were now null and void. A new day of freedom had come for mankind. The impact of the divorce was threefold.

First of all, the individual was divorced from nature. Nature and man were meant to be together with man as a gardener caring for God's creation. After the great divorce, autonomous rational man saw nature as something to be exploited more than something to be cared for. Nature lost its mystery, and so person and world were torn apart. Rational, autonomous man stood, not in nature, not as nature's servant, but as nature's master. "Nature, red in tooth and claw" became man's enemy to be subjugated to his will.

Secondly, the individual was divorced from others. The individual now stands alone as an autonomous, rational being, needing none other. What is essential to

personhood? The Enlightenment said that rationality was all we need to be a person. The Bible says that we are persons by virtue of relationship. Man is a relational creature - male and female. Even as God is relational, so man, made in his image, is a relational being. Apart from relationship we cease to be true persons.

The first consequence of sin was the breaking of relationship. The Enlightenment however established that man as he is in himself, apart from all others, is a person. Separation is seen as the goal of personhood - not the disruption of personhood. Individuation is the end, not a part of the process. Other people are there for autonomous man to use. Colin Gunton puts it this way:

"In individualism ...there is to be found at work a tendency to suppress the other, who is made the mere means to an end, or reduced to an impediment. Individualism is a non-relational creed, because it teaches that I do not need my neighbor in order to be myself. (The One, The Three, and The Many, pp. 31-32)

Nietzsche was one of the most clear-sighted exponents of modernity. Nietzsche's modern man as described by Karl Barth is "the man of ‘azure isolation,' six thousand feet above time and man; the man to whom a fellow-creature drinking at the same well is quite dreadful and insufferable; the man who is utterly inaccessible to others, having no friends and despising women; the man who is at home only with eagles and strong winds; . . . the man beyond good and evil, who can only exist as a consuming fire. (Church Dogmatics Vol. 3/2, pp. 232,240)

This loss of the high value of relationality is perhaps the greatest divorce of all. The individual person stood alone in the world. Self was enthroned. Self-fulfillment, self-realization, self-satisfaction these became the goal of one's life. Relationships were things to be exploited and discarded when they no longer met the individual's needs. Freedom became freedom from others rather than freedom for others. Dependence on others was evidence of weakness rather than strength. Look out for number one - that's what's important in life. Value others only for what they can get out of them.

Individualism in turn led to the third divorce - the divorce from God - secularization. When man became god, God became redundant. The Enlightenment placed God's role into man's portfolio.

God was no longer needed to account for the coherence and meaning of the world, so that the seat of rationality and meaning became not the world, but the human reason and will, which thus displace God or the world. When the unifying will of God becomes redundant, or is rejected for a variety of moral, rational and scientific reasons, the focus of the unity of things becomes the

unifying rational mind. (Colin Gunton, The One, The Three and the Many, p. 28)

Individualism to Collectivism

God, having been divorced, is expelled from the market place; but humankind cannot live without God. So once the divorce has taken place and individualism and secularism begin to settle into their new role, new marriage partners arise. R.J. Neuhaus wrote a very significant book, The Naked Public Square, back in the eighties. This book powerfully captures what happens when man is divorced from God. Colin Gunton, summarizes what Neuhaus has to say and adds his own insightful commentary:

"When God is expelled from the public square...from public discourse and thought about the development of political institutions, the outcome is not freedom, but a form of displacement that can only be called demonic. The room swept clear of one devil is replaced by seven far worse. We might say: the transcendent and apparently oppressive single deity is swept away only to be replaced by the demonic alternatives we have met. In place of the deity conceived personally, albeit inadequately so - and that is where modernity is right to question - there appear immanent impersonal forces which mercilessly, like all idols, devour their devotees." (The One, The Three and the Many, p.38)

The immanent impersonal forces that fill the vacuum are best illustrated in the totalitarian states such as China, the Soviet Union, and rogue states in Africa. It is one of those paradoxes of history that the elevation of the individual results in a loss of individuality. Individualism cannot work - it cannot fill the God-shaped vacuum it creates. Therefore it creates a new god to fill the vacuum - the god of collectivism. Gunton's insights helped me understand this important development:

The distinctive feature of the modern condition is ... not that it represents an assertion of the rights of the many over the one (individualism), though that has been attempted. The feature ... is rather that the assertion of the rights of the many ( individualism) has paradoxically, dialectically perhaps, achieved the opposite, the subversion of the many by new and in some cases demonic versions of the one ( collectivism). The logic of this is that when the one is displaced by the many (individualism), the displacement happens in two ways: either the many become an aggregate of ones, each attempting to dominate the world, the outcome being those regimes now labeled fascist, in which the strongest survives and dominates; or the many become homogenized, contrary to their

true being, into the mass (Kierkegaard's ‘public'). ‘The trend today is in the direction of mathematical equality. . .'

It is not just the totalitarian states that work against individuality. Even within democracies there is a tendency to put people in boxes that generalize them. The consumer driven market promotes this. It cannot sell its wares to individuals - no one could afford to do that. So it creates a market by placing generations into boxes: the GI generation, the boomer generation, or the millennial generation. Once the box is labeled, the boxed mass is then told by anonymous "experts" what they are to think and feel, how they are to dress, and what they are to do. If anyone disagrees, they are judged to be politically incorrect and thus are not to be respected. Gunton continues:

It might be said that the latter is the real danger because it is more insidious: it is the flat unity of homogeneity. In the imposition of a unitary and homogeneous public culture, disseminated now throughout the world by the spread of Western technology and communications, is to be found one of the central features of modernity's distinctive way of achieving the priority of the one over the many (collectivism). Homogeneity derives from the creation of an undifferentiated social or other reality...the ‘sham individualism' of fashion. It is not therefore the priority of the many that distinguishes modernity from other cultures, but the shape the priority of the one takes in practice. Thus both the ancient and modern eras, in so far as they can be distinguished in the way often attempted, share in a tendency to elevate the one over the many: to enslave the many to the heteronomous rule of the one. The pathos of the modern condition is that, after rejecting what it rightly sees to be the oppressive forms of unity deriving from the past, it has itself succumbed to various false universals that replicate or even exacerbate the bondage from which it had hoped to free itself. The truth is that many characteristic modern forms of life succumb in different ways to the false universals... (The One, The Three and the Many, pp. 33,34).

What started out as a movement to free the individual then has done just the opposite. It has resulted in forms of collectivism that, though not as disastrous as totalitarianism, are nevertheless degrading and dehumanizing.

The Enlightenment has not solved our problems. It has in fact created unprecedented new problems, most of which we have only begun to be aware during the last two decades or so. The Enlightenment was supposed to create a world in which all people were equal, in which the soundness of human reason would show the way to happiness and abundance for all. This did not materialize. Instead, people have become the victims of fear and frustrations and have come into the grip of false universals: the irrational momentum of anonymous,

impersonal, and inhuman power - the power of ideologies, systems, technology, bureaucracy, artificial languages, and political slogans" (Vaclav Havel).

In 1950 Romano Guardini captured the fragmentation and aloneness of the human condition at the end of modernism:

"All Monsters of the wilderness, all horrors of darkness have reappeared. The human person again stands before the chaos; and all of this is so much more terrible, since the majority do not recognize it: after all, everywhere scientifically educated people are communicating with one another, machines are running smoothly, and bureaucracies are functioning well (quoted from The End of the Modern Era by David Bosch, Transforming Mission, p.274)

This is our world. A world in which man stands fragmented - from creation, from others and from God. He stands alone in a crowd. He lives in an empty, purposeless world. He is like the lonely shack in a deserted vineyard (Isaiah 1:8). The prophets of modernity promised so much, but delivered so little. Expectations have been smashed into the dust of disillusionment. There is now in the post-modern world no exit - no place of hope.

Modernity promised us a culture of unintimidated, curious, self-reliant individuals, and it produced ... a herd society, a race of anxious, timid, conformist "sheep", and a culture of utter banality'. (Robert Pippin in Gunton, p. 40)

Is There Any Hope?

Several years ago, before radio, the submarine S-4 sank off the coast of Massachusetts when it was rammed by another vessel. Quickly it went to the ocean floor. The submarine became a prison for the crew. Rescue ships got to the scene as soon as possible. Divers began rescue attempts. As they drew near the vessel, they heard a tapping from inside. The question was slowly tapped letter by letter in Morse Code: IS THERE ANY HOPE?

"We all," as the Beatles sang, "live in a yellow submarine." The question being frantically tapped on the walls of this beleaguered planet is this: Is there any hope? Modernism is not the answer. Is there any hope in this post-modern world?

Some would say yes there is hope. The hope is the "blessed hope" the return of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is our ultimate hope; but in the not yet, prior to the return of Jesus, is there a hope? Must we wait in despair until the consummation of the age?

Others would say that the hope of the world is Jesus. but what does that mean? That so easily becomes an empty cliché like a mirage in the desert. It evaporates

as you move toward it. What I want to say tonight is that the hope of the world is Jesus, but Jesus as he makes himself present in his church. If there is any hope in the world, it is to be found in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The answer to the fragmentation, isolation, and despair of our generation is to confront the individualism that gave birth to this evil child, and to return what was lost - the church. Earlier I listed the seven characteristics of the Enlightenment as given by David Bosch. When discussing the effects of each of these characteristics on Christianity Bosch says this concerning the seventh:

The last Enlightenment precept I have identified was that everyone was an emancipated, autonomous individual. Its most immediately recognizable effect on Christianity was the rampant individualism which soon pervaded Protestantism in particular. Its influence went further, however. The church became peripheral, since each individual not only had the right but also the ability to know God's revealed will. And because individuals were liberated and independent, they could make their own decisions about what they believed. (Transforming Mission, pp. 273)

We cannot go back to the pre-Enlightenment world, nor would we desire to return to that flawed past. But what we must recover the diamond that was discarded in Enlightenment. We must rediscover the church.

My thesis is that if the world is to find hope, it will find it in God's source of hope - the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. You might think this is too high a view of the church. "You can't mean," you might ask, "that the church is the answer to mankind's despair? You don't know the church that I know. The church that I know is not the answer, it is part of the problem. If God is depending on the church, then he is in a heap of trouble!" Well, that might be true in terms of the church as a whole at this time in history and of the particular church that you know, but that does not mean that the church is not God's answer. It means only that we have not lived up to God's gracious intent.

Paul's High View of the Church

I am not alone in this high view of the church. No one had a higher view of the church than the Apostle Paul. I do not believe you know Paul until you understand how motivated he is in serving the church. He spends the first three chapters of Ephesians painting an awesome picture of God's purpose, work and joy in the church. By the time he gets to the middle of chapter three Paul is dancing with glee over the virtues of the church. How awesome is the church? It is of such value, he says, that he is willing to be a prisoner in order to serve it:

"For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles - (3:1)

He says that the church is God's great hidden secret that is now being revealed to him. He considers the reception of this revelation concerning the church one of the greatest honors ever given to him. He even goes so far as to make the church a part of the gospel - the good news of hope.

"Surely you have heard about the administration of God's grace that was given to me for you, that is, the mystery made known to me by revelation, as I have already written briefly. In reading this, then, you will be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to men in other generations as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God's holy apostles and prophets. This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.

"I became a servant of this gospel by the gift of God's grace given me through the working of his power. Although I am less than the least of all God's people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things. His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord. In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence. I ask you, therefore, not to be discouraged because of my sufferings for you, which are your glory. (Ephesians 3:1-13)

Paul's greatest concern was that the Ephesians would understand what they had in the church. So, even after he has so powerfully painted the picture of the church, he goes on to pray that the Lord will give them an experiential knowledge of what he is talking about.

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you (corporate ) with power through his Spirit in your (corporate) inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your (corporate) hearts through faith. And I pray that you (corporate), being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge - that you (corporate) may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and

in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. (Ephesians 3:14-21)

John Stott, in his summarizing comments on Ephesians 1-3 and especially on chapter three gives this helpful reminder:

"The major lesson taught by this first half of Ephesians is the biblical centrality of the church. Some people construct a Christianity which consists entirely of a persons relationship to Jesus Christ and has virtually nothing to do with the church. Others make a grudging concession to the need for church membership, but add that they have given up the ecclesiastical institution as hopeless...."(God's New Society, p.126)

"The gospel which some of us proclaim is much too individualistic. ‘Christ died for me,' we say, and then sing of heaven: ‘Oh, that will be glory for me.' Both affirmations are true. As for the first, the apostle Paul himself could write, ‘The Son of God. . . loved me and gave himself for me.' As for the so-called ‘glory song', the gospel does promise ‘glory' for believers in heaven. But this is far from being the full gospel. For it is evident from Ephesians 3 that the full gospel concerns both Christ and the ‘mystery' of Christ. The good news of the unsearchable riches of Christ which Paul preached is that he died and rose again not only to save sinners like me (though he did), but also to create a single new humanity; not only to redeem us from sin but also to adopt us into God's family; not only to reconcile us to God but also to reconcile us to one another. Thus the church is an integral part of the gospel. The gospel is good news of a new society as well as of a new life. (God's New Society, p.128-129)

This call to reestablish the value of the church is something the Spirit is saying to the church. The Lord is calling his people to a new love for and embracing of the church. He is calling us away from the loneliness of Enlightenment individualism and independence to become disciples who are deeply committed to the Lord and his church. He is reminding us that the church is his strategy for bringing hope to the world.

When I started this sermon I was going to give several theological reasons why Paul believed the church is God's answer to despair. As the sermon grew, I kept cutting the reasons. I am quite certain that you appreciate my sensitivity in this matter, as you would have been here all night if I had carried out my original intent! So I have narrowed the reasons to one - the one greatest reason Paul believed the church was God's source of hope for a despairing world. It is this:

The Church Is the Source of Hope for a Despairing World Because She Is the People Through Whom God's Blessings Come to the World.

To put it in Pauline terms: the Church is the promised seed of Abraham through which God will bless the world. God gave a promise to Abraham that his seed would be blessed and that the seed, in turn, would be God's source of blessing to all the nations of the earth:

"The angel of the LORD called to Abraham from heaven a second time and said, "I swear by myself, declares the LORD, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me." (Genesis 22:15-18)

This is an awesome promise sealed by a blood covenant. Through the "seed of Abraham" all of the nations of the earth are going to be blessed. The seed is God's great gift to humanity. The magnitude of the blessing makes it vital for us to understand who or what this seed is. The seed will be as numerous as the sand on the seashore and as the stars in the sky and the seed will be the instrument through which all nations of the earth will be blessed. The world needs hope; the seed is the source of the hope sought.

But who or what is the seed? The logical interpretation of the seed is Israel - the natural descendants of Abraham. Jews for centuries have believed this and boasted that they are the seed of Abraham. But is the seed limited to Israel, and are all who are Jews a part of the seed?

Paul gives the Christian answer to this in Romans 9. He says that not all who are descendants from Israel are Israel as is evidenced by the fact that only Isaac's descendants are reckoned as Abraham's offspring or seed:

"It is not as though God's word had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham's children. On the contrary, "It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned." (Romans 9:6-7)

Paul then goes on to prove through the story of Jacob and Esau that the true Israel is made of only a remnant of the Jews - the descendants of Abraham. The narrowing of the remnant that is the true Israel that began in the prophets (Isaiah 1:9, 4:2-6, 6:13; Jeremiah 23:3) funneled down to the point where there was only one who was Israel - only one who was the promised seed: Jesus Christ. Through him all the nations of the earth would be blessed.

"Brothers, let me take an example from everyday life. Just as no one can set aside or add to a human covenant that has been duly established, so it is in this case. The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. The Scripture does not say "and to seeds," meaning many people, but "and to your seed," meaning one person, who is Christ. (Galatians 3:15-16)

Christ is the seed. Christ is the one who will bring blessings to all peoples of the earth. Nothing could be more clearly stated. Who is the hope for a despairing world? Christ is! He is the seed of Abraham. Natural Israel had failed, but Christ would not. He was blessed and in turn would bless all the nations of the earth.

But then the question arises, what did Paul mean by "Christ?" That appears to be clear. The seed is Jesus Christ. I say appears, because in Galatians 3:26-29 someone else is identified as the seed:

You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise. (Galatians 3:26-29)

Now the people of God, the church, are identified as "Abraham's seed." Is the seed Jesus the Messiah, or is the seed the church? Is Paul confused?

N.T. Wright in The Climax of the Covenant helps us understand what Paul is saying and clears up this apparent contradiction. He says that in 3:16 and in 3:29 the seed is both the Messiah and the church. Christ and the church go together. They must not be separated. Messiah is not then simply another name for Jesus. Rather, it is a name that implies corporateness.

How did he come to this interpretation? After an extensive study of the various formula such as "in Christ," "in Christ Jesus," "in Christ Jesus our Lord," "through Christ, etc. he came to the following conclusion:

A careful look through these statistics ... reveals a regular variation in phraseology. Thus, most noticeably, we see that when Paul says ‘in' with a phrase denoting Jesus Christ the Lord, the word which regularly follows is either ‘Christ' or ‘Lord', and virtually never ‘Jesus'. When, however, he says ‘through', it is usually ‘Jesus' or ‘Lord', rather than ‘Christ' (Climax of the Covenant, p. 45)

Why would this pattern be followed? Why would Paul use Jesus when he is speaks of the agent, and why would he use Christ when he speaks of being "in." Why not use the names interchangeably? Wright's explanation is as follows:

1. The usage of Christos is incorporative, that is, Paul regularly uses the word to connote, and sometimes even to denote, the whole people of whom the Messiah is the representative.

2. The best explanation for this incorporative sense is that Christos still bears, for Paul, the titular sense of ‘Messiah', and that it is precisely on the basis of that meaning that he is able to coin ...the various prepositional formulae in which this incorporative idea is summed up.

3. The distinction between Christ and Jesus in these various phrases, and indeed where they occur by themselves in Paul, is quite straightforward. Though both words denote the same human being, Paul uses Jesus to refer to the man from Nazareth, who died on the cross and rose again as a human being, and through whose human work, Paul believed, Israel's God had achieved his long purposes; and he uses Christ to refer to that same man, but this time precisely as Israel's Messiah in whom the true people of God are summed up and find their identity.

He then concludes his discussion of Galatians 3:15-16 and 3:23-29 in the following way.

Here, as elsewhere, we meet Paul's use of Christos in a representative or corporate sense. It is true that, for Paul, Christos always denotes Jesus of Nazareth...The word never becomes a mere cipher. But it is also true... that Paul understands ‘Christ' as ‘Messiah', carrying the significance of the one ‘in whom' the people of God is summed up precisely as the people of God; and Galatians 3.23-29 is in fact one of the most important bits of evidence for this. Many of Paul's frequent ‘incorporative' expressions cluster together in vv. 26-29, in just that passage where the worldwide church is affirmed to be ‘one' and therefore to be ‘the seed of Abraham'. They are the children of God (as Christ is the Son of God); they are baptized into Christ, have put on Christ, they are one in Christ, they are ‘of Christ'. It would not therefore be surprising to find that in vv. 15-18, which look forward to just this conclusion, we should find the same point being made, albeit with characteristically Pauline brevity.

Which is Christ could then perhaps be not so much an exegetical note, an attempt by Paul to read ‘the Messiah' out of ‘your seed' in Genesis 13.15, etc., but rather an explanatory note, informing his readers that the ‘one family' spoken of in the promises is in fact (as he will prove) the family created in Christ. Christ is the ‘seed' because, and insofar as, the promised single family of Abraham is brought into being in and through him and him alone. It therefore finds its identity in him. He is its incorporation. This view of the phrase clearly suggests that Paul's use of Christos was more

flexible, more capable of different levels of meaning, than is often supposed.

If " in Christ" has this incorporative meaning, the church takes on a role that is much more significant than many of us have understood. "In Christ" is one of the most characteristic phrases in Paul's letters. In Ephesians alone he uses the phrase sixty-four times (this phrase or "in the Lord" occurs 165 times in Paul's letters). If "in Christ" has the incorporative meaning, then all the blessings we receive are found in relationship with Christ as we are in relationship with one another. The church then is not a bonus that we can take or leave. Rather it is absolutely essential to our salvation. It becomes the locus of blessing.

This incorporative idea is one of the great theological truths now gaining clarification through biblical theology. Whereas scholars in the modern era understood "in Christ" individualistically describing the mystical relationship between Christ and the individual, the weight of biblical scholarship is now seeing the phrase as N.T. Wright does. W.W. Gasque, in "Christ Mysticism" in The Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, is an example:

"While it (in Christ) obviously includes the idea of personal fellowship with Christ, the phrase seems to have a decidedly communal emphasis. To be "in Christ" is to be a Christian, viz., to be in the body of Christ, the church."( p. 221)

John Stott put it this way:

Fundamental to New Testament Christianity is this concept of the union of God's people with Christ. What constitutes the distinctness of the members of God's new society? Not just that they admire and even worship Jesus, not just that they assent to the dogmas of the church, not even that they live by certain moral standards. No, what makes them distinctive is their new solidarity as a people who are ‘in Christ'. By virtue of their union with Christ they have actually shared in his resurrection, ascension and session. In the ‘heavenly places', the unseen world of spiritual reality, in which the principalities and powers operate (3:10; 6:12) and in which Christ reigns supreme (1:20), there God has blessed his people in Christ (1:3), and there he has seated them with Christ (2:6). For if we are seated with Christ in the heavenlies, there can be no doubt what we are sitting on: thrones! Moreover, this talk about solidarity with Christ in his resurrection and exaltation is not a piece of meaningless Christian mysticism. It bears witness to a living experience, that Christ has given us on the one hand a new life (with a sensitive awareness of the reality of God, and a love for him and for his people) and on the other a new victory (with evil increasingly under our feet). We were dead, but have been made

spiritually alive and alert. We were in captivity, but have been enthroned. (God's New Society, p. 81)

This is the reason we are the hope of the world. Already we have the power's of the age to come working in us. Already we have passed through death by the resurrection of Jesus. Jesus is the eschatological man, and by our identification with him we are his eschatological community. Already we partake of the eschatological meal and are filled with the eschatological Spirit. Already we have been delivered from the realm of darkness into the city of light. Already we have overcome the world. Already God is building us into his eschatological temple in which his name will be praised. Already we are a community being drawn into the life of the eternal triune God.

We are the seed of Abraham that is filled with the blessings of God so that we might be a blessing to the world. We do not exist for ourselves. Our blessings are not given to us to hoard. We exist for the world and the immeasurable treasures that are given to us "in Christ" are to be freely given to the world as gifts of hope.

If it is true that the church is the seed that receives the blessings of God, and if it is true that the blessings of God are received as we live in vital relationship with one another "in Christ", and if it is true that the nations of the earth will be blessed by us, then the church is the most important institution in the world. As Todd Hunter used to tell us, all of history is but stage props for the major event - what God is doing in and through his church.

Therefore Live Up To the Calling

If we are the promised seed; if what is happening in us is the most important thing happening in the world, then how should we respond?

First we should give our utmost energy to live up to the calling that we have received. After reveling in the greatness of the church and what it means to be "in Christ", Paul admonishes the Ephesians:

As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. (4:1)

What calling? The calling to be the church. It is an awesome privilege and an awesome responsibility to be the church. The motivation for good behavior is that your behavior reflects on the church.

How do we live up to this calling? For starters:

Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit - just as you were called to one hope when you were

called - one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. (4:2-6)

So I want to challenge each of you. I want to challenge you to understand what you have been given in the church. I want to challenge you to embrace the church - all the church. I want you to understand what an awesome privilege it is to be set apart to the ministry of the church. With Paul I pray:

"...that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge - that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:16-19)

When we live this way and as we experience the realities of this prayer, we will be the seed of Abraham and thus the hope for a despairing world.

Find Meaning and Motivation in the Church

Secondly, in light of the fact that we are the seed of Abraham, the church should provide us with a tremendous source of meaning and motivation. The church provides us a cause to both live and die for. Life is lived to its fullest only as long as it has a reason; only as long as it has meaning. Lose meaning and you lose life.

I am now sixty-one years of age. Recently I have been asking myself a lot of questions. One of them has to do with my lifestyle and my constant pursuit of understanding. People ask me how I read as much as I do while pastoring a fairly large church and leading a movement the size of the Vineyard. Well the truth is, quite often I wake up at four or five o'clock in the morning and can't wait to get out of bed to begin reading and pondering some great truth about God or his creation. I am not a great scholar with a great mind, or a great communicator. When I hear a Don Williams or a Peter Davids, or a David Parker or many of you teach I turn green with envy. I think "Lord, why can't I be as articulate and clear as they are? Study is not easy for me. I die a thousand deaths every time I write. What is it that causes me to do this. It is my personal search for meaning and purpose in life. That is a part of my search for the Holy Grail.

I am a passionate person. The pastoral staff at the Houston Vineyard used to laugh at me because I was always saying, "I feel deeply about..." But I do. I passionately dislike clichés and platitudes. I equally dislike a Christianity that gives simple answers to difficult questions. I like to take "reality checks" to see if things work (this is the pragmatic side of me). If they don't, I want to be open to

new answers or even better questions. I am serious about doing what the apostle instructed us to do, to "test all things." I resist any boxes be they Pentecostal, Reformed, Wesleyan, Evangelical or otherwise. I want to be catholic in Spirit and thus embrace all of the body of Christ, and to find truth wherever it may be found. I hate sectarianism, personal kingdom building, and selfish ambition. These are some of the values - positive and negative -that govern my intellectual pursuits. Why do I feel so strongly about these? Because they touch on issues of great meaning for me.

The other day over lunch I was discussing this pursuit of meaning with Herschel Rosser and Rick Callahan, two of my associates at the Sugar Land Vineyard. I lamented, "I wish I were like some people I know. Sometimes I feel that my pursuit is more of a curse than a blessing. Some people seem to be able to accept things so simply without evaluation; there lives seem so simple. They don't have to struggle about where they are going to put both of their books. They don't wrestle through Pannenberg, Barth or Calvin. They sleep until eight o'clock in the morning, get up and have a cup of tea and spend a nice little thirty-minute quite time reading "Three easy Steps to An Absolutely Marvelous Life."

The question for me is, "Why am I driven to understand?" Is this an addiction? Am I a workaholic that needs the short nights and long days to give me an adrenalin rush? I am probably both of these. But if I know myself, neither of these are the driving force in my life. What drives me in my studies is that I desperately want to live a true life, a life with purpose and meaning. I want my life to count. I really want to make a difference in the world. As I approach death I want to look back on my life and say with deep conviction that I lived in truth and that my life was significant. I don't want to be fooled.

Some say, "I find my significance in who I am not in what I do." I disagree. In the first place I do not find my significance in what "I am" but rather in who "we are." Secondly, significance is not found solely in who we are. It is also found in what we "do" - what we commit ourselves to - our purpose in life. If what we are doing ceases to have meaning for us, then our life is empty with feelings of insignificance.

Some are satisfied with having significance in this life alone. I want to commit to what gives me a sense of eternal significance. I want to know that when I appear before the judgment seat of Christ, my life really did count because I committed myself to things of eternal significance not to things that were wood, hay and stubble that will be burnt up in the end (I Corinthians 3:10-15)

After years of study and work, at the age of sixty-one, I can say that I have found what is worth living and dying for. I have found what gives life meaning and satisfaction - it is building the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what gives me the greatest sense of significance. It's motivates me. I want to reach people

for Christ. I want to build fully devoted disciples, but even more, I want to build the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is my single goal in life.

Why am I so passionate about the church? Why am I willing to lay down my own ambitions and dreams for the sake of the church? Because I believe the church is the seed of Abraham, it is the visible presence of Christ in the world and it is the only hope for a despairing world

Is It Worth it?

My father was a Pentecostal church planter when neither Pentecostals or church planting were popular. As a child I knew the pain of social rejection, poverty, and injustice. We were pelted with rotten eggs, called holy rollers, accused of being demonized, and threatened - even by the evangelical community. My early childhood home was a two room shack with cardboard on the walls, coal oil lanterns for lights, and a path to the outhouse. We moved from there into the back of a grocery store, below the tracks. The converted store had been converted into a meeting place for the church. My bedroom was a Sunday school class room. The building was old with a wrecking yard next door. I wouldn't invite my high school friends home because I was embarrassed about where I lived.

Do I regret it now? Am I sorry I had to go through those things? Not for a moment. I have been privileged all my life to be involved in the greatest enterprise of history. What more could I ever want out of life? I have wonderful friends all over the world, dozens of spiritual children, the joy of seeing transformed lives, and the pleasure of knowing that I am involved with what is most important in life. All of this now, and the joy of knowing that these are temporary perks with the full paycheck coming in the future!

Last year as I stood in Canyon View Vineyard in Grand Junction Colorado Vineyard where Dan Cox is the senior pastor.- a church my father started fifty years ago. That church has about 2500 in attendance, a beautiful building and a wonderful leadership team. It started with a little group of Pentecostals in a brush arbor and now stands as a rock of safety for thousands. And just think, I had the privilege at the age of eleven, to participate in building one of the most important institutions in Grand Junction - the Vineyard Church.

Is this whole thing of the Vineyard worth it? Should we send our kids out to build churches and give their lives in Christian ministry? Should we challenge them to consider first the possibility that God is calling them to the service of Jesus in the church? Should we challenge our best and brightest to go out church planting or into missions, or in other service of the church when they could be so successful elsewhere? Should we encourage them to go through the sacrifice, rejection and pain that ministry so often demands?

Is it worth what you are going through right now? Is it worth the pain and the rejection you have known in the past? Is it worth putting you and your family through the pressures that ministry demands? Is it worth the loss? Is it worth putting up with shortfall budgets at home and in the church? Is it worth putting up with the false accusations from angry, hurting people? Is it worth the agony that accompanies being an agent of forgiveness and reconciliation. Is it worth the effort that is required to bring restoration to the fallen?

It is if we are the hope of the world. It is if what we are doing is of greater significance than the Palestinian human bombs. It is if it is of more significance than the cause for which our young men spill their blood in urban Baghdad or on barren desert battlefields. It is if we have a cause that reaps eternal benefits. It is if it really is going to make a difference in the world. It is if it is done for Christ sake and for his cause.

"Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. (Matthew 10:37-39)