N.T. Wright, "How God Became King: Why We've All Misunderstood the Gospels"

N.T. Wright's lecture based on his book, How God Became King at Calvin College's 2012 January Series.

Review of "The Trinity and the Kingdom" by Jürgen Moltmann

The Trinity and the Kingdom by Jürgen Moltmann

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Moltmann's engagement with Trinitarian theology is highly thought-provoking. One thing I greatly appreciated was his insistence that, following the biblical writers, we must begin by talking about the threeness of God and then move toward oneness. In line with this, I think he successfully demonstrated the inadequacy of some western formulations of the trinity that consider it sufficient to say that the different persons all share the same 'divine substance,' as though this were all that mattered. (In my mind, this can tend toward tri-theism even more than Moltmann's 'social' model of the Trinity, since it doesn't lay enough stress on the mutual indwelling of the persons in one another - they are simply three beings that hold a certain attribute in common.) Perhaps the most engaging portion of the book is in its discussion of 'the passion of God,' i.e. the question of how the triune God of Christian confession relates to the problem of evil and suffering in the world. In keeping with his strong theology of the cross (best exemplified in his masterpiece, "The Crucified God"), Moltmann insists that we regard suffering love as intrinsic to the very identity of God, such that a creation in which the Son did not offer himself up to death would be inconceivable.

With reference to the title, Moltmann's book is 'heavy' on trinity and 'light' - extremely light - on kingdom. He doesn't even attempt sufficiently to ground his ideas within the ancient biblical concept of the kingdom of God; he simply uses the term as though it manifestly means what he thinks it does (which it manifestly doesn't, at least not if he intends to mean by it something like what the biblical writers of the second temple period meant by it). His general inattentiveness to the biblical text and ancient historical context at this point (as at others) is hampered further by his modern allergy to any hint of hierarchy whatsoever, which in my mind yields a skewed conception of the kingdom of God that demands we sweep large portions of the biblical text - both in the gospels and in the epistles, as well as vast swathes of the Old Testament - under the rug. In tracing the connections between a monarchical monotheism and human systems of oppression, he throws the baby out with the bathwater, assuming that the problem is with the notion of power and authority per se and not in our human perversion of them in disobedience to the good authority of a loving God. The great hope of the biblical writers seems to be that God would be acknowledged as king on earth as in heaven, and that his will would be done and the knowledge of him would be perfected; only the Reign of God, on earth as in heaven, could yield true creaturely freedom. (This latter point, in fairness, is something Moltmann recognizes - he acknowledges that true 'freedom' entails not only an openness of decision but specifically a willingness for the Good.)

Moltmann's ideal, however, leaves us with a God who is not a king but a friend (as though the two were mutually exclusive!). His argument depends on a softening of the biblical concepts of fatherhood and sonship, as well as a total ignoring of the idea of headship, such that he emerges with a totally egalitarian reading of the Trinity that seems to leave little room for Paul's affirmation, precisely on the point of authority and submission, that "the head of Christ is God" (1 Cor 11:3) and that the Son to whom all things have been subjected will himself be subjected to the Father in the age to come such that the God to whom all is subjected will at last be "all in all" (1 Cor 15:27-28). Where God's status as "all in all" for Moltmann entails something like Christian panentheism, for Paul it clearly means exactly what Moltmann, despite using his phrase, does not want it to mean - namely, that the entire created order is, at last, fully in unmediated submission to its Creator King. In the final analysis, Moltmann emerges with a picture of the age to come that, while interesting and certainly appealing to modern western liberal democrats, does not appear to resemble clearly the biblical picture of God become king in Jesus of Nazareth, and implementing his rule through the Holy Spirit.

Moltmann thus escapes a heterodox subordinationism, but ends up denying any form of hierarchy whatsoever within the Godhead in the process. The biblical witness speaks strongly otherwise; this needn't equate to hierarchical systems within the church as he fears, moreover, since 'monarchical monotheism' (as Moltmann calls it) is precisely the thing that is meant to keep hierarchical relationships in check (as with slaves and masters) because both slave and master, both husband and wife, both parent and child, and both Jew as the gospel's first recipient and Gentile as equal second are in every case equally answerable to the very same Lord and God over all. Slaves and masters alike have a Master in heaven; husbands and wives are all alike under the headship of the same Bridegroom; parents and children, Jews and Gentiles, are all alike the children of one heavenly Father. When God is all in all, there can be no oppression because this is not how he rules the world; domination between God's creatures suggests a lack of subjection to God the king, not a genuine recognition of him as such.

At this point, though, I've strayed more into philosophical differences with Moltmann than with anything wrong with the book. Apart from the imbalance between his discussion of the Trinity and of the Kingdom (with a particular dearth of textual engagement when it comes to the latter), this book is an excellent, engaging inquiry into perhaps the greatest mystery of the Christian faith, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the topic. If you are looking to delve into Moltmann for the first time, however, a better place to start would be "The Crucified God."

View all my reviews

An Account of Early Church Worship

On the day called Sunday all who live in the cities or in the country gather at one place and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read as long as time permits. When the reader has finished, the one who is presiding instructs us in a brief discourse and exhorts us to imitate these noble things. Then we all stand up together and offer prayers.... When we have finished the prayer, bread is brought forth, and wine and water, and the presiding minister offers up prayers and thanksgiving to the best of his ability, and the people assent, saying the Amen; after this the consecrated elements are distributed and received by each one. Then a deacon brings a portion to those who are absent. Those who prosper, and who so wish, contribute what each thinks fit. What is collected is deposited with the presiding minister who takes care of the orphans and widows, and those who are in need because of sickness or some other reason, and those who are imprisoned, and the strangers and sojourners among us.

From Justin Martyr's First Apology, quoted on pp. 28-29 of Wilken, Robert Louis. The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God. Newhaven: Yale University Press, 2003.

I've been doing some research for a paper on Christology in the early Church, and came across this description of early Christian worship. It isn't directly related to my topic, but it captured my attention nonetheless and I thought I'd share it with you. This description of Christian worship comes to us out of the mid-second century (i.e., the 100s AD) from the hand of Justin Martyr, one of the first great Christian Apologists. (He was a philosopher, and continued wearing his scholarly garb after he converted to Christianity as a statement of his intent to articulate the gospel in a rationally coherent way in the presence of its skeptics and detractors.) I just wanted you to notice a few things about what he says:

1. First, notice the way in which the scriptures are handled: "and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets [in other words, the New Testament or Old Testament writings] are read as long as time permits." The reading of scripture, in line with 1 Timothy 4:13, took on a central importance, and in the congregation of which Justin was a member at least, there was no definite limit on how long scripture might be read at a given worship service. We are probably talking about longer readings rather than shorter ones here, and this raises a worthwhile question: why don't we do this in the church today? Why do we so often read only what will be discussed in the sermon? (This can be especially catastrophic in some parts of the protestant tradition, where the sermon may for better or worse focus on only a couple of verses at a time.) Why not give people more rather than less, so that the diversity of situations out of which church attendees come can be addressed by many things from scripture, and not just the one topic a pastor wants to talk about?

2. Second, notice the twofold pattern of the preaching: instruction and exhortation. This is widely recognized in the church today, but it is helpful to point out the value of this simple approach to sermons. The sermon is intended to address listeners with the word of God, both informing them of and clarifying its meaning (or acknowledging obscurity and uncertainty where it exists), and applying it to them in such a way that the word will take root, grow, and bear fruit in their lives in whatever context or calling they find themselves in. A focus on instruction and exhortation in sermons will in the long run yield communities of Christian disciples who both understand and do the word of God.

3. Third, notice the importance of prayer. It is corporate, something done together, and comes in sequence after the reading of scripture and the sermon. This means that as the church is first addressed by the word of God, it is being prepared to respond with words of its own, based on its own needs that have been put in proper perspective by God's revelation of himself in the gospel. What does corporate prayer look like in your churches? Speaking for my own Anglican tradition, I've come to appreciate lately the value in allowing a significant amount of time for people to pray in the midst of the assembly as they feel led, so that a whole range of the church's needs gets addressed by the church herself. (The pitfall in my tradition is to omit this in the liturgical form of the prayers, so that corporate prayer ends up sounding much more like another segment of the announcements than it does the sweet, rising incense of petition, praise, and thanksgiving from a people to their God.)

4. Fourth, notice the centrality of the Eucharist (i.e., the Lord's Supper). As in the New Testament (cf. Acts 2:42-47; 1 Cor. 11:17-34), the celebration of the meal Jesus gave us was an absolutely indispensable part of Christian worship - one could say, it was the edible word that stood alongside the audible word, the sermon. For a multitude of historical reasons there isn't time to discuss right now, this practice has often been pushed to the margins in protestant worship especially (despite the insistence of reformers like John Calvin on its centrality to Christian worship). A church that is 'all pulpit and no table' is in a precarious position (as of course is a church that is 'all table and no pulpit'), in danger of forgetting the importance of experiencing and enjoying the life of the kingdom in intimate personal communion with Christ and with his body the church. This need challenges us, beyond the mere question of how often our churches 'do communion,' to ask ourselves whether our churches are places where life is truly being lived 'together' in a meaningful sense.

5. Fifth and finally, notice how giving in the church is closely connected with providing for the needs of its members, especially people who are poor or in bad health. This is an area in which many churches have gotten a bad reputation, as impersonal organizations that are more intent upon self-perpetuation and on getting fancier facilities or gadgets than they are on engaging in holistic ministry that seeks to address the practical everyday needs of its family members. I won't pretend to have any experience with the ordinary concerns of church budgeting, but what would it look like for the first item on the budgetary concerns of a church to be "orphans and widows, or those who are in need because of sickness or some other reason"? (The last phrase is deliberately vague - in other words, "fill in the blank!") Might churches actually find that, far from limiting resources for ministry and outreach, this kind of prioritization of financial resources might in the long run actually further the work of ministry, by turning a church into a tight-knit community that loves and cares for its members in a way that is utterly foreign to this world? It is better to have people attracted to churches, not because of the funds that those churches were able to sink into state of the art facilities or media, but because of the Christlike generosity of people whose love for one another was such that they didn't regard anything they had as their own, but only as a gift from God with which to serve others and the world. That's the kingdom springing up in the midst of the present evil age, and Christian generosity of every sort serves as one of the most vivid signposts of the reign of God that has been inaugurated in the world through Jesus Christ, who was generous to the point of giving us his very self, of becoming poor so that we through his poverty might become rich.

Anyway, just some thoughts. Hopefully you find Justin's account compelling!

A God-Summary, Summarized

In him we have deliverance through his blood—the forgiveness of trespasses—based on the great riches of his grace, which he’s made to overflow abundantly to us in the form of every kind of wisdom and insight, just as he has made the mystery of his will known to us, based on his purpose that he publicly displayed in Christ. This was a divine plan for the fullness of the times, to ‘sum up’ all things in Christ—things in the heavens and things on the earth, in him.

Ephesians 1:7-10

I was reading Ephesians and felt the need to share my sense of wonder. Paul says that in Christ, God “publicly displayed his purpose” (Eph. 1:9). This mirrors similar language in Romans 3, where Paul tells us that God “publicly displayed” Christ as “an atoning sacrifice accessible by faith, in order to display God’s righteousness” (v. 25). And what is this purpose? It is “a divine plan for the fullness of the times, to ‘sum up’ all things in Christ—things in the heavens and things on the earth, in him” (Eph. 1:10). Moreover, this purpose was specially displayed to us, to sinners who have received the gospel. His abounding grace, Paul says, has overflowed to us not least in the fact that he’s revealed to us this mystery of his will for the world in Christ. So my question is, do you in fact look at the world around you as it is “in Christ”? If God’s purpose is to “sum up” everything in this universe in Jesus Christ (anakephalaiosasthai—literally, to ‘put under the heading of’), are we endeavoring to regard it in the light of that purpose?

This claim is astonishing enough already, without much further comment. A human being, in whose identity the whole creation is supposed to be somehow contained? What sort of a person is this?! The truth is, this man is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation (Col. 1:10), the one whom the whole fullness of deity inhabits bodily (2:9). He is the true son of God where Adam failed to be—true because he is not simply son of God, but God the Son, utterly obedient to the will of his Father where all else have gone astray. The universe was made for his lordship, his headship.

And look at how he exercises that lordship, that headship. How and where do we find all things summed up in Christ, revealed most truly for what they are in him? We come to a cross, to a bloody instrument of torture, to which this man has been affixed—by the very creatures whom God made through him and commanded to represent him in the creation! What sort of a God is this, who accepts crucifixion from the hands of his creatures? What sort of a man is this, who perishes under the weight of evil, the only words on his lips “Father, forgive them…” and “My God, my God, why have your forsaken me?” This is the identity of our God, most truly displayed! This is God joining us in our god-forsakenness, our godlessness, being for the world that which you and I have refused to be—God's image, God's glory, God's loving presence.

At the cross, we find the prolepsis of what Paul is talking about in Ephesians 1:10, the Son of God bearing all things within himself: all the world’s evil, all the world’s shame, all the world’s guilt, and all the world’s violence—and emerging victorious from the empty tomb, drawing with him all those who have faith in God into newness of his life, and all those who do not into the eternal judgment of death, the final fruition of their tireless efforts to be god for themselves. Thus the cross is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world, the place where God’s judgment against the world is unveiled and carried out. Yet by bearing it in himself, Jesus made this self-sacrificial act the most fundamental expression of God’s identity to the creation. (Truly, he is the image of the invisible God!) God has said to the world, in the crucified and risen Messiah, ‘I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE, over and against all of your violence and blasphemy, your efforts to make yourselves god and to usurp my creation to suit your own ends; yet I will give you the same life I intend to offer the whole creation, if you will turn from your rebellion and share in my suffering.’

That is our God, friends. I don’t really have any comment of my own on to add on the matter, just an irrepressible need to share my astonishment.

Sermon on Romans 11

I promised audio a while back for the sermon I gave in August - Here it is! http://www.allsouls.com/downloads/DavidWestfall8.14.11.mp3

Praying and Resting

The mind that comes to rest is tended

In ways that it cannot intend:

Is borne, preserved, and comprehended

By what it cannot comprehend.

Your Sabbath, Lord, thus keeps us by

Your will, not ours. And it is fit

Our only choice should be to die

Into that rest, or out of it.

-Wendell Berry, “Another Sunday Morning Comes” (1979)

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking a great deal about the finished work of Christ—how he, by his work on the cross, has already done everything necessary to affect the restoration of our fellowship with God—and consequently how our lives must be characterized by a certain striving, not one that chases after God’s promises to us seeking to grab hold of them, but instead that rests—a striving that rests, that is—in faith, with an utter reliance upon what has been done already, and upon what will be done in the future, when Christ returns.

I’ve been writing a book (tentatively titled Between the Two Appearings) that expounds on Titus 2:11-14, where the Apostle Paul situates all Christian living and striving within a certain timeline, with the finished work of our Savior behind us, and his work yet to be completed ahead of us. Meanwhile I had been preparing a sermon on Romans 11 that I preached this past Sunday (audio will be forthcoming), in which Paul gets at the question of Israel’s continuing disobedience with a sustained look at God himself—at the creator’s sovereign purposes, in history, to consign everything to disobedience, in order that he may have mercy on it (Rom. 11:32). All that while I’d also been reading Michael Horton’s Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church, which criticizes the tendency in American Protestantism (both liberal and conservative) to eschew the preaching of gospel (the person and work of Christ) in favor of law (what we ought to do to be good, relevant, socially-conscious Christians). To that, add reading Flannery O’Connor’s novel, Wise Blood, in which the character Hazel Motes preaches a “Church Without Christ” (ironically in reaction against what he assumes to be the ‘real’ gospel, which is in fact the Christless Christianity Horton is talking about!), and you’ll be able to see why my recent reflections have been devoted rather exclusively to a single idea, the centrality of Jesus Christ. The purpose of this reflection, though, is not to enumerate all of these reflections, but to focus on one in particular, that I think is of great importance to any one of us: prayer.

For some years now, I have been fairly consistent in following a particular pattern of Christian devotion, that of the Daily Office found in The Book of Common Prayer. (Perhaps you’ve heard this practice referred to by a different name: Daily Prayer, Matins and Evensong, the Divine Office, etc.) In my Anglican tradition, a very precise and rich liturgy determines most of our worship, both communally and often individually as well. At certain times of day—as many as four, usually no fewer than two—a group or an individual may read through the daily prayers in the prayer book, following the format and adding their own personal prayers where appropriate.

As with all spiritual disciplines and practices, this one can be misused—something I realized I’d been doing for who knows how long. It can become a work, a pattern of obedience by which I believe myself to be maintaining my relationship with God through my own action and initiative; if I am negligent—tired and not very attentive one evening, say, or I miss a few times during the week—this may displease him, but if I am diligent, he’ll be very happy and so will I. Of course, if you’d asked me about that danger I wouldn’t have said such things—my fellowship with God is a gift of grace! But had I really believed that, I should not have been feeling guilty when my attention was more prone to wander today, whereas I really prayed good ‘n hard with plenty of feeling and eagerness yesterday.

So as I was reading and writing and thinking about this matter—the objective center of the gospel, this man of Calvary now out of his tomb—I found myself laying the Daily Office aside, and simply pondering daily the mighty work that Christ had accomplished for our sakes, then praying for my needs and those of others I know. The fervency with which I did this varied every bit as much as it did when I prayed the Office, but my feelings were no longer uncertain, the face of God never obscured by the subjectivity of my circumstance. For I had just glimpsed—whether for a long time or a short time, whether with tears or with joy, whether I was tired or wide awake—the agony of a God of self-giving love upon a bloody cross, who I knew in that very moment of prayer embraced me and still embraces me within his very self, hidden in God until his glorious appearing (Col. 3:3-4). I found this to be the anchor of my soul, limiting, as anchors do, the distance that I might otherwise travel in any direction away from the rock-bottom certainty that in Christ, God is utterly, impossibly, irrevocably for me.

Now I hope that touches your heart, because here is the point: I’ve stumbled clumsily across a method of prayer that I think all of us would do well to emulate in one way or another, whatever our particular tradition might be. My temporary vacation from the prayer book has reminded me of what must lie at the heart of all our prayers: Almighty God, glorified in the person and work of Christ, on whom we fix our eyes and to whom we hold fast by the power of the Holy Spirit. If the celebration of this God and what he has done does not have primacy, I am convinced that our praying, our ‘quiet times,’ our disciplines of any kind will inevitably incline more and more toward selfishness, toward self-reliance, and consequently to anxiety.

I say “temporary vacation” from the prayer book because I eventually discovered, to my astonishment, that this is exactly what the Daily Office does—I hadn’t been able to realize it until I’d taken a step back from what I thought I understood! The prayers begin with readings from the scriptures, celebrates the gospel through the songs of Luke, which are assigned to different times of day (Lk. 1:68-79 AM; vv. 46-55 PM; 2:29-32 before bed—try it!), recites the Apostle’s Creed and the Lord’s Prayer, and concludes with the various prayers and petitions that the group or individual may have. The name “Daily Office,” a translation of the Latin name for it that we might otherwise render “Daily Duty” creates a misleading impression of what the purpose of the prayers actually is: to center those who pray them around a God of grace and glory and righteousness, revealed through Jesus Christ for all who have faith in him, a God before whom we may therefore be utterly confident in Christ.

I say this not to advertise the prayer book itself (though I would recommend it to many), but instead to ‘advertise’ what I have found to be of the utmost importance, whatever form our prayers take. The gospel of Jesus Christ—the good news that God has vindicated Jesus of Nazareth, crucified for the sins of the world, by raising him from the dead and enthroning him over all creation—must take the center stage in all of our praying and thinking about God, because we understand the identity of God himself nowhere so truly as in this event: Jesus crucified, lifted up upon an instrument of torture, giving himself in total love for his enemies and drawing all the world to himself (Jn. 12:32-33). Knowing this, and knowing yourself to be such a one, drawn to this bleeding God of love in spite of your rebellion, means knowing peace, joy, and confidence of a kind that no power or principality can thwart.

As I’ve reflected on these things, I’ve also been reading poetry by Wendell Berry. The last two stanzas of one of his pieces is quoted above, taken from a series of “Sabbath Poems,” all of which address the topic of rest in one way or another. It occurred to me that Berry’s picture of the mind that comes to rest, that has rested from its works by trusting in the gospel of God’s grace (Heb. 4:9-11) and is subsequently cared for and preserved in ways that it cannot even fathom, is a picture of exactly the sort of mindset I am talking about with regard to prayer. Read the stanzas: when it comes to your devotions, your quiet times, or whatever you may call them, do you believe that you are doing something with God, or that God is doing something with you? Your task is not to mount up to God and grab a hold of his arms when you pray, but to see his arms already open to you upon the cross, and then as Berry says, “to die into that rest”—to know yourself crucified with the Messiah but consequently alive to God, as the Messiah is, and resting in what Christ has already accomplished.

Prayer that we offer day by day, then, might be called a microscopic Sabbath of sorts. It is not a work, but a resting from our works, a resting in the beauty of the works of a God who did not spare his own Son but gave him for us all, and will therefore not hesitate to give us all good things (Rom. 8:32). Whatever our tradition, we are all prone to the self-reliance which thinks it is our duty to drag Christ down to us day by day if our prayers are to be fulfilled, when all the while the word of faith, by which we have absolute assurance before God, is close by (cf. Rom. 10:6-9). True prayer is not merely an address to God, but an address in response to Jesus Christ—God’s own address to us, as Karl Barth called him. In short, all our speaking to God must be undertaken in an awareness of the fact that God has already spoken to us previously and decisively in Jesus Christ, who perfectly represents and embodies his character to us (Heb. 1:2-3). Rest is the most natural posture of the soul for this kind of address, because prayer is, at its root, an acknowledgment that I do not run the world and God does—I rest so that I may trust his power to work, power far beyond mine. In your prayers, consider it and consider him: who is this God with whom I must reckon? What do I know of him… a self-giving savior, rich in grace and keeping every hair on my head numbered? Only in that knowledge do I dare ask him anything.

Discerning the Body in Worship

In Christian gatherings and in private Christian devotion, there is a tendency to focus and attend on the unseen, perhaps in a fairly exclusive manner. I don’t want to be too harsh on the idea—after all, do we not worship that which is unseen? “Who hopes for what he sees?” Not only do I not wish to denigrate the needed Christian preoccupation with that which lies beyond the senses, beyond the empirical realm (in a world that often displays little ability to envision anything more than this), it is my ardent desire to see Christians develop a heightened ability to attend upon the presence—and the unfathomable glory—of the invisible, living God, particularly at gathered worship.

But this is related to my complaint. Attending upon God at gathered worship does not necessarily mean closing one’s eyes, waving one’s hands, and drawing one’s mind to the one-on-one, ‘me and my God’ exchange taking place. (Not that I have any problem with eye-closing per se… but do you ever close your eyes to listen not only to your voice, but to a multitude of voices, praising God’s name “with one accord”?) Rather than a basically dualistic dichotomization of the spiritual and the immediately material, would not the church benefit from having eyes to see the Spirit of God also at work precisely in the visible ‘worship event’? We have a whole host of ways of describing how God is present, immanent within his world despite the world’s refusal to know and worship him—but then, is not the presence of a worshiping community, one that is visible to all alike, exactly one such means of God’s immanence? If we are the Spirit-constituted body of the Messiah, then we are the visible sign to the world, to the rulers, to the principalities and powers, that a different lord runs the world, and one who is present in it at that. Christian worship, then, is not meant to invite us only into an invisible encounter with God, but also into a recognition of the display of that God’s glory in the midst of the visible people of God, gathered in the name of their risen lord.

As an Anglican, I think (hopefully without any hint of pride in my tradition or condescension toward others) that I see this vividly displayed when we gather for Sunday worship, in a way that is perhaps missed in some worshiping communities whose philosophies about liturgy are more truncated. (Mind you, every church has a liturgy, whether they realize this or not—they have some modus operandi when it comes to worship services that is generally consistent at every gathering and reflects a particular attitude toward what Christian worship is meant to be.) The liturgy—with or without all the ‘smells and bells’ that one finds in many Anglican churches—is all about facilitating a direct, Spirit-led encounter between God and his people, understood as a collective whole. One is free to ‘keep one’s eyes open,’ as it were, to what is going on all around, to the delicate interplay of the visible with the invisible. What do I see at a ‘typical’ (I use the word cautiously) service in my tradition? I see the people of God, enjoying the presence of God, and am myself taken up into this marvelous event: worshiping his name through song, listening to his word being read, professing our shared faith through the creed, confessing our sins together, and going to the Lord’s table as one, to celebrate our identity as the already-but-not-yet-raised-from-the-dead Body of Christ.

This idea of discerning the invisible in the visible shows up in remarkable ways in scripture, and I’ll focus on one instance in particular: in 1 Corinthians 11 Paul writes, “Whoever eats and drinks without recognizing the Body eats and drinks judgment on himself” (v. 29). For centuries this has been co-opted by various people in the interminable debates about the mode of Christ’s presence in the Lord’s Supper, but increasingly today it is recognized among scholars and interpreters that Paul’s point here has to do not with the invisible presence of Jesus ‘in the bread’ and ‘in the wine’, but rather with his presence at the supper, his presence among the gathered community—that is, the Body. If one does not attend in the slightest to the reality of this Body in worship—as the Corinthians were failing to do, “each one going ahead with his own meal”—true worship is not being offered. To 'discern the Body,' especially in the Lord’s supper, is to recognize the unique presence of God among a Spirit-constituted, called-out people, and to welcome his presence there whenever this people is gathered for worship.

This is not to say that most evangelicals are facing condemnation or are failing to offer true worship. Who among us doesn’t know the great joy of gathering in a room full of people and praising the name of God together? I am saying, simply, that the truly remarkable, visible reality when the people of God are gathered in the name of Jesus is something we haven’t devoted enough attention to, and it ought to be a part of our imaginative landscape when we approach God in worship week by week. In our emphasis on the unseen in worship, we are sometimes tempted to operate with a conception of the worshiping church as a constellation of tenuously-connected individuals whose worship, vertically speaking, may be quite attuned, but equally may often be, horizontally, quite disconnected. Food for your thought, next time you worship: the Spirit has gathered these people as living members of Jesus’ body, and you have been gathered with them; God walks among you (2 Cor. 6:16), and part of having no good apart from God is seeing “the saints in the land, the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight” (Ps. 16:1-2). It doesn't mean you should be worshiping them—it just means you should be worshiping with them.