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Friends United Meeting |
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January/February 1999
Distinctly Embodying Christ
On Friends Recovering the Gospel and Our Distinctive Call
by Curt Shaw
For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need some one to teach you again the first principles of God's word. You need milksolid food is for the mature... (Hebrew 5:12)
My spirit, as perhaps yours, yearns to fly freely. I yearn to wing in the blue of life, swoop through valleys of suffering and soar on clouds of promise. Alas, reality, like gravity, captures me from below, with the grave realization that I bear weighted feet. This soaring spirit is entrusted to an earthen vessel of a person.
But Jesus' spirit flew. He flew through his day as a whirlwind of heaven. Suddenly the poor in spirit, the meek, the hungering were themselves lifted up. And as the rumors of his presence in history pressed upon my ears, he flew through the ages, even unto my soul of clay. Although he was grandly invited, I was awestruck when he arrived. "What do I do now?" "Drink," he said. "Drink of my life, my word."
Jesus directed me to his earthen community, the visible church. The church fed me with the milk of His Spirit and I was a babe quieted at my mother's breast.
Spiritual Milk
There are four "hungering heart questions" which the spiritually hungry ask. These questions, seldom asked directly, inquire about the divine, choices, community and action.
How can I know God?...Jesus Christ
How can I find guidance? ...Scripture
How can I live with others?...Church
How shall I respond? ...Ministry
Jesus Christ, scripture, church, and ministry are the nourishment which grows the body of Christ. This nourishment is initial and essential. The wings of my spirit began to develop and strengthen. I began to flutter and fly, though my spirit tired readily. I needed to stay near the nourishing nest. My hunger was met but not quenched. I knew a Spirit which flew beyond its own nest, even beyond its own flock. I met a Jesus which flew into lives and conditions far beyond.
Whose spirit soared like Jesus beyond his own time? This crucial quandary pointed toward the family of Friends. Primitive Christianity revived? Yes! Look how these Friends flew as whirlwinds of the countryside! They took flying lessons from Jesus himself. They flew in the face of kings and of customs. They flew to the poor and the foreigner far afield. "By what strength do they fly so mightily?" I asked. My Lord answered using their own simple words, "Christ is come to teach his people himself." "How can I fly like them?" I asked. "Eat," he said, "My body, broken for you."
Spiritual Solids
Jesus offers us personal nourishment. He gives us the manna of his own Presence. Why such a costly meal? Our Lord needs his people to be of soaring spiritual maturity. He yearns to raise up a people distinctly embodying the very Spirit of God on earth. Strengthened with the milk of the visible church, Friends reveal a new order of relationship possible with the Risen Christ present. Yet as Christ is seen only by faith, so too the manna he feeds, and the church we become, are encountered only with the eyes of a maturing faith. As the Anointed feeds us directly, our flight is strengthened to see new horizons. We no longer need to fear flying far.
From this gift of nourishment that fashions us into Friends, there are four distinct horizons we are called to reveal. From these horizons Friends offer the whole body of Christ a fuller freedom meant for all his beloved flock.
Jesus Christ
The first horizon Jesus Christ reveals through Friends is that God is known in relationship, not religion. Relationship, not religion, is the subtle revelation of the name by which our Lord has called us. "Friends" describes a common relationship with uncommon love. This relationship with the Holy is not built around formal agreements or contracts, it is fashioned around trust. We do not need to come to God with a formula of ritual or creed. Rather a yearning or contrite heart beckons our Friend.
To be called a "friend" by one's Lord is uncommon good news which may shake our earthbound legs, for our spirit is freed to new heights. When this Friend is present it is often enough to sit in a communion of silence from which words well up.
Word
The second distinct horizon Friends are shown in our ever-broadening flight is that God's immediate word guides us in being transformed, not conformed. The Bible not only tells about the drama of God transforming us, it is a tool God uses to change us. This distinct horizon has fashioned Friends as a "peculiar people" to emphasize that the heart of Christ's teaching is found within us where he has placed his Spiritnot in imitation of others. In winged flight Friends understand the need to carry scripture within. Even though it requires conviction of things unseen, God's word travels even farther written upon the heart than on the page. This Lord, guiding our winged mission, uncages us from conformity to the outward realities and rituals which once protected us. The new frontiers of God's kingdom requires daring freedom to obey the direction of this Lord of all life and all time.
Church
The third distinct horizon Friends are shown through Christ's immediate presence is that church is lived as attention to God's presence, not attendance with selected people at appointed times. Attention, not attendance, is the mature character gathering God's people. Our naming of "meetinghouses" helps us pay attention to the reality that God's ground is the human soul in the divine community, not a building or an organization. Should Christians meet together? Gathering together in God's living presence is certainly an essential witness in this fallen age of individualism. What the Lord of all times has asked Friends to embody is that we are called to be attentive to the Holy One gathering us together at home or at work, as well as in the pew. For wherever our heart is gathered with another, attentive to the presence of God, to that time and place the Spirit of God has flown, to lift us to a new order of community imparted by the heavens.
Ministry
The fourth horizon Friends have ascended to behold is that ministry is the work of the faithful, not the few. Friends have been called to embody this universal ministry for the body of Christ. Each member of the whole body, the faithful, are to be sent forth with the revelation of the one God and the application of this God's limitless love. Revelation and application are the two wings of spiritual flight to which every member is entitled. To separate the love of God and our relationship to our neighbor is to remain earthbound. Friends have reminded the body of Christ that serving God means both having the love of God within us to give and having the word of God within us to speak. To soar with Jesus Christ in ministry is the promise of the spirit of Christ to each of us.
Winging it from the beginning, this Lord of Life flies into our own experience. Christ is come, and to those with wings strengthened by the church visible, He truly comes in power. This daredevil flyer proves a shattering whirlwind to the gates of hell, bringing the bread of life. And if we are faithful to fly the horizons we have been shown, if we invite him to soar in our soul, he will lead us beyond to new heights of communion, obedience, community and service.
O Rising Lord, soar in our midst!
Curt Shaw is superintendent of Western Yearly Meeting. In subsequent articles, Curt intends to expand on the four major points he opened here.
Copyright (c) 1999 Friends United Meeting
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