Practice Resurrection

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS........................................................................xiINTRODUCTION...........................................................................11. The Church of Ephesus: Ephesians 1:1-2..............................................112. The Message to the Ephesians: Ephesians 4:1, 7......................................303. God and His Glory: Ephesians 1:3-14.................................................534. Paul and the Saints: Ephesians 1:15-23..............................................695. Grace and Good Works: Ephesians 2:1-10..............................................886. Peace and the Broken Wall: Ephesians 2:11-22........................................1097. Church and God's Manifold Wisdom: Ephesians 3:1-13..................................1298. Prayer and All the Fullness: Ephesians 3:14-21......................................1479. One and All: Ephesians 4:1-16.......................................................16610. Holiness and the Holy Spirit: Ephesians 4:17-32....................................18711. Love and Worship: Ephesians 5:1-20.................................................20312. Household and Workplace: Ephesians 5:21-6:9........................................22513. The Wiles of the Devil and the Armor of God: Ephesians 6:10-17.....................251APPENDIX: Some Writers on the Practice of Resurrection.................................272INDEX OF NAMES AND SUBJECTS............................................................280INDEX OF SCRIPTURE REFERENCES..........................................................287

Chapter One

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

EPHESIANS 1:1-2

[T]he church is not an ideal to be striven for; she exists and they're within her.

GEORGES BERNANOS, Diary of a Country Priest

Church is the textured context in which we grow up in Christ to maturity. But church is difficult. Sooner or later, though, if we are serious about growing up in Christ, we have to deal with church. I say sooner. I want to begin with church. Many Christians find church to be the most difficult aspect of being a Christian. And many drop out-there may be more Christians who don't go to church or go only occasionally than who embrace it, warts and all. And there are certainly plenty of warts. It is no easier for pastors. The attrition rate among pastors leaving their congregations is alarming.

So, why church? The short answer is because the Holy Spirit formed it to be a colony of heaven in the country of death, the country William Blake named, in his comprehensive reimagining of the spiritual life, "land of Ulro." Church is the core element in the strategy of the Holy Spirit for providing human witness and physical presence to the Jesus-inaugurated kingdom of God in this world. It is not that kingdom complete, but it is a witness to that kingdom.

But it takes both sustained effort and a determined imagination to understand and embrace church in its entirety. Casual and superficial experience with church often leaves us with an impression of bloody fights, acrimonious arguments, and warring factions. These are more than regrettable; they are scandalous. But they don't define church. There are deep continuities that sustain church at all times and everywhere (ubique et ab omnibus, as the Latin tag has it) as primarily and fundamentally God's work, however Christians and others may desecrate and abuse it. C. S. Lewis introduced the term "deep church" to convey the ocean fathoms of tradition that are continuously re-experienced "at all times and everywhere." I like that: deep church.

Church is an appointed gathering of named people in particular places who practice a life of resurrection in a world in which death gets the biggest headlines: death of nations, death of civilization, death of marriage, death of careers, obituaries without end. Death by war, death by murder, death by accident, death by starvation. Death by electric chair, lethal injection, and hanging. The practice of resurrection is an intentional, deliberate decision to believe and participate in resurrection life, life out of death, life that trumps death, life that is the last word, Jesus life. This practice is not a vague wish upwards but comprises a number of discrete but interlocking acts that maintain a credible and faithful way of life, Real Life, in a world preoccupied with death and the devil.

These practices include the worship of God in all the operations of the Trinity; the acceptance of a resurrection, born-from-above identity (in baptism); the embrace of resurrection formation by eating and drinking Christ's resurrection body and blood (at the Lord's Table); attentive reading of and obedience to the revelation of God in the Scriptures; prayer that cultivates an intimacy with realities that are inaccessible to our senses; confession and forgiveness of sins; welcoming the stranger and outcast; working and speaking for peace and justice, healing and truth, sanctity and beauty; care for all the stuff of creation. The practice of resurrection encourages improvisation on the basic resurrection story as given in our Scriptures and revealed in Jesus. Thousands of derivative unanticipated resurrection details proliferate across the landscape. The company of people who practice resurrection replicates the way of Jesus on the highways and byways named and numbered on all the maps of the world.

This is the church.

The practice of resurrection is not an attack on the world of death; it is a nonviolent embrace of life in the country of death. It is an open invitation to live eternity in time.

But the practice of resurrection, by its very nature, is not something any of us are very good at. Outsiders (and plenty of insiders too!) look at us and see how badly we do it. They observe how hit-and-miss so much of our practice is.

It is easy to dismiss the church as ineffective and irrelevant. And many do dismiss it. It is easy to be condescending to the church because so many of its members are unimpressive nonentities. Condescension is widespread. It is common to become disillusioned with the church because expectations formed in the country of death and by the lies of the devil are disappointments. Disillusionment is, as a matter of course, common.

In the face of all the easy dismissals, the widespread condescension, and the epidemic disillusionment, how are we going to maintain the practice of resurrection in the company of the men and women in the church?

This requires serious conversation, for if the church is intended as God's advertisement to the world, a utopian community put on display so that people will flock to it clamoring to get in, it has obviously become a piece of failed strategy. And if the church is intended to be a disciplined company of men and women charged to get rid of corruption in government, to clean up the world's morals, to convince people to live chastely and honestly, to teach them to treat the forests, rivers, and air with...