Synod Bible Study

Uniting Church in Australia – Synod of Queensland

27th Synod, 2008

Bible Study 2

Revd Dr David Rankin

Mission, the Pilgrim People, Augustine, and a Tale of Two Cities

Hebrews 11. 8-16

“(8) By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going. (9) By faith he stayed (parw/|khsen) for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. (10) For he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. (11) By faith he received power of procreation, even tough he was too old – and Sarah herself was barren – because he considered him faithful who had promised. (12) Therefore from one person, and this one as good as dead, descendants were born, ‘as many as the stars of heaven and as innumerable grains of sand by the seashore’”. (13)All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners (ce/noj kai_ parepi/dhmoj)[1] on the earth, (14) for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. (15) If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. (16) But, as it is, they desire a better country, that is, the heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them.”

How do we as a people of faith, as citizens of the city which is to come, and are thereby only pilgrims, passers-through, exiles, sojourners, treat this world which is transitory and often at odds with the city to come? Yet, though transitory perhaps in the context of the Church’s pilgrimage, no less of divine creation and purpose.

“city of God”: Psalm 46.4 [where the city of God is the holy habitation of the Most High]; Psalm 48. 1, 8; Psalm 87.3

Basis of Union para. 3 “…….The Church lives between the time of Christ’s death and resurrection and the final consummation of all things which Christ will bring; the Church is a pilgrim people, always on the way towards a promised goal; here the Church does not have a continuing city but seeks one to come. On the way Christ feeds the Church with Word and Sacraments, and it has the gift of the Spirit in order that it may not lose the way.”

While we often understood the notion of the ‘pilgrim’ as that of someone merely on the way to somewhere special or sacred, with no reference to the place through which one travels to that special or sacred place, the biblical sense of the ‘pilgrimage’, and the one therefore that I choose to read here, is that that of a journey through a strange, alien, foreign, ‘other’ land. That being said, however, we need not read this as a geographical reference; this physical earth, this physical space, is not this ‘other’. It is often simply a state of mind.

Questions: What does it mean for a Church which is a pilgrim people (exiles or sojourners in a foreign land) to be engaged in the Mission of God here, in this place?

What does it mean for a body which is an exile, a sojourner, a stranger in an alien land, a body on the way to somewhere else which finds itself here, what theologian John Milbank calls a “nomad city”, to be engaged in this alien, strange place? How to relate to this [strange] land, this place which is ‘other’?

Churches, or individual, localised Christian communities, have historically dealt with this in a variety of ways:

Some sects, like the Exclusive Brethren, for example, have sought to cut themselves off from the broader community/society – as much as they can – and operated as a form of ghetto with all social and communal life focussed, as much as possible, within their own community. They, for example, do not formally participate, if they can help it, in either the political or educational process within the wider community. [total separation]

Some so-called megachurches, particularly in the US but there are alsoUC congregations throughout the national church, who seek to meet many their members’ social and other related needs within their own structures.

[a partial separation; the enclave]

But for the most part, and this is normal for many within the UnitingChurch, people are involved and engagewithin the broader community/society:

involvement in political parties which are not normally faith-based;

involvement in work for social justice with other groups, some of which will not be faith-based;

membership of service clubs;

UC agencies will often employ people, and properly so, with no particular faith perspective;

UC agencies co-operating with secular agencies;

Christian workers employed for ministry within non-church agencies and institutions.

St Augustine of Hippo in North Africa, Church Father of the late fourth and early fifth centuries, in his celebrated work On The City of God speaks of the history of human dealing with God in terms of two cities or two societies or two branches of humankind, one the City of God (civitas dei) or the Heavenly City (spoken of in the Psalms, in the passage before us from Hebrews and in the Basis of Union) and the other the Earthly City (civitas terrena). The one is characterised by Augustine as shaped by faithfulness and a love for God (the amor dei), a turning towards God and the things of God and the other by a love of self (the amor sui), a turning away from God or what Martin Luther in the 16th century called curvatus in se(turned inwards upon oneself). For Augustine, the Church in its more faithful moments can properly be said to be identified with the City of God or at least to be a representation or symbol of that City above; it could also be said, along the lines of the parable of the Tares and the Wheat, to have within its number citizens of the Earthly City. Augustine also used – and we see something of this in the Basis of Union where we are described as a Pilgrim People not having a continuing city but seeking one yet to come – the notion of the citizens of the Heavenly City who are living in this Earthly realm as exiles, sojourners, strangers passing through thisalien, strange and even hostile land.

In one passage of the City of God(19.27) – a long work of some 22 books and one written in the aftermath of the Sack of Rome in 410CE - Augustine asks the question of how the citizens of the Heavenly City, while living in the Earthly one, are to deal with the structuress of this latter realm. He speaks of the citizens of the EarthlyCity, whose life is not governed by faith, pursuing

“an earthly peace (that is, a peace characterised in negative terms as one in which the normal violence of the fallen human being is constrained by external threat of force) (pursuing an earthly peace) by means of the good things and the conveniences of this temporal life” (19.27).

[[This will be understood as arbitrary violence kept in check but not extinguished by more violence or the threat of violence.]]

Yet those who are citizens of the Heavenly City, the City of God, he says, who live by faith and who look to the eternal blessings that are promised for the future,

“employ like anyone finding themselves in a strange land any earthly or temporal things yet not allowing these to entrap or divert them from the path that leads to God but rather employing them to minister to their needs in this mortal realm”.

“Therefore, so long as it leads its life in captivity, so to speak, being a stranger in the earthly city, although it has received the promise of redemption, and the gift of the spirit as a pledge to this, it does not hesitate to obey the laws of the earthly city whereby matters that minister to the support of mortal life are administered to the end that since this mortal life is common to both, a harmony may be preserved between both cities with regard to the things that belong properly to it”.

He then goes on and makes clear, however, that there can be no compromise over the laws of religion – for the citizens of the HeavenlyCity will worship the one only true God, while the citizens of the Earthly will know either all manner of gods or none at all. He continues:

“while this heavenly city goes its way as a stranger on earth, it summons citizens from all peoples, and gathers an alien society of all languages, caring nothing what difference may be in manners, laws and institutions by which earthly peace is gained or maintained, abolishing and destroying nothing of the sort, but rather preserving and following these (for however different they may be among different nations, they aim at one and the same end, earthly peace), provided that there is no hindrance to the religion that teaches the obligation to worship one most high and true God. For even the Heavenly City, in this its pilgrimage, makes use of the Earthly peace, using this to minister to the true peace, that of heaven, being the best ordered and most harmonious fellowship in the enjoyment of God and of one another in God”, and

“this (true)peace the heavenly city during its pilgrimage enjoys by faith, and by this faith it lives justly when it makes the attainment of that peace the goal of every action in which it engages [in this earthly realm] for the service of God and one’s neighbour; for the life of a city is certainly a socialis or relational or companionable one”.

Questions: What, then, might this mean for us as we pass as sojourners, as strangers, as pilgrims through this alien land? What is mission then, how is it to be understood, this mission of God, the missio dei, in this context, for individuals, congregations, presbyteries, synods, agencies – community service, educational and so on – as they seek to know and to be that which God calls us, in that freedom which God gives us to be that which God desires us to be?

How to relate/co-operate with those without particular faith (or even hostile to a faith perspective)?

What are the limits of co-operation? What the constraints?

Can a faith-based community – whose citizenship properly belongs within the City of God – pursue an earthly peace within the alien, earthly realm as a means of ministering to the peace of heaven?

Are we constrained as people of God by what might divert or obstruct the free and unhindered worship of God? Can we compromise this obligation, in our dealings with the structures of this earthly city, “to worship one most high and true God”?

Is what we do within the earthly city, and working within the framework of a peace which is not that of heaven but merely one which is the restraint, the holding in check of violence, simply determined in the final analysis by how it might allow, encourage or facilitate the worship of God and thereby the mission of God?

Summary:

Hebrews speaks

of Christians seeking a promised homeland, a better country than this, a new city prepared by God.

The Basis of Union speaks

of the faithfulas pilgrims, always beingon the way to a promised goal…to a city to come.

Augustine speaks

of employing the structures of this earthly city to meet the basic needs of this mortal life but not being diverted thereby from the path to God;

of employing the structures of the earthly city, of the earthly peace, to minister to the heavenly;

of preserving all manner of customs, laws belonging to the earthly city – those which maintain the earthly peace but provide no hindrance to the free worship of God;

of the service of God and of the neighbour in the earthly city as having the ultimate goal of the peace of heaven, a relational existence of fellowship in the engagement of God and of the neighbour.

What, then, are the basic earthly needs which, as met, might minister to and facilitate (in a positive sense) and which will not obstruct or divert (in a negative sense) the attainment of the peace of heaven, a peace which is not merely the restraint of violence, but that peace which is true fellowship with God and the neighbour, which will minister to the free and unhindered worship of God which is after all the purpose of the creation?:

A basic, fundamentally supportive environment which means, at the very least, the provision of affordable and universal basic health care (physical and emotional), of basic sustenance (food, water, clothing, and shelter), of the meeting of basic educational and vocational needs.

For only a person, it would seem to me, with these basic needs, at the very least, guaranteed and provided on a regular and sustained basis can be freed for free and unhindered worship and service of God and for the possibility of fellowship with God and with the neighbour.

3 November 2008

Synod Bible Study 2

Mission, the Pilgrim People, Augustine, and a Tale of Two Cities

David Rankin

Hebrews 11. 8-16

“(8) By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going. (9) By faith he stayed (parw/|khsen) for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. (10) For he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. (11) By faith he received power of procreation, even tough he was too old – and Sarah herself was barren – because he considered him faithful who had promised. (12) Therefore from one person, and this one as good as dead, descendants were born, ‘as many as the stars of heaven and as innumerable grains of sand by the seashore’”. (13) All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners (ce/noj kai_ parepi/dhmoj)[2] on the earth, (14) for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. (15) If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. (16) But, as it is, they desire a better country, that is, the heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them.”

Questions: What does it mean for a Church which is a pilgrim people (exiles in a foreign land) to be engaged in the Mission of God here, in this place?

What does it mean for a body which is an exile, a sojourner, a stranger in an alien land, a body on the way to somewhere else which finds itself here, what Milbank calls a “nomad city”, to be engaged in this alien, strange place? How to relate to this [strange] land?

Augustine, On the City of God 19.27:

“While this heavenly city goes its way as a stranger on earth, it summons citizens from all peoples, and gathers an alien society of all languages, caring nothing what difference may be in manners, laws and institutions by which earthly peace is gained or maintained, abolishing and destroying nothing of the sort, but rather preserving and following these (for however different they may be among different nations, they aim at one and the same end, earthly peace), provided that there is no hindrance to the religion that teaches the obligation to worship one most high and true God. For even the Heavenly City, in this its pilgrimage, makes use of the Earthly peace, using for the sake of the true peace, that of heaven, being the best ordered and most harmonious fellowship in the enjoyment of God and of one another in God”. And

“This peace the heavenly city during its pilgrimage enjoys by faith, and by this faith it lives justly when it makes the attainment of that peace the goal of every action in which it engages for the service of God and one’s neighbour; for the life of a city is certainly a socialis or relational or companionable one”.

[1]Parepi/dhmoj is a stranger, sojourner or one sojourning at a strange place.

[2]Parepi/dhmoj is a stranger, sojourner or one sojourning at a strange place.