Identity, vocation, and mission for Christians are not three separate realities, but are mutually dependent. Christian identity is realized through Christian mission. Mission defines and fulfills identity. Vocation, a word derived form the Latin verb vocare, “to call,” is the calling every Christian has both to be with God and to carry out God’s mission. We can see all this as a theological expression of the relationship between being and doing, living and working. One’s being is only partly separable from one’s doing, for just as our doing is grounded in our being, our being is realized through our doing. Our doing expresses who we are, but we also discover who we are through our doing. Just that intimate is the relationship between Christian identity and Christian mission. As the Swiss theologian Emil Brunner is reputed to have said, “The church exists by mission as fire exists by burning.”
From Horizons of Mission by Titus Presler, Volume 11 of the New Church’s Teaching Series (Cowley Publications, 2001).
[Hat tip to Vicki K Black]
2 comments:
Hear, hear! It is amazing how much clapdoodle and general folly, not to mention aimless waste, fall away when Christians focus on mission and seek faithfully to do what Christ enjoins us to do.
Mission also reminds us that we are sent and that our life, like Christ's, is to be poured out for the life of the world, not protected for the life of the church.
Brunner was a favorite theologian (and I believe possibly a mentor) for one of my favorite seminary professors and the quote sounds so familiar it must have been brought to our attention (but what do I remember clearly from 35 years ago?).
Thank you, Paul!
Very gradually, I'm coming to realise that mission is not just something the Church does, one activity among many, but in a profound way mission is what the Church is. Eternally, the Church is the Body of Christ - here on earth, we are his hands and feet and eyes, as St. Teresa said, and that is mission.
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