CONTRIBUTED BY GILLIAN GODSELL
This short piece
by Michelle Wade, is from a longer essay, ‘Living with Jesus in
Liminality’ which can be found at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1skGzhFwhynt4F0BBjhyEvOp5nwMcAw16O86wgNn4e2Q/edit?hl=en_US
3.Liminality Church
Embracing Holy Saturday liminality for the Christian Church undergoing massive socio-cultural
transition, is as massive as the Institution itself. To those who were
struggling with his teaching, Jesus once said, “Let the dead bury their own
dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:60) I
that it does not seek to oust or master other narratives; its nature is love,
believe that this is the guidance the Western Church needs to respond to the
opportunity implicit in its present liminality: to let the dead be dead,
and get back to basics: to love God with our heart, soul, mind and strength and
to love our neighbour as we love our self. “The kenosis of the gospel is
not victory” (Clark 2009, 109).
In other words, the Christian expresses their faith in God by allowing the dead church to die. Scott
Cowdell describes this as a pneumatology of hope, rather than despair. If
we trust in the Church as Religious Institution, we are driven to despair, for
movement out of liminality only comes from outside ourselves. In
contrast, to embrace the Community of God as Mystical Union with Christ, is to
let go of those human definitions of the Christian Church and reformulate our
identity and understanding with more explicit reference to Divine Mystery
(Cowdell 2006). Elsewhere he concludes that this leads the Church into a
ministry of ‘midwifery’ rather than ‘palliative care.’ “That does not
mean abandoning the old...[however] the ministry task today is not to preserve
and protect dwelling pockets of the old, but to see where the new is coming to
birth and put in our best efforts there” (Cowdell 2004, 70)
Brueggeman and Frost both employ the lessons of exile to the prophetic task of ministry and church today.
In Brueggeman’s words: “Prophetic ministry consists of offering an
alternative perception of reality and in letting people see their own history
in the light of God’s freedom and his will for justice” (Brueggemann 2001,
116). This includes the formation of communitas, radical discipleship,
and prophetic ministry that “seeks to penetrate the numbness in order to face
the body of death in which we are caught...[at the same time as seeking to] ...
penetrate the despair that new futures can be believed in and embraced by
us”(Brueggemann 2001, 17). The New Monastic communities within the
Emerging Church movement are a particularly interesting expression of this.
“Monastic movements were creations and movements of the Spirit. If new monasticism
is to serve the mission of God through the Church, as I hope, then retrieval –
reconnection to the ancient church, and renewal – the breaking in of God’s
future, his new creation, need to go hand in hand.” (Cray 2010, 10)
CONCLUSION
This essay has presented an argument that liminality is a natural part of human experience which presents
the follower of Jesus with an opportunity. Surviving liminality requires
faith and understanding – that this is not the end of the story, that there has
been One who has been here before. It is, in fact an opportunity to come
into intimate contact with that One who is beyond our reach in the everyday of
life. Saying yes to this opportunity means embracing the moment -
standing still in the dark, or lying with Jesus in the grave. It is
a strange mix however, for at once there is a letting go of the old, a refusal
to draw on human resources, the determined act of trusting that there is a
future. Critical thinking and searching for meaning, searching for God is
a liminal intelligence that refuses to believe there is nothing but void.
That there is a power beyond the grave to come to our rescue, break
through the meaninglessness with purpose and redeem the old ways so that they
make sense again in a new light.
What
does it take
to mark
the canvas
to
write the line
to play
the chord
to
plough the field
to
cross the river
to
change the world?
Perhaps
the
courage
to let
become
what is
waiting to become
('What does it
take?' in Adams 2010, 1)
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