by Father Lambert van Dinteren
The Church not only guards its apostolic faith but has been sent out. It has a mission. But where has the Church been sent? Why? By whom? To what end? These questions press upon us at a time when Orthodox Christians are increasingly asked to explain our vision and to answer the challenges of the modern world.
"Mission" does not mean preaching and making converts, the narrow "evangelistic" view of mission as expansion and propaganda which long prevailed in the west. Mission is the being and acting of the Church which is directed outward, which is open for, witnessing to or directed towards all those who are and all who are not yet, no longer or almost. no longer Christ.'s. This definition coincides with the translation of "apostolate" as "mission." The word for mission in Greek means "a sending outward" and a "sending to witness.").
In Scripture, especially the Gospel of John, we are told repeatedly that God sent His Son. For instance, "God sent the Son into the world . . . that the world might be saved through him." (John 3:17). This theme of sending is also developed in the Anaphora of St. Basil. The Anaphora speaks about the history of salvation: the creation of man, his disobedience, God"s mercy in sending the prophets, the law, and His Son: "And when the fullness of the time was come thou didst speak unto us by thy Son himself."
The Anaphora continues, explaining how the Son, being the brightness of God's glory and himself God pre-eternal, "yet showed himself upon earth," how "he emptied Himself and took upon him the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of our vile body that he might fashion us like unto the image of his glory." Thus Christ brings us to the knowledge of God. He conquered death by his death and gave us the resurrection by rising the third day.
All this was his mission, and this mission is actualized in the Liturgy: ". . . remembering therefore . . . all those things which came to pass for our sakes: the cross, the tomb, the resurrection on the third day, the ascension into heaven, the sitting on the right hand, the coming again a second time in glory . . ."
Liturgy is God's work. It is Christ who offers (as we see in the prayer before the Great Entrance), it is the Holy Spirit who transforms (Epiclesis). But at the same time, Liturgy is an act of the people of God. As Schmemann has made very clear, the coming together of people is essential for the Liturgy.
The Liturgy is an act of people: God calls us together, and we answer this call; Christ offers and is offered, and we accept Christ's invitation to do this as a commemoration of him; the Holy Spirit transforms, and we offer our gifts and ourselves. It is accordingly the Church that celebrates the Liturgy. Moreover, in Scripture we see the Liturgy and Baptism as a mission which Christ gives the Church.
This is true not only for worship but also for the existence and activity of the Church. It is Christ himself who sends the Church out to continue his work, and he promises to be present in this work: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations. . . ." (Matt 28:16) We find this mission mandate in all four Gospels.
Witness to the Kingdom
In Orthodox tradition, theology is not a rational deduction of revealed facts but a vision with roots in mystical experience, the experience of seeing God. Only two saints are called "theologian": St. John the Theologian (the Evangelist) and St. Gregory the Theologian (of Nazianzus). Both saw God. This initiated them in the mystery and made it possible for them to talk about God. Orthodox theology is therefore a mystical theology. But it is not an individual emotional mysticism. Theology must be faithful to the faith "the Lord gave, the Apostles taught, and the Fathers preserved" (Athanasius, Ad Serapion I, 28).
It is in the Church that we can understand Scripture. It is in the Church, the Body of Christ, that we are united with Christ in the Holy Spirit and in Christ we know the Father. It is in the Church that we can experience the Mystery, especially in the Holy Liturgy as the Sacrament of the Kingdom and the actualization of the Body of Christ. This means, as Alexander Schmemann has written, that the Liturgy is "the source and indeed the very possibility of theology." Orthodox theology must be liturgical.
The Liturgy begins with the blessing "Blessed is the Kingdom." This blessing indicates the goal of the Liturgy, which is fulfilled when the people enter into Communion with the Lord "at his Table in His Kingdom" (Luke 22:30). The Eucharist is the Sacrament of the Kingdom whose culmination is Holy Communion, where the faithful participate in the eschatological "marriage supper" (Rev. 29:9). The end becomes present in the sacrament: God shows His glory and lets the faithful participate in it. This revelation of God's glory is central to every aspect of the mission of the Church.
In celebrating the sacraments, the Church saves the world because in water, in bread and wine offered, in the human community coming together, this world is transformed by the Holy Spirit. The world which ceased to be an icon of God's glory after the fall is restored in the sacrament to its original meaning.
At the same time, by celebrating Liturgy, the Church is revealing to the world still outside a way to salvation. Through its liturgical witness, the Church gives people the opportunity to orient themselves -- to walk either towards heaven or away from it. The Church challenges the world by revealing to it its real destiny: being an icon of God's glory.
The task of to go out is not imposed from outside, neither should the invitation itself be. Mission is nor forcing or persuading people to accept a view, but a loving invitation stemming from the abundant experience of God's love.
This invitation is not just an invitation to adhere to Christ, but to adhere to Christ as he is found in the Church, to join his Body. The community of believers is transformed in Holy Communion to Christ's Body. In the same way, the faithful are baptized in order to become part of the Body of Christ, the Church. Therefore we can say that the mission of the Church is to guide people towards the Church.
The world
In Scripture there is a double attitude towards the world. In St. John, for example, there is a constant tension between being "not of the world" (John 17:16) and sent "into the world" (John 17:18), between Christ come into the world in order to save it (John 3:17; 12:47) and his Kingdom being not of this world (John 18:36). For the Christian community there are similarly two different ways of being and acting in the world. The first epistle of Peter stresses the responsibility the Christian has in the world, while Revelation stresses the otherworldliness of the Christian. In both cases the Christian witnesses to the Lord and his Lordship, by active participation in the case of 1 Peter, by active withdrawal in Revelation.
Whether by engagement or withdrawal, the Church has something to do with the world, its history and society.
In the Eucharist, an ordinary group of people becomes, by the descent of the Holy Spirit and the communion in the body and blood of Christ, a new community, itself Body of Christ. This means that human communities, that society, has the potential to become a sacrament of Christ; and that our time, human history, can become a sacrament of the New Aeon. In the sacraments, parts of this world are restored to their original meaning, thereby revealing to us the potential transfiguration of the whole world. Our time can no longer be neutral since the ultimate meaning of time is revealed in the "present" of the Liturgy. Having been shown this ultimate meaning, the Christian must struggle to transform every situation and every reality into a prophecy of the Kingdom and a participation, even now, in the coming world. The Church has a mission in this world in order to transform it.
This transformation or transfiguration of the world will take place when God fulfills everything, but it has already begun in Christ. We are living in a period between two eschatological events. The incarnation, death, and resurrection was one of these events. It was the fulfillment of the history of salvation and the messianic promise. But although something ultimate happened, history did not come to an end. This will occur with a second eschatological event, the parousia. Our history is defined by these two events and can be characterized as "an ultimate and eschatological conflict." Our time has become an eschatological time. The Church lies in this time between Christ's ascension and his parousia. Here is where the Church must fulfill its mission.
"Church" means to build a new community, to reconstruct human society on a new basis. This implies that the Church has a mission in the society in which it lives: a political mission.
Here are two examples of areas in which the Church has a mission:
The Church has a mission with regard to peace. One of the most urgent problems of the modern world is the endless violence wrought by war, the arms race, and by the exclusion and oppression of peoples and populations. All this results from the disintegration introduced into the world by the Fall. God created this world as a means of communion with Him. Sin meant an alienation from God and thereby a disintegration of life. However, the salvation offered by Christ restored communion with God and in him the communion of all creatures and the whole of creation. It is in the Church, in the eucharistic community, that this communion is offered. Here the "peace and union from on high" are offered to those who left "this world."
This is expressed by the whole group of rites preceding the eucharistic prayer. It begins with the blessing: "Peace unto all." Then the deacon says: "Let us love one another that with one mind we may confess . . . " The kiss of peace follows. The celebrants confess: "Christ is in the midst of us" and all say the creed. Schmemann calls these rites "Sacraments of Unity," a unity established by Christ who is mystically in our midst. This is fulfilled in the Sacrament of Communion.
This unity and peace, this communion coming from above, offered to us by Christ, gives direction to our striving for peace, a direction quite distinct from the unity "from below" sought by peace conferences and all kinds of humanitarian initiatives or revolutionary utopias. Although the world has already been changed by Christ in his death and resurrection, and this world is henceforth offering us building blocks in order to achieve a better world, salvation has only come in potential and sin still reigns. Therefore it is impossible for this world to achieve peace and unity using its own resources, "from below." The Church reveals to the world a different way: the Way, Christ, our Peace.
The Church also has a mission with regard to creation. The ecological crisis is threatening our world. Man is destroying God's creation instead of caring for it, as he was instructed (Gen. 1:28). People around the world are trying to stop this process, but we are not succeeding because we resist giving up our resource-consuming life-style and economic interests. Furthermore, for most people saving creation is a kind of self-preservation and the force which motivates them is fear.
The Church offers a far more radical vision: creation must not only be preserved, but transfigured. And the force which moves the Church to care for creation is the Spirit who offers us a vision of a transfigured world.
Such a vision can be found, for example, in the building of churches. In his history of religions, Christians developed a new form of places for worship. Whereas all religions have some kind of "Domus Dei" (House of God), a sacred place where God and human meet, Christians have only a "Domus Ecclesiae" -- a House of Assembly where Christians meet to worship God. The church building is a place where the Church is called out of this world and comes together. The building then is referred to by the same word as the community coming together in it: ekklesia.
In fact, the place of assembly is itself a reflection of the event taking place in it: the community of believers coming together, transformed in a body, the Body of Christ. The church building is an icon of this communion. The iconographic structure of the church building shows us the transfigured world: high in the dome is Christ, the Head under which all is re-established. On the four pendentives the four evangelists who, by their God-inspired words, connected heaven (the dome) and earth (the nave) and preached the Good News in the four corners of the world. And on the pillars and walls are all the saints. Using shapes and colors, the building becomes an icon of the Church in its cosmic sense: "to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth" (Eph. 1:10). It all reflects symphony, harmony, beauty. This is the New Creation already begun in the historic Church. In the church building parts of this world (paint, stones) already join in the eschatological New Creation, thereby challenging us to offer the whole of creation to be transfigured by the Holy Spirit.
Orthodox mission is not restricted to celebrating the Liturgy. It includes the commission to "make disciples of all nations, baptizing them" (Mt. 28:19) -- to go out into the world in order to invite. It also includes going out into the world and witnessing to the possible transfiguration of the whole world in the Kingdom. But this kind of mission should be liturgical, too. All mission should be a continuation of the Liturgy.
The Liturgy itself indicates it should be continued. It ends with a sending out: "Let us depart in peace." Having experienced the heavenly life and having participated in the communion with Christ, our Peace, Christians are sent out into the world.
It is with this understanding that modern Orthodox theologians have called the care for the world "liturgy after the Liturgy" or "prolongation of the Liturgy." I prefer the second, as it is the same liturgy which is continued in the world.
The liturgical nature of the Church's mission should be stressed because this is the only way in which the Church is really offering something new to the world. The mission of the Church is not to offer the world more of the same, but to offer it the Kingdom. Christians should be the salt of the earth, a light of the world, living according to "the extraordinary and paradoxical law of their spiritual republic" (Letter to Diognete 5,4).
Where do we learn these laws? In the Liturgy. There he or she "sees the true light and receives the heavenly Spirit" and learns (as it is expressed in the prayer before the Gospel) a "spiritual life-style."
The incarnational dimension of mission
The Church's mission must be incarnational, for "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory" (John 1:14). Becoming incarnate was the essence of Christ's salvific mission, as the Fathers say: "God became man, so that man may become like God."
This incarnational approach must also define the mission of the Church. This can mean two things: First, mission should be incarnational in the sense that it takes on local culture, taking up all the good things among different cultures to express anew what the Church is handing down traditionally. This kind of missionary approach has been common in Orthodox mission throughout the ages.
Second, the mission of the Church should be a kenotic -- self-emptying -- because the self-emptying "Christ . . . took the form of a servant." The Church has to enter this world in all its filthiness and sinfulness.
One consequence of this is that the Church has a mission with regard to the poor. The Jesus which Scripture presents to us lives with outcasts. He was born in a stable amongst shepherds, was associated with harlots and sinners, and died as a criminal. Good Tidings for the poor is the crux of his mission (Luke 4:17-21; Matt 11:2-6). The Savior does this not only in words but in deeds, in his keeping company at table with sinners.
Let us not forget that the Easter cycle teaches us that salvation began in hell. In the center of the three days of the Easter Triduum is Holy Saturday on which the Descent into Hell is celebrated: "To earth hast Thou come down, O Master, to save Adam: and not finding him on earth, Thou hast descended into hell, seeking him there."
The Easter troparion proclaims: "Christ has trampled down death by Death." And the most common Easter icon is that of the Descent into Hell; Easter is the conquering of hades and its master, the devil.
If then the mission of the Church comes in the form of Christ, it has to associate with the poor and the sinners, it has to suffer with the suffering, and it should not shrink back from entering the hell of this world in order to offer the world God's salvation.
This kind of mission will not be a social ideology favoring a certain social stratum. On the contrary, by going down to the uttermost desolated places of this world, all the world and all that lives in it will be saved. Christ associated with the greatest sinners and the poorest of the poor and went into the depths of hell because, as the Fathers explain, "what is not assumed is not healed and what is united to God is saved." In order to save the whole man, Christ had to have a real human body, a human soul, and a human will and descent into death. This is what the Fathers defended in the christological debates and what the Ecumenical Councils defined. In order to save all people, Christ had to live with the littlest ones. This was the only way in which Christ could enter "into the domain usurped by the devil and break up the power of the devil over humanity." All are saved: "Christ the Life, by tasting death, has delivered mortal men from death and now gives life to all."
In order to save all, the Church in its mission also has to enter into the hell of this world, not being afraid to be characterized as "a pack of sinners, fools and simple men, violators of convention, disturbers of law and order," as the non-Christian Celsus characterized Christianity in the 4th century.
Entering the world and descending into its hell seems to contradict leaving the world and going up towards the Kingdom. In fact, both approaches are complementary. Moreover, it seems to be one continuing course: after going out of the world and up to the Kingdom, and communicating in the New Life, the Love experienced will flow over, inciting a going out into the world, now as witnesses of this Love.
Our entering into the world does not stop when we no longer feel comfortable; it will become a descent into hell. The descent, however, is not a goal in itself; it is the one way in which to achieve salvation, taking the world up toward the Kingdom. The Church enters the world in order to invite it to the Lord's Table in His Kingdom (Luke 22:30), just as the Word of God, the brightness of God's glory, entered the world, emptied himself, and took human form in order to fashion us into icons of his glory. In the end, it is the glory of God which all mission should reveal.
Father Lambert van Dinteren serves in the parish of Sts. John Chrysostom and Servatios in Maastricht, the Netherlands. This is an abridged version of his essay, "Revealing the Doxa of God: the mission of the Church in the world: an Orthodox view", to be published [by whom? where? when?]. In 1992 he represented the Orthodox Peace Fellowship at the World Council of Churches meeting on "a new heaven and a new earth" held in Brazil in connection with the United Nations "Earth Summit."
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