Come Let Us Reason: An Introduction

But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear

1 Peter 3:15

Sacraments proper are the Church’s action within herself. It is the way the Church enters into communion with the God Who is beyond all things, it is a way of union. One can say the sacramental is first directed inward and upward. Mission is the Church’s action directed to and in the world. The missional act is first and foremost the perpetuation of Christ’s work and a fulfilling of His command to make disciples of all nations. It is outward with the intention of drawing those inward–come taste and see! Christ called persons to be part of His life; He is the autobasileia, for one to be saved we must become part of His Body. The Church’s mission is, therefore, Christ’s mission.  The intersection of these two aspects of the Church’s work is at baptism; here the outward missional act and the inward sacramental act converge. Baptism is passage, an entrance into the Kingdom of God. Communally and mystically the Church enters and ascends. 

The Holy Apostles brought the Gospel to the four corners of the earth fulfilling Christ’s command in their time and place. They were clothed with power on high and spoke in a multiplicity of languages. Babel had been reversed and the Church becomes the healing and reuniting of the scattered nations of old. The Church has inherited this very task, to fulfill the Great Commission in its time and place.  

Inevitably problems arise when the Church begins to dialog with the society in which she also shares space culturally and geographically. The Fathers took language and concepts from Hellenism and Christ-ified them. Theirs was not an eradicative but a transformative act. They were able to accomplish this without domesticating the Gospel by truly indwelling the story that first began with, “in the beginning.” They bore witness to the Christ event and preached it as a public fact. They did not concern themselves with debating historicity. The first Christians preached the Gospel because they saw the risen Lord. This was not the recurring dying god motif of mythology, this truly happened in space and time. Myth became history. Currently, the Church lives within a thoroughly secularized society, where anything with a smattering of religion will be confined to the private sphere, and anyone with proclivities of extremism (which nowadays doesn’t take much) will be excommunicated from the social sector. We live on this side of the quest for the historical Jesus and history as an academic discipline. We are constantly assailed by science to prove the veracity of our dogma. The devil takes us up to a precipice and tells us that he will give us the world if we repackage the Gospel into a self help program or spin it into enticing prosperity language. If the Church refuses to play this game, then we are branded “haters of humanity” all over again. We must bear in mind, the Church has survived worse persecution than what she currently suffers in the contemporary West, so she must carry on. At the same time, we must call attention to the myth of a secular society–here myth meaning false–because regardless of  the supposed stripping away of religious belief and superstition, people are still believing people, they put their faith in something. At this junction the Church can speak to this generation

Orthodox Christians of the “diaspora” pride themselves for being Orthodox in the (post)modern world. Lest we succumb to delusion, we are not fifteenth century Russian peasants; we are modern people that are products of a secular culture. However, Orthodox have rejected some of the world by simply becoming Orthodox or choosing to stay within the tradition in which they were raised. There is one foot in each world. Needless to say, the Church has not gone through modernism (if it did, it would resemble Anglicanism), but has, by the grace of God, survived to the present. Diaspora Orthodox are hybridized Christians, they are learning to free themselves from the shackles of (post)modernity; however,  they will never truly be Medieval Russian peasants, or citizens of the Eastern Roman Empire able to attend Hagia Sophia. The Church of today must learn to speak the contemporary language without neutering and taming the Gospel to fit nicely and neatly into the homogenized culture shaped by the reigning plausibility structures. Borrowing from Lesslie Newbigin, the Church of today must indwell the narrative, tacitly, while tending to the world. Only then can the Church bear witness to the Kingdom of God in a world that is hellbent on razing creation to lay the foundation for another Tower of Babel. 

The purpose of this blog is twofold. Addressing education at the parish level is of primary concern. How does one share one’s faith? How to engage with a culture in such a way that Orthodoxy is not easily dismissed among the white noise of a consumeristic landscape that has shelved religions, cults, ideologies and belief systems side-by-side on the same aisle in the competitive marketplace…this is of utmost importance. This reduction of religion to branding and sales pitches has been pernicious at best and malevolent at its worst. Orthodox Christians need to be wary of the allure of the “economic” enterprise. Christians need to know their faith well enough to not fall into the trap of the modern project. Basic beliefs and practices that distinguish Orthodoxy is needed; moreover, commonalities can act as a catalyst for dialog. 

The first purpose should fuel the second, mission. Fr. Alexander Schmemann tells us that, “the Church is mission and that to be mission is its very essence, its life.” To make disciples of all nations and baptizing them was the last command that Christ gave us before He ascended into heaven.  Ten days later the promised Holy Spirit descended. Every year, fifty days after Pascha, the Church kneels in prayer on the Feast of Pentecost. Repeatedly the people of God are called to fulfill the Great Commission, to propagate the Gospel to the ends of the earth. 

In the first chapter of the book of Isaiah, the prophet speaks, “Come let us reason (λέγω) together.” The Greek word meaning to say or to speak but also to teach; there is also a meaning to collect or to gather. The people of God are called together for instruction. Doom is on the horizon for the nation of Israel, and they must heed the prophetic instruction. Preceding that verse they are exhorted to: 

Learn to do good; Seek justice, Rebuke the oppressor; Defend the fatherless, Plead for the widow.

The people are called together to fulfill the Abrahamic covenant of being a blessing and to bear witness to the glory of God (Gen. 12:2). The Church now fulfills the role of Israel, as seen in the Great Commission and Pentecost.