Yes, it is mainly the lack of a visible sign toward that all encompassing end that frustrates me. So…sigh…I’m kind of tired of working professionally or participating ecclesiastically in areas that seem devoid of that end (communion of saints). I really am trying to be thankful, though, for God’s body wherever I experience His gift or even in areas that seem to lack it. And I’m asking God to show me how my own sin is the real issue here. In other words, I am closer to the core hindrance of faith than I may want to believe. What else am I missing?

Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial…[the dreamer] acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure.

Now, I’m not sure if this is a contradictory point or not. But Paul Munn just posted this additional response to his point about “strangers and exiles.” He says in one part:

Discerning the body is then the same as discerning the spirit. Looking for and recognizing where the spirit of God is working in people, and seeing how the spirit is calling me to work together as one body with them. The body is not fixed according to persons or membership. The body exists where the spirit of Christ is, and the spirit “blows where it wills.”

This means the membership of our Christian community is not fixed either, or a given. Just as many in Jesus’ religious community turned against him (and we see the same repeated again and again in church history), so also there will be times when we have a hard time recognizing the body where we have seen it before. But then we may soon see it again in the same people. And we may encounter the body of Christ where we never saw it before or never expected to see it.

Anyway, the end all here is actually something quite spectacular (maybe Bonhoeffer would have a problem with me saying this?) and yet so widely missed: the communion of saints.

I think I usually have some idea of how I’d like something to take place or turn out, but there is also some slowly dying concept of “success” that I imagine is something different for me.

Does that make sense even a little bit?

When I walk away from here, I think there will be an over-arching sense of whether or faithfulness (or failure) brought about the kind of fruit I dreamed of. But that doesn’t feel like it has anything to do with the day to day stuff.

And maybe that is what I’m getting around to asking.

I think I know how you’d like to set up your community and I have some kind of picture in my head of how you’d like the day to day rhythms to follow, but how would you identify a point of completion in terms of your work?

And which of those sets are causing all the heart ache?

Are you frustrated with the things you have before you each day, or are you frustrated because you don’t feel as if you’re progressing at all toward a sense of completion?

I guess I’m talking about the difference between a microscope and a super wide angle lens.

Like I said, I think I know your microscope, but funny as it may be, I’m not sure either one of us has ever explored with the other what the end all here might be?

Am I wrong?

Now, I’ve also got one minor disagreement. There is a difficult to see difference between what you might mean by an unfruitful “striving” and the disappointment/grief associated (expected) in following Jesus. I make this point because I wouldn’t want the actual cost to be minimized unwittingly in an effort to afford God his due. In effect, I think God can appreciate how difficult it is for us and might even bless us as we mourn our losses. Our various expectations can be in error, for sure, but expectations in and of themselves are not our enemies. You know more about my expectations for community life than most. If you aren’t sure what I mean by now, my friend, what can I add to it?

I just caught up on all your blogs from when you moved into the new place on out… you had that huge space where you really didn’t blog and I stopped checking… that was a mistake

Your post tonight sounds like such a culmination of frustration and angst. I feel for you, and yet I’m not sure all of your disappointment is well-placed. Though I’m becoming more convinced that perhaps your expectation may be the farthest thing from well-placed.

I’d be interested to hear how you imagine this idea of community could/should play out in your life.

Maybe this goes all the way back to the difference in our backgrounds, but it may surprise you to know that I am still a more or less semi-postmodern or perhaps post-postmodern calvinist.

The thing about calvinism (and yes, I just invoked the thing), is it severs the normal view of causation that Hume critiqued with something much less knowable.

Perhaps thats more fatalism, but whichever label, the sweeping result is the same.

Have a look at my most recent blog. It is a reflection on how our meal this evening played out. This is the true riddle. I don’t know that I did anything different than normal. I’m not sure I “led” in any varied way. So far as I can tell, I rolled the dice the same way I always do… and you know what?

I got a very different result.

What if you’re expecting your efforts to have some greater effect on the result than they really ought to? I am completely convinced that everyone around you knows how sincerely you believe in the work of creating community that sets out to restore all things as partners with the Creator.

If your resulting feeling is something less than what you’d hoped, maybe it has nothing to do with you?

I remember the first few times I rode an elevator. Obviously, I was very young and I’m not super fond of heights so it was a little daunting to imagine what was really happening just outside of those thick metal doors. When I rigged up a four year old’s model of elevator physics in my head, it occurred to me that weight was the enemy pulling us back to the ground and putting stress on the chains and cables struggling to bring us upward.

I would do my part to help lighten things in the elevator. I’d try to exhale and then hold my breath so there wasn’t any air in my lungs. That way, I’d be at least a little lighter, right?

It must have worked because I have never been in an elevator accident.

Not once.

But maybe a more apt metaphor is the roller coaster. I could imagine holding my breath so it would pull up the first big hill a little easier and I guess I could push really hard on the seat in front of me with my feet as if it was a giant imaginary brake going down the big scary hill, but would that really effect the outcome?

Maybe the course is already set for us. Maybe it’s not. If it’s not, maybe the outcome has nothing to do with our striving anyway. All I know, is often, the harder I work, the more my thing sucks. Many times, the more I phone it in, the more I’m stuck trying to explain how things went so well.

But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body.

If we could effect it, then it would appear that the work, and ultimately the glory, was our own. This is all for something far grander than our own internal sense of loneliness.

If I were a betting man, and it appears that I am, I would bet it all on this:

That ours is to pay the ticket price, sit in the seat, keep our arms and legs inside at all times, pray like hell and hold on.

If we endure the ride, then it is all to His glory.

If we scream like little girls and puke on the back of the guy in front of us, well, at least it wasn’t our fault, right?

ps. sorry I’m so slow in replying here…