This week’s post, updated from a few years back, is continuing the Glacial Transformation theme. I’ve also prepared a post on human priestliness, tentatively titled “The Priesthood We Cannot Escape.” It’s about 60% complete which means it could be posted by Friday, or maybe sometime in early November. Before the advent of smartphones and social media I was perfectly capable of distracting myself into immobility. I really didn’t need help. But on with Glacial Transformation:
In the previous post, I examined Simon the Magician (Acts 8) as an example of an inadequate concept of conversion. If what is often called conversion is simply the inauguration of the conversion process, then Simon’s conversion, as told in that story, was merely a small beginning. The text does not support the attempts of many commentators to cast doubt on the authenticity of that beginning. Those attempts only reveal an assumption that the beginning is supposed to be the end. It is not. It is just the beginning.
Yet the distance between our beginning and our end – to show, unsullied, the character and person of Jesus through the lens of our unique personalities – is a long journey in which no part of our lives can be left unexamined. If that is a challenge to an individual Christian, it is a much greater one to a Christian community. The challenge becomes even more daunting because our cultural bias in the West leads us to underestimate both the reality and the power of community. While an individual may have some influence on a community, a community has a personality and a life that is not only greater than the sum of its parts, but is more capable of influencing us than we it. James K.A. Smith makes a similar observation regarding a type of community, the cultural institution: “However, there is an important sense in which cultural institutions take on a life of their own; while they are ultimately human creations, once they’re up and running, they cannot be reduced to the particular whims and interests of particular human beings. They assume a kind of systemic power that gives them an influence independent of individual agents. The result is that while cultural institutions are essentially human creations, there is also an important sense in which humans are the products of the formation we receive through cultural institutions.[1]
We find a more whimsical version in John Gall’s last edition of his book, The Systems Bible (the third edition of his original work, Systemantics). “Systems are like babies: once you get one, you have it. They don’t go away. On the contrary, they display the most remarkable persistence. They not only persist, they grow.[2]
The New Testament recounts the formation of numerous new communities through St. Paul’s missionary work. One community that seems particularly to have struggled with the process of conversion is the Christian community in the city of Corinth. At the time of Paul’s writing, Corinth was a thriving and prosperous port city. Like many commercial centers in our times, it was an expensive place in which to live. Additionally, like many modern cities, there were significant disparities in wealth, status, and education. The first Christian communities were notable for the diversity of their members: Jews and Gentiles, women and men, the rich and the poor, slaves and citizens of Rome. And yet…
Despite having a robust spiritual life, the Corinthian church faced some significant problems. The culture of the city infiltrated the church through its members. Several issues that Paul addresses in his letters reflect the culture of the city. There are factions around leaders. The eloquent Apollos and the blunt Paul are sharp contrasts, and the congregation seems split between the educated, who appreciate the oratory of Apollos, and those who prefer the blunt directness of Paul. There is also religious division between those who are sophisticated enough to disregard the old gods and goddesses of the classic world and those who still find power, however sinister, in the old religion.
However, the most significant evidence of a not-quite-converted community is in their “love feast,” which is a common setting for observing the Eucharist, also known as the Lord’s Supper. The continuing separation based on wealth and privilege has some with nothing to eat at the feast and some who continue pagan patterns of overindulgence. Jew and Gentile sharing a meal would be a radical thing for the Jewish believers in this new community. But sharing a meal with the rich and the poor was equally radical – a sign of a new humanity in Christ. The separation experienced in the Corinthian meal (one cannot call it a common meal!) was a clear indicator that the life of Christ’s new community had not yet permeated the customs and expectations of the Corinthian church.
Although much of Paul’s first letter is devoted to corrections, this was not a failed community. It was simply a community in the early stages of conversion. There was sufficient awareness within the community that a delegation had come to Paul, expressing their distress and concern. In one important regard, the situation of the Corinthian church was much clearer than that of churches in the West, particularly in the US. The world of ancient Corinth was a pagan world, characterized by its values and expectations. There was a Jewish presence in the city, but the separation Jews maintained from the surrounding culture meant that the life of the Torah had little impact or influence. In our day, on the dying edge of Christendom, the distinctions are not quite as clear. The assumption that Christianity is “normal,” even though its normalcy is under siege, masks the need of a community to experience ongoing conversion. The problem with “normal” is the question of whose norm we apply. Perhaps the ending of our former normal is a God-given moment where we can test that passing normal against the norms that Jesus and Paul set forth for the church.
What can help us get our communal conversion back on track is to explore the New Testament’s description and expectation of what a church is supposed to look like. Once we discover the disconnect between that description and expectation and the characteristics of “norms” of church life, conversion can resume in earnest.
[1] James K.A. Smith. Desiring the Kingdom, p. 72
[2] John Gall. The Systems Bible, p. 17
The Apprentice Priest 