The Trinity and Mission

This is the second in a series on The Trinity and the Christian Life. Exploring how thinking and speaking of God as Triune impacts the way we approach central aspects of the Christian life. In this post, Mission.

Readings: Exodus 3:1-17; Isaiah 55:10-56:2; Acts 2:1-21; John 15:1-17

Why does God make Godself known to us? Why revelation? The God who created all things could have withdrawn from sight and allowed the world to unfold without entering into covenants, calling people from their homes, liberating a nation from slavery, giving law, sending prophets, becoming incarnate, and dwelling with us as Spirit. Even if God, dismayed by the ways human beings wronged one another, wanted to rescue people from their destructive desires, could this not have been done with an unseen hand? Numerous writers in Scripture remind us that God does not need anything from humanity – God is not like Tinkerbell in the Pantomime, fading out of existence unless we clap loud enough. Revelation is not self-satisfying or self-protecting on the part of God. So why then, does God reveal Godself?

Revelation reflects God’s missionary nature – it reflects God’s turn toward us, God’s being for and with humanity. God is the one who reveals, and in doing so reveals Godself as being committed to the establishment of a people and the flourishing of the world. The Trinity is a missionary God. When God reveals the divine name to Moses it is (roughly) translated as I will be what I will be, or (even more emphatically) I will be known by what I am about to do. Moses is commissioned to tell the Israelites (and Pharaoh) that ‘if you want to know who God is…watch this!’ The nature and name of God is revealed in the mission to liberate and establish Israel as a people free to worship, witness and order their lives after God’s generous, gracious love. Revelation is purposive (Is. 55:11); it has a reconciling quality. Revelation overcomes the gap we have envisaged between God and ourselves, and between ourselves and others. Revelation reveals that God has acted – dramatically – to overcome the estrangement we have wrought and to stand in solidarity with, and in service to, those whom the world rejects, calling a people to do likewise. 

This link between revelation and reconciliation extends to the fullness of God’s redemptive work, even shaping how we speak of God as Triune. In sending the Son, reconciliation with the Father is achieved objectively (a cosmic once-and-for-all fact) and in the sending of the Spirit it is achieved subjectively (in the life of each individual). The Trinity is known through redemptive engagement with the world. As John Flett writes, there is no breach in the being and act of God (Flett, The Witness of God - same for all the following).  

The reason this claim is important, and not mere speculation, is that if there is no breach in the being and act of God, there should be no such breach in the Church: “God exists for the world, and if the community is to exist for God [the church] has to exist for the world… The Christian community is a missionary community, or she is not a Christian community” (Flett). If God has turned to the world, moved out into the world to stand in solidarity with those who suffer, and reconcile all things back to God, and yet the church stands idle and looks inward, then it is the church that has turned away from God. Another way to put this is to think of the image of the church as the body of Christ, with Christ as its head: if the head answers the call in obedience and goes out into the world, while the body does not – then the church has become a headless body. Faithfulness comes through patterning the community after Christ’s own obedience to God’s mission

If we accept the necessity of the church to be a witnessing/missionary community for its ongoing communion with God, then what form should this mission take? While Pentecost reminds us there is no necessary language or cultural form for the proclamation of the Gospel, we can still search for guiding values in God’s own mission, especially in Jesus’ life. First, given that Jesus not only reconciles us, but calls a community of disciples to be ambassadors of reconciliation, “missionary activity receives a definitive form: it is active participation in reconciled and reconciling communities” (Flett) This point holds particular power during Reconciliation Week: Our call to walk together for justice and reconciliation in our country is not a political stance alongside our life of faith, but is born directly from our desire to imitate Christ and participate in his mission. Second, “as the history of God includes taking the ‘form of a servant’, service characterises the human response” (Flett). To be a servant requires us to respect what it is those we seek to serve identify as a need; so mission requires humility to not presume the needs of our neighbours. We need to show up, listen, learn, and stay to do the work. Third, as Jesus himself took the loving kindness of God to those most often shunned by religious and political systems, the Christian life is marked by a determination “to open up and direct the whole world to this loving kindness” (Flett). Its good news worth sharing! Fourth, because God exists for the world, and the community of Jesus Christ exists for God, the church has no option but to exist for the world. The church, following Christ, stands in solidarity with the world, particularly with those in affliction. Mission then implies “living with those to whom one is sent, living their life with them, speaking their language, sharing in their problems, speaking to them, not from the outside, but as one of their own people” (McMaken, Our God Loves Justice). This requires us to be as innocent as doves and wise as serpents; resisting the lure to use our power for our own security when it would neglect the vulnerable, but also resisting resigning all power when those in affliction need the church to take a risk and stand with them. 

While the specifics of each community’s witness is determined in dialogue and payer, we rejoice for the mission of God has changed the landscape! Evil has been confronted, reconciliation has been achieved, and we have been made a people. Having been captured by the gospel we live as a community swept up by this reconciled reality, joyfully participating in the work of Christ by witnessing to the kingdom he proclaimed. “The battle has been won, and the work of the community consists of hurrying after Jesus Christ’s own prophetic work” (Flett).