“Participate in communion in remembrance of my whole person…

relationally involved together in the new covenant.”

1 Corinthians 11:24-25

 

“Whoever serves [and worships] me must follow my whole person; and where my person is, my child-persons also will be whole-ly.”

John 12:26

 

 

 

 

The unfolding of God’s relational word, whole-ly embodied in Christ, continues in this chapter to give us further understanding for our compatible relational response in worship and discipleship. In particular, we consider carefully the deep relational significance of Jesus’ table fellowships for his earliest followers, a significance that was not always understood by his disciples, and that is missing in most practice by us today (even if present in our theology). These table fellowships provided persons with the experiential reality of communion (sharing in intimate relationship together) with Jesus in God’s relational context and process, for example, when Jesus came to Martha and Mary’s home. It is through God’s relational context and process where persons relationally come directly before God on God’s terms for relationship—behind the curtain and with the veil removed—for the primary relational purpose to compose the new covenant. The relational outcome of the new covenant is what Jesus embodied, formally instituted at his final and pivotal table fellowship, and sealed with the sacrifice of his whole person on the cross.

 

Compared with the first covenant in the OT, in which face-to-face connection with God was limited to Moses (Num 12:8; Dt 34:10), the new covenant opened up access to God to anyone. As part of God’s unfolding of the new covenant, these gatherings around the table served as settings in which the new covenant terms of relational grace were whole-ly embodied in a new way. That is, this was something truly new (beyond innovation), the unfolding in improbable strategic and tactical shifts made by God in his increasingly vulnerable relational response of grace to the inherent human need and human condition (‘to be apart’ from God’s relational whole).[1] The relational outcome was that the new covenant is experienced in intimate communion, of which Jesus’ table fellowship is our hermeneutical key. It is essential for our practices of Holy Communion to deeply understand and experience the face-to-face relationship of Jesus’ table fellowship. And since his table fellowships often made persons uncomfortable and created conflict, I would not be surprised by resistance to engage this discussion.

 

In the Mediterranean region during biblical times, table fellowship signified close friendship and belonging. Yet Jesus’ table fellowships were distinguished far beyond those human contexts by Jesus embodying the vulnerable presence and intimated involvement of God with persons in an uncommon way. At these table fellowships, Jesus now embodied the new covenant relationship, in which Jesus’ vulnerable presence and intimate involvement with persons was most openly available for persons to come Face to face and heart to heart with the whole of God. Recall Jesus’ disclosure that “whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (Jn 14:9). What was unheard of before, now even persons who were unlikely table companions—such as Levi, Zacchaeus, and other marginalized persons in that sociocultural milieu—were provided direct access to the whole and holy (uncommon) God.

 

In this unlikely and simple way, table fellowship with Jesus whole-ly (not parts of him, e.g. teachings, his sacrifice, ethical model) composed communion (intimate relationship together) taking place ‘behind the curtain’ with the veil removed. This is whole-ly communion composed by whole persons (divine and human) in wholeness (not fragmented and reduced to parts, but integrated whole from inner out), in reciprocal relationship together on God’s terms of relational grace, with nothing less and no substitutes in both theology and practice. Whole-ly communion integrates holy (uncommon)—that is, being compatible with who and what God is and thus in God’s qualitative image—and whole (being congruent with how God functions in relationships, and thus in relational likeness of the Trinity). Communion that is not whole and holy, whole-ly, is fragmented and common, which describes much of communion practice today.

 

Whole-ly communion that persons enjoyed at table fellowship with Jesus was the distinguished and paradigmatic embodying of the new covenant relationship together. This uncommon communion is the relational experience of whole persons in whole relationships of the new covenant, inaugurated by Christ when he entered behind the curtain to make the blood sacrifice necessary to enact it (Heb 9:11-14). Yet, in relational terms some persons experienced whole-ly communion with Christ even before he went to the cross. Even while on the cross, Jesus continued his relational work to establish his Father’s family, for example, which included bringing his mother Mary and disciple John together in family love (Jn 19:26-27).[2] Before and while on the cross, Jesus was always engaged in the relational work of family love, the primacy of which should expand the common narrow focus on the cross as just the symbol of Jesus’ sacrifice for us. To remain overly focused on Jesus’ sacrifice fragments Jesus’ whole person to only that part, and de-personizes and de-relationalizes the whole of who and what Jesus whole-ly disclosed. That is to say, communion that is overly christocentric has relational consequences, which render such communion practice without relational significance. Whole-ly communion with the whole and holy God in the new covenant is also to be our experiential reality today as the new creation family into which we have been adopted as full members ‘already’.

 

The new covenant and its primacy for relationship together won’t be realized among us as long as we continue in the old of making the secondary primary, the old symbolized as the tent of the first covenant (Heb 9:8-10). If the old tent still stands, the new cannot emerge. The question that must be asked ongoingly—not taking for granted where we are, in front of the curtain or behind it—is whether we really are functioning in relationship with God according to God’s relational terms of the new covenant. As we continue, we need to examine some ways that the secondary have eclipsed the primary, ironically in many of our celebrations of Holy (yet common) Communion—including our theology, certainly in our practice.

 

 

 

Whole-ly Communion Embodies the New Covenant

 

 

The discussion in this section may appear to reduce the significance of Communion. Nothing could be further from the truth, for the practice of Communion is an irreplaceable integral aspect of every worshiping body of Christians; and the relational function (not in referential terms) of this practice joins us together as ‘one’ in Christ, not only in theology but relationally in the church’s function worldwide. What we need to understand is the historical and current reduction of the Communion’s theology and practice, namely the predominant practice (and traditions) of making secondary matter primary, which creates or reinforces relational distance in our discipleship relationship, our worship relationship, and thus in our corporate relationships (our ecclesiology). Relational distance in our corporate family life reflects a renegotiated ecclesiology that runs counter to God’s distinguished relational design and purpose for the new covenant. Such assumptions underlying so much of church life and practice need to be clarified and corrected, perhaps even chastened, before the new wine communion of Jesus’ table fellowship can restore Communion to its intended wholeness in theology and practice.

 

For Jesus’ closest disciples, these table fellowships were distinguished experiences as they experienced Jesus face to face in intimate relationship together. And while these intimate times held relational significance for individuals, the corporate experience of relationship together was equally important. This relationship with Jesus composed the relational progression that deepens from being disciples to friends, and into the relational belonging in the Father’s very own family (Jn 15:14-15; Mt 12:48-50)—the relational progression necessary for reconciled relationship with the whole and holy God as the new creation family together (as Paul clarified for ecclesiology in wholeness, Eph 2:14-22; 2 Cor 5:17-19).

 

To continue discussion noted earlier about the biblical Mediterranean sociocultural and religious context, table fellowship was an important context of acceptance, close friendship, and belonging.[3] Given that the region was home to numerous deities, shared meals were part of sacred rituals signifying the relationship between humans and their deities—which influenced a fragmenting hybrid practice in churches (cf. Rev 2:19-20). In OT times, the Israelites observed a temple/ tabernacle cultic practice of sharing a meal with God—the practice of peace offerings (šelem, also called the “fellowship offering,” Lev 7:11-15, 32-33). For this occasional shared offering, the worshiper brought an animal to be sacrificed, a portion of which was given to God, and the rest to be eaten by the priests and worshiper(s). Very detailed regulations were followed pertaining to ceremonial purity of the sacrifices, the priests and worshipers for this shared meal (indeed for all the various sacrifices and offerings), which apparently were enjoyable celebrations expressing thankfulness to God. In effect, with these offerings the Israelites “shared a sacred meal with God as a sign of their acceptance by him through the sacrificial act.”[4]

            Yet, by Jesus’ time, the Pharisees had reshaped Judaism’s cultic practice by turning every meal into a sacred one, and their strict outer-in emphasis on ritual purity had relational consequences, as noted by Christian liturgy historian Paul Bradshaw:

 

They were very careful about not only what they ate (so as to observe the dietary laws prescribed in the Old Testament) but also with whom they shared a meal, since table-fellowship with those regarded as impure would compromise their own ritual purity.[5]

 

The Pharisees’ meal practice along with their other religious practices created relational barriers for those who didn’t measure up to their strict traditions—part of why Jesus cleaned out the temple to restore God’s house for all persons without distinctions (Mk 11:15-17).

 

It was for this reason that Jesus’ behaviour scandalized many of his contemporaries, since, although apparently claiming to be a pious Jew, he ate with the outcasts of society—tax collectors and sinners.[6]

           

Beyond merely observing Jesus in referential terms, we need to pay attention to the relational significance unfolding to whole-ly embody the church. Table fellowship with Jesus was the incomparable experience of God’s relational grace for relationship together in wholeness for these disciples. This relational outcome has been ambiguous, elusive or simply absent in Communion practice in church history to the present.

 

After Jesus ascended, the Lord’s Supper (the Eucharist) was a meal shared by the earliest Christians in the form of Jesus’ table fellowship (1 Cor 11:17-34). The earliest worship settings were private homes and the number of persons attending depended on the size of the house that could be opened up for such gatherings.[7] What soon transpired in some places was not the disappearance of the Eucharist, but rather the substitution of it with something else. Notably, the primacy of its relational significance very soon was diminished. In the Corinthian church, for example, the meal became an end in itself, as when some of the Corinthian Christians indulged themselves (eating and getting drunk) while the poor members were left out. Paul was infuriated by this fragmenting of the church family (1 Cor 11:17-34). Thus Bradshaw writes, “What was happening was the exact opposite of the unity that the meal was supposed to express, so that Paul concludes, ‘it is not the Lord’s Supper that you eat (v.20).’”[8]

 

From the fourth to the twenty-first century, controversies and debates have divided God’s church over interpreting Jesus’ words focused in referential terms. For example, how do we explain Jesus’ presence or absence in the bread and wine?[9] About these and related issues, we can make the generalization that the disagreements arose from interpreting Jesus’ words and actions in referential language (not relational). Referential language interprets Jesus’ words as information from an object to study and explain, rather than as relational disclosures by God as Subject. Consequently, Jesus’ words “Take, eat; this is my body…. this is my blood” (Mt 26:26-28) have been reduced by referential language in two major ways: (1) By linking the bread and wine to Jesus’ death on the cross, we end up thinking that “do this in remembrance of me” is solely (or primarily) about Jesus’ sacrifice; (2) this perception then reduces Jesus’ whole person to one part (his sacrifice), with fragmenting theological ramifications, discussed shortly.

 

Although most modern theologians, church and worship leaders wouldn’t interpret Jesus’ words literally (cf. Jn 6:52), their referential interpretive lens has only a limited narrowed-down field of perception; they can only continue in the mode of the wise and learned (discussed previously in Lk 10:21). Throughout the church’s fragmenting history, theologians have done interpretive gymnastics, creating theological fog out of words from Jesus that in whole context make sense only in relational language. And, again, Jesus’ relational language is clear to child-persons who can hear and speak “my language” (Jn 8:43).

 

Bradshaw points in the direction of how our referential language lens pays attention to only one part of Jesus (his sacrifice), thereby reducing the broader relational significance of Jesus’ relational involvement with persons:

 

While I believe it was, and is, perfectly legitimate for Christians to interpret Jesus’ sayings [at the Last Supper] in relation to his death…I believe a valuable balanced insight was lost by an excessive focus on the power of his sacrificed body and blood and a consequent diminishing of the value of his living and nourishing flesh and blood. In particular, it led in the course of time to a decline in the reception of communion, as that came to be seen as less important for believers than the offering of the Eucharistic sacrifice—to a disproportionate emphasis, if you like, on altar rather than on table.[10]

 

Bradshaw speaks also to the need for our lenses to broaden and deepen, in order to take in the whole, rather than focus on parts of Jesus. Let us reflect on our Communion experiences, and the gap between the theology and words that we hear, and what we actually experience. I dare to offer that the lack of experiential relational significance in Communion has been disheartening to many, stirring up deeper desires and longing, perhaps even prompting persons to stop going to church. That is to say, communion practice is only a symptom of what churches don’t feed, nurture and mature in their members.

 

Communion (capital “C”) today is not distinguished in practice as whole-ly communion, the sharing together in intimate relationship composing the new covenant, which Jesus’ table fellowships embodied. We have an accounting to make that cannot be fixed by any relationally-less-significant approaches, or be replaced by any relationally-less-significant substitutes, no matter how sincerely we try. This brings us to an assumption we make about participating in worship, and especially Communion, that it forms worshipers into Christlikeness (and what that means depends on the Christ we follow) and also the people of God (e.g. a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people).

 

The reality or fact that merely being present in worship, and especially at Communion, has been ineffective in bringing about inner-out change of persons is the unmistakable presence (i.e. if not ignored) of relational distance among us. Even among long-time Christians, from the personal level, within a single local church, churches in a region, within a country, all the way to the macro level of the global church, relational distance is the key indicator of embodying old the worship relationship (as well as discipleship). The inner-out change of metamorphoō is eclipsed in our theology and practice by giving attention and primacy to secondary matters—secondary matters, for example, in the various traditions of Communion—and merely making outward changes (metaschematizo).

 

In spite of the Communion’s deeply hope-filled theology and its Great Prayer of Thanksgiving,[11] participation in Communion on a regular basis has not broken down the relational barriers of traditions, denominations, race, gender, class, and any other human distinctions—in churches both in the global North and South. The relational barriers exist also between clergy and laity—role functions in the church not interconnected by the primacy of relationship as Paul defined for the church body (1 Cor 12:12-26)—which point to relational barriers between the highly educated and those less educated. The underlying comparative process of human distinctions unavoidably stratifies relations vertically and not just horizontally at the communion table. By relational distance, whole-ly communion becomes fragmented and stratified communion, intentionally or unintentionally. We must not assume that God is pleased with the status quo of Communion practiced today. Would Jesus overturn this table and clean his house today in order to restore the primacy of relationship together for all persons without distinctions?

 

Currently there is growing interest in “spiritual transformation” of persons said to take place by attending worship on a regular basis.^[12] Certainly persons’ behavioral changes indicate that something is changing. And certainly it is only God (and maybe the person) who knows whether inner-out heart-level changes of the whole person (metamorphoō, to change from inner out, heart, mind, physically and relationally, cf. Rom 12:2; 2 Cor 3:18) are taking place, not merely outer-in behavioral change of only parts of the person (metaschematizō, to change only one’s outward form, cf. 2 Cor 11:13-14). Yet, to repeat Jesus’ words as to the indicator that we are being transformed not only to be like Christ, but, more importantly, by experiencing the relational outcome of reciprocal relationship with him, “Just as I have loved you in the depth of relational involvement, you must also love one another” (Jn 13:34). This is a matter addressed in the new relational order of intimate and equalized relationships composing the new creation family (Heb 9:10), to be discussed later in the chapter.

 

On the basis of the primacy God gives to relationship together on only God’s terms for relationship—namely, God’s relational acts of grace and grace’s relational demands and outcome in intimate and equalized relationships—it is urgent for us to press ahead with vulnerable listening to the Spirit as never before.

 

Even before Jesus’ last and pivotal table fellowship, some of his would-be disciples came to their own conclusions about what Jesus meant when he linked his flesh with bread to eat, and his blood with drink (Jn 6: 26-68). These disciples stopped following Jesus (v.66) based on having interpreted Jesus’ words through their narrowed-down lens of referential language. Their lens focused on only a few of Jesus’ words fragmented and disembodied from the integrity of his whole person presented to them, the quality and relational content of his communication for them, and the depth level of his relational involvement with them.

 

By referentializing his words (i.e. the referentialization of the Word), these persons detached Jesus’ words from his whole person, thereby fragmenting and reducing him to parts (“his flesh”). Thus, while Jesus was initially openly disclosing his intimate relationship with his Father, they paid attention to only a few words (a selective bias), and they ended up with no more than the absurd conclusion that Jesus was discussing cannibalism (6:52). This is how they disembodied and de-relationalized Jesus’ discourse on eating his body and drinking his blood, which in relational terms was only about engaging in intimate relationship together of the new covenant (cf. vv.29,40,54-57). This same process of referentializing Jesus’ relational disclosures has led to the divisive theories in subsequent years up to the present day, forming traditions churches live by regardless of the relational consequences. Such doctrinal priority and commitment was clarified and corrected by Jesus of a church that, despite their impeccable church practice had “abandoned your primary love” (Rev 2:2-4).

 

 At his last supper with the disciples, when Jesus picked up the bread and cup and pronounced “this is my body…this is my blood” (Mk 14:22-24), he never intended his words to be taken literally in referential terms, nor was he uttering a mystical esoteric truth that only a few can understand. He was communicating in relational language (that child-persons understand), about persons vulnerably and deeply receiving him for the most intimate relational connection possible, constituted behind the curtain by his whole-ly embodied sacrifice that removed the veil of relational distance permanently. This is why John’s Gospel emphasized “receiving” (lambanō, to take, receive, partake) Jesus. When John illuminated this relational involvement of those “who received him, those who believed and responded relationally to his whole person,” he anticipated the relational outcome that these persons were given the right of adoption to relationally belong as God’s children permanently in God’s family in the primacy of relationship together, without the relational distance of human distinctions (Jn 1:12). Are any wise and learned persons, church and worship leaders, out there listening to the relational significance of John’s Gospel composed in relational terms? Indeed, “do you love me whole-ly in the primacy of relational involvement?” Then “Follow me whole-ly” (Jn 21:15-19).

 

 

 “Remember Me Whole-ly”

 

In churches and seminary classes preparing students to lead worship and the practice of Communion specifically, attention is given to anamnesis, the Greek word for ‘reminder’ or ‘remembrance’. Jesus told his disciples over the bread and cup “do this in remembrance [anamnesis] of me” (Lk 22:17; 1 Cor 11:24). Anamnēsis in Communion, it is taught, is rooted in ancient Israel’s practice of Passover, a major part of which involves remembering God’s saving acts (e.g. Num 9:2; Dt 16:1-8; Jos 5:10; 2 Kgs 23:21; Ezr 6:19; Mk 14:12).[13]

 

In OT Hebrew, the word for “remember” is zâkar, and has a full array of significance. When God ‘remembers’ in the OT, this refers to God’s faithful relational involvement. After the flood had passed, God made a covenant with Noah ensuring God’s ongoing involvement with Noah, every living creature with Noah, and all generations to come—that is, with all God’s creation thereafter. And God put the rainbow in the sky and said that by it “I will remember my covenant between me and you…. between God and all living creatures…on the earth (Gen 9:12-17). For God, remembering was and is in the context of covenant relationship, and remembering was and is the vulnerable relational dynamic that he never stops being involved in. In other words, God’s remembering is always in relational terms and not referential in terms, for example, of something, events or situations.

 

For God to be vulnerable means both that God delights when his people respond in compatible reciprocal relational involvement, and, negatively, that God’s vulnerable involvement is being deeply affected by our sin. Nevertheless, God has continued to engage with his creation; most notably in the incarnation of Jesus and the presence of the Spirit. The ancient poet queries “What is ’enôsh [human person] that you are mindful of [zâkar, remember] him…that you care for [pâqad, connoting God’s intimate and beneficial involvement] him?” (Ps 8:4).Here zâkar signifies more than God’s being mindful and aware of someone or something, but that God is whole-ly and intimately involved with us.

 

In many ways, our rite of remembrance, Communion, is practiced with the same sense of dutiful observance as when peoples and nations observe anniversaries of certain national or global historical events. For the latter, interested persons call on society to commemorate these usually tragic past events with “days of remembrance” (e.g. for genocides, Sept. 11 and the like). Calls are issued to “never forget” so that a similar tragedy never happens again. Then, once the day has passed, we generally forget as we get back to our daily routines of life. In both the East and West, these commemorations are somber occasions engaged with much tradition and ceremony. It seems to be part of our human nature to commemorate events that have affected us or our ancestors deeply, to connect with each other in bits of shared history, which even define who we are today. Do these remembrances have life-changing significance for their participants? For example, how do these remembrances make us better people so that similar human tragedies are prevented?

 

So the question for us Christians becomes, how is our participation in Communion any different from remembrances of other religious and historical events? More importantly, what did Jesus mean by “do this” and what is the significance of “in remembrance” of him? Does he want us to partake in Communion as a memorial to his death and resurrection—to “never forget” the cost he paid to secure our future life? Certainly we are thankful for his sacrifice and tell him so. Is the Eucharist a “sign” serving merely as a cognitive reminder to worshipers, as most Protestants believe? If so, how does a reminder change us? Is having this reminder weekly better than once a month? Or does Jesus want us to think we are metaphorically, or spiritually and mysteriously receiving his presence, as liturgical Christians believe? Does our participation in this sacred meal ensure our transformation to become more like Christ, as many evangelical pastors hope and claim, or lead to our deification as the Eastern Orthodox Church believes? And does this transformation to Christlikeness take place as we participate again and again over time, as some liturgical scholars suggest? All of these questions must be clarified and even corrected by paying attention to Jesus’ words: “unless you change and become vulnerable like child-persons” (Mt 18:3), and then “pay attention to what you hear from my whole person in relational language,” because “the measure of the interpretive lens you use will be the measure of change you get” (Mk 4:24).

 

John’s Gospel did not include the narrative of the institution of the Lord’s Supper where Jesus tells his disciples, “do this in remembrance of me” (Lk 22:19; 1 Cor 11:24,25) and that the bread is his body and the cup is the blood of the new covenant (Mt 26:26-28; Mk 14:22-24; Lk 22:14-21). Rather, John’s Gospel unfolds the relational significance of the new covenant that Jesus at inaugurated the Lord’s Supper. John illuminates in two major movements the distinguished communion with Jesus (as discussed above) that embodies the new covenant.

 

First, John elaborates on Jesus’ relational language in what are unmistakable allusions to the bread/body and cup/blood of the Lord’s Supper, unfolding a matrix of connections in Jesus’ relational words to intimate communion together:

 

·       eternal life is experienced in relationship together as persons respond in relational trust (“believes in him who sent me,” Jn 5:24; 6:29 with 40,47; 17:3, and, of course, integrated with 3:16)

·       bread from heaven as himself, “the bread of life” (Jn 6:27, 32-35,41,48-51)

·       to eat his flesh and drink his blood is to “have eternal life” in relational terms, and thereby to “abide in me and I in them” (Jn 6:54,56; cf. 15:4,9-11) in intimate relationship with Jesus behind the curtain, which the atonement sacrifice in referential language maintains at a relational distance, keeping those participants in front of the curtain as if the veil still exists in their relationship together—a relational barrier John records of Jesus’ deep disappointment in the disciples not relationally knowing him (14:9).

 

Together with the Synoptic accounts, what emerges from John’s accounts is the primacy of intimate relationship perceivable only in relational language.

 

Second, at that pivotal table fellowship (at the evening meal before Passover, according to John), Jesus’ continued relational work of family love extends to its deepest relational involvement at this last meal with his disciples before he reaches the cross (Jn 13:1-18). We need to understand, and thus experience, the relational dynamics of this defining table fellowship, which most deeply illuminated the whole-ly communion that composes Communion to be whole and holy (uncommon). Here Jesus vulnerably embodied with his disciples the intimate involvement necessary that distinguishes relationship together with the whole and uncommon God without the veil, in the new covenant and new sanctuary (no more secondary sanctuary focused on secondary matter^[14]). As John narrates, “Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love” (Jn 13:1) by washing their feet, the significance of which cannot be constrained to an act of hospitality or an example of servant leadership. This is the intimate involvement in reciprocal relationship that makes persons vulnerable.

 

Jesus engages in his most vulnerable relational act of washing the disciples’ feet at to redefine them from inner out in intimate relationship together. The significance of Jesus’ footwashing emerges beyond conventional perception when Peter refused Jesus, and was sternly corrected by Jesus. As I mentioned in chapter two, in relational terms, this interaction illuminated both the relational significance of Jesus’ act and Peter’s own theological anthropology defining his identity, which we need to understand in order to embody the new covenant relationship with Jesus and for depth of involvement together in Communion table fellowship. The deeper relational significance of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet is expanded here:

 

     If the context of his footwashing is not limited to only the situation and circumstances—as prevailing as they are just prior to his death—Jesus takes his followers deeper into his relational context and relational process. For Jesus, the time now is not about going to the cross, rather “the time had come for him to…go to the Father” (13:1). This situation and circumstances neither define Jesus’ person (though they certainly will affect him) because he is defined by the trinitarian relational context of family; nor do they determine his action because he functions by the trinitarian relational process of family love. All of his actions thus are for relationship. As the embodiment of God’s grace, Jesus’ whole person functions to affirm the importance of the whole person and to constitute intimate relationships together as family—by redeeming and transforming the person and their relationships….

By extending God’s grace to his followers, Jesus makes his whole person fully vulnerable to his followers. Since God’s grace affirms the whole person—which reductionism resists—grace demands nothing less and no substitutes. And Jesus doesn’t allow anything less or any substitutes of his own person to be in direct relational involvement with them…. [15]

 

While Jesus demonstrates his humility (as the Teacher, Lord, Messiah) to assume the footwashing work himself, even more significant is “the full extent” of his relational involvement (signifying his family love). Nothing less and no substitutes of Jesus’ whole person than he personally assuming this footwashing would be sufficient to constitute his relational involvement of family love—that is, as the embodiment of God’s grace. Furthermore, grace demands nothing less and no substitutes of persons to constitute the intimate relationships of family…. Likewise, in relation to his disciples no household servant could substitute for Jesus and nothing less than Jesus’ whole person could make evident this family love….[16]

 

Footwashing doesn’t represent so much how far (or “low”) Jesus is willing to go, as much as the feet are symbolic of the depth level of relational involvement Jesus engages with them. In other words, no level is too deep or beyond any limits for relationship together, which reductionism resists and tries to redefine. God’s grace demands this and constitutes this intimate relationship of God’s family. This not only makes Jesus’ whole person vulnerable but also makes his followers’ whole person vulnerable. What does Peter do this time with the face of Jesus?

If Peter’s perceptions of Jesus had changed, we could expect a different response than the time he tried to prevent Jesus from going to the cross. Yet, Peter’s response to Jesus washing his feet…is the strongest expression of categorical denial and refusal of Jesus’ action. Did Peter not learn anything from their previous confrontation? While he appears to have accepted Jesus’ pending death (cf. Mk 14:31; Lk 22:33), though with mixed reactions (cf. Jn 18:10-11), he has yet to experience redemptive change from reductionism….

Based on his reductionist substitutes and practice to define himself, that’s how he functioned in relationships. As the prevailing practice in human relations from reductionism, Peter also essentially compared people on a human totem pole. This process of stratification placed Jesus at the top and Peter below…. Peter felt very strongly that his servile act (just as the cross scenario) was not worthy of Jesus…. Conversely, Peter would feel also that he was unworthy to have his Teacher, Lord, Messiah, God wash his feet, however strong the feeling. The latter feeling more fully explains Peter’s relational rejection of the intimate involvement of Jesus’ whole person in family love, and thus of God’s grace—all while professing faith to the contrary. In his unworthiness, Peter was not open to the vulnerability of such intimacy, even despite Jesus being more accessible to him than at any other time.[17]

 

As never before, Jesus’ person was now vulnerably present and available to his disciples for them to reciprocally respond to, hereby embodying God’s relational grace. On the disciples’ part, to complete the relational connection required only their compatible response by opening their hearts vulnerably to him, acting as subjects with the resolve of kûn (cf. Ps 108:1). Earlier we discussed the difficulty Peter had with this relational choice, because he was not yet willing to be so vulnerable with Jesus. Peter still did not understand that this is how God’s relational grace nullifies any and all relational barriers from reductionism—namely defining one’s person from outer-in by secondary matter, as Peter demonstrated in feeling unworthy—thereby freeing his heart to the primacy of relational connection from inner out with the heart of God. Consequently, what could still not emerge was Peter’s person in wholeness in the qualitative image and relational likeness of God. This is the relational choice we are faced with also, which will require examining the theological anthropology underlying our identity.

 

            After washing the disciples feet, Jesus communicated further relational words to them, “I have embodied for you the relational terms that you also be relationally involved  vulnerably with your whole ontology and function as my whole person has been with you” (Jn 13:15). His words here define unmistakably how he wanted them (and us) to function: in the same depth of love that his whole person (not as Teacher or Lord) had just vulnerably extended to them—not for ‘servant leadership’, which focuses primarily on serving that subtly makes the primacy of relationship secondary. Moments later, after Judas left their midst, Jesus reinforced this new command (God’s terms for relationship): “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” (13:34). Their depth of relational involvement together (i.e. agape) would make evident to the world that they relationally knew the whole and uncommon God (v.35), which Jesus definitively stated is the relational significance of ‘eternal life’ (Jn 17:3). The remainder of John’s account of this pivotal table fellowship expands and deepens Jesus’ relational work of family love for his disciples, and inseparably his worshipers, to embody new their relationships.

 

As Jesus made primary above, reciprocal relational work together in family love is the deep significance of what Jesus meant, and still means, by “do this in remembrance of me.” These words, which are often merely taken to mean “don’t forget,” are significantly transposed for our understanding to “remember me whole-ly”: for the relational purpose and outcome of our whole persons involved in face to face relationship (without the veil) with Jesus’ whole person (not his parts, even as sacrifice), individually and corporately together to build each other up as God’s new creation family, with the vulnerable depth of relational involvement of family love, and thereby function distinguished in the qualitative image and relational likeness of the Trinity, just as Jesus prayed to close his pivotal table fellowship (Jn 17:20-26).

 

Therefore, to “remember me whole-ly” in our practice of whole-ly communion that composes Communion, we must begin with letting Jesus wash our feet. That is, as Jesus is vulnerably before us to redefine our person, letting him wash our feet means we make the choice to be vulnerable too, to let our heart emerge from its constraints, and masks, and receive him and each other for intimate relational connection together. This is the necessary relational process by which we participate compatibly on God’s relational terms of grace in God’s relational context and process for the new covenant.

 

How Jesus is remembered has deep theological and relational implications. Anything less of the Face of God and in our face-to-Face response keeps God behind the curtain and maintains our response in front of the curtain, both of which signify worship in the old tabernacle/temple (Heb 9:8). The extent of our listening to Jesus’ words in relational language will be the determining issue, both in understanding the whole and uncommon God theologically and for the connection needed in communion together relationally. As Jesus’ made conclusive: “Pay attention to all my words you hear; the hermeneutic you use will be the Jesus you remember” (Mk 4:24).

 

            Therefore, we must also address the predominance of the secondary in practices of Communion, which has long plagued Christ’s church, even in biblical times. The secondary has historically and currently obscured the primacy of relationship together. And we cannot continue in our theology and practice under the subtle assumption “we will not be reduced or fragmented” (as in Gen 3:4).          

 

 

 

Fragmented Christ, Disembodied Communion, Renegotiated Ecclesiology

 

 

In the history of the church, the theologies and practices of Communion have diverged widely. I contend that this divergence is the consequence of the referentialization of the Word. This diversity of theologies and practices of Communion have caused fragmentation of God’s whole church family by shifting the focus to the secondary over the primary. In one extreme example taken from the medieval church, the belief was that the real presence of Christ was in the bread and wine, therefore only priests could touch the elements. Additionally, out of concern about dropping crumbs or spilling the wine, celebrating the Eucharist become reduced to the priest holding and elevating the elements for the worshipers to only look at—reducing participation to ‘communion with the eyes’, which then eliminated blind persons.^[18] Perhaps this history has no relevance for your practice but it illustrates the existing process of variable fragmentation of God’s new creation family, between clergy and laity, but also creating relational distance by focusing on secondary matters.

 

Our continued referentialization of the Word prevents us from being relationally reconciled to be “one as we are one,” as Jesus prayed (Jn 17:21-23). By referentializing God’s relational Word, we disembody Christ into parts and thereby de-relationalize him from the whole person composing Communion. Our diversity of theologies is not a benign or healthy condition, but even with good intentions this basically reflects a fragmented Christ (cf. Paul’s rebuke to the Corinthian church, 1 Cor 1:13), which then reinforces and sustains our relational distance, relational separation or relational brokenness.

 

In the global church today, there are two general approaches (reflecting their respective theologies) to Communion and other “sacred actions” (also called “signs,” including baptism, ordination, marriage, etc.). These approaches are liturgical worship (or high church worship in sacramental churches) and non-liturgical worship (or low-church worship). Although our discussion in this chapter focuses primarily on Communion, the distinction raised throughout this study between outer-in involvement versus inner-out involvement applies to all sacred actions, regardless of what tradition they reside in. These two views are summarized thus:

 

Sacramental churches—Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and some mainline Protestant churches—regard the Lord’s Supper, baptism, and sometimes other actions as special signs that bestow grace on those who receive them. Other Protestant groups believe that the sacraments by themselves confer no special power and do not necessarily indicate the presence of God. They tend to refer to sacred actions as ordinances, actions to be observed because Christ commanded his followers to do so. Regardless of their theology, all Christians agree on the importance of keeping these sacred actions and on the tremendous benefits that come through their proper observance in worship.[19]

 

The crucial phrase in the above quote is “through their proper observance in worship.” The urgent issue for both liturgical and non-liturgical Eucharist is their common (not uncommon) practice that (1) emerges from referentialization of the Word, and (2) gives primacy to secondary outer-in aspects of the Eucharist. Observance with such practices disembody Christ, which then derelationalizes whole-ly communion, thus making Communion common, because they diminish the primacy of uncommon relationship together—however unintentionally this happens. The consequence has been to subtly skew our practice, if not our theology, to less than “remember me whole-ly.”

 

 

The Formal Common-ization of Liturgy

 

Ever since the emergence of the church, the church has had to deal with the onslaught of heresies. In all their forms, these heresies have fragmented and disembodied Jesus’ whole-ly integrated person. To combat heresies and provide uniformity among the churches, the early church Fathers, and many others since then, have set down doctrinal truths in “confessions of faith.” These confessions of faith took the forms of, for example, “the rule of faith,” and creeds (e.g. Apostles’ Creed, Nicene Creed and many other “statements”). In the pursuit of certainty, however, what has consistently emerged is formalizing the common-ization of theology and practice.

 

In liturgical churches today, such doctrinal statements and other “standardized” practices (e.g. the Church calendar year) are contained in “orders,” which function as templates for planning worship services (e.g. the Book of Common Prayer). These orders are also instructional to church members. Included in this body of tradition is the Great Prayer of Thanksgiving for the Eucharist. This Great Prayer is used widely in mainline Protestant churches; it is a lengthy prayer containing a leader’s spoken parts and congregational spoken responses, and can be adapted to fit the church season and needs of a local congregation. It is also used increasingly in evangelical churches that embrace ancient-future faith practices.

 

I mention this particular prayer because it represents problematic worship practices that are meant to ensure correct theology and uniformity of practices among churches. First, and not surprisingly, we are susceptible to referentializing set prayers presented in worship bulletins or PowerPoint slides for worshipers to follow, which would get us to say them “with lips but…hearts far from me,” thereby diminishing our vulnerable compatibility of involvement with God who is vulnerably present and intimately involved. Secondly, and to be expected, in the desire to ensure orthodoxy, there is a tendency to include many theological points through the Great Prayer of Thanksgiving. This poses the critical error of making the Eucharist (as well as the worship service) more cerebral with referential language/terms that minimalizes relationship together (e.g. with substitute simulations), whereby persons can avoid being vulnerable. In the absence of the primacy of relationship together, priority is given to secondary matters as substitutes for vulnerable hearts. An extreme example of this is a concern over how worshipers should “correctly” receive the elements: should they sit, stand, or kneel? Which hand goes under, and which is on top? Can the participants touch the “bread” or does the priest have to place it on the tongue?

 

The concern for these and any secondary matters will always be made primary in the absence of what is primary to God: the whole person, nothing less and no substitutes, in compatible reciprocal response to God’s whole person offered to us in communion together. Unless all of our secondary (even non-liturgical) is integrated into the primacy of this relational context, process and purpose, the relational outcome will not be whole-ly communion but something less or some substitute. And the shift from vulnerableness of our person to the substitutes from secondary matter can be very subtle, particularly because we assume liturgical traditions are unquestionably significant to God.

Consider further the matter of theological correctness based on referentialization of the Word. For example, in some churches (and this includes non-liturgical churches, discussed shortly) a person who has a relationship with Christ but hasn’t yet been baptized is not allowed to partake in Communion. Baptism is no secondary matter, to be sure, but one’s compatible relational response to Jesus in relational trust would have enough relational significance to Jesus to participate in his table fellowship of Communion. But those churches make chronological order (a secondary issue to God) the primary determinant for who can partake.

 

            For liturgical (sacramental) churches, the critical problem is the theology (explicit or implied) that worshipers receive grace by going to church and participating in the sacraments (the rituals themselves, which includes when to speak and what to say). Yet, receiving grace in referential terms may appear theologically correct and still have no relational significance for the participants (including God). That is an assumption from human tradition composed in referential terms, the very same belief that drives the outer-in worship that God rejects (Isa 14:29; Mt 15:8).

 

It may very well be that some worshipers in liturgical worship are compatibly involved with the Lord while participating in the sacraments, thus having relational significance to and making congruent connection with God. The issue of significance can be ambiguous; and there is a fine line between relational significance and referential significance, which can simulate connection with God. Because of our default tendencies not to be vulnerably involved, the question must still be raised in general whether some of the participation is based on familiarity and thus creating a comfort zone for us by default, such as knowing when to speak and what to say, much like following directions. When we come before the Lord on this basis, we easily become embedded in making primary what we do in various parts as the measure we give in worship over extending our person directly in relational involvement—with the assumption that the sum of our parts equals (defines) the whole, both of our person and church family. On this basis, who and what does God get?

 

Though God’s grace could be defined as referential grace, this theological distinction does not distinguish grace beyond common understanding. Because God’s grace is distinguished just as relational grace, God’s relational grace is distinguished by God’s relational response of grace that functions only for face-to-face connection together. Therefore, we have no basis to assume that mere participation in sacraments—which is very susceptible to being about what we do from outer-in—imparts or earns grace, or has relational significance to God for the relational outcome of grace (cf. Eph 2:8-9). Worshipers are easily rendered into near objects (though outwardly we may appear actively engaged) expecting God to give to us in essentially a unilateral relationship, by which we assume we receive grace—a wrong assumption based on a referentialized grace. On such a basis, worshipers are hereby trying to get God to comply with their terms for relationship, intentionally or unintentionally. By referentializing grace, we shape grace into something other than the relational terms for covenant relationship with God; and the relational consequence emerges in our level of experience at Communion, which the world struggles “to believe and know the church’s loving relational wholeness in likeness of the Trinity” (as Jesus prayed, Jn 17:21-23).

 

There is no question that the historical church needed to articulate its theology in order to distinguish itself against false teaching and practices. This struggle was evident as early as NT times, notably in Paul’s letters (e.g. Gal 1:6-7. Similarly, there is no question about the good intentions of many church and worship leaders who seek to be faithful to God and his church through traditional liturgy (-ies). Yet, the pursuit of faith in doctrinal certainty and related certainties of practice required narrowing down God’s relational context and process that is required to compose the relational response of faith. This increasingly limited, if not constrained, faith to a referential response constructed by conformity to various certainties so-called for faith.

 

In the uncertainty of modern times, and with the pervasive shallowness of faith in contemporary churches, the certainties of early traditions can have and are having renewed appeal. Among those persons are evangelicals from non-liturgical churches now in the ancient-future faith movement, who seek to reconnect their churches with the historical church by embracing ancient liturgical practices. By doing so they also hope to combat rampant individualism and shallow worship in their churches. Yet, even having good intentions (which Peter excelled in), the issue is still the prevailing referentialization of the relational Word. On this basis, theological correctness and ecclesial uniformity remain only, in a sense, good ideas or even hopeful ideals. Moreover, the priority given to ensuring theological completeness and correctness based on a referential lens trumps the primacy that God gives to dynamic vulnerable relationship together. Therefore, they cannot compose the whole theology and practice required to “follow me whole-ly” for “remember me whole-ly”—the wholeness of persons and persons in relationship together as church, whom Jesus constituted only by his relational work in whole relational terms.

 

 

The Informal Common-izing of Worship

 

            As we transition to less traditional forms under the category of non-liturgical worship, this encompasses a wide range of practices, which cannot all be addressed in this study. Thus, much of this discussion will be generalized based on contemporary evangelical worship practices. While readers may worship in other kinds of churches, the concerns raised in this discussion apply across the non-liturgical worship spectrum.

 

            Non-liturgical worship and Communion are overwhelmingly individualistic, despite occasional comments about the church as family, and as part of the global and historic church. The individualism and historical amnesia of evangelical churches are the issues that the ancient-future faith network seeks to change. In discussing this problematic individualistic focus, we need to distinguish clearly that the issue is not the individual’s personal and intimate relationship with Christ; this relationship is vital and necessary for each of us as Jesus’ followers. The problem is that we stop here, and essentially remain in our private relationship between ‘Jesus and me’, and do not mature in the relational progression that the complete Christology unfolds. As Jesus prayed for his church family, “to follow me whole-ly and be where I am relationally” is to be intimately together in his church family in relational likeness of the Trinity. The individual not integrated into the primacy of Jesus’ wholeness subtly displaces the central primacy of Jesus’ whole relational terms for the discipleship-worship relationship, with the individual’s terms for relationship—terms centered on the individual’s concerns, interests and priorities.

 

            Many of our worship songs and sermons express and reinforce this individualism in the following ways: songs that focus more on I/me than on God, songs expressing “I/me” more than “we/us,” songs and sermons focused on Christ as an individual apart from the Trinity; sermons that focus on ‘God in my life’ (rather than I/we in God’s life), or only the individual’s relationship with God (rather than corporate relationship together as God’s new creation family).

 

            Moreover, Communion in non-liturgical worship is predominantly practiced as the individual’s private time with Christ. For example, quite regularly the pastor has the congregation pray privately to confess sins and receive forgiveness before participating in Communion, which again is vitally necessary but must not stop here. This common practice expresses the view that Communion is primarily about Christ’s sacrifice for the forgiveness of the individual’s sins (though not including reductionism), and the individual’s part is to thank God (Eucharist is from the Gk eucharistia, thanksgiving).

 

Of course theologically and relationally, forgiveness is irreplaceable for us as disciples/worshipers. Yet, worshipers are thereby rendered as immature objects who repeatedly have to deal with personal sin, and are rarely urged on to functioning as mature subjects who share family love vulnerably together in relationships (cf. Heb 6:1-2). Communion must take participants further and deeper in theology and practice to full soteriology: not stopping at being saved from sin through forgiveness, but going on to what we are saved to, which is integrally whole relationship with God and together as daughters and sons in God’s new creation family. In other words, if we are forgiven for our sin of reductionism, then this is evident only by our involvement in the relational process to wholeness; otherwise we remain in our sin as reductionism.

 

The most telling symptom of the overly individualistic and private character of Communion practice is that worshipers never make eye contact with each other. This lack, along with the lack of any relational connection together, precludes any sense of corporately sharing together (koinonia) as the new wine family. Jesus’ table fellowship corrects this severely fragmented practice, but only if we listen to all his relational words, receive his whole person, and compatibly respond face to face, heart to heart, eye to eye.

 

Non-liturgical worship also often treats Communion with casualness and shallowness that render it completely without relational significance—and those in ancient-future faith would even say without referential significance. For example, at a church service that my husband and I attended on a Communion Sunday, the Communion elements had been placed on a table set to the side of the worship room. Worshipers were invited to partake (individually or with others) at any time during the worship service “at your leisure.” I suspect that this pastor regards Communion as a mere referential reminder of Christ’s sacrifice. Yet the message that this process indirectly communicated was that Communion was not only an individual matter (or primarily so), but also that Communion wasn’t important, or at least not central to worship but merely an adjunct.

 

            In the non-liturgical Protestant view, worshipers participate in Communion because Jesus so ordained. The theological assumption underlying this practice is that Jesus instituted a memorial service, which has more likeness to secular days of remembrance than to Jesus’ intimate communion at table fellowship. For  these worshipers, while “do this in remembrance of me” carries more significance in functional terms than merely “don’t forget,” what is highlighted for remembrance is Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, which fragments Jesus’ person to parts (i.e. in an incomplete Christology, discussed below). Jesus’ whole person (with complete Christology, also discussed shortly), who is vulnerably available for us to corporately receive and respond to, must correct such assumptions that non-liturgical worship embodies.

 

            Ironically, liturgical and non-liturgical churches both reduce the primacy of relationship to lesser significance, and as a result their practices are more alike than different when it comes to what is primary to God—despite major differences in the secondary aspects of their respective practices. What these two traditions share is their underlying incomplete Christology, not to mention a reduced theological anthropology. Both theologically and functionally disembody Jesus’ relational words, and de-relationalize his whole person. Both theologies and practices show little or no understanding of the primacy of our reciprocal relational responsibilities as God’s new creation family together, because they have yet to understand the whole significance of Christ’s disclosures beyond referentialized information composing doctrinal forms and individualistic practice. The irremediable problem with referential information and any related knowledge is that any referentialized source cannot be translated into relational language and terms. It simply has been narrowed down such that its information and knowledge can, at best, only be about fragmentary parts of Jesus, without relationally knowing and understanding Jesus’ whole person.

 

Liturgical worship demonstrates incomplete Christology by not paying attention to Jesus’ relational language that gives primacy to the compatible response of child-persons in relationship together as God’s new creation family. Even while liturgical worship may faithfully proclaim such ecclesiology, the practice fails to make vulnerable relationship with him primary over traditions, formalized orders, and set prayers, thus reinforcing indirect participation of worshipers. “Participation” comprised of either directed or expected actions (standing, sitting, coming forward for the Eucharist) may give the appearance of everyone’s involvement, thus confirming the definition of “liturgy” (Gk. leitourgia) which is “the work of the people.” However, such participation in worship traditions effectively are templates for behaviors that are susceptible to outer-in practice—that is, indirect relational involvement expressing only limited parts of a person. And conforming to templates eliminates opportunities for child-persons to shout-in to the Lord with joy.

 

Another problem that arises from an incomplete Christology, which generally characterizes non-liturgical worship in particular, is an overly christocentric focus. An overly christocentric practice of worship that focuses primarily on (1) the cross, and (2) having our sins atoned for, thus (3) celebrating God’s love as sacrifice that is primarily shown to us in the cross and salvation from sin. I am not at all saying to not worship Christ and thank God for atonement and forgiveness of sin. Rather, we need to grow from a dominating celebration of the cross in worship and mature beyond this limited focus (cf. Heb 6:1-2), for this focus reduces salvation to only being saved from sin (not including reductionism). Salvation that stops at only ‘saved from sin’ is only one part of the story (i.e. a truncated soteriology). For full soteriology we must grow in our practice to what we are saved to (adoption into God’s new creation family, discussed further latter in this chap.). Remaining fixated on the cross in truncated soteriology is what Paul and the writer of Hebrews refer to as still needing milk, not yet ready or willing to grow-up to maturing on solid food (1 Cor 3:2; Heb 5:12). The cause of this stunted development to maturity is essentially an overly christocentric focus from a lens narrowed down by incomplete Christology. We need to grow in our development from milk to solid food. Our overly christocentric focus comes from incomplete Christology stemming from not having obeyed the Father’s relational imperative to “Listen to my Son” (Mt 17:5), because the Son unmistakably illuminated and distinguished his relationship with the Father, and his relational work on the cross served the Father’s relational purpose to relationally reconcile us with the Father in the whole of God’s family together.

 

            It is a major christological error in evangelical theology and practice (intentional or not) to remain overly christocentric in an incomplete Christology—which also exposes an underlying reduced theological anthropology. Remaining in and reinforcing christocentricity in worship exposes our immature ecclesiology as well, and also doesn’t fully understand the purpose for which the Spirit is now present and involved with us. The issue is summarized here, and urgently needs to be addressed in both the church and academy.

 

When our theological interpretation disembodies Jesus’ teachings and behavior from the theological trajectory and relational path of his ontology and function as Subject, then Christ is divided into these parts—resulting in an incomplete Christology no longer distinguishing the Jesus embodied in whole. An incomplete Christology has two critical repercussions, whose consequences have reverberated through church and academy today:

 

1.     An incomplete Christology tends to be overly christocentric because it has diminished or minimalized the whole of God, that is, God’s whole ontology and function vulnerably present and relationally involved not only distinguished as Subject but integrally distinguished as Son, Father and Spirit in the relational ontology of the Trinity.

 

2.     Moreover, an incomplete Christology renders Jesus’ theological trajectory to a truncated soteriology that may necessarily include what Jesus saved us from (sin, yet without sin as reductionism) but insufficiently involve what he saved us to—the whole relationship together as God’s family in likeness of the relational ontology of the Trinity, whose primacy is ‘already’ in function only with no veil.

 

3.     Therefore, an incomplete Christology assumes a reduced ontology and function for both Jesus and those who have claimed this fragmentary gospel. Consequently, what emerges from the Word and unfolds in the incarnation do not go beyond the hermeneutic impasse shaped by the limits of our human terms from the influence of reductionism—the sin of reductionism that a truncated soteriology is insufficient to save us from. If soteriology saved us from the sin of reductionism, by its nature this would necessitate being saved to wholeness.[20]

 

Wholeness and maturity in Christ are inseparable and need to be integrated in church theology and practice, just as Paul made definitive for the church (Eph 4:11-13). Yet, the path to maturity has been fragmentary, unfolding in ways assumed to be new.

 

            This clarifies a related issue in non-liturgical worship in need of perspective for our understanding, which is innovation and experimenting with “new” forms in worship and Communion. Some churches, which may or may or may not identify as “emergent,” display a lot of enthusiasm and creativity in designing worship to provide affective experiences—for example, creating an ambience through visuals, smells, lighting, and activities like drawing and making things. I believe these efforts are often well-intentioned and indicate the desire—indeed the real need we all have—to make deep connection with God.

            I urge such sisters and brothers to consider carefully the fact that changing outward forms of our behaviors and worship practices (even with something more qualitative) is never sufficient to make compatible relational connection with God on his whole relational terms. ‘Outer’ change (i.e. metaschematizo) will only result in ontological simulation (perhaps virtual, with only the appearance of change), which Paul warned the church against (2Cor 11:14-15) and made imperative for us to stop conforming to the limits and constraints of human terms (syschematizo, Rom 12:2). Ontological simulation of meaningful worship leads to epistemological illusion (virtual reality); that is, we may feel something has taken place (the affective, qualitative experience) and incorrectly believe we are making congruent connection with God. However, this kind of experience will remain only situational, within a virtual context, and not establish us directly in relationship with God, because it is based on the secondary aspects of that particular worship service—reinforcing indirect (or virtual) connection with God without sustaining ongoing relational involvement directly with God.

 

            If the creative and innovative forms are engaged integrally in the primacy of relationship together in God’s relational context and process of family love (discussed throughout this study), they will likely have some significance to the participants. Yet, here again, significance to be of significance must be measured in relational terms for relational significance, not in referential terms for referential significance. To paraphrase Paul speaking from God’s perspective: “Neither traditions nor innovation is anything; but the new creation family is everything!” (Gal 6:15)

 

 

The critical issue for Communion practices is that the referentialization of the relational Word and all outer-in practices disembody and de-relationalize Jesus’ whole person, including his words, in an incomplete Christology. An incomplete Christology reduces Jesus to fragments (his sacrifice or teachings, e.g. “do this in remembrance of me”), which also renders God to secondary aspects of what God does (e.g. referential information about God’s acts, which are narrated in the Great Prayer of Thanksgiving). Incomplete Christology is an example of idolization of God, by shaping God through our biases and how we think Jesus ought to be and ought to be treated—that is, by reducing the whole of God to something less, which is what an idol is.

 

Based on an incomplete Christology, both liturgical and the non-liturgical approaches’ practice of new covenant relationship (behind the curtain Face to face without the veil) are often in function not much different from the Israelites’ unacceptable outer-in practice of the first covenant (cf. Isa 13:29). An incomplete Christology leaves us all at the cross, whether in theology (e.g. non-liturgical) or function (liturgical), still in front of the curtain with the veil over our hearts. With an incomplete Christology, ecclesiology of worship remains renegotiated, whether by liturgical worship or non-liturgical worship.

 

It’s time for maturing to reclaim and embody new the worship relationship for God that has relational significance to God, and to ourselves. After all these decades, on the one hand, of preserving liturgical tradition practiced from outer in, and on the other hand experimenting, exploring, and innovating with focus on secondary aspects of worship and Communion, maturity challenges us to make complete our Christology. This would require us to vulnerably receive, embrace and compatibly respond to Jesus’ whole person and respond compatibly with our whole person, whereby our Communion practices illuminate the relational reality of the intimate communion of shared life together as the new creation family—in both liturgical and non-liturgical worship.

 

 

 

Relational Communion Composing the New Covenant

 

 

As discussed above, for the experience of Communion to have relational significance to God, and also to us, our Communion theology and practice must go beyond the past, merely in remembrance (anamnēsis) of his sacrifice that secures the future, as in “proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Cor 11:27). For Communion to go deeper, it must be composed by the very face of Jesus (not merely “body” and “blood” in ongoing communion with the whole of God (and God’s glory, 2 Cor 4:6), which unfolds in the new covenant composing God’s new creation family. The Face of God made vulnerable by Jesus cannot be reduced to the cross or remain on the cross but must be engaged face to Face in order to have reciprocal relational connection that is both compatible to and congruent with the whole of God’s relational response to us. This relational process converges integrally on the cross and behind the curtain; yet this relational outcome emerges only beyond the cross and without the veil to transform persons and relationship together. This is why only complete Christology composes relational Communion—not referentialized, which is reduced to transmit doctrinal information about God—necessary for the new covenant to be our experiential reality and not merely a truth remembered an affirmed.

 

Complete Christology (neither fragmented nor disembodied and derelationalized Christology) is irreplaceable for whole-ly communion since that alone embodies the new covenant relationship together; and the new covenant is the relational experience as God’s reconciled new creation family (God’s whole) behind the curtain for Face-to-face relationship with no veil. In other words, whole theology and practice are required from us.

 

The theological reality of Jesus’ “body and blood” is that we have been redeemed from the old and transformed to the new, which a truncated soteriology only saved from is inadequate for saved to. The practical reality, inseparable from the theological reality, is nonnegotiable practice of the person(s) redeemed and hearts freed to open vulnerably without the veil of relational distance, and therefore transformed in intimate relationship together in likeness of Christ’s wholeness.

 

Anything less in our theology composes referential illusions, and any substitutes in our practice engages in simulations of who we and whose we are in Christ—the virtual realities pervading our churches.

 

 As discussed in the previous section, intimate relationship together is what whole-ly communion involves vulnerably from inner out. Whole-ly communion embodies the new covenant relationship and integrates our discipleship relationship and worship relationship; additionally, whole-ly communion transposes our Communion practices into relational Communion to be whole. Relational Communion does not preserve the old wine (e.g. “worship from outer in and hearts distant”) in old wineskins (focus on the secondary, constrained to templates from Christian tradition to follow at a relational distance), though some persons really do think the old is better than the new (cf. Lk 5:39). The following discussion puts complete Christology into whole perspective:

 

As the person Jesus vulnerably presented is received and responded to with the compatible vulnerable involvement in relationship together, along with the Spirit in the relational epistemic process, what unfolds increasingly in our theology and practice is the complete Christology and thus the gospel of transformation to wholeness. As the integral person, Jesus distinguished the most significant basis for knowing and understanding the whole of God, both theologically and functionally. This integral basis is most significant in three ways, which are sequential as well as a reflexive:

 

1.     Jesus provides the epistemological key to open the relational epistemic process with the Spirit for whole knowledge and understanding of God.

2.     Jesus provides the hermeneutical key that opens the ontological door through which the Spirit further discloses to us the whole of God, the triune God, the Trinity.

3.     Jesus also provides the functional key that opens the relational door to the whole of God’s ontology and function, the necessary way through which the Spirit transforms us to intimate relationship with the Father, belonging together as the whole of God’s family (new creation and church) constituted in the Trinity.

 

The keys Jesus’ integral person presents—which Paul develops further—need to be understood as conjointly theological and functional since these aspects should always remain together—though being functional has often not been part of the theological task. Most notable, as discussed above, when the complete Christology defines our theological anthropology, it by necessity also determines our whole ontology and function for relationship together face to Face with the whole ontology and function of God, nothing less and no substitutes.[21]

 

In complete Christology, Jesus is the hermeneutical key (e.g. “Don’t you know me yet? Whoever sees me sees the Father”), the epistemological key (“unless you change and become vulnerable like child-persons”), and functional-relational key (“follow me whole-ly” and “remember me whole-ly” as the new creation family) necessary for our full participation in God’s life. In God’s relational context and process of the new creation family, we are full members, namely daughters and sons who have been redeemed from sin of reductionism, adopted, and relationally reconciled to God and each other in the relationships to be whole. The relational outcome and ongoing relational imperative is our whole theology and practice, now, as the new creation ‘already’.

 

In a complete Christology, the person presented by Jesus is a function of his whole person—nothing less and no substitutes, thus irreducible in the nature of his incarnation involvement with the human context; and Jesus’ whole person is a function of relationship in the trinitarian relational context and process—also nothing less and no substitutes, thus nonnegotiable to the terms of any other context and process. In this complete Christology the whole gospel of God’s thematic relational action of grace emerges for the experiential truth of Jesus’ full soteriology (saved both from and to), the significance of which is only for relationship together.[22]

 

Moreover, in complete Christology, the Son’s wholeness is irreducible and inseparable from the Trinity. Jesus never functioned apart from the Father, always pointing to his irreducible relationship with the Father. And as Jesus prepared the disciples for his departure, he promised definitively to them the Spirit as his relational replacement, who would come and continue involvement with them relationally just as he had been with them (Jn 14:15-18,26).

 

The following summarizes how complete Christology antecedes trinitarian theology that is whole, and for our ontology and function to be whole (our theological anthropology and ecclesiology). Thereupon, wholeness in our theology and practice can and must transform our ecclesiology to be whole corporately together in the qualitative image and relational likeness of the Trinity. Inseparably, our ecclesiology of worship is also redeemed to be whole.

 

The need for our fuller and deeper understanding of the Trinity goes beyond to be merely informed about God, which perichoresis tends to do. We need this whole understanding (synesis) to experience the whole of God for relationship, as the early disciples’ lack with Jesus demonstrated (Jn 14:9). This is the only purpose of God’s self-disclosure vulnerably embodied in the whole of Jesus, making complete Christology the necessary antecedent for trinitarian theology. In the incarnation, the whole of God ultimately emerges and converges for this relationship together, which Jesus intimately disclosed in functional clarity and experiential truth: to be relationally involved with God as whole persons together in the whole of God’s family constituted in and by the Trinity. Jesus’ call is composed by this relational language and terms. The whole experience of this relational reality of God’s whole without reduction of its relational truth (e.g. to referential truth) has been the integrating theme of the Trinity’s relational response to our human condition “to be apart” from the whole from the beginning in the primordial garden. Indeed, the whole of God’s desires were formulated even before creation to restore us to the whole in the new creation, to be completed by the Spirit in God’s eschatological plan concluding with the Son partaking of the last Passover cup at the ultimate table fellowship (cf. Mk 14:25).

As the Son fulfilled his earthly function to vulnerably embody God’s family love downward to constitute his whole followers in the whole of God’s family, his relational replacement, the Spirit, extends this family love by his reciprocal relational work to bring their new creation family to its ultimate relational conclusion. Trinitarian uniqueness emerges and integrally unfolds in complete Christology, which establishes the relational significance of the Spirit and his reciprocal relational work: as ‘the presence of the ontological One and relational Whole’ who continues to be vulnerably involved in relationship to distinguish and raise up to completion whole persons in whole relationships together in the qualitative image and relational likeness of God (2 Cor 3:17-18). Our theological anthropology cannot ignore the third person of the Trinity… but must also engage this person ongoingly in the relational epistemic process for the knowledge and understanding necessary integrally for the whole of God and for the whole human person (Jn 15:26; 16:13-15; 1 Cor 2:9-16) and for persons together in wholeness (Eph 2:19-22).[23]

 

Therefore, our Christology must be complete or else we are left to our own speculation and shaping of the whole of God in either becoming overly christocentric or by the process of idolization of God. Left to our own construction of God, worship and Communion are not only susceptible to but likely to ignore Jesus’ words about Mary’s relational significance in her worship relationship (inseparable from her discipleship), and who can speak to and for God (e.g. the shout-in child persons).

 

Complete Christology vulnerably illuminates the Trinity unmistakably for us. The Christian academy has been actively exploring trinitarian theology relatively recently. This is a move in the right direction for Western theology and away from the overly christocentric and juridical bias. However, this “shift” is explored in largely referential terms, relying heavily on information and concepts from philosophy to explain the interrelatedness within the Trinity, such as the concept of perichoresis (the “relational” interpenetration among the trinitarian persons). Relying on human reason for knowledge and understanding of God, who is transcendent creator of all things, will not bear fruit having relational significance to God. Such endeavor is countered by God in his words through Jeremiah (see Jer 9:23-24). Nor does referentialization of the Word by the interpretations of the wise and learned (as in Lk 10:21) illuminate the Trinity. In fact, God’s pronouncement against human reason as the basis for knowing and understanding God is similar to God’s rejection of worship that has no significance to him (Isa 29:13). Only complete Christology in Jesus’ whole relational terms, to which we respond to the Father’s relational imperative to “listen to my son” (Mt 117:5), will unfold in whole-ly communion.

 

With the increased interest in trinitarian theology is a companion focus on trinitarian worship in seminaries, worship institutes, worship conferences, and songwriting to correct overly christocentric worship that stays focused on Christ, his kingship and throne, and his sacrifice (a focus that fragments and de-relationalizes Christ). In non-liturgical evangelical worship, worship planners and leaders increasingly talk about and lead worship with the Trinity in mind. Yet, trinitarian worship typically is reduced to referentialization of the Trinity, that is, by merely including words and songs about the Trinitarian persons. In practice, this amounts to honoring the Trinity with lips but without the inner-out function of the whole person in intimate relationship together. If we understand the relational ontology of the Trinity, we understand both the primacy of relationship together in the Trinity and our being created in the relational likeness of the Trinity’s primacy. Moreover, even though more songwriters are including the Trinitarian persons in their songs, worship leaders still tend to choose songs focusing on Christ[24]. Even trinitarian prayer—praying to the Father, Son and Spirit—doesn’t necessarily directly involve their persons or our whole person vulnerably involved from inner out. Thus, merely having a trinitarian focus in worship does not ensure trinitarian worship that is whole. Therefore, trinitarian worship is defined as follows:

 

Trinitarian worship is the integrating focus and integral relational convergence of our (both individual and corporate) compatible reciprocal response to and vulnerable involvement in relationship together with the whole of God, nothing less and no substitutes, as the new creation family together. Trinitarian worship hereby composes the ecclesiology of worship in the qualitative image and relational likeness of the whole of God (the Trinity).

 

Worship needs to be “trinitarian” but only if trinitarian means as God’s new creation family in relationship together behind the curtain with no veil. The whole of God’s relational context and the trinitarian relational process of family love must be embodied by daughters and sons together with the Father, Son and Spirit to compose trinitarian worship (beyond a merely referential trinitarian worship). Embodying new the worship relationship can only be as the Father’s adopted and deeply loved daughters and sons—the relational outcome of Jesus’ relational work—in compatible reciprocal relationship together with the Spirit, who helps us embody our new identity as God’s very own family (Mk 3:33-35; Rom 8:4-17, 29; Gal 4:6-7).[25] And trinitarian worship can only be experienced without relational barriers common to human shaping of relationships, which further determines trinitarian worship as the whole reciprocal relational response to the whole and uncommon God.

 

To reiterate, whole theology and practice transforms us from our individualized and referential practices to embody new the ecclesiology of worship that functions in relational likeness of the Trinity, with nothing less and no substitutes. Referentialization of the Word and referentialization of the Trinity block this wholeness from emerging, thus are incompatible with whole-ly communion that embodies the new covenant, and incongruent for relational Communion to compose the new covenant. Referentialization of God and God’s relational communications in Scripture take place in academic theological and biblical study, sermons, worship songs, personal and corporate prayers, and personal Bible study—that is, in every level of our practice. When we finally shift away from the referentialization of the whole and uncommon God in all these forms, the new can and will emerge.

 

Complete Christology discloses the Trinity and composes full soteriology. Only full soteriology accounts for what God saved us to beyond incomplete Christology that focuses on saving us only from sin (in practice if not theology), yet likely not including sin as reductionism. We must come to know and understand that the purpose of Jesus’ relational work of salvation was to relationally reconcile us to the Father and each other in relationships that are both intimate and equalized (discussed below). This nonnegotiable shift in our theology and practice to full soteriology is required (not for conformity but by necessity) for further transformation of who, what and how we are corporately together by the redemptive inner-out change of metamorphoō (2 Cor 3:18), for our person and church relationships to be made whole. If this is not challenging or even threatening enough for us, all of this only emerges and unfolds to maturity in the ongoing process where the old must die for the new to rise—even the old we may assume to be new already.

 

 

New Wine Family Emerges

 

For this transformation to continue to unfold, the Spirit is vulnerably present and intimately involved with us for reciprocal relationship, just as Jesus promised: “I will not leave you as relational orphans…the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send as my relational replacement for you, will continue the relational work I’ve begun with you” (Jn 14:18,26, NIV). To continue in the relational work of family love, in reciprocal relationship now with the Spirit, is the significance of Jesus’ words to “remember me whole-ly”—his whole person in life, not only in death—ongoingly and vulnerably involved for our own wholeness. We have been saved to be whole and to live whole as his followers and worshipers, inseparably as God’s new creation family.

 

It was no random occurrence that Jesus embodied God’s relational context and process at table fellowships rather than at synagogues or the temple. Table fellowship serves as both the original relational context of the new creation family that Jesus came to establish—just as Jesus’ table fellowship continues to compose whole-ly communion to which we are saved—and the relational process to functionally take our “permanent place…forever in the Father’s family” (Jn 8:35; cf. 14:2). For Jesus, this relational dynamic of table fellowship is the integrating function of koinonia in the church.

At Jesus’ table fellowship, persons like Mary compatibly responded to Jesus’ person, namely as a subject whose heart was freed by relational grace from any self-consciousness and any other constraints on her person from the human context. When intimate connection with God is made in likeness of Mary’s congruent connection with Jesus, this is the experience of the new wine that Jesus earlier composed in relational terms (Lk 5:33-39). New wine is qualitatively and relationally uncommon (holy): signifying what has been freed from the sin of reductionism (defining our person and others by outer-in criteria), which creates relational distance and barriers because it always functions in a comparative process with others to measure how one is doing, thereby making stratifying distinctions needing to be redeemed and made whole. Old wine in old wineskins embodies old the worship relationship, and accurately describes prevalent Communion practices today. The old is neither good (enough) nor better, although many of us prefer it or simply don’t want to change in relational terms (v.39).

 

Whether in general church life and practice, at a particular worship service, or specifically at the Communion table, we are integrally disciples and worshipers together constituting God’s new creation family. In this integrated whole practice, therefore, how we respond to Jesus’ call “follow me” embodies how we respond to his relational words “remember me whole-ly.” Accordingly, just as we need to understand that following Jesus means to make the relationship together primary over serving (based on Jesus’ paradigm for his disciples, Jn 12:26), so too we need to make relationship together primary in our understanding for communion of Jesus’ table fellowship. Only his primacy in whole relational terms composes Communion, and all koinonia in the church, that is whole in its theology and practice. Otherwise, we continue in some limited and even fragmented understanding of the significance of these distinguished gatherings. How might we take some steps to redeem the old?

 

When we come together at the Communion table, we need to come as family in a new relationally uncommon (holy) way, in relational likeness of the Trinity. That is, relational Communion takes place behind the curtain (on God’s relational terms of grace), and with the veil (of relational barriers) removed. In so many of our Communion times relational distance prevails and earns the description of old wine Communion; old wine does not signify or cannot substitute for “my blood of the new covenant.” It is time to redeem Communion, to shift away from perfunctory Communion that lacks relational clarity and relational significance. We also need to shift from liturgical Eucharist in which we participate either as objects (e.g. by rote), or as the wise and learned whose Word has been referentialized. And we must shift away from primary focus on secondary matters, and shift nonnegotiably to the primacy of relational Communion that embodies the new covenant with the wholeness of new wine. I am sure God isn’t pleased with those of us who say, with persons in Jesus’ parable, “the old is good/better” (Lk 5:39).

 

For example, how have you experienced Communion? If my own experiences in a variety of settings (at various points on the liturgical spectrum) is common to many, Communion is highly individual and private—that is, very rarely do worshipers actually make any relational connection with each other as a worshiping family together. So, for starters—in making the shift from incomplete Christology, to complete Christology, to function in relational likeness of the Trinity—I suggest we take the step, the very minimal step, of making eye contact with each other as we partake of the bread and cup. (Ironically, dogs often make better eye contact than humans, and make better connections in so doing.) This would involve turning our heads and looking around, eyes open. As we continue with resolve (kun) to engage the vulnerable reciprocal relational work with the Spirit, we will grow (mature) in opening our hearts to each other for relational connection together (cf. 2 Cor 6:11-13). This is what we can anticipate to be our relational reality, along with the poet who said “I run in the way of your terms for relationships, for you have set my heart free” (Ps 119:32, NIV). For some of us, this might involve first rejecting our self-consciousness and our comfort zone of staying private, that is, staying self-focused.

 

Another example for making Communion a relational reality is to combine “passing the peace” with Communion. Usually “passing the peace” (also called “meet-and-greet” time) takes place earlier in a worship service. This can be quite perfunctory, but often it is a warm catching-up time among worshipers. Imagine, then, at times shifting this sharing together as part of Communion—not mainly with friends and acquaintances but notably with strangers and others relegated to the sidelines. As persons finish relationally partaking of the elements together and responding in thanksgiving to the Trinity, turn to others and share hugs and some relational words of family blessing, such as simply “my sister,” “my brother,” or adding “you are the Father’s beloved daughter/son,” or “we are family together!”—because this is the undeniable reality of the new covenant and the experiential reality of the new creation church family.

 

The experiential reality of whole-ly communion with our whole and uncommon God composes joy deep in our hearts (and God’s also; cf. Lk 10:21). This is the joyfull relational outcome that Jesus desires for his disciples (Jn 15:10-11; 16:22,24) and prayed for (Jn 17:13). This joyfull relational outcome is also what Jesus likened to “new wine” that cannot be put into old wineskins (Lk 5:37-39). Jesus made definitive that old wine is incompatible with the new wine; likewise, referential terms cannot translate into relational terms. The former can only be constrained in old wineskins, while the new wine needs new wineskins in which to mature, emerge deeply, and then flow out shout-in to the Lord. Any influences from human shaping (e.g. some of our traditional practices of Communion and incomplete Christology trapped at the foot of the cross) that fragment and reduce this experience of family together need to be questioned and redeemed, or simply discarded, in order to be transformed to the new.

 

This gets us back to all the preceding discussion about our compatible relational response of worship, with vulnerableness of child-persons who worship in spirit and truth (honesty of heart) along with Mary. Trinitarian worship isn’t about what to do from outer in (e.g. talk or sing about the Father, Son and Spirit), but to live vulnerably as the new creation family, intimately involved together. In order for the new to emerge, we have to expose the old for what it is.

 

A major component of the old is assumptions and illusions we have made and function by, even by a rather blind faith. We wrongly assume that we can engage in relationship with God on our reduced or fragmentary terms based on what persons (God and us) have and do. Based on those criteria, we create ontological simulations of relational significance in worship, such as through creating ambience (as in some non-liturgical worship) as well as preserving some traditions (e.g. in liturgical worship). We create ontological simulation also focused on secondary matter (of which Christmas and Easter are prime examples, discussed previously). On the basis of our ontological simulations, we create epistemological illusions according to which we think we know God and have a good relationship because of the things we do for him (such as serve in discipleship and sing in worship). All of these construct the virtual realities found in our ontology and function, which we assume “will not be reduced or fragmented.” Yet, God is asking “what are you doing here?” because Jesus is pained, “Don’t you know me yet, even after all our so-called time together?”

 

 For our understanding of these matters, we discuss briefly how Jesus exposed these assumptions in persons who claimed to be his own. The first assumption that some persons made with Jesus was that merely being present at Jesus’ table fellowship signified making relational connection with Jesus. In two piercing discourses, Jesus challenged this very assumption. In one discourse, Jesus used a parable to expose the illusion that merely occupying space or being in close proximity with him does not constitute making relational connection with him (Lk 13:22-27, NIV). In the parable, persons are trying to get the owner of a house to allow them in, saying, “we ate and drank with you” (v.26). But the owner (God) states, “I don’t know you or where you come from” (v.27). In biblical times, saying “I don’t know where you come from” was the equivalent of saying “I don’t know you,” so an emphatic denial is made here. Contrary to their assumptions and ours, Jesus did not, and still does not, assume the depth level of our relational involvement with him. Don’t we make a similar assumption, thinking that by regularly “going to church” and, specifically, taking Communion we’re participating in God’s life on his terms for relationship? Hearing “I don’t know you” in referential terms can easily be ignored as inapplicable to us, yet in relational terms we need to pay close attention for any illusions on our part.

 

The second related assumption is that God does relationship unilaterally, an assumption negated by Scripture. Throughout the OT and NT, God always sought reciprocal (never unilateral) relationship with his human creatures because that is his nature, and is the nature of covenant relationship with God. According to God’s relational righteousness (nothing less than and no substitutes for who, what and how God is in covenant relationship), the whole and holy God holds himself accountable for his relational covenant responsibilities. By always functioning according to who he says he is and by fulfilling his promises, he demonstrates that he can be counted on in relationship together. Based on his relational and not referential covenant, which is a reciprocal relationship, God fully expected the Israelites to be accountable for their relational responsibilities, foremost of which was whole-ly communion with “the Great Commandment” in the Shema: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart…soul…might” (Dt 6:5)—that is, definitively from inner out giving primacy to their heart-level involvement with God. Jesus emphatically reinforced this relational responsibility (Mk 10:30; Mt 22:37).

 

The third assumption appears in Matthew’s Gospel, and is related to the first assumption, in a teaching by Jesus that is similar to the parable in Luke. Jesus foretold to his followers that he would reject some of them who claimed they had done ministry in his name—“did we not prophesy…drive out demons…perform many miracles?” (Mt 7:22-23). Jesus replied, “I never knew you.” Both in the parable noted above and in this account, the persons tried to connect with Jesus through the secondary substitute of what they did (however impressive), and Jesus denies knowing them. They wrongly assumed something took place relationally, which exposed their lack of understanding of the relational dynamics of intimate connection. Don’t many of us do a lot of ministry and service for God with the expectation that our efforts will result in knowing God, and with the assumption that he knows us?

 

Usually in worship, we focus on we knowing God. Obviously, to know God is necessary in our disciple relationship (as well as the goal of spiritual disciplines). If this is not our relational priority, we need to take to heart Jesus’ pained response to his closest disciples at the last table fellowship: “Don’t you know me yet…even after I have been with you such a long time?” However, the reality of reciprocal relationship is that we cannot know God without God knowing us in relationship. Likewise, we cannot not know God and he know us. God cannot relationally know any of us whose hearts are not vulnerable to him for intimate relationship together, nor can we relationally know God on that same basis. This is what Jesus is illuminating when he told the Samaritan woman that the Father seeks those whose hearts are vulnerable and embody new the worship relationship in spirit and truth (Jn 4:24).

 

In other relational words, if we try to involve God in relationship on our common terms based on what we do, usually in service or ministry in a comparative process, this renders his relational grace unnecessary and keeps us relationally distant from God. Nullifying God’s relational terms of grace violates the covenant relationship together (unfolding from Gen 17:1), and God will not participate. God will not be reduced to our common terms because God is holy (uncommon). Are we listening to Jesus in the above examples? We need to seriously and honestly consider what and who we present to God, how our communication is to make relational connection for communion with God, and the depth of our relational involvement in worship. Do you think God knows you relationally because you assume God is all-knowing? This is what we have to ask ourselves.

 

 

God’s terms for relationship are righteous because they are based on the whole of who, what, and how God is in covenant relationship. God’s relational righteousness is how God is ongoingly involved with us. This is the significance of his relational language, relational messages, and his terms for relationship together. Psalm 119 illuminates God’s righteous terms for relationship together, his terms that we can count on him for compatible reciprocal response, and which God wants to count on us for (e.g. Ps 119:7,75,137-38,164). Can God count on us for our relational righteousness (the whole of who, what, and how we are as new covenant “partners”), which Jesus said must go beyond that of the outer-in practice of some Pharisees (Mt 5:20)? For example, is ‘who, what, and how we are’ nothing less and no substitutes for our whole persons, together as God’s family that practices the depth of involvement with each other in agapē (not as sacrifice), just as Jesus has loved us?

 

We must take Jesus’ words seriously in order to grow further and deeper in our own accountability to be relationally righteous. For example, why is there often a lack of qualitative depth and vitality in worship among church and worship leaders, as well as congregations? Is this due to secondary issues or an underlying primary issue? There is a casualness and a shallowness that many worshipers convey, not to mention the sense of entitlement and self-centeredness among some worshipers, expressed in complaints more about personal preferences than God and the church family. Yet, the phrase “I didn’t get anything out of the sermon” cuts both ways: on the one hand, the sermon didn’t meet someone’s personal expectation (not necessarily their need); on the other hand, the sermon may not have taught anything of relational significance to the congregation. It is necessary to talk about the above assumptions that persons make about their involvement with God in worship. It is likely that church leaders themselves are embedded in these assumptions, along with the ontological simulations of ‘family’ and epistemological illusions based on those assumptions. To how many of us would Jesus say, “I don’t know you or where you come from”? The assumptions you make will be the communion together you (and God) get.

 

Jesus’ paradigmatic relational words in Mark 4:24, are further transposed here for Communion: the communion we practice will be the Communion we get; and, conversely the Communion we practice reflects the communion we experience. For example, have you ever thought about who God gets as you individually and corporately with others partake of the Communion elements? What do we embody at Communion beyond formalized theology (for liturgical Eucharist) or a memorial service (non-liturgical Communion)? How we answer these questions both as individuals and corporately as God’s family reflects our theology and practice, and our assumptions about the meaning of “do this in remembrance of me.”

 

These understandings and assumptions have been formed and shaped by what Christians in the global North have paid attention to, practiced and passed down in forms of Christian traditions and other templates for practice. The shift of the center of global Christianity away from the North to the South should cause us to question why this shift doesn’t humble us to vulnerably examine our practices and our theological assumptions. And to question why we hang onto our old wine and wineskins, since our efforts don’t distinguish us as uncommon (holy) in relational likeness of the Trinity.

 

On the other hand regarding this shift, despite numerical growth of the church in the global South, we also must not automatically assume that growth in numbers in those churches reflects deep relational significance to God’s heart either. We can never assume such matters; God doesn’t. God always want to know “What are you doing here?” Regardless of where we come from, the Communion we practice is the gospel we claim for ourselves and proclaim to others. The gospel that transforms us into God’s relational whole composing the new creation family “to be one as we are one” struggles to find expression in our practices of Communion as relational Communion. And a telling symptom of this struggle for expression is Mary’s invisibility wherever we are proclaiming the gospel—contrary to Jesus’ own relational words (Mk 14:9)—both her invisibility and the absence our reciprocal involvement with God in the depth of her relational likeness. Jesus still calls us to “follow me whole-ly” with kûn of resolve and sense of determination to take up our relational responsibilities in the new covenant relationship that the Spirit is now here to help us in. Thereby, “remember me whole-ly” can emerge in us as the new wine family.

 

To paraphrase Paul’s inclusive critique, “neither liturgical tradition nor non-liturgical innovation is anything; but the new wine family is everything! (Gal 6:15).

 

 

 

Communion Together in the New Relational Order

 

 

But what is the path for us to get to that elusive outcome, “to be one as we are one” in such a way that we’re not just passively waiting for this to happen (which assumes God does relationship unilaterally)? We have to get down to our reciprocally shared relational responsibility in the vulnerable relational work of becoming like child-persons. Initially, yet ongoingly, this means that the old wine of fragmented ontology (e.g. of the wise and learned) in old wineskins of constrained function in the comparative process (giving primacy to what we do and have) must die, that is, let go of and turned from. As the old dies, what can emerge and flow now is the new wine of our whole person (as child-persons) in the new wineskins of the new relational order not determined by human distinctions in a comparative process—which Paul fought for (2 Cor 5:16-17; Gal 3:26-28; Col 3:9-11). The old wine is our ontology and function embedded in the sin of reductionism, which is also what Paul equally fought against in order for the relational outcome from the whole gospel to emerge.[26]

 

The sin of reductionism is unmatched in its influence to reduce our theological anthropology by transposing the primary with the secondary criteria of defining the person by what we do and/or have—by which we measure ourselves in the comparative process with each other (as Paul critiqued, 2 Cor 10:12)—in opposition to God’s relational grace (cf. 1 Cor 4:7). This is the main struggle for wholeness in our theology and practice for all of us. Yet, God’s relational grace provided the relational path for us to engage reciprocally with the Spirit in order to prevail over the sin of reductionism, and is sufficient for the new wine family. In this reciprocal relational process, relationship together is always primary for our practice; in this primacy all our situations and circumstances are secondary and subordinate to the primacy of relationship. By our primary relational involvement, our human contexts are perceived and defined by God’s relational context in the relational process of reciprocating contextualization, which provides us with the understanding we need to extend the primary in our situations and circumstances to live whole as the new wine family, and also to make whole the old wine in our human condition.[27]

 

Previously in chapter two, we discussed that receiving God’s relational grace means that we can come before God freed from needing to measure up to outer-in criteria (feeling either better or less than others) in a comparative process of reductionism. This measuring-up issue precipitated the first debate over the new wine, in which Jesus rendered secondary human distinctions and related practices not only insignificant but contrary both for primary human identity and for the primacy of relationship together (Lk 5:33-350. On the basis of Jesus’ polemics against reductionism and his relational work for whole-ly communion, we are equalized without distinctions before God—that is, God doesn’t look at outer-in criteria to define us—and our hearts are freed to come forth without relational barriers for Face-to-face connection in his relational context and intimate relational process. The relational outcome is that we are freed for intimate and equalized relationships as God’s new creation family, which is the only significance and purpose for following Jesus’ whole person (not solely his sacrifice) behind the curtain into the Father’s intimate presence (Heb 10:19-22).

 

When I was a new Christian, I didn’t understand what Jesus meant by “the last will be first, and the first will be last” (Mt 20:16). I pictured the last person in a line coming to the front and first person in a line going to the end of the line. So what? I thought. As a more mature Christian having studied the Bible for many years, I also incorrectly interpreted what Jesus meant by “whoever wants to be first among you must be your servant” (Mt 20:26), and other such burdensome statements. I took those words referentially and made serving primary, as too many of us do. I was always focused on serving, and could have continued to focus on serving—that is, defining my person by what I did as God’s servant—as long as it didn’t include taking the lead in any way, which would entail failing. My discipleship wandered in the wilderness of the primacy of serving in ministry (including playing guitar in worship) for decades. Through it all, my heart was lonely, and I longed to deeply experience God, to know God. Even practicing spiritual disciplines didn’t bring the relational connection I needed and hungered for. I remember asking for prayer to experience and know God’s grace at the heart level, and God answered me.

 

Jesus pursued me for the following: to make our relationship together primary over serving (Jn 12:26), first dying to defining my person by what I did serving in ministry (Eph 2:8-9); to make myself vulnerable before him with honesty of my heart about my inadequacy, my sin of reductionism, and my fears about failing and rejection; to be forgiven and receive God’s relational response of grace (“my grace is the only sufficient basis and ongoing base for relationship together,” (2 Cor 12:9), thus rejecting my self-determined terms (e.g. of making ‘what I do’ in service/ministry primary).

 

I have been lovingly corrected for my wrong interpretations and assumptions. God has freed me from my sin of reductionism, and freed my heart to compatibly reciprocate in intimate communion at Jesus’ table in the Father’s presence, Face to face with the veil removed! Here is my permanent place where I belong as daughter, a full member in my Father’s new wine family (Jn 8:35), which now includes taking the lead to help further build God’s family in reciprocal relationship with the Spirit. This is the relational process of dying to the old (the sin of reductionism) and claiming God’s relational grace as that which now defines my person, my theological anthropology in reduced ontology and function thus made whole. I share with you from my own experience in the desire that it be helpful and encouraging for sisters and brothers to experience the whole and uncommon God’s vulnerable presence and intimate involvement—which is the primary God has always wanted with all of us. It is for this relational reality of what we are saved to, that Jesus established the new covenant, to reconcile us together in intimate and equalized relationships. It is only these uncommon relationships that will distinguish us as God’s family (Jn 13:35)—distinguish from the common pervasive in discipleship and prevailing even in churches.

 

By God’s relational terms composing his relational response of grace, our hearts are set free not just for individual freedom but most importantly for intimate and equalized relationships together in wholeness as family. With all masks, other relational barriers, and constraints on our person removed, our hearts are free to open wide to each other in family love, to be involved with each other according to the three major issues for all practice: in the integrity of the persons we present to each other, the relational quality our communication, and the depth of relationship we engage with each other.

 

The ancient poet deeply knew this when he wrote “I run in the way of your terms for relationships for you have set my heart free (Ps 119:32, NIV). The Hebrew word for “set free” is râchab, to broaden or open wide (ESV translation says “when you enlarge my heart”). All of these denote that our hearts are set free, not to pursue our self-interests with a sense of entitlement, but free to be involved with each other in the love we have experienced from Jesus, that is, God’s family love (agapē, not about sacrifice, Jn 15:9). Paul extended this family love (including correcting them in order to build them up) to the Corinthian church, asking for their love in reciprocal relationship together: “In return…open wide [platynō to open wide, make wide] your hearts also” (2 Cor 6:11-13).

 

What we gain by dying to the old so that the new can emerge has no significance in referential terms, but becomes fully distinguished only in relational terms (cf. Paul’s language in Phil 3:7-9). What we gain is the outcome of the only alternative to reductionism—that is, the wholeness of God’s relational response of grace in relationship together, thereby fulfilling God’s definitive blessing (Num 6:25-26)[28] that Jesus whole-ly embodied new (as Paul illuminated for the church, 2 Cor 4:6; Col 3:15). What is more, God’s words “my relational grace is sufficient for relationship together” (2 Cor 12:9) communicate both God’s relational terms and relational messages from God’s heart to ours. As we vulnerably receive God’s relational messages further, our hearts are also enlarged further to compatibly respond, notably in the worship relationship of the ecclesiology of worship.

 

 

New Wine Family Distinguished

 

Relationships based on grace must (dei, by its nature) be characterized in two vital and observable ways: intimate and equalized, which emerged from Jesus’ relational involvement with persons, notably in his table fellowships initiated by the first new wine fellowship. These relationships must be intimate, because, as relational grace embodied by Jesus requires, hearts need to be open and vulnerable to God in compatible and reciprocal relational response, and by extension to each other. To be vulnerable for intimacy, however, we have to go beyond the limits of the secondary and our preoccupation with it—as demonstrated at the first new wine fellowship. More specifically, intimate relationships aren’t constrained by self-consciousness in a comparative process focused on human distinctions.

 

It is vital to understand that because God does not define human persons by human-shaped outer-in criteria and categories, God’s relational response of grace deconstructs both these human distinctions and their resulting stratifications and hierarchies in relationships which constitute relational barriers—the significance of Jesus cleaning out the temple. God hates our human constructions because they fragment persons and create and maintain distant and even broken relationships—all antithetical to his created order and in conflict with human ontology and function created in the whole of God’s qualitative image and relational likeness. In other words, God disfavors reduced theology and practice. And all human distinctions of outer-in criteria formed by what we do (e.g. achievements, jobs, roles, performance) and what we have (e.g. resources, attributes, spiritual gifts) are equalized before God by the necessity of grace for everyone.

 

Equalization is a necessary process in order for persons in God’s family not to remain fragmented in the relational condition “to be apart” as relational orphans, even while being church members. Equalization frees relationships from vertical and horizontal relational barriers, making possible the depth of relational involvement in likeness of Jesus’ relationship with the Father, which is the relational outcome Jesus prays for (Jn 17:21-26). This relational outcome of equalization for all persons “in Christ” is summarized by Paul: Christ destroyed the relational barriers (the old reductionist criteria of outer-in distinctions that created relational distance and barriers (Eph 2:11-18; Gal 3:28; 1 Cor 12:13; Col 3:11), including but not only based on race/ethnicity (“There is no longer Jew or  Greek”), class (“slave or free”), and gender (“male and female”).[29] Mary, Levi, and Zacchaeus all experienced being equalized by grace, redefined from inner out in their respective relationships with Jesus. Their intimate connection necessitated the process of equalization, otherwise this relational outcome does not emerge as a relational reality.

 

These dynamics illuminate for our understanding how God “shows no partiality” (prosōpolēmpsia, respecter of persons, favoritism, Rom 2:11; Eph 6:9; Col 3:25; Jas 2:1, cf. Acts 15:9), because God looks only at the heart, inner out, whereas humans who function from self- determination look outer in (1 Sam 16:7; cf. 2 Cor 5:12). For us to emerge and flow as the new wine, our new wineskins must function without partiality (the old). We are certainly challenged, then, to critically examine, on the one hand, the favoritism we show to scholars, celebrity pastors, and celebrity worship leaders. This partiality has even solidified into marketing terms like “branding,” as in “the Mars Hills brand,” or other megachurch or multisite church “brands.”[30] Branding is notably applied to celebrity pastors, whom church members favor, depend on, and serve contrary to the primacy of God and what distinguished the new wine family.

 

Paul rejected the reductionism behind such function because it led to fragmenting the church: “Has Christ been divided?” (1 Cor 1:10-13) based on human shaping of the secondary over the primary (4:6---7, cf. 2 Cor 10:120. The new relational order is incompatible with the old wineskin of distinction-making and partiality, and we need to specifically die to defining ourselves and others from outer-in criteria prevalent in churches today, criteria we are so familiar with: success in numbers, TV viewership, books published, website hits, reputation, latest technology. Most important, we need to die to how these distinctions determine how we function in relationships with each other, which determine a church’s identity and function. Similarly, we are challenged to examine who we ignore, for example, persons we don’t feel comfortable talking with because they’re “different” from us—which paradoxically can include direct relational involvement with God.

 

It is also critical for our understanding that favoritism is similar in function to personal preferences, such as who we prefer to sit with in worship, our music preferences, or our preferred style of worship. Preferences are natural to have, but my preferences are not more important than yours, and vice versa, or they become self-interests revolved around ‘me’. This is an important issue that applies to how we incorporate secondary matters in worship. For example, many worship leaders in non-liturgical worship are college age or young(er) adults who prefer the music to be loud. But high volume is both harmful to everyone’s hearing, and particularly uncomfortable for older persons. Loud music being played in the sanctuary at the end of worship service also drives out persons who otherwise might have stayed to talk together. Oversaturating sounds make relational interaction difficult, and perhaps this becomes a convenient mode to ignore or avoid deeper connection. What must define the worship leaders is the primacy of relationship together, which must determine their decisions for that which builds up the new wine family in love. In this example, worship leaders must function in the intimate and equalized relationships of the new relational order, where persons in leadership don’t impose their preferences (or self-interests) just because they have those roles and functions; and the rest of the church must not just sit as observers or they reinforce the old wine as OK. Of course, our old patterns become convenient for us to stay where we are and not become vulnerable to the new wine.

 

Intimate and equalized relationship corporately together need to be what we expect from ourselves and each other when we come together to embody the worship relationship corporately. We need to be able to count on each other for the three major issues for all practice—the persons we present together before God, the integrity of our corporate communication, and the depth level of corporate relational involvement. Related to these issues, two further examples need consideration. One is the matter of performance in worship. The other is joking in sermons.

 

Performance in worship is incompatible with intimate relationship, because it is a unilateral dynamic: the singers, musicians or dancers perform, and everyone else is rendered to a position to listen or watch perhaps actively. In terms of embodying new the worship relationship as child-persons involved compatibly in reciprocal relational response to God, a performance presents a subtle substitute. If the performer considers his/her performance as directed to God (which renders God to passive object, euphemistically labeled ‘audience of one’), the rest of the worshipers are left on the sidelines. If the others are prompted to participate, there is ambiguity about where the response is directed (performers or God), and about the nature of ‘who is given’ and ‘who God gets’. In a performance, there is no direct communication with relational terms for relationship together (referential terms at best), and any depth of corporate relational involvement with God is subtly substituted with simulations, which then leaves everyone with illusions after the performance. Moreover, performance creates unequal (stratified) significance of persons that fragment relationships with subtle relational distance in the corporate context, which is supposed to be a time for the new wine family to share in together—the distinguished communion of intimate and equalized relationships together in wholeness.

 

The second example of what we can count on each other for brings up the issue of jokes in sermons. This may appear picky or rigid with over-seriousness, yet hopefully will be edifying or chastening. There’s nothing wrong with some humor in sermons, but it is unedifying to make certain kinds of jokes. For example, jokes that stereotype persons (e.g. male preachers joking about their wives’ shopping habits), or jokes that simply draw attention to the preacher’s wittiness, and which may have no correlation or significance to the sermon’s subject matter. While many worshipers like a lot of humor in sermons (i.e. they like to be entertained), certain kinds of jokes create relational barriers. I believe some preachers use humor to hide behind, rather than take the lead to be vulnerable with the new creation family. That is to say, humor becomes a substitute for their hearts extending to the others for intimate and equal connection to build the church family in wholeness. Such leaders cannot be counted on for the three major issues for practice—the integrity of the person presented, the quality and content of communication, and the depth of relationship engaged. And those who reinforce these leaders with loud laughter or applause also sustain church practice of diminished persons in minimalized relationships, thereby implying “the old is better.”

 

Intimate and equalized relationships in the new covenant compose the new relational order that the writer of Hebrews elaborated on in his important discussion about Christ’s relational work (Heb 9:8-10). The writer declares for our understanding that the new covenant is not only better than the old one (Heb 8:6) in a comparative process, but God has made the first one obsolete (8:13). The old order (the metaphor of “the first tent” or tabernacle) remains standing and functioning until it is replaced (not merely reformed) by “the new order” (diorthōsis, 9:10, new order, to correct throughout)—that is, the new relational order distinguishing the new wine church family. We don’t see this qualitative new very much—if at all—in our worship practices. In many respects, it seems that the first tent is still in place, and that the curtain to the vulnerable presence and intimate involvement of the whole and uncommon God still hangs between us. Yet, we can change if we are resolved and determined (kûn) as child-person subjects for God to receive who and what are his: the measure we give…!

 

 

Referentialization of Jesus’ Table Fellowship

 

The new relational order of the new covenant based on God’s relational grace is exciting to anticipate emerging and unfolding in churches today, not just for the future at the ultimate table fellowship. One final discussion in this chapter is needed for our deeper understanding of the incompatibility of Jesus’ relational work of establishing his followers together in intimate and equalized relationships, and a human shaping of “equal” relationships that tries to generate equality from outer in. Ironically, this human shaping focuses on Jesus’ table fellowship.

 

Just as the Word and the Trinity suffer from referentialization, the referentialization of Jesus’ table fellowship needs to be mentioned, because there are inadvertent relational consequences on the new relational order. Referentializing Jesus’ table fellowship is reflected in two interpretations that have the intentions to equalize persons, but do not. They are: (1) table fellowship as a paradigm for an ethics of inclusivity, and (2) as a paradigm for equal-gender church leadership. These two paradigms intend to elevate marginalized persons to equal status at Jesus’ table, but inadvertently reinforce reductionism. These do not represent the equalized relationships based on God’s relational grace, so we need to understand the difference for our theology and practice to be whole.

 

Those Christian ethicists who see Jesus’ table fellowship as an ethical paradigm of inclusiveness for church practice focus on the fact of Jesus’ inclusion of marginalized persons (among whom women are listed[31]). This fact of inclusion becomes an ethical example for Christians to imitate, but is a product of a particular interpretive framework, and is not the proper approach to human diversity.[32] Imitation of Jesus’ behaviors is an outer-in approach that does not address the deeper issue of the outer-in process of distinction-making in conflict with the inner out relational function of grace (what Paul signifies in his shorthand term ‘in Christ’, Gal 3:28). The concept of “inclusivity” as an ethical category begs the questions: Who are the “included” (the un-marginalized)? How did they get that way?

 

To think in terms of inclusion is to operate with a narrowed-down category of included-excluded, which still operates in the dynamic of making distinctions based on outer-in criteria from human contextualization of gender, race/ethnicity, occupation, and other human differences. Distinction-making is implicit whenever certain persons are singled out based on their difference. In practice, any distinction-making involves comparison and competition that implies “different” is “less.” Inclusivity as an ethical category operates essentially by making distinctions, pointing to a reduced theological anthropology of persons and relationships, both of which are antithetical to God’s relational response of grace ‘in Christ’ (and thus contrary to Paul in Gal 3:28). For example, in one ethicist’s view, God’s kingdom is “gestured in open conversation with women...to welcome sinners, and to treat women as equals.”[33]

 

In the second interpretation, biblical feminism sees Jesus’ table fellowship as the paradigm for church and church leadership, a round table that has no hierarchical head.[34] Equality characterizes this table fellowship. Inclusiveness and equality indeed are important and necessary parts of wholeness, yet they are only parts and not wholeness in themselves—even the sum of the parts does not equal the whole. If inclusiveness and equality are not the inner-out functions in God’s relational context of family on God’s whole terms of relational grace, then inclusiveness and equality are just outer-in social structures. Moreover, there is a subtle problem that if changes we make in our attempts at equality are only structural (outer in), then attempts at inclusivity and equality are only ontological simulations. Unless the underlying reductionism dies, this “table in the round” inadvertently maintains and reinforces the very exclusivity and hierarchy in relationships that it seeks to eliminate by utilizing the same basis of defining persons by what they do or have (e.g. talent, leadership skills, even spiritual gifting). The ontological simulation thus reinforces and further embeds persons to fragments in reduced ontology and function, which cannot determine relationships together in wholeness but only fragmentary relationships together. The result can only be cycling through the same issues over and over, which, for example, we have seen recurring in civil rights in the U.S.

 

These two views show us that however good our intentions may be, they need to be examined through the qualitative-relational lens of the Word that gives light, not a predetermined referential lens that creates fog. There are many interpretations about Jesus’ table fellowship, and we need to carefully examine (even with suspicion) of the interpretive lens used whenever we study them. It’s easy to be attracted to interpretations of Scripture that appeal to equality, or even intimacy, but the only interpretations that will be distinguished in uncommon (holy) practice are those that fully listen to Jesus’ whole person—not just his teachings, not just his sacrifice, and not even as a role model to imitate—listen vulnerably with our whole person, in ongoing reciprocal relationship with his relational replacement, the Spirit.

 

 

The experiential reality of this new relational order began with Jesus’ table fellowship, and this experiential truth becomes the interpretive lens to understand that “follow me whole-ly” embodies “remember me whole-ly.” Integrally, the new relational order is celebrated in full significance whenever we come together to celebrate whole-ly Communion—in the ongoing unfolding transformation of God’s new family in relational progression of intimate and equalized relationships together in wholeness.

 

Wholeness is not an end in itself, a condition for the individual to feel better, though the individual person does feel better. Wholeness is the integral well-being experienced from inner out by both the person and persons together as church family in the relational reality of being together with our Father, as daughters and sons, in relational likeness of Jesus’ relationship with the Father (Rom 8:29). Wholeness is the relational outcome of being loved (agapē) by God for the only purpose of reciprocal relationship together and, therefore, comes with the relational responsibility to be whole as his family, and to live whole together in the world, and to make whole the human condition both in the church and the world.

 

And to reiterate, agapē is not primarily about what to do (nor about what God does) but is primarily the depth of relational involvement in the primacy of relationship with God, each other and others—in relational likeness of God’s relational involvement with us. Agapē is God’s family love that frees us: from the limits of reductionism, from the constraints of fear (of failure or rejection), fear which leads us to hiding our whole selves in self-consciousness and even self-preservation, from comparing ourselves with each other, and from other causes of relational distance—all of which, without being free from, maintain the veil and keep us in a condition “to be apart.” In wholeness we are free to reciprocate relationally with God in love and each other in intimate and equalized relationships, and therein also experience wholeness (peace) in relationship together as the outcome of the gospel of peace (wholeness). Thus, we deepen our understanding of biblical wholeness with the following definition:

 

Wholeness is the conjoint function of the whole person involved in the relationships together necessary to be whole—transformed relationships both equalized and intimate. The whole person is defined from the inner out signified by the importance of the heart in its qualitative function, who then joins together in relationship with both God and other persons with the involvement “in spirit and truth” in the new relational order that distinguishes the new wine family—uncommon (holy) communion in the relational righteousness of nothing less and no substitutes composing whole-ly communion

 

By listening in relational terms to Jesus’ whole person, we will grow together in the relational progression that leads to the wholeness required in our theology and practice in order to embody new the discipleship and worship relationship.

 

 

            Grace, new covenant and ecclesiology of God’s relational whole converge in Jesus’ table fellowship. These relational dynamics that Jesus embodied in whole relational terms at these table fellowships are essential for us to understand in order to experience the following as new wine family together: relational grace as the basis and ongoing base, new covenant as the relational context and process, and ecclesiology of the whole as the family dynamic in which worship is the integral focus and integrating congruence of our (individual and corporate) reciprocal relational response and vulnerable involvement in relationship together with the whole and holy God for the ecclesiology of worship. This is the whole-ly communion together that must by its nature embody our worship relationship new as the new wine family. And that which distinguishes us as God’s new wine family is the transformation in intimate and equalized relationships—the relational outcome of God’s relational grace which is our sufficient basis and ongoing base for relationship together in wholeness with the whole and uncommon God.

 

 

A Suggested Communion

 

The following is a suggestion for transforming Communion from its common practice(s) of either an individual and private time, or a formalized pattern to a “new and living way” in the dynamic flow for Communion behind the curtain (or with the curtain torn open) with the veil removed (cf. Heb 10:20). As usual, any suggestions for worship come with the caution to not think in secondary terms of ‘what to do’ but how to be involved in the primacy of relationship together in family love.

 

            Sometime before worship service begins, set up a double curtain with an opening in the middle but remained closed. These don’t have to be real curtains, but something just to give the sense of a curtain that can be parted. Place the Communion elements on a table behind the curtains.

            At the beginning of Communion, someone read Hebrews 9:11-12, or simply explain the relational significance of Jesus’ relational work on the cross: Jesus, as our High Priest, entered behind the curtain into God’s intimate presence; there he made the sacrifice of his body and blood once and for all to not only free us from our sin (of reductionism) but also to relationship together as adopted daughters and sons into God’s very own family. It is vital to emphasize the necessity for those who follow Jesus to follow him behind the curtain.

            A leader has everyone imagine a mask or veil over their faces and hearts (alternatively, use a piece of paper or one’s hand). Give persons some quiet moments to imagine this. The leader explains that our sin, namely the sin of reductionism, is a relational barrier with God that every one of us has to ongoingly deal with, from new Christians to long-time Christians—this needs to be taught to the worshipers previous to this Communion. All relational barriers are like a veil over our hearts, preventing us from being in God’s intimate presence ‘Face to face’ and heart to heart. Since God’s vulnerable heart is always extended to us for relational connection together, God is always seeking worshipers who will respond to his relational provisions of grace with their whole, vulnerable person. That means to join with Jesus in his sacrifice, putting to death the sin represented by these masks and veils. Then read (preferably not a leader) Hebrews 10:19-22.

            Persons are called to come to the table. Each must enter through the curtain one at a time, holding their ‘veil’ or mask (a real item or use their hand) in front of their face. All gather around the table set with the elements. Leader reads paraphrase of 2 Cor 3:12-18.

All partake of the elements together. Then, together we throw off our veils/masks. The leader says, “Jesus said, ‘these are my brothers and sisters’.” Everyone share hugs together as the leader reminds all that we are full members together as daughters and sons composing God’s new creation family, for equalized and intimate relationships together, without distinctions and the veil.

Sing “Whole-ly Communion.”

 

 

  

For Your Theology and Relational Response

 

            Consider deeply the following song to be sung as you and others gather for Jesus’ table fellowship, where God’s relational grace brings you Face to face to “remember me whole-ly.”