Ch 4 The New Creation Family in the Trinity's Likeness

How does the new creation family distinguish itself at worship from the prevailing common practices ‘in their way’ that we’ve identified in this study thus far? Only by keeping Jesus’ relational terms (“my word” and “my commandments”) in the primacy of relationship together based on the intimate involvement of love. By loving as we are loved, Jesus’ followers enact the congruent response necessary to embody the “home” (i.e. the new creation family) of the Trinity. When we live as beloved daughters and sons in the wholeness of our person, and worship the Father in Face-to-face and heart-to-heart connection together (as the Father seeks, Jn 4:23-24), this composes our worship relationship together as the new creation family in whom the Trinity is present and involved (cf. Gal 6:16; 2 Cor 5:17). In this corporate intimate relationship—notably enacted in Communion—we distinguish ourselves and our worship from the common worship practices ‘in their way’.

This is to emphatically state that no individual can distinguish the church or its worship as God’s family, no matter how famous or gifted they are; and churches need to make every effort to be redeemed from that fragmented mindset of individualism prevailing the Western church (cf. Paul’s emphatic point about this issue in 1 Cor 1:21-23). Nor do a church’s reputation, wealth, ministries, and service distinguish the new creation family, as Jesus made clear in his post-ascension discourse to the churches (Rev 2-3).^{^[1]} Only by corporately loving as we are loved—loved not simply by Jesus but by the whole Trinity (Jn 17:23)—can the church (local and global) make the Trinity relationally known and understood in its midst (cf. Eph 2:19-22), just as Jesus made the Father known (Jn 1:18) and prayed for his family (Jn 17:26). By our ‘embodying new’ the worship relationship, we corporately attest to the trinitarian relational context and process of family love. And although we are not experiencing this in the global church today (for the reasons discussed in this study thus far), we should be encouraged because by embodying this new relationship together in love, there is much more for us to experience of God’s presence and involvement with us in worship than the status quo—not in us individually but in us as God’s distinguished family of the new creation.

A word to the yearning hearts of many dissatisfied and discouraged Christians: As we grow personally and corporately in relationship together with God in our worship gatherings (i.e. family times), we will mature in our wholeness and well-being, and we will know and understand God in relational-specific terms—just as Paul prayer for (Eph 3:16-19) and made definitive for the church (4:13-16). In this distinguished relational reality of relationally knowing and understanding God (cf. Jn 14:9), this will constitute the boast that God has desired (see Jer 9:23-24), and our hearts yearn for. Moreover, our identity as the Father’s new creation family (not merely an adjective or label) will have clarity and effectiveness (light and salt, Mt 5:13-16) to witness to who and whose we are in our worship gatherings and to the world—as Jesus defined for his family (Jn 17:21-23).

In response to the question raised at the end of chapter 1—who can speak for God?—we together only as family will truly be able to echo God’s voice, within the global church and to the rest of the world. It is therefore time for God’s new creation family to come into its own, to mature as who we are and whose we are: the Father’s daughters and sons, and each other’s sisters and brothers in the Trinity’s new creation family.

When Jesus said the above words, he stated an improbable and remarkable relational truth: “we—that is, the trinitarian we—will come to them and make our home with them.” How does the Trinity dwell in us such that together we constitute God’s uncommon home—the relational outcome that has escaped our experience? One common answer is that God dwells in us by the Holy Spirit (Eph 2:22), though perceived mainly in individual persons. Another common view is that ‘God inhabits our praise’ (cf. Ps 22:3, yāšab, dwell, inadequately rendered “enthroned on” in NRSV), with the assumption inclusive of any type of praise (contrary to Mt 15:8-9). Both these views are usually understood in referential (not relational) terms, and thus are unable to make any functional-relational difference in our worship experience.

The answer to this urgent question in is Jesus’ prior words in the above verse that define an essential relational contingency: “Those who love me in the depth of trinitarian family love me will keep my relational terms, and my Father will love them….” That is, keeping Jesus’ uncommon relational terms (“my commandments” only as terms for relationship together) to love as Jesus has loved us (Jn 13:34) would constitute them to become the Trinity’s home. Jesus here defined our relational responsibility necessary to enact the essential reality (not to simulate a virtual or augmented reality) of the trinitarian relational context’s new creation family into the human context—the Father, Son, Spirit together with them/us (Jn 14:6-31). Just as Jesus spoke these words of relational truth then, so may the Spirit now help us deeply understand them so that the new creation family will emerge as never before. This is the only relational outcome that matters to the Trinity and that has significance for the gospel we claim for ourselves and proclaim to others.

This chapter focuses below on particular persons in the NT who illuminate specific relational matters to encourage and guide us through unavoidable relational responsibilities in our discipleship and worship practice. These are necessary matters to deal with in order to mature the persons and relationships of God’s new creation family on God’s nonnegotiable relational terms. A former prostitute illuminated relational grace and forgiveness necessary for the intimate relational involvement of love, and Mary of Bethany embodied the vulnerable relational work required to compose whole involvement in God’s life. These two women’s relationships with Jesus dynamically witnessed to the whole and uncommon God—the whole who, what, and how the triune God is in uncommon family love. In this distinctly qualitative-relational work of raising up and maturing the new creation family, we need to give secondary priority to the secondary matters of ministry and service in order for the primacy of relationship together to emerge unmistakably as the essential reality in our churches and not a virtual-augmented reality. And, if we want to experience this relational reality composed by the Trinity’s presence and involvement, we have to enact our reciprocal part in relationship together.

Moreover, for the relational work of maturing persons and relationships in this distinguished family, the triune God is present with and in us in the indispensable person of the Spirit. Jesus told his disciples that with the Spirit’s coming to them, his vulnerable presence and intimate involvement (inseparably with the Father) would now be ongoing, to fulfill conjointly Jesus’ promise to “not leave you as relational orphans” (14:18), and Jesus’ formative family prayer (Jn 17:21-23). And since the whole of God engages only in reciprocal relationship, we need to further examine what is expected of us—the nonnegotiable relational contingency.

Jesus emphatically stated this relational contingency for his disciples more than once and in various ways: loving Jesus is the significance of obeying/keeping his commandments (i.e. his terms for relationship together); by keeping Jesus’ commandments we love Jesus (14:15,21,23); to remain/abide (menō, dwell) in trinitarian family love is to keep his commandments (15:10); and the new commandment to love each other as Jesus loved them/us (13:34). These are Jesus’ relational contingencies that must define and determine the purpose of our worship gatherings, and move us away from all the secondary matter that we now fill up the worship hour with ‘in their way’.

An example of beginning the relational work of cultivating family relationships (as opposed to maintaining relational distance in worship) is to incorporate into worship gatherings the intentional effort for everyone to learn each other’s names, not all at once, but over a period of time commensurate with the size of the church. In small churches this would be much easier, and can be incorporated with greeting times. In large churches, other alternatives need to be pursued; it simply may not be possible to learn more than fifty or so names. We all need help, and sometimes structured activities are helpful to get persons out of limited social circles at church. The irreplaceable key is to make direct relational connections (not casual) in order to grow relationships.

Keeping God’s relational terms of love in the primacy of whole persons and relationships is a relational dynamic that we must stop reducing to a referential pronouncement of belief or good intentions. Direct relational involvement, no just participation in the Trinity’s relational context and trinitarian relational process of family love is our reciprocal relational responsibility to compose our identity as the Father’s uncommon new creation family. In this dynamic identity as the Father’s daughters and sons, the new creation family embodies the trinitarian relational context and the trinitarian relational process of family love into the world (the human context) in a reciprocal relational process of reciprocating contextualization, explained briefly here.

Without the presence of the palpable Word and reciprocal involvement with the person of the Spirit face to face, the church does not unfold in wholeness—regardless of the church’s membership, resources, situation and circumstances….This irreplaceable relational process unfolds for the church in ongoing involvement in reciprocating contextualization…with the palpable Word in order to address the surrounding contexts (as in the ek-eis relational dynamic), and to be distinguished whole and have the significance of wholeness by ongoing involvement in triangulation (e.g. connecting a situation with connection between the church and the palpable Word, as in the process of navigation) with the palpable Word, to be guided in those specific situations and circumstances. Without this relational involvement with the palpable Word, the church is faced with contexts, situations and circumstances in which it isn’t, or doesn’t know how to be, distinguished and significant. This lack of involvement leaves the church susceptible to, if not already subject to, the surrounding influences, which then shape the church’s identity and function according to those common terms.^{^[2]}

Certain segments of the church (notably Reformed theology) minimalizes our reciprocal relational responsibilities as God’s people, an attitude which carries over into worship. If we are listening vulnerably to Jesus relational contingency, we cannot let ourselves continue to expect God to unilaterally do all the relational work (e.g. “dwell in our praise”), as Reformed theology commonly does. Our relational responsibilities as the new creation family are nonnegotiable to compose the holy/uncommon context and whole process in which worship has relational significance to God. The new creation family is not a vacant house for the Trinity to occupy, but the people gathered and set apart (made uncommon) to embody and thereby enact the Trinity’s relational-specific response of family love, first within the church, and then into the world.

Much relational effort needs to be given to re-orienting the gathered worshipers to take up their relational responsibilities in corporate worship; and I believe that many worshipers want such opportunities but don’t have them. Re-orienting needs to be a step-wise process to encourage persons in their compatible responses to God. I suggest that worship planners keep in mind to lead worshipers in the three major issues for all discipleship-worship practice: (1) the person they present to God, (2) the quality of their communication for the purpose of making relational connection with God, and (3) the depth level of their relational involvement with the Lord.

An initial non-threatening step is to have persons write short personal notes from their heart to the Father, Son, and Spirit, collect them in a basket, set the basket symbolically before God’s Face, and read a few out loud. They should focus on relationship with one or all of the trinitarian persons, as opposed to referring to secondary criteria of what God does or has, or on other people. These notes could be thank you’s, relational requests, questions, or honest feelings—use Jesus’ feelings in the garden of Gethsemane and on the cross as examples (Mt 26:39; 27:46). Try this over several worship gatherings, and see what the Spirit unfolds for the new creation family. The purpose is to help persons grow in relational involvement with the Lord, to directly communicate their nothing-less-no-substitutes whole person with God face to face, heart to heart. Perhaps persons can stand up where they are and read their own note to God. Granted this example focuses on the individual’s worship relationship, but as these personal expressions are corporately shared, worshipers are corporately edified and built grow together.

Before discussing the NT persons who can lead us in worship, there is a necessary paradigm shift for our current worship practices that we need to understand and make. This is a major shift in our worship practice from the familiar and common ‘order of worship’ (liturgical ordo) to the uncommon ‘new relational order of worship’. This paradigm shift requires the following: our inner-out transformation that integrally involves the vulnerable presence of our whole person in relationships (as the Father seeks, Jn 4:23-24), the new mindset and interpretive lens provided by the Spirit (Rom 8:6), a new understanding of what matters most to God as God has disclosed to us in Scripture, and a new view of our relational responsibilities in worship. Jesus calls all of this integral newness the “new wine,” (Lk 5:37-38).

With this paradigm shift, we need to also understand that we can never significantly transform our worship practice just by changing outward behaviors (metaschēmatizō, cf. 2 Cor 11:13-15), or merely by embracing different symbols and patterns for worship—as evidenced in contemporary and emergent church worship. We cannot simply exchange one liturgical order for another, switch music styles, change clothes, or employ the latest technology. We must undergo the redemptive change of our theological anthropology by redemptive change from inner out—that is, the change where the old dies so that the new wine can emerge (metamorphoō, cf. Rom 12:2; 2 Cor 3:18), and flow whole-ly as God’s new creation family in uncommon likeness of the Trinity. Redemptive change is essential for the new relational order to have qualitative relational significance in worship.

We will need to leave behind many old ‘wineskins’ of the familiar and common in our worship practices. This alone will likely be unsettling, maybe scary, and certainly met with resistance (the significance of “the old is better,” Lk 5:39). Likewise, stepping out in ‘new’ practices can also create tension, heighten anxiety, and scare people away. Some practices may outwardly appear to remain the same (e.g. some aspects of Communion, discussed below), yet what must be transformed is our vulnerable involvement in those practices with the primacy of relationship on God’s relational terms.

At the heart of the paradigm shift is the need for our resolve, our determined choices (cf. kûn, Ps 57:7; 108:1), to embrace the relational work of sharing together in the trinitarian relational-specific process involved in family love, which much of our corporate worship lacks today. The alternative is to live with the status quo of what amounts to old wineskins in spite of new appearances. The problem with old wineskins, according to Jesus, is that they cannot hold new wine without bursting, hence ruining both wineskins and new wine. Much of our worship history has seen such outer-in change, thus ruining much new wine without cultivating its significance and growth. Do you know churches like this? Indeed, I believe that loss of the new wine is precisely how the churches (at least in the global North) have lost their voice (authority and credibility) to proclaim the good news of God’s relational-specific response to us in our human relational condition. Still, the new wine keeps sprouting to emerge and flow, and it is our responsibility with the Spirit to establish new wineskins for it to fully flow to maturity.

The paradigm shift is the necessary step for us to enact our transformation to worship in the new relational order of equalized and intimate relationships together. Inseparably, equalized and intimate is the nature of relationships integrally composing God’s new creation family such that there is no question as to who and whose we are. Or, as Jesus told his disciples in his new commandment (his distinguished relational terms): “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples….” (Jn 13:34-35). Are we ready to love as Jesus has loved us—notably, has he washed our feet so that our whole person emerges vulnerably together in the new relational order of worship? By the way, for Jesus’ followers, this is not optional if we want to share in his intimate life (Jn 13:8).

The significance of ‘new relational order of worship’ is designed to illustrate the paradigm shift regarding what we give primacy to—from the common use of ‘order of worship’ as the assumed determinant in worship planning (focused on what to do), to ‘the new relational order’ of our relationships together on the distinguished, uncommon basis of God’s relational grace (focused on agapē involvement of how to be involved in relationship).^{^[3]} These two competing paradigms are mutually exclusive as the primary determinant of worship: The old-wineskin ‘order of worship’ signifies the common usage of a template for worship that is susceptible to turning worship into a referential and relationally stagnant activity with a fragmentary composition. The new-wineskin ‘new relational order’ is not a structured reality but the relational reality composing the new creation family based on the relational ontology of the Trinity, whose function is only whole and thus neither partial nor fragmentary. Moreover, these old and new paradigms cannot be combined into some hybrid, because the old will always fragment the wholeness of the new.

Therefore, the ‘new relational order of worship’ establishes the trinitarian relational context as the contextualizing ‘framework’ for worship, and the trinitarian relational process of family love as the embodied dynamic for worship, replacing in primacy any external structure that we have depended on for centuries. Note, however, this paradigm shift does not eliminate orders of worship, because they have an important function for planning worship and the flow of any worship service. Yet, any worship order has to understand its underlying significance. What we are talking about is who and what define and determine the nature and function of our worship gatherings, and how to fulfill this relational purpose.

Certainly there are worship thinkers who emphasize the primacy of relationship with God in worship, and warn of slavish adherence to any worship orders. They are correct to point out the difference. Yet, until our underlying theological anthropology—that is, how we define the person, and on this basis how we engage in relationships, both of which then determine how we practice church—is addressed and transformed, clergy and worship leaders will always default to using any worship orders in referential terms. Default means specifically in this case: used as templates that will be the primary determinant for their worship practices as a subtle substitute, which then reshapes the likeness of the Trinity to something lacking qualitative relational significance. With this likeness, is this the kind of God you want to experience in relationship together?

When Jesus had table fellowship with some tax collectors and sinners, he was engaged in crucial relational work. In response to his critics, Jesus spoke of “new wine,” which cannot be contained in “old wineskins” (see Lk 5:37-39; Mt 9:17; Mk 2:22). The new wine signifies his disciples’ (and new creation family’s) ontology and function needing a compatible context to mature in. New wineskins signify the discipleship-worship practices necessary for persons to grow and mature in wholeness, just as new wine needed to be put into new wineskins to age properly. Old wineskins (already too stretched out for fermenting grapes), however, signify any context of discipleship-worship practices that have become reduced or fragmented and thus are incompatible with new wine, which then are unusable for the new wine to mature in. Indeed, new wine and old wineskins are so incompatible that both are ruined when joined together. Jesus was teaching about the incompatibility and incongruence between the new and the old, that is, his uncommon disciples-worshipers and common practices focused on secondary matters.

As the title of this chapter points to, we need to transform a particular prevailing aspect of worship—the common practices that converge in an explicit or implicit ‘order of worship’, which is like an old wineskin. Again, by no means does this discussion suggest doing away with orders of worship, but to shift our worship paradigm involving who and what defines and determines the very nature of our worship gatherings. In other words, orders of worship must be redeemed from their common usage and re-contextualized into the trinitarian relational context and relational process of family love.

Worship services worldwide generally follow a basic liturgical pattern called the ‘order of worship’ (or liturgical ordo) consisting at minimum of four symbols or movements: gathering, word, table, and sending (with variations in their wording).^{^[4]} Various church denominations add many others to this so-called ‘deep structure’ (in function as a template), but some or all of these four are what most worship services share in common. These four symbols/movements roughly correspond to the gospel: God has gathered (or called, as in ‘the called out’ people, or ekklēsia) through the proclamation of the Word, we respond and come to the Communion table where we memorialize Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross and partake of the elements representing Christ’s body and blood, and then we are sent out into the world to make disciples. Although there are many added parts to the basic order of worship—notably the lengthy Great Prayer of Thanksgiving for the Eucharist—most contemporary worship orders more or less follow these four.

We certainly can affirm the importance for the global church to have theological and ecclesial consistency in worship through time, which standard orders of worship provide. There is no dispute that orthodoxy in theology and practice—that is, correct theology and practice that are whole and not referentialized—are necessary for God’s church family. Yet orders of worship—for example, the Book of Common Worship (Anglican)—must serve the primacy of God’s new creation family, and not vice versa; and the new creation family must not serve patterns of worship for the sake of their preservation.

For example, one issue concerning templates for worship is that worship programming becomes dependent on a series of the symbols/movements as referentialized parts, and their referentialization (in language, purpose, and process) renders them relationally disparate, lacking an integral purpose, namely for the relational primacy as new creation family. This is why in terms of relational experience, there often isn’t integration between parts of worship, though thematically there may be. For example, let’s say there is a theme for worship for a given month. That theme will be integrated into the opening comments of gathering, the hymns and praise songs, sermons, prayers, visuals. Yet the primacy of relational involvement (both with God and with each other) is pushed to the margins, if not ignored, in service of the parts. The parts may add up to some kind of total, even assumed to equal the whole, but lack the integrating wholeness of reciprocal relational involvement together as new creation family in likeness of the Trinity. In other words, the reality facing us is that the sum of all these parts do not add up to equal the whole composed by the Trinity. Nevertheless, in the subtle influence of what’s common, old wineskins may appear useful, good, or even better (cf. Lk 5:39)—which is why they persist in worship practice, even while they do not mature the new wine in whole ontology and function. This is why many church thinkers have concluded that the church is failing to form disciples, though too often disciples are defined only for ministry work and service.

A worship service determined primarily by orders of worship also easily becomes overly focused on going from part to part. Worship leaders talk a lot about needing to make smooth verbal or musical transitions from one part of the worship service to the next, such as from the last song in a music set to the offering collection, or from Communion to intercessory prayer. The focus is less (or not at all) on primacy of relationships together, and more on what to do—even with worship leaders’ sincere desires to lead others in worship. In the absence of the primary, we focus on the secondary so that awkward transitions become a primary concern of both worship leaders and some worshiper. What God would care about this—a God who values relational connection, or a God who prefers perfect presentation in secondary matters?

Related to this issue of transitions from part to part is what the congregation is doing. Worship for many persons is more about being led in an expected manner (e.g. smoothly, eloquently, and thus with the appearance of sacredness), and less about their own relational responsibilities as subject-persons intimately involved in the worship relationship with God. These persons focus more on how the worship leaders do their job than on their own accountability for their relational part, namely the three major issues for all worship-discipleship practice: the person they present to God, the quality and integrity of their communication, and the depth level of their relational involvement with God in worship. Furthermore, even though some worshipers may come to worship ready to worship with their whole-person in congruent involvement with God, they may be subtly influenced by everyone else around them such that their ‘new wine’ is squelched in an old wineskin. The sum effect is not wholeness together but the conformity of fragmentary parts.

Following the order of worship as described may have relational clarity, and help worshipers know what to expect, as liturgies of the Eucharist provide (i.e. the Great Prayer and its many parts); yet, our participation in such orders can easily lack relational significance involving our vulnerable relational involvement with the Lord altogether as the new creation family. Liturgical worship’s relational clarity is perhaps its most important function. However, I suspect that many persons prefer to recite or read their parts of the Great Prayer because it’s more palatable to do so and thereby keep relationally distant than to palpably open their hearts before God. Palpable communion together is what God desires, but making referential statements in set prayers merely engages us in palatable Communion.

We need to embrace that we are all responsible and accountable to God and each other for the person we present in worship, the quality and integrity our communication in worship, and the level of involvement in relationships together that compose corporate worship in likeness of the Trinity. Church leaders together with worship planners and leaders must take the lead in these three major issues for all worship practice, giving primacy to the new relational order of worship, and dealing with the common order of worship accordingly—that is, forsaking old wineskins for new ones in order for the new wine to be nurtured, matured, and flow. Unavoidably, however, what also converges with these dynamics involves our theology anthropology underlying how the person is defined, relationships are engaged, and thereby how church is practices, which may require redemptive change in order for the new wine to emerge at all.

Therefore, this paradigm shift cannot be reduced to merely what’s “creative” and innovative as ends in themselves; that reduced view is just another old wineskin made to look new. Rather, church leaders and worship planners/leaders together must intentionally cultivate and grow the new creation family’s relationships of the new relational order—the equalized and intimate relationships that compose our identity as God’s very own daughters and sons. This is the both new and uncommon relational context that must determine every aspect of worship gatherings.

To grow to maturity requires rigorous involvement in the conjoint fight for wholeness of persons and relationships and against the sin of reductionism, both of which need to be given priority in worship planning. The song “Only By Grace”^{^[5]} is a meaningful song to sing about the equalizing work of God’s relational grace that needs to find application in the very surroundings of worship. One very visible change that nonverbally communicates the new relational order of worship is to move the worship leader and musicians out of front and center stage to the sides (or even the back) of the chapel/sanctuary, and the choir similarly. There is no good reason to perpetuate the relational distance (not just physical distance) created by the performer-audience positioning of worshipers. Each church’s physical space may present challenges, but the Spirit is willing to meet them if we are!

Relationship with God cannot be intimate if it lacks relational clarity, which means there can be no ambiguity as to who is being worshiped. At the very least, worship leaders need to ensure relational clarity by helping the worshipers give their primary attention and relational involvement directly to God without mediation, and thus not on themselves, not on performances or performers, or even “honored guests.” Songs that are sung directly to God (in the second person) and not indirectly about God (in the third person) are a part of relational clarity. Church leaders also need to take up their relational responsibilities to grow these worshipers outside of the actual worship service, to “equip the saints” for “maturing the body of Christ…in love” (Eph 4:12,16). These comments presuppose, of course, that church and worship leaders are themselves involved in the nonnegotiable relational work that Jesus requires of his disciples. In other words beyond the referential, relational clarity ends up having no meaning unless it is composed, embodied, and enacted with relational significance, which requires the vulnerable involvement of whole persons.

Relational clarity in our equalized and intimate relationships together as sisters and brothers is vital also—that is, relational clarity of the persons we present with relational significance to each other, as well as to God. An important step for many if not most churches and their worship would be to eliminate the use of titles when both addressing each other, or when referring to others. The titles of Reverend, Pastor, Doctor, Father (for priests), and other titles only serve to create relational distance, inevitably in the comparative process of reductionism (defining persons as more-less by secondary criteria that have no significance to God). Using titles in worship intentionally or inadvertently counter equalized and intimate relationships, since the purpose of titles is to set persons above others, a glaring practice of worship ‘in their way’. Jesus eliminated the use of titles for his disciples (Mt 23:1-12), as discussed in chapter 2. Will we heed Jesus’ words?

When we embrace our relational responsibilities as daughters and sons, the Father can relationally receive all who are his (nothing less and no substitutes)—that is, relationally receive our whole person (not what we do in service and ministry), whom he loves and pursues for life together in intimate communion. It is only in the dynamic, ongoing reciprocal relational involvement of love (agapē) that the Trinity can come and make their home in us (Jn 14:23). When involvement this takes place, it means that we will have been transformed into our new and uncommon functional identity (i.e. in practice as well as in our theology) as God’s new creation family. Moreover, our corporate worship gatherings will be qualitatively and relationally distinguished from the current status quo or what’s common. It will be remarkable to experience God’s new creation family emerging together thus distinguished from the fragmentary life templates that we’ve let define and determine our persons and relationships together. Social media dominate Christians’ attention and determine how we function more and more with each tech innovation, promoting virtual and augmented realities that also infect the church. For example, showing TV-like videos with “commercials” advertising the church’s activities are inappropriate and intrusive distractions into the new creation family’s most important gathering—relationally no different from parents on their devices during dinnertime, while their children lack connection as relational orphans.

Church and worship leaders must take the lead by first understanding for themselves the de-person-izing and de-relationalizing influences of social media, then directly critiquing it. Limit using technology to only ways that help facilitate relational involvement in worship (e.g. projecting song lyrics) without further augmentation; do not let the culture’s dependence on technology enslave you any longer in the virtual. We can liken these relational actions to the lopping off and pruning that the Father deems necessary in order for his beloved family to mature (cf. Jn 15:1-2). We will not grow in the trinitarian relational context and process of family love while spending so much effort over worship ‘in their way’—that is, trying to be culturally relevant in order to appeal to persons (notably millennials). That effort cannot distinguish who and whose we are, period.

In honest reflection on the condition of the world around us, we as Christians must acknowledge our corporate failings as God’s new creation family. The world (indeed also many Christians) isn’t very interested in the Good News as we have presented it through our churches and worship times, and it’s not for lack of our efforts and good intentions. It is time for us to turn from our self-determined views of God and assumptions about what pleases God in worship (cf. Ps 46:10), to mature into who, what, and how God calls and expects us to function in order to be distinguished unmistakably as the Father’s new creation family.

Furthermore, the new creation family emerges only ‘behind the curtain’ of the old worship context, which signifies where and how communion unfolds with God’s most intimate presence. We must follow Jesus ‘behind the curtain’ to join him in the sacrifice he made on our behalf to have direct access to relationship with the Father (Heb 9:24-26; 10:12-14, 19-20). Here behind the curtain we (personally and corporately) must also remove the veils (covering our faces and hearts) of relational barriers (2 Cor 3:16-18). The Father’s new creation family worships in uncommon ontology and function only ‘behind the curtain’, Face to face and heart to heart. Remaining in common worship practice, however, keeps us ‘in front of the curtain’, relationally apart on our own relational terms and with the veil still in place. Such practice neither claims the good news of Christ’s sacrifice nor receives the communion constituting its relational outcome (discussed later).

In view of the church’s current condition, we need a new ‘call to worship’ ‘behind the curtain’ in the ‘new relational order of worship’ with veils removed—compatible and congruent with the relational ontology of the Trinity, summarized here:

In the mystery of the Trinity’s ontology, we have experiential relational connection with the whole relational function of the Trinity’s whole relational ontology—in the experiential truth of the whole gospel’s trinitarian relational context of family and trinitarian relational process of family love—to understand the very relational likeness constituting our ontology and function to be whole. This relational outcome cannot be composed by referential terms, nor can it emerge from the referential likeness of God. On the unequivocal contrary, this whole understanding is the relational outcome of experiencing the relational reality of God’s vulnerable presence and intimate involvement with us. This experiential truth is crucial for our theology and practice: If God is not vulnerably present and relationally involved with us, then our epistemic field of knowing who, what and how God is is narrowed down to referential terms that, at best, can only boast of having fragmentary information about God—without experiencing the truth of the whole of God in the reality of intimate relationship together.^{^[6]}

Within this discussion on our relational responsibilities and wineskins—all within the defining relational context of worship ‘behind the curtain’ and ‘without the veil’—we examine Jesus’ interactions, first with the former prostitute, then with Mary of Bethany. The interactions Jesus had with these women don’t initially appear to be related to worship as we know it today. But the relational involvements from both these women deeply embody their worship relationship and commitment in the uncommon ontology and function that we seek through this study. In fact, their worship is so clearly distinguished that they are worship leaders with the qualitative relational significance needed for us to learn from and be encouraged by.

Of all Jesus’ followers mentioned in the NT, two women emerge to lead us in uncommon worship with more relational significance than the other disciples. What distinguishes them from the others is not their gender but rather the quality of their persons over the quantity of the others’ service. A former prostitute and Mary (Martha’s sister) demonstrated the specific choices that are involved in their worship that definitively had relational significance to Jesus. In compatible reciprocal response to Jesus, the two women fulfilled the three major issues for our discipleship-worship relationship with Jesus. Their witness will challenge much of our own worship theology and worship practice with uncommon ways foreign to our worship lexicon.

To briefly review, the previous chapter discussed how Jesus embodied the three major issues for all practice essential for our discipleship-worship relationships to be in his likeness, as follows: (1) the significance of the person presented, demonstrating the integrity of the whole person; (2) the quality and integrity of the person’s communication to make relational connection; and (3) the depth level of relational involvement in the trinitarian relational process of family love (ḥesed and agapē), defined as ‘how to be involved’ in relationships, not about ‘what I need to do’ (even sacrifice). As we examine these two persons’ practice, be aware of their underlying theological anthropology and how they defined their person, and on this basis how they involved their person with Jesus in relationship together.

The interaction between Jesus and the former prostitute demonstrates the relational necessity of God’s forgiveness for our wholeness in reconciled relationship together (Lk 7:36-50). Forgiveness is essential to being uncommon, because we need to be relationally reconciled to the uncommon God in order to experience this essential difference in our ontology and function. In other words, if we are not forgiven for living according to what’s common, how can we be essentially different to enact uncommon function from inner out?

The former prostitute received Jesus’ forgiveness for her common moral failures, which should not be considered worse than any other common practice. However, the former prostitute’s experience went much deeper than forgiveness for those sins; she experienced the fulfillment of God’s definitive blessing from OT times (Num 6:24-26). That is to say, the former prostitute—this most unlikely person—became, paradoxically, a kind of gospel foremother to us. This woman experienced God’s relational response of grace to her human condition with the face of Jesus, face to face in intimate relationship, (Lk 7:36-50), which required the integral two-fold significance of salvation: (1) Jesus freed her from the old and common definitions of her person from outer-in (i.e. her occupation), and conjointly (2) this transformed her to wholeness and holiness (uncommonness) in reconciled relationship with Jesus.

What unfolds from this unlikely person is the relational paradox of a once-common person in relational connection to and intimate involvement with the uncommon God. This relational paradox further signifies a once-reduced person now vulnerably extended with her whole person to the whole of God. On the essential basis of the quality of her whole person, her relational actions at Jesus’ table fellowship compose her uncommon response of worship with the qualitative relational significance to lead us today in uncommon worship.

I have also included her in this section as a worship leader because her interaction with Jesus further illuminates our discussion of Jesus washing the feet of our whole person—a necessary relational reality for church and worship leaders to receive personally. Of course, Jesus didn’t physically wash this woman’s feet—just the reverse here. Yet he did ‘wash’ her for the deeper relational dynamic of “have [a] share with me” (cf. Jn 13:8), which is necessary for us to receive from Jesus for our own relational reality with him in worship. She experienced God’s forgiveness and grace, and loved back simply with the depth of her person in reciprocal relational response compatible with Jesus’ relational response. She was transformed from inner out. Moreover, her actions demonstrate that grace, faith, and peace (wholeness) are integral dynamic relational functions needing to converge in the primacy of relationship with the whole and uncommon God. This woman becomes for us ‘the relational paradox’ that must also become our essential reality in the whole and uncommon relational response of worship—the irreducible and nonnegotiable response in contrast to and conflict with ‘their way’.

This known former prostitute entered a dinner party held for Jesus. The party’s host, a Pharisee named Simon, inwardly criticized Jesus for letting this woman physically touch him, and do so in such a demonstrative intimate way. According to Simon’s religious beliefs and practices, Jesus should not have allowed such impropriety because she was considered unclean. But here she washed Jesus’ feet with her tears, wiped them with her hair, kissed them then poured perfume (a tool of her trade) on them.

Simon could only see the woman as ‘less’ on the basis of her occupation (and likely also her gender). His lens was a product of his religious context that gave primacy to such outer criteria. Jesus, however, saw the woman in her innermost (cf. Acts 1:24a; Rev 2:23; Ps 139:1), through his qualitative-relational lens. Jesus focused on her open and vulnerable heart (signifying her whole person) in reciprocal response to him, and received her at that level. This is how Jesus engaged with persons in God’s uncommon relational context, not influenced by how her sociocultural context viewed her, whereas Simon’s common behavior was determined by his religio-cultural context.

Apparently Jesus had a prior interaction with the woman in which Jesus forgave her for her common moral failings. Forgiveness for this woman wasn’t limited to the commonly referential view that forgiveness means just wiping a slate clean. Rather, she experienced the deeper significance of intimate relational connection in God’s relational response of grace to her whole person. What she experienced with Jesus was to no longer be defined her by her circumstances and actions in the past. He knew that prostitution was a fragmenting, dehumanizing occupation, reducing persons to only their bodies for sex (for both prostitutes and their customers). In a highly moralistic religious context such as Pharisaical Judaism, prostitutes were not deemed ‘less’ but ‘least’ on the basis of their occupation—unclean and untouchable sinners.

Jesus’ vulnerable presence and relational-specific involvement with the woman freed her from her old identity from outer in by his relational response of forgiveness and relational grace, thereby redefining her person from the inner out for the purpose of making her whole in relationship together. Jesus’ forgiveness freed this woman from her common sins, and relational grace established her in wholeness of intimate connection in relationship together. This is how Jesus ‘washed the feet’ of her whole person—which Peter had difficulty receiving—and reiterates why we too need to let Jesus wash the feet of our whole person. In her compatible reciprocal response to God’s relational grace and forgiveness, the former prostitute enjoyed her ‘share with Jesus’ (cf. Jn 13:8), and Jesus enjoyed the depth of relational connection too—signifying what and why the Father seeks this from worshipers (Jn 4:23-24).

It’s vital for us to understand that this woman deeply received Jesus in his relational response of grace by letting her heart be open and vulnerable with him—the enactment of her faith, that is, as relational trust in Jesus that he would not reject her. Having been so deeply responded to in her human condition and relational need, the reciprocal response of her heart freely emerged as she stepped forth in faith to wash Jesus’ feet with her tears, wipe them with her hair, and anoint them with perfumed oil. Jesus’ affirmed her faith, saying “Your faith has saved you” (v.50). This interaction shows us the dynamic relational process involved in faith, correcting our mistaken view that faith is some quantity to merely possess. Faith is dynamic relational trust in God to be whole-ly (not fragmentary) who, what, and how God is in relationship.

Furthermore, “saved” (sōzō) here didn’t mean that the woman’s faith produced her own salvation (only God can save). Significantly, Jesus affirmed the reciprocity of her relational response (of faith) to vulnerably entrust her person to Jesus. Her reciprocal response was necessary for her to experience the reality of being freed from the sin of reductionism of her person and function in order to experience wholeness in reciprocal relationship together. For the former prostitute and for all of us, this reciprocity affirms our persons as subjects worthy to engage in relationship with the whole and uncommon God. We must embrace the reciprocal nature of relationship with God if we want to grow both in our wholeness, and to know and understand God in our innermost (cf. Jer 9:24).

The relational process that the former prostitute experienced was redemptive reconciliation; she was redeemed from the old (common) to the new (uncommon) of being made whole in relationship together with God. Jesus thus definitively affirmed this significance for her life: “Go in peace” (v.50). In Scripture, “peace” is always about wholeness and well-being of persons, in contrast to the Greek notion of peace meaning absence of conflict, conflict that his woman likely would still experience in social contexts. To paraphrase Jesus’ words to her in his blessing and ‘sending’: “go forth now in your whole and uncommon ontology and function in the primacy of our relationship together—and let the new wine flow!”

And with the further significance of Jesus’ words, this woman “has shown great love” by giving primacy to her relationship with Jesus, in reciprocal relational response to having been loved first. Her worship is a touching example of one who worshiped in spirit and truth. Yet we should not idealize her or her relational reality; sin is sin, forgiveness doesn’t make distinctions. What is important for us is to embrace for ourselves the relational contingency that Jesus makes definitive here: This reciprocal relational involvement of love at this vulnerable level emerges only from one who has been vulnerably open to experience God’s relational response of love in forgiveness from inner out (Lk 7:47; cf. Mt 6:14-15; 18:21-35). The extent of our reciprocal relational response is directly contingent on and proportional to the extent of vulnerably receiving God’s relational response of grace and forgiveness.

The former prostitute is the relational paradox for worship on two accounts. First, given that her human context cast her as a most unholy and undeserving person, the reality that she demonstrates uncommonness/holiness seems incongruous—that is, in common terms. For human persons, the most common definition for holiness is purity and is about sexual abstinence until marriage (e.g. “purity pledges” or “virginity pledges” made by evangelical teens and young adults in the U.S.). Obviously the former prostitute didn’t fit such a definition of holiness, since she was considered morally impure and unclean by virtue of her occupation. Yet, it is this immoral woman—in contrast to her detractor, Simon the Pharisee (with his overt practices of piety)—who corrects us and our common notions about what it means to God to be uncommon/holy.

On second account, prostitution (along with pornography) epitomizes in the extreme the substitutes that humans turn to in place of genuine intimate connection in human relationships. Engaging in prostitution and engaging prostitutes fragment and reduce persons, and their activity provides only ontological simulation of relational connection through sexual acts; intimacy based on sex is also common confused in marriage. Indeed, for many females, prostitution is a literal enslavement, for others it is a job to make a living, or a means to support drug addictions. And so for the former prostitute to be a role model for intimate relational connection with Jesus makes her the relational paradox.

But herein lies God’s distinguished ways: What is impossible in the human context, in God’s relational context this woman was redeemed and relationally reconciled, becoming a most uncommon and whole person on the basis of God’s relational terms (cf. Lk 18:27). Her uncommon ontology and function in her whole reciprocal relational response of worship are vital for us to understand for our own uncommon ontology and function. Her life exemplifies the relational paradox of those who make up God’s new creation family, and demonstrates for us what it means to worship in new wineskins.

Most of us have asked God during worship services to forgive our sins, very often during the Lord’s Prayer, as a prelude to Communion, or in conjunction with asking Jesus into our hearts. We’ve asked God for forgiveness for a variety of moral failures, primarily when we’ve done, said, or thought something we know is wrong (e.g. lying, stealing, cheating, being jealous). Some of us have asked God to forgive us for “deeper” sins, such as disbelief and lack of trust, pride, or self-justification. Any of these sins we might confess before we take Communion, focusing on Jesus’ spilled blood that signifies God’s forgiveness through Jesus’ death on the cross (Mt 26:28; Eph 1:7)—that is, blood essentially disembodied from Jesus’ person and thus derelationalized from direct involvement in relationship together (the only significance of forgiveness). Accordingly, in general, Christians don’t demonstrate the “great love” as the prostitute did (Lk 7:47) that emerges from only the essential relational experience of forgiveness. Many worship gatherings demonstrate “loves little” instead, which demonstrates unmistakably the common experience of “one to whom little is forgiven.” Consequently, we seem to have made even forgiveness into something common, lacking relational significance. This is our basic experience with sin and forgiveness.

We have much to learn from this woman as to the essence of forgiveness and the relational response of grace necessary for our person’s ontology and function to be made whole. This is the only basis for our worship involvement to have relational significance to God, because it is composed by the reciprocal nature of our relational response of having been loved first. In contrast, we who have been forgiven little love little, because the existing reality is that we haven’t experienced having been loved first. The prostitute teaches us the truth that the vulnerableness of our hearts is necessary to receive God’s forgiveness, then relationally trusts that God has indeed forgiven us whereby we are free to express our whole person in loving response to God and others, and to share this same forgiveness with others (cf. Mt 6:12, 14-15). In addition, her relational paradox clearly demonstrates the irreplaceable basis required for any of us to significantly respond with love in likeness of how the Trinity loves us (Jn 15:9; 17:26)—the relational response of love that distinguishes us as the Trinity’s new creation family (Jn 13:34-35; 17:23).

Therefore, we need to embrace this sister as one who whole-ly fulfilled the three issues for all discipleship-worship practice. For the first major issue, the person she presented to Jesus was without masks or substitutes for her person; she didn’t to try to make herself more “acceptable” to Jesus, but was involved with Jesus only in vulnerable honesty of her heart without pretense or embellishment. The quality of her communication was direct, and with uncensored heart she vulnerably expressed to Jesus how she felt about him through her unconventional nonverbal expressions—expressions deemed unacceptable by the prevailing religious order (e.g. Lk 7:39)—in the new relational order of worship. And the depth level of her relational involvement was clearly with her innermost being, having been forgiven and made whole in redeemed, reconciled relationship together with Jesus, the essential reality of which could never be reproduced by virtual or augmented reality. The interaction between Jesus and this woman was relationally involving and dynamic at a depth that can be neither simulated nor simply idealized. We can imagine that she went forth with her face shining brightly for having intimately experienced the relational grace and glory of God (the who, what, and how God is in God’s vulnerable presence and intimate involvement) in the face of Jesus (as in 2 Cor 4:6). This is the uncommon relational outcome awaiting all of us who follow the prostitute’s relational path of worship.

Mary is also an unlikely worship leader, as well as unlikely teacher with respect to the new relational order in our worship-discipleship relationship—unlikely, that is, if we are thinking in the common terms of our current worship practices. For starters, Mary didn’t have the same recognition or status as Jesus’ twelve closest disciples. We know nothing about Mary up until Jesus had dinner at Martha’s house (i.e. Lazarus’), such as any past accomplishments, her resources, her education—nothing to distinguish her in her sociocultural context, most notably in the existing religious order.

What then distinguished Mary from the other disciples? Simply, yet uncommonly, her undivided heart composing her whole theology and practice. By involvement with Jesus with her heart not fragmented (especially by secondary matter), Mary provides instructive contrast to Peter, since he struggled (due to his hybrid theology) practicing discipleship and worship on his own self-determined terms. And where Peter at times made empty boastful statements (even with good intentions) about his devotion to Jesus but did not follow through on them, Mary lived her boast—which I call her ‘whole-ly boast’ (whole+holy). That is, Mary’s qualitative and relational involvement with Jesus was her whole-ly boast, her boast that didn’t depend on boastful words or outward displays of devotion. It was Mary’s whole practice that witnessed to her relational reality of who defined her person, and what determined her relational involvement with Jesus—which also involved the significance of her theological anthropology.

We need to learn this from Mary for our own worship to have significance and be distinguished. These qualitative and relational aspects of Mary illuminate the essential significance of the new relational order for relationships that distinguish the new creation family in likeness of the Trinity. Mary’s discipleship-worship practice set her apart from the common practices ‘in their way’, which also shaped the other disciples and that continue to pervade the global church today. Therefore, we need to consider the following discussion on Mary imperative for all Christians and our gospel, because that’s how Jesus considered Mary (Mt 26:13).

When Jesus visited Martha’s home (Lk 10:38-42), Mary made an unexpected counter-cultural move that upset Martha but pleased Jesus. Yet, what she did was not simply to defy a cultural norm by leaving her (woman’s) place in the kitchen with Martha in order to sit at the teacher’s feet to study. Much more significant was that she enacted her whole person with determination (cf. kûn, Ps 57:7; 108:1, to be resolved, have one’s heart set on) to be directly involved with Jesus “where I am” (the relational imperative of discipleship, Jn 12:26). In the relational primacy of discipleship, Mary (1) rejected the constraints of being defined from outer in by her socio-religious context that would have kept her at a relational distance from Jesus, and (2) “sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying,” to be directly relationally involved with Jesus as his disciple. That is, Mary gave primacy to relationship together as Jesus’ disciple in congruence with Jesus’ nonnegotiable relational terms for discipleship—the primacy of which Christians have commonly reinterpreted in various secondary ways (as the disciples demonstrated, discussed below).

Mary made the paradigm shift we are discussing in this chapter: Mary chose the primacy of relationship with Jesus at the expense of what was expected and acceptable behavior as defined by her socio-religious context of the time. She defied the order (template) sanctioned by the leaders of Second Temple Judaism, to which Martha still adhered. While this scene wasn’t specifically about worship, the discipleship and worship relationships are inseparable, thus the paradigm shift applies.

More than the other disciples, we witness in Mary the relationally specific response to Jesus in the primacy of relationship that needs to define all his disciples. Martha, by contrast, responded to Jesus indirectly, and her involvement was more generalized in the performance of her prescribed role (as object-person), much like Peter. Mary’s choice (as subject-person) was direct and face-to-face with Jesus’ person. Although none of the Gospels mention Jesus having called to Mary to “follow me,” she did indeed follow Jesus on Jesus’ nonnegotiable relational terms, which distinguished her response to Jesus even beyond the responses of the other disciples.

Like the former prostitute, Mary engaged in the compatible reciprocal relational response necessary for Jesus’ disciples-worshipers to function in his likeness. And although in this scene we don’t know what Mary might have said, her actions definitively embodied her relational messages communicated vulnerably to Jesus, the content and quality of which spoke loud and clear to Jesus. It is vitally significant that Jesus was pleased by the depth of Mary’s relational involvement with him, and affirmed Mary for having chosen the “good part” (Lk 10:42). It is equally instructive for us that Jesus contrasted Martha’s practice—“worried” (merimnaō, have anxiety) and “troubled” (thorybazō, upset, distracted, v.41)—with Mary’s practice as having chosen the good “part” (meris, from meros, part, share). This statement overlaps integrally with Jesus’ words to Peter that “unless I wash you, you have no share [meros] with me” (Jn 13:8). This ‘share’ that Mary chose was to participate in Jesus’ life in the primacy of relationship together, to be “where I am” (cf. Jn 17:24).

Much like Martha, many worship planners and leaders become anxious, worried, and distracted by preparations and performance to make worship acceptable to God, which, as with Martha, are tasks with good intentions that somebody has to take on. We need to understand, however, that our preoccupation with secondary matters about worship are likely from self-concerns about what people will think about us, about how we measure up in a comparative process, which signify our reduced theological anthropology fragmenting persons and relationships. Again, this self-concern reflects a divided heart that is not relationally secure and confident in God’s relational grace (recall Peter’s fear at the transfiguration). Mary’s heart was undivided and secure, and thus, like the former prostitutes, she was free to involve her whole persons directly in face-to-face relationship with Jesus, the Son of God.

The primacy that Mary gave to relational connection with Jesus puts into whole perspective where service and ministry fit into our discipleship-worship relationship—a secondary place. Whenever we reverse these priorities and give primacy to service and ministry, then we will be determined foremost by focusing on ‘what to do’ over how to be relationally involved with God and others. This is axiomatic, and Jesus’ words (Jn 12:26)—his relational paradigm for his disciples—must finally be heard and responded to without reduction and negotiation!

These two sisters illuminate the choices before us: the choice involving transformation of our ontology and function from common practice to the uncommon, and thus risk engaging a new order; or the choice to remain constrained by the common’s traditional expectations notably giving primacy to serving, even if serving Jesus with good intentions, which maintain the old order. When Jesus ended by saying that the good part that Mary had chosen “will not be taken away from her,” he was assuring her of her permanent place with Jesus in God’s family—the new creation family—where she now relationally belonged (as in Jn 8:35-36). Jesus’ expectations for his disciples-worshipers certainly defied the common’s expectations, and still do. Are we listening to “my Son,” as the Father makes imperative?

Consider for yourself what limits and constrains you in worship, the self-consciousness and concerns that keep you measured, self-contained, and at a relational distance. What is your comfort zone (the answer to which helps identify how you define your person)? What changes in worship gatherings would help you and others to take first steps in the equalized and intimate relationships of the new relational order to follow Mary’s lead? Consider these issues vulnerably with the Spirit.

For persons in church and worship leadership, it’s important to identify the expectations that cause you to become preoccupied, anxious or stressed, and where those expectations come from. Consider these in light of the primacy that God gives to the whole person in vulnerable honesty of heart for whole (equalized and intimate) relationships together. Mary and the former prostitute embodied undivided hearts, such that their persons were defined and determined by relationship with God only on God’s relational terms of grace. Thus their self-worth didn’t depend on their performance and measuring up in a comparative process. They experienced the transformation of their identity from the old (in common terms) to their new identity with Jesus. Jesus calls us to the same relational identity that they enacted in compatible reciprocal relational response of faith (relational trust).

Additionally, for persons who don’t have the roles, titles, and expectations of church and worship leaders, it’s necessary to address things from a different angle. That is, the rest of us also have our reciprocal relational responsibilities as disciples-worshipers. We too need to die to the old-common of being defined and determined in the comparative process by secondary criteria of what we don’t do or don’t have (lead worship, roles as leaders). Important for us to understand is that while persons who are considered as ‘better’ (e.g. church and worship leaders) need to be ‘equalized down’, others who are considered as ‘less’ need to be ‘equalized up’ (cf. Jas 1:9). By assuming our own relational paradox, we must reject seeing ourselves as “mere” worshipers, and can no longer passively assume a ‘lesser’ place of importance in worship. We need to exercise our resolve to be equalized up and take uncommon steps with Mary, which then would also be intrusive as she was: no longer defined and determined by outer criteria from our religious contexts, but as full daughters and sons for direct, face-to-face- worship in our permanent place in the Father’s new creation family.

The new relational order signifies relationships in the new creation family that are integrally equalized and intimate, the only basis for which is God’s relational response of grace (and forgiveness) in response to our innermost condition and need. In this new relational order, the church must give primacy to whole persons and whole relationships together, regardless of roles, social status, and all other human-made distinctions. To reiterate from chapter 3, being equalized by God’s relational response of grace to us necessitates letting Jesus ‘wash the feet of our whole person’, just as the former prostitute and Mary experienced. This also requires us to be involved in Communion with Jesus behind the curtain with our veil removed, discussed further below.

Mary’s whole and uncommon ontology and function were further distinguished in a second interaction with Jesus when Lazarus died (Jn 11:28-33). In this interaction, Mary demonstrated a deeper level of vulnerableness with Jesus than in the first interaction. Her relational trust (faith) deepened along with her relational expectations of Jesus for how Jesus would be involved with her and would receive her as she freely shared her heart with him. That is, Mary’s expectations deepened as she grew in relationally knowing and understanding Jesus in reciprocal relationship together. This dynamic of growing further and deeper in our relationship with God is the relational reality of reciprocating contextualization: being contextualized and matured in the trinitarian relational context of family and trinitarian relational process of family love, while remaining in and interacting with the human context.

After Jesus talked with Martha following Lazarus’ death, Mary was told that Jesus was calling for her, and she quickly went to Jesus, knelt at his feet, and poured her heart out to him weeping. In all four Gospels, Mary rarely spoke. But in this one instance when she did say something her words were the same as Martha’s (Jn 11:21,32); yet, though their verbal content was the same, Mary more simply, freely and deeply expressed her whole person to Jesus, and with a very different relational outcome. Mary didn’t stay at a comfortable distance relationally from Jesus, in contrast with Martha’s more restrained interaction with Jesus at a noticeably different level of affect, for both Martha and Jesus (vv.20-27). Mary was free to be vulnerable and direct with Jesus in a way that none of the other disciples demonstrated (cf. Mk 6:52; 8:14-17; Jn 4:27,31-33).

Understandably, Mary’s vulnerableness and pain touched Jesus’ heart, seeming to portend the coming painful journey to the cross Jesus would soon undergo. That is, the anguish that Mary and Jesus felt together now—“he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved…. wept” Jn 11:33)—would continue beyond the situation of Lazarus’ death to Jesus’ own. John’s Gospel appears to intentionally relationally link Mary’s pained heart with Jesus’ impending suffering (cf. 12:27; 13:21), notably by bringing them together again later as Jesus prepared to go to the cross (discussed shortly).

Mary could be even freer and more confident with Jesus because she was ongoingly experiencing relational grace extended to her. It was this ongoing experience of relational grace received through Jesus’ acceptance of her and his intimate relational involvement with her whole person that had come to increasingly define and determine her ontology and function. Accordingly, Mary’s actions here further composed her reciprocal response to Jesus’ response of grace to her person, thereby even further eliminating the constraints from the religio-cultural context that limited Martha’s involvement. With those relational barriers removed in Jesus’ vulnerable presence, Mary was no longer self-concerned about the secondary matters of ‘what to do’. For example, Mary wasn’t self-concerned about the proper way to behave with one’s “superior” as Peter was with Jesus (at his footwashing), and as Martha’s measured involvement conveyed. Mary’s freedom with Jesus is the freedom we can all experience because, as Paul clarified for us, “when one turns to the Lord, the veil of relational barriers is removed” (2 Cor 3:16-17). This is the only freedom that has relational significance to God—not the so-called freedom of being able to do whatever we want, nor even just freedom from sin—which therefore is essential, indispensable, and irreplaceable for us to worship God in likeness of God, not determined ‘in their way’. Such freedom as Mary’s (and the former prostitute’s) also confronts and challenges who, what, and how we present ourselves to God in worship gatherings—the person we present, the integrity and quality of our communication, and the depth level of our relational involvement with God and with each other.

In contrast to how so much of corporate worship focuses on God revolving around our lives, we see the relational progression to maturity in Mary’s interactions with Jesus. Most notable, Mary increasingly participated in Jesus’ life as she reciprocated with her own vulnerable heart in face-to-face connection together. From their shared pain in the above interaction to the non-verbal and heart-wrenching interaction discussed next, the depth level of Mary’s relational involvement with Jesus was even further distinguished in her new-order interaction with Jesus.

Their third interaction took place at another table fellowship in Lazarus’ home (Jn 12:1-8; Mt 26:6-13; Mk 14:3-9). Here Mary further illuminates the person’s ontology and function vital for leading worship, as well as what participation in God’s life is truly involves. This interaction was not an isolated situation in which Mary did something commendable in service to Jesus—a common interpretation by worship writers. If that were all that Mary signified, it would not warrant Jesus’ affirmation aligning her practice with the gospel itself (Mt 26:13; Mk 14:9).

Moreover, in contrast to discussions from biblical feminists, Mary’s primary importance supersedes the three most common interpretations: as a female disciple, she challenged androcentrism and patriarchalism, she challenged traditional roles for women, and she was the first disciple to recognize and anoint Jesus as the Messiah. While each of these aspects of Mary is important, what is most significant about her third interaction with Jesus is the depth of Mary’s maturity in her discipleship-worship relationship with her Lord. Mary’s maturity is indicated in the following: in her whole ontology and function, that is, presenting nothing less and no substitutes for her person in likeness of Jesus; involved with the vulnerableness of a child-person illuminating the integrity and honesty of her undivided heart; in decisively distinguishing the uncommon from the common as she embodied equalized and enacted intimate relationship with Jesus at the depth of “where I am.” On the basis of these observations, we can conclude that Mary, more definitively than the other disciples, participated in Jesus’ life defined only by his relational terms for his disciples, and thus directly involved her in the life of the Trinity (as in Jn 14:21). She was the kind of worshiper that the Father seeks to compose the uncommon new creation family to whom the Trinity will come and make their home. Pay close attention to Mary’s person and the depth of her involvement in this new-order interaction with Jesus.

During dinner, Mary came and poured very expensive perfume on Jesus’ feet and wiped them with her hair (Matthew and Mark’s Gospels say “a woman came…and poured the ointment on his head,” Mt 26:6-13; Mk 14:3-9; cf. the similar action from the former prostitute, Lk 7:37-38). Other disciples who were present chastised Mary, calling her action wasteful because the perfume should have been sold and the money used to help poor people. The contrast here is pivotal for determining the extent of participating in God’s life, and thus the significance of worship involvement.

This was a crucial moment leading up to Jesus’ death, which Jesus had indicated to the disciples. Yet, those disciples focused on ministry (i.e. on ‘what to do’), not on Jesus’ person in the primacy of relationship, nor what was ahead for him. Such a focus on the secondary matter of ministry indicated the relational distance they were keeping from Jesus, and certainly from their own hearts—which was demonstrated even more distinctly in their lack of involvement with Jesus in his anguish at Gethsemane (Mk 14:32-42). To many of us, serving is the most worthy discipleship effort to focus on and to give primacy to; this is a prominent message given in worship services as well. But our apparent good intentions about serving often belie a heart unavailable for relational connection. As mentioned earlier in the study about persons who are defined and determined by secondary criteria of what one does or has, those persons are less sensitive to the qualitative and less aware of the relational. This qualitative insensitivity and relational unawareness were painfully true about the disciples here.

Mary, however, was focused vulnerably and intently on the person Jesus, well aware of his impending death, and so despite the harassment from her fellow disciples, she acted according to her undivided heart. In Jesus’ own words, Mary “has prepared me for burial” (Mt 26:12; par Mk 14:8; Jn 12:7). In her sensitivity, surely Mary’s heart was breaking as she anticipated the ordeal Jesus was soon to undergo; and in her relational awareness she participated with relational involvement in his whole life, even while not fully understanding the circumstances.

What unfolds from Mary should not be idealized, because this is simply the nature of the new creation unfolding with whole ontology and function in likeness of the Trinity. The following understanding about Mary is critical for us to understand in our own involvement with Jesus in worship. Keep in mind that this discussion isn’t advocating singling Jesus out from the whole of the Trinity, but is focused on congruent relational involvement with the Son and, on this relational basis, with the Trinity.

Mary demonstrated two senses of kûn (cf. Ps 57:7; 108:1, noted earlier): she was established in the primacy of her relationship with Jesus and not merely in the role of servant; on this primary basis, with the resolve of her heart, she directed her attention to act on what she had been considering. Mary’s heart, even at what could be considered an elementary stage, was both defined by the whole ontology of her person (constituting the new creation), and her involvement was determined by her person’s whole function (composing the new relational order)—neither reduced nor fragmented by the secondary. Therefore, Mary deeply involved her whole person with her Lord in this act of worship—openly and vulnerably involved with Jesus in the giving of her person to Jesus in trinitarian family love, which certainly was only in likeness of the Trinity’s love that she experienced first.

Unlike many Christians, Mary’s confidence was not in her abilities, education, training, titles, or status. Her confidence was based on her relational experience of relational grace that freed her from any self-concern and limits that might otherwise have constrained her involvement with her Lord. Accordingly, Mary’s vulnerableness with Jesus wasn’t akin, for example, to Peter’s situational so-called openness (e.g. his bold declarations, Mt 16:22; Jn 13:37) because Mary’s response emerged as relational trust in Jesus’ whole person. As noted above with the former prostitute, relational trust is the significance of faith, the relational response beyond the common practice that faith is a quantity to possess, a belief affirmed. Contrary to such referential terms, in functional relational terms faith is only our relational response to God that is contingent on who, what, and how God is. Relational trust in the whole of God embodied by Jesus must by its relational nature embrace Jesus’ person jointly in the theological trajectory of his whole ontology and on the intrusive relational path of his whole function, which challenges all common function. Mary teaches us the depth of this relational response and the relational outcome unfolding from such involvement in relationship together without common limits and constraints, which challenges the common function of all Christian worship.

Because of Mary’s vulnerable reciprocal response to Jesus, Jesus was able to engage her in equalized and intimate relationship together. In relationship together heart to heart with Jesus, Mary experienced the necessary “share with me” (Jn 13:8), and “better part” (Lk 10:42), thereby taking her place as daughter in the Father’s new creation family (cf. Mt 12:30,49-50; 2 Cor 5:17) in likeness of the Trinity (2 Cor 3:18; Eph 4:24). This is the very relational connection that Jesus came to make with all persons, the intimate connection in which the Trinity is relationally known (Jn 1:18; 14:9b,11,20-21,23; 15:8; 17:3,6,21-26). Unmistakably, therefore, Mary illuminates the kind of disciple and thus worshiper that the Father seeks. She was a “true worshiper” whose person functioned whole from inner out with honesty and vulnerability of heart (i.e. “in spirit and truth,” Jn 4:23).” And the Trinity seeks nothing less and no substitutes from all of us.

Jesus’ affirmations of Mary’s life and practice are vital to understand the unfolding of God’s theological trajectory and relational path to establish persons together in likeness of the Trinity, as Jesus prayed (Jn 17:20-26). From Mary’s first steps in face-to-face relationship with Jesus as his disciple, to this last table fellowship together, Mary fulfilled Jesus’ relational contingency for his new creation family that “those who love me will keep my word” so that “my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them” (Jn 14:23). Hers was the compatible and reciprocal response to Jesus and how Jesus is relationally involved with persons: “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you” (Jn 15:9). Jesus’ relational involvement with persons embodies love (agapē), God’s family love, which he enacted beyond sacrifice and deeper than serving. God’s family love is never primarily about what to do—not even with acts of sacrifice, though it can include sacrifice—but about being deeply involved relationally with the other person for whole relationship together (cf. Jesus’ involvement with others while on the cross). At this point, compare your feelings about Mary with what Jesus felt.

Since God is always vulnerably present and intimately involved with persons, those who receive God with their own vulnerable hearts for relational connection (only on his relational terms with relational grace) are those persons who will experience the depth of the Father’s family love, and who will be made whole in intimate connection belonging to God’s new creation family. This was Jesus’ only relational purpose and work that composed the integral basis for Mary’s reciprocal relational response. Mary’s relational connection with Jesus—like no other disciple’s—is the outcome of God’s relational involvement of family love to reconcile persons with him in the new creation family. And only this relational outcome is the good news that composes the ‘whole’ gospel of Christ (i.e. the gospel of peace, wholeness in relationship together, Eph 6:15). Therefore, Jesus highlights the significance to him (and thus to the Trinity) of Mary’s act of worship by making the most remarkable statement about Mary, a statement that rightfully should be taught and celebrated in the global church:

“I tell you the truth, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her” (Mk 14:8-9, NIV).

The key for Mary’s compatible and congruent response—again in contrast to Peter and the others—was that she made the choice to be vulnerably involved with Jesus in reciprocal relationship together, which thereby composed her worship as whole and uncommon. In the relational terms of the three major issues for all practice that Jesus vulnerably embodied (discussed in chap. 3), Mary’s practice whole-ly embodied, enacted, and fulfilled the congruent reciprocal response. We see her integral congruence in (1) the integrity of the person she presented to Jesus, (2) the quality of her communication to make relational connection with Jesus, and (3) the intimate depth level of her relational involvement with him. More than any other disciple mentioned in the Gospels, Mary is the one who understood God’s words “be uncommon because I am holy,” which by her practice—and notably not by her words—she distinguished between the “holy and common,” (Lev 10:10). This is our relational responsibility also, and any lack of assuming this responsibility renders our worship, including our persons and relationships, to ‘in their way’.

Ever since Jesus commended Mary, she is rarely, if ever, attached to Jesus’ gospel. The gospel we claim and proclaim never tells of Mary’s qualitative and relationally significant response to Jesus—as compared to, say, Peter, James and John’s missional activities (even as important as these activities were). This glaring omission exposes our ignoring Jesus’ words throughout church history. Selective listening has allowed us to avoid Jesus’ words about Mary and to ignore the Father’s imperative to all disciples to “Listen to my Son” (Mt 17:3). These omissions in our collective theology and practice have been overlooked as we have irresponsibly trained our attention elsewhere. Being vulnerable with Mary simply hasn’t been part of the church’s theology and practice.

For clarification, being vulnerable with the Father does not involve the common perception of being weak, fragile, and liable to collapse if attacked. That perception comes from a universal human fear of disapproval and relational rejection. Relational vulnerableness is the honesty of one’s heart exercised by a whole subject-person (not a reduced object) face to face with the Father, trusting in the Father’s unfailing love.

The omission of Mary’s relational significance to the gospel is less about androcentrism as some biblical feminists would claim (though gender is undoubtedly involved). Our omission is about the threat that Mary’s person presents to those (both male and female) who are defined and determined by reductionism (namely a theological anthropology of reduced ontology and function) instead of by God’s relational grace and agapē involvement. The latter requires vulnerableness of our person before God, which includes epistemic and ontological humility. We collectively need to come before our Lord and face this “threat.” Church and worship leaders need to take the lead by first listening hard (i.e. with honesty and vulnerableness of heart) to Jesus’ relational-specific language to them; and this likely will require a paradigm shift from referential language to relational language to understand Jesus’ relational terms.

Mary’s qualitatively sensitive and relationally aware involvement with Jesus make her the definitive worship leader for us to learn from in order that we also mature to ‘embody new’ the worship relationship. Mary edifies us by how she listened to Jesus’ relational language and responded congruently in his relational language, just as the Father makes imperative for all disciples-worshipers (Mt 17:3). With Mary, we see Jesus able to build the new creation family one person at a time. Here we can understand Jesus’ expanded vision of this relational work to fulfill his words to all his disciples that they will “also do the relational works that I do and, in fact, will do greater relational works” with the Spirit’s coming (Jn 14:12 with vv.15-26).

Therefore, our worship gatherings need to make this unavoidable paradigm shift: leaving behind the old approach to orders of worship in order to embrace and embody the new relational order of worship that celebrates new/uncommon persons in new/uncommon relationships together, conjointly equalized and intimate relationships without the veil of relational barriers that integrally compose the new creation family with nothing less and no substitutes. In such worship, the Trinity will delight in our likeness, and we in the Trinity.

And so let’s be clear, growing the new creation family will require many of us to change, starting with being open to being taught by someone (a woman at that) occupying a seemingly minor place in the Gospels’ narratives. We must no longer ignore Mary’s discipleship-worship relationship. Instead, we need to listen to Jesus without being selective, thereby taking seriously the unconventional truth that Mary can “speak” into the church’s current condition (in decline) as she illuminates for us the uncommon practice necessary to follow Jesus on his uncommon theological trajectory and whole relational path. Our sister Mary is the most encouraging and edifying disciple-worshiper for maturing the new creation family that I know. Let us finally begin to focus on the fact that Jesus said that “wherever the gospel is preached in all the world, Mary’s reciprocal relational response to my whole person will be celebrated in remembrance of her” (Mt 26:13).

Whole-ly Communion: the New Creation Family’s Table Fellowship ‘Behind the Curtain’

As initially noted previously, the new creation family emerges only ‘behind the curtain’ where we follow Jesus into the “Most Holy Place” to join with him in the sacrifice he made there as our high priest (Heb 10:19-25). Jesus’ sacrifice of death on the cross tore open the curtain separating Uncommon God from the common human context, thereby giving us direct access to the Father (Eph 2:18; 3:12). We participate in Jesus’ death by relational involvement with his whole person, whereby we join together with him integrally with our own dying to the old, and emerge resurrected in “newness of life” with Jesus as well (Rom 6:3-11). There is a complexity of relational significance in our joining with Jesus ‘behind the curtain’ and with the veil of relational barriers removed. Paul summarized all this relational-specific work enacted by the Trinity—on the Trinity’s nonnegotiable relational terms—to adopt us as daughters and sons in the new creation family together (Eph 1:3-14; 2:19-22).

All of this relational-specific work enacted by the Trinity came to its pivotal climax with Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross for us. In common referential terms (in theology and practice, notably in worship), we narrowly define and limit Christ’s salvific work on the cross to (1) the means to atone for our sin(s), resulting in (2) eternal life, namely, that our life with God after we die is secured. These are both true but these aspects of the Jesus’ cross and salvation are incomplete. Jesus clearly defined eternal life (what we are saved to) only in relational terms for the present, as Jesus prayed to the Father: “that they may relationally know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (Jn 17:3).

This is the relational truth for the Father’s new creation family, which composes the defining reality that needs to become the relational reality we all must by its nature experience in our worship gatherings in order to be distinguished as the new creation family in likeness of the Trinity. And the experiential reality of the new creation family together—conjointly ‘behind the curtain, with the veil removed’—in likeness needs to define and determine our Communion practices.

The nonnegotiable relational implications of ‘behind the curtain with the veil removed’ bring us back to Jesus’ nonnegotiable relational terms for his disciples-worshipers, which the former prostitute and Mary enacted with their vulnerable, new-order involvement with him. They demonstrated for the new creation family what our worship must involve to take place behind the curtain without the veil. Therefore, unless we follow Jesus behind the curtain, and follow the lead of the former prostitute and Mary to remove their veils, our worship will remain ‘in front of the curtain’ in common, referential worship with our veils in place, having to relational significance to the Trinity.

We now enter a necessary discomfort zone—at least for many worshipers—in regard to familiar practices of Communion^{^[7]} (Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper). It may seem impious to some persons, but in this final section of the chapter, readers are asked to: (1) reflect on their thoughts and experiences of Communion, whether in liturgical, contemporary, or alternative worship gatherings; and (2) challenge deeply embedded assumptions about the relational significance to the Father of our Communion practices. We have indisputable precedent for going into this discomfort zone—for which I pray we all engage in reciprocal relationship with the Spirit in order to heed the Father’s words to “listen to my Son” (Mt 17:3).

In the OT, God defined for Aaron a critical relational responsibility as priest—“you are to distinguish between the holy and the common” (Lev 10:10, discussed in chap.3). This responsibility directly involved how the Israelites lived out God’s relational terms of the covenant, for the purpose of maturing the Israelites to be an uncommon people clearly distinguished from the common as they enacted the covenant relationship within the human context—so that God’s presence could dwell among them (Lev 26:9-12). God expected Aaron to examine their practices in light of God’s relational terms disclosed in the Decalogue and other terms of the covenant relationship, correcting practices ‘in their way’ as necessary. It must clearly be understood that God’s commandments from the beginning of the covenant were only the relational terms for reciprocal relationship together. God’s relational terms were distinctly in contrast to composing a template for God’s people to conform to, which is what Israel did anyway in forming their behavioral code for their self-determination.

In the NT, Jesus’ very person (inseparable from his practice) brought into direct conflict his holy/uncommon relational terms with the common religious practices and assumptions of his day, notably the Pharisees’ worship with disembodied lips (Mk 7:6-7). To Jesus, the Pharisees’ worship practices had no relational significance. Indeed, Jesus identified their entire system of piety—(“the tradition of the elders,” “human precepts and doctrines,” “human tradition,” “many things like this,” vv.5,7-9,13)—as an ontological simulation, in which they worshiped their idealized (or idolized) Object of their faith that substituted for God’s presence and involvement, along with God’s relational terms for worship (v.13). Jesus embodied definitively the necessary process of critiquing our worship practices, to determine whether they are congruent with God’s relational primacy, or determined by the human context’s influence ‘in their way’.

Therefore, on the basis of participating in Jesus’ (i.e. the Trinity’s) life, it is our relational responsibility as our Father’s daughters and sons in the new creation family (indeed God’s uncommon priesthood, 1 Pet 2:5) to ongoingly distinguish between our holy/uncommon practices and common practices in worship. Just as Jesus did, so we too must distinguish whether our worship practices—and, with greatest concern, our practices of Communion—are uncommon behind the curtain without the veil, or merely common ‘in their way’ in front of the curtain with the veil. No sacrament or ritual is too sacred to examine, question, and change in order to be made whole in congruence with the Father’s desires. To be clear, this discussion clearly presumes the defining importance of Communion for the life of the church and its primary significance in worship. Otherwise, without this central focus, the gospel and Jesus’ relational work on the cross have lost the qualitative relational significance necessary to ongoingly enact the relational reality of their relational outcome: the new creation family composing the new covenant relationship together behind the curtain without the veil, in likeness of the Trinity (as in Jn 8:31-32, 34-36; 2 Cor 3:16-18; Col 3:9-11).

As we begin this examination, keep in focus that our primary purpose is for our theology and practice to be compatible with the Trinity’s uncommon presence in our midst, and also to be congruent with the Trinity’s whole relational involvement in our lives primarily as persons and in relationships. Whatever your worship’s customary approach, to help us thoughtfully examine current Communion theology and practice, take account of the following questions prayerfully with the Spirit about participation in Communion:

· What do you think is the depth level of relational connection that God experiences with you and other persons during Communion?

· Do you experience Communion as a heart-to-heart connection with God and other worshipers?

· How has participation in Communion significantly changed who you are in your innermost, not just your outward behaviors? This question addresses current scholarship focusing on the transforming influence of attending church regularly.

· Have you ever noticed (the irony of) how relationally separate everyone is while “partaking together” of the bread and cup—for example, persons usually don’t even make eye contact, say a personal word to others, or make a physical contact during this “shared intimate experience” (the definition of communion)?

· For worshipers in liturgical worship, what is the depth level of your relational involvement with the Lord during the Great Prayer of Thanksgiving (either reciting or reading your part)? And do you ever feel like expressing your own words to God?

· For worshipers in contemporary worship, what is the depth of your relational involvement with the Father while remaining focused primarily on Christ (as most contemporary worship does)—which may include involvement with Jesus’ person if the focus is on what Christ did?

After accounting for such questions, I hope that readers will now further take into account a very different way to understand Communion ‘behind the curtain with the veil removed’—different from prevailing common practices ‘in front of the curtain with the veil’, though by no means theologically different from what the NT unfolds in the primacy of relationship that Jesus embodied.

Communion (capital “C”) has its beginning not at Jesus’ last supper with his disciples, but in his collective-cumulative table fellowships that included his disciples (male and female), Pharisees, tax collectors (notably Levi [Matthew] and Zacchaeus) and sinners. Keep in mind also that the interactions that Jesus had with both the former prostitute and Mary (discussed above) took place at table fellowship.

At Jesus’ first table fellowship (Lk 5:27-39), something qualitatively-relationally unique and new took place for those who were present, which could not have happened had Jesus adhered to the practices of piety prescribed by law in Second Temple Judaism. At these intimate gatherings, Jesus embodied face-to-face relationship together with the whole of God (the Trinity): the Uncommon and the common came Face-to-face. As persons responded with the vulnerableness of their persons to Jesus’ whole person—who was vulnerably present and intimately involved with them on the relational basis of relational grace—they experienced the depth of relational connection of belonging in the Father’s family. Relational truth wasn’t just an ideal to recite prayers about at an altar, but became these persons’ relational-experiential reality touching their innermost to make them whole. Without the reality of this relational connection there was no reality of this relational outcome. The communion at Jesus’ table fellowship required relational terms for this reality to unfold. Perhaps a virtual reality could emerge from referential terms, augmented by a referential prayer and ritual, but not the essential reality embodied by, in, and with Jesus.

During this uncommon table fellowship, Jesus’ new wine parable prefigured the Father’s new creation family as the new wineskin in which his disciples would mature in their new ontology and function (Mt 9:9-17; Mk 2:13-22; Lk 5:33-39). In these Face-to-face gatherings, Jesus demonstrated the new relational order of the new creation family of equalized and intimate relationships—the new wineskin itself! This new wineskin is nothing less than the intimate communion in the trinitarian relational context and relational process of family love necessary for his disciples to grow and mature (Lk 5:37-38), which Paul made conclusive for the church family (Eph 4:15-16, 22-24; Col 3:9-17).

With Levi, and later with Zacchaeus, Jesus demonstrated the integral connection between his table fellowships and the discipleship-worship relationship. After Jesus had called Levi, Levi, out of his joy hosted the first table fellowship (Lk 5:27-29). Later, Jesus called to Zacchaeus to prepare table fellowship together (Lk 19:1-10). Both these men, like the former prostitute, undoubtedly received Jesus’ forgiveness for moral failures (e.g. cheating persons as tax collectors). We know that both these men’s lives were radically changed by Jesus’ relational responses of grace, as they were now equalized in this new relational order. The relational response of grace to their whole persons went much deeper than the common interpretation that Jesus merely includes marginalized persons into the church. Levi and Zacchaeus were freed from having been fragmented and reduced, and relationally marginalized in the comparative process, to intimate communion with Jesus, thereby taking their place of relationally belonging at the Father’s family table.

Imagine Levi’s deep gratefulness to be counted among Jesus’ followers. Imagine how thankful Zacchaeus felt to be affirmed as “a son of Abraham,” meaning that by Jesus’ presence and relational-specific involvement with him, he now relationally belonged in God’s family. Levi’s and Zacchaeus’ transformation involved rejecting the old/common ways of defining and determining their persons and relationships, and choosing to relationally respond to Jesus’ relational response of grace to their persons—just as the former prostitute and Mary did. Likewise in reality, intimate communion at Jesus’ table fellowship is the relational-specific response that the Trinity has made to each of us, and that we share in collectively just as Jesus promised, to “not leave you as relational orphans” (Jn 14:18, NIV). These are vital examples of the deeply relational-specific significance of Communion for each of us today. We are called personally into corporate whole and uncommon communion as God’s distinguished family. Again we are asked, has Jesus washed the feet of your whole person to be made whole in reconciled relationship together for whole-ly communion?

Experiencing Jesus’ relational actions would have required the other disciples to deal with their own mindsets, given that Jesus didn’t just invite these two tax collectors (commonly despised by Jews in that time) to his table, but relationally included them into their nascent “family.” These uncommon gatherings publicly defied the common religious practices of that time. No doubt some of the other disciples were deeply touched in their own hearts. But it is also likely that some of them worried that “we’ve never done it that way” or “what will others think of us?” In light of our own likely inner resistance to changes in long-held traditions in our practices of Communion, it’s increasingly imperative that we listen carefully to Jesus—not just his words, but who and what he embodied in his uncommon vulnerable presence and intimate involvement with persons at his table fellowships. These are the relational antecedents of new wineskins that compose not just each person’s communion with the Trinity, but must compose our corporate practices and relational involvement in Communion today, as the new creation family behind the curtain without the veil. The unavoidable truth is that our Communion practice proclaims the gospel we’ve claimed; and this action speaks louder than any of our words.

At Jesus’ last supper with the disciples before going to the cross, and as Jesus shared the bread and wine, he instructed them, “do this in remembrance [anamnesis] of me” (Lk 22:19-20; 1 Cor 11:24). Jesus intended that his words and actions be taken relationally, not referentially as the church has done for centuries. He did not intend for his uncommon relational language to be common-ized by turning them into a recitation of what God did/does or has (i.e. God’s deeds and divine attributes, as the Eucharistic liturgies do), or as a mere memorial service of his salvific sacrifice on the cross (as Protestants do). Referentializing Jesus’ language at his last table fellowship creates and maintains relational distance on common terms that we have determined. The consequence of referentializing Jesus’ relational language is that our common practices of Communion are for the most part merely ontological simulations worshiping an idealized God, having the appearance of holiness, sacredness, and godliness (commonly defined) without any functional-relational significance to God.

We may unknowingly referentialize Jesus’ relational language, but we are still accountable for how we listen (cf. Lk 8:18). Fragmenting and derelationalizing Jesus’ relational language and commonizing Jesus’ practice create a very imposing relational barrier to relationally connect with Jesus. This is how the “tradition of the elders” came to be reified in Pharisaical Judaism, that is, by referentializing YHWH’s relational terms (his commands), and then building a system of relational stratification and divisions—all the while appearing to serve God in their self-serving simulations of holiness, sacredness, and godliness. We also see these processes in some of Jesus’ would-be disciples in John’s Gospel (Jn 6:22-66), in an interaction demonstrating the counter-relational consequence of referentialization of the Word for a more palatable communion; and I believe exposing this dynamic was the Spirit’s intention for having John include this scene.

John did not include the narrative of the Lord’s Supper where Jesus told 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 unfolded the vulnerable and intimate relational significance of the bread and cup signify for communion with Jesus (inseparably with the Trinity), indisputably defining in only relational terms (not static doctrine) the new covenant that Jesus inaugurated at the Lord’s Supper. We need to listen to Jesus vulnerably with the Spirit, and to open our hearts to receive, carefully consider, and respond to Jesus’ relational language that is meant also for us.

Jesus knew that the crowd was following him on the common basis of what he could do (i.e. miracles, Jn 6:26). They also focused on the common of what they should “do to perform the works of God” for eternal life (6:27-28), thereby exposing their reduced ontology and function and referentializing lens (vv.30-31). Jesus kept speaking in relational language, but they kept responding in referential language. The interaction turned even more blatantly disconnected as Jesus identified himself as the bread from heaven, “the bread of life” (vv.35,41,48-51), the bread being his flesh for them to eat. The crowd grew agitated as they continued to listen referentially only in common terms, not understanding Jesus’ intimate relational language. The last straw for them was Jesus’ statement, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life…they abide in me, and I in them…whoever eats me will live because of me” (vv.54-57). These common disciples found this too difficult to accept (v.60), so many disciples “no longer went about with Jesus” (v.66).

Those followers held onto their common and referentialized interpretations of his perplexing words, but Jesus language is only perplexing when heard through a referential language filter. In relational language, Jesus was making a vulnerable self-disclosure and call to the most intimate relationship together by equating eating his flesh and drinking his blood also with “abide in me and I in you” (v.56, cf. “abide in my love,” 15:9). Whether their mis-understanding was innocently unintentional is highly questionable, but they unquestionably maintained relational distance from Jesus (e.g. vv.41,52,60). Those persons were looking for a more palatable Jesus for palatable “communion” with him, but Jesus could not and did not conform to their common terms, so they left. His whole person in this interaction definitively distinguished between the uncommon (nothing less and no substitutes in the primacy of intimate relationship together) and the common (anything less or any substitutes) that those persons preferred.

When Jesus said “I am the bread of life” (Jn 6:35), he was also fulfilling the relational function of “the bread of the Presence” of the old covenant (Ex 25:30; Lev 24:5-9). “The bread of the Presence” belonged to Aaron and his sons (Israel’s priests) “who are to eat it in a holy place, because it is a most holy part of their regular share of the offering made to the Lord” (Lev 24:9, NIV). Jesus himself became this bread of the vulnerable presence for intimate involvement together for us to ongoingly “share with me” behind the curtain without the veil. So at this point in church history, we still need to come to this understanding:

To avoid Communion in worship is to avoid Jesus’ most intimate presence, and to practice Communion in front of the curtain with the veil is to reject Jesus’ deepest relational involvement—the practice or lack of which renders the Trinity’s uncommon presence and whole involvement without significance for us, and thus without the likeness necessary for us to embody the new creation and to enact the new covenant.

At Communion’s table fellowship, we are invited, called, and indeed expected by our Lord to “eat my flesh and drink my blood,” the relational outcome of which is the intimate Face-to-face family time between the Father and Jesus’ disciples-worshipers behind the curtain without the veil. This is the uncommon/holy relational significance of Jesus’ words at his last supper: “do this in remembrance of me” (Lk 22:19; 1 Cor 11:24-25). We are to come together vulnerably, with nothing less and no substitutes for our whole person abiding (menō, to dwell) in compatible reciprocal relationship in the trinitarian relational context and relational process of family love. This is the only compatible ontology and congruent function that can make relational connection with the uncommon Trinity on the Trinity’s whole relational terms of grace. And this reciprocal response is how we integrally celebrate Communion such that ‘remembrance’ functions in relational terms beyond merely referencing what Jesus did in the past. That is, when Jesus told his disciples to “remember me whole-ly,” he defined for us to love (in the depth of relational involvement) each other just as the Son has loved us (Jn 13:34), just as the Father loved the Son (15:9,12). This whole-ly remembrance may include recalling Jesus’ (and therefore the Trinity’s) relational work through history, but only has significance to God in our relational involvement with him, not as a recital of information.

Jesus had similarly stated about Mary (discussed above) that wherever the gospel is proclaimed, her practice—that is, her reciprocal relational involvement of love just as Jesus had loved her—would be told “in remembrance of her” (Mt 26:13; Mk 14:9), not to make her witness common by focusing on what she did, but in uncommon practice of the trinitarian relational process of family love. On this relational basis, as Jesus made unequivocal, to remember the good news of Jesus’ ongoing family love is to remember Mary’s reciprocal response of love as definitive for all of us to enact the gospel’s only relational outcome: the new creation family in likeness of the Trinity. Therefore, ‘remembrance’ in Communion is only the relational dynamic that composes the present reality of the Trinity’s uncommon relational terms for the Father’s daughters and sons to be intimately involved in the life of the Trinity as new creation family together—which Mary fulfilled at her last table fellowship with Jesus.

In likeness, therefore, our Communion practices need to be re-embedded in this integral understanding of all of Jesus’ relational work, not reduced to only his suffering and death, or a merely symbolic foretaste of an eternal table in the ‘not yet’ as Communion commonly does. Otherwise, Jesus’ words during his final supper will only continue to be both decontextualized and derelationalized from their primacy in our practice ‘here and now’, thus commonized ironically ‘in their way’ as they have been for centuries—though practiced with a very good ontological simulation of sanctifying (making holy, setting apart in service to God) significance.

We have done a great disservice and thus injustice to the Lord’s Supper (even with good intentions) by giving primacy to fragments of Jesus’ whole person—namely, selectively focusing on only some of his sentences and limiting his involvement to his sacrifice on the cross—thereby making Jesus much more common in a palatable Communion. For example, we highlight Jesus’ words of institution from a single table fellowship, disconnecting them from the three years of Jesus’ transforming relational work in the deep involvement of family love at all his table fellowships. We elevate those words with special gestures, as if a few recited sentences from Jesus capture their relational depth. Or we dwell on the suffering of Christ for our sins, as if Christ came only to demonstrate the sacrifice of salvation (as an end in itself).

Whether in liturgical, contemporary, or alternative Communion, all common practices construct what amount to a palatable Communion that is more acceptable to the majority present, for example, without being accountable for more. Yet what our fragmenting has done is create inedible Communion that has lost its essential quality and thereby no longer has functional-relational significance to God or to us as Trinity’s new creation family. Palatable Communion and its consequence of inedible Communion are critical conditions for the body of Christ. The most undeniable symptom of these seemingly overstated charges is the distance in relationships during Communion. Even if relational distance from God is not apparent, existing relational distance from each other demonstrates the lack of love’s relational involvement due to not having been truly loved first, which directly indicates having relational distance with God—as Jesus illuminated at his table fellowships. Relational distance is simply incongruent with Jesus entire relational work enacted in the human context, and also with his ongoing presence and involvement in post-ascension integrally with the Spirit—just as Paul’s theology and practice was transformed (e.g. Gal 5:6; 6:15).

Whole-ly Communion in likeness of Jesus’ table fellowships, therefore, is nonnegotiable and irreducibly needs to become the functional-relational determinant of our worship gatherings—which celebrates but does not stay narrowly focused only on Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross in an incomplete Christology. Accordingly, our understanding of the cross needs to theologically mature (for a new view of the cross in complete Christology^{^[8]}) to include Jesus’ continued relational work to establish the new creation family while engaged on the cross. Specifically focused on the primary, even while suffering on the cross, Jesus established his mother and disciple John together in the primacy of new relationships together as family, which Jesus earlier unmistakably defined as his uncommon family: “Whoever compatibly responds to the will of my Father in heaven are my family” (Mt 12:50, NIV).

In light of Communion’s relational centrality for the functional-relational identity of the new creation family—far more important than mere memorial service—contemporary churches urgently need to give primacy to Communion’s relational significance, that is, if we want our existing condition to be transformed. This may involve bringing Communion into worship on a weekly basis. Yet, this is not to say that celebrating Communion has to take place with certain frequency, or more in traditional liturgical forms. On the contrary, the pivotal issue here is only that the relational significance of Communion can be neither ignored nor reduced to mere memorial or derelationalized ritual. That fact that many non-liturgical churches have Communion only once a month or even less often likely reflects an incomplete Christology that is (ironically) overly christocentric, with the relational consequence of minimalizing the primacy of the new creation family. This is a glaring consequence for the church in the U.S., which promotes the primacy of individualism, the nuclear biological family, and related interests at the expense of the whole gospel enacted by the Trinity’s uncommon intimate presence and whole relational involvement.

For liturgical churches, in which the Eucharist is central and defining for corporate worship, an important challenge is to eliminate relational barriers inherent in the dependence on formal (i.e. forms and templates) traditions. We need to vulnerably examine who is served (God or humans), for example, by the palpable distinctions made between the clergy (titles, robed) and laity, the performance of gestures, and by the structured prayers throughout the service. Certainly the earliest churches did not need or follow such elaborate clothing and templates in their worship. Their focus was the primacy of relationship together (e.g. Acts 2:44-47; 4:32-37), although that focus was always being pulled apart by the common influences from their human contexts—which Paul integrally fought for and against (e.g. Col 2:8-9,16,20-23).

While contemporary churches celebrate Communion too infrequently (once a month or less), liturgical churches celebrate Communion twice a week, which may be too often. The issue here is that both approaches to worship are guilty of making common Jesus’ uncommon communion by narrowed-down palatable Communion practices in front of the curtain, which is not edible for the new creation family. The frequency issue—like all secondary issues for worship—needs to be defined and determined by and thereby contextualized in the trinitarian relational context with the trinitarian relational process of family love. Again, throughout the incarnation, Jesus embodied the trinitarian relational context and enacted the trinitarian relational process of family love into the human context. And as persons like Mary compatibly responded to Jesus in congruent reciprocal relationship together, theirs was the experiential reality of wholeness in the Trinity’s relational context by the dynamic of reciprocating contextualization, which was indispensable for the relational response of worship to be in likeness of the Trinity—distinguished from ‘in their way’.

In conclusion to this chapter, focus further and deeper on the following important insights for whole-ly Communion in uncommon likeness of the Trinity as the new creation family—no longer determined ‘in their way’:

If our theology and practice are the outcome of relational connection and involvement with God’s communicative action in self-disclosure—not merely from an authoritative Word or an inerrant Bible—then we are contextualized beyond human contextualization to the further and deeper contextualization in the now-accessible relational context and process of the whole of God. That is, this distinguished contextualization is the trinitarian relational context and process into which the whole of Jesus—the embodied communicative Word who vulnerably came to us to “take us” experientially to the whole of God—not only intimately contextualizes us but whole-ly constitutes us in relationship together. This relational dynamic involves us in the distinct integrating process of our human context converging with the primacy of God’s relational context and process (as Jesus distinguished for his disciples, Jn 17:13-17), which I define as reciprocating contextualization….

The relational context and process of God are distinguished in the whole life and practice of Jesus; his intrusive relational path established the relational context and process of the triune God in order to know and experience the whole of God in intimate relationship together—distinguished in Jesus’ formative family prayer (Jn 17:20-26). Without this contextualization that Jesus composed in the human context, any other contextualization (e.g. in missiology and theology) would only be reductions epistemologically and ontologically of God’s self-disclosure. The absence of the distinct integrating dynamic of reciprocating contextualization (between God’s and human) results effectively in both disembodying the Word made flesh to referential terms and failing to grasp the whole qualitative-relational significance of the gospel, reflecting incomplete Christology.^{^[9]}

Our participation in reciprocating contextualization is the only way for us to fulfill “You shall be holy because I am holy” (Lev 11:44-45), which Peter finally understood and echoed later in his life (1 Pet 1:15-16). Importantly, reciprocating contextualization ensures the two essential criteria that our worship theology and practice, and notably our celebrations of Communion, have qualitative relational significance to God: (1) that the God we worship is the God self-disclosed, not the God we have idealized and stereotyped; (2) that our practice—notably all of our worship practice—is congruent with God’s uncommon relational terms and not our own common self-determined terms ‘in their way’.

In the current state of the world and the church, there is much personal and relational fragmentation, both subtle and overt. The identity of God’s people in this common context is extremely faint or painfully ambiguous (as Jesus illuminated, Mt 5:13-15), even if quantitatively present in our neighborhoods, politically active, and nationally televised (as the disciples analogously demonstrated, Mt 26:8-9). Who and what are we going to be defined and determined by, beginning with worship? Will we remain the status quo church with common worship practices, defined and determined in common ontology and function ‘in their way’, the church that even many Christians are dissatisfied or disillusioned with—not to mention dismissed by the secular elements in our prevailing sociocultural contexts? Or will we emerge as the uncommon and truly new creation family, in and with whom the whole of God (the Trinity) dwells?

YHWH stated to his worshipers, “let those who boast boast in this, that they relationally know and understand me, that I am YHWH” (Jer 9:24). Will we be those very persons because we are the new creation family in whom the whole and uncommon Trinity is vulnerably present and intimately involved? Will we thereby be the uncommon persons and relationships together—distinguished in our compatible reciprocal relational response of worship—to echo in likeness the whole and uncommon God’s voice?

Nothing less and no substitutes for the Trinity is present and involved in order for us to become, to be, to embody, and to enact nothing less and no substitutes in likeness of the Trinity.

[1] For an in-depth discussion of Jesus’ post-ascension discourse, see T. Dave Matsuo, The Gospel of Transformation: Distinguishing the Discipleship and Ecclesiology Integral to Salvation (Transformation Study, 2015). Online at http://4X12.org., 302-316.

[2] T. Dave Matsuo, The Global Church Engaging the Nature of Sin & the Human Condition: Reflecting, Reinforcing, Sustaining, or Transforming (Global Church Study, 2016). Online at http://4X12.org, 125.

[3] The ‘new relational order’ is discussed in full in T. Dave Matsuo, The Gospel of Transformation.

[4] Other liturgical scholars identify the four elements as bath, word, table, and prayer.

[6] T. Dave Matsuo, The Global Church Engaging the Nature of Sin & the Human Condition, 50-51, 34, 96, 158. And for an in-depth study of the Trinity, see Matsuo, The Face of the Trinity: The Trinitarian Essential for the Whole of God and Life (Trinity Study, coming in 2016). Online at http://4X12.org.

[7] I use the term Communion because it best reflects the trinitarian relational involvement of family love that we are meant to share in together.

[8] For an insightful discussion of this new view of the cross, see T. Dave Matsuo, “Did God Really Say That?” Theology in the Age of Reductionism (Theology Study, 2013). Online at http://4X12.org., 139-50.

[9] T. Dave Matsuo, The Gospel of Transformation, 27-28.