Sacred Selfishness

The calling of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost began to produce what 1 Peter calls a “race, priesthood, nation, and people” (1 Peter 2:9-10), a worldwide multicultural fellowship of witnesses. The people of God, in all their cultural diversity, may be understood as a universal community of communities. The particular church community is, in an essential sense, an expression of the universal church. Thus specialization and segmentation advocated for by denominationalism compromises this universal personality of the church.

In his high priestly prayer, Jesus set out the purpose of the church as the community of communities:

“I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in me through their word; that they may all be one; even as you, father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you sent me. The glory which you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as we are one; I in them and you in me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that you sent me, and loved them, even as you have loved me.” (John 17:20-23)

This prayer is a central New Testament passage defining the purpose and relatedness of the church. It teaches us that the dimensional connectedness of the church is not merely a matter of institutional unity, good public relations, or effective growth strategies. The oneness spoken of here is a matter of obedience to the Lord of the church, obedience that centers on his mission, “so that the world may know that you have sent me.”

The church is not only a community of communities, but it does share in the Trinitarian relationship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.One of the ways the communal and commissioned church of the tri-une God repositions itself as a divinely communal entity is through the Lord’s Supper. This communal nature of the church removes the emphasis from the organization and places it on the collective relationality of its members. The church as an organization must serve the purposes of the tri-une God within the body.

Thus the mission of the church goes beyond self-preservation to becoming an instrument for building community. The church’s goal is not serving the organization’s own ethics and purposes, but leading the organization to fulfill a more universal purpose as a representative servant of God on earth. The church works for the ultimate order of manifesting the glory of God, of becoming a people of God, of serving the purposes of God, and of fulfilling the plan of God.

A community-centered people of God must orient their desires not towards their personal good feelings but towards the broader category of the will of God on earth.