"Towards A Holistic Understanding of Mission"

"Church: A Community in Mission for Justice, Peace & Integrity of Creation"
(Nov 15-17, 1993, New Delhi)

Key Note address
by Rev Fr Samuel Rayan S J. He teaches in the Vidya Jyoti Theological College of the Society of Jesus, New Delhi, India.

1.Mission:

Mission means sending. John's gospel consistently speaks of Jesus as the Sent One. This man fulfills his mission by speaking the Sender's word, doing the Sender's will, embodying and disclosing in his own person and life the Sender's plans and dreams for his earth and ours. To the Sender, the Sent One bears witness; and in the end he seals his witness with his blood as he was executed by those who could not silence him, by the combined terror of ecclesiastical and state power.

But the Sender reversed the killers' judgment by testifying to the rightness of the victim, by raising him from the dead. So the mission continues.

Jesus' followers have for centuries understood the mission in terms of his parting words found at the close of Matthew's gospel: Go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all the commandments I gave you. (28:19)

The text has served to define mission for many, and to inspire vast and heroic missionary ventures. The mission however became ambiguous and questionable when it got married to throne and sword, to conquest and colonialism, to capitalist exploitation and armament accumulation: to force, that is, of enslavement and death while the Gospel is liberation and life. And the text itself came to be honored little or nothing when emphasis shifted from disciple making to baptizing with water and to proselytizing. The fact is that baptizing and teaching (participles in the text) are essential factors in the process of making disciples. The crucial question then would focus on the shape and meaning and demands of discipleship. What are the practical implications of following Jesus and forming a community which would be his Body that continues his presence and activity in history? And what follows on baptism if that is not a mere water rite but receiving of the baptism which Jesus received (and not gave)? (MK L:11-12; 10:39-45; LK 12:49-50). Jesus' baptism was the costly commitment he made to God's cause on earth which is one with the people's cause. Is it not making that commitment our own that makes us disciples? What then does it mean to be Christian as against being a Christian?

2. Missioned to Love:

At this point a word of Jesus Claims attention. Jesus said:
I give you a new commandment:
Love one another....just as I have loved you.
It is by your love for one another
that everyone will recognize you
as my disciples. (JN 13:34-35)
Love is indicated as the distinctive mark of discipleship, even as its constitutive factor. If that is so, love must be said to define mission and give it substance. The call to love is, in John, Jesus' parting word just as the marching order is in Matthew. Love is Jesus' crowning world, his own commandment, a new commandment: new in that its manner and measure are his love for us and the Father's love for him (and for us). (Jn 13:34-35; 15:9-17). Jesus' own mission to the world is born of and itself bears God's self-giving, all-giving love for the world (Jn 3:16f). Hence that astonishing deeply refreshing grammar of the thought and heart of Jesus and his Gospel:

As the Father sent me, so am I sending you. (Jn 20:21)

As the father has loved me, I have loved you. (Jn 15:9)

As I have loved you, love one another (Jn 15:12)

As I have washed your feet, wash each other's (Jn 13:14)

The action does not short-circuit, complete the circle and return to the source; it keeps flowing on and fanning out all the while.

Love is central. On the two commandments of love for God and love for neighbor "hang the whole law and the prophets too" (Mt 22:40). To love God and neighbor is :far more important than any "burnt offering or sacrifice," was a friendly scribe's comment which met with Jesus' approbation. (MK 12:33-34). On love depends the inheriting of eternal life. (LK 10:25-28). Love and salvation coalesce. Mission then would consist in persuading people to love God and neighbor: persuading by word, and still more by deed and the lure of loveful life.

When we leave the Synoptic and come to John and Paul, the shape of the commandment undergoes change. On the basis of Gods' love for us we love (ICOR 13:1 to 14:1; of Rom 5:5-8). The two loves coincide. Love for God is no longer explicit; it melts into love for neighbor and remains latent in it, transforming it, giving it unspeakable mystical depths. Here is the gist of a meditation of John on this matter:

God is love. Love is from God. Let us love one another. Anyone who does not love the brother, the sister, the neighbors is not from God, is not born of God, (is no brother, no sister, no disciple to Jesus) and knows nothing of God. Love one another is the message of the Gospel from the beginning. And to love others is to pass from death to life, is to be resurrected and saved. Not to love is to be dead; to hate is to be a murderer, and no murderer has life. The proof of God's love is that he gave us his Son, and the Son laid down his life for us. The proof of our love will be in laying down our life for our friends, brothers, sisters and neighbors. (1Jn 3:10-18; 4:7-21)

That is the mission: the commission we, as church, have received. If we have to lay down our life for others, how much more are we not to lay down our wealth and goods and all material resources so that life may flourish and abound for all?

In the gospel of John, all who listen to Jesus and believe in (commit their life to) God have already passed from death to life. To have faith in the God of Jesus is to be resurrected and saved. Mission here would consist in confronting people with Jesus' words, and challenging them to faith in his Sender. In John's epistle it is those who love the brothers/sisters that are thus privileged with a paschal experience. Here mission shapes up promotion of friendship and selfless love among people. For John, faith and love are one. For Paul it is faith realizing itself as love that saves. And for the synoptic Gospels and James faith is the depth-dimension of practical concern and compassion for the needy sister and brother. (Mt. 25:31-46, LK 10:29-37; James 2).

But the love in question is more than words and feelings. It is concrete practice that matters. Love is the good we do for the neighbor just as faith is a particular style of living and relating. Love means to share, to care for one another, for the disinherited, the marginalised and the despised in particular. Love means to die, if need be, for their cause, in defense of their life, their rights and their dignity. John shares with us his understanding of love:

               Our love must be not mere talk,
               but something active and genuine.

For instance

If anyone is well off in worldly possessions
and sees his brother / sister in need
but closes his heart to them
how can the love of God be remaining in him?

More:

This is the proof of love: that he (Jesus) laid down his life for us. We too ought to lay      down our lives for our brothers.

Still more:

and the point is pressed home: Anyone who says 'I love God' and hates his brother is a liar. Whoever does not love the brother whom he can see cannot love God whom he has not seen. (1 Jn 4:20)

The neighbor is the sacrament of God; the Divine expressing itself in visible, tangible bodily form, the image of God. To receive this sacrament is to receive God and be made whole.

Hence Paul's Gospel:

Share with any of God's people who are in need; look for opportunities to be a hospitable; if your enemy is hungry, give him something to eat.
(Rom 12:31-46)

Hence too Matthew's mystical Christology:

I was hungry and you gave me food.... In so far as you did this to one of the least of these brother/sisters of mine, You did it to me. (Mt.25:31-46)

It follows then that the concluding word in the story of the Samaritan is a mission word, as valid and challenging and empowering a commission as is Mt 28:19. "Go and do likewise" is a missioning we cannot afford to overlook any longer. Live in compassionate love, struggling against forces of death and degradation; and make ourselves, as a Church, responsible for the victims of our distorted economic and political systems and warped cultural traditions.

Jesus' ministry, models and articulates the reality of mission, Jesus is all the day long at the service of life and health, of freedom and dignity, of justice, fairness, equality and community. He heals the sick, restores the handicapped to wholeness, feeds the hungry, promotes sharing and compassionate concern and mutual responsibility. He attacks and sweeps aside abstract and frozen socio-religious laws, and tenets and traditions which overlook real life women and men of blood and flesh and their real hunger and tears and wounds. He liberates people from the alienating and the demonic, the demon in his view being any power or force of structure which deprives human beings of selfhood, freedom and uses them as tools. Jesus honors the dishonored, gathers the outcast to the bosom of the Father, and gives voice to human growth and wellbeing, and to ultimate cosmic wholeness. And he places the disinherited human person at the center of religion, displacing Sabbaths and ablutions and authorities and fasts. Mission for Jesus consists in liberating and whole making the totality of life in all its complex relations and unfurling. His view of life and his approach to reality was neither dualistic nor chaotic. His world was centered on the brokenness of the Human, and the Human in process of healing was to center on the Father of all, the God and Father of flowers and birds and children and women and men. For Jesus mission was more than preaching, rituals, powers and numbers. It was life and liberation; it was justice, freedom and fellowship, expressed concretely in solidarity with outcasts and all the wretched of the earth in their struggle for a place under the Sun.

In brief, then, mission consists in loving people in an exceptional and surprising manner and measure: as Jesus loved us, as God loved Jesus, as God loves without discrimination, making his sun shine and his rain fall for all humans good and wicked alike. Mission means as to love the world as to transform it and guide it into a beautiful place where life abounds for all, where everyone's basic needs are met, and more and more of the possibilities and promises enshrined in creation, including the human, could come to fruit and fulfillment.
 

3. Love and Salvation:

A significant use of the noun salvation (SOTERIA) and of the verb "save" (SOSAI) are used in Lk 19:9-10. The reference is to the chief tax collector Zachaeus' conversion from the cult of mammon or wealth accumulation to the cultivation of justice for the victims of his (and the system's) fraud and greed, and to the cultivation of friendship with Jesus. The growth of commitment to justice, and of reduction of economic gap between the man and people, and of friendship with Jesus went hand in hand with each other inseparably, each giving birth to the rest and coming to birth from them.

We have seen how faith transports the believer from death to life, and how love for the neighbor does the same. Saving faith is faith that works and realizes itself in love and service. The Bible, and the New Testament, in particular, is emphatic about the primacy of faithful love. (1 Cor. 13: 14:1 Mt 25:31-46: Mt 22: Mk 12:). The reason is obvious: it is love that humanizes and whole makes: it is love that saves. Because love is central, freedom is central too, for freedom in the ultimate analysis, is the ability to love, to center myself on another, to give myself away in order to make the other/others great.

Salvation is wholeness. (Note how "salvation" is etimologically related to all or whole, and how "wholeness" is related to healing). Salvation is the completion of ourselves, the full realization of our selfhood and personhood; of this body with its conscious free center; of this thinking spirit with its concrete material self-expression and historical presence. As persons we are not closed monads; we are open to one another, and social. We grow and unfold only through interaction and exchange, through facing and naming each other, and through sacrificial giving and loving. That means there is no purely private, individualist wholeness or salvation. Salvation is always personal and interpersonal; it is communitarian. It is human kind God loves and calls and saves, and each person in community. When we approach God, he always asks, where is your brother, where is your sister, and how are they? When we approach him alone he says, put your gifts down, go find your sister and brother, make up with them, come with them if you really would have me.

But the human community comprises not only women and men, but the earth as well, and the universe, which is our home, of which we are part, on which we depend physically and spiritually, and with which life is bound up in so many ways. We know in faith that we are born of the same Womb of Love and are moulded by the same Artist's hand as is the universe, as is this dear little earth. We know that all things in heaven and on earth were made through, in and for Jesus Christ; they have his name engraved on the sinews of their heart as we have it on ours. We know that "the whole creation, now groaning in labour pains" together with us will be freed from frustration and slavery to corruption, and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God! And we know that the whole of creation including us will be gathered and brought to a head in Christ Jesus to be his Body for ever. (Rom 8:18-25, Eph 1:10). Salvation then means newness of hearts and relationships, of dealings and transaction, of patterns in the distribution of wealth and power, it means a new humanity and a new earth. Salvation means new creation. For anyone who is in Christ there is a new creation. (2Cor 5:17-19), and that is what matters. (Gal 6:15; of Rev 21:1-7).

This newness salvation is now in process in every act and life and relationship of faith and love and compassion, mercy and justice; in all resistance to oppression, in all struggle against forces of death and degradation, and all striving after freedom, dignity, equality and peace. The process will be led to completion when all women and men will have learned to love and live in freedom without succumbing to the multiple pulls of interia. The Spirit is there liberating, enabling and guiding the process.

We may then emphatically reject the charge, made by Limn White in 1967 and often repeated ever since, that the Christian faith with its anthropocentrism and the Bible with its call to the human to subdue the earth are responsible for the ecological crisis into which we have run, for the pollution of the environment, the destruction of nature and total threat to life on this planet. The facts are:

 

a) Greed and class war and power/status struggles have always been as destructive of nature as of people;

b) Spiritualities and faiths, not excluding the  biblical and the Christian, have helped mitigate vandalizing nature by condemning greed and violence and advocating sobriety, moderation, detachment and renunciation.

c) The Bible is respectful of nature, and shows God as making the earth his "consort", enabling it to bring forth living things, plant and cattle and bird and fish (Gn 1); it shows God as covenanting with nature as he does with human beings (G.9); it shows God as rejoicing over nature and taking pride in the wonder that it is (Ps 65: Job38ff).

d) Jesus discovers in bird and flower, in nature as a whole, the concerned action and caring presence of the Father; he picks up items of nature as symbols and parables of himself and of the Kingdom  " of God: Jesus is the Light, the Vine, the Way, the Grain' of wheat that must fall and died to rise again; the Kingdom is like a mustard seed, and a treasure in the field, and rare pearl; and Jesus' followers are to be salt and light and fragrance. (Mt 5; 13; 2C2:14)

e) In the context of the Bible, "subdue the earth" cannot be understood as license to dominate. For in the Genesis narrative there is no suggestion of an insubordinate, recalcitrant earth. Quite the contrary: the earth is something God admires and loves and associates with his creative activity in which she collaborates beautifully. The writer shares in God's fondness for the earth, which is reflected in naming the earth so often in the course of his history.

f) Nor may "mastery over creation" be interpreted in terms of domination and abuse. God is master and king of the universe not in that he plunders and pollutes it, but in that he loves it into existence, and sustains each part in its specific activity, identity and beauty. Mastery by human beings, as images of God, can only mean that they should represent God's providence and be responsible for the earth's meaningful existence as a revelation and a web of life.

g) The Bible, both the old testament and the new, views creation as God's self disclosure and self-witnessing. (Ps 19; Rom 1:19; Acts 14:17). Nature therefore plays an important role in God's work of saving the world.

h) Through these and other factors a sacramental view of the world has shaped up to enrich Christian life and tradition, and it has found expression in a profusion of artistic and liturgical forms, Christian faith and experience have become incarnate in line and colour, wood and stone, music and stained glass, poetry and drama.

i) For the rest, Christian attitude to nature for the major part of Christian history must be described as non-intervention and contemplation full of reverence and joy. Remember Augustine of Hippo, 5th century, Hildegard of Bingen, 11-12th century, Francis of Assisi, 13th century, Robert Bellarminem, 16th century to mention only a few representatives names who have left us a rich and beautiful heritage of eco-spirituality.

j) The approach to nature changed with the renaissance in the 16th century of Greco-Roman individualism and privatism, with the decline of community sense and of the challenge of sacra mentality; with the emergence of colonialism and canonization of greed since the 16th century; with the development of rationalism and of the hubris of Baconian science in the 18th century; and with culmination of all this in the triumph of capitalism, that organization of greed into armed principalities and powers, that system of insatiable appetite, which to survive must eat more and more each day of the earth and its people.

Neither justice nor peace can be attained, nor the integrity of creation, nor the cultures of the world, nor the life of children nor the dignity of women can be safe-guarded till this system of death and splurge is laid in the grave. It is to be expected that beneficiaries of the system will seek alibis and lay the blame for the earth's woes at the door of spiritualities which rebuke greed and side with its victims.

4. The Project Human

We have seen that wholeness is now in process. That means the human and the earth are a project, to be implemented and completed jointly by God and us. Possibilities enshrined in the human, and (perhaps) in all creation, are limitless. This is so because creation is God-oriented, and God is always greater. We can therefore always become finer, do better, and relate deeper. There is a process of growing and unfolding, maturing and blossoming, not of course without occasional side-tracking and frustration. In several CNI documents, the process is called development which term is carefully explained to obviate any overwhelmingly economistic misunderstanding of it. I would like to cite here a fine expose from an introduction to this Consultation, signed by the most Reverend Moderator of the CNI:

"The process of development is the process of enabling people to discover their potential and to be able to interact creatively with this potential. The freedom from deprivation thus also envisages a freedom to creativity. Creativity is the basic manner in which humans experience their "humanness". Thus the process of development, in the ultimate analysis, is the process of humanization. Everything else is subservient to this. The crippling reality of hunger, want and need must be recognized, but the process of development is not economic or technical alone. The debilitating effects of fear, superstitions...must be exposed, but the process of development is not social alone. The enslaving ends of status quo ideologies, past dominations... must be opposed, but development is not political alone... the... word...denotes the release from all that "envelops", restricts, discriminates and constricts. The key word here is "release".

Note the affirmation that the process of development, in the ultimate analysis, is "the process of humanization". We have drawn the conclusion that humanization is self-realization in love which crosses barriers, rejects the demonic and the oppressive; promotes life, freedom and creativity. Seen in the context of love's processes set free by God, we can recognize the Gospel dimensions of development and the place it holds in the mission of the church. Development as described above is a fundamental human project, and therefore a basic Gospel project a joint project, as we have already said, of God and people.

I would speak however of humanization rather than of development for the concept of development as used by governments and the media has many dehumanizing aspects:

a) It has associations with colonialism and the "white man's burden" to civilize the world;

b) It borrows from colonialism, and later from evolutionism, a hierarchical ordering of all beings;

c) It has links with neo-colonialism and with the right "developed" countries claim to dictate to the rest of the world the ways and the pace of what they call "development!"

d) It has affinities with the arrogance of modern science which promises absolute human mastery over nature as well as absolute human omniscience.

e) Historically development (economic industrial) has shown itself to be incompatible with social justice, human rights and the survival of indigenous cultures.

f) It imposes and justifies unequal costs and sacrifices on the poorer and oppressed sectors of oppressed and impoverished countries.

g) It has everywhere exhibited an inbuilt tendency to legitimize police states, national security ideologies and weapons of accumulation.

h) It ignores, marginalises and eventually destroys cultural traditions which, though imperfect, stand close to the ways of real life people and represent distinctive manifestations of human potentialities.

i) It is destructive of ecology.

j) It advocates aggressive competitiveness, hard individualism and unrestrained need  for achievement, undermining the greatest of human inventions which is tenderness and blasting the historical path of human growth which is cooperation. (cf Eric Fromm).

k) It makes tall claims to be the only way of changing society while its greatest achievement has been the resuscitation of old imperialisms and their enhancement by the new international imperialism of money.

For these and similar historical reasons it is advisable to be aware of the concept and the term "development". (cf A Nandy, "Culture, Voice and Development". (MSS); U.Duchrow, Global Economy 1986; A.G.Frank, Crisis in World Economy1980)."
 

5. Mission and the Kingdom of God:

The reference to "development" and its association with colonialism and neocolonialism brings up the question of accumulation of world wealth in the hands of small elite groups in every nation, the consequent concentration of power, and resultant situation of domination and dependence. In this situation the bible speaks of Mammon as the adversary of God and the enemy of God's human family. Mammon is wealth accumulated as the basis of power and the source of unlimited pleasure. Mammon is the God of wealth. Mammon is greed or avarice which in Paul's view is nothing short of idolatry (Col 3:5; Eph 5:5).

Matthew 6: 24-33 speaks of what happens when, where, Mammon rules. Under Mammon's dominion, people suffer from deprivation, and endlessly worry about food and clothing and shelter for the day and for the morrow. Jesus saw how under the deeply exploitative Roman colonial � military rule and the temple system his people lived harassed and worried, neglected like sheep without a shepherd, like an ungathered and wasted harvest. (Mt. 9:35-37). But worry does not solve problems created by Mammon; it only aggravates the situation of misery. The solution Jesus proposes is the Rule of God and the Justice of God. Seek them first and above all else, and everything will fall in place: needs will be met and creative possibilities served, and worry will cease and will be replaced by celebration of life in a community of brother / sisterly sharing and concern. God's rule is God's justice. God himself is the ineluctable Imperative of interpersonal justice. What is the shape and hue of the Justice of God? Find it by looking not at our forensic institutions, but at the bird and flower, God provides the bird and the flower with everything they need to be bird and flower, flying and soaring, wafting beauty and fragrance, with a heart of song and a heart of honey; God provides all they need in order to grow, to act at their level, and to come to completion. God does that to everyone of his creatures. What the baby needs is a mother, and that is what God provides; she is his providence or justice to the baby. What the sinner needs to be human again is forgiveness, and forgiveness is what God offers him in abundance in the heart and hands of Jesus of Nazareth.

It is this justice we are to seek, and let rule over our life. The call is to remould the social order and reorganize economics and power in such a way that everyone is assured of what he/she needs in order to be authentically herself/himself, to be human and gentle, to grow and unfold, to be active and creative and become complete, perfected in love and in beautiful relations within the cosmic community.

This call to seek God's Rule and God's Justice is a missioning word, as deep and challenging as the word that concludes the Samaritan story and the one that crowns the gospel of Matthew. This concrete description of mission includes concern for food and drink and clothing and shelter, as well as concern about the worry and the suffering their absence causes. Mission here centers on life at all its levels, physical, mental, social, spiritual, and in all its varied manifestations. Mission works towards a different, just, humane social order here on this earth in the presence and company of the God of Jesus Christ, instead of pointing exclusively to some other world in the clouds and counseling resignation. Mission enjoins socially and personally transformative action.

The Kingdom we are to seek is the Central Symbol of Jesus' Ministry. It is code-word for all God's gifts and dealings with creation. Its reality is embodied and expressed in all of Jesus' feeding, healing and forgiving services. It is a comprehensive symbol for the entirety of God's saving activity starting with creation. It focuses concerned attention on the dispossessed and the victims of our unjust and cruel systems. The Kingdom bestows itself on the poor in the first place. The good news of the Kingdom is entrusted to the poor and the simple. The rich may find the news sad, and find it difficult to enter the kingdom as camel finds it difficult to pass through the eye of a needle. Amassing of wealth and continuing to hold it in the midst of poverty, instead of becoming a brother among brother, camelises people, dehumanizing them.

The mission is to enable the victims of the system to see reality critically, to dissent and reject it, to seek for alternative social structures, to work, to shatter and eliminate the old oppressive systems, and give shape to new structures of life, freedom and participation.
 

6. To sum up:

What has been said may be gathered into three telling symbols which are basic to Christian faith and life.

The first symbol is the Our Father, a prayer which is also an action programme which wants things to happen on this earth of ours, and to this our earth. The earth is central, and is the focus of attention and action. The name of God, the naming of God, faith in the Divine should be seen and experienced on this earth as holy, as whole making, hope-giving and deeply meaningful, and not as a cover for exploitation, a distraction from vital issues, an opium for the
oppressed masses of the people. God's rule of justice should come to this earth and shape all our relations to the earth and to one another, and become a socially experienced and recognized reality. Thus only can God's name be known and held as holy and meaning-giving. God's will should be done on this earth, here and now, in all our economic and political dealings and cultural creations. And God's will is that this earth should be preserved in its beauty and wondrous fecundity, it should be held in honor and allowed to serve life in freedom and joy. His will is that every child should be loved and fed and educated and enabled to be free and to find a place in the sun with all other children. His will is that enough rice and bread should be assured to everyone each day, an equitable share in the material resources that support life on earth make creative existence possible for all. Jesus is aware at this point that work for a fraternal social order for all and for an economics of equality and politics of tenderness will, in the present situation of domination and dependence, involve us in conflicts. But conflictual action for social transformation must be redeemed and humanized through abundant forgiveness, and cancellation of "debts". We are to beware of vindictiveness and greed while working with God to transform the earth into the family of God who is the Father of us all, the Father and Mother of the Universe.

The second symbol is the Lord's Supper which we celebrate. We take food and drink, fruit of the earth and of human labour, representing nature and culture. We place them before God as symbols of ourselves, of the community which is the Body of Christ, and of the cosmos which is the ultimate body of Christ. It is an act of cosmic communion, communion with one another and with God, a communion in which there is no high and low. God's family gathered around the Father's table. A circle of Christ's friends come together in order to become with him
Bread broken, Rice shared, for the life of the world; and to become together with Jesus a Cup of life poured out in service to liberate the earth from selfishness and greed. At the Lord's Supper we are equals, sisters and brothers. No body is excluded from sharing in the Food and Drink. The Eucharist is an exercise and an education in egalitarian, brotherly / sisterly existence on this earth. The symbolic sharing is an imperative and a promise to be obeyed and fulfilled in real life, in the sphere of social relations, economic dealings and political life. That is, if we want to live the meaning of the Supper and not treat it as an empty rite and a trivial gesture.

The third symbol is the Christian faith in God as Trinity. The confession means that Ultimate Reality is a community of persons in which all power and activity and dignity are shared. Its implications are that if we want life on earth to be deeply human and authentic, it must be rooted in and modeled on the Source reality, the Ground Reality, which is Communitarian. Christian insight into God as Trinity and Community has its origins in the testimony of Jesus as well as in early Christian experience of community life: they were one heart and mind, united in the faith inherited from the apostles, united in prayer to the Father, united in the breaking of bread and sharing of food, united in pooling material resources to make sure that nobody among them was left in the lurch in need or want. The experience of community life nourished their insight into God as Trinity, and that insight clarified and fostered community existence for over two centuries till the beautiful experience was subverted by the privates of Roman culture, and Faith in the Trinity declined to the status of a mathematical enigma with little or no practical spiritual power.

When the early church linked discipleship with baptism or immersion into the Name or Reality of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, they meant that to be Christian is to be community of bread sharing, and earthshaking community, the Body of Christ.