| Capillaries of grace and
truth
v If
every factor contributing to human wholeness was known and could be collated in
an agreed model for interpreting society, assertions of creating global harmony
might be feasible. Yet no such indivisible perspective is possible in the diversity
of cultures, within yet further diverse contexts of particular human association. Human
aspirations in diverse contexts cannot be surveyed in a global perspective. In
pursuing such a perspective, selective choices occur within assumed values, yielding
abstractions divorced from particularity. Ideals abstracted from the indigenous
milieux they purport to represent are further falsified in simplifying them. Ideals
also dictate their proper reception. Yet multiple strands of human perception
mingled with particular compromises resist idealism. Statistics
are summoned as a form of adjudication on contested issues, yet statistics are
frozen in their purview of a receding state detached from a living reality that
is already negotiating the future. Human freedom can initiate unpredictable possibilities
beyond calculation. Human adaptation to change and new needs is more fluid than
any statistical slice of frozen time. The particular belies statistics and the
mystical illusion of surveillance their use invokes. Any
quest for a global purview cannot account for what is unique to human particularity.
Human perception can be myopic, yet canny and inventive before real challenges,
even within familiar forms of dysfunction and compromise peculiar to human identity
in specific times and places. Particular challenges and responses may appear to
be generic, yet experiences of human solidarity within a specific association exceed extrinsic possibilities in relevance.
Human
associations exhibit an approximate adequacy within the health, dysfunction and
self-compromise of particular identity. Every context is a locale of equilibrium,
actual and anticipated, negotiated within relationships of relative trust beyond
contractual state services, whatever degree of material adequacy or promise these
represent. Humans invariably seek to live beyond bread alone. v Human
particularity exists in numerous examples of adaptation toward a sense of equilibrium
within specific human associations. The local congregation is the most applicable
expression of Christian faith within the diverse particularity of human life,
even as it articulates vocative grace and volitional truth that exceed any regional
equilibrium forged from health and compromise. As
a Pentecost phenomenon, Christian testimony to grace and truth is experienced
in a particular not a universal language. The particular is endorsed, as its true
possibility is disclosed through numerous capillaries of personal encounter beyond
the expectations of any human horizon. This is the peculiar ecumenism of Pentecost
inscribed in the local congregation. In
the Pentecost phenomenon, particularity is affirmed in language, while introducing
a new possibility that exceeds the scope of any cultural perspective sustained
in language. What is new for human life in Christian testimony is also the possibility
of human transformation within particular cultural life and expression. The peculiar
testimony of Pentecost to something new under the sun is articulated in the worshipping congregation. Human
equilibrium is sought in either seamless identification with material phenomena,
as in secular materialism and religious monism, or in flight from assorted ambiguities
of life, as in secular idealism and religious dualism. These sources of dysfunction
require vocative grace and volitional truth in excess of any proximate equilibrium
forged within human compromise or sin. Humanity
is compromised by seamless identification with material phenomena that blurs the
personal and therefore the volitional, requiring another impetus toward the uniqueness
of persons in vocative grace. Human responsibility and relationships exceed the
scope of material phenomena. Flight from the goodness of creation is countered
in the truth of volitional engagement affirming humanity within corporeal community.
Human dignity is embodied. Christian
testimony to grace and truth in word and deed are expressed in the particularity
of human life—as at once the integral essence of particular human life, while
also exceeding any specific context. A congregation’s capillaries of gift and
veracity are both the integral possibility of every human context and its critique.
Its testimony to gift and veracity are tangible and eventful, yet these surpass
regional expressions of social equilibrium forged toward health and compromise.
Informed by Christology in its identity and life, a congregation is the most contemporary
expression of Christian faith for and within any human context. A Christian congregation is a phenomenon of apocalypse. Its reality exists in the disclosure of God in love. It has the unique capacity to address people in grace and truth within any microcosm of human life. Christian
grace and truth are conveyed through multiple capillaries, which are personal
and eventful in human transformation. Yet Christian specificity, with its capacity
to address persons within particular communities, quickly evaporates in forums
seeking to establish notional generic ideals instead. Christian
identity is sustained in the brevity and rhythm of congregational memory and anticipation
in Christological focus that clarifies the nature of vocative grace and volitional
truth. v Baptism
symbolises an eventful possibility for human subjectivity beyond allegiances forged
within regional phenomena. In baptism, a person dies to any essential claim on
cultural or tribal particularity to be made alive to grace and truth in Christ.
Human transformation is essential to living beyond competing claims within human
dilemmas and compromises. Baptismal death liberates specific cultural life to
its true possibility as a cradle of human nurture. By
broken bread, the passion of Christ is invoked in a context where suffering humanity
is encountered in particular neighbours within specific loss, injury, anxiety
or crisis. While neighbour is not confined to a neighbourhood, Christian grace
and truth is always eventful for human life as tangible in its expressions of
compassion. Christological
grace and truth affirmed in baptism and breaking bread give a peculiar horizon
that exceeds a global horizon. Grace and truth are eventful in calling any human
context into question, even as particular humanity is given to integrity exceeding
its assumed horizon. Clarified in Christ, eventful grace and truth form unique
subjectivity within a community of forgiveness that exceeds any regional equilibrium
forged for social harmony. Truth disclosed in grace exceeds notional ingredients
informing any social accord. The
Christian congregation is unique in its unbroken continuity over two millennia
as an expression of vocative grace and volitional truth within the particularity
of any human context, while surpassing the resources of any association in its
specific experience of perennial human dilemmas and self-compromise. Human particularity is impervious to global perspective; the Christian congregation affirms this beyond a global perspective. The congregation resists a babelian symbolism of social unity under a name or global charter—ethical, philosophical, social—even if ideologically plausible. As a Pentecost reality, it sustains particular and cultural expression of Christological grace and truth that is applicable to the reality and limits of any human context. |
