Embodying God

Giving ourselves to the epic quest of embodying God in our leprous bodies is how we exhaust evil.

My approaching consecration as an Abbot Bishop on Saturday, January 9, 2016 has got me pondering. What is the Lord calling me to do in this next season of life, here on planet earth?

So, in the safety of the Secret Counsel of many, I would like to share with you a pilgrim’s roadmap that I find myself compelled to follow. This roadmap, however, isn't just for my journey alone. I hope and expect, since you’re reading this, that your pilgrimage and mine will continue to overlap in increasingly exciting ways. After all, ultimately, none of us travels alone, although it may feel that way at times because we often get separated from one another on the road.

All of us have a glorious individual destiny and also a collectiveshared one, culminating in an outrageous wee little thing called embodying God. We’re each divinely crafted by God in the image of God as icons of God. But a dragon darkness has crept into the world, obscuring this glorious truth, trying to keep Mankind pinned down in the dust. Thus, the journey, the struggle, and the hope.

As I wrote about in Epic Living, evil’s best attempts to disfigure us shall not ultimately succeed in depriving us of the victory and joy of embodying God.

Lepers Embodying God

Disfigured by the darkness that has crept into the world, I’ve become a leper in need of healing. Truth be told, we're all lepers, and the Church is a colony of lepers in need of healing.

As Saint Gregory says,

There lies before our eyes a dreadful and pathetic sight…human beings alive yet dead, disfigured in almost every part of their bodies, barely recognizable for who they once were or where they came from…even the most kind and considerate person shows no feeling for them…we actually believe that avoiding these people assures the safety of our own bodies.

Saint Gregory pretty well sums up my experience over the years of living with myself and others, and especially others in the Church. Though we are a disfigured lot, we remain icons of God. How can this be? The light of Christus Victor’s Incarnation overcomes the darkness. Thus your destiny and mine, the destiny of every person, and also that of the Church, is not to waste away to nothing, but to be restored to embody God in our flesh.

"Outrageous Grace" by Robin Mark. Written by Godfrey Birtill.

Lepers embodying God? Outrageous? Totally, which makes this the great story of the ages, a pilgrim’s story fueled by the Father’s passion for the restoration of all things, a hero’s journey fraught with challenge and peril. There will be adventures, dangerous ones, and in the midst of them, great joy.

Care For the Body

Saint Gregory goes on to make a wonderful observation about his own body.

How I came to be joined to it, I do not know; nor how I am the image of God and concocted of clay at the same time; this body…that I both cherish as a fellow-servant and evade as my enemy…If I struggle to suppress it, I lose the helper I need to achieve my noble aims, knowing that it is through my actions that I am to ascend to God.

Saint Gregory concludes,

We must, my brothers [and sisters]… care for the body as being our kinsman and fellow-servant.

As the Scripture says, true, authentic faith deals with “the things needed for the body” (James 2:16). As portrayed in the Icon of the Resurrection, the body must be raised out of Hades. So, how do I see myself called in this next season to care for my body, the bodies of others, and the Body of Christ? In five ways.

Planting “Local Churches” Fifth

The last thing, that is, the fifth thing I intend to set my hand to do with Basileia is plant what some people call “local churches.” Four other priorities come first. However, together all five of these priorities form a whole greater than the sum of the parts––a covenantal whole that unites individuals in the Capital C Church to embody God on earth.

These five priorities are:

1. Start Abbeys
2. Commission Eucharistic Servers
3. Release Initiatives
4. Multiply Chapters
5. Form Fellowships

After I first share the story of how I discovered these five priorities––which I think of as five milestones of the journey––I’ll then define what each one means.

Celtic Colonies of Heaven

Fifteen years ago I learned that the ancient Celtic Church didn’t plant “local churches,” but colonies of heaven. From the fifth through the eighth centuries, the Celts formed over 1,000 of these heavenizing-earth outposts. The first ones appeared in Ireland, followed by others to the east at Iona and Lindisfarne, and then hundreds more sprung up across northern Europe. As Thomas Cahill puts it, following the collapse of the Roman Empire, these colonies “saved civilization.”

We’ve come full circle. The Winter season has come again. Many modern empires are in a state of collapse, affording us the opportunity to let go of the old and embrace the new. Thus, to greet the coming Spring with wisdom, power, and strength in our bones, now is the time to embrace a twenty-first-century approach to forming colonies of heaven.  

We can learn a lot from the ancient Celtic Christian settlements that rose as Rome fell. These colonies functioned as the heart of the Kingdom on earth. Embodying God was their overall, unifying vision. Each community was typically laid out in a circle, large enough to encompass hundreds, even thousands of people and animals. In the middle was an Abbey. Around the perimeter of the community was a three foot high circular stone wall, marking where the Fallen World System ended, and where the Kingdom of God began. To enter the community was to cross over into another world. Imagine oak trees planted just inside the wall, creating a ring of trees around the entire community. Under these oaks various guilds or vocational groups gathered––artisans, educators, blacksmiths, farmers, and others. Each practiced a very earthy sort of praying throughout the day. The blacksmiths had special prayers for lighting fires, just as the farmers had their prayers for milking cows. Such Celtic Daily Prayer was at the heart of a lifestyle of embodying God in every moment, in every task, in every breath, in every person. Between the Abbey and the oak trees were clearings for guest houses and other meeting places for fellowship and sharing life.

In The Fellowship of the Ring, Tolkien fancifully captures the dynamic of these Celtic colonies in epic descriptions of Lothlórien, “the heart of elvendom on earth.” As Frodo experienced it, upon arriving in Lothlórien,

“It seemed to him that he had stepped over a bridge of time into a corner of the Elder Days, and was now walking in a world that was no more. In Rivendell there was memory of ancient things; in Lórien the ancient things still lived on in the waking world.”

The vision of thin place communities, where the veil between heaven and earth is wispy thin, has captured my imagination.

Embodying God in the Abbey, Under the Oak Tree, and Everywhere In-Between

I and my fellow Basileians have conducted fifteen years of research and development on this Celtic-inspired way of doing Church. We’ve built prototypes, not out of a nostalgic yearning to recreate a Celtic past, but with future-ancient eyes fixed on the Kingdom’s future. Now it’s time to multiply communities of the Church that operate as thin place colonies, embassies, outposts of heaven on earth, dedicated to embodying God in all areas of thought and life. I see this unfolding in five stages:

1. Start Abbeys

In our twenty-first-century, basileian way of doing things, an Abbey is an apostolic team called to build a Community. For example, I presently serve as the Presiding Abbot of the Abbey of St. John, based in Colorado Springs. Our Abbey is an apostolic team engaged in building the Community of St. John, a colony of heaven on earth. Here in the twenty-first century, our members also include those spread out across the globe, whom we connect with virtually.

Our Abbeys are like mustard seeds that give rise to mustard trees, i.e., to entire communities. Therefore, the highest priority of an apostolic team is to assemble in Sunday Eucharistic worship shaped by the rhythm of the Church Year where we are healed of our leprosy and restored as icons of God. Facing and owning the poverty of our fallen human condition is the first and necessary step in our journey of deification––of our participation in the life of the Trinity, which makes us partakers of the divine nature.

Once we plug into God via the Divine Liturgy, then we extend His divine life outward, first by commissioning Eucharistic Servers.

2. Commission Eucharistic Servers

In The Empire of God, I tell the story of how worshipers in the early centuries brought small loaves of bread with them to Eucharistic worship services. While one main loaf was broken and eaten during the service, these small loaves were not, even though the Bishop consecrated these loaves during the service. Instead, each worshiper took his or her little loaf with them to share with others throughout the week who were not at the service. This extended approach to celebrating the Eucharist served as a powerful, practical, and tangible way of giving expression to the organic unity of the Body of Christ in every corner of daily life.

Sharing consecrated bread with people not at a liturgical Eucharistic service is not a substitute for assembling as the Church, but rather another way of assembling as the Church. Extending communion to those who for whatever reason can’t or won’t yet come to an Abbey service is a way to bodily and tangibly demonstrate that the Church is bigger than any one particular expression. Commissioning Eucharistic Servers is a kind of inverse Trojan Horse strategy.

Thus, it is my joyful ambition to see our Abbey train and commission dozens, even hundreds, of Eucharistic Servers. We will multiply Servers to share consecrated bread back in their homes, businesses, apartment complexes, under bridges with the homeless, in prisons, and even in space. Yes, in space, just like what Buzz Aldrin did on July 20, 1969. Immediately after landing on the moon, Aldrin celebrated communion with bread and wine that his pastor gave him back on earth. Now, that’s what I’m talking about!

A network of people sharing communion together throughout the community, not only on Sundays in the Abbey but also Monday through Saturday beyond the Abbey, better positions us to release Initiatives.

3. Release Initiatives

Initiatives take place “under the oak tree,” at the edges of the community. In 2014, Sheila and I started an Initiative called CenterPoint, which functions as a basileian cottage industry in the area of business, wealth creation, and personal finance. Basileian educators have started Montessori schools, and also a worldview Institute named Nehemiah. Presbyter Tim Abel in Wales has founded Transformations, a life coaching Initiative ripe for multiplication around the world. Presbyter John Hunt and I have launched Kingdom Superheroes, “a global community of chivalric adventurers engaged in an epic lifestyle of heroically advancing the Kingdom of Christ.”

Initiatives mainly provide kingdom hospitality and services to “guests,” i.e., people who are not necessarily believers or even members of the community. We see such guests as icons of God, lepers like ourselves destined for transformation by the Grace of God.

Hosting Initiatives is hard because we must confront and overcome the temptation to stigmatize others just because they have leprosy (as if we don’t). We must resist the temptation of “avoiding these people,” as Saint Gregory says, to assure “the safety of our own bodies.” We cannot allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by fear of being overcome by the leprous conditions of others and then use that fear as an excuse to avoid facing our own leprous condition. The autonomous traditions of men justify all forms of stigmatization––racism, sexism, denominationalism––by concluding that “lepers” deserve their fate, being cursed by God. Our unfounded but real fears of being abandoned by God fuels these views––views from the pit. 

Eucharistic worship is the fundamental way we embrace the path of kenosis and deal with our fear of being abandoned by God. Thus, we root and anchor all of our Initiatives deep in the life of the Church through what we call Chapters of Vocational Societies.

4. Multiply Chapters

Regardless of the terminology used, every civilization naturally forms “chapters” or “associations” for every conceivable vocational area of thought and life. Modern societies, for example, have associations for educators, scientists, realtors, travel, chicken farmers, skydivers, chess players, dogs owners, cat owners, fashion, and so on. A comprehensive list would contain thousands of different types of associations.

CenterPoint, for example, is an Initiative of the Abbey of St. John Entrepreneurs, a Chapter that is both membered to our Society of Entrepreneurs and our Abbey. What we call “Chapters” are how we use associations for building colonies of heaven.

Our Basileian Chapters are vocational expressions of kingdom civilization, rooted in the Church. Chapters enable us to identify, train and commission people via the laying on of hands as ministers in their particular vocational areas of life. The very word “vocation” means a “calling” from God. Being ordained as an officer in the Church is but one diaconal path of service in the Kingdom among many. Each path is of equal value though different in function. Our Chapters affirm the nobility and unique genius of all vocational areas and make it public, giving us yet another way of embodying God.

Chapters form somewhere between the Abbey and the Oak Tree, which is also the case with Fellowships.

5. Form Fellowships

A “Fellowship” is simply the term we use for what some call a “local church,” or what classical churches call a “parish.”

Forming Fellowships is the fifth milestone on the journey. I place this milestone fifth because many today lug around heavy baggage in their perceptions of and experiences with the “local church.” By first 1) starting Abbeys, 2) commissioning Eucharistic Servers, 3) releasing Initiatives, and 4) multiplying Chapters, much of this baggage can be cut away. Fellowships that emerge organically out of a community dedicated to these first four milestones enables both unbelievers and believers to freshly discover the Church as an Ecclesial City.

Putting Fellowships fifth paves the way for unbelievers to discover the Church as a “belong to believe” community versus a “believe to belong” institution captive to the traditions of men. And putting Fellowships fifth gives believers an opportunity to detox from bad past “church” experiences so that they might then rediscover the Church in a fresh, organic, and relational way.

Who can say what form Fellowships may take as we move further into the twenty-first century. Whatever their form, they are yet another vital way of embodying God in a colony of heaven, which for Fellowships means embodying God somewhere in-between the Abbey and the Oak Tree.

Conclusion

Saint John Chrysostom says that we may see,

Christ’s Body…lying everywhere, in the alleys and in the market places, and you may sacrifice upon it [as you would an altar] anytime…When then you see a poor believer, believe that you are beholding an altar. When you see this one as a beggar, do not only refrain from insulting him, but actually give him honor, and if you witness someone else insulting him, stop him; prevent it.

Humanity is an altar made holy by the Incarnation. Evil doesn’t ultimately shape our destiny; the goodness of God does. Thus, giving ourselves to the epic quest of embodying God in our leprous bodies is how we exhaust evil. Even as our bodies are being healed, forming colonies of heaven is the surest way to cut the legs out from under all the sophisticated relational and institutional nonsense of the traditions of men. Forgetting that we’re all lepers only encourages the traditions “of this world”––versus those “from above”––to shun others as lepers, which tragically spiritualizes and sentimentalizes the Faith into irrelevancy.

Let’s get relevant.

Embodying God on earth as lepers who are on the mend doesn’t deny heaven, but embraces and honors heaven as the pattern for earth. Our missional objective is to heavenize earth by replacing the Fallen World System with the Kingdom of God. Thus embracing lepers everywhere is an inevitable, good and necessary thing, beginning with the one who stares back at us in the mirror. Every person remains an icon of God no matter how deeply the power of evil twists them. Therefore, no person is ultimately able to resist their own untwisting, for by Grace we are restored to our common call and destiny of embodying God, even if we kick against the goads. Embodying God is an inevitability planted deep in our bones. Such a view of things compels me all the more to follow the pilgrim’s roadmap given to me with abandon––this map with its five milestones.

We fight from victory, not for it.

I look forward to making this journey with you in all the wild ways that are no doubt in store for us just ahead as well as over the not so distant horizon.

Boyd+
Fifteenth Week after Pentecost, 2015


Boyd writes a new Secret Counsel blog every couple weeks. Click here to see the whole collection.