On Donald Messer's Conspiracy of Goodness - A class paper

April 15, 2004

A Reading on Donald E. Messer’s A Conspiracy of Goodness: Contemporary Images of Mission

I. Creation-based Mission as an Authentic Mission in the Twenty-First Century: A Summary

The central question in Messer’s A Conspiracy of Goodness: Contemporary Images of Christian Mission is “What is mission in the twenty first century?”(16-18). Even though it is not a newly discovered question, its distinctiveness is determined by Messer’s two intertwined missiological-ecclesiological questions: “How to recover the apostolic ministry of the church” and “how to revitalize local congregations” (159-160). These questions are rooted in four intertwined mission problems, which have emerged in the life of the churches in many parts of the world, especially in the West (i.e. the USA): first, the paradigm shift from mission-oriented to pastoral care-oriented. This shift results in the second problem: the disappearance of missiology in the seminary curriculum that does not only endanger mission intellectuals but more profoundly will, as the third problem, eliminate the missional character of the church; fourth the church self-absorption that implies the understanding of mission as the internal church matters. These problems are rooted in the prejudice of what western Christian missionaries did in the past (17).

Responding to such problematic issues, Messer’s book thus aims at two particularly interconnected efforts: “to reawaken the church and theological seminaries to the pressing missional dimensions of the church and its ministry… [and] to appropriate the missional insights of global Christianity for Christian ministry and to root them in an understanding of the minister as apostle” (ibid). Thus, this book needs to be read in the recognition of the two distinctive contexts that Messer tries to embrace mutually: the western and the non western world. Such a particular-universal, local-global approach seems to characterize his effort to overcome the dichotomy of “mission and ministry,” “evangelical and ecumenical,” “evangelism and social justice concern,” “clergy and lay,” and so forth, that has been denigrating the authenticity and relevancy of Christian mission in the world.

Messer’s identification seems to resonate with David Bosch’s characterization of the mission being in crisis in the West. He, however, clearly states that the changing context of the contemporary world inevitably changes the nature of mission. Therefore, unless the church reclaims its missional character, it will not be able to face the challenge of its contextual reality. Thus, he argues, being church in this contemporary world means being in mission to the world. To reclaim its missional character in the 21^st century, then, the church has to use the language that is translatable in the life of the contemporary world while remaining faithful to the Christian distinctive identity. It is the identity that is shaped by the confession to God in Jesus Christ as the One who owns the mission in the world. “Mission means the Christian church and its ministers, lay and clergy, discerning and responding to God’s loving and liberating initiatives in the world…. God’s mission exists on everyone’s doorstep, not only in distant places”(18). Thus, every Christian is a missionary!

Messer’s four creative and rich images of being missionaries: “global gardeners,” “bridge builders,” “star throwers,” “fence movers” are his way, not only to bridge the dichotomy in the life of the church, but also to offer biblically and historically rooted images that can speak powerfully to the contemporary world. All these images are based on his argument of mission as missio Dei that is captured by the book’s central image of the “world as God’s body” (67-78). Here lies Messer’s profound argument of a creation-based mission that is rooted in the biblical claim of the centrality of the world in God’s mission. By recognizing feminist efforts to re-imagine God and relating to local wisdom of the earth (i.e. Native American) (68-69), Messer argues for the world as sacred ground and sacrament of God’s love. As he states, “[t]he universe becomes sacramental with the presence of an invisible God” (69). Based on a feminist trinitarian approach to mission, i.e. Sallie McFague’s imagery of the world as God’s body (69-73), Messer argues for the determinative influence of one’s understanding of God on ascertaining the nature of the mission and ministry of the church (71). To confess God as the Trinitarian God implies the church response to God’s call to be in relation to the world since the nature of the Trinitarian God is relational. Thus, to be church means to be relational. It is the relationship that the church should create upon “God’s loving and liberating initiatives for the redemption and restoration of creation” (70).

In conclusion, Messer’s creation-based mission is also a life-centered mission which makes this book distinctively different. Moreover, its distinctiveness lies on Messer’s way of reconciling the dichotomy in the life of the church by starting from the very center of the missional role of the church: the local congregations as God’s contemporary apostles. Thus, reading this book means also reading anew our call to involve in the “conspiracy of goodness” as a “conspiracy for life” that is based on God’s love to the world that makes God gives God’s beloved child, Jesus Christ, so the world may have life and have it in its fullness (cf. John 3:16).

II. Mission as the Embodiment of God’s Love for the World: A Reflection

My body is thirsty for this water…

For the water of life…

And the tremble with joy with the multitude of the poor,

With the sun and the entire earth.

“ As the deer longs for running waters…”

The above expression is from Ivone Gebara’s book, Longing for Running Waters: Ecofeminism and Liberation that resonates with Messer’s argument of oikos. Gebara’s vision of a just household where all the habitants of the earth living in harmony, and of sustainable community where the life of the poor, the marginal peoples, and the nature, become the starting point in recreating the life in dignity for all creation resonates with Messer’s discussion of oikos as a “world house” (45). To look at oikos as the context for mission creates an impetus for the radical shift in the church understanding of its role from “master-owner” to be ‘steward-servant” in the household of God (53-55). Here Messer’s creation theology of mission, as Gebara’s feminist vision of a just household of God, intertwines economy and ecumenics as intrinsic parts to the nature of mission in the 21^st century. Such interconnection is also reflected in the way Asian theologians use metaphors of the earth, such as rice, in thinking of God and God’s creation in new ways.

Masao Takenaka, a Japanese theologian who is known for his book God is Rice, explores an Asian metaphor of God as Rice that spells the economic realities in many Asian countries that are intertwined by the issues of peace and justice. Such a connection is found in a Chinese character for the word peace: “wa,” that consists of two meanings: “paddy” and “mouth”. Thus, peace means to distribute paddy/rice or food to the neighbors by which justice will reign. We could not achieve peace unless we share paddy/rice with our neighbors. Unless every mouth in the world filled with enough food, we would not achieve peace on earth.[1]

To say that God is Rice also reminds me of another painful reality in my country. With the depreciation of our currency against US Dollar, as in many places in the world, the theological claim that God is Rice also shows the economic reality differently. Under the economic crisis, for many people in Indonesia and many places in Asia, rice has been but an unaffordable primary need in the lives of many families. For children on the street, the internally displaced people, people in conflict areas, the poor in the urban settings, and many other places, rice has been so expensive. In such an economic difficult situation, rice then has lost its determinative influence to be used by the churches in Indonesia on ascertaining church mission and ministry that flows from God’s liberating love for God’s creation.

Another story of rice is from West Kalimantan, Indonesia. There is a legend of a young woman named Unyang Bulaan from whose dead body emerged the seed of paddy that creates the rich resources for all the members of the community to have enough rice to survive and continue their lives. The story of Unyang Bulaan is, interestingly, used as a cultural basis for the Roman Catholic Church in West Kalimantan, to share the meaning of Eucharist that is understandable in the life of the local people (the Dayaks). Here, by using the story of Unyang Bulaan as a contextual expression of the way Christ gives life to the whole creation, the church Christology becomes ecological; meaning God’s love embodies the nature as well as the marginal people: women and the native communities. Thus, the marginal peoples become the starting point of a Christian theology of mission (cf. 97) that is centered on Christ incarnation in the world as God’s body.

The above stories of rice remind me of the centrality of communion in the life of the Church that resonates with Messer’s argument of the world as sacrament of God’s liberated love. The communion shows the nature of God, the Trinity, as God-in communion.Thus whenever we take part in the communion it means we will always be reminded of our mission imperative to participate in God’s mission in this interdependent world.

The image of communion, I argue, resonates strongly with Messer’s revisioning of the rainbow as the sign of God’s saying “never again” (57-58) to the destruction of the earth. God’s “never again” can be envisioned as a theological source for our understanding of Christ’s saying “do this in remembrance of me.” Thus central to our partaking in the communion is our commitment to say “never again” to the injustice in the world. God is killed in the way we do harm to the earth, the way we treat people as nonpersons, and in the way the global economic injustice has created the gap between the rich and the poor, human beings and the earth (69). The “never again”, thus, stands as an authentic Christian language of love and liberation that reminds us of the One whose resurrection is eternally present. Here, the communion stands as the feast of life for all God’s creation.

Finally, after reflecting this way on Messer’s book, I found myself, however, being in deep

silence while remembering the pain of the WCC member churches which are caused by the failure to have communion together. Moreover, such “impossibility” is being sharpened by the current disagreement of using the word “worship” as a common theological language. We instead replace it with the word “prayer,” so that we can sit together in the same room and listen to the word of God. Here it is clear that the dichotomy is rooted in the very nature of the gap between “what we are saying” to the world and “what we are doing” to the body of Christ. Thus, if for so long we have failed to have communion together, when then can we be “contemporary apostle[s] of Jesus Christ [that] signifies [our lives] in divine conspiracy of goodness?” (144) I wonder! Moreover, how can we say powerfully “never again” to the unjust world every time we listen to the words of Jesus “do this in remembrance of me” if we fail to embrace each other at the very center of our being as Christ’s body? I still wonder!

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[1] My translation of the Indonesian version of the book, Nasi dan Allah: Kebudayaan Asia dan Iman Kristen (Jakarta :PT. BPK Gunung Mulia, 1993). 19.