Church should be the location where our gifts are used and honored the most. Church should encourage the value of Who we are (Whose we are) and propel us towards our calling. Concordantly, church should enable us to lay down our own self-centered concerns. If God is looking after our interests and we live among a community that also looks out for our desires than we are free to let go of our rights and focus on building up the other. I can spend time and resources to help others achieve a strong sense of identity knowing that they are partnering with God to do the same for me. It is such a rewarding experience to relinquish the desires of the self in trust that they will be met outside of my preoccupation with them. Thus we see that the essence of the Sermon on the Mount is accomplished in community for the sake of freedom.
Christ’ s call to reconciliation propels us to this very place of surrender for the sake of the other. Jesus did the same for us, and the movement of the Holy Spirit is always moving those who are raised in him to cross the boundaries of autonomous self into the territory of the other. Take this simple observation under consideration: we cannot deliver the message of the good news unto ourselves nor can we understand the depth of it’s meaning until we have brought it to another. It is in the other that we see the face of Jesus. It is after the breaking of bread that he becomes present in our midst.
It is in seeking Jesus [to truly see him, to encounter him] that we leave the self behind, not unattended but in better hands. We leave the self in the hands of God and in the hands of the other. Once we achieve this vulnerable state of selflessness community naturally forms around us the way that water rushes to the lowest point. We see in the absence of self that the glory of God is revealed. Where the self is not occupied with its own being we see true love and overflowing love has two things: one, that it is inexhaustible, and two, that it is irresistible.
Through the process of emptying our selves the Holy Spirit comes to fill us more and more. We distinguish this spirit from all others in two ways, both of which keep us from dissolving the self completely into an amorphous mass of individuals without distinction. First, if the spirit testifies Jesus coming in the flesh than we know there is redemption the adoption of our bodies. Resurrection validates the individual as important to God and shows his concern to redeem the old creation as apart of making the new one. Second, we identify the spirit by more than one name, but one of the most important is “Advocate.” To advocate for the other is to see the value in their individuality. The Advocate enables us to see the beauty that God has specifically revealed in each person. Even the most unpresentable parts will be honored in the body of Christ. In submission to the Advocate it will be impossible for the strong to simply absorb the weak. Even these very distinctions are no longer rational where the fullness of the kingdom is present.
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