Let’s look to God in prayer: God, give us faith to
receive your word, understanding to know what it means, and the will to put it
into practice; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Church
and its Mission is the center of
Christian identity and it should reflect according to the context. But Church
and its Mission has often failed to
reflect in the emerging contexts. So, people started to feel that Christianity has
became a confusing Churchianity. The first
century Christians were radical in freedom, equality, sharing and service, but
the Christians today are in the quest for a new way of spirituality. According to Pope Francis, Church is called to find, new
roads to step outside itself and go to those who do not attend church, to those
who have quit or are indifferent, instead of being just a church that welcomes
and receives by keeping the doors open. It is time to
redefine the church and re-discover its original meaning to make it more
relevant, in this religiously plural and culturally globalized world.
Church is always assumed as ekklesia, but it has to be kyriakos. Re-examining the concept of church as ekklesia, will provoke and
stimulate for the actual concept of church called kyriakos. The concept of church as ekklesia has to undergo a paradigm shift to become true church
called kyriakos. To define this, the
definition of both ekklesia and kyriakos has to be explored. Ekklesia is defined as a called out community or gathering. The called-out (ones)
means a civil body of believers called out of the Roman and Judean or any
system to come together into a separate civil community. So, ekklesia is just a separated community. Kyriakos is
defined as something that pertains to or belongs to God, with an identity
of one in Christ, giving priority for Mission to God. While every mission in the world is
considered as Mission of God, kyriakos urges for Mission to God, i.e. our
response to Mission of God. Therefore, any organization in
the society can be called as ekklesia,
but the
real church is and must be kyriakos.
For this reason, our ekklesia-like
churches have to become kyriakos to
do Mission to God.
The
Ephesus church was also convicted for the same reason, i.e. for remaining
as ekklesia rather than becoming kyriakos. The church in Ephesus is the most influential among the seven churches mentioned in the Book of
Revelation and was assumed to be founded by Apostle Paul. Ephesus
had Jewish Christians as well as converted Gentiles, called God fearers. All Christians
in Ephesus do not owe allegiance towards Paul because there were also
pre-Pauline groups in the city. The Jewish community assumed themselves as
indigenous citizens and had conflicts with the city of Ephesus and with the gentile
Christians who claimed some form of authority. During the reign of Augustus, their
prosperity made Ephesus the home of cults, including the Temple of Artemis. The
cult of Artemis went beyond the religious sphere to the civic, economic and
cultural life of the city. Also, Emperor Domition instituted the imperial cult to
the city of Ephesus and built a temple cult called Sebastoi. Even though the
situation for Christians was not favorable, churches in Ephesus grew rapidly.
It was considered to be the headquarters of faith. In this scenario, Church in
Ephesus concentrated fully on the ‘Mission of God’ to maintain their ecclesial
identity, rather than on a Mission to God,
which must be community focused. In this context, God accused them of losing
their first love and urged them to take a U-turn from ‘ekklesia’ to ‘kyriakos’.
So here I would like to convey the qualities, needed to reinstate first love, which is the prime factor to restore church
as kyriakos in the society.
In the read passage,
God addresses the angel, the leader of the church in Ephesus, and reminds the
leaders about their responsibility. The leaders of the early church were
companions, God-bearers, temple-bearers,
Christ-bearers, and bearers of holy things. They constantly confronted wrong ideologies and various
cults which had peeped into the
Church. They had qualities like determination, patience with people,
long suffering and intolerance towards evildoers and false apostles. All these
unique qualities can be seen as the characteristics of leadership in Kyriakos, which is Mission
to God. However, this was not the situation with the new generation of
Ephesian leadership. They became ordinary leaders who just maintained the ekklesia, and were divided, regarding their beliefs and practices, including
socio-economic level, leadership style, and attitudes towards outsiders. So God said, “I know your works...” The term used
here to denote ‘know’ is oida and not
ginosko. Oida means the complete or
full knowledge of God,
about the past and the present of the community. God’s vigilant and inevitable evaluation over
the Church found that their leadership became less glowing and less passionate,
in comparison to their fore-parents. Therefore, God asks the new generation
Ephesian leaders to take an immediate U-turn from ekklesia, and turn back to become kyriakos.
This
reminder to the Angel of Ephesus is relevant to the present day churches too.
Today, the Angels of the church are the Bishops, Presbyters, Ministers, or
the one who has the spiritual charge of a congregation and responsibility for
the community. We, as leaders of the
present church, are called to confront the wrong ideologies and practices
prevailing in our church and society. But we perpetuate and promote predatory preaching, predatory tithing,
institutionalization and many other problems that are within the church. Although,
churches always have persons holding specific authority and responsibility, church
is called to exercise wise and loving leadership on the basis of the Word of
God; faithful in inter-dependence and reciprocity.
If we look back to our own previous
generation leadership in the church, pastors were literally considered as God’s
representatives. But today, there is a visible gap in the church between the
leadership and the community. This is because of the inability of the church
and her leaders to change their leadership pattern according to the context. The
failure of the leadership in Ephesus was also their inability and the fear of
losing purity and chastity by accepting the converted Christians into the
community. Applying the same principle to our own context today, God calls us
to reinstate the qualities of leadership according to our own socio-political
context. It is a call to go back to kyriakos
leadership called Mission to God, characterized by inclusiveness, fearlessness,
risk taking, interrogating the evils in society and daring to attempt new
things relevant to the context. It leads to a critical sifting, about our
understanding of the Mission of God concept, according to the contemporary
context. In kyriakos
leadership, escapism and conformism are forbidden.
2. First Love: Being for One Another (Shattering the Hindrance).A
Bridging Spirituality
The church in Ephesus had forgotten the
simplicity and freedom of being in love. So the penetrating, omniscient gaze of
Christ has spotted a fatal flaw, that
it has let down its first love. While love for one
another is the distinctive badge of kyriakos;
as ekklesia, they extensively involved
in schisms, arguments with Nicolaitans, heretics and about faith doctrines. The Ephesians had deep suspicion and
uneasiness among their gentile neighbors and they were regarded as a threat to the
fabric of their society. The structuralisation of their churches promoted
the maintenance of differences and brought diversity within the Christian
community. Thus, they lacked
the passion and enthusiasm which their fore-parents expressed as kyriakos and church became a place of lifeless orthodoxy. They became mere
caretakers and custodians of faith and their love became mechanical. This
opened the door to spiritual lethargy, mediocrity, indifference to others, love
for the world, compromise with evil and ultimately the death of the church. The
Ephesian church tried hard to remain ekklesia, but failed to become kyriakos, which is Mission to God. Mission
to God is an attempt to do things which God would have done to others. As
Desmond Tutu says, “Without us, God has no eyes; without us, God has no ears;
without us, God has no arms or hands. God relies on us.”
Church
as kyriakos is to be the pillar and
foundation of the truth. When the church loses its truth, all that left is a religious
club, another kind of darkness, where people comfort themselves with false hope.
The
Church is called to struggle with the oppressed, towards their freedom and
dignity. This mission needs to be carried out in changing political, social and
cultural contexts, manifested in acts of service, within the community and to
the world. We, too, have memories of our own
churches where our fore-parents made sure that they do not miss even a single
opportunity to come to church for worship, fellowship, service and for every
other important event in their life. They looked forward to the church, as a
place of comfort, a place of peace and a place of hope.
Even
today, divisions are happening through various means and a kyriakos community must go beyond the traditional interpretations and
rethink their conclusions, accepting them as only temporary, and acknowledging
their methods as tentative. A community without any difference but with
mutuality can only become kyriakos.
We must not hesitate to understand and interrogate the complexities of the ekklesia and should promote the
realities of kyriakos, and this will
lead us towards a reconciled blissful spirituality.
3.
First Love: A Reconciled Blissful Spirituality
Reinstating the
first love can happen only by recognizing the will of God, and reconciling with
God, through empowering a new humanity in hope, with mutual forgiveness and
love, despite the frailty of its members. God warned the Ephesian Church to
remember the past and turn back to the love which their fore-parents had. If
they fail to do so, the church without light would be removed from its place.
Ephesus gives us a good example that, if our leadership and communitarian
fellowship is not bringing light, the churches will experience a spiritual
blackout. Sadly, we have to say that there are thousands of churches like this in
our world today, where congregations are still meeting year after year, Sunday
after Sunday, doing religious rituals without witnessing any change in their
lives and society. They have remained as strong ekklesia rather than becoming kyriakos.
So
it is better for us, as backsliding churches, to recollect our ecclesial history
and recall the days of pious fore-parents, to restore and fulfill the
reconciling dream of God through the people. Therefore, God calls us to repent
and turn back to kyriakos.
Any church which succeeds in
becoming kyriakos is offered with a
reward to taste from the tree of life. Tree of life is a new humanity of the renewed community, without any
alienation, transformed with gospel values, and witnessing Christ to others.
The term used to denote the ‘succeeded one’ is ‘to nikonti which means “the
overcoming one”. It is not a completed action but a current and continuous
action. The struggles in the present life of ekklesia should be considered as part of a constant, dynamic process
of the church to become kyriakos.
Only a radically welcoming leadership and community can try to reconcile with
the context, to embrace the margins, who are silenced and closeted. So, it is the
time for us to retrospect and reconcile to experience the blissful spirituality.
Conclusion
To conclude, dear friends, in this
context, we should realize that, our world is full of promise and frustration.
So our Mission to God should speak
about responsibility and not just grace. The challenge today is that we as
leaders should not be afraid to accept the realities and must
move forward with new strategies. Our church leadership is trapped in
the fear of failure, losing purity and afraid of trying new things.
But we as leaders are ultimately expected to be responsible for the Mission to God, i.e. to teach through
preaching and responding according to the context. A kyriakos community is also
expected to be there for one another, before being preachers and
church planters in front of the skeptical world. At this juncture, present churches must undergo self-evaluation in
the light of God’s message to the Ephesians. In our gloriously
frightening religious context of India today, it is the time for the church to reluctantly embrace and accept its continued
failures to connect with younger generations, new issues and become a real church with First love called kyriakos………… Amen.
Stalin S.S.
BD IV
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