Infused Herbal Tea, Christian Mission, and Everything Else.

I bought a new box of tea at the grocery store today. Had some lunch. After following the instructions on the box of tea, I read step 5: Contemplate your favourite eternal mysteries. So I did.

I started thinking about the mission of the church and how it seems so individualized these days, and how it hardly has any regard to community and the whole body of Christ. But if we stop and think, you cannot talk about the living body of Christ without saying something about the Church, and you cannot think of the Church without Christ. How is it that people think they can live as a Christian without the Church? The body can still live without the finger, but can the finger live without the body? If you claim to be a member of the invisible Church, you'd be right that the Church has invisible qualities, but it also has visible manifestations too. I think this attitude turns out to be more prideful, and more dangerous, as a super-spiritual gnosticism. And to me, this is one of the mysteries of his kingdom: the height and depth to which Jesus forgives sin, not merely as a mediator between man and God, but also as a mediator between man and man. Jesus forgives my sin so much that he forgives my neighbor's. Therefore, the Church and its mission can exist. That is where mission starts. If I attempt salvation without Christ, it is humanism, an endless toil, lofty goals, and in the end, fruitless. But the power of the gospel produces real effects, here and now, and forever. And that is why the Gospel needs to be central in all Christian conduct. Where some people see peace, love and kindness, as the Gospel, I see it as the cause and effect of the Gospel, but not necessarily the Gospel itself. It isn't about us, but it is about Christ for us, together with him, his gift to us. It all comes through his forgiveness. To be in Christ is to have him in us, to have each other, to be his body. So as the incarnation is a mystical union with God and man, so we also have a mystical union with him and to each other through the Spirit he gave us.