“Submission to the needs of the other” makes more sense to me. Though, again, I think that needs to be explained, since that is not the common usage of that word, and “submission” has been used so very often (by Christians!) to suppress and abuse the individual, those in the minority, and the weak (slaves, women, the illiterate, etc). Also, it still leaves the question: How are these “needs” determined? By the one receiving help, by what they ask of us? (As I pointed out before, Peter resisted Jesus' footwashing, but Jesus insisted he needed it.) By the community? The leaders? I would say that it is God who knows and decides what is best for us, and it is in submission to God that we best respond to the real needs of those around us.

You raise a good point about my sensitivity about group dynamics and the evils of institutions (if anyone's interested, I tried to explain my reasons for it in the article “Are we the people?”). But I don't think I automatically spout “Woe!” every time the church is mentioned. Only when “submission to the group” (because “God is always more present to the community than to the individual”) is laid on us as a demand for Christian discipleship, which is in fashion these days in certain circles. Not at all Jesus' message, and nothing like his life (which was seen as dangerously rebellious to the religious leaders and community of his day). As bad as individualism, in my opinion, if not worse. And I think the history of the institutional church, with its terrible (often lethal) abuses committed against rebels in “the community,” bears out my concerns.

I agree with your observation that Paul called people to be the church, to live up to “who they are.” But then he was preaching to people who had no concept of the church, who were just learning what it was. We, on the other hand, do have a concept of church, based on our experience of the multitude of churches on every street corner (often two or three on a street corner). And our concept is usually wrong, severely distorted (perverted?) by the institutional “incarnations” of the church that are often not the Body at all. So I think our preaching has to be different now, at least breaking down false views first, by contrasting them with the truth about the Body of Christ.

And don't we see some of that in some of the later writings about the church? For example, in Revelations, this passage that I think fits a lot of our American churches quite well:

“I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth.

“For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing; not knowing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. Therefore I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, that you may be rich, and white garments to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, that you may see.

“Those whom I love, I reprove and chasten; so be zealous and repent.” (Rev 3.15-19)

And then there's Jesus' words in John (which appeared much later than Paul's writings):

“I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

“If a man does not abide in me, he is cast forth as a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned.” (Jn 15.5-6)

Which emphasizes that the crucial part is being connected with Jesus, since he is the source of fruit and life. He is the vine; we can be part of that, but we never determine the nature or fruit or the vine. If we move away from him then we are cut off, no longer part of the vine (though we are welcome to return). We can't drag the vine down with us; the vine is Christ. But we can separate ourselves.

Isn't that what Jesus is warning us about when he says, “Apart from me you can do nothing”?

I don't think Chris is the only person to use “submission” in this way, just as I don't think I'm the only one who uses “community” without the institutional baggage you want to attach to it. I think your anti-institutional bias is so strong that you are reading dark undertones into these words (and words like “responsibility” — if you need to link to your own blog for us to understand your reaction to a given word, I submit that the linguistic peculiarity is yours) that are unintended. It's as though we can barely bring up the church without a stark warning from our resident prophet about the dangers of group dynamics, or a rejoinder that the local church is not the One Body.

Although it makes a certain amount of sense to recognize that a group of people who profess belief are not necessarily the body of Christ, or that a given group can fail to be or even cease to be the body of Christ, Paul does not argue in this manner. He tells the believers to whom he writes that they are the body of Christ, and he adjures them to comport themselves in a particular way on the basis of that identity and calling, and not from possibility that they might cease to be the body. Even when the issue prostitution, Paul does not say “If you do this, you won't be the body anymore,” but “Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never!” Paul argues from the Church's identity as the body — even at Corinth.

If you think I've mis-characterized your words, Chris, feel free to correct me. If it's not clear to me what you mean, I usually say something like “it sounds like you're saying…,” as I did above. And I have to admit that your language is pretty vague and you seem comfortable using words in ways other than the common usage, without explanation. So that may contribute to my misunderstanding you. For example, you have not been clear about what you mean by “submission,” a word that has been commonly used to mean “obedience” (as in “submit to our authority”), even in Christian communal circles. The example of Jesus washing feet still doesn't make it very clear; do you mean “humble” or “service”…? He was actually doing something that they didn't want, with Peter strongly resisting. So how do you see this as submission?

As I understand it from Paul's descriptions of the Body, if the church is not faithful, then it is not being the Body (for example, the Body is not divided but always one, because Christ cannot be divided against himself—yet churches are often divided). This is not nitpicking. We should be committed and faithful to the Body, but faithfulness to church institutions (particularly when they are not being the Body) is not asked of us. We may even be called, in faithfulness to the Body, to reject or attack the institutional church at times when it claims to be what it is not. Soren Kierkegaard's “Attack on Christendom” comes to mind, but there are countless other examples.

This is think, directly applies to the point of Bryn's article, doesn't it?

If you think I've mis-characterized your words, Chris, feel free to correct me. If it's not clear to me what you mean, I usually say something like “it sounds like you're saying…,” as I did above. And I have to admit that your language is pretty vague and you seem comfortable using words in ways other than the common usage, without explanation. So that may contribute to my misunderstanding you. For example, you have not been clear about what you mean by “submission,” a word that has been commonly used to mean “obedience” (as in “submit to our authority”), even in Christian communal circles. The example of Jesus washing feet still doesn't make it very clear; do you mean “humble” or “service”… He was actually doing something that they didn't want, with Peter strongly resisting. So how do you see this as submission?

As I understand it from Paul's descriptions of the Body, if the church is not faithful, then it is not being the Body (for example, the Body is not divided but one, as Christ is one, yet churches are often divided). And this is not nitpicking. We should be committed and faithful to the Body, but faithfulness to church institutions (particularly when they are not being the Body) is not asked of us. We may even be called, in faithfulness to the Body, to reject or attack the institutional church at times when it claims to be what it is not. Soren Kierkegaard's “Attack on Christendom” comes to mind, but there are countless other examples.

This is think, directly applies to the point of Bryn's article, doesn't it?

First of all, there is nothing inherently Christian or Jewish (or Muslim or Buddhist or whatever, for that matter) about marriage. The Church uses a social construct to illustrate restored humanity, which only serves to bless the institution and hold it to an exemplary standard.

Nowhere did I say we must submit to the “will” of others, but if Jesus' washing of the disciples feet is not submission, I don't know what is, yet the Servant King is the model of freedom.

My reference to accomplishment was to your statement that the Body is the source of real love greater than any accomplishment of ours. I agree, but the Body is US. We are the Body of Christ! I do not mean to imply that the Body has realized itself entirely faithfully as the institution of the Church, but it remains the Church. Labor can still be sweet and disappointment, enlightening, for His yoke is easy and His burden light and James' letter seems to argue for the faithfulness of labor (don't dare assume I mean any kind of nonsense Protestant work ethic).

Poor Bryn must be pulling his hair out by now, if he's still reading these responses to his original thoughts. Let me add, finally, that dreaming about eternal life (which I do not suggest Ms. Day frittered away doing) and longing for some pie-in-the-sky Christiology (which I do not mean to suggest you do, Paul) denies the Word of God active and militant in the world now and in it's state of chaos. If God is not Emmanuel, what is the Gospel? Day was a devout Catholic, to my knowledge, and very rooted in society and community and I don't think her movement is called “Worker” for nothing.

I can agree about the importance of accountability. But “In accountability we loose some of our imagined freedom, or selfishness, and in submission to each other in fact grow to a higher freedom”? I don't think so. Maybe this is a difference in our understanding of what “submission” means precisely (which has been discussed elsewhere here), but when you put “accountability” and “submission” together with “to each other” and “in community” it sure sounds like you're saying that we should give up our freedom and submit our will to the will of other human beings. And I don't think Jesus ever taught that.

We gain freedom through submitting our will to the will of God. Our accountability is always to God. Submitting our will to the will of the community, represented by leaders or vote or consensus, is only one more instance of “submitting again to the yoke of slavery.” God never suppresses the individual but gives each of us greater freedom, while our humanly-instituted groups again and again suppress the individual for “the good of the community.”

As such, they are hardly personal expressions of romance or praise. Rather they are fixed within a context of community. In marriage, the community has a very real benefit to the success of the union in the provision and upbringing of offspring and a more stable society. In the Church, again the community has a very real benefit to the success of the union. We all seem to agree that stability can be misleading. Perhaps accountability is the word we should use to describe the necessity of devoted communal relationships. In accountability we loose some of our imagined freedom, or selfishness, and in submission to each other in fact grow to a higher freedom. I'm not saying this is anything we accomplish, but you bet your bottom dollar it's labor intensive. And because we are in this present darkness, we will be disappointed, just, hopefully, not to the point of despair. That's when another good word might come into play: endurance; not self-suffering drudgery, but sharing each others' burdens.

There is nothing diminutive about foretaste or illustration. Jesus gave a foretaste at Cana and used illustrations all the time in his parables. They point to the Kingdom though they, themselves, are not the Kingdom. Likewise the Body points to the Kingdom and marriage illustrates restoration, but both exist in the context of this era of the fall. The Kingdom is, indeed, among us, but the chaos of our present state keeps us looking through a mirror dimly. Disappointment results from our own idealistic images. Labor may be intensive, but, speaking as an organic gardener, in the endeavor of devotion, is not without reward.

Also the church (the Body, the kingdom of God) was presented by Jesus, not as a result of fallen humanity, but as the life of eternity made available to us now. It was the life he himself lived. Of course our “churches” are disappointing, as you say. But that's not because the church is merely a provisional “foretaste,” but because our churches are not the one church, the Body. Where the Body exists, it is neither labor intensive nor even a little bit disappointing.

You make good points about the temptations of divorce and the hesitancy to commit. And obviously “skipping around from church to church” is not right, not what we are called to do. But there are many reasons for changing churches that are not “skipping around.” It is a great good, part of the miracle of the Body of Christ, that we can move from one gathering of Christians to another (if called to do so by God) and find the same spirit, the one Body, there as well. Jesus' itinerancy shows the amazing breadth and flexibility of the kingdom of God, which no institution (church or otherwise) can come close to matching.

As I wrote earlier in this discussion, stability is not the point (and it can be quite a distraction if we are seeking that primarily). Our focus should be on staying connected to the one Body (which is Christ himself). This is both the source of real love of real people, and provides a stability that transcends anything we can accomplish by committing to some place or communal organization.

Actually it is not something we can accomplish at all (in that sense, it is not “intentional” community). We can only accept the invitation of Jesus and be welcomed into his Body, as a gift to us.