Community and Sacramental logic...

Chris Erdman over at Odyssey, husband, father, pastor to emergent, missional, and "traditional" communities, seminary professor, consultant, writer, activist, pilgrim...shared this great quote around the idea of christian communities and sacramental logic...

Javier Martinez, Archbishop of Granada (Spain) and pastor-theologian, remarks in an unpublished speech, "Beyond Secular Reason"--

The church needs to become again, at all her levels, "the house and the school of communion," as John Paul II has reminded us. The Church has to be a community life, in a sense, "a family" life, like the life of "a body." She needs to recover "social" density. Not as a ghetto, but as real family life, always open to life and to society. "family," "mother," "house," "nation," "body"--are not just names for the Church, but are social realities essential for the life of the Christian Tradition. The Church is a company for life, and for everything in life. In other words, the Church has to be "rescued," so to speak, from the drying and inhuman power of the managerial logic, and has to recover the sacramental logic, which is the one that belongs to her.

Martinez is a bright and courageous pastoral archbishop and has much more to say. What I'm interested in here is the conversion he commends from the "managerial logic" of the Western liberal rationality towrad, instead, "the sacramental logic"--that is inhabiting a w/holy new way of seeing and living in the world through the Eucharist and Baptism.

Regarding the previous post above: I cannot speak for the Archbishop, but I do have a sense of what he might mean because I orbit a similar conceptual world. There is a richness to the logic given us in the sacraments--a mystery, an openness, even a thickness that is missing in the managerial logic so current our churches . . . more here from Chris

Christian communities living a scaramental logic made be think of a recent experience in which I shared in the comments.

A few weeks ago we went on a local mission trip to a very small church in a town where the sole employer a logging mill had closed, the town was in a deep depression,and the church found itself in the midst of the same storm. But the whole weekend in which involved worship, agape' meals, and fellowship...seem to revolve and flow out of John 13. We even washed one anothers feet...and in that act, I got such a huge revelation. The act of foot washing is a sacrament that we seem to have hidden away in the corner of the vestry. But there is such a spiritual truth to be found here. Real community, real fellowship, communion with each other and God can not happen if this act is not a spiritual reality of the community. Somehow as a church we seem to jump right into communion, but the reality is, there is something very powerful that precedes it...the Jesus revealed to us. With hours to go...I believe Jesus wanted to show this band of raggamuffins the greatest truth of the Kingdom, the greatest truth of communal living...and the greatest truth of our faith. I think in the open verses of John 13, in the upper room with friends Jesus reveals the reality of sacramental logic.

Chris Erdman over at Odyssey, husband, father, pastor to emergent, missional, and "traditional" communities, seminary professor, consultant, writer, activist, pilgrim...shared this great quote around the idea of christian communities and sacramental logic...

Javier Martinez, Archbishop of Granada (Spain) and pastor-theologian, remarks in an unpublished speech, "Beyond Secular Reason"--

The church needs to become again, at all her levels, "the house and the school of communion," as John Paul II has reminded us. The Church has to be a community life, in a sense, "a family" life, like the life of "a body." She needs to recover "social" density. Not as a ghetto, but as real family life, always open to life and to society. "family," "mother," "house," "nation," "body"--are not just names for the Church, but are social realities essential for the life of the Christian Tradition. The Church is a company for life, and for everything in life. In other words, the Church has to be "rescued," so to speak, from the drying and inhuman power of the managerial logic, and has to recover the sacramental logic, which is the one that belongs to her.

Martinez is a bright and courageous pastoral archbishop and has much more to say. What I'm interested in here is the conversion he commends from the "managerial logic" of the Western liberal rationality towrad, instead, "the sacramental logic"--that is inhabiting a w/holy new way of seeing and living in the world through the Eucharist and Baptism.

Regarding the previous post above: I cannot speak for the Archbishop, but I do have a sense of what he might mean because I orbit a similar conceptual world. There is a richness to the logic given us in the sacraments--a mystery, an openness, even a thickness that is missing in the managerial logic so current our churches . . . more here from Chris

Christian communities living a scaramental logic made be think of a recent experience in which I shared in the comments.

A few weeks ago we went on a local mission trip to a very small church in a town where the sole employer a logging mill had closed, the town was in a deep depression,and the church found itself in the midst of the same storm. But the whole weekend in which involved worship, agape' meals, and fellowship...seem to revolve and flow out of John 13. We even washed one anothers feet...and in that act, I got such a huge revelation. The act of foot washing is a sacrament that we seem to have hidden away in the corner of the vestry. But there is such a spiritual truth to be found here. Real community, real fellowship, communion with each other and God can not happen if this act is not a spiritual reality of the community. Somehow as a church we seem to jump right into communion, but the reality is, there is something very powerful that precedes it...the Jesus revealed to us. With hours to go...I believe Jesus wanted to show this band of raggamuffins the greatest truth of the Kingdom, the greatest truth of communal living...and the greatest truth of our faith. I think in the open verses of John 13, in the upper room with friends Jesus reveals the reality of sacramental logic.