Many people today seem rather ambiguous about the missionary identity of the Church.
There is a strand of thought which opines that people should be left well enough alone to believe whatever they like.
The drive to ‘save souls’ that spurred the extraordinary efforts of our forebears in the faith seems largely to have evaporated.
For some, it is because they think it is wrong to impose ideas – even truth – upon other people.
It is considered so wrong, in fact, that even inviting people to consider alternative viewpoints is a monstrous trespass against their person.
Others throw up their hands in exasperation when it comes to the mission of the Church, not because they feel we ought not preach the faith, but because they think it is a forlorn hope, given the world and society we face.
Yet if we look to our own history and tradition – particularly to the original ‘Apostle to the Gentiles’ – neither of those reasons for shirking our evangelical excursions is valid.
Much has changed since Paul composed his letters, yet it is arguable that the challenges he faced and his response to them are still informative for a contemporary model of mission in the Church.
St Paul too faced a world that considered itself well-versed in sophisticated argumentation.
In Athens, he was speaking to a society that thought of itself as the Omega point in history – the last word in development and progress.
As a result, St Paul thought it best to focus on their own interests and leave out those aspects of faith in Christ that might be rather hard to swallow – a crucified God among them.
He wasn’t terribly successful.
Despite difficulties in reconstructing the course of the Pauline mission, it is widely accepted that he preached at the Areopagus in Athens and then walked to Corinth.
And despite it being difficult to speculate about Paul’s reaction to the supercilious response of the Athenian philosophers – laughing at the idea of bodily resurrection and perhaps suggesting they might hear more from him later (Acts 17:16-34) – it is nevertheless clear that something occurred on the journey from Athens to Corinth which prompted St Paul to adopt a different approach.
Because by the time he reaches the next city on his journey, he had ‘resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.’ (1 Corinthians 2:2)
Yet what is seldom recognised is that this journey from Athens to Corinth would have taken him through Eleusis, which was famous for its religious ‘mysteries’ of Demeter and Persephone.
I think that this encounter with the ‘mystery religions’ of ancient Greece prompted Paul to reflect upon the notion of ‘mystery’ and its connection with the ‘love of wisdom’ (philosophy) as exemplified by his recent encounter in Athens.
The mystery religions claimed to induct members into secret knowledge, ecstatic experience, and possibly the assurance of some personal immortality.
The philosophers of Athens similarly claimed to have attained exalted levels of wisdom.
In light of these two related experiences concerning hidden ‘mysteries’ and ‘wisdom,’ St Paul seems to have re-conceptualized the traditional understanding of both ideas.
‘Mystery’ is no longer to be thought of as a private revelation shrouded in darkness but is exposed in the story of the cross.
Paul views the Crucified Christ as a ‘mystery’ in the fullest theological sense of the word: as a concrete reality which, when encountered, puts those who experience it ‘into contact with a divine reality,’ as Benedictine Abbot Jeremy Driscoll says.
St Paul sees this divine reality as superseding all the ‘mysteries’ that preceded it, as well as possessed of a communicative power beyond mere human capabilities.
Thus, it was not in pandering to the apparent philosophical and religious inclinations of his audience that brought conversion, but the cross: ‘Jesus Christ and Him crucified’ (1 Cor 2:2). When we reflect upon our own experiences in light of this fact, it appears in recent years as though we in the Church have tried ‘defending Christianity at the Bar of Kantian rationality.’ (Tracey Rowland)
If Paul were taken as a model, the mission would be better served by preaching the Crucified Christ into our world that Charles Taylor claims is beset by the sense, ‘that this life is empty, flat, devoid of higher purpose.’
The incarnational ‘mystery’ of our Crucified God might be more compelling than we otherwise suppose.
Moreover, the Church ought to reinvigorate the sense that the message preached derives its communicative ‘power’ and ‘wisdom’ from the fact that it is a revealed truth from God.
If the Apostle to the Gentiles is to be taken as a model, then our own ‘weakness and fear and trembling’ (1 Cor 2:3) is far from a hindrance to our proclamation; it is our greatest asset.
Our human failings allow others to encounter the Crucified Christ in our own lives, just as they once met Him in Paul.
As was memorably highlighted by Benedict XVI in his first encyclical as Pope, Christianity is not after all, ‘an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.’
Neither then nor now does the gospel rest on the magnetism of colourful personalities.
Our current weakness is our greatest strength, because we are forced to rely on nothing but the Cross of Christ and its ‘power’ alone. (1 Cor 1:17)
As a final note, it is worth remembering that our missionary endeavours within the Church ought not overlook the reality that dawned upon St Paul somewhere on the road between Athens and Corinth: that Christ is a ‘mystery’ in the theological sense of the world.
On the cross, Jesus revealed in a concrete way the reality of God’s love – and that truth is a gift that ought to be passed on to all men and women of all ages.
Despite many failures and failings, the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ incarnates that concrete reality in human history.
Those who encounter the Church are brought into mysterious – sacramental – contact with the divine.
Missionary efforts today should not falter in the face of past failings but instead forge ahead, secure in the knowledge summed up in the concluding statement of the 1985 Synod of Bishops: ‘the Church is, in Christ, the ‘mystery’ of the love of God present in the history of mankind.’
And it is the mystery of that love alone that will save the world.
