I have been reading 2 Corinthians once again. In chapter nine, I came across a verse that seems to encapsulate, in a strange way, one of the great and most significant challenges before the modern church. I am thinking of verse 13. âUnder the test of this service, you will glorify God by your obedience in acknowledging the gospel of Christ, and by the generosity of your contributionâ¦â? (RSV).
You can read about the context of this verse in a commentary. Let me draw your attention here to the three familiar words â comfortable, âchurchyâ? words â in unfamiliar usage.
The first is translated âservice.â? But the word behind the translation is leitourgÃa â from which we also derive âliturgy.â? This is, certainly, one of the most common words in our church vocabulary. We go to âserviceâ? on Sunday. We open our books and recite the âliturgy.â? We do our leitourgÃa.
The second word is translated âacknowledging the gospel.â? The word itself is homologéo, often translated âconfession.â? This, too, is a common experience throughout the Christian world. We open our books; we find our place; we âconfessâ? our faith. We homologéo the gospel.
The third word is translated âcontribution.â? This is koinonÃa, often translated âfellowship.â? For most of us, this is what happens over a donut and some coffee after our leitourgÃa and homologéo. We practice fellowship â koinonÃa.
But the usage we find in Corinthians is pretty unfamiliar.
Here we find a leitourgÃa that âtestsâ? its participants. When was the last time you felt tested while, letâs say, working your way through the Kyrie on Sunday morning, or challenged while singing the Nunc Dimitis?
And the homologéo we find here is something to be obeyed. It is something that will not be bound in a book. It leaps off the page and into confessorsâ lives. It is something to be lived, and not merely recited.
We find a koinonÃa that is vastly more than donuts. This is fellowship that connects its participants to the world church â in this case, the church in Corinth is connected by an offering to the struggling church in Jerusalem. This is fellowship that expresses itself in action. There is nothing, exactly, cozy about first-century koinonÃa. Lives were on the line. Christian koinonÃa challenged participantsâ wills and enabled participantsâ actions in the world that surrounded them. Donuts, at very best, were optional.
In twenty centuries of Christian history, we have seen the unfortunate development again and again. What was once living and dynamic becomes somewhat moribund. Our traditions lose their edge. Sometimes, we cannot even remember what they are about. Maybe you thought that koinonÃa â fellowship â actually is about coffee and donuts!
The challenge before the church, in a nutshell, is to recover the edginess of its heritage. Not to become more at home in the culture that surrounds us â but less so. We must learn to do a liturgy that tests our will and expands our horizon. We must learn to make our confession with our lives. And we must learn to build a fellowship, by Godâs good grace, that impels us into the actual world, in sacrifice and mission.
But more about this theme next month.
(Next month: What have we made of âmissionâ??)