The Practice of Peoplehood

In Genesis 12 the word of God lands on a settled villager, transforming him into a wandering nomad. "Go from your familiar surroundings," the Lord tells Abraham. "I will make you a great nation and through you I will bless all the families of the earth." God's plan to redeem creation enters history with the call of a man whose obedience would last eternally.

He was not, however, called as an isolated individual. Abraham was not a solitary knight of faith, but was called to be the father of a great people, a nation, a corporate body. Nor was he called for his own sake but rather that through him all peoples would be blessed. The ancient Israelite call was not tribal or narrowly nationalistic but was universal, for the sake of the blessing of all people.

God's call is a call into peoplehood, and whenever individuals are chosen it is for the sake of the corporate call of God, not their individual blessing. In addition, the people of God are called into being not for their sake but for others. The call into peoplehood is a call into servanthood as well.

When, in Genesis 35, Jacob gains the crucial name of Israel, it is so that a great company can come from him. In Genesis 46, when Israel is called into Egypt, God emphasizes that they are there in order to become a people. Coming out of Egypt, on the first trip to Mount Sinai, God tells the straggling band of fleeing slaves, "you shall be my own possession among all peoples, for all the nations of the earth are mine and you shall be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" (Exodus 19:3-6). Israel was called into peoplehood to be the priesthood of the earth, the holy people through whom the blessings of God would flow to his creation. The same point is reiterated in Deuteronomy 7:6-8, where the Lord tells them, "you are a people holy to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his own possession, out of all the peoples that are on the face of the earth ... because the Lord loves you." Chosen out of love into peoplehood and service, the sons and daughters of Abraham are sent into their promised land.

The holy people, however, defaulted on their call. The chronicler of the history of ancient Israel who wrote the books of Kings compacts that history into one oft-repeated sentence: "And Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord." What was the evil that Israel did? As it is recorded in the book of Kings, they built ivory palaces, enlarged the conscripted army, adopted the medium of exchange of other nations--which included worshiping their gods--and expanded their empire. The people who had spent forty penitential years wandering in the wilderness and learning to trust in the daily providence of God now trusted in their self-constructed fortifications; the energy that once went into forming themselves into the people of God now went into building more elaborate palaces; the time that once went into listening for the word of God now went into bargaining and haggling in the marketplace. God's plan was to call and bless all nations through the seed of Abraham, but Israel abandoned the call. Called to be a holy priesthood, they became a paramilitary empire; called to be a servant community, they exalted their hegemony over other nations.

With acid bitterness, Hosea names his daughter "not pitied." It is impossible for us to recapture the terror that name provoked, for throughout the Torah the pity of the Lord was the foundation of the covenant: God had promised always to have pity on his people. In saying "I will no more have pity on the house of Israel, to forgive them at all," God implies the covenant is at an end. Worse still when Hosea names his son "Not my people!" This phrase was the summation of the covenant made through Moses. Utterly reversing what [God] promised to the wilderness wanderers, God says to the kingdom of Israel, "you are not my people and I am not your God."

No sooner does God annul the old covenant than [God] promises a new one. Right after withdrawing [God's] pity, God says, "But I will have pity ... I will deliver them by the Lord their God; I will not deliver them by bow, nor by sword, nor by war...."

God promises new pity and new deliverance, but it will not be deliverance in the world's way: not by political and military power. And right after saying they are no longer [God's] people, God says, "it will be said to them, sons of the living God...and they shall be gathered together under one head." Hosea announces the end of the old covenant but in the same breath promises the return of the pity and peoplehood of God--only under radically different conditions. The new people of God will not depend upon military coercion. And they will be united under one head.

Isaiah had the same vision. In chapter 11 occurs that passage made familiar by generations of Christmas readings about the shoot from the stump of Jesse, who will judge with righteousness and usher in a reign of peace. The passage goes on to say that this shoot of Jesse "shall stand as an ensign to the peoples, him shall the nations seek," and "He will raise an ensign to the nations," (Isaiah 11:10,12). The shoot of Jesse, the Messiah, will carry on the call of Abraham; he will gather the chosen people and be a signal to the nations of the earth. In the same tradition, the servant of the Lord is called "a covenant to the people, a light to the nations" (Isaiah 42:6), and it is foretold that "you shall call nations that you know not and nations that knew you not shall run to you, because the Lord your God...has glorified you." One sign of the Messiah will be the fulfillment of the call to Abraham, the blessing of all the nations of the earth, by calling them together with the sons and daughters of Israel.

This brief excursion into biblical history reveals the call of God as a call to a people; when individuals are called, it is to play a role in the formation of the people of God. Peoplehood, community, is not an option but is at the heart of the way God does business. The call is, however, not for the sake of the people chosen but rather for the nations of the world they are called to serve.

Here is where Israel, after the flesh, went wrong and defaulted on its vocation. God's plan, however, did not change. God still willed to bless all creation through a holy people, but the locus of that call narrowed down to one person: the suffering servant of Isaiah who shall be raised up as a signal to the nations. One sign of the fulfillment of this promise will be that the nations (Gentiles) will be joined with the Jews.

The Holy Spirit
From this one man, Jesus, a new people came. Pentecost was the creation of a new people, the formation of a new Israel, not on account of the flesh but on account of the Spirit. The church, Paul says in the letter to the Romans, is now heir to the promises and the responsibilities of the old Israel. So we find in 1 Peter an echo of Hosea addressed to the new Israel: "You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you...Once you were no people but now you have received mercy" (1 Peter 2:9-10).

The sign of the formation of the new Israel is that the nations, Gentiles, are coming into the promises of God too. This was the crisis of Paul's ministry--the conflict between the chosenness of the descendants of Abraham after the flesh with their divinely granted Torah and the fact that the Gentiles were receiving the spiritual blessings of God in fulfillment of the equally divine promises of the prophets. Paul resolved the conflict by choosing the promise of a new covenant over the givenness of the old covenant, the Spirit over the Torah, the future over the past.

The call of the descendants of Abraham into peoplehood was for the sake of other nations, but Paul implies that the new Israel is constituted to redeem the whole cosmos. "All things, things in heaven and things on earth" are to be brought under the lordship of Christ (Ephesians 1:10). Christ is to be the head of his body, the church, but this body will someday extend to "everything" so that "God will be all in all" and the universe will realize that it is held together by the lordship of Christ. Not just the church, not just all peoples, but the whole cosmic system will be the body of Christ, will be Christian community. This is the farthest reach of the plan of God which began with the call to Abraham.

THE NEW TESTAMENT rarely uses the term people or nation; in its place is the Greek word koinonia. This is the Greek term for the most intimate human relationship possible. It is used, for example, for the union of husband and wife in marriage. The epistles use it to describe our relationship with God.

In Romans 15:27 Paul says that the Gentiles have come into koinonia with the Spirit. In 1 Corinthians 1:9 he says that God calls us into koinonia with his Son. In 2 Corinthians is the famous benediction, "the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the koinonia of the Spirit." John writes that the gospel is proclaimed so that "you can have koinonia with us and our koinonia is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ" (1 John 1:3). 1 Peter says that Christians have koinonia with the glory of God (5:1) and 2 Peter says we will have koinonia with the divine nature.

With remarkable consistency, then, the epistles describe Christian experience in terms of community; we are called into community with God and with each other. By using the same word, koinonia, to describe our relation to God and our relations with our brothers and sisters, the New Testament sets the standard by which religious experience is to be judged. Our relationship to God is to be as close as the most intimate human friendship and our relationship to others is to be as close as the spirit of God dwelling in our hearts. To be authentic, our religious experience must produce an ever deeper walk with God and an ever deeper community of brothers and sisters.

There is not space here to enter into a discussion of how communities are to serve the world for which their head died. The creation of community may itself be the most crucial form of service of this day. Here I only want to emphasize that the call to community is not a call to withdraw from the world but rather a call into that matrix which sends its members out to serve.

John 17 is the classic text for understanding the relation of the church to the world. The passage revolves around the Greek preposition "ek." Most translations obscure the meaning by not rendering this word consistently into English. Consider the following:

I have manifested my name to the men you gave me from (ek; RSV has "out of) the world . . . I am no more in (en) the world but they are in the world ... I have given them your word and the world hates them because they are not from (ek; RSV has "of) the world, even as I am not from (ek) the world. I do not pray that you should remove them from (ek; RSV has "out of") the world but that you keep them from (ek) evil. They are not from (ek; RSV has "of) the world, even as I am not from (ek) the world . . . As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.

Seen in this way, it becomes clear that Jesus is drawing a parallel between his relationship to the world and that of his disciples. He is not from the world, but he is sent into the world; likewise they are not from the world--but they are sent into the world. The disciples' relation to the world is the same as the master's, and no one can deny that Jesus lived in the world, no one can argue that he withdrew from it. Nowhere does the New Testament say we are called out of the world. Jesus insists that we, like him, are sent into it.

Tracing the biblical history reveals that the search for community is not one alternative but is, rather, at the heart of the call of God. The ligaments of this body remain to be sketched in. Paul's letters deal with more than doctrine; often they attend to very practical details. One such detail was a collection being taken for the poorer churches. The Greek word used to describe this collection was a variant of the term koinonia. Used in this way, koinonia means to be generous, to share. If one has community, this is expressed in sharing and contributing to each other. In Romans 12:13, Paul exhorts the readers to "contribute" to the needs of the saints. Timothy is asked to be "generous," (1 Timothy 6:18). Throughout the letters to the Romans and the Corinthians, Paul speaks of the "gift" or "contribution" being collected for the relief of the poor. All of these words are derivations of koinonia.

This sharing makes a group a koinonia. Just gathering people under one roof, just exchanging a common ideology, just eating meals together or working together on a joint project will not create community. In the early '70s I saw so many communal experiments fall from high ideals into bitterness and rancor because the participants thought that community could be an experiment, a trial run without real commitment to each other, and that ideology and common purpose were strong enough bonds to restrain the selfishness of human nature. It is not so. Community means participating in, sharing in, serving one another.

Community is an affair of the Spirit, not an institutional structure. Such radical participation in one another's lives can go on in small groups or large ones; where people live under one roof or come together frequently from many separate domiciles. There is no one community structure.

Beware of the one who comes to you with a blueprint under his [or her] arm; if there was a single blueprint for successful community life, the land would be full of successful communities. That it is not reveals the failure of the blueprint mentality. Many energetic, talented, creative people have invested themselves in carefully conceptualized community plans that have been torn into pieces in the struggle to put them into practice.

The question is not, What is the right plan? The question can only be, What is the Spirit calling you to now? When a group gathers to seek the Spirit rather than to erect an organization, there is hope for koinonia. When they seek the Spirit in their own way, rather than trying to impose the patterns of others upon themselves, the hope grows. Communities need structure, but the structure must grow organically out of the life they are living--or else they will build only empty forms, waiting to be torn down or filled with frustration.

Structure, in the scripture, seems to be a function of mission. A community organized around the inner-city apostolate will develop differently than one called to give retreats. A community called to serve the worldwide renewal of the church will need different structures than one called to be a locus of psychological healing. A group focused primarily on ministering to alcoholics and addicts will be organized differently than one whose members are primarily engaged in writing and teaching. Some communities will perform many of these functions, but some are called to a special mission and they ought not seek to impose the structures that are a function of that special vocation on all communities.

Unity and Uniqueness
Koinonia is a two-way street: Serving, giving, and sharing also mean receiving, being cared for, and being ministered to. Strange as it may seem, sometimes it is easier to walk down the street of service than back up the other side where one is served. Sometimes people say they want to work, give, share, help and yet their services never seem to build community. Why? Because they never let others minister to them. Serving can be a defense to keep others away; if I am always listening to other people's concerns then I don't have time to be bothered sharing what's inside me. I get to know them and at the same time keep them from getting to know me.

No community is built by such compulsive servants. We must be willing to minister and also to be ministered to. My gifts and strengths may minister to your needs and weaknesses, but my needs and weaknesses must be exposed to give you a chance to minister to me. That's how the body is built up; that's the bearing of one another's burdens that fulfills the law of Christ.

Paul addresses this in his famous metaphor of the body in 1 Corinthians 12. Everyone is a limb of the same body. No one has all the gifts, and thus each can help others and receive help. In verse 12, he describes one type of person who can be found in every community: the hand who says that, because it's not an eye, it does not belong. "I want to be someone else; I wish I could lead the singing, or give the teaching, or conduct the healing ministry." They can't accept themselves for what they can do and so always wish they could do something else.

In verse 21 Paul discusses another common type--the eye that says because the foot is not an eye it doesn't belong to the body. "Everyone must do it my way! If you don't sing, pray, teach, counsel, exercise spiritual gifts, carry out the apostolate as I do, forget it!" The body is not all one type--thank God.

Koinonia is unity without uniformity; one body with many equal (underscore "equal" several times) members. There are two elements that must be kept in balance, in tension, and not set in opposition: (1) We are members one of another--there is one body, and there is unity; and (2) We all have different gifts, and are all unique--there cannot be uniformity.

This is Paul's point with his metaphor of the one body with many members, which echoes Jeremiah's prophecy of the new covenant:

Behold the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers ... I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts, and I will be their God and they shall be my people.--Jeremiah 31:31-33

On the one hand, this will be a covenant with the house of Israel and of Judah, and it renews the old covenant promise: "I will be their God and they will be my people." The new covenant continues the call into peoplehood that we traced from Abraham onward. The communal nature of the call of God is not nullified by the new covenant. On the other hand, the law will be written within each heart; each will know the Lord for [his or her self] and by [his or her self] (verse 34). A balance of the individual and the corporate, the unity of the body and the uniqueness of each member, is here expressed.

Two extremes must be avoided. If the unity of the body is stressed without an equal emphasis on respecting the differences of the members, totalitarianism results. Unity is equated with uniformity. Many religious-communal movements today are totalitarian; the diversity and uniqueness of each person is sacrificed for the sake of the unity of the body. If the uniqueness of each person is emphasized without an equal emphasis on the oneness of the body, anarchy results. Many revival movements have degenerated into charismatic chaos, congregations of loose spiritual atoms where each does his [or her] own thing. Here the freedom of individuals to know the Lord in their own ways and follow the law written in their own hearts is preserved, but the unity of the body is lost.

Koinonia is the transcending of these dichotomies; it is not a totalitarian state, nor is it a bag of loose spiritual parts. In koinonia the uniqueness of each member is preserved and cherished, but each freely lays down his [or her] life in service of others.

That is why Christian community is so crucial today. It is not like anything found in the world: Human camaraderie is not koinonia. That's why it's so hard to talk about--there are no models in the world for it. The church and the secular state know both anarchistic assemblies and totalitarian structures; but rarely, if at all, do they manifest koinonia: where uniqueness, diversity, and individuality are nourished, supported, and valued but where mutual submission, mutual service, and love bind all into one body. This is why we cannot adopt a blueprint or techniques from the world but must allow the Spirit to create koinonia.

IN THIS CONTEXT the critical concern of leadership must be addressed. The New Testament presents two leadership models. One is St. Paul. In 1 Corinthians 4 he deals sternly with the congregation: "Some are arrogant," he says. "When I come to you ... I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people but their power!" and "What do you wish? Shall I come to you with a rod, or with love in a spirit of gentleness?" (verses 18-21). He writes to the Corinthians again, "If I boast a little too much of our authority ... I will not be put to shame ... understand that what we say by letter when absent we do when present" (2 Corinthians 10:8-11).

Paul's firm leadership did not quench the Spirit but was rather inspired by it. Acts and the Epistles demonstrate time and time again that Spirit-inspired leadership is one way the community is built up. Many times I have visited communities and churches and prayer meetings in deep trouble because they lacked the gift of adequate leadership. Inadequate leadership is a block to the Spirit's work. Paul's example makes clear that in the early church firm leadership was not antagonistic to the Spirit but was a channel of the Spirit.

The other New Testament model of leadership is the Lord. In Mark 10 we find the words of Jesus that must be at the heart of any Christian discussion of leadership:

You know that those who are supposed to rule the Gentiles really dominate them, but it should not be so among you. Whoever would be great among you must be your servant and whoever would be first among you must be everyone's slave. For the Son of man also came not to be served but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many.

We have not only the words of Jesus, but also his example: a servant, a foot-washer, one who laid down his life for others. There is no place in the New Testament where Jesus demanded submission to his authority (except on the part of the evil spirits). No one can come in the name of Christ demanding submission to their authority.

There is no place where the way of the world and the way of the gospel diverge more drastically than in this area of leadership: "The rulers of the Gentiles really dominate them but it should not be so with you." There is no place where the great reversal of the world's values brought by the gospel is clearer than here: "The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep." How many of us can honestly say that the model of leadership we were taught in school, or observed in our elected officials, was one of laying down one's life for others? The good shepherd is not one who dominates others, who demands his authority be recognized, who pushes the sheep around; such is a thief and a robber. The good shepherd is the servant and the slave, not the master or the commander.

Servant Leadership
Leadership is service. The Lord's model must be followed. Even Paul, the firm pastor who boasts in his authority, writes to the Corinthians of his suffering on their behalf (2 Corinthians 1:3-11), and he tells them how they must treat someone who has caused him much pain--they must forgive him and take him back (2 Corinthians 2:1-11). The church must take this one who has opposed Paul and "forgive and comfort him, and reaffirm your love for him." This is how Paul deals with trouble makers.

Paul has a shepherd's heart. No harsh penalties, no demands for submission, but love and forgiveness lest the offender "be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow" and lest "Satan gain the advantage over us." I have known many Christian assemblies in which Satan has gained the advantage because people with a desire for obedience to their authority rather than a shepherd's heart dealt harshly and too quickly and uncaringly with people, thereby breeding bitterness and factionalism.

The way of the gospel is not the way of the world: In the church, everyone is a leader. Leadership is ministry, and the two Greek words for ministry (diaconia and leitourgia) both connote service. Diaconia, the word Jesus uses to describe himself in Mark 10 (43, 45), means "waiter" or "domestic servant." Leitourgia describes a public servant who performs duties for and on behalf of the body politic. All are servants, none is set permanently over the rest. No one has any authority over another except to wait on him; no one has dominion over others in any absolute way. I may teach you; in that case you are under my ministry. But when I help set up chairs for the meeting, I am under the direction of the person who coordinates that. Or, if I drive people to their apostolic work, I abide by someone else's schedule. Any submission is mutual.

1 Peter 5 makes this very clear. Pastors are to tend their flocks "not as dominating others (the Greek word is the same as what Jesus condemned in Mark 10:42) but by being examples" (verse 3). Christian leaders work not with coercion, domination, or constraint but by exemplifying servant-love. And in verse 5, Peter says, "Youngsters should submit themselves to those who are older and all of you submit yourselves to one another, clothed in humility." Mutual submission binds the body together. Mutual submission sums up, for Peter, Christian personal relations.

In Galatians, Paul makes the same point when describing how to treat someone who makes a mistake: "Restore him with gentleness. Look to yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another's burdens; this fulfills the law of Christ" (6:1-2). A wrongdoer is to be dealt with not in a spirit of self-righteous condemnation but gently and with understanding, lest the pastors learn the meaning of Jesus words "the judgment you give will be the judgment given you."

I know many horrible instances of leaders who, instead of looking to themselves, lest they be tempted, have self-righteously criticized others for their family life, children's behavior, or financial problems, only to find the same problems or worse cropping up in their own lives and the judgments they gave coming back to haunt them. Rather, we are to bear one another's burdens. Caring (not condemning), supporting (not judging)--these fulfill the law of Christ. Taking each other's burdens upon ourselves, as Christ took all our burdens to himself, binds us into his body.

Called into peoplehood, the new Israel is to carry out the mission of the old: being the priesthood of the universe, the servant-society for creation. Its form is to reflect its function: Characterized by joyful celebration and worship, mutual service of one another, compassion for the world for which Christ died, the body shows forth its head. Guided by the Spirit, koinonia is formed and governed in a way not found in the world--neither an authoritarian system nor an anarchistic cell, but a body bound together by love expressing itself in mutual submission and concern. Thus it anticipates the time when all creation will live under the headship of Christ and radiate his love.

James W. Jones was chair of the religion department at Rutgers University when this article appeared.