The church participates in the death of Christ

the life of the church lived in constant participation of the death of Christ produces a martyr-church.  It shares in the death of Christ through baptism and renews this when it breaks bread.  It admits the paradoxes of its own existence: its life is death-made, the bread it breaks is infinitely creative.  It affirms that Jesus cannot be the first Chrstian martyr, since there are no Christian martyrs except those who die the death of Christ. (p79)

I’m currently halfway through a really thought-provoking book: To Share in the Body: A Theology of Martyrdom for Today’s Church, by Craig Hovey (2008).  It’s a theological reading of the gospel of Mark, showing how this piece of Christian scripture calls the church to a life of cruciformity.

My own thinking is that this is precisely what Paul is doing in 1 Corinthians: Calling the Corinthians to inhabit the cross in the present, as they look ahead to participating fully in the future resurrection.  This means an orientation of dependence upon God, which will be expressed ethically in (at least) surrendering my own defiant sense of bodily ownership, and forgoing the exploitative exercise of my own rights in relation to others within the body of Christ.

In other words, the knowledge that our identity is tied up with Christ means that we can have confidence that when HE is revealed, WE too will finally share in the fullness of his glory.  This frees us up to pursue the pattern of the cross in the present: Thoughtfully, creatively, utterly giving ourselves up in the service of God and others… labouring to transform this world, knowing that “in the Lord, our labour is not in vain” – because God raises the dead (1 Cor 15:58).

Anyway, the book by Hovey is short, well-written, provocative, and worth a read.  I’ll finish with one more quote:

To identify with Christ in his death and resurrection is to identify with the church.  But this also makes sense only if the church is a martyr-church.  What does this mean?  It means that the church is characterized by the life of the resurrection only insofar as it undergoes the pain of the cross.  (p27)