Iconic or ironic christian communities?

By Filip

12 Oct 2007

Scot McKnight got me thinking about his often used biblical word ‘eikon’ (imago dei – tselem). Basically he is saying that we are created after Gods image (eikon) but are cracked in four directions or dimensions: yourself, God, the other and the world. The letter of Paul to the Collosians (chp. 3) is very helpfull in this respect. From there on he concludes in one of his talks that we tend to jump from the cracked bit (Gen 3) to the restored bit (Rom 3). No middle part, a very individualstic approach indeed. What is the role of community in shaping and reshaping and restoring the image of God, the eikon?

Do we become iconic communities or ironic communities (I couldn’t resist the play on words)? Do read the definition of Irony on wikipedia.

So what I did in a sermon is showing the members of our church the perfect icon (Jesus) and then placed all the pictures of individual of our community in a mosaic way (oops another play on words?) on Jesus the eikon.

I believe in a very real sense we do reflect the image of God in an individual way but that morning I wanted them to see that the community in its entire being reflects Jesus. Does that make sense? Is this a rightfull adaptation of what it means to be an icon?

Flip

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  1. Comment by Jonny

    10.11 am on 12 Oct 2007

    interesting stuff Flip. I got me thinking: could Jesus have achiveved his mission with out a community around him? Often we can get caught into talking about Jesus and his individual mission [particuarly in tems of atonement] and seprating him from the stroy of God’s people and the community of follwers he had around him who he loved and taight to love each other.

    … incomplete thoughts there…. but I occurs to me when I read “any one who has seen me has seen the Father” – I often don’t take into account Jesus’ relating to him community as part of that, but instead see it as some sort of “inner quality” [in a Platonic sense]. I wonder if i need to let my thinking be expanded there.

  2. Comment by filip

    10.28 am on 12 Oct 2007

    In one sense there is this trinitarian community Jesus is part of. In another sens we are His body. At the same time we need to acknowledge that Jesus was one His own in the garden of Getsemane. the community was a sleep, not that He didn’t ask him to stay awake.

    Just got a link in that makes this whole image dei thinking very practical: http://www.imagodeicommunity.com/information/mission/vision/

  3. Comment by filip

    10.29 am on 12 Oct 2007

    Should have said “not that He didn’t ask THEM to stay awake”.

  4. Comment by Jonny

    10.34 am on 12 Oct 2007

    thanks filip,
    yes of course the trinitarian aspect is of vital importance [that exscaped me as a posted that comment].
    also your commenr reminded me of something i think NT Wright says – along the lines of “Jesus did on the cross what the people of God could not do for themselves.”
    … still plenty to think about.
    ta, Jonny

  5. Comment by Paul

    9.25 am on 13 Oct 2007

    Thanks Filip. Maybe one of the roles of the community as an icon is to help deconstruct the ideal that church is perfectly good or perfectly bad – that life is an ongoing mix of feast and famine, of the ordinary and the miraculous, of God close and God far?

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