Posted 759 days ago
Why Do We Need a Rule of Life?
by Christine Sine, Mustard Seed Associates
Why a rule of life, you might ask? We sense that God’s spirit is currently speaking through many voices around the globe about the need for a more embodied, incarnational faith and we want to join in what God is doing. Developing a Rule of Life is an important step in that process. According to the Northumbria Community, “a Rule of life expresses ‘who we are, this is our story’ and reminds us of those things God has put on our heart, and calls us back to the story that God has written as foundational. Monastic stability is to be accountable to a Rule of Life as a framework for freedom, not as a set of rules that restrict or deny life, but as a way of living out our vocation alone and together. It is, to use the words of St Benedict, ‘simply a handbook to make the radical demands of the gospel a practical reality in daily life.’” 1
The Celtic monastic model centered around the formation of communities (monasteries) in which the members undertook to follow a common lifestyle and maintain shared disciplines of prayer and worship. Monks mixed manual, intellectual and spiritual labor, maintaining a balance between engagement in the world and withdrawal from it. These communities provided a focus for the life of the surrounding community as a whole. Members of the surrounding community made different forms of commitment and adhered to a variety of rules that acknowledged and affirmed their gifts and ministry.
In his recent book Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, NT Wright asserts that Christianity’s most distinctive idea is bodily resurrection. After his resurrection, Jesus was a flesh-and-blood person, and Wright contends that we will be too. He further argues that if we truly believe this than it will impact the way we live our lives now. If God intends to renew all of creation and all of life—a process already begun in the resurrection of Jesus—then our responsibility as Christians is to anticipate this renewal by working for hope and healing in today’s world.
So how can we learn to live as wide-awake people, as Easter people? […] In particular if Lent is a time to give things up, Easter ought to be a time to take things up […] If Calvary means putting to death things in your life that need killing off if you are to flourish as a Christian and as a truly human being, then Easter should mean planting, watering, and training up things in your life (personal and corporate) that ought to be blossoming, filling the garden with color and perfume and in due course bearing fruit. 2
Our belief in God’s dream for the redemption and restoration of all the dimensions of life that were distorted and corrupted by the Fall is at the core of Mustard Seed Associates. Our relationship to God will be redeemed and made whole, our relationships to others will be restored, our inner being will be made whole and our relationship to God’s creation will be restored. Through the redemptive work of Christ, one day together with sisters and brothers of every culture, from every age, we will be made whole and live together in the love, joy and mutual concern of God’s original creation.
According to NT Wright all the gospels make the same point: “Jesus is risen, therefore God’s new world has begun. Jesus is risen, therefore Israel and the world have been redeemed. Jesus is risen, therefore his followers have a new job to do. And what is that new job? To bring the life of heaven to birth in actual, physical earthly reality.” 3
To live as wide awake Easter people and embody God’s resurrection-created world, we need discipline and intentionality. A Rule of Life provides guidelines that make this possible. This is still a work in progress and we would appreciate your feedback and suggestions.
A Rule of Life for Mustard Seed Associates: A Work in Progress.
MSA is a network of individuals and communities of the followers of Jesus that seek to embody the aspirations and values of God’s resurrection world of restoration and wholeness (the shalom kingdom) by:
- Reflecting, wherever possible, the image of our loving God.
- Responding to the growing needs in our changing world by focusing our lives on God’s redemptive work in the world.
- Living a life that recognizes that God’s new world has begun and celebrates the wild hope of the resurrection.
As a result we want to encourage followers of Jesus to work towards:
1. A redeemed (restored) relationship to God, seeking intimacy with God through:
- Regular individual prayer and scripture study
- Regular corporate worship balanced with times of listening in solitude: meditative and contemplative prayer.
- Confession of sins
- Development of disciplines that encourage a balance between spiritual and secular, community and solitude, work and rest: “Learn the unforced rhythms of grace” (Matt 11:28).
2. A redeemed (restored) relationship to God’s worldwide community through:
- Practice of a common life with others: recognizing that God comes to us in community and that community is essential for Christian faith; actively seeking support and accountability.
- _Hospitality and celebration: “let everyone be received as Christ”; celebrating the in-breaking of God’s resurrection world with others.
- Simple living: un-cluttering our lives to focus on participating in God’s resurrection life; give me neither poverty nor riches (Proverbs 30)
- Solidarity with the marginalized: “act justly, love mercy” (Micah 6:8)
- Economic stewardship that encourages mutual care: “where your treasure is there your heart will be also” (Matt 6:24).
- _Service in the broader community: not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of others (Phil 2:4).
3. A redeemed relationship with our own inner being through:
- Discovering our identity in Christ: “do not conform to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Rom 12:2).
- Commitment to healing personal wounds from the past: “by his stripes we are healed”
4. A redeemed relationship with God’s creation through:
- Responsible ecological stewardship: responding to the fact that “the earth is the Lord’s & the fullness there of” (Ps24:1).
- Connection to the God revealed through creation
Notes
1. from Northumbria rule
2. N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York: Harper Collins, 2007), pp. 255-257.
3. Ibid., 293.
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Reader Comments
too many times we focus on orthodoxy and forget orthopraxy. we have to LIVE BY that rule… not just believe it to be true. Christianity is based on more than just a belief but a practice of that belief… and we, as a whole, cannot forget that. we have to stop sugar coating everything and get in the mud and get dirty. show people christianity isn’t in the suburbs but in the dark places of the cities.
Great to read and think over your approach to living out a rule of grace that frees us from forever retreating to our individualistic and disconnected faith.
I live amongst a community of Christ-followers who have been living out community for the last 30+ years in the rural/outback communities of Australia (largely NSW/Queensland/Victoria)
We are a mission order – largely made up of people who are from evangelical backgrounds, but recognising that we must have a ‘whole of life’ approach to making the life of the Kingdom a reality and not just talk.
grace and peace
Ben
Ben Johnston » 624 days ago » Link