Church, Missions, and the Path of Totality

Guest author:

Alan Howell

Director of Church Relations

The recent eclipse was certainly an impressive spectacle.  I’ve met people who traveled from across the country to make their way to the path of totality to experience just a few minutes of strange semi-darkness where the moon had completely blotted out the sun.  I ended up celebrating it at Sonic Drive-in, of all places, where one of my daughters was working that afternoon.  While it was a unique experience and a cause for celebrating, with special glasses and community gatherings, what if we also thought of it from an additional perspective?

Since light and darkness are important themes in Scripture, what if we considered the ways that different convictions and perceptions can also have the power to eclipse our view of God? How do they also warp the church's ability to participate in missions effectively?  What if this eclipse experience could also be a way of illuminating and drawing attention to things contributing to spiritual darkness?  While the eclipse is something rare, there are also some large cultural factors that are so commonplace, that we may not realize just how much our eyes have adjusted and accommodated to the darkness.

Racism / Colonialism – Love of one’s family, tribe, and kinfolk, is a good thing. But, when loyalty to our “own kind” eclipses the call to be kind and care for our fellow humans, the people of God have lost their way. Whiteness and Western domination have warped the world in tragic ways. The history of missions is full of stories where the Church hitched a ride with the Empire to share the gospel and ended up giving a different impression of what God is like. Some missionaries certainly resisted the pull of Colonialism and Racism, but the impact remains. In many parts of the world, Christianity is seen as a Western religion and the colonial inheritance has more often than we’d like to admit hidden the Christ from view. We all need to remember and rediscover the way that this Messiah from the Middle East showed the path to the good life, while also living under the boot of the Roman Empire. Recovering that vision can teach us all what it can look like to live faithfully and fruitfully even from the margins.  

Patriarchy / Male Domination – I was in a conversation recently with someone who was dealing with the fallout of a teacher who was telling people that a hierarchy of men over women was part of the design of creation. Apparently, this person had missed the fact that those verses he was clinging to (Genesis 3:16) appeared only after the "Fall" and were not part of God’s original design and were certainly not called, “good.” This person assumed that God's words about the consequences and fallout in the Adam and Eve story were prescriptive instead of descriptive of the challenges that humanity and creation would be facing. I found myself thinking of how in Genesis 1:14-19, God creates a greater light to govern the day and a lesser light to govern the night. But when we get to the creation of human beings, there is no greater or lesser type. Male and female alike both fully share in the image of God. When we lose sight of that fact, when we forget that the creation story and the spark of the New Creation story (the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, Acts 2) includes female and male, the gravity of missions will be warped. All of God’s children, regardless of gender, are full participants in reflecting the Creator’s glory to the nations.

Nationalism / Partisan Loyalties – When our loyalty to Christianity is tied to a political party or national agenda, its essence is polluted and poisoned. I recently heard Dan Rodriguez give a call to carefully consider whether we see ourselves as “American Christians” or “Christians in America.” By seeing our identity as “Christian in America,” we can be hospitable to fellow Christians (of whatever nationality or documented status) and be hospitable to potential Christians (everyone else) in our midst. Jesus’ disciples included the full spectrum of political perspectives of his day. How much do our churches reflect that diversity? Overheated political affiliation is linked to overworked national loyalty where we forget that the vision of the end of time includes people of every nation, tribe and tongue gathered around the throne (Rev. 7:9).

In 1 John 2:8, after a section where we are reminded that people who claim to know God should be marked by the way they reflect real love for one another, John observes that, the “darkness is passing and the true light is already shining” (NIV). While we may be living in the path of totality, the countdown clock is ticking down. The days of these dark powers are numbered, and the church is called to live in light of the coming reality and cheer the fading darkness, not foolishly cling to their shade. Looking to the waning eclipse as our source of hope will cause blindness, not sight. And living and serving as agents of light means finding our orbit and center of gravity around the full glory of God.

I’ll end with one more story. Years ago, while we were living in northern Mozambique, there was a partial eclipse. Announcements on the radio had prepared people for the event and without access to special glasses, parents were warned not to let their children stare at the sky. I remember the eerie shadows that day as I spent some time in an adjacent neighborhood. The paths were strangely empty and from where I was, I noticed that ringing out from the thatched roofs of mud huts around me was what sounded like the banging of metal spoons on pots and pans. I asked a friend about it, and he laughed a bit saying that the eclipse was making people nervous and some people who didn’t understand what was happening were frightened and they were making noise as a way of asking whatever was causing the disruption to go away and allow the sun to return in all its fullness. At the time, I tucked it away as a story of surprising cultural differences.  But, over the past few days, I’ve wondered if those people were wiser than I realized. What if, in a distinct way, the church is called to make similar noise, lifting voices in prayer, and calling attention through prophetic witness to what is causing the darkness, pleading, and hastening it on its way? Maybe it is a call to remind each other of the dangers of this darkness and tune our voices together in prayers of Maranatha or “Come Lord Jesus.”

May we not become complacent and blindly accept any object, no matter how large or formidable, that eclipses our view of the glory of God. May we resist the powers-that-be and refuse to be captivated by the low light that they allow. Let us defy the darkness and not let anything get in the way of following, full-heartedly, the Prince of Peace.