holiness reconsidered

Andy Stanley is teaching a new series called "Brand: New", and in Week 5, he talks about the old Temple Model definition of holiness meaning "to set apart and remove yourself from"...but the Jesus Model meaning to get in there and "get your hands dirty".  How can the reconciling love of Christ be manifested and worked out without us mixing it up and getting dirty with our neighbors in the world?  

John Paul Lederach speaks beautifully on this in his book Reconcile: Conflict Transformation for Ordinary Christians:

"Over past centuries, some Christians, including Mennonites, my home denomination, have chosen to embody atonement and holiness by the motto, "We are in the world but not of the world."  (see John 17:11,16)  We use this text to support notions of nonconformity.  We say this means that we choose not to live conformed to the pressures around us but rather by the standards and ethics of the kingdom of God (see also Romans 12:2).  

In practice, this has often been applied as removing ourselves from the world, pulling back, and isolating our communities from the world.  Because of our concern for holiness, we try to control the environment around us so that we will have less opportunity to fall and fail.  In our practice we have placed the emphasis on the "not of the world" portion of the motto.

Ironically, God through Jesus seems to have approached holiness and atonement with an emphasis on the "in the world" part of the motto.  The world is a messy, violent, and broken place.  God's model child, Jesus, was needed in the world to provide the distinctive direction.  This would be something different from the way people were acting and carrying on.  By God's example through Jesus, "to be in but not of the world," means that we move toward human troubles and choose to the live in the messiness.  That way the alternative of God's reconciling love can be made known.

From such a view, atonement and holiness are not about establishing proper ritual and merely maintaining individual purity.  Atonement and holiness are about entering relationships and starting dynamic social processes that help create the space for a new humanity to emerge.  We choose to journey toward and with those who have experienced the deepest division and separation because this is God's mission and Christ's example."  p.129-130 Reconcile John Paul Lederach  

Keep moving me toward, Lord!