Perfil de la lámina de agua

In the last chapter of Trauma and Grace, Serene Jones shows a discomfort with “the fundamental dramatic structure of the sin-grace model” which remains unquestioned (2009:155). Jones holds that

“whether it was liberation theology, feminist theology, or substitutionary atonement theology (all of which rely on a version of the basic story line), the story bred an almost instinctual optimism about change that is hard to sustain” (Jones, 2009:155). “At the crudest level, it trains one to assume that if one works hard enough at healing, one will obtain what one asks for” (Jones, 2009:155). The “harsh fact” is “that the vast majority of trauma survivors reach the end of their lives still caught in its terrifying grip” (Jones, 2009:155). Serene Jones questions “how do we come to grips with the fact that a mind disordered and diseased by violence might well be one in which the very “imagining”

mechanism necessary for redemption has been broken … beyond repair” (2009:155).

26 Serene Jones engages in a search for a “trauma-wizened version of the sin-grace story” (2009:157).

The moment of simultaneous embrace, where the crucifixion narrative enables an individual to behold Christ while also being beheld, is significant for the process of discovering a new way of understanding grace. “What matters is the physical sensation of simultaneously loosing yourself (to pain, to fear, or to just the strangeness of the motion) and being safely held while it happens.

According to trauma theory, this off-kilter embrace enacts the therapeutic insight: by testifying and bearing witness, you intuitively learn to bear up under the weight of the trauma you are speaking”

(Jones, 2009:160). “Theologically, this strange embrace physically performs the promise that through grace, we are found, forgiven, and fortified by God” (Jones, 2009:160).

The “strange embrace” becomes the premise of a “trauma-wizened” grace argues Jones (Jones, 2009:

160):

Unlike the vanquishing of sin in the old story of sin-grace, this double motion of loss and support physically enacts the reality of being a sinner and a saint, not in succession but both at the same time.

Fully, we are undone and yet also held together in the strong grip of divine compassion.

An unexpected moment comes in the process of being “thrown open” when ones is “viscerally extended toward your surroundings” (Jones, 2009:160). “Theologically cast, the moment enacts the embodied grace feeling of accepting your life as a gift and a promise, and living in the expansive sense of time and space that this gift provides” (Jones, 2009:161).

Grace evokes “two habits of spirit” (Jones, 2009:161), which Jones calls “mourning and wonder”

(2009:161). Serene Jones admits (2009:161, 165):

Neither one answers the question that trauma poses to grace. They are, instead, states of mind that, if nurtured, open us to the experience of God’s coming into torn flesh, and to love’s arrival amid violent ruptures… At the edge of every thought, there resides the promise of both ever-deepening loss and insistently imposed newness … there is a space that both carries traumatic loss and yet remains open and new. This is a profoundly presentist vision of life, landing us hard in the here and now: to be saved is not to be taken elsewhere” neither is it “driven toward evolving resolution. It is to be awakened- to mourn and to wonder. And to stand courageously on the promise that grace is sturdy enough to hold it all.

Jones follows a similar logic when approaching the church as graced community. She starts her chapter on community by looking at the various critiques feminist theory has levelled at the church as social institution, after which she offers a new perspective.

In a discussion held with Serene Jones’ Tuesday-night group on the distinctiveness of the church as community, eight features came to the fore. (1) The church as community where “Scripture is recounted and listened to”, (2) within Scripture “the theme of community is sounded repeatedly,” (3)

“the story (of Scripture) is recounted in many different ways,” (4) “people have a rather peculiar relationship to this story.” (5) “Church as the community that imitates and performs²¹ us,” (6) “people describe themselves as “called²²” into this community by God,” (7) church as community takes precedence over other communities, but “the church never constructs our world in isolation from our other communal commitments: it normatively shapes us in the midst of them” (Jones, 2000:156-158).

21“The image of performance clarifies the way the church inhabits Scripture. It captures even better than imitation the theatrical dimensions of the church’s life in the narrative” (Jones, 2000:157).

22 In the act of being called, “divine initiative” is displayed. “The church thus experiences its existence as a gift”

(Jones, 2000:158).

27 The final characteristic of the church has to do with the often “unquestioned authority” it has been given in the past, “We knew from history that the church’s view of itself as chosen had justified horrendous acts of injustice against women and many other as well” (Jones, 2000:158). The final characteristic was thus the churches “identity as a sinful community” (Jones, 2000:159). The church consequently becomes a place where “those who have faith” (Jones, 2000:159) come together. Jones emphasises the “fallenness” (2000:159) of the church in “creating the golden calf” and “oppressing the poor” (Jones, 2000:159). For such instances, the “language of performance” is used by Jones; “the church simultaneously performs the roles of the righteous and the unrighteous - of both saints and sinners” (2000:159). The church is therefore “engaged in a continual process of internal critique-a process of continued reformation-lest its faith pronouncements and practices become destructive idols of its own creation” (Jones, 2000:159).

The reason for seeing the church as graced community is motivated by Serene Jones in the statement:

“While I am aware of the church’s ongoing sinfulness, I experience it as a place where I can respond to the Christian and feminist call to live in and struggle with communities of diversity seeking justice”

(2000:161). She continues to describe the church as one place where one can “live in intentional and diverse communities” (Jones, 2000:161).

The notion of simul iustus et peccator is applied to the church where “a collective people” “is similarly undone by divine judgment and remade by divine grace” (Jones, 2000:162). According to its status as simultaneously justified and sinner, the church as community is placed in the “defendant”

seat (Jones, 2000:162). Jones continues (2000: 163):

Standing under the judgment of the law, this church is not only condemned because of its false institutional pride and its arrogant functionalist pretensions: it is so levelled by the law that it can finally claim no special standing, in its own rite, before God.

As such, the church “is fully implicated in the sins of the world” (Jones, 2000:163) it too stands

“undone” before God (Jones, 2000:163) with no means of justifying itself from within itself. The church is only deemed “forgiven” when God pronounces the church “justified” through the reconciliation brought in Jesus Christ (Jones, 2000:163). “As such, it is a community whose identity comes to it from beyond itself. It receives the name “forgiven”” (Jones, 2000:163) and a “space is created where God’s will for human flourishing might be embodied, in this space, people might know God and be formed by God’s love” (Jones, 2000:170-171).

As result of the “alien righteousness” (Jones, 2000:56) being given to the church, it responds in thankfulness by proclaiming “God’s reconciling the world to Godself in Jesus Christ” an act which is in itself a “performance” (Jones, 2000:163). A performance which recognises its “full implication in the sin the cross reveals” (Jones, 2000:163). With Luther’s emphasis of the justified community of believers, Serene Jones turns to Calvin’s doctrine of the church.

Calvin displays a different approach to the “institutional aspects of ecclesial life” than Luther, where Luther, “realizes that the earthly church inevitably takes institutional form, his basic disposition toward authority and institutions is largely negative” (Jones, 2000:165). “Calvin, in contrast, dwells on the institutional features of ecclesial existence: he delights in them, struggles with them, and in his own life tried to shape them” (Jones, 2000:165). Serene Jones attributes Calvin’s “positive references to the church” (2000:165) in his vocation as teacher of ministry students (Jones, 2000:165). These ministry students were headed for “parishes in France”, where they were “actively persecuted” and was intent on “fostering forms of community resilient enough to resist outside forces seeking to destroy them” (Jones, 2000:165). Accordingly, Jones believes the doctrine of sanctification to be “one

28 of the responses to the hardships faced by the community” (2000:165). “Calvin’s doctrine of the church therefore focuses more on the processes by which a faith community is formed and maintained than on the monetary juridical decision central to Luther’s account of community” (Jones, 2000:165).

The particular characteristic of grace as “envelope” (Jones, 2002c:60) has the similar function in a communal reading, “the church as a communal context in which people are pulled together and given defining practices and institutional form by a sanctifying grace” (Jones, 2000:165). This understanding of sanctification extends to two metaphors; the church as “God’s accommodation” and the church as “Mother” (Jones, 2000:166). The church as God’s accommodation is for Serene Jones

“The external means or aims by which God invites us into the society of Christ and holds us therein”

(2000:166), “the central drama of the sanctified life in its corporate dimensions” (Jones, 2000:166).

Here, “God’s grace welcomes us into it and then contains and embraces us once we arrive” (Jones, 2000:166).

The church as mother underscores the “forming power of Christian community” (Jones, 2000:167):

“Just as a child is knit together in her mother’s womb, the people of faith are conceived and brought to life in the corporate body of the church” (Jones, 2000:167). Two implicit images are noteworthy for Serene Jones, “the material and embodied ways in which the church forms us” (2000:167). “In the womb of the Christian community, we are pulled together and refashioned in a manner that contradicts the chaos of sin and gives us new patterns of living in Christ’s life” (Jones, 2000:167).

The two “moments” (Jones, 2002:55) provide the graced community with “the convictional ground for understanding the importance of “the excellence of practices.” Justification complements “this understanding of forming grace by stressing “the freedom of practices” (Jones, 2002:55). Serene Jones has illustrated in the doctrine of justification and sanctification how grace deconstructs the brokenness of humanity while creating a forum wherein the brokenness may be healed. The community of faith undergoes a similar process, termed “bounded openness” (Jones, 2000: 170). Serene Jones underscores the notion of “bounded openness” in her feminist ecclesiology. A feminist ecclesiology serves to continue the affirmation of agency in both the individual and the community of believers.