Deep roots and new shoots.
When we decided to move to Canada, settling in Lethbridge, I saw an image during a time of prayer that proved to be illustrative about all that we would learn during our time there. It began deep under the earth, where the taproot of a vine moved its way up through the soil. As the vine ventured further, it interacted with different terracotta gardening pots submerged in the ground, buried just beneath the surface. Some of the pots looked cracked, showing signs of deterioration. Other pots had plants whose roots looked cramped, while others contained dried up heathers that looked to have died. The vine broke through each pot and connected to the different plants rejuvenating them above ground. As they grew upwards, the plants took on a more remarkable likeness to the vine, yet each maintained something of their distinctiveness.
As I prayed about this, I heard an invitation.
"I want to teach you about the catholic and apostolic roots of the faith."
I intuitively knew that the stem from the taproot moving up through the earth was the Lord Jesus Christ, the living vine (John 15), and the movement through the earth signified "the faith once delivered to all the saints" (Jude 1:3). When I prayed further about the pots, I sensed that these represented the different denominations across the body of Christ. The submerged pots could suggest the hidden boundary markers that shape and define the current ecclesiastical scene. What might God be doing in these days, delivering us from our potbound ways and crumbling structures of terracotta tribalism?
In May 2014, we moved into our new condo in Lethbridge. The condo complex is called Legacy Crossing, situated in a larger neighbourhood called Legacy Ridge. Both those place names also proved to be parabolic. Here is the essence of the parable:
What if time was not merely linear, where tick follows tock and days pass to weeks, months to years? What if time were a hill or a mountain? On that peak, there is a ridge where Jesus (the head of all things) stands in the place of highest honour and glory, the living legacy of God. He waits to show you the fulness of that glory stretching out on either side of the ridge. Back into the past throughout the Old Testament and forward through the New Testament, into the future beyond you.
I am mixing my metaphors, I know, roots and ridges. But notice the shared movement in both images. Upwards. It is the call of every Christian to look and live upwards. "Set your minds on things above where Christ is seated at the right of God" (Col 3:1). Our call is to participate in heavenly realities, bearing witness to the eternal gospel that does not change, and to see the Kingdom of God, which is at hand, established here on the earth, "on earth as it is in heaven."
In the June of 2014, we returned to Scotland to square away our belongings and honoured commitments in our calendars. In September, we returned to Canada to discover something strange in our new home. In the time we had been away, a little vine had managed to grow up through our home's foundations and concrete basement floor! Once inside, it crept along the skirting (base) board of our spare room with its delicate, green leaves hunting for light. The mortified builder, who in all his years of construction had "never had something like this happen," came to remove the vine and check for any structural damage, not before I could understand what this sign was pointing to and was participating in. We were here to learn about the apostolic and catholic roots of the faith. We were here to cross over into God's living legacy in his Son; we were here to learn to climb the ridge of time and to participate in heavenly realities. Interestingly, three years later, when our son Brennan was born, his cot was positioned right over the place where the green shoot had crept along the skirting board. That's the thing about legacy, it is to be passed on.
The term "catholic" means "according to the whole" and was first coined by St Ignatius of Antioch in the second century to emphasize the universal scope of the church. Under the headship of Christ, she is the bearer of Good News that rings out the same in all places and times, in ancient Gaul and modern Glasgow. "Apostolic" means to be sent. Sent in the same manner as the early apostles were sent, in the way that the Father sent his Son, humbly with all power and authority. Additionally, the "apostolic" nature of the church safeguards her from the error of heresy or any practice that would derail the invitation into Life in all its fullness, for our sentness is rooted back in Christ and his apostles. He is man's builder of faith through the ages and holds up a true plumb line throughout history, judging error and nurturing life through the Holy Spirit who has filled and inspired godly leaders.
It is in and through Holy Scripture and Christ's church that we receive a faith that is catholic and apostolic, and such a faith in Christ places us into God's ongoing mission and into his living body of redeemed people. To be a 'wise master builder' in any generation is to look back over your shoulder, or perhaps under your feet, and ask am I building upon and in the faith once delivered to all the saints? Is the loveliness of Jesus front and centre in all that I do? Or, have I been potted in a lesser issue or cause, however noble, and the catholic or apostolic rootedness in my discipleship is now obscured?
As you sit with these questions, know that you are not alone. Christ, the living vine, invites you to ever-deepening friendship and communion with him as together we learn to abide in Him.
Apart from him, we can do nothing. In and through him, we can do all things.