(March 10, 2000) -- In considering mission and Scripture today, Christians need to preserve a sense of urgency in inviting others to the "dance" of faith both for their own sake and the sake of others.

"Our invitations are urgent, but they are invitations to feasting and dancing at the bridegroom's (Christ's) wedding reception, not to judgment," Dr. Robin Mattison said. In issuing our urgent invitations, "we must put aside our fiction of American 'rugged individualism.' Scripture makes clear that, as individuals, we are always socially tied to a specific gender, race, national origin, age and social class. The values, particularly the economic power associated with these characteristics in any culture, shape our invitations, especially if we don't pay attention to them. We need to think of ourselves as part of a social location of the entire Christian community, as well as the world. We need the interrelationships of all the connections we have." Otherwise, Mattison said, we run the risk of ignoring the largest dimensions of our daily life and faith. Most often, we thereby miss opportunities for mission that have powerful implications for our commitment to bring rejoicing and justice to "the ends of the earth" and "the end of the ages."

Dr. Mattison, Associate Professor of New Testament and Greek at The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, was the third and final speaker in the Seminary's Spring Biblical Lecture Series dealing with Mission in the New Century. She used wedding dance metaphors throughout her address, entitled "The Patter(n) of Beautiful Feet: New Testament Models for Mission."

"Thinking of others and ourselves in social context will permit us to reconsider our mission dance protocols, such as who invites, who gives permission for the dancing, who leads, and even who is in charge of what steps are done and what music is played," Mattison said. "We, as friends and relatives of the bridegroom, Jesus Christ, may find our mission invitations scandalize others. In the New Testament it is often the religious authorities of the invitee's former tradition who wish to deny permission for even the poorest members of the family to accept an invitation to the dance. So, offense and rejection will happen, but that must not impede our urgent invitations," she said. "So get over thinking Christians can witness without dissension following. However, the disruption brought about by having a great dance to which to invite people is what Paul identifies as the necessary suffering for the Gospel, which accompanies our rejoicing in the Good News." Mattison reminded her listeners that our efforts "are an extension of the Gospel and not the Gospel itself…How we do our inviting and the dance itself is to the glory of God" and is not simply a reflection of who does the inviting. Ultimately, the dancers are not to be looking into each others' eyes, but dancing to the glory of God. She concluded by sounding an urgent note about the importance of the invitation, "As Gene Kelly sang in An American in Paris, 'Gotta dance!'"

Mattison, a resident of Philadelphia's West Mt. Airy section, has taught at the Seminary since 1989. She holds her doctorate from Vanderbilt University (1995). Prior to joining the Seminary faculty, she taught at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, MI, and served as a campus pastor in Madison, WI.