I’m into Hauerwas’ Christian Existence Today this weekend.

it is a community whose memory of its Savior creates the miracle of being a people whose very differences contribute to their unity p.53

The church as witness to God’s work for us in Israel and Jesus of Nazareth means that here the teller and the tale are one. For this is not just another possible story about the way the world is, it is the story of the world as created and redeemed by God. That story, the story of the world, cannot be told rightly unless it includes the story of the church as God’s creation to heal our separateness

…we really do have an alternative to Babel, to fear of one another, and finally then to war. Even more happily it means that insofar as we are the church, we do not just have an alternative, but we are the alternative. We do not have a story to tell but in the telling we are the story being told.
p. 54

We ARE the alternative.  It just doesn’t seem that way most of the time.  Are we supposed to be satisfied with that?  Is that the “norm” that God expects?  Is what God expects a “realistic” thing?  Probably not.  But who’s “realistic” are we talking here?  In what reality? (There’s only one that is REALITY,  the others are claims;  metanarratives which we do well to recognize;  to “Name the Powers” (with a nod to Walter Wink’s book)