. . . the church in its historical concreteness functions as a gesture and a signal pointing towards Jesus Christ by doing what it ordinarily does and being what it ordinarily is: the proclaimers and audience of the Word of God, the theater of the various acts of the Holy Spirit. The church is [the] sign of God in its flesh and blood reality as Corpus Christi, as communities, as gatherings, as communion in these elements that are always human, creaturely, sinful, yet holy in the hands of the holy God. . . . Under and in and through this sign we know God. And this is, itself, the musterion, is it not? This is, itself, the bearing witness, the representing of the sacrament of God, the sign of the incarnation, the incarnation that is Jesus Christ, Emmanuel; the church is the sign that endures in its fragile humanity because it does not endure in its own power but endures precisely in the power of an-Other, the one whose name consists in not being named. And from this vantage point, from under, within and through this sign, we at last see and know — God.
Michael Jinkins, The Church Faces Death (Oxford: 1999), 84.
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