tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-266984422024-03-07T18:36:48.584-05:00Theologia ViatorumTheology For Wayfarers and others along the wayPatrick McManushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717639457555961172noreply@blogger.comBlogger34125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26698442.post-17169271633326451562009-03-26T15:58:00.007-04:002009-03-30T10:12:01.268-04:00God of Light, God of Darkness<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-LUf5NhwfjN3-A3f7AEoUnW_4BlJp6NBej-LNT1oKFTVl6fgXZZtLrMR5CPDpRh5kFzvdzpOHPqtZgXNL45RWTaISHaK3OaolE1T903EPQAtZu7C0hDPxftuXvEp8yxVgMF16EA/s1600-h/168814086_f3903c04eb_o.jpg"></a><br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family:'trebuchet ms';font-size:13px;"><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align: center;color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">A Lenten Homily</span></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align: center;color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: bold; line-height: 19px;font-family:arial;">John 3:14-21</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align: left;color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">As a university student, I used to <span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">plant trees in Northern Ontario as a summer job.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">It was hard work, rising early, planting as much as you could in the daylight and resting during the night. On occasion, on really, really nice days, when the morning planting had been going well, one of my favorite things to do would be, after my lunch break, to stretch out under a <span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">large tree and take a well earned nap.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I would lie there in the darkness of a deep sleep, on a bed of moss, or of dry earth with a <span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">warm summer breeze blowing over me, until I would wake up to the light of the midday sun shining down on me through the cracks in the canopy of maple or oak or birch leaves that <span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">occupied the space between the light of the sun and my eyes.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-LUf5NhwfjN3-A3f7AEoUnW_4BlJp6NBej-LNT1oKFTVl6fgXZZtLrMR5CPDpRh5kFzvdzpOHPqtZgXNL45RWTaISHaK3OaolE1T903EPQAtZu7C0hDPxftuXvEp8yxVgMF16EA/s320/168814086_f3903c04eb_o.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5318980922417661186" style="float: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px; " /><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align: left;color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I still recall those moments in vivid memory—those moments of waking, of blinking at the invading light, adjusting to being awake again, getting my bearings, taking stock of what the rest of the day held in store as I lay on the forest floor—in those moments, coming into the light was beautiful and sublime.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Of course, at other times in my life—like when my mom would throw open the curtains on a Monday morning at 7 am to rush me out of bed so that I would make it to school on time—coming into the light, being awakened by the brightness of the morning was a less than beautiful event…it was downright maddening for a teenager—in fact, it’s still downright maddening for a grown man, </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">but that’s just between you and me.</span></span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">You see, coming into the light can be, at times beautiful and, at other times, maddening—and sometimes, coming into the light, at its most intense, can be both at once.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Think about the birth of a child.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">This beautiful act of coming into the light of the world is accompanied by pain, stress, crying, and maybe the occasional freak out by the attending husband (again, </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">this is just between you and me</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">)—you see, it’s madness and beauty all wrapped up together.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The light that invades and displaces the darkness is the light of God; in fact, here in John’s gospel light is another way of speaking about the life of God himself, who in Jesus assaults the darkness of the world.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The shining of this light is itself both beauty and agony, which is something the season of Lent asks us to remember as we approach Good Friday where we learn that the beauty of God is all tied up in the agony and madness of the cross of Jesus.</span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Being drawn into this light is both maddening and beautiful.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">This light of God, this light that Jesus shines into our world displaces and dispels our darkness—which is beautiful in itself.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">But it’s maddening because, as Jesus says, we love the dark—and not just the darkness of a good sleep.</span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">This passage in John comes on the heels of Nicodemus’ coming to Jesus to question him. </span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">He comes to Jesus, in the darkness of night. "Night" is, in the gospel of John always more than the darkness of night. It’s ignorance; it's sight, but it's an obscured sight; it’s confusion.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> It's odd to find Nicodemus here "by night"</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">. You see, Nicodemus is one who knows. He's a “leader” in the religious establishment, a smart person, a learned person, a church person, if you will.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Nicodemus is us, those of us “on the inside track”—but he’s still in the dark.</span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">We, as people, love the dark because it’s there that we feel safe, don’t we?; we feel safe because it’s only in the dark that we feel as if our secrets won’t betray us as they would if we found ourselves in the brightness of the light.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">In the light we can’t help but be exposed and that’s maddening because we don’t trust each other with our secrets, let alone do we trust God.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">We feel as if coming into the light might somehow expose us as in some way less than loveable by God and by each other—and that makes us anxious and fearful.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Anyone who’s kept a secret, anyone who’s harbored a lie deep down within themselves knows this fear—and that’s to say we all know this fear.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Not only fear, but this madness can easily slip into hatred of each other because it’s easier to hate each other than to live truthfully with each other.</span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">But learning to blink at this light, as I like to think Nicodemus did when we find him later in the Gospel of John preparing Jesus' body for burial is what salvation is all about. L<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'trebuchet ms'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">earning to slowly allow the light of God’s love to illumine our lives, darkness and all, learning to see the light of God’s love through the cracks in our lives is another way of speaking about conversion.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Not many people experience the blinding light of God’s love like Paul did on the road to Damascus—though its been known to happen.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">No, for most of us, recognizing God’s light in our lives is a slow process; it’s a slow opening of the eyes, like after a deep and heavy sleep; the darkness doesn’t just vanish but as we learn to see in God’s light, as our eyes adjust to what life looks like, or ought to look like on God’s terms, we’ll notice that the darkness of our lives cannot help but be slowly exposed—<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">and that that’s ok</span>.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">We ought to be a community that trusts God and each other with our darkness, with our secrets. We are called as the church to learn to be a community that knows trust and love as living alternatives to fear and hatred.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Coming to the Lord’s table—being a eucharistic community—means that we commit ourselves, weekly, to a way of life where, whether we like it or not, we are implicated in living in the light.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> If I were honest with you, s</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">ome weeks I’d rather hide in the darkness than to be implicated in this exposure…but again, </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">this is just between you and me</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Regardless of our proclivity for the absence of this light, the beauty of all of this is that God does love us and that God does transform us, in spite of ourselves, from lovers of the darkness to lovers of the light, from lovers of clandestine fear to lovers of the truth, the truth about ourselves, about God and about each other, no matter how maddening we might find that to be.</span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Let us pray.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span style=""></span></p><blockquote><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Relentless God, you pursue us with your light; you invade our darkness with the maddening light of your Son Jesus.</span></span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">We’d rather live in the darkness and, if we were honest with ourselves, we’d rather you leave us alone.</span></span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">But you don’t.</span></span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">You pursue us, and you catch us; you catch us up in your love.</span></span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">And when we get past our compulsive desire to be alone—to be in the dark—we find ourselves in this</span></span></span></span><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> community, implicated in your way of life as your eucharistic people.</span></span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Prepare us again this morning to walk in your light and may we live that light into the darkness of our world. Thanks be to God.</span></span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Amen.</span></span></span></span></blockquote><span style=" ;font-size:12pt;"></span><p></p></span>Patrick McManushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717639457555961172noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26698442.post-46014910475344255582009-03-26T15:43:00.007-04:002009-03-26T16:06:31.665-04:00A Funeral Homily<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 19px; font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><div style="text-align: center;"><blockquote></blockquote><blockquote></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">A Funeral Homily</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">preached at Moore Chapel</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">Opatovsky Funeral Home</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">Sundridge, ON</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">March 26, 2009</span></div><div><br /></div></span><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 19px;font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: normal; font-size:13px;"><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; text-align: center; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Century Gothic'; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Our Stubborn God</span></span></b></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; text-align: center; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Century Gothic'; min-height: 15px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Century Gothic'; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I met Bob at our first wardens meeting when my family and I first came to the parish a year and a half ago. Bob, at the time, was a warden at St. George the Martyr Anglican Church in Magnetawan as well as its treasurer. I was just remarking to Shirley a few days ago about how much one person can do—about how important one person can be in the whole scheme of things and what a gap they can leave when they’ve gone. Well, in our church, with the loss of Bob, he’s left a huge gap. Bob was determined and tireless in his work for the church and for his community—people like Bob are hard to come by. Bob was, to say the least, one of a kind. He was an Anglican’s Anglican. He took his faith seriously and he treated the life of the church as if it were an extension of his very own. He was also inseparable from Shirley—they were a team, a pair in ministry as they were in life. </span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Century Gothic'; min-height: 15px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Century Gothic'; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Bob was also very stubborn. It seems as if it was built into him. Shirley and I spoke about this one day on our way up to see Bob in North Bay as he was fighting his cancer. From our very first meetings, when I first came to the parish, he would stick to his guns, clarify his points, and he would push them through, and he had no problem telling me the way it was—he was indeed a force to be reckoned with! Now some people take stubbornness as a less than desirable quality—but, in the case of Bob, I appreciated Bob’s tenacity—his doggedness; in fact, I think it was a blessing to the church. In other words, Bob was a gift for the church and a gift to his community. I say this because Bob embodied a way of life that reminded me a lot about what we, as Christians, confess about God. I’m not sure Bob knew this or not, and I never did get the chance to tell him—but he knows now—that he reminded me consistently that our God is a stubborn and tenacious God. </span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Century Gothic'; min-height: 15px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Century Gothic'; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The God of Israel, the God of Jesus Christ, the God of the church is a God who doesn’t let us go despite our faithlessness; God is a God of persistence, a God who will not let his point go; a God who relentlessly pursues us in this life with the light of his love and who catches us up in that love in our deaths. This God is a force to be reckoned with! Bob knows this God and this God knows Bob; and now that he has died into the life of this God, Bob knows this God to be even more stubborn than he was! And thank God for that! </span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Century Gothic'; min-height: 15px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Century Gothic'; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">God’s whole point in Jesus Christ is resurrection</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">—</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">the turning of death into life; the miracle of light exploding the darkness of our lives </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">and</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> our deaths. And so, while the death of someone we love, like we loved Bob, is certainly a time for mourning</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">—for mourning a real loss—it is much more deeply a time to celebrate hope; to celebrate the hope that God doesn’t leave us alone, that God is so insistent on his point, so stub</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">born for us, so unrelenting in getting his way that he won’t leave us alone. He hasn’t left Bob alone and he doesn’t leave you alone Shirley, or your children. He doesn’t leave any of us alone and we thank our stubborn God for that. </span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Century Gothic'; min-height: 15px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Century Gothic'; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Amen & Amen. </span></span></p></span></span></div></div>Patrick McManushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717639457555961172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26698442.post-89806181966358591002008-10-17T10:14:00.006-04:002008-10-17T11:57:55.630-04:00Our new little boy!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkCssAYX-2Na7WYMNZbO1o_1CXOHrkwwmrPSrLZIqIfcJl0J9dFlQmarQslvOCkLWdSyVlxv4zSbuKGvoMJvGR9FfpKUpdbxz3KcY-2vcqUaZG1wRwDRKt1NNNT3ziizy_OnI4-Q/s1600-h/_MG_0412.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkCssAYX-2Na7WYMNZbO1o_1CXOHrkwwmrPSrLZIqIfcJl0J9dFlQmarQslvOCkLWdSyVlxv4zSbuKGvoMJvGR9FfpKUpdbxz3KcY-2vcqUaZG1wRwDRKt1NNNT3ziizy_OnI4-Q/s320/_MG_0412.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5258126869152326226" border="0" /></a>Our new little boy arrived about a week and a half ago and is doing very well. I've taken a parental leave from the parish and will be home for the next two months.<br /><br />You can read about our home birth on my wife's blog <a href="http://reneeanneblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/our-new-baby-has-arrived.html">here</a>.<br /><br />This is a picture I managed to snap of his older brother, giving him a kiss! He's very excited to be a big brother.Patrick McManushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717639457555961172noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26698442.post-37425950220776440562008-10-02T08:57:00.002-04:002008-10-02T09:01:05.900-04:00Mix self-indulgence, a little bit of ignorance and what do you get?A Piece of Crap!<img onload="if (typeof uet == 'function') { uet('af'); }" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/5159HAG%2ByHL._SL500_AA240_.jpg" id="prodImage" width="240" height="240" border="0" alt="Constantine's Sword" />Patrick McManushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717639457555961172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26698442.post-83561279480684354472008-04-24T08:48:00.010-04:002008-12-08T18:54:56.294-05:00Lars, the Real Girl and Foucault<div style="text-align: left;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1-lC5YXjidbAa_v5dGda4Lm-plvTJpafY-AsvWDPglTyh4DVDG6xQM3R4H9BNMQW7-fT9ZqdsMaTfcCx4-8SYp1yUS9gMkFxE_ZHeWeVGx3NpJRDgqCyEmTp5PU5Nl8RjbYgTHQ/s1600-h/lars-and-the-real-girl.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1-lC5YXjidbAa_v5dGda4Lm-plvTJpafY-AsvWDPglTyh4DVDG6xQM3R4H9BNMQW7-fT9ZqdsMaTfcCx4-8SYp1yUS9gMkFxE_ZHeWeVGx3NpJRDgqCyEmTp5PU5Nl8RjbYgTHQ/s320/lars-and-the-real-girl.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192818278485336034" border="0" /></a><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0"></span></span></span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Renée</span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> and I watched </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:100%;">Lars and the Real Girl</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> the other night starring Ryan Gosling. I can't believe that this movie was passed over for best picture for the Academy Awards. It did get nominated for best screenplay (well deserved) but lost to </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:100%;">Juno</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> (another great film). Gosling also got a SAG nomination for best actor but, unfortunately, was overlooked by Mr. Oscar.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:100%;">If you're a fan of the HBO series </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:100%;">Six Feet Under</span><span style="font-size:100%;">, you'll really enjoy this one. The screenplay was written by Nancy Oliver who wrote some of the best </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:100%;">Six Feet Under </span><span style="font-size:100%;">episodes. Not only is this movie fall-off-your-chair funny (which I did when Lars introduces his family to Bianca), but it's also a </span><span style="font-size:100%;">sociopolitical commentary on how society deals with emotional and mental health. I won't get into the plot too much, but the story is about a delusional breakdown of the main character, Lars (played by Gosling) who has been unable to deal effectively with past family tragedy (the loss of his mother, </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2" style="font-size:100%;">occasioned</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> by his own birth, and the loss of his father when he was a young boy). Clinically, he would be labeled with something like social anxiety disorder (a 'sad' acronym at best). Lars has repressed his emotions to such a degree that even the touch of another person causes him pain (the kind of pain when your feet get really cold then you come into a warm house and they burn...it feels just like that, Lars tells us). He ends up ordering a 'real doll' from a website and begins a delusional relationship with her and the rest of the story deals with how his family and his community (his church, workplace, friends, his therapist, and a real girl) support him and help him through his delusion.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:100%;">I've also been reading Foucault's </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:100%;">History of Madness</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> and early on, Foucault talks at length about leprosy and how medieval Europe shunned and relegated all lepers to the outside of the city gates (a scapegoating role the mentally ill--the mad--would come to fulfill after leprosy disappeared from Europe). Foucault then takes us through a medieval liturgy of exclusion:</span><span style="font-size:100%;"></span><br /></div><blockquote><span style="font-size:100%;">'Dearly beloved', says a ritual from a church in </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Vienne</span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> in the south of France, 'it has pleased God to afflict you with this disease, and the Lord is gracious for bringing punishment upon you for the evil that you have done in this world.' The leper was then dragged out of the church by the priest and his acolytes...but was assured that he was God's witness: 'however removed from the church and the company of the saints, you are never separated from the grace of God.'...Abandonment is his salvation, and exclusion offers an unusual form of communion (</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:100%;">History of Madness, </span><span style="font-size:100%;">6)</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:100%;">.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></blockquote><span style="font-size:100%;">This liturgy of exclusion would carry over into the eighteenth century as society became less and less hospitable to madness, controlling it by labeling it, </span><span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4" style="font-size:100%;">corralling</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> it, and 'solving' it with institutions and the systematic treatment of '</span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">unreason</span></span><span style="font-size:100%;">'.<br /><br />What struck me in this movie, is how Lars' family and community (even his church!) came alongside him and didn't expel him or scapegoat him. But the most compelling aspect, in my opinion, is how the therapist works with Lars. We never get the sense that she's treating a problem and Lars is never medicated. Lars learns how to be touched by her and Lars eventually makes the decision himself to finish his delusion. In one scene, Lars' brother wants an answer, he wants a solution to this problem as quick as possible. The therapist tells him, in probably the most subversive scene of the movie, that this delusion isn't a problem, in fact, it can be a gift for Lars and for those around him, which in fact, it turns out to be.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_x_K90aKLC0IEsYwrl67G74tvS_0dHYfpbWRs3jYQl-pH9da6NoHOHXp__SZKgF-zw__sRzjijxQsQe5S5jYv3TOLytWLcrEHyWGhTRGQar5WHJpt55ApBguClEI3u0asRp5E3g/s1600-h/lars-and-the-real-girl2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_x_K90aKLC0IEsYwrl67G74tvS_0dHYfpbWRs3jYQl-pH9da6NoHOHXp__SZKgF-zw__sRzjijxQsQe5S5jYv3TOLytWLcrEHyWGhTRGQar5WHJpt55ApBguClEI3u0asRp5E3g/s320/lars-and-the-real-girl2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192817934887952322" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Now, I realize that labeling this delusion 'a gift', especially for those who have lived through or live with mental health issues, is a tenuous description but one that is, at least in this situation, quite apt. In fact, in the </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4" style="font-size:100%;">Foucaultian</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> sense, this 'gift' has its own dignity--this ship of fools is allowed to float on without being 'powered' over, without being confined and expelled from society. In fact, if the church can come to behave like Lars' community, learning to live with and within the delusions of life, we can also learn how to accept the gift of difference that mental and emotional health issues bring with them into our communities.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"></span>Patrick McManushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717639457555961172noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26698442.post-21811220987781710942008-04-06T08:39:00.005-04:002008-12-08T18:54:56.483-05:00Foucault on Power, Help!<div style="text-align: left;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD0PhD2Tj4Yr49KonV5BSr9a9aurEjDTMEtv8qv78lXNhTvVo1b30HEjOEt7LSEIzKO1qjt1McWjSPJsn_pLPluNLYjMLcaKtZpO6VuN3BpzUsLyjjzcI_Pl4ZZHS5kwOBo2VLBQ/s1600-h/Foucault.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD0PhD2Tj4Yr49KonV5BSr9a9aurEjDTMEtv8qv78lXNhTvVo1b30HEjOEt7LSEIzKO1qjt1McWjSPJsn_pLPluNLYjMLcaKtZpO6VuN3BpzUsLyjjzcI_Pl4ZZHS5kwOBo2VLBQ/s200/Foucault.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5186113227482070786" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:100%;">To those of you who happen to come across this rarely updated blog (and who are competent in the secondary </span><span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" style="font-size:100%;">literature</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> on Michel Foucault!) I am in need of help. I'm working on my dissertation on how Barth handles the language of 'powers and principalities' in the NT (also looking at some minor figures like W. </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1" style="font-size:100%;">Stringfellow</span><span style="font-size:100%;">) but I think Foucault will offer a solid dialogue partner for a constructive account of the Christian life lived </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:100%;" >in conflict </span><span style="font-size:100%;">with the 'powers'. That said, can people point me to the best of the secondary literature on the subject? </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2" style="font-size:100%;">Toole's</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:100%;" >Waiting for Godot in Sarajevo</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> first turned me on to Foucault so I'm familiar with that one.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:100%;">Thanks,</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:100%;">Patrick</span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;">p.s. I'm reading Foucault's </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:100%;" >History of Madness</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> right now and I'm </span><span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3" style="font-size:100%;">entirely fascinated</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> with it! I'll post some thoughts on it soon (maybe!).</span></div>Patrick McManushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717639457555961172noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26698442.post-90691454670450432112008-01-23T07:35:00.000-05:002008-01-23T07:43:41.750-05:00Upcoming Conference<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:100%;">There's an exciting conference coming up at Tyndale University entitled <a href="http://www.tyndale.ca/universitycollege/religiousstudies/viewpage.php?pid=20"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Holy Trinity in Holy Scripture</span></a> and the line-up of presenters is exciting. The conference's keynote speaker will be John Webster. There is still a call for papers for those of you interested. Last year's conference </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:100%;" >Figured Out: Figuration in Biblical Interpretation </span><span style="font-size:100%;">has already been <a href="http://www.amazon.ca/Go-Figure-Figuration-Biblical-Interpretation/dp/1556355793/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1200096480&sr=1-1">published.</a> This year's conference will also be published in book form. I won't be submitting a proposal, but I will hopefully be going.</span></div>Patrick McManushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717639457555961172noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26698442.post-35154274248902240202008-01-03T09:02:00.000-05:002008-12-08T18:54:56.644-05:00The Stillborn God<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9mYaRuP0DuJrCRZRmM_Ck2hQLYAQgBaLr-4ZFbcGvD14Z1u7BrFkj98dSS9lMOjnez0xsH7YCUmRYfZNvdGdeMhOHZYe2l2fIzgPYoaBkSdTVBZ8DNHsDQ66SjUVxUmKtqHdukw/s1600-h/41Q9Ua54IbL._SS500_.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 182px; height: 182px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9mYaRuP0DuJrCRZRmM_Ck2hQLYAQgBaLr-4ZFbcGvD14Z1u7BrFkj98dSS9lMOjnez0xsH7YCUmRYfZNvdGdeMhOHZYe2l2fIzgPYoaBkSdTVBZ8DNHsDQ66SjUVxUmKtqHdukw/s320/41Q9Ua54IbL._SS500_.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5151272308947822434" border="0" /></a><blockquote>I've recently started to read Mark Lilla's<span style="font-style: italic;"> <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.amazon.ca/Stillborn-God-Religion-Politics-Modern/dp/1400043670/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=gateway&qid=1200452639&sr=8-1">The Stillborn God</a> </span></span>and have come across a review by Jamie Smith over at the <a href="http://www.ssrc.org/blogs/immanent_frame/2007/12/27/the-last-prophet-of-leviathan/">Immanent Frame blog</a>. While I'm only 50 pages into the book, Jamie's review has ruined the book for me. I was enjoying Lilla's engagement with 'political theology' (at the very least he takes it seriously) and was looking forward to his engagement with Barth and Rosenzweig (I cheated and looked in the index). I was excited to see someone, outside the theological academy, engaging Barth and German theology in general.<br /><br />But a perfect world this ain't: apparently, Lilla lays the blame for Nazism upon the shoulders of Barth's political theology!! Well, since I haven't read this far into the book, I will <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">withhold</span> judgement. Needless to say, if this is the charge, I'm anxious to see just how he gets there!</blockquote>Patrick McManushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717639457555961172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26698442.post-2153031001734931442007-12-25T10:45:00.000-05:002007-12-26T12:30:19.250-05:00Well, so that is that...<blockquote>Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree,<br />Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes—<br />Some have got broken—and carrying them up to the attic.<br />The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,<br />And the children got ready for school. There are enough<br />Left-overs to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week—<br />Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,<br />Stayed up so late, attempted—quite unsuccessfully—<br />To love all our relatives, and in general<br />Grossly overestimated our powers. Once again<br />As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed<br />To do more than entertain it as an agreeable<br />Possibility, once again we have sent Him away,<br />Begging though to remain His disobedient servant,<br />The promising child who cannot keep His word for long.<br />The Christmas Feast is already a fading memory,<br />And already the mind begins to be vaguely aware<br />Of an unpleasant whiff of apprehension at the thought<br />Of Lent and Good Friday which cannot, after all, now<br />Be very far off. But, for the time being, here we all are,<br />Back in the moderate Aristotelian city<br />Of darning and the Eight-Fifteen, where Euclid's geometry<br />And Newton's mechanics would account for our experience,<br />And the kitchen table exists because I scrub it.<br />It seems to have shrunk during the holidays. The streets<br />Are much narrower than we remembered; we had forgotten<br />The office was as depressing as this. To those who <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">have</span> seen<br />The Child, however dimly, however incredulously,<br />The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all.<br />For the innocent children who whispered so excitedly<br />Outside the locked door where they knew the presents to be<br />Grew up when it opened. Now, recollecting that moment<br />We can repress the joy, but the guilt remains conscious;<br /><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Remembering</span> the stable where for once in our lives<br />Everything became a You and nothing was an It.<br />And craving the sensation but ignoring the cause,<br />We look round for something, no matter what, to inhibit<br />Our self-reflection, and the obvious thing for that purpose<br />Would be some great suffering. So, once we have met the Son,<br />We are tempted ever after to pray to the Father:<br />"Lead us into temptation and evil for our sake".<br />They will come, all right, don't worry; probably in a form<br />That we do not expect, and certainly with a force<br />More dreadful than we can imagine. In the meantime<br />There are bills to be paid, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">machines</span> to keep in repair,<br />Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem<br />From insignificance. The happy morning is over,<br />The night of agony still to come; the time is noon:<br />When the Spirit must practise his scales of rejoicing<br />Without even a hostile audience, and the Soul endure<br />A silence that is neither for nor against her faith<br />That God's Will will be done, that, in spite of her prayers,<br />God will cheat no one, not even the world of its triumph.</blockquote><div style="text-align: right;">~ W.H. Auden, from <span style="font-style: italic;">For the Time Being, A Christmas Oratorio</span> (1941-42)<br /></div><blockquote></blockquote>Patrick McManushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717639457555961172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26698442.post-34299779594605921142007-12-15T09:49:00.000-05:002008-12-08T18:54:56.790-05:00Sufjan Stevens, Christmas Music, and the Apocalypse of God<div align="left"><blockquote><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5144223352787052338" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" height="231" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9nkOF3PVBudjaR5wuB2yf95a_A0dtV1VNf9tIfg7MmSgBiUyYlGbBW87PgeUXPJkYJwW289zF8Ro3O6VwG83p5HlOQxuYzonzH10dm6oSsr8BkYSR5Esfc5Dl1rdgp_yU4D06Cw/s320/637796.jpg" width="250" border="0" />A couple of years ago, I received a gift of Christmas music from a friend whose friend knows someone who knows Sufjan Stevens. This Christmas collection was released last year in a box set of 5 EP's.<br /><br />It was only this year that I've actually read the liner notes for the album about <em>why</em> Sufjan decided to go ahead with this project.<br /><br />Sufjan's ability to cut through the sentimentality of the season and get to the theological heart of what it is we 'celebrate' at this time of year is rare to find in the church, let alone in a musician. But Sufjan is unrelenting:<br /><br />"What did the angels renounce in the wake of the shepherd's trepidation? 'Have no fear,' they petitioned with trumpet blasts and a garish display of constellations. But that's like waving a gun in a bank lobby and demanding: 'Everybody stay calm!'"<br /><br />What Sufjan gets is that Christmas is an apocalyptic event; it's about the terrifying <em>coming of God</em>. Further along he confesses that "Christmas music poses a cosmological conundrum in requiring us to sing so sweetly and sentimentally about something so terrifying and tragic." That's Christmas; that's the demand made of the church: sing about the unsingable!<br /><br />I'm reminded about Karl Barth's observation about theological speech: "We ought to speak of God.... We are human, however, and so cannot speak of God. We ought therefore to recognize both our obligation and our inability and by that very recognition give God the glory. This is our perplexity. The rest of our task fades into insignificance by comparison" (<em>The Word of God and the Word of Man</em>, 186).<br /><br />This is Sufjan's way of recognizing both his obligation and his inability; his own attempt, while waving his gun around, to tell us to stay calm. So, steady yourself, await the coming of God, and STAY CALM! <blockquote></blockquote><blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></div>Patrick McManushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717639457555961172noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26698442.post-30117900185410729452007-12-13T09:25:00.000-05:002007-12-15T09:49:01.386-05:00Deluded About God?<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:100%;">To anyone who reads theology blogs: if you're reading my blog and have never read Ben Myers' </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:100%;" >Faith and Theology</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> blog, go <a href="http://faith-theology.blogspot.com/">there</a> now! Every so often, a Yanke pastor whose managed to land in England by the name of Kim Fabricius posts his "10 propositions" on a theological issue. Some of my favorites are archived and linked on the right hand column. The most recent are Kim's props on Dawkins, Hitchens, and these so called 'new' atheists. It's a wonder-ful post, as always. For those of you in my book club at church, read these propositions and you'll see how closely they resemble Rowan Williams' moves in our book.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:100%;">As our group will be going through Williams' </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:100%;" >Tokens of Trust: An Introduction to Christian Belief </span><span style="font-size:100%;">throughout advent I will post some of our thoughts and some issues raised from this provocative book.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:100%;">That's all.</span></div>Patrick McManushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717639457555961172noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26698442.post-31301020144517867992007-12-09T21:17:00.001-05:002008-12-08T18:54:57.378-05:00Advent Birds<div style="text-align: left;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVXSjKfndEkNfsv_V2LjzO6oHDMuypuNmUxusaC__CfY0Q9ltm9p2Pl6GtI5H3RRublvKq4GVjkqCXp7ZFJoMXZOEMyzeS_WAL6wEVfmyTtPf071eGND5KLwPUvJhjDBxpk8qMvw/s1600-h/bird1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 155px; height: 197px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVXSjKfndEkNfsv_V2LjzO6oHDMuypuNmUxusaC__CfY0Q9ltm9p2Pl6GtI5H3RRublvKq4GVjkqCXp7ZFJoMXZOEMyzeS_WAL6wEVfmyTtPf071eGND5KLwPUvJhjDBxpk8qMvw/s320/bird1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5142166410116594978" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:100%;">A few days ago, as I was preparing for Advent celebrations in our churches, my carefully planned schedule was interrupted with a death in my parish. One of my </span><span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" style="font-size:100%;">parishioners</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> lost his father, a man whom I had visited a few times since beginning ministry here. I was already overwhelmed with meetings, services and hospital visitations. I knew he was a special man, a man who<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-_6ybJN5MDm3LXmR60XNQ-5zeAB4XfnzYvRp01JqDcmVtSiiqCC3cgFc1X7KtfrBWuXYa57sKrn45AS-PHsrt7K2aELk9ji2s923SdpODDEGCtRZso8j4SX8x5eNIL8wxj4BgJQ/s1600-h/bird2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-_6ybJN5MDm3LXmR60XNQ-5zeAB4XfnzYvRp01JqDcmVtSiiqCC3cgFc1X7KtfrBWuXYa57sKrn45AS-PHsrt7K2aELk9ji2s923SdpODDEGCtRZso8j4SX8x5eNIL8wxj4BgJQ/s200/bird2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5142167380779203890" border="0" /></a> lived his life in laughter; a man who lost his wife of fifty-seven years three-and-a-half years ago; a man who was waiting...who, in his terminal illness knew the reality of advent, of waiting for the unexpected.</span><br /></div><span style="font-size:100%;"><br />As I busily prepared for his funeral, and for all the other services, I was overwhelmed with rushing around. The morning of the funeral, I was heading out to drive to the church and I <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuwDYB-ZPtcakXzaKaJWIIJQDf0iar0OCC2zsFu-OzHmaX69QTlV7ZHaEmbRhuAAZ96VWP9dU5AvANkZn7dCvnwvt5FaN75jflRwnpOkAuSFQc4eop-4JRPlQV_md9ckryaLNk9w/s1600-h/bird3.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuwDYB-ZPtcakXzaKaJWIIJQDf0iar0OCC2zsFu-OzHmaX69QTlV7ZHaEmbRhuAAZ96VWP9dU5AvANkZn7dCvnwvt5FaN75jflRwnpOkAuSFQc4eop-4JRPlQV_md9ckryaLNk9w/s200/bird3.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5142168926967430466" border="0" /></a>noticed some snow falling from the trees beside our house. There was a group of birds eating from the pine trees. I grabbed the camera and I waited. I was reminded what it was to wait for something beautiful. I managed to get a few good shots, but I had to take the time to wait for the birds. I was a helpful and graceful reminder of what season was encroaching upon my busy existence. It was an advent moment.<br /><br />For those interested, these birds are Pine Grosbeaks; I found that out at a dinner table with a theologian who, apparently, is also an avid birder. The beautiful rose coloured one is the male, the yellow one, female. Enjoy the pictures!</span><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div>Patrick McManushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717639457555961172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26698442.post-24486716242638050922007-12-09T20:52:00.000-05:002008-12-08T18:54:57.507-05:00Waiting for God...<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCRUkuSF-t_DCIDQjxT1yPCTPKT2DBRRQwo6Ve67rdr_A4EoLh_LY00QIkcCZttz2DIQqZ7lMRQ3xZadod9694rMZGRpU1XeJE7dRMh70l3xEpX3lnZkwJ_6lSzQM48HKqhl6BVg/s1600-h/2085061952_5c92e2573d.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCRUkuSF-t_DCIDQjxT1yPCTPKT2DBRRQwo6Ve67rdr_A4EoLh_LY00QIkcCZttz2DIQqZ7lMRQ3xZadod9694rMZGRpU1XeJE7dRMh70l3xEpX3lnZkwJ_6lSzQM48HKqhl6BVg/s320/2085061952_5c92e2573d.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5142159542463888626" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0);">A Sermon preached at the Anglican Parish of Almaguin/Emsdale</span> <span style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0);">Dec. 2nd, 2007</span> <span style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0);">Is. 2:1-5; Ps. 122; Rom. 13:11-14; Mt. 24:36-44<br /><br /></span></span></div> <span style="font-style: italic;">God who comes to us so unexpectedly, come to us this morning and so transform our lives. In the name of the One we expect, Amen.</span><br /><br />This morning, we celebrate the first Sunday of Advent. Advent marks the beginning of the Christian year and it’s the season that asks us to prepare ourselves for the unthinkable: we are asked to prepare ourselves for the in-breaking, for the coming of God into our world. It is a season which asks us to anticipate, to sit and wait for the impossible, the unexpected.<br /><br />Waiting can be a really frustrating experience as I experienced all week waiting for our lovely national treasure, Bell Canada, to fix the church’s phone line. You call, you get put on hold, you get automated message after automated message and finally you get a live person only to find out that you’ll have to wait 24 to 48 hrs for the line to be fixed. And, when it is, you realize that there are a host of other problems and you have to call them again, and the season of waiting begins all over again. Even as I was writing this sermon, I was sitting, waiting for Bell. We tend to get impatient, frustrated, and even angry (though, I would never, never get angry with Bell Canada). We want things now, we don’t want to wait; we want instant gratification.<br /><br />When we lived downtown in Toronto, we had a Shoppers Drugmart directly across the street. One night, the eve of Halloween, we needed some medicine for William because he was running a fever. So, I went across the street. The store stayed open until midnight and I was the last one to walk in as they closed the doors behind me. The scene that greeted me literally made me take a step back. All the employees of the store were taking down the Halloween decorations and products and replacing them, row by row, with Christmas ones. Astounding! “What the rush?”, “Why so quickly?”, I asked myself. There were Halloween pumpkins sitting beside and amongst Christmas wreaths and bows—a sure sign, if there ever were, of our culture’s obsession with immediate indulgence; a symbol of our collective inability to wait! The night of Halloween, we were thrown, headlong, completely unprepared, into the season of Christmas. How maddening!<br /><br />And so, unable to bear the burden of waiting, we enthusiastically enter into this consumer Christmas, which has turned into a time of setting our cultural and societal coping mechanisms into play. We’d rather not take the time to wait; we get busy, we hide behind the season, we’d rather build fantasy castles around ourselves, decked out with plastic angels and candy canes than to . We lull ourselves to sleep, we numb ourselves in our shopping, we cope in our busyness. But advent, this season of delay forces us to wait, to take the time to anticipate, to prepare, <span style="font-style: italic;">to steady ourselves for God’s coming to us</span>.<br /><br />And notice that our readings this morning don’t circle around God’s incarnation in Christ, but around Christ’s coming again, his Second Coming. St. Paul writes “now is the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near.”…and Jesus tells his disciples in Matthew’s gospel, “keep awake, for you don’t know when the Lord is coming”…”you must be ready, for God in Christ is coming at an unexpected hour.” So the church is asked in this season not only to recall God’s adventurous coming in Christ but to prepare for Christ’s return…to anticipate his coming; to expect the impossible, to await the unthinkable—Christ’s advent, his coming to us. But what does that mean? What does that mean for the church, on the ground?<br /><br />It means wholeheartedly and assuredly that waiting is an exercise of <span style="font-weight: bold;">hope</span>; it is <span style="font-style: italic;">the</span> church’s exercise of hope; waiting is Christian hope in action. It's not wishful thinking, but hope in the One who has come and who will come; it is an <span style="font-style: italic;">active </span>belief that God’s justice will prevail and that we are called to embody that justice in anticipation through our actions toward each other and toward our world. This means that waiting is not a passive activity but a wholly <span style="font-style: italic;">active</span> one. Waiting is a restless, impatient act. Our children have a thing or two to teach us about the posture of waiting; “are we there yet?” is a common enough, but profound refrain; or you may remember what it was like as a child, waiting for Christmas morning—eager, impatient, restless, active waiting…this is what the church is called to do.<br /><br />But this active hope requires that the church not fall asleep in its anticipation of God’s coming. But how easy it is to be lulled in this season!—how can we not when we’re bombarded with the synthetic images that float across our television sets, that greet us in our newspapers and magazines that demand that Christmas be a time of consumption and not a time of expectation; a time of gratification and not a time of preparation?<br /><br />And when the church buys into this it neglects its prophetic call to stand in our culture as a beacon of hope, a place of peace in a world of violence, a light of justice in a world where it’s a rare gem. But when we wait, when we wait impatiently like a child awaits the wonder and mystery of Christmas morning, we can participate in the change that comes to our worlds; we can play a part in bringing God’s advent light to shine amidst the darkness that threatens our world.<br /><br />So we prepare for God’s coming in this season of advent. And we actually expect that God will come to us. How foolish of us, how absurd, how impossible, but oh how marvellous and miraculous!<br /><br />Amen.Patrick McManushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717639457555961172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26698442.post-42124112248759333332007-11-21T08:11:00.000-05:002008-12-08T18:54:57.718-05:00"Behold! I Make All Things New", or God 'ends' us in Jesus<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkauAFk3DkVeJGLclDH43S1iQu4pQ1_9CR7q3bpIY4QH5XlNJC3TcZ-M8WxAg57MaXb0z40bIeNW0StoKljJuShrXQwhLoAylsqibbI7SoRwXVDDZ6u9D_OUqcav1jGcP07C2Ohg/s1600-h/IMG_0098.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 236px; height: 355px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkauAFk3DkVeJGLclDH43S1iQu4pQ1_9CR7q3bpIY4QH5XlNJC3TcZ-M8WxAg57MaXb0z40bIeNW0StoKljJuShrXQwhLoAylsqibbI7SoRwXVDDZ6u9D_OUqcav1jGcP07C2Ohg/s400/IMG_0098.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5135294699238490002" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 0);">A Sermon preached at the Anglican Parish of Almaguin/Emsdale<br />Nov. 18th, 2007<br />Is. 65:17-25; Is. 12; Lk. 21:5-19<br /></span></span></div><span style="font-style: italic;"><br />Lord of our endings and beginnings, we treasure what you bring to end and we fear what you begin. But in trust and faith we thank you for ending us in Jesus and beginning us again in him. Begin with us anew this morning. Amen. </span><br /><br />When I say the word “apocalypse”, what do you think of? Many of us think end of the world stuff, destruction, violence; some may think about Francis Ford Coppola’s movie <span style="font-style: italic;">Apocalypse Now</span> with its deep darkness and profound sense of hopelessness. Some of us may think about the massively successful book and now movie series <span style="font-style: italic;">Left Behind</span>. Or maybe we remember the apocalyptic fervour surrounding Y2K. These are all popular notions of apocalypse embedded within our culture, but they all miss the biblical understanding of apocalypse.<br /><br />Apocalypse simply means ‘revelation’, it means new out of old, light out of darkness, it means "coming" and in Scripture it means the coming of God, a coming which cancels what was and makes what is to be. Apocalypse means ending, but at the same time it means beginning. But most of all, for the Christian church apocalypse means Jesus Christ—<span style="font-style: italic;">God’s apocalypse is Jesus</span>. God’s revelation—his coming to us—is Jesus.<br /><br />Two of our readings this morning are ‘apocalyptic’—they revolve around beginnings and endings. These two readings, Isaiah’s vision of the newness of beginning and Luke’s sombre vision of endings are fitting as we’re coming to the end of this long season of Pentecost (which is next week, for those of you not keeping track) and the liturgical year and we await the coming of Advent and the season of anticipating and waiting for the light of Christmas.<br /><br />Our reading from Isaiah 65 is about a vision of God’s re-creating, of God’s remaking of all things…”Behold! I will make all things new!”, God says. But this new beginning requires an ending, it means the passing away of old things, an ending of things as we know them…“former things shall not be remembered or come to mind” writes Isaiah…be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating”. The vision is one of the peaceable kingdom, where the lion lays with the lamb…it’s a reordering of the world, an ‘apocalypse’, a revelation of what God’s end game is like. And what a beautiful and striking vision it is.<br /><br />In our other reading from Luke’s gospel Jesus is talking to some people who were really admiring the ornate beauty of the Temple…”wow, what a beautiful Temple”. I’ve had this experience walking into large cathedrals…”this is such a beautiful church!!” If somebody came in here and said that, we’d be inclined to answer them with, “well thank you, we work really hard to keep it up”. How does Jesus respond? In his surprising and subverting way, he tells them the Temple will be destroyed…not a stone will be left, everything will fall apart—in effect he tells them that their lives which revolve around the Temple in Jerusalem will end…and it did; in fact, for the readers of Luke’s gospel this would be the reality they lived. Jesus’ warnings about the end carries with it the promise of newness; endings mean new beginnings. For that, we need to read a little further in the gospel. Further along Jesus says to his disciples, ““Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”<br /><br />Endings are part and parcel of what God did with Israel, of what he is doing with us, with his church and with this world. What we know will come to an end; sometimes suddenly or sometimes slowly, and most of the time endings can be quite uncomfortable or painful. Jobs come to an end, marriages end, friendships end, life itself has its end. This isn’t news to any of us.<br /><br />But there’s something in us that reacts quite sharply to this. We don’t like endings, endings are by nature unpredictable, uncontrollable. But we want to control our endings…there’s something in us that so badly wants to be in control. In fact, our entire modern age of technology and supposed progress is one long attempt to be in control of our destinies. If we can maintain some sort of control over our situations, we think we can maintain a level of comfort or at least a level of manageability. If we can be in control, we can feel like we’re grabbing life by the horns.<br /><br />I came upon a strange thing a little while ago. At least I thought it was strange. I had rented a DVD and apparently, the new thing with movies, is that some movies allow you to choose the ending to the movie. Does that strike anyone else as strange? You’re able to choose the ending you want. Designer endings…In the world of movie magic we get to control how the story ends. I can see the appeal. Maybe <span style="font-style: italic;">Gone with the Wind's</span> Rhett Butler decides that he gives a damn after all; or maybe at the end of <span style="font-style: italic;">Casablanca</span> Humphrey Bogart doesn’t send Ingrid Bergman on the plane and <span style="font-style: italic;">they</span> walk off into the fog together.<br /><br />But there’s something wrong with this. In the story of life we can’t choose our endings, we aren’t in control of our destinies—no matter how much our talk-show gurus would like us to “Get-Real” and create and take control of our own destinies, endings surprise us and confuse and, most of the time endings mess up our plans. But that’s the whole point of the gospel—that job’s taken: the end of the story, the final curtain of this drama of life is in God’s hands. Our beginnings are his, our endings, all the endings we experience in life are his also. This is another way of speaking about salvation, about conversion.<br /><br />The salvation that the church speaks of, the salvation the church proclaims about Jesus is just this: God surprises us in Jesus, He ends us in Jesus Christ, and begins us anew in Jesus. The God of our beginning, the God of our creation is the God of our endings; <span style="font-style: italic;">our endings and our beginnings begin and end with God, not with us</span>. Conversion is the slow and often uncomfortable realization of this.<br /><br />What sustains the church is not the church’s social activities, its monetary support, or its engagement of culture, important and as vital as these things are. What supports and sustains the church is its faith, its deep trust that God carries the church, that God carries us and will bring us to our ends and will bring us through our ends to something new. God ends all of us, he ends all of our desires for our own way, our own ends, for control over what we want; he ends us in Jesus Christ and begins us anew in Christ. This is what our baptisms represent—we are ended in Christ’s death and we are made new in Christ’s resurrection. In baptism we participate in God’s apocalypse, we participate in God’s coming and making all things new. And our participation in the Eucharist this morning is our reminder that we celebrate God’s apocalypse, God’s revelation of who God is in Jesus Christ and who we are as those people called and gathered by him. In the bread and the wine, we celebrate God’s coming to us in Jesus Christ; these physical things, this bread and this wine, are for us the sign of God’s apocalypse—the beginning and end of the world in a wafer. So we participate here in anticipation of the ending of this church year and the beginning of something new; we participate in anticipation that out of the endings in our life, we will find new and exciting things; we participate in anticipation that we ourselves will be made new.<br /><br />Amen.Patrick McManushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717639457555961172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26698442.post-84257915621444613872007-10-17T08:38:00.000-04:002008-12-08T18:54:57.894-05:00Jüngel on Beauty and the Beautiful<blockquote><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim9HTWuueYZpJjfuIHkaYQzW6OeI9ZPfTk9ub9UFeiEPGgUuDAkKSGK9eZ8JwEUUiMeDKFEW7VeJBMkH1r6SI1DIW0tfe-Bhc7IFO9qMJFynC1rGrOVzvbqc7RBI8gaCro48DIEw/s1600-h/francesca_the+resurrection.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim9HTWuueYZpJjfuIHkaYQzW6OeI9ZPfTk9ub9UFeiEPGgUuDAkKSGK9eZ8JwEUUiMeDKFEW7VeJBMkH1r6SI1DIW0tfe-Bhc7IFO9qMJFynC1rGrOVzvbqc7RBI8gaCro48DIEw/s400/francesca_the+resurrection.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5122294982866812546" border="0" /></a>"According to the self-understanding of Christian faith, there is only one single appearance of truth which - despite all parallels to the beautiful pre-appearance of the truth - follows another law. That is the revelation of God. It is distinguished from the epiphanies of the beautiful in that the <span style="font-style: italic;">origin</span> of all light appears in this event, and indeed appears in such a way that it does not radiate in the light of the world as does the beautiful, but rather appears hidden <span style="font-style: italic;">sub contrario</span> [under the opposite]. The event of revelation cannot therefore be subordinated to the category of the beautiful. Sin - that which God made him, who knew no sin, for the sake of sinners, and for their benefit - was too ugly for that.... The revelation of Jesus Christ shatters all beautiful appearance. It must shatter the beautiful appearance, because it is not a pre-appearance of the truth, but is the truth itself. Yet according to the understanding of the New Testament, this truth occurs fundamentally as a crisis. It does this by confronting the world not only with its finiteness and transience, but also with its merited end and well-earned disgrace. Revelation does this, as Paul expresses it, by 'painting' the crucified 'before your eyes' (Gal. 3.1). From this death as such, it is not apparent that the life of the risen one has been released from it, and with that that eternal life is promised in the form of a <span style="font-style: italic;">visio beatifica</span> [beatific vision], thus a totally unfettered vision of God face to face. For according to the New Testament, God's love is a work in this death. This love is not a love which (like <span style="font-style: italic;">amor hominis </span>[human love]) is kindled by the beautiful, but rather a love which <span style="font-style: italic;">beautifies</span> that which is ugly, namely the self-defacing <span style="font-style: italic;">homo peccator </span>[human sinner], by loving it. As the event of the love of God, the death of Jesus Christ is the opposite of what it appears to be. The cross of Jesus Christ does not disclose that in this death there occurs the unity of life and death in favour of life, which deserves to be called love.<br /><br /> For that disclosure to take place, a renewed coming of the one who has previously appeared<span style="font-style: italic;"> sub contraria specie</span> [under the opposite species] is necessary. For this, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is necessary, that is, the Easter coming of the Lord <span style="font-style: italic;">in glory</span> and thus in the <span style="font-style: italic;">unmitigated </span>light of his own being.... For now the beautiful appears both in the alien light of the world as well as in the light of its own being; but then this twilight hanging over the beautiful will come to an end. Then nothing more will <span style="font-style: italic;">appear</span>. For then <span style="font-style: italic;">being in glory</span> will replace <span style="font-style: italic;">appearance</span>.... Then truth and beauty will be identical...here and now the beautiful remains only a glimmer of truth, lighting up and fading away again. With Schopenhauer one can say that the beautiful 'does not deliver' humanity 'from life for ever, but only for a few moments'. In a world context characterized by sham existence and lack of freedom, the experience of the beautiful (as the glimmer of truth) that makes the torn world whole can only be an experience which <span style="font-style: italic;">interrupts</span> this world context. The most that an aesthetic relation can promise is being whole (being eternal) for a moment - in order then to return to the interrupted life context, at best changed and changing. But if one wants it to be more, or if it should become more, if one denies the bitter insight that 'even the beautiful must die', then the beautiful will inevitably become and enemy of the truth.<br /><br /> .... only what makes a claim to <span style="font-style: italic;">truth</span> deserves to be called <span style="font-style: italic;">beautiful</span>, and that only where <span style="font-style: italic;">truth</span> establishes itself in a work can one speak of a <span style="font-style: italic;">work of art.</span> But beauty and art are both welcome and dangerous competitors with the Christian <span style="font-style: italic;">kerygma</span>, for in the beautiful appearance they anticipate that which faith has to declare, without any beautiful appearance and indeed in contrast to it: namely, the hour of truth."<br /><br />~ Eberhard Jüngel, "'Even the Beautiful Must Die' - Beauty in the Light of Truth", in <span style="font-style: italic;">Theological Essays II </span>(T&T Clark, 1995), 79-81.<br /></blockquote><br /><br /><br /><blockquote></blockquote>Patrick McManushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717639457555961172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26698442.post-55976571557783748682007-10-16T11:57:00.000-04:002008-12-08T18:54:58.031-05:00Learning to Live in Exile<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 0); font-weight: bold;">Sermon for the 20th Sunday After Pentecost</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 0); font-weight: bold;">Anglican Parishes of Almaguin/Emsdale</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 0);"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Oct. 14th, 2007</span><br /><br /></span><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-style: italic;">God of all hope, you have called us to be your people. Teach us how to do that so that we can witness to your ways in our world and so to participate in your transformation of it. Amen.</span><br /><br />During one of my classes in seminary in Toronto, my theology professor was trying to make a valid point and he used a passage of Scripture from the book of Jeremiah in support of it. After making his point, a student in the back of the class raised her hand and after my professor acknowledged her, she said, “you know sir, Jeremiah just doesn’t speak to me.” Without skipping a beat, my quick witted professor responded with, “Well, frankly dear, I don’t blame him.”<br /><br />The point is that Jeremiah still speaks to us whether we listen or not, whether we are open to what he has to say to us or whether we think he’s irrelevant—a by-product of another time with nothing of relevance to us.<br /><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs_z6ueIRuJUMBwA_CGFCgrr2oYPvec9vLyuje51T3XLBZcjrKCEYFCBg0deOX-BhBBVGdvJwPXaXGPMHiUB1RQj6g7JqsHPbXAVkeJCg7ufDnEshcXQAJm8cMFwu7txMiehlqvg/s1600-h/bio_1_Marc_Chagall.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs_z6ueIRuJUMBwA_CGFCgrr2oYPvec9vLyuje51T3XLBZcjrKCEYFCBg0deOX-BhBBVGdvJwPXaXGPMHiUB1RQj6g7JqsHPbXAVkeJCg7ufDnEshcXQAJm8cMFwu7txMiehlqvg/s320/bio_1_Marc_Chagall.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5122276127960383090" border="0" /></a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Last week we considered what it might mean to exist as a people who live thankful lives, even in full view of the complexities and struggles of life. We learned that Israel, even amongst the ruins of Jerusalem, learned how to give thanks to God. This morning, we consider, thanks to this letter from Jeremiah to his fellow Hebrews, what it might mean for Israel and for us to live in exile.<br /><br />Our first reading is the beginning of a letter which Jeremiah wrote to his fellow Jews who had recently been trucked off to Babylon after Jerusalem fell. There were some prophets who were counseling the people that they would be leaving Babylon shortly and that their stay there would soon end. But, if we were to read further into the letter, Jeremiah calls these prophets liars. Jeremiah’s words to Israel?: Israel better hunker down and spread some roots because this stay in Babylon was looking more permanent than transitory. In fact, Israel remained in Babylon captivity for generations but ultimately they did survive their exilic existence and were restored as a people though many continued to live as Diaspora Jews, as ‘scattered’ Jews within Babylon. This is one of the most astonishing historical phenomena we have in the Hebrew Scriptures that the Jewish people survived the Babylonian exile. If this doesn’t impress you at face value, the Northern kingdom went into captivity as well at the hands of the Assyrians and, well, that’s where we get the name the ‘lost-tribes’ of Israel from…they just disappeared from history.<br /><br />The story of Israel’s exilic life is ultimately a story of hope in the darkest of days, a story of surviving as a people, when all the odds are stacked high against you. Jeremiah’s counsel is for Israel to continue to exist as Israel, to keep on doing it’s Israel thing—to multiply and not to decrease, and as Israel to seek the welfare of the city, to pray for Babylon, and in its welfare to find its own welfare for Yahweh works—surprise, surprise—even through Babylon. Jeremiah doesn’t counsel revolt against Babylon but an active living in it—and through this, through living as Israel fully immersed in Babylon and its culture, Israel would witnesses to the fidelity of God in a society that is hostile to its existence. Jeremiah doesn’t counsel Israel to passively acquiesce in Babylon, but to be who she is in Babylon—to be active witnesses to God even in Babylon. The vision of Israel’s life in exile is a missionary vision. In Psalm 137 the Psalmist asks : “How can we sing the Lord’s songs in a foreign land?” And yet that is what Israel learned to do, and do well.<br /><br />We often hear about the death of the church at the hands of secular culture, a culture that has little or merely decorative use for the church. And our culture, if we’re honest with ourselves, is, if not outright hostile to the church’s existence, at the very best, merely puts up with it. But this is nothing new and it shouldn’t come as a surprise, the church was born into such hostility in the Roman empire. So it’s not a new situation, the church has always existed as a witness to the ways and world of God in Christ within a world that would rather not hear about it. And this culture, this situation, this post-Christian world we live in is looking more permanent than transitory. We better learn how to hunker down and learn how to live as the church in our times.<br /><br />So, just like Israel, the church lives in exile—as the church we live as a peculiar and strange people—as people whose lives are shaped and governed by the gospel and by the virtues and habits of being of Christian discipleship and we exist as this people in a world that is shaped by all sorts of other isms—by materialism, by capitalism, or by secularism to name but a few. Many have sounded the death knell on the church. But just like the rumors of Ina’s Trollove’s death were so greatly exaggerated, so too is our culture’s pronouncement of death upon the church.<br /><br />Our word this morning from this ancient prophet is a word of hope—what does Jeremiah speak to us this morning?—keep on living as the church in the culture we find ourselves in, keep on being the church: multiply and do not decrease, keep on existing as a people whose lives find their rhythm, not in the time and pace of society and culture, but as the church, as a people whose lives are shaped by God’s time, by God’s time for us in Jesus Christ. Our lives are shaped and given contour and definition by what we do here in our liturgy this morning and by the subtle gestures of our common life because it is in the enactment of this common life, that the transformation of the world has begun.<br /><br />It is in the subtle gestures of our common life</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">—</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">gestures of kindness, peace, and concord</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">—</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">and in the rhythm of the liturgy, in the formation of Christian discipleship; it is in all of this, in the living of life as Christ’s body to the world, that the church lives its life in exile. The church lives, not in revolt against our culture, but as fully alive within it! This is the call of mission for the church: it is not a call to passive acquiescence, to roll over in Babylon, but a call to an active witness in a culture that so badly needs to hear about the One who has redeemed our world.<br /><br />Amen.<br /></span><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 0);"></span></div></div>Patrick McManushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717639457555961172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26698442.post-5267763835398979752007-10-07T18:35:00.000-04:002008-12-08T18:54:58.306-05:00Living Amongst the Ruins of the City: On Learning to Give Thanks<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0); font-weight: bold;font-size:100%;" ><span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 0);"><span><span>A Thanksgiving Day Sermon<br />The Anglican Parish of Almaguin-Emsdale<br />Oct. 7, 2007<br />Lam. 1:1-6; Lam. 3:19-26; 2 Tim. 1:1-14; Lk. 17:5-10</span></span></span></span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 0);"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></span></span></span></div><span style="font-style: italic;"><br />Lord of Creation, you who spoke light out of darkness, speak life into us this morning so that we may live lives of thanksgiving so that the world may know You. Amen. </span><br /><br />We like Thanksgiving, don’t we? It’s a time of celebration and joyfulness for all that we have in abundance. Giving thanks is almost as natural as breathing, or at least it should be. Someone opens a door for you, you respond automatically with ‘thank you’. But we had to be taught to be thankful. When someone gave you a gift as a child, your parents hopefully taught you to offer them a heartfelt ‘thank you’. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgreU04114dGTnHoz99lJOunHIWaEYBxWR1HOuricrFONEXNPBi-jvQPQ_HoQAIeyTvMqKz2UXh653xBz2x9M43HgNFVteceXsBsNUqcOyGZKqx5Waie0gLFZ4XFpz7TPzts3wNAg/s1600-h/chagal37.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 227px; height: 302px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgreU04114dGTnHoz99lJOunHIWaEYBxWR1HOuricrFONEXNPBi-jvQPQ_HoQAIeyTvMqKz2UXh653xBz2x9M43HgNFVteceXsBsNUqcOyGZKqx5Waie0gLFZ4XFpz7TPzts3wNAg/s320/chagal37.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5118729193643490866" border="0" /></a>Well, our Scripture readings today, specifically the readings from the book of Lamentations, teach us that being thankful is not an easy or trivial thing to do, they challenge us to re-think what it means to be thankful in a world like ours—and in fact, I want to suggest that living a life of thanksgiving requires a lot of effort, and like all things worth working for, is itself an art form, a learned skill, it's something we all keep on learning—and this morning, the Hebrew poets of lament are our teachers.<br /><br />In our reading from the book of Lamentations, we have what seems to be the exact opposite of giving thanks—we are here witnesses to the ancient Hebrew practice of poetic lament, that literary performance which gave public testimony to the deep grief of the Hebrew people over the destruction of the city of Jerusalem at the hands of the Babylonians. Israel, as a people, had experienced something they never expected, they lived through the ruin and devastation of Jerusalem and more pointedly, they experienced the annihilation of the Temple—the very thing that gave their lives, as Jews, meaning.<br /><br />But nevertheless, in the middle of the poet’s darkest reflections—and even T.S. Eliot, at his most somber, doesn’t approach the sense of melancholy and sorrow expressed here by this Hebrew poet—even in the middle of all of this, the poet is able to articulate: ‘But this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness’. Even in the midst of the tumultuousness of its life, Israel is grateful to her God for his goodness and his provision; even amongst the ruins of the city, Israel learns to give thanks, to acknowledge its hope in God’s mercy, his faithfulness and his steadfast love. The poet, in our canticle, comes to a resolution only as they reflect on God’s provision and his care for his people; <span style="font-style: italic;">the poet is able to wrestle life out of death because of God’s steadfast love.</span><br /><br />Following the literary movement of this poet, from the depths of lament to hopefulness of God’s provision, I’m reminded of one of the most moving scenes in modern cinema, from Roberto Benigni’s 1998 movie <span style="font-style: italic;">Life is Beautiful</span>—a movie which takes place during the rise of fascism in Italy during WWII. I’m reminded of the scene where the father and his young son are in the concentration camp, in the most horrible circumstances one can imagine. The father wants to protect his son from the reality of what they are facing and so tells him that the whole thing is just a big game and that the manual labour that he performs every day is just really a competition. In this way the father, a man who can find humor in the most bleak of situations, shields his son from the horrors of the camp which, in the end, saves the son. Here is a man, who in the heart of darkness, is so thankful and grateful for the life of his son, that he struggles to find the beauty of life in order to protect him. <span style="font-style: italic;">He is able to wrestle life out of death so that his son might have hope and not despair.</span><br /><span class="on down" style="display: block;" id="formatbar_Italic" title="Italic" onmouseover="ButtonHoverOn(this);" onmouseout="ButtonHoverOff(this);" onmouseup="" onmousedown="CheckFormatting(event);FormatbarButton('richeditorframe', this, 4);ButtonMouseDown(this);"></span><br />This is the reality of our lives as Christians, this is what the gospel of thanksgiving is all about! Thanksgiving, giving thanks to God in the middle of the hard things of our existence is an art learned in the living of it; true, deep biblical thanksgiving is a chastened gratitude for what God has given us, for what he had taken us through and for what he will take us through. The celebration of Thanksgiving is more than a one day affair, much more than a long-weekend spent with the family, but something, as Christians, that we live out with our lives, one day at a time.<br /><br />It’s easy to thank God before meals and for our families (well, most of the time), or for prosperity and health or for the beauty of creation—but after this it gets a little difficult. It’s not an easy thing to live lives of thanksgiving when we have obstacles to be overcome, <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl5vKq5G8VjJWpGEpdBu96G-zMW-iZD-IzyR409Q8HCvHV1gJVT-uoM2ZWKn6na2JRfxhIZKjN3FFFlvvvdKY7qrHX7Z2PA5GP87mVDSoFKXVEp-qtZlvPpvFCgG9uLIj1Jw_7xg/s1600-h/21_1480_m.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl5vKq5G8VjJWpGEpdBu96G-zMW-iZD-IzyR409Q8HCvHV1gJVT-uoM2ZWKn6na2JRfxhIZKjN3FFFlvvvdKY7qrHX7Z2PA5GP87mVDSoFKXVEp-qtZlvPpvFCgG9uLIj1Jw_7xg/s320/21_1480_m.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5118730370464529986" border="0" /></a>lessons to be learned, when we need to endure hardship, or to live with those people in our lives who are more thorns than they are roses. Sometimes it’s much easier to become disillusioned with our lives and so become bitter. But this morning, it is not a glib or superficial ‘thank you’ that we offer to God, but we offer our very lives in gratitude to God, as damaged, as broken and as bruised as our lives may be—<span style="font-style: italic;">we live them in thanksgiving to a God who struggled to find life in the heart of darkness, who wrestled life out of death in the life of his resurrected Son so that we might have hope and not despair. </span>True thanksgiving is gratitude born in the full view of all the realities of life, in view of joy & sorrow, of love & brokenness, of pleasure & pain, of gratitude & lament, of life & of death.<br /><br />So, as we prepare to come to this altar this morning, as we come to perform the church’s most central act of thanksgiving in celebrating the Eucharist—and <span style="font-style: italic;">eucharist</span> itself literally means ‘gratitude’ or ‘thanksgiving’—let’s offer our thanks for God’s wonderful provision and for his beautiful creation we see all around us—for the marvelous colours of this fall season and for a bountiful harvest, but most of all, let us offer our thanks to God for wrestling life out of death.<br /><br />Amen.Patrick McManushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717639457555961172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26698442.post-23037708871844401362007-08-15T07:22:00.000-04:002008-12-08T18:54:58.530-05:00Abelard on Family Life<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_yvt4v1P2EkRRjY8YNhRD5IkNxRMdFdcPq547MaoAtDPRxGGAEsYdUeNv4Jl6JctwYjxN-KgtWHLfgeOv76sbFna7GwXIoByyNG_oGmajKCicx9jheZ2nerR1IY4DS3miBx4vgA/s1600-h/abelard-solo.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_yvt4v1P2EkRRjY8YNhRD5IkNxRMdFdcPq547MaoAtDPRxGGAEsYdUeNv4Jl6JctwYjxN-KgtWHLfgeOv76sbFna7GwXIoByyNG_oGmajKCicx9jheZ2nerR1IY4DS3miBx4vgA/s200/abelard-solo.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5099111948065709506" border="0" /></a>I came across this in Peter Abelard the other day: <blockquote></blockquote>"What man, intent on his religious or philosophical meditations, can possibly endure the whining of children, the lullabies of the nurse seeking to quiet them, or the noisy confusion of family life? Who can endure the continual untidiness of children?" (<span style="font-style: italic;">History of My Misfortunes</span>, ch. 7)<br /><br />Any of you academics working on your degrees with children present can surely relate to Abelard's concern, hee hee! Well, he never was married (duh!?) and did eventually get castrated by some really angry guys for sleeping with his collegue's daughter. Boy, if only theology faculties could live up to this sort of drama today!<br /><br /><blockquote></blockquote>Patrick McManushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717639457555961172noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26698442.post-16726874369432295832007-07-15T22:22:00.000-04:002008-12-08T18:54:59.426-05:00The Upside-Down World of Jesus<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvzLjF7Gc1abySFMCUzV7o795iWFECfMg8_nwNjjh2NorcEaOjRElB8snZq3myXrjAQDKM2nbeitbW9Yj1dw319pF_fyNIlfJxShok2LIj12YUYMyznovRSnJlDCc_j1OIAgDMEg/s1600-h/goodsamaritan.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 289px; height: 289px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvzLjF7Gc1abySFMCUzV7o795iWFECfMg8_nwNjjh2NorcEaOjRElB8snZq3myXrjAQDKM2nbeitbW9Yj1dw319pF_fyNIlfJxShok2LIj12YUYMyznovRSnJlDCc_j1OIAgDMEg/s400/goodsamaritan.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5087615686796009298" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 0);">A Sermon Preached at Church of the Epiphany, Sudbury ON, July 15, 2007</span></span></span><br /></div><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">When my wife Renée and I were expecting the birth of our son William about three years ago now, we were given a popular book that many mothers swear by: </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:verdana;" >What to Expect </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:verdana;" >When You’re Expecting</span><span style="font-family:verdana;">. I’m sure that some of you recognize it. The cover has a picture of a young mother-to-be, rocking peacefully in a serene scene full of bliss and joy. It sounds nice doesn’t it. It didn’t take long after William was born—a couple of sleepless nights to be exact—for me to begin to think that there was something a little slick and slightly dishonest about the title. It’s not that I’m not grateful for books which try to prepare parents-to-be for what they are about to experience. It’s just that having a baby and becoming a parent is such an unexpected, interrupting and world-altering experience that by definition, expecting what’s going to happen is a stretch, to say the least.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">We may go into life and the situations we encounter along the way with all sorts of expectations and, if we make the mistake of taking ourselves too seriously, we can be bound to those expectations—and we can get bitter if things don’t work out the way we want. When your world is turned upside-down by something like the birth of a child, you quickly realize that what you thought you recognized as the lay of the land, is actually a completely different landscape. It’s unsettling and it takes time for our eyes to adjust to our new surroundings.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Something similar is going on in today’s gospel with the lawyer we meet. We’re all somewhat familiar with this parable. The parable of the Good Samaritan has indeed seeped into our common vocabulary and popular culture. It’s just another example of the Golden Rule right? “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you?” This is usually what we think of when we read the parable—at least that’s the way it was always taught to me. It’s a moral lesson about being good to people, about helping others, about loving thy neighbour as thyself. It’s about being ‘good’ just like the Samaritan, right?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Well, that’s certainly part of it, but if we leave it at this we really miss the subversive nature of Jesus’ parable and indeed of the gospel as a whole. There’s something much more radical going on here—the parable, if we actually read it, or rather allow it to read us, is quite a challenging and unsettling one—it’s a world altering story. And here’s a tip: if we read one of Jesus’ parables and we feel comfortable and settled, chances are that we’ve misread it.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">A lawyer, one soaked in the Hebrew law and Jewish religious customs, approaches Jesus, not with a question but with a challenge, with a test, with a public legal dispute. In the Greek we have a strong verb here—and with the tone we get the sense that the lawyer is trying to entrap Jesus—this certainly wouldn’t be the first time. There’s a sense of hostility here—this is no courteous conversation over a cup of tea. The lawyer means business, as they often do.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">The lawyer came thinking he knew what to expect from Jesus—he knew what Jesus would say—he had it all figured out, this legal stuff. After all, he had studied the law for quite a long time. “Rabbi, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” The lawyer is asking the question, not in order to hear something—he didn’t come ready to listen to Jesus, rather he wanted to say something—he wanted to test Jesus’ fidelity to the law. This legal question may indeed be a veiled assault on Jesus’ ministry with the unclean, with those whom Jesus treated as his neighbours. The lawyer came expecting Jesus to play ball.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">But instead of answering his question, Jesus throws it back to lawyer—“Well, you, lawyer, you know the law better than anyone—how do you read the law?” This is really a trick question on the part of Jesus and you can sense Jesus’ sarcasm here—of course any good Jew knew the law: 1) Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and 2) Love your neighbours as yourself. “Rabbi, that’s an easy answer!” “Well”, says Jesus, “you know the law, A+, bang on—do that, and you’ll find all the life you need.”</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">The lawyer’s feathers are ruffled, he wants to justify himself, to defend his case, he wants Jesus to meet his expectations. So he can’t just let it go at that. Loving God, well, that’s the easy part of the law…we all know who God is. But, on the neighbour thing, we’re a little less clear. “So, just who is my neighbour, exactly Rabbi”? His question is that of a point of legality and did in fact concern a central issue in Jewish law. Ancient Jews defined the neighbour in terms of insiders and outsiders and generally a neighbour for a Jew was considered to be a fellow Israelite. But this lawyer wanted an exact definition just in case the legal question of loving one ever came up. He wants to know who the law demands that he love. He wants boundaries, because boundaries make life easier to live. He wants a reality defined in terms of those inside and those outside. If we know who are neighbours are, we can offer them our love. We can meet the demands of the law if we know what the law demands.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">But Jesus doesn’t answer his question...he doesn’t play ball here either. Instead, Jesus did what he did best: he told him a story. A traveler who was on his way to Jericho, is attacked, robbed, </span><a style="font-family: verdana;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGF3TDekxCQ6P75zQdN82uPmjHAGDzJY5xdJDlpB0ryMLUcKo6Br8QcZG9Eg_-yjFLEyZKBcQGwTrr8yePQV37FxsxZ6LK9HQKNI3z42SXiowYPYO2v5ggYtKhyQEIJB9nMg2pdg/s1600-h/3796.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGF3TDekxCQ6P75zQdN82uPmjHAGDzJY5xdJDlpB0ryMLUcKo6Br8QcZG9Eg_-yjFLEyZKBcQGwTrr8yePQV37FxsxZ6LK9HQKNI3z42SXiowYPYO2v5ggYtKhyQEIJB9nMg2pdg/s320/3796.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5087618182172008306" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:verdana;">beaten and left for dead in a ditch. By chance, a priest and then a Levite pass by without offering any help. The priest and the Levite would have been two people extremely stringent on the law (in fact, many priests were also lawyers—a point certainly not lost on the lawyer questioning Jesus). They pass by, presumably, to avoid contamination and defilement by a dead, or a soon to be dead body—the only dead body a priest could defile himself with by touching was a member of his own immediate family for the purposes of burial.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">But now a Samaritan came walking by, he had pity on the stranger, bandaged his wounds and brought him to an inn where he could get well and made sure that he did. We need to understand the radical nature of this dramatic turn of events. What Jesus’ audience would have understood is that the Jews saw the Samaritans as the lowest of the low. A neighbour was one on the inside and anyone outside of that circle was excluded from this category. Samaritans were definitely on the outside—no group was more unacceptable to the Jews of this time—they ranked lower on the scale than did Gentile slaves. For example, if a Samaritan volunteered to pay the temple tax, it was to be returned to them.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">So, Jesus asks him point blank, who here was a neighbour to the man? Notice Luke’s intent: he reminds us again that Jesus is speaking to ‘the one who was an expert in the law, and so the expert answers “The one who showed mercy.” Luke wants us to appreciate the great shock of the lawyer’s confession. “Go and do likewise” Jesus tells him.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Jesus was very intentional in his choice of characters here. He chooses the most despised outsider who was unfit for friendship with a Jew as the hero of this parable to deliberately shock, provoke and scandalize his audience. What Jesus’ story does is to effectively turn the lawyer’s world upside-down and inside-out. The lawyer came expecting one thing, but he got another thing entirely—he is confronted, challenged and striped bare with this parable. Everything the lawyer takes for granted, everything he expects is put into question and revolutionized. And notice that Jesus never answers his question, “who is my neighbour” but with the parable, with the story he tells, he forces the lawyer to re-think his presuppositions behind his question. Jesus doesn’t answer his question because in Jesus’ world, the question is unanswerable and ought not even be asked in the first place.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">In Jesus’ world, love doesn’t begin by defining its objects but rather discovers them. Jesus turns the question around and inside-out: he never gives the lawyer the boundaries, the restrictions he wants because “neighbourhood” is defined for Jesus not in terms of the object of love. Rather the identity of neighbour is caught up with the subject, the one who shows mercy. The identity of the neighbour shifts from the one who receives mercy (from who is eligible for our love and mercy) to the subject who shows mercy. The question is not, “who is my neighbour?”, but “who am I as a neighbour to those I encounter along life’s way?”—and by this shift Jesus effectively erases any boundaries—if a Jew could admit that the hated Samaritan was the neighbour in this case, then there are no boundaries, no working definition to make life easier. Jesus places the enemy in the position of the elect and becomes the example for the community. This is a mind-blowing, reality altering way of looking at the world and it’s a hard reality for the lawyer to swallow. And notice that we aren’t left knowing how the lawyer reacted to all of this. Jesus’ intent was to clearly change this man’s perspective on reality, but we’re never told how the story ends for the lawyer. Did he go and do likewise, or did he remain stuck in his way of doing things?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">We come to church sometimes like the lawyer came to Jesus, don’t we? We may not be hostile (or, indeed sometimes we may). But we do come with our expectations of what church should be, how things should be done, and sometimes with a very strict definition of who is in and who is out. And, more often than not, we come thinking we know what Jesus is all about—we don’t expect to be confronted by Jesus. But, just like the lawyer who thought that he knew what’s what, Jesus doesn’t leave us, with our boundaries and definitions, and expectations unchallenged or unprovoked. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Jesus told this parable to turn the lawyer’s world upside-down and today this parable is for us an invitation to the quite unexpected world of Jesus where Samaritans, the despised outsiders of society and not the religious leaders of the day are the heroes of the story. Where enemies, those we consider to be on the outside are really on the inside. A world where we are shocked to find out that the first are really last and the last are in fact, first.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">It is an invitation to a way of life, to a community that doesn’t seek to set boundaries of who is in and who is out—who we love and show mercy to, and who we leave in the ditch for dead. It’s an invitation to live as a follower of Jesus not with our expectations controlling our lives (for we all sometimes get caught up with the expectations we place on each other and on God or especially with the expectations we feel are made of us) but an invitation to have our lives overwhelmed, turned upside-down and inside-out by the miracle of God’s grace.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">And just as we don’t know how the lawyer reacted to this provocation, to this quite unexpected turn of events, I don’t know how you’ve reacted to the reality altering world and ways of Jesus in your own life. The invitation to encounter this Jesus who transforms and revolutionizes our lives is open to everyone—and if we let him, he will turn our worlds upside-down.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Amen.</span>Patrick McManushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717639457555961172noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26698442.post-89721715733664845882007-06-25T09:21:00.000-04:002008-12-08T18:54:59.858-05:00The Church as Eccentric Community<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 102, 0);font-size:100%;" >A Sermon Preached on the</span><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 102, 0);font-size:100%;" ><br />Feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, June 24th 2007</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 102, 0);font-size:100%;" ><br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 102, 0);font-size:100%;" >Church of the Epiphany</span><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 102, 0);font-size:100%;" >, Sudbury, ON</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><br /></div><br />May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all of our hearts and minds be pleasing unto You, O Lord our Saviour and Redeemer. Amen.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia3Z_UEcGjTQKX3hQ7NU7jb9qWj2AEqDJbejtXl2ejMIoGSSkpj049KN4n6PF2i3ufr2HOBEGgUsqWTutWPMX5hGzKshGJ6oLEpxLntlv_QsAWFoixA9sK10Sz4Q9M_e6B0aHmMg/s1600-h/isencross.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia3Z_UEcGjTQKX3hQ7NU7jb9qWj2AEqDJbejtXl2ejMIoGSSkpj049KN4n6PF2i3ufr2HOBEGgUsqWTutWPMX5hGzKshGJ6oLEpxLntlv_QsAWFoixA9sK10Sz4Q9M_e6B0aHmMg/s320/isencross.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5079999113828081650" border="0" /></a>John the Baptist is certainly in the running for one of the strangest characters from scripture. True to the form of Old Testament prophets, John was, to say the least, an odd and peculiar person. He looked, and probably smelled, more like someone living on the street than any of us here today. In light of the reading from Luke’s Gospel this morning, where we are told that the one who will come to prepare the way of the Lord is the Prophet of the Most High, we are probably prone to expect something other than what we got in John the Baptist—someone important, well-connected, someone socially stable. But that’s not the way God works…He gave us John the Baptist—a man with animal skin for clothes, and with honey and locusts stuck in his beard; a smelly and grubby itinerant preacher from somewhere out in the wilderness. In a word, he gave us an “eccentric” witness.<br /><br />Truth be told, we’d probably all rather not have <span style="font-style: italic;">him</span> sitting next to us in church on Sunday morning. I’m sure that we can draw up all sorts of eccentric characters from the pool of our collective memories and experiences—someone who was always a little off-center—whether it’s a co-worker who doesn’t quite fit in, or someone from your childhood who was the class oddball, that weird kid that everybody picked on…or maybe you fell like you are the one of those people always sitting on the outside looking in.<br /><br />What I would like us to consider this morning is that the church is called to be eccentric, much like John the Baptist was. Just so we’re clear here, I’m not suggesting that we are all called to wear ratty clothes and eat weird things and generally not look after ourselves. But what I do want to do is to play around with this word “eccentric”. What does this prophet have to teach us, gathered here this morning, about the church as an eccentric way of life?<br /><br />First of all, the word eccentric carries with it the sense of being off center—to be out of center. In this way functions as the opposite of ego-centric: it means living ‘outside’ of ourselves in contrast to living a self-centered life. Karl Barth, the theological giant of the twentieth century, had a picture hung above his desk for his entire life. The picture, copied for you on the front of this week’s bulletin, was Matthias Grünewald’s crucifixion scene from his Isenheim altarpiece painted in the early 16th century. I want you to look at it and take it in. Barth was fond of this picture, not for the centrality of the crucifixion scene per se, but rather for Grünewald’s representation of John the Baptist. In this figure of the prophet, with the Holy Scriptures in one hand and the other, with finger outstretched toward the figure of the crucified, we have, Barth claimed, the very vision, the very identity of the church, of what it means to be a witnessing community.<br /><br />It is the finger of the Baptist draws our attention. Elongated and outstretched, he doesn’t seek to attract attention to himself, but wants our gaze to be cast upon the crucified Lord. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjvCU0cId2F0uA0xCJXGd9483WkpAz69LILwMLxtzTMa7_1XL_bH46nqkqKO19cpNQ0oTRkYd6oQsOYb4ShQYS-F9mnJzaHZ_HGt6WKcek162UXGWQ-GE9bTMY8qVohwu-tr9OPQ/s1600-h/1view1c3.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 159px; height: 219px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjvCU0cId2F0uA0xCJXGd9483WkpAz69LILwMLxtzTMa7_1XL_bH46nqkqKO19cpNQ0oTRkYd6oQsOYb4ShQYS-F9mnJzaHZ_HGt6WKcek162UXGWQ-GE9bTMY8qVohwu-tr9OPQ/s200/1view1c3.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5079996223315091426" border="0" /></a>John is not interested in himself but in the One who has come to put all things right. John’s disregard for himself was not a product of a self-imposed humility. Rather, John had the task of preparing the way of the Lord and His salvation—it was a job that required taking notice of Jesus and not of himself.<br /><br />As members of God’s church we are called to the same ministry as John the Baptist. We are called to be witnesses to Christ in our world—not as self-interested people but as selfless ones. Our job is, like John’s, to point to Christ so that the world may know that salvation has come and this requires, to put it rather bluntly, that our egos are checked at the door. The church is not a community focused in on itself, but it is called to be a community centered on others. <span style="font-style: italic;">The church only exists as her true self when she exists for others.</span><br /><br />More often than not, the church’s actual posture is one of pointing to ourselves, seeking our own attention, rather than the posture of the Baptist who points away from himself. Our communal life can all too easily slip into self-centeredness when we get caught up with ourselves, with our own individual desires, our own plans, when I want it my way. When we live such a self-centered life, individually and as a community, we miss the boat. We exist for others, plain and simple. When we think that being the church is all about us, that all of this is here for us, we miss our call to be an eccentric, other-centered community. When we live with our egos at the center, with our fingers pointed to ourselves, we blur and confuse our witness. John knew this as we read this morning from the book of Acts, “What do you suppose that I am? I am not he. No, but one is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of the sandals on his feet.” John knew that to be self-centered meant obscuring his witness to Christ. In fact, in the sometimes overwhelming temptation to be overly concerned with ourselves, we block out the image of the crucified, which is another way of saying that we sin.<br /><br />And this brings me to the second sense in which the church is called to be eccentric, and here I mean it in a more corporate and social sense: Christ calls the church to live, not as an important social club—as a place where membership gets you some sort of credibility amongst your peers, or where you come to feel important or to maintain some sort of status. No, in a very real way, Christ calls us to exist like those eccentric and strange figures in our lives, at the fringes of society, at the outside of the social margin where God’s peace and tender mercy are all but invisible. We live there because that’s where Jesus lives caring for the poor and the hungry, suffering with the sick and the rejected.<br /><br />We may think that we’re cultured, and well-to-do and important, but we belong to a body where all are welcomed, especially those people who make us uncomfortable, those people who make us shift a little in our sometimes all too comfortable pews. The church is the place where those who don’t ‘fit-in’ in the world are welcomed and accepted. It is the place where we exist as God’s living alternative to a world gone awry—and that’s often an uncomfortable and unpopular place to be.<br /><br />It’s not easy to live as God’s alternative in a world that worships the idols of capital, the health of the market and the bottom line; in a world that treats people like statistics and holds the poorest of nations in debt; in a world that teaches us to value and protect our own self-interest over that of others, that it’s okay to exploit others in the name of self-preservation. It’s no accident that the New Testament word for witness is martyr—the very giving up of the self—something John the Baptist knew all too well. No, it’s not easy to live as a community that is supposed to embody God’s way of life. It’s not easy to cry in the wilderness, pointing to the crucified, “Here is your God!” The light of the dawn that breaks over us, the light that Zechariah prophesied about in Luke’s gospel is the light of God’s salvation that has come to shine on us and our world. It is our job to selflessly share this light with the world, a world that sits in darkness and in the shadow of death.<br /><br />So being witnesses to Christ doesn’t mean being prim and proper, important or self-sufficient, least of all does it mean ‘upwardly mobile’ or ‘normal’ or ‘socially functional’. John the Baptist is our great example of what it means to exist as a witness, not because he had it all together (he most certainly did not), but because he was transparent to Christ. True eccentricity, true selfless living in the interest of others in the name of Jesus Christ is what it means to be God’s witnesses. It’s not easy, but that’s what we’re supposed to be all about.<br /><br />Not because ‘we’ have it all together…we don’t and that’s the point exactly. Living eccentrically means that we’re not just a group of isolated self-interested individuals looking out for number one who occasionally bump into each other at church, but it means living as a community that exists for each other, both inside and outside of the walls of the church. It means life together <span style="font-style: italic;">for others</span>. It means living for others <span style="font-style: italic;">with each other</span> and when we do that we live as transparent witnesses to Christ. We live off-centered, outside of ourselves when we open our doors to all people and invite them to participate in our peculiar and eccentric way of life where self-centeredness crumbles under the weight of God’s redeeming grace, where conflict and bitterness are transformed into living for the sake of others, where the strangeness of God’s love overwhelms the normalcy of our lives, where our inward pointing fingers are turned from ourselves to the life giving cross of Jesus Christ.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">for </span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">you</span> </span><span style="font-style: italic;">will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">to give knowledge of salvation to his people</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">by the forgiveness of their sins.</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">By the tender mercy of our God,</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">the dawn from on high will break upon us,</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">to guide our feet into the way of peace.</span> Amen.Patrick McManushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717639457555961172noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26698442.post-35272058604557222502007-04-12T10:25:00.000-04:002007-06-25T09:46:54.214-04:00<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/speechanddrama/media/auden205.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 163px; height: 163px;" src="http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/speechanddrama/media/auden205.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 0);font-size:130%;" >W.H. Auden's <i>Horae Canonicae</i></span><br /><br />For those of you who enjoy the poetry of W.H. Auden, BBC Radio 3 had a reading of his marvelous lenten poem, <i>Horae Canonicae</i> (The Canonical Hours) read by Tom Durham with introductions by Archbishop Rowan Williams. You can listen <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/speechanddrama/auden.shtml">here</a>. <br /><br />You can get the text of the poem <a href="http://spintongues.msk.ru/auden9eng.htm">here</a>.Patrick McManushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717639457555961172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26698442.post-25705561478740964602007-03-22T10:54:00.000-04:002008-12-08T18:55:00.061-05:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFMoIpo7P82bNakyBe4P_MxMIy3x5l4qYP-PA8stXzxDVsLjLhjx5FxA6gIhGuDwlGT3436wM-DUdp-M7gA9cSlcpLjkQ-rabaXRQye3vI_hInMdjBhFM64T54qEWzrDQ4vOsmAw/s1600-h/maximus1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 175px; height: 253px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFMoIpo7P82bNakyBe4P_MxMIy3x5l4qYP-PA8stXzxDVsLjLhjx5FxA6gIhGuDwlGT3436wM-DUdp-M7gA9cSlcpLjkQ-rabaXRQye3vI_hInMdjBhFM64T54qEWzrDQ4vOsmAw/s320/maximus1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5044763863835577394" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 0);">Maximus the Confessor</span></span><br /><br />I'm currently reading the collection of Maximus the Confessor's writings, <span style="font-style: italic;">On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ</span>. As this is my first foray into Maximus, I'm wondering if any of you who may happen upon this post know of any top notch secondary sources that will help to place Maximus into his theological/historical/political environment.<br /><br />As for secondary resources, I'm reading Hans Urs von Balthasar's <span style="font-style: italic;">The Cosmic Liturgy: the Universe According to Maximus the Confessor</span>, Andrew Louth's <span style="font-style: italic;">Maximus the Confessor</span>, and Meyendorff's <span style="font-style: italic;">Christ in Eastern Christian Thought</span> (esp. chp. 7). I also know of Thunberg's work and will eventually look at it. I'm also open to French language sources. Any help you could give me would be greatly appreciated. As well, if any of you know any good patristic theology blogs, pass them along. Thanks.Patrick McManushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717639457555961172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26698442.post-80881476932389476452007-02-20T11:52:00.000-05:002008-12-08T18:55:00.145-05:00<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 102, 0);">Toward a Post-Liberal Theology?: The Architecture of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Christology and Ecclesiology<br /><br />Part IV: The Perils of </span><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 102, 0); font-style: italic;">Christus als Gemeinde existierend</span><br /></span><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" ><br />Bonhoeffer’s contribution offers much in response to theological liberalism. Yet we are left with some nagging suspicions that, left on its own, the architecture of Bonhoeffer’s Christology and ecclesiology cannot fully afford what it wishes to purchase—a ticket to outbid theological liberalism.<br /><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPodsUl8fWUOHtl3RrplonXlGe3ssxz4sjqe7cJ7rphcNc5XCTfb6do0vYBeZKUCSj3VnzBTsF25t_brzXtu1l0PwCwf9AtC0KdTWnt9igKYsUJ0bhTTbCUxHWBSEv2sZfcg8baQ/s1600-h/picture_11.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5033672639907774178" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPodsUl8fWUOHtl3RrplonXlGe3ssxz4sjqe7cJ7rphcNc5XCTfb6do0vYBeZKUCSj3VnzBTsF25t_brzXtu1l0PwCwf9AtC0KdTWnt9igKYsUJ0bhTTbCUxHWBSEv2sZfcg8baQ/s320/picture_11.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >We return to some of his early programmatic statements: "the church is the presence of Christ </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >in the same way</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0,0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >that Christ is the presence of God" (</span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >SC</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >, 138, emphasis mine). He goes on to qualify this: "one must not think of a second incarnation of Christ…but rather of </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >a form of revelation</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >that may be called 'Christ existing as church-community'" (</span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >SC</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >, 138, emphasis mine). The difficulty within Bonhoeffer’s description is that we are inevitably led—even against his best efforts to </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >not</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" > think of the church as a second incarnation—to think of the church as, at the very least, an extension of the incarnation. Without parsing the discontinuity between the identity and presence of Jesus Christ as say Barth or more precisely as Hans Frei has done, we are left with a number of difficulties (both potential and actual). Here the danger is that the identity of Jesus is not only </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >dislodged </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >from its own unique narratively rendered description (which is a weighty, but different concern) but is so </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >fused</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" > with his presence that his identity (his act and being) is too easily confused with a phenonmenologically rendered description—the visible and sociologically describable </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >gemeinde</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >, grounded earlier, within </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >Sanctorum Communio</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >, in a sociologically and philosophically describable “personhood” and “community”.<br /><br />Take the following, from </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >Discipleship</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >, for example:</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" ></span> <blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >In his grace, [Jesus] has left something unfinished in his suffering, which his church-community is to complete in this last period before his second coming. This suffering will benefit the body of Christ, the church. Whether this suffering of Christians also has the power to atone for sin (1 Peter 4:1) remains an open question. What is clear, however, is that those suffering in the power of the body of Christ suffer in a vicariously representative action ‘for’ the church-community, ‘for’ the body of Christ (</span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >Discipleship</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >, 222).</span></blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" ></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >The issue here is not about the activity requisite of the church, for it is indeed called to follow Christ precisely in his suffering and so, it too suffers. The issue at hand is that Bonhoeffer missteps when he claims that </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >we</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" > complete the work of Christ to the point of leaving the question of the vicarious and atoning suffering of the community for sin an open one—which is a clear outcome of not attentively distinguishing the identity of Christ from that of the church (here we have a deep division between Barth and Bonhoeffer). To speak of the community as “completing” the work of Christ introduces within that community’s activity a certain active promeity, which it shares with the promeity of Christ. We are close—and let me be clear here that this is </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >against </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >Bonhoeffer’s best intentions—to the ancient heresy of Pelagianism wherein human activity bears soteriological consequence. If Bonhoeffer wants a genuine human activity and at the same time to avoid Pelagianism, as I believe him to, he needs to delineate in what way human activity participates in divine activity without usurping that activity and domesticating it to a flat phenomenological account of divine activity. Furthermore, without fully considering the full and complete work of Christ, the work of Christ, as </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >pro me</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" > activity is in danger of being evacuated of its </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >full</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" > promeity. That is, the relation between the activity of Christ and the activity of the church is, on this score, a </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >shared</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" > activity—and what’s more—a shared </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >salvific</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" > activity, for the community becomes</span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" > the </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" > Stellvertretung. The community thus does not correspond to the vicarious activity of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit but rather, in some sense, constitutes that activity in its own activity (which is but a form of ecclesiastical triumphalism).</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >This line of critique could be extended but what is at the root of the problem is an underdeveloped account of divine activity vis-à-vis the church, and such underdevelopment is but symptomatic of Bonhoeffer’s neglect of the doctrine of God proper—there is in fact no fully operative doctrine of God (doctrine of the Trinity) in Bonhoeffer’s corpus (for instance, a developed pneumatology would go a long way in avoiding the above problems).</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >To expand upon this critique, let us remember that “relationality” is derived, not from God’s relationality </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >in se</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >, but in an economy characterized and controlled by a phenomenologically achieved definition (an inheritance of 19th century liberal theology). That is, the problem that presents the difficulty with regards to Bonhoeffer’s Christology and ecclesiology is a neglect of the “relationality” of the Trinitarian economy. Barth offers us a keen assessment of the difficulty:</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" ></span> <blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >Theological thought is distinguished from philosophical thought by the fact that it does not regard the incarnation of the Word as the truth of a state, e.g., the truth of the unity of subject and object, of the man-relatedness of God or the God-relatedness of man, which is then an underlying principle of dogmatics that has to be exegeted…but regards it rather as the truth of a divine act. But if it is understood as an act, then the </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >terminus a quo</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" > (‘God in Himself’) and the </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >terminus as quem</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" > (‘man in himself’) must be differentiated and then interelated in the description of the act as such. </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >What would ‘God for us’ mean if it were not said against the background of ‘God in Himself’?</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >” (CD I/1, 170 emphasis mine).</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" ></span></blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >Barth’s concern is that in order to properly take account of the divine economic activity </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >ad extra</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >, and so to appropriately gauge the human-divine relationship, proper attention must be paid to the activity of God </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >ad intra</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >. What indeed would it mean to say “God for us” without saying “God in himself”? This is essentially what Bonhoeffer does—he says “God for us” without taking account of “God in Himself”. The danger is that “relationality” and all of its correlates (“community”, “person”, “the other”) are read phenomenologically.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >So we come full circle in that the methodology that ruled </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >Sanctorum Communio</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >, an arguably classic liberal methodology, was never really overcome even in spite of a rich and strenuously orthodox christological development. Not only that but this methodological move was never deemed necessary to overcome in the first place! That methodology, as we discussed earlier but which only now can be fully appreciated, asserted that a Christian concept of community (ecclesiology) is funded either via a concept of God or via a concept of person (which always has a concept of God in view), and that both are equally valid. This is precisely the classic liberal dichotomy within theological method precipitated by the turn to the subject in later nineteenth century theological discourse! This is specifically what funds his distressing paucity with regards to reflection upon the doctrine of the Trinity (let us remember what weight the doctrine of the Trinity held in Schleiermacher’s theology!). Not only that, but Bonhoeffer’s ontology from </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >Act and Being</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" > is inadequate to the degree that it offers him little help in parsing the difficulty of taking account of divine and human activity (that is, the act </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >and</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" > being of Christ and church) with regards to the identity of Christ and his church. Is Christ exhaustively identified with the community? Does the community partake in some sort of </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >hypostatic</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" > union with Christ such that it has both a human and divine dimension? As we tentatively answered above, Christ and church are identified but not to the point that Christ is identified with the church without remainder—this is Bonhoeffer’s intention. Yet there is a tension here that is not adequately resolved and so the question of the </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" > fusion</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" > of identities and the consequences therein need to remain open as an extension or possibility inherent within Bonhoeffer’s theological contribution.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >While Bonhoeffer gains mileage on the tradition of theological liberalism in his effort to outbid that tradition, he remains, in certain important respects imbedded within that tradition. Without a full-blown doctrine of God funding his ecclesiological and christological moves, especially an account of the activity of the Holy Spirit in relation to ecclesiological concerns, Bonhoeffer’s contribution remains an inadequate attempt to mount a successful response to the nineteenth century’s shortfalls. This is not to discount the ground that Bonhoeffer makes up in his Christology lectures—which is significant. In this sense Bonhoeffer is a legitimate forerunner of postliberal theology as many of his concerns in his Christology lectures parallel, to a great degree, the concerns of someone like Hans Frei. Yet he remains a precursor of postliberal theology who could not really shed his liberal skin completely (and this may indeed be why he is largely overlooked in contemporary postliberal theology). To do so, his contribution needs to be properly supplemented with a robust doctrine of God wherein he could properly take account of the human activity of the church without falling into the above problematique.</span></div>Patrick McManushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717639457555961172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26698442.post-84765787784439217902006-12-29T10:00:00.000-05:002008-12-08T18:55:00.385-05:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_cNPMgjqpjvE/RYvsH_tzIcI/AAAAAAAAADE/tYDah3Atkow/s1600-h/bonhoeffer_1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_cNPMgjqpjvE/RYvsH_tzIcI/AAAAAAAAADE/tYDah3Atkow/s320/bonhoeffer_1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5011358632486576578" border="0" /></a><span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 0);"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Toward a Post-Liberal Theology?: The Architecture of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Christology and Ecclesiology<br /><br /></span></span></span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 0);font-size:130%;" >Part III: The Christology Lectures of 1933</span><br /><br /></span><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >Bonhoeffer, now a professor at Berlin, delivered these lectures in the summer semester of 1933. The text we have is not Bonhoeffer's own but a carefully reconstructed manuscript from the notes of the students present, edited and compiled by Bonhoeffer's closest friend, literary executor, and biographer Eberhard Bethge. Moreover, the lectures themselves are not complete as a third section, on "the eternal Christ", was planned but apparently never completed as no extant notes have been found.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >Bonhoeffer begins the lectures in what at first glance seems to be an obscurely and piously enthusiastic manner:</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >Teaching about Christ begins in silence…. That has nothing to do with the silence of the mystics, who in their dumbness chatter away secretly in their soul by themselves. The silence of the Church is silence before the Word. In so far as the Church proclaims the Word, it falls down silently in truth before the inexpressible…. To speak of Christ means to keep silent; to keep silent about Christ means to speak. When the Church speaks rightly out of a proper silence, then Christ is proclaimed (CC, 27). </span></blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >What at first seems to be a piece of subtle dialectical piece of rhetoric in fact reaches to the heart of the matter at the outset of the lectures. Speaking of Christ "rightly"—properly identifying Jesus—is done neither by the drumming up of sophisticated dogmatic formulae separated from the church’s worshipping posture ‘under’ the Word, nor by the search for some "inner Christ" (the Christ of faith) or an historical Jesus. Bonhoeffer knew all too well the cul-de-sac of that well-traveled road. The intellectual posture of 'silence' essential for engaging Christology (and to the discipline of theology in general) employed by Bonhoeffer is not a novel or erratic turn of phrase. Rather, what the diction of silence is meant to convey is that the only 'appropriate' approach to and description of the discipline of Christology is a dogmatic one and more precisely a dogmatic one employed in a doxological mode. Pangritz notes that for Bonhoeffer, "the meaning of 'dogma' is not so much 'doctrine', but rather praise of the 'doxa', the glory of the Lord."</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >Two significant material considerations fund this methodological move on Bonhoeffer's part and represent a crucial 'moment' in his Christology—a critical moment that clarifies just how extensive his response to and undercutting of theological liberalism is. First Bonhoeffer claims that the discipline of Christology is "the center of its own space"; it "remains unique. It has no proof by which it can demonstrate transcendence of its subject. Its statement that this transcendence, namely the Logos, is a human person, is presupposition and not subject to proof" (CC, 28). Second, for Bonhoeffer, theology and in particular, Christology, is concerned not with impulsive human utterance about Jesus, but with a Divine Counter-Logos: "When the Counter-Logos appears in history, no longer as an idea, but as a 'Word' become flesh, there is no longer any possibility of assimilating him into the existing order of the human logos" (CC, 30). </span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >In the first instance, Bonhoeffer's claim that Christology “occupies its own space” is short form for the axiomatic theological claim that Jesus Christ cannot be classified or assigned a “place” within an accepted order of reality and actuality logical inquiry and not vice versa (Webster, </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:130%;" >Word & Church</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >, 116). In the words of John Webster, Jesus is “that in terms of which all other reality is to be mapped” (116). The second claim, that Jesus is the “Counter-Logos”, is closely related to the first and is in essence an extension of the first point. In the incarnation Jesus comes as the Word who both disrupts and interrupts all speech and thought. This, as Webster notes, shapes christological inquiry profoundly because it repudiates “any idea that theological talk about Jesus is pure initiative” (116). Such talk is, in a most profound sense for Bonhoeffer, what the church must obediently engage in because in the first instance, it has been spoken to, and in a very real sense, silenced by the interruption of the Counter-Word in which all true words (christological reflection included) find their genesis and impetus—“when the church speaks rightly out of a proper silence, then Christ is proclaimed” (CC, 27). </span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >Bonhoeffer here, at the outset of the lectures, offers his prolegomenal response to theological liberalism. In making the two claims noted above, Bonhoeffer is attempting to cut the feet out from under the edifice of theological liberalism and specifically of liberal thinking about Jesus which ultimately ends up in either of two equally distressing thought patterns about Jesus—the Jesus of history or the Christ of faith. Both are equally problematic because both uniformly disregard and violate the two above-mentioned rules of christological inquiry. In Bonhoeffer’s words, both errors have misconstrued the ‘who’ question by imposing upon the subject matter with questions of ‘how’, the question of demonstrability.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >In this sense, all classical and formal epistemological questions are subsumed within and under the doctrine of revelation, the event of God’s salvific activity (his pro-me activity) in Jesus Christ. In this way, Bonhoeffer does not operate with an epistemology per-se but takes God’s activity as the basic criteria, especially within Christology. This is why, for Bonhoeffer, two questions can never enter christological discussion: 1) the question of whether or not the church is justified in its claims about Jesus—“this question has no basis, because the human logos can have no authority to doubt the truth of the other Logos. The testimony of Jesus to himself stands by itself, self-authenticating”; and 2) the ‘how’ question of how the truth of its christological assertion is possible—“in that way the human logos would be claiming to be the beginning and the father of Jesus Christ” (CC, 32). Both questions are formally apologetic ones and for that reason are suspect from the start. Yet they are also, at the material level, driven by the desire to speak, to engage in logos, and not keep silent before the Counter-Logos. In other words both questions are engagements in sinful disobedience. The only permissible question on Bonhoeffer’s account, is the question of ‘Who?’, to which he devotes the rest of the lectures.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >The formal negotiation between legitimate and illegitimate questioning is not a trivial affair but of fundamental dogmatic importance. This is so simply because how the church speaks of Jesus, how it goes about answering the question of identity belies what it thinks about the one with whose identity it is concerned. In other words, method is informed and formed by the content, by the subject matter and not vice versa.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >In filling out an answer to the question of ‘who’ it is that the church speaks of when it names Jesus Christ, Bonhoeffer offers us three interrelated claims: Christ is Word, Christ is Sacrament, and Christ is Church. In all of these Jesus Christ is ultimately the absolute and categorical expression of God’s freedom, which as noted above, is not a freedom </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >from</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" > but a freedom </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:130%;" >for</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >—a freedom constituted in Christ’s nature as the God-Man:</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >Christ is Christ, not just for himself, but in relation to me. His being Christ is his being for me, pro me. This being pro-me is not to be understood as an effect emanating from him, nor as an accident; but it is to be understood as the essence, the being of the person himself. The core of the person himself is pro-me (CC, 47). </span></blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >Christ cannot be thought of other than in his being as pro-me. It is only by acknowledging Christ’s promeity that Christology can properly proceed to discuss him as “contemporaneous” and contemporaneously present only existing as Word, Sacrament, and Church.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >Our interest here is obvious. Christ is present because, at core, he is only who he is in relation to me, there is no other Jesus. That is, his act informs his being and equally his being his act. While Bonhoeffer does not put it in these terms, he is essentially saying that Christ’s nature is exhausted (in the sense of fully defined) in relation to me or more specifically in relation to his church as such also to all of created reality, myself included. This is not by ontological necessity but by divine freedom—the freedom to be so defined. It is this Jesus who is freely present as Word, Sacrament and Church. While the first two forms of his existence are of vital importance to Bonhoeffer’s Christology, our interests, specifically the relation of Christ to Church, are animated by Bonhoeffer’s familiar assertions concerning the third form of his existence—as gemeinde—which receive renewed attention here. Bonhoeffer reiterates that “Christ is not only the head of the Church, but also the Church itself” but here adds the qualifier that “Christ is the Church by virtue of his pro me being”. He also further qualifies his ruling axiom, Christus als Gemeinde existierend, by offering this commentary: “Between his ascension and his coming again the Church is his form and indeed </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >his only form</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Garamond;font-size:130%;" >. That he is in heaven at the right hand of God does not contradict this; on the contrary, this is what makes possible his presence in and as the Church” (CC, 58, emphasis mine).</span></div>Patrick McManushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717639457555961172noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26698442.post-65393823773676345182006-12-22T09:35:00.000-05:002008-12-08T18:55:00.497-05:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzecPAEsB7fEcZe5YUltggSqNtYQO8mww3_ttsZ7xE4yEElxWuoQe1oYIe3Zqvr3__0mqJCXEvbKmRcGpWfCTX6j9QFJL4nTENwdyQKzdnB6dkR_8CHIlFHRWE2mMsBsDBPwopwQ/s1600-h/GrecoNat.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzecPAEsB7fEcZe5YUltggSqNtYQO8mww3_ttsZ7xE4yEElxWuoQe1oYIe3Zqvr3__0mqJCXEvbKmRcGpWfCTX6j9QFJL4nTENwdyQKzdnB6dkR_8CHIlFHRWE2mMsBsDBPwopwQ/s400/GrecoNat.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5011363558814065138" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" ><span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 0);">George Herbert's </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(255, 102, 0);">Christmas</span></span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">After all pleasures as I rid one day,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> My horse and I, both tired, body and mind,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> With full cry of affections, quite astray;</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> I took up the next inn I could find.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> There when I came, whom found I but my dear,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> My dearest Lord, expecting till the grief</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> Of pleasures brought me to Him, ready there</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> To be all passengers' most sweet relief?</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> Oh Thou, whose glorious, yet contracted light,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> Wrapt in night's mantle, stole into a manger;</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> Since my dark soul and brutish is Thy right,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> To man of all beasts be not Thou as a stranger:</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> Furnish and deck my soul, that Thou mayst have</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> A better lodging, than a rack, or grave.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> The shepherds sing; and shall I silent be?</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> My God, no hymn for Thee?</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> My soul's a shepherd too; a flock it feeds</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> Of thoughts, and words, and deeds.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> The pasture is Thy word: the streams, Thy grace</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> Enriching all the place.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> Shepherd and flock shall sing, and all my powers</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> Outsing the daylight hours.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> Then will we chide the sun for letting night</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> Take up his place and right:</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> We sing one common Lord; wherefore he should</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> Himself the candle hold.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> I will go searching, till I find a sun</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> Shall stay, till we have done;<br /></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> A willing shiner, that shall shine as gladly,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> As frost-nipped suns look sadly.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Then will we sing, and shine all our own day,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> And one another pay:</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">His beams shall cheer my breast, and both so twine,</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> Till ev'n His beams sing, and my music shine.</span>Patrick McManushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10717639457555961172noreply@blogger.com0