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Christian witness – bespeaking hopefulness to a culture mired in its own despair

Hope. To look to the future as open and replete with new possibility. To see our past and our present circumstances without conceding they determine who we will be, and what is now possible.

If there's one disposition, one emotion, one word for which our times are sick with hunger, it's hopefulness.

Are any of us immune to that darkness and heaviness of soul that occasionally descends as we glimpse our own shallowness, sense the superficial transcience of a life lived too rapidly, and long for something more permanent, durable, worth giving our lives to?

How to bear witness to Jesus who brings freedom in a culture suffering an advanced case of creeping exhaustion through trying to keep the creaking economic machinery going through the cycle of sustainable economic growth, global recession, and economic recovery. Remorselessness engenders hopelessness, and it's no accident that a theology of hope has an umbilical connection to liberation theology.

And alongside the search for meaning and identity through our capacity to participate in a consumer culture, isn't there something existentially significant about the contemporary pursuit of belonging, identity and connectedness through Facebook, Twitter and yes the blog?

One way or another we each try to locate our own living in the excitement and sameness, the creativity and the mess, the valuable and the trivial, the enduring and the disposable, the worthwhile and the wasteful, the optimism and the despair, that is the cultural flux of our times.

So I think of some of the great words that bespeak hopefulness. Bespeak – that is speak and make be. Speak into existence. Talk up. Not in the silly sense of make-believe, but in the prophetic sense of re-imagining a world in which hope and not cynicism is the default posture of our forward thinking. For example:

Amos 9.13, at the end of a doom laden sermon or two:

The time is surely coming, says the Lord, when the one who plows shall overtake the one who reaps, and the treader of grapes the one who sows the seed; the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it.

Isaiah 55.12, as a promise that simply denies to the status quo its claims to permanence and determinism

You shall go out with joy, and be led forth in peace, and the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

Revelation 22.1-2, one of those texts that Hollywood would need CGI's to do justice, a vision of life and movement, of growth and fulfillment, of international healing and peace.

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the lamb, through the middle of the street of the city. on either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

And the lines from Browning's Paracelsus, Victorian rhetoric and human longing for a future drawn forwardt by the sense that in the murk and darkness we might be a bit like Moses sometimes, and have to draw near to the thick darkness in which god dwells…..

If I stoop
Into a dark tremendous sea of cloud,
It is but for a time. I press God's lamp
Close to my breast; its splendour, soon or late,
Will pierce the gloom. I shall emerge one day.

God is love. God is light. But a Christian understanding of God, standing this side of resurrection, manages to look at a tired, scared, fragmented world, buckling under the strain of human activity, and pray, The God of hope fill you with all hope. It is God who bespeaks the future, not us. Thank goodness, and thank God!

Faith then, is
both defiant and imaginative – refusing to concede that how things are
is how they must be. Instead faith sends out trajectories of hope
towards a future differently imagined. Not because we can simply wish
fulfil the future – but because wherever our human future takes us, God
is already there, and there as eternally creative love, reconciling our
shattered cosmos, and bringing to completion our own brokenness through
that same reconciling love.

The Colossian Christ, the image of the invisible God, the one in whom all things hold together, in whom all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell – there is the core of any theology that claims to be Christian and relevant to a culture mired in its own despair, and apparently hell-bent on foreclosing on its own future. To bear witness to a different future, and live towards that future by a life of peace-making and conciliatory love, and to embody these in actions of generous, gentle, costly healing of whatever is hurting around us, – that is to bespeak hopefulness, is to be the Body of Christ, broken for the nourishment of the world.

In Christ all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of the cross.

(The painting is Hope in a Prison of Despair, Evelyn De Morgan, Pre-Raphaelite)

(The space image above can be found here )

5 September 2010
Keats, Van Gogh and Autumn

No need to post the whole poem. Keats' Ode to Autumn is accessible on countless sites. But the first verse has to be the most lyrical description of autumn in English literature, and the first line has such precision and evocative power it serves as the classic definition of the season, a six word essay on the ecstasy of nature fulfilled.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells.

No need to say more. But here's a picture by one of the most nature sensitive human beings ever to put paint on canvas

”… in all nature, for instance in trees, I see expression and soul… ”
Letter to Theo van Gogh, 5 November 1882

3 September 2010
Karl Barth and a Qualified Kenosis?

If then, God is in Christ,

if what the man Jesus does is God's own work,

this aspect of the self-emptying and self-humbling of Jesus Christ

as an act of obedience

cannot be alien to God.

But in this case we have to see here

the other and inner side of the divine nature of Christ

and therefore of the nature of the one true God –

that he himself is also able and free to render obedience.

Church Dogmatics, IV.1 Page 193

That is as succinct a summary as I know of the theological importance of kenosis as an interpretive category of Christology that derives ultimately from the intra-trinitarian life of God. "Kenosis articulates the act of love revealed in the Word made flesh." Kenosis is not so much an attribute of God as the quality that defines how the attributes of God are expressed in love towards all that is.

1 September 2010
Jurgen Moltmann – overcoming death and a theology of hope

Moltmann at his rhetoriocal best:

So we may say that jesus' death on the cross was solitary, and exclusively his death, but his raising from the dead is inclusive, open to the world, and embraces the universe, an event not merely human and historical but cosmic too: the beginning of the new creation of all things.

With the overcoming of the disciples' crucified hope for the future and the shaken confidence in death of the women at the tomb, the early Christian belief in the resurrection acted in the ancient world like an explosion og hearts and sense. It attacked with elemental force 'the powers iof this world': the power of sin, the inescapability of death, and the hopelessness of hell. The risen Christ became the power of protest against these godless and inhumane forces.

Jurgen Moltmann, Sun of Righteousness Arise! (London: SCM, 2010) page 55

Question: Why does this 254 page paperback book cost £25 from SCM, and the soon to be published Divine Humanity by David Brown (on Kenosis) costs £50 paperback for 256 pages. Do the tow ectra pages cost £12.50 each??? I am emailing SCM about this 🙁

31 August 2010
Kenosis, the Love of God, and a Way of Seeing the World Unselfishly.

Much of my study time just now is spent preparing a keynote theological address for a gathering of ministers. I've long been persuaded that kenosis is an essential theological category for understanding the nature of Divine love. If God is revealed in Jesus, and God's love is Christ-like, then kenosis far from being a marginal sidelight, is the shining centre of the love of God incarnate in human life, crucified for a broken world, and resurrected in a power that remakes creation. The Colossian Christ of chapter 1 is the same Kenotic Christ of Philippians 2 and the same exalted Christ of Revelation 5,the lamb slain in the midst of the throne. The title is " 'This is love's prerogative, to give, and give, and give.' Trinitarian Kenosis as a Model of Ministry."

I fully recognise kenosis is a contested idea, especially if it is made the primary interpretive category in Christology. But whether such primacy is claimed or not, kenosis seems to me indispensable as a way of exploring what we mean when we talk of the love of God. I am interested that there is now considerable research activity around the theme – Bruce McCormack, David Brown and Paul Fiddes in systematic theology, Michael Gorman and M S Park in New Testament, Paul Fiddes and Timothy Herbert in pastoral theology. (By the way, David Brown's volume due out in a month or two is an SCM paperback – priced £50 – from this we conclude that kenosis is expensive, or at least to buy this book you need a kenotic (self-emptying) credit card!!!)

My own encounter with kenotic theology at its most persuasive is in the seminal work of W H Vanstone, Love's endeavor, Love's Expense – in 1977 I paid £2.95 (please note SCM) for this slim book that is worth its weight in platinum. I've given it as a gift almost enough times to buy David Brown's SCM volume. It has shaped and inspired and energised and quality tested my ministry from the start. I don't read it uncritically, but its central thesis about the nature of love as precarious, with no guaranteed outcomes, instinctively investing itself in the good of the other, as that in God which seeks the response of relational love, seems to me to be congruent with a Gospel of love as self-giving, conciliatory and transformative.

What I'm trying to do is explore kenosis as that in the love of God that is evident in the intra-trinitarian life of God. Moltmann of course is a major influence here – but so is Michael Gorman more recently, where kenosis is linked to the cruciform shape of divine love. But there are other thinkers – and just as important there are stories of human loving and caring that are themselves primary evidence that far from being a demanding passion ever tempted to selfishness, love is defined more by indefatigable goodwill, persistent kindness, self-expending energy for the other, self-donating in emotional gift, self-emptying not as a habit of self-negation, but as a pouring out of ourselves into the lives and blessing of others. In that sense kenosis isn't a contested theological concept – but an ideal of ministry in which the basin and the towel, the table and the cup, the open arms and outstretched hands of welcome, express that finest of book titles, Love's Endeavour, Love's Expense.

29 August 2010
Good News for Babylon – Brueggemann as Old Testament Prophet

Two new books coming by Walter Brueggemann. I've been reading this Old Testament prophet for 30 years, and he is as stimulating, infuriating, rewarding and necessary as ever for those called to preach beyond the horizons of their own vision, and who therefore want their Old Testament theology "thickly textured". The phrase is Brueggemann's, and refers to the complexity of both the text and the lived experience of those of us who come to the Old Testament world millenia later, to discern and live towards the vision of God and the worldd that lies at the heart of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament gospel.

Out of Babylon (coming in November from Abingdon – see here) is the kind of book the church, emergent or submergent, now needs to read, consider and then do the hard work of asking what is the good news for Babylon today. Here's the publisher's description of what Brueggemann is about:

It was the center of learning, commerce, wealth, and religion. Devoted
to materialism, extravagance, luxury, and the pursuit of sensual
pleasure, it was a privileged society. But, there was also injustice,
poverty, and oppression. It was the great and ancient Babylon—the
center of the universe. And now we find Babylon redux today in Western
society. Consumer capitalism, a never-ending cycle of working and
buying, a sea of choices produced with little regard to life or
resources, societal violence, marginalized and excluded people, a world
headed toward climactic calamity. Where are the prophets—the Jeremiahs—to
lead the way out of the gated communities of overindulgence, the high
rises of environmental disaster, and the darkness at the core of an
apostate consumer society?

It costs money to read Brueggemann! His production rate means at least a couple of volumes a year. Much of his work is gathered essays, addresses and other occasional papers. But there are very few repetitions, and I've never read a Brueggemann chapter, commentary or essay without being as stated above, stimulated, infuriated or rewarded! So Disruptive Grace, a major collection of his recent pieces due in January from Fortress will be a straightforward click on the pre-order button. Here's the blurb

Walter Brueggemann
has been one of the leading voices in Hebrew Bible interpretation for
decades; his landmark works in Old Testament theology have inspired and
informed a generation of students, scholars, and preachers. These
chapters gather his recent addresses and essays, never published before,
drawn from all three parts of the Hebrew Bible—Torah, prophets, and
writings—and addressing the role of the Hebrew canon in the life of the
church.

Brueggemann turns his critical erudition to those practices—prophecy,
lament, prayer, faithful imagination, and a holy economics—that alone
may usher in a humane and peaceful future for our cities and our world,
in defiance of the most ruthless aspects of capitalism, the arrogance of
militarism, and the disciplines of the national security state.

"Holy economics" seems like a recent theme triggered by recent events in global markets. Not so. The first two books of Brueggemann I read were The Land, and Living toward a Vision. They are both over 30 years old. Both are to do with just practices, critique of status quo, analysis of power – its use and abuse, and a searching exegesis of texts that call in question the prejudiced fundamentalism of consumer capitalism and the imperial pretensions of economy, business and global ambition. Reading Brueggemann is a cultural and moral interrogation of the way things are in the world, and the interrogator's questions are formulated in conversation with that most disruptive of texts – the Bible.

28 August 2010
Sports Injuries and Victoria Plums

It's been a week of limping progress. Literally. Should a man my age be playing five-a-side football? The unanimous view of those who know me well enough to be unflinchingly frank is a scornful negative. Feel free to offer your own compassionate, caring and courteously concerned opinion. Last Friday I discovered I have a gastrocnemius – that's the long muscle in the calf that deals with stopping and acceleration. I stopped, accelerated and then 'ping', had to stop! been slow and sore ever since!

The positive and friendly doctor I saw the following day told me I was very fit for my age. That the injury was an impact injury. Could happen to anyone. Even David Beckham. This final consolatory comparison was mentioned to Stuart, who now refers to my wife's middle name as Posh! Personally, I think the comparison with Beckham bears some credibility – after all we both had to put ice packs on our leg….but in fairness, I struggle to find a more compelling comparison, because I ain't rich!!

However it is on the mend, slowly and will need regular stretching exercises for a while. Meanwhile my leg is technicolour, purple, red and yellow hues, impressive as an impressionist landscape in various blurred hues.

Not to worry. yesterday I ate my first punnet of Victoria Plums. And I easily walked the length of the high street to buy them – and as they make such a brief appearance on the shelves, I bought some for other devotees of this most wonderful autumn food. There is an entirely neglected sacrament of friendship in buying your favourite food and sharing it with others. The trick is to buy enough to indulge yourself as well. Actually, on further consideration, the purple red and yellow of the plum is vaguely familiar to the purple red and yellow hues of…….see above 🙂

27 August 2010
Storm clouds that darken our discussion of God….

Here's an interesting piece of theological reflection:

There is a storm cloud that darkens our discussion of God and language, and it is expressed by the formula…the finite is not capable of the infinite. The worry is that mere human words can neither contain nor convey the thought of God. It is best to respond to this concern not speculatively but historically. By nature, the finite is indeed incapable of receiving the infinite. The incarnation is conclusive evidence that, by grace, the finite is made capable of receiving the infinite. Better: God is capable of "receiving" (assuming) human nature. (Deus capax humanitas).

The incarnation thus serves as a check on our tendency to play divine transcendence off against human language. Furthermore, if the incarnate Son of God can speak our words, it follows that we have at least one instance of literal divine speech: When Jesus opens his mouth and speaks Scripture…barth's distinction evaporates." These words do not become but are the word of God. The line between divine and discourse is breached: the infinite intones.

Kevin Vanhoozer, "Triune Discourse II", in Trinitarian Theology for the Church. Scripture, Community, Worship. (Nottingham: Apollos, 2009), 54

26 August 2010
Michaelangelo Pieta, and the prayer that is best unspoken

I didn't know this poem by C Day Lewis until I read it today. The combination of this exquisitely worked Pieta and the poignant first person poem I find breathtaking. To read the poem aloud, while looking at this image is to pray in language that takes us beyond mere words to a sense of the unspeakbale sadness at the heart of the Gospel of good news. Atonement is not a theory to argy bargy about – not argument, adoration is the disposition of the true theologian.

Pieta

A dome superb as heaven's vault, capping a story

whose hero blessed the meek; a desert of floor

Refracting faith like a mirage; the orchestration

Of gold and marble engulfing the still, small voice:

You cannot pass over St Peter's and what it stands for,

Whether you see it as God's vicarious throne

Or the biggest bubble yet unpricked….

I was lost, ill at ease here, until by chance

In a side chapel we found a woman mourning

Her son: all the lacrimae rerum flowed

To her gesture of grief, all life's blood from his stone.

There is no gap or discord between the divine

And the human in that pieta of Michaelangelo.

………………………

25 August 2010
The necessity for preachers to undergo the world…

In her Journal of a Solitude, May Sarton writes of a moment while tending her garden border, and she was overcome by tiredness, and particularly a sense that too much had happened without enough time to process it. She later wrote of the fatigue caused "by unassimilated experience." My parents used to have a wee devotional book, given them at their wedding by the minister, but long disappeared – it was called Come Ye Apart. The title came from an old translation of Jesus' invitation to the disciples at the end of a draining day, "Come ye apart and rest awhile". A good title for a book about restoring the soul – also a good phrase to describe what happens in an overstressed life "come ye apart"! - or as Yeats said, "things come apart, the centre cannot hold".

The poet Denise Leveretov – for me one of a personal canon of poets who assimlate experience and cherish human existence in a troubled world – Levertov writing about her friend Robert Duncan quoted his criticism of a fellow poet – "he has enthusiasms but not passions, he collects experiences but he does not undergo the world". I sometimes think that about preaching today – "enthusiasms but not passions", the preacher collects experiences but does not undergo the world."

When we've done the training, read the books about new hermeneutics, had fun with the homiletical plots and narrative theology, made the necessary concessions and expressed the expected cautions about postmodern suspicions of authority and engaged in discourse analysis and the dangers of social construction through linguistic power games, and then preach; or when we've done the biblical thing and subjected the text to atomised exposition, contextual application, faithfully (so far as our own limited grasp of it goes) proclaimed the gospel to our own satisfaction and even the satisfaction of those privileged to hear us. Well when all that kind of stuff is done and said, the poet poses a fundamental question to the heart of the preacher –

Do you have enthusiasms but not passions?

Do you collect experience but refuse to undergo the world?

To undergo the world is to live deeply, to feel the joy and anguish of other human beings, to come to terms with ambiguity and doubt and struggle and hurt as people try to make ends meet in the economy of the heart. What I sense in much preaching now is a lack of depth, by which I mean a willed unfamiliarity with the deep places of human experience, a superficial stone-skimming-the-surface impatience with profundity or difficult thought, a salesman-like confidence that is entirely uncritical of applied practical answers to life's most troubling complexities, and these delivered in sound-bytes and bullet points as if the conversation was about the latest three for two offers from our preferred supermarket. OK that's exaggeration – but the poet is right. It's too easy in the image saturated environment we inhabit to become collectors of experience and refuse to undergo the world. A preacher is the last person who should shirk depth – maybe those who shirk depth are afraid of sharks.

To undergo the world is a deeply Christ-like journey.

The Word became flesh and made his home amongst us" – the Word did not refuse to undergo the world.

"He emptied himelf….and being born in human likeness…he humbled himself…" the one in the very nature of God, did not refuse to undergo the world.

To undergo the world is to love it, to live in it, to be in the world as a reconciling presence, to hold the world in the heart, to explore the depths and darkness as well as the surface and light of human experience, to struggle with thought in the face of tragedy and to find words to express the joyful mystery of existence, and to do so in order to know when we are short-changing those to whom we dare preach. To undergo the world is to live with openness of mind, ears, eyes and heart – not a collector of experiences, but an experienced human being who in undergoing the world, transfigures experience into wisdom. It is that wisdom that best informs our preaching, and that wisdom which emerges from the encounter between our personal lived experience, the biblical text, and the real lives of those to whom we are privileged to preach.

23 August 2010