Category: The text as critic

Ephesians – The Triune God of love eternal and grace immeasurable…

From my early years as a Christian I've read and re-read Paul's Prison Epistles (Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians and Philemon). As a pastor I've preached on them often, nearly always with a residual disappointment that mere preaching doesn't begin to convey the 'unsearchable riches of Christ'. If Isaac Newton really did say he felt like a child playing with seashells on the beach when the great ocean of truth lay before him unnoticed, then as a preacher I've felt the same with the unfathomable depths and irresistible currents of a text like Ephesians. That first extravagantly long sentence in Ephesians chapter 1 betrays a mind pushed into theological overdrive, Paul's vision and imagination running out of subordinate clauses as he finds it impossible to end the sentence. Maybe that's what happens when we speak of God – we run out of clauses and the sentence always, but always, finishes with much unsaid and probably unutterable.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones preached through Ephesians and the published sermons fill 8 thick volumes. By the way the volume on chapter 3, "The Unsearchable Riches of Christ" is a profound account of Christian mysticism illumined by evangelical experience and textual discipline, providing a deeply satisfying exposition of what it means to be in Christ, and for life to be grounded in the eternal love of God made known in Christ. Here more than anywhere else in his writing. Lloyd-Jones expressed his Welsh fervour, his revival instincts, his theological passion, and through the intensity of his personal experience of Christ, he rhapsodised on the grace unspeakable, the riches inexhaustible, the love unfathomable and the wisdom unsearchable of this God who in Christ reveals His purposes of love and mercy hidden in the ages but revealed in Jesus.

Every now and then I'm drawn back to Ephesians, just as at other times I'm drawn back to other parts of the Bible that to use the old Puritan phrase, 'speak to my condition'. Sometimes Isaiah 40-55; or the Psalms; the Gospels often, and John most often. But when it comes to Paul the Prison Epistles are where I instinctively go – especially those first chapters in Ephesians and Colossians when Paul sees the universe through the lens of Christ. And my own story is not relativised and reduced by the comparison; it is drawn into it and given a significance that is rooted in precisely that "grace unspeakable…, those riches inexhaustible, such love unfathomable and the wisdom unsearchable of this God who in Christ reveals His purposes of love and mercy hidden in the ages.

The paradox of revelation and mystery is one we live with as Christians, gladly, gratefully and generously. It's the paradox of the God who comes near in Christ but is beyond our comprehension as the Triune God of love eternal and grace immeasurable. It's the tension of the soul being caught up into the heavenly places while we still deal with the earthly, the everyday, the ordinary, the fragile, the transient, the reality of life as a human being yet as made in the image of God – trying to make sense of this paradox of existence in Christ and living the life that is ours. At those points in our lives when that tension is most acute and that paradox hardest to live with, that's when I read Ephesians 1, and Colossians 1, and Philippians 2. And if I ever need reminding of what it means to deal with the realities of social justice, human values, freedom and community, there's always that short masterpiece of practical theology we call the Letter to Philemon.

All of which arises because I've had on my desk one of the first commentaries I ever bought and which I treasure as a spiritual artefact, a sacred gift to myself, a trusted exegetical companion – Paul's Letters from Prison,G B Caird (Oxford, Clarendon: 1976) Bought in the John Smith Bookshop on the Campus of Stirling University, in March 1976 – cost then – £2.25! I doubt I ever spent money on a book more wisely and for better reward. Yes there are the big heavies – and I have most of them (Markus Barth, Ernest Best, Andrew Lincoln, P T O'Brien, and just arrived Clinton Arnold and Frank Thielman – no space for Hoehner's encyclopedic doorstopper). But there is an elegance in Caird's 90 pages on Ephesians, and for me an affection for this careful scholar, that makes this small book special. It's one of the very few commentaries I've ever slipped into a flight bag and read at an airport! I know – sad – better to read Lee Child, or Henning Mankell, Ian McEwan.

Maybe so. But for the umpteenth time I'm keeping company with G B Caird on Ephesians, trying to live with the tensions and paradoxes of grace unspeakable, unsearchable riches, all summed up in Ephesians 2.4-5, "But because of his great love for us, God who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions – it is by grace you have been saved". That's the greatest paradox of them all – our transgressions and God's great love for us. Who would ever have thought they could be reconciled – except God, who is rich in mercy?

1 August 2011
When comment is superfluous 1.

Sometimes comment is superfluous. As in the case of the incomparable G Campbell Morgan, who is always good value, often theologically precise, and sometimes profoundly right, and unfailingly accessible.

"Said Thomas, 'except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails…I will not believe. What Thomas said of Christ, the world is saying about the church. And the wolrd is also saying to every preacher: Unless I see in your hands the print of the nails, I will not believe. It is true. It is the person who has died with Christ…that can preach the cross of Christ."

Allow me one unsuperfluous comment. The mission of the church the Body of Christ? It's about nailprints, visible and tangible.

28 June 2011
When being bold is hard to be, and being scared is ok

You know how now and again, at church, you find yourself invited to sing something you don't want to sing.

It isn't just to be awkward. And it isn't because you don't want to sing something you don't much care for, or it's a duff tune or one that is unsingable. It's more fundamental than that.

You are being asked to sing what isn't true in your experience. The last place to pretend is in a service of worship. And amongst the most corrosive forms of pretence is emotional insincerity, which isn't far from spiritual self-deceit.

You see, the Catch-22 of congregational singing is that while you want to share the faith of the community, sometimes you can't without being untrue to yourself. Because how that faith is expressed, and what it is declaring to be everyone's experience right now, may not be at all congruent with where your own heart is, what is so in your life, and may wrongly presuppose that it is well with every soul gathered in this place, with these people, for worship, now.

Some time ago ( and it is a while ago) I was standing alongside someone in her own church, who was going through the most horrendous experience of their life. The details don't matter – what matters is that this person was inwardly broken, clinging to whatever faith might have enough buoyancy to stop her from drowning. And she was afraid, scared of the future, her inward defences dismantled by what had happened. And we stood to sing

Be bold, be strong, for the Lord your God is with you!

Be bold, be strong for the Lord your God is with you!

I am not afraid. I am not dismayed

For I'm walking in faith and victory

Come on and walk in faith and victory

For the Lord, your God is with you.

Now I know it's biblical, it's the spirituality of Joshua, its the confidence of the conqueror and a declaration of assurance. But there is also the spirituality of the Psalmist in lament mode, and of Isaiah who understood broken hearts and bewildered spirits and people's deep fears for the future. And allowing for that, I wonder if we could just occasionally take time to sing, to each other, same tune, much less strident:

Though scared, though weak, Still the Lord your God is with you;

Though scared, though weak, Still the Lord your God is with you;

Yes you are afraid, Yes you are dismayed,

Because you're walking in deep uncertainty,

We know you're walking in deep uncertainty,

But the Lord your God is with you.

This is a plea for emotional honesty, and emotional inclusion, so that we recognise in each gathered community, the experiences of joy and sorrow, laughter and lament, of confident faith and struggling faith, healed hearts and breaking hearts. I too like a good sing when my spirit is singing – but I need different words when I'm inwardly crying. Worship is honest when the declarative mood is sometimes muted by the interrogative mood, and worship that arises from the real experience of the life I live is more likely to have integrity. And whether I am going forth weeping or rejoicing in the homecoming, it is one of the great gifts of the worshipping community that the content of our services enables us to laugh with those who laugh – and weep with those who weep.

I offer this not as a rant, or a hobby horse – I think these are trivial forms of complaint. I'm more interested in making an observation of pastoral consequence, and spiritual sensitivity, and human solidarity, all of which are inherent in the practices of Christian fellowship.

The etching above comes from my personal canon of artistic exegesis – I guess at some time in our lives we are the one clinging to the mast, or holding on to Jesus for dear life!

30 May 2011
Learned Optimism and the Gospel of John

Optimism is not the same as hoping for the best but not sure if it will happen. It isn’t a kind of philosophical crossing of the fingers behind our backs either. That kind of uncritical optimism mean we’re simply not being realistic. The relationship between optimism and realism is very interesting for people who take Jesus seriously enough to trust Him. For people of faith, is their trust optimism or realism?

An important insight comes from an unusual book entitled Learned Optimism. It sounds complicated, but stay with me:

“I have always prided myself on being realistic, and still value that quality. What I learned is that being realistic should be combined with feeling optimistic about creating ways to improve the realistic situation as I understand it.”

It is one of the subtle and creative techniques in John’s gospel that he sets you up, to hit you with truth, an ambush of the intellect. His gospel is about learned optimism. Repeatedly he says, if you believe in Jesus you can combine being realistic with feeling optimistic, because He will create ways to improve the realistic situation as He understands it.

For John the Evangelist (nickname for Good News Disseminator!) optimism is not only a matter of temperament. It is a worldview, a considered view of how the world is. In John’s Gospel, to believe in Jesus is to have a radically different worldview. Jesus, says John, is God’s radical intervention who redefines all other reality. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word became flesh…..in Him was life and the life was the light of all humanity…the Son came that you might have life….if the Son shall set you free you shall be free indeed”. Reality is reconfigured, the way the world looks changes forever, when Jesus’ presence, purpose and power are presupposed.

So, says John – Jesus is the life-giver, the light bringer, the liberator. And in chapter 11, Jesus’ friend Lazarus is dead, buried, locked in the grave, decomposing in the darkness, confined by embalming bandages; that, says John, is the reality. And John says to you, the reader, faith is learned optimism, faith is feeling optimistic about God improving reality, your considered view of how the world is, is about to be reconfigured.

John says, ‘Watch Jesus and learn’. ‘Take away the stone’, says the Life-giver; ‘Lazarus come out’, says the Light bringer; ‘unbind the grave clothes’ says the Liberator. And Lazarus walked out, into the light, back into life and out into the freedom Jesus both commanded and gifted.

“Learned optimism”, it’s the worldview of those who have seen Jesus at work, and who believe that he still works; that the light shines in the darkness of every death confirming, life threatening grave. But says John, the darkness can never get the better of Him, cannot comprehend Him, never but never has the last word. And that says John, is the learned optimism of resurrection faith.

I am the Resurrection and the Life. Whoever believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.

……………………

The second picture is by Corrinne Vonaesch and can be seen along with a series of illustrations of John's Gospel over here. They are a form of exegesis in their own right, – simple and complex, the language of colour expounding both text and story.

29 May 2011
Emmaus and the journey towards a new wholeness.

The walk to Emmaus is one of the high points of gospel narrative. The journey, the lonely road, two bewildered travellers, the unlooked for stranger who becomes a companion, the change of conversation, and the way the journey passes quickly in such company. Each of these are features of the skilled storyteller, and each of them exactly what I guess are universally recognised clues for what we all need when walking the road of uncertainty ourselves – company, conversation and companionship that stays with us.

The Emmaus walk and the Emmaus Supper have provided artists with some of the most emotionally charged narrative and some of the most poignantly imaginative encounters in the entire Christian tradition. For those who are honestly facing the realities that call previous certainties in question, or who have reached those unknown places of uncertainty and significant life change, Emmaus is a pivotal story. "He took bread and blessed and broke it….And their eyes were opened…and he vanished from their sight".

Easy to miss that. The moment of recognition lasts just long enough to surprise, remind, reassure, and to release vision and energy enough for a lifetime. Open-eyed recognition, and he vanished. Like those first disciples, the reader today wishes he had stayed longer, we long for more permanence. Yet. Whatever else faith is, it cannot be chronic certainty. The constituents of faith are wonder and surprise, risk and trust, voluntary vulnerability, and contentment with hints of truth and glimpses of glory. That walk to Emmaus could have left the disciples where they were – bewildered, resentful, and in terms of life purpose at a loose end. "and a stranger drew near…and they didn't recognise him…". But he walked with them just the same, won confidence enough to not only speak, but be listened to, and on being asked to stay longer, like a good guest, he welcomed their welcome, and shared their meal.

For all kinds of reasons Luke's Emmaus narrative of that troubled journey and its resolution, touches into those deep places of our human experience, those parts of our journey that are also troubled, from which we don't emerge unscathed or unchanged. But in the breaking of bread, the Guest becomes the Host, our eyes see, and our souls are fed – and life is nourished again towards wholeness.

in trying to get hold of things mysterious
we try to invent something definite
and mystery can never be defined
or must always be redefined
or better yet
come at newly and indirectly
through stories and things around us
thru parables and food

The window was designed by William Morris. The verse is quoted in an early book by Sallie McFague, Speaking in Parables, Fortress, 1975, p.114.

31 March 2011
Did Jesus Really Say That?

I spent an absorbing hour or two yesterday trying not to push Jesus through the grid of my presuppositions. Rudolf Bultmann's "Is Exegesis without Presuppositions Possible?" is one of his seminal articles, and the question is a tad awkward. Can any of us come to a text without much of our mind already in the process of being made up by our experiences, prejudices, extent of previous learning, existential commitments, a bias in favour of what we already think? And when the text is the Gospel account of Jesus, what he said and did, how can we possibly read it without what we already think of Jesus shaping our preferences for the exegtical options?

Here's the problem. Luke 16.1-8a is a scandalous parable. Scandal, deriving from 'skandalon', "an impediment placed in the way causing one to stumble". Could Jesus really be saying that embezzling and squandering an employer's property, and then quick witted cleverness in using the proceeds to buy yourself out of trouble is something to be commended? If Jesus did say that what does that do to our view of Jesus? If he couldn't possibly have meant what it seems he said, what did he mean? And why did he say it in the first place? And here's the hard bit – how far is our difficulty in interpreting this parable due to our refusal to believe Jesus might have said something so offensive?

That raises further questions. Was Jesus being ironic? Are we so unable to think ourselves into the codes and norms of a very different culture, that we become postmodernists with a dangerous residue of literal woodenness? Does reverence for Jesus get in the way of that deeper devotion that tries to hear the authentic voice of Jesus, however disconcerting? In the parable itself, was it the master who commended the dishonest manager, or the voice of Jesus, or the voice of Luke the narrator? And what was commended? Was it the dishonesty, embezzlement and bribery, or the recognition of crisis and the urgent action taken to survive. In which case the methodoloy (cunning dishonesty) isn't the point, indeed is beside the point; and instead the alertness to see and the motivation to survive the coming crisis, that is the point. Or is it? Or is that exegetical option driven by my presuppositions about what Jesus could or couldn't say?

I am happy to hear from others who have puzzled over this parable in pleasurable perplexity and exercised exegetical energy extensively – and if you have reached any conclusions that might have survived the process of presuppositional prejudices – that is, if such a thing is possible? (Smiles broadly!)

31 October 2010
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
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
The biggest book I’ve ever bought! :)) – and the artist as alternative exegete

Two books recently bought. One huge, as in mega-big. I didn't look at the dimensions when I clicked. (36x43x3). Don't care. It's a coffee table book, which could also mean put legs on it and it is big enough for a coffee table! But it is a gorgeously produced, outrageously sized, sumptuously heavy, ridiculously unwieldy, impossible to read in bed, but impossible not to read, study of Johannes Vermeer and His World. And the price is £15 from Amazon! There are 10 posters for framing included and I reckon any half decent print shop would charge you more than £15 for one of them, let alone the book and the set.

There is one painting in particular I want to spend some time with – Vermeer's interpretation of the Martha and Mary story. Of which more in a later post. But this volume is a labour of love; each of the confirmed Vermeer paintings is reproduced, with good background notes, exposition of key details, and building up to an education in the understanding and appreciation of artistic development from gift to genius. What becomes progressively clearer in studying the paintings is the way the eyes of the subjects are portrayed. How they look, the direction and focus, the use of light, each draw the attention of the viewer, and thus influence the way we look, and point us towards what we ought to see. In other words the artist is providing his own hermeneutic, and with Vermeer that includes provoking and directing emotional attentiveness "by rendering visible particular moods and feelings". One of the unmistakable responses to a Vermeer masterpiece is precisely this, the artist setting the emotional climate in which the painting can best be appropriated, and doing so by taking control of how the viewer looks and what it is the artist wants the viewer to notice.

Exegesis of a text requires, and is inevitably accompanied by, a set of hermeneutical assumptions, strategies, principles – which are themselves influenced by the capacity of the text to speak for itself. There is an equivalent process, when the text is not in words but in image. Visibility, seeing and reading the non-verbal text, is with an eye to apprehending the truth, the is-ness made visible and comprehensible not in words but in that emotional and spiritual intuition of the viewer that recognises the rightness, the fittingness, the yes factor in what is being viewed.

This is an important resource for theological nourishment, as well as a crucial insight for theological understanding. Much hermeneutical activity which surrounds the exegesis of words composed into texts, strongly focuses on meaning and truth. The equivalent hermeneutical activity in art focuses on the response of the viewer to beauty, and the search to understand the process by which the apprehension of beauty opens the mind to truth of another order. This painting is a pictorial exegesis of a gospel incident that has been deeply influential in the development of Christian spirituality, especially the unhelpful distinction between the active and the contemplative life. Vermeer portrays both women as having Jesus' attention, and there is little sense of one being preferred to the other. The active and the contemplative, the kitchen and the prayer stool, food and conversation, Martha and Mary, are equally disciples, and feeding the hungry Jesus is as important as listening to Jesus' words. Dag Hammarskjold, that surprisingly perceptive Christian and Secretary General of the UN, understood the given and creative tension of Christian obedience, that "the way to holiness lies through the world of action".

And Thomas Merton, who to my knowledge didn't write on this gospel incident, though one of the greatest apologists for the contemplative life in silence and solitude, nevertheless linked these spiritual disciplines of passive waiting (Mary) to the richer textured realities of active obedience in the world (Martha), and to demonstable Christian practices which embody and enflesh the virtues of peacemaking, love and social compassion. His finest writing is found in the collision, or perhaps the conflation, of contemplative and political theology, the fusion in his spirituality of prayer and protest, the insistence that true communion with God and love for the world are to be found both in the inward cohesion of a contemplative community, and in the outreaching and scattering of that community in Christian witness to a broken God-loved world. And it is not unimportant that some of his most telling statements are not in words, but in photographs, poems and calligraphic art. And some of his most piercing images are literary and in his best known essays. For Merton, word and image are equally effective conduits of those truths that shape and inspire patterns of behaviour and practice that are demonstrably Christian.

16 July 2010
When contemplative prayer doesn’t work – and hard words do.

In the Celtic Daily Prayer of the Northumbrian Community there's a lot of liturgical material you don't easily find elsewhere. And sometimes it gets in the way of meditative or contemplative praying. Some sentences are just too provocative. Like this one:

"Many whom God has, the church does not have; and many whom the church has, God does not have."

That is Karl Rahner, an often controversial Catholic theologian, parodying Augustine, who was also controversial but tends to be seen as a central pillar of orthodoxy. One of Rahner's more controversial ideas was the notion of 'anonymous Christians', those who were unrecognised as Christian because they were outside the recognised spiritual terrories of the Christian churches. But their character, their inner impulses and instincts, were open to and responsive to the grace of God in Christ. Now however difficult this idea is, and it is fraught with theological contradiction and damaging tensions, Rahner is saying something important as a general observation on the Church's amnesia about some of Jesus' hardest words. "Not everyone who says Lord, Lord, will enter the Kingdom".
And what about that huge granite boulder of a parable in Matthew 25 where the presumed righteous, (in Matthew's gospel, the Church), have to ask in consternation, when did we see you naked, hungry, thirsty, in prison and do nothing about it? That parable is a road-block on spiritual complacency, a take-down for theological over-confidence, a puncturing of presumed moral and ecclesial superiority.

We can all find good biblical and theological reasons to refute the claim "you can be a Christian without going to church". And we instinctively resist the idea that some people outside church life altogether are nearer to what it means to follow Jesus than some professing Christians who say "Lord, Lord." For myself, I am trying to stay alert, to see those whom God has, but the church does not have; I wouldn't presume to think too hard about whom the church has that God does not have. But I suspect there is a serious and troubling truth in Rahner's words that catches those warnings of Jesus to those who think they have Christian discipleship and their personal place in heaven sussed. And then there's that veiled promise of Jesus that there are those whom the church does not have, who are invited into the Kingdom because when Jesus was naked, hungry, thirsty, sick, in prison, they fed, cared for and visited him. And all of those, God does have. Hmmmm.

16 May 2010