Jurgen Moltmann according to his critics is discursive, non-systematic, at times reliant on theological resources which are marginal rather than mainstream, his theology often fuelled by emotive rhetoric rather than substantial intellectual cogency. Much of which could be conceded – and his best work would still tower above many of the more systematic, non-discursive, safely orthodox and at times emotionally under-developed theologies of the 20th Century. I say this because I know of few theologians who have sought as he has, to restore to christian thought and worship, a sense of the tragic triumph that lies at the heart of the cross, that is rooted in inexhaustible resources of self-giving love that pulsate in the heart of the Triune God, and that radiates into creation a hopefulness and purpose by which God will bring all things to completion in Christ.
Yesterday at worship we sang the praise song ‘Filled with compassion….’ As we sung the first verse and chorus I became aware of a slight dissonance, a feeling that the words didn’t quite say what was there to be said – and I wondered if Moltmann would have made a small edited change. Here are the words we sang:
FILLED WITH COMPASSION for all creation,
Jesus came into a world that was lost.
There was but one way that He could save us,
Only through suffering death on a cross.God, You are waiting,
Your heart is breaking
For all the people who live on the earth.
Stir us to action,
Filled with Your passion
For all the people who live on the earth.
If invited, I think Moltmann would want to make one slight change to the words, and by doing so a significant change to the theology. Moltmann is passionate about the cross as the place where God’s love is revealed as passionate, suffering love – and while Jesus suffered and died, the Father suffered the death of the Son. So in line 3 of the verse, if we had sung:
There is but one way that God could save us
the song would have acknowledged without embarrassment, the suffering of God. But historically theology is uneasy with this thought as it seems to diminish the otherness and unchangeable nature of God who is not subject to passions. Maybe so – but the chorus goes on to talk about God’s heart breaking, a theme that is deeply rooted in the biblical narrative, which Abraham Heschel calls the pathos of God.
For pastoral and personal purposes I am reading through a book called The Incomplete One. It is a book of sermons and extracts from funeral services for children and young people, and reflects on the experience of suffering that a child’s death brings to a parent. This isn’t devotional anodyne or pastoral cliche. These are sermons by Karl Barth on the death of his son Mathias in a climbing accident, by Friedrich Schleiermacher at the grave of his child, by William Sloane Coffin following his son’s death in a driving accident. They are theologically responsible words shaped out of raw suffering experienced at the extremes of human grief. And they are very near to Moltmann’s sense of the pain of God, and the chorus line, ‘God you are waiting, your heart is breaking’…..
These theological mysteries of love, suffering, relationship and death, are crucial in Christian theology, and in pastoral accompaniment of those whose hearts are breaking. Moltmann’s theological exposition of the death of the Son and the bereavement of the Father and the Spirit, captures in Trinitarian terms, the reality of the deepest family griefs.
And I wonder if a theology that acknowledges the suffering of God as implied in Moltmann’s The Crucified God is more capable of the creative, redemptive ministries of reconciliation that our world desperately needs, and the church is charged with embodying? Omnipotence unqualified by love is an odd way of thinking about God the Father…how can we think of love in any terms we could recognise, if it doesn’t have the capacity to be so affected by the suffering of others, that it shares that suffering?
The questions take me out of my depth – no bad place to be for a theologian I suppose. But I remain convinced that Christian worship must be able to bring to our minds and hearts the reality of a love that is so passionately for us that the cross was not only thinkable, but endurable as redemptive suffering for purposes that are eternal and hope-filled.
Heidegger in one oh his pessimistic moments described death as ‘the possibility that threatens all my other possibilities’. By contrast, for Christian faith, the cross and resurrection of Jesus are certainties that brings all other possibilities into being.
O cross, that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from thee;
I lay in dust, life’s glory dead,
and from the ground there blossoms red,
life that shall endless be…..
