Last Session

A woman who was disabled, I think she has Cerebral Palsy, struggled to ask a question from the mic. She said she read “a crucified God” in 1975 and for the first time in her life, she actually owned her identity as the image of God and not something less than a full human being. She asked him, “How to people with disabilities who are both a burden and a blessing to the church find their life in the church.”

He said his older brother was a severely disabled person and they grew up together. He died under the Hitler regime when euthanasia began in Germany, early on in the war. He has lived with this question all of his life. He said, “A church without disabled people is a disabled church. Bring those with disabilities into the congregation because they are all images of Jesus Christ.” The imago dei speaks of a relationship to God, not as a qualification (attribute) of the human being. God’s relationship with human is where the human is a resonance, image of God (we reflect back and “image”). This cannot be destroyed either my disability or by sin. The other relationship is concerns our similarity and response to God. This is a life in faith and responsibility and a conformity of our life to the will of God. the relationship to God is in everybody, so we must respect God in every person we meet. God created all men equal, so we must respect the image of God in every person. Even in the murderer and the terrorist…it’s difficult I know, but it’s not a question of our judgment, but a question of respecting God’s presence.”

It was an incredible moment.

Moltmann part 2

These are just a few notes from yesterday:

THE NATURE OF ATONEMENT
Christology of solidarity: he suffers with us.
He suffers for us – for us the guilty

Those two sides go together. That he suffers for us is the reconciling part. He was given up for our sins and raised up for our justification. One the one hand the payment for sins, on the other hand our justification through the resurrection. Forgiveness of sin is a negative act which clears the negative things, resurrection and justification brings you into a new life, a righteous life. Both sides must proceed together. There is another partner on the one side we have the tradition of the justification of the sinner, reborn to a new life. But what about the victims of sin? Must we not speak about the victims of violence and injustice and sin? The victims are important, the justification of the victims is perhaps the first act. Because in practical terms, the sinners who have become guilty have always only a short memory if they have amemory at all. But those who suffered violence and injustices always have a long memory. So if you want to enter into the truth of your life, listen to the victims, because they can tell you who you really are and what situation you are in. Justification is of the victims first.

We learned this after the war as we listened to the stories of the survivors of concentrations camps. We heard about them, but as we listend the tstories of survivors, and looked into their eyes, we because aware of who we really are, the Germans. Same thing happened in the truth commissions in S. Africa. The perpetrator must listen to the vicitim. The VICTIMS MUST TELL THE STORY. Only then do we know the truth about who we are. This is one of the problems with our church, we have no liturgy or sacrament for the justification of the victims. They cannot overcome their feelings for revenge and overcome evil with the good. we don’t’ do that in our current ecclesiological practice. the victim needs to tell the story. They have the divine key in their hand to forgive. But this only happens if we take them through the process. The perpetrators cannot forgive their sins by themselves.

The greatest danger for me personally…is when suffering comes to become apathetic…don’t care anymore; don’t love somebody because this willl cause only pain. If you love nobody you will feel no suffering in relationship to other people. If you don’t love yourself, you will not feel your own death because you don’t care. I saw soldiers who became so apathetic that they don’t’ care about their own death or the death of others. They live in the service of death, not in the service of life.

We see the terrorists today have this same problem. Mullah Omar said, “Your young people love life, our young people love death.” This is a real danger (there is no deterrent). If you go into the love of life you risk disappointment, you must be ready to suffer on behalf of your compassion for other people. You must be ready to feel their dying and with their dying a part of your own life will die also and you must then trust that there is a new beginning and the resurrection of Christ.

In the Room with Jurgen Moltmann

I'm in Chicago listening to Jurgen Moltmann speak as I write this. It's an incredible thing to sit and listen live to a person who has had such an incredible impact on my thinking and my faith.

He talked just a little bit about his time as a visiting lecturer at Duke. He was on faculty at Tubingen and the time, where they asked the questions “what is the church?” But in Durham in 1967-68 and they wanted to know how to run the church. He was there to witness a terrible time during racism and the burning crosses by KKK in people’s yards. 1967, “Theology of Hope” was published in America & was praised on the New York Times front page as replacing the ‘God is Dead’ theology, “which was not too difficult,” he said. He went on, “The divinity school made a nationwide theology of hope conference in April of 1968. Everybody of name and rank in theology was there.” He told the story of when he was in the room arguing about history. Someone ran into the room and yelled – “Martin Luther King, Jr.” was shot. They stopped the conference. Everybody left and went home. They all found a place to watch TV that afternoon and evening. “This was the end of my American dream,” he said. On the same evening at the university, 400 students gathered and did a sit in – they sat in silence in mourning for 4 days in rain or shine. They just sat there lamenting the loss. Then on the weekend, students came together and had a celebratory service – they all sang “we shall overcome” together. He took part in that. “That was my American experience,” he said. “First I liked America, then I was disappointed by America, then I came to love America.”

More Later...

A Little Spoon in your Life

Everybody needs a little bit of Spoon in their life...don't forget about the underdog.

More Jesus and the Political

I read this today in a book by Richard Rohr and thought it would apply not only to the discussion in the previous post, but to the hateful speech I've been seeing on television during the political forums in the past few weeks.

"They're not credible prophets. If we hate people who don't agree with us, if we feel righteous and superior to those who have different politics, we're not in the Spirit. Until that grace is given, we should not presume we have a prophetic charism. When we have the prophetic charism, we don't inflict plain on 'them'; we hold the pain in ourselves. We absorb the pain; we don't project it or avenge the evil we see. We surrender to the realization that we are also complicit in the evil of the world. It's just a matter of when and where and how."

Jesus and the Political

A blog reader asked me two questions in a recent comment: "Is Obama who you thought he was? and has America changed for the better(long term) since he was elected?" I thought about it a bit and started writing a response, but it was too long so I made it into this post. Here's my response:

Q1: Obama seems to be about what I expected him to be.

Q2: I don't think America has changed appreciably since he took office.

That's probably not what you are looking for, but I feel no special allegiance to any of the American political parties or ideologies. I don't generally watch Fox News or MSNBC, unless Jon Stewart is poking fun of them. I don't buy the bashing and conspiracies from the right and I'm not an Obama sycophant.

Christianity is a politic, to be sure. But it is not Republican or Democrat, Conservative or Liberal in nature. Our agenda is mercy and justice, right relationships between the person and God, the self, other persons, and God's good creation. We work with anyone who works for peace, no matter their race, religion, creed, or politics. I can't even begin to explain how much I don't care about the typical bashing that goes on from the right and left alike. Nothing good comes from that, it is not designed to inspire hope, but hatred, fear and negativity.

America seems to be struggling as a culture and a country. But it's not simply the fault of politicians. I think politics largely reflects culture and our culture has chosen greed & affluence over mercy & justice. Even more than that, as a culture, we've lost the ideal of the "common good" as well as any concept of "enough."

But it's not only the fault of culture, it's the fault of the church as well. As Christians, we've offered no alternative vision strong enough to counter the narrative of greed. We've largely gone along with the culture and baptized the values of individualism, consumerism and nationalism with religious language. In the end, we're not appreciably different from anyone else in our culture, in many ways we're just less tolerant, more self-concerned and more violent.

Followers of Jesus need to learn how to embody and proclaim a completely different vision of reality. The alternative vision is the kingdom of God and it is the central message of Christ, (see Matthew 5, 6 and 7, Mark 1, Luke 4). This narrative calls into question our entire way of life and it is actually powerful enough to inspire a completely different "way" of being human.

In this "way," we find our life by losing it...losing ourselves on behalf of others. We do not exploit weaknesses in our opponents, we become purposefully weak ourselves so that the power of God can inhabit our weakness. We practice kenotic self-emptying and humbling. And we believe that this way of being human is what Jesus has inaugurated and empowered through his life, death and resurrection. It has very little resemblance to either side of the American political landscape and must not be so joined to either one that it becomes impossible to embody something so radically different as the kingdom of God.

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Kempis on Suffering

“Jesus has many lovers of His heavenly kingdom, but few bearers of his cross. He has many seekers of consolation, but few of tribulation. He finds many companions at His feasting, but few at his fasting. All desire to rejoice in him; few are willing to endure anything for him. Many follow Jesus as far as the breaking of bread, but few to the drinking of the cup of his passion. Many reverence his miracles, but few will follow the shame of his cross. Many love Jesus as long as no adversaries befall them. Many praise and bless him so long as they receive some consolation from him. But if Jesus hide himself and leave them but for a brief time, they begin to complain or become overly despondent in mind.”

Thomas a’ Kempis