Grief at the devastating violence against children reported in the past couple of weeks in the australian media, from children left to starve by their parents in Brisbane to a double murder of his children and suicide by a father in rugged country west of Eden and an apparent axe murder of children by their father is warranted. Grieve with those who grieve ...
However the public response for the government to do something and the assumption that violence can be prevented by more laws deserves some further consideration.
The assumption is that evil can be prevented and tragedy avoided by sufficient use of legislation and government mandated intervention and surveillance.
What needs further reflection is the unacknowledged violence in the human heart and the assumption that with enough intelligence and education and the employment of enough socal workers and police we could all get out of life alive ...
Monday, 30 June 2008
Saturday, 21 June 2008
Subsizing World Youth Day
The costs to the NSW State government of staging the Catholic church's World Youth Day this year is going to come in a bit under $100 million but probably not by much.
I have to say I find this troubling - for a couple of reasons. One is that security legislation similar to that inforce during the legendary APEC schemozzle last year is in force. (the challenge to the Chaser Team must be almost irresistible). The second is that the church has tied itself up with government by accepting a substantial financial subsidy for an event which relates to the heart of the church's activity in encouraging pilgrimage and proclamation of its core identity as a movement committed to following Jesus.
Something is not quite right here - the dissonance between the life and witness of Jesus and the acceptance of subsidisation by government and assent to use of legislation which concentrates increased power in the hands of the state is too sharp for me to feel comfortable.
I have to say I find this troubling - for a couple of reasons. One is that security legislation similar to that inforce during the legendary APEC schemozzle last year is in force. (the challenge to the Chaser Team must be almost irresistible). The second is that the church has tied itself up with government by accepting a substantial financial subsidy for an event which relates to the heart of the church's activity in encouraging pilgrimage and proclamation of its core identity as a movement committed to following Jesus.
Something is not quite right here - the dissonance between the life and witness of Jesus and the acceptance of subsidisation by government and assent to use of legislation which concentrates increased power in the hands of the state is too sharp for me to feel comfortable.
Sunday, 15 June 2008
Church, World and Religion
The Bonhoeffer daily reader, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: I Want to Live These Days with You in its readings in June focuses on the Unity of the Church - interestingly many of the extracts deal with a theology of the relationship of the church and world and why it is not all about individual religious experience and meeting the spiritual needs of humans as consumers.
Bonhoeffer deconstruct's a Christendom mentality that is committed to top down institutional power and forces our attention back again and again to Jesus Christ as the key to our practice of community witness and humanity.
June 13:
When God in Jesus Christ claims space in the world - even if only in a stable "because there was no room for them in the inn" (Luke 2:7) - then at the same time God summarizes in this small space the whole reality of the world and reveals its ultimate foundation. So also the church of Jesus Christ is the place - that is the space - in the world in which the lordship of Jesus Christ is witnessed and proclaimed over all the world ...
The space of the church is not there to make a piece of the world controversial. but precisely to attest to the world that it remains the world, specifically the world loved and reconciled by God. The church does not desire more space than it needs in order to serve the world with its witness to Jesus Christ and to the world's reconciliation with God through Christ. Also the church can defend its own space only by fighting not for it but for the salvation of the world. Otherwise the church becomes the "society of religion" that fights for its own cause and thereby ceases to be the church of God in the world. The first instruction to those who belong to the church is not, therefore, to do something for themselves - say create a religious organisation, or lead a pious life - but be witnesses of Jesus Christ to the world.
June 15:
The church is the humanity that was incarnate, condemned and raised to new life in Christ. Thus to begin with it has essentially nothing at all to do with the so-0called religious functions of human beings; it has to do rather with the whole of human kind in its existence in the world and in all its relationships.
What the church is all about is not religion but the form of Christ and Christ taking shape among a group of human beings.
Bonhoeffer deconstruct's a Christendom mentality that is committed to top down institutional power and forces our attention back again and again to Jesus Christ as the key to our practice of community witness and humanity.
June 13:
When God in Jesus Christ claims space in the world - even if only in a stable "because there was no room for them in the inn" (Luke 2:7) - then at the same time God summarizes in this small space the whole reality of the world and reveals its ultimate foundation. So also the church of Jesus Christ is the place - that is the space - in the world in which the lordship of Jesus Christ is witnessed and proclaimed over all the world ...
The space of the church is not there to make a piece of the world controversial. but precisely to attest to the world that it remains the world, specifically the world loved and reconciled by God. The church does not desire more space than it needs in order to serve the world with its witness to Jesus Christ and to the world's reconciliation with God through Christ. Also the church can defend its own space only by fighting not for it but for the salvation of the world. Otherwise the church becomes the "society of religion" that fights for its own cause and thereby ceases to be the church of God in the world. The first instruction to those who belong to the church is not, therefore, to do something for themselves - say create a religious organisation, or lead a pious life - but be witnesses of Jesus Christ to the world.
June 15:
The church is the humanity that was incarnate, condemned and raised to new life in Christ. Thus to begin with it has essentially nothing at all to do with the so-0called religious functions of human beings; it has to do rather with the whole of human kind in its existence in the world and in all its relationships.
What the church is all about is not religion but the form of Christ and Christ taking shape among a group of human beings.
Wednesday, 11 June 2008
Counter-intuitive?
If you want the eternal, hold on to the temporal. If you want God, hold on to the world.
(Dietrich Bonhoeffer: I Want to Live These Days with You - A year of Daily Devotions, WJKP, 2007)
(Dietrich Bonhoeffer: I Want to Live These Days with You - A year of Daily Devotions, WJKP, 2007)
Tuesday, 3 June 2008
What about Hitler?
A persistent viral infection has found me curled up at home reading and given me the opportunity to go back and work my way through some of the books piled up on my bedside table, while in the background the withdrawal of Australian troops from Iraq is announced and analysed.The inability of radio journalists to press politicians on the impact of the war on Iraqi society and on the difficulty of arriving at any unambiguous assessment of what that military intervention has meant is frustrating.
Brendan Nelson seemed remarkably comfortable with the assessment that Iraqis were happy not to have security forces torturing them and their families now that Sadaam's regime has gone. Fair point but he was not then pressed on the issue of how that might be balanced against the internal conflict with torture, banditry, kidnapping and civil war with the result that there have been 2 million refugees and two million other Iraqis displaced within the country. Even on a utilitarian ethical assessment that might be a difficult calculation to balance out even after 5 years and politicians are mostly utilitarian, most of the time. but no Brendan wasn't pressed on that issue.
The difficulties of responding to such "wicked problems" are ones that Christians who take Jesus's teaching and life seriously have to struggle with continually. It often pops up for example in the "What about Hitler?" question.
One of the books I have picked up to work my way through is Robert Brimlow's book of that title, with the subtitle "Wrestling with Jesus's call to Nonviolence in an Evil World' (Brazos Press, 2006).
Robert Brimlow in the introduction makes his starting point clear:
...part of what is entailed in our call to follow Jesus is that we are called away from violence. We are not called to be pacifists; we are called to be christians, and part of what it means to to be Christians is to be peacemakers. ...
The gospel is full of teachings that counsel us to make peace by following Jesus, and there are numerous examples from the Lord's life that illustrate what those counsels mean. The problem is that those counsels and teachings and examples are very clear, while at the same time they seem to be impossible. What makes them hard is not that they are too vague or so broadly expressed that they are open to a wide variety of contrary interpretations. They are straightforward and unambiguous. (p.11)
Brimlow is making the point that the call to peacemaking is an essential element of discipleship not some add on for those interested in political or social activism.
While our recognition that we are called to be disciples might occur suddenly, the transformation that is required takes time. The way to become faithful is live faithfully. ... Christian peacemaking makes sense and ceases to be absurd only when it is embedded in a life of faithfulness and practices that arise from our faithfulness. (p.13)
Tuesday, 27 May 2008
A right to cheap petrol?
The general public discussion in the mass media following the recent increase in the price of fuel has betrayed a frightening sense of entitlement to cheap fuel world without end.
Any future dining hydrocarbons at minimal personal cost into account ...
The disconnect between concern for climate change and the whipping up of populist demands for reduction in the price of fuel is amazing to behold.
Any future dining hydrocarbons at minimal personal cost into account ...
The disconnect between concern for climate change and the whipping up of populist demands for reduction in the price of fuel is amazing to behold.
Sunday, 18 May 2008
Living the Trinity
The sermon on Trinity Sunday this morning reminded me of how difficult it is to preach about an abstract doctrine which is what "the doctrine of the Trinity" has become.
Trinity as it emerged as a doctrine, comes across as an attempt to set fences around the embers of the explosion, the excitement, the wonder, the awe that lay behind the socially and politically subversive and transformative Jesus movement, lest the flames begin burning again and upset the emerging applecart of Christendom and the accompanying use of the church for the purposes of stabilising the empire.
The Trinity, like the Creeds emerged in a particular situation, as an attempt to achieve an understanding that could inform teaching and evangelism and respond to the questions that were being asked in the intellectual, political and religious context of the time. It is not a timeless abstraction, but you would never guess that from most of the preaching tht I have heard.
Simon Barrow in s sermon from last year's Trinity Sunday, see the link below, is a little more generous than I was inclined to be in responding to the preaching this morning and helpfully reminded me that Trinity can be understood not as belief in an abstract sense as giving assent to a rational formula but arises from the dangerous experiment of living as a Christian in a community shaped by the remembering of Jesus life death and resurrection.
http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/5312
God, in other words, is now and forever the transcendent mystery of the world, the 'Word' (or reason) of God expressed through flesh, and the energy of God continually inviting us into the ritual of life and equipping us to dance. ... what we are talking about here is three irreducible and mutually interdependent ways of believing in one God – belief, in this case, residing not in a proposition, but in experimental living. How do we touch God’s creativity? By developing and celebrating each others’ creativity. How do we touch God’s love for humanity? By refusing all that imprisons human beings in themselves. And how do we touch God’s spiritedness? By nurturing the everyday gifts of the Spirit – not abstract or 'religious' virtues, but love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Galatians 5.22). This happens personally and corporately.
... 'Trinitarian language' is about several very important things. First, holding together elements of God’s life which superficially appear in contradiction (transcendence and embodiment, say) and which we would otherwise be tempted to separate, to turn into a hierarchy or to ignore. Second, discovering the nature of God by learning to re-order our lives according to the promise of God’s endlessly hidden appearances beyond, in and between us. Third, constantly repeating (in speech, sacrament, song, deed and thought) the figurative grammar which goes on linking us to the modes of God’s life and God’s modes of living to us. In this way we "become Christians".
The chief difficulty we have with all of this, I suspect, apart from the fact that it demands our lives not merely our assent, is that the components that make up this all-embracing 'traditional' Christian speech about God have come to us in abstract Greek metaphysical categories - ones which address questions and formulate responses that seem remote from our habits of thinking. Our task, then, is to so inhabit what our predecessors were trying to say that, discovering its fruitfulness, we can say "if they put it like that then, how would we put it in our language today?" ....
How would we put it in our language today? What are the questions that trouble us as we try to speak of God and live out our discipleship?
Simon rightly draws attention to the fact that the technical language used at the time the doctrine was formulated, "persons" and "substance" for example, meant something quite different then to what they mean in contemporary usage.
For example, I once heard a well-known theologian wrily observe that grasping Trinitarian language is not too difficult... once you realize that ‘one’ and ‘three’ aren’t numbers in a sequence (but rather ways of speaking of a singularity embracing beyond the merely numerical); that ‘persons’ in the Trinity are not human persons (the Greek means something like dramaturgical ‘masks’ or ‘appearances’, and was deliberately chosen to avoid what we now denote by ‘personalness’); and that ‘substance’ applied to God doesn’t mean ‘stuff’ (but true essence beyond our knowledge of ‘thingness’)!
In other words, Trinitarian doctrine is not trying to describe God as you would a person or an object. But nor is it simply a mirror held up to our nice ideas about God. Instead it refers to what we can know by participation, rather than 'forensic examination' or speculation, about the life and affection of God encountered through the excess of the world, the unrestrained humanity of Jesus, the limitless donation of the Spirit, and the outstretched community of the church. It is therefore about image and relation, not some silly empirical claim to see into the very core of God when, frankly, most of us couldn’t claim to have much of a clue about what makes our spouse or neighbour’s cat tick – let alone the giver of the universe!
Further comment
On the Ekklesia Project blog on Trinity Sunday some comments by Debra Dean Murphy that makes a similar point:
http://ekklesiaproject.org/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1
Trinity as it emerged as a doctrine, comes across as an attempt to set fences around the embers of the explosion, the excitement, the wonder, the awe that lay behind the socially and politically subversive and transformative Jesus movement, lest the flames begin burning again and upset the emerging applecart of Christendom and the accompanying use of the church for the purposes of stabilising the empire.
The Trinity, like the Creeds emerged in a particular situation, as an attempt to achieve an understanding that could inform teaching and evangelism and respond to the questions that were being asked in the intellectual, political and religious context of the time. It is not a timeless abstraction, but you would never guess that from most of the preaching tht I have heard.
Simon Barrow in s sermon from last year's Trinity Sunday, see the link below, is a little more generous than I was inclined to be in responding to the preaching this morning and helpfully reminded me that Trinity can be understood not as belief in an abstract sense as giving assent to a rational formula but arises from the dangerous experiment of living as a Christian in a community shaped by the remembering of Jesus life death and resurrection.
http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/5312
God, in other words, is now and forever the transcendent mystery of the world, the 'Word' (or reason) of God expressed through flesh, and the energy of God continually inviting us into the ritual of life and equipping us to dance. ... what we are talking about here is three irreducible and mutually interdependent ways of believing in one God – belief, in this case, residing not in a proposition, but in experimental living. How do we touch God’s creativity? By developing and celebrating each others’ creativity. How do we touch God’s love for humanity? By refusing all that imprisons human beings in themselves. And how do we touch God’s spiritedness? By nurturing the everyday gifts of the Spirit – not abstract or 'religious' virtues, but love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Galatians 5.22). This happens personally and corporately.
... 'Trinitarian language' is about several very important things. First, holding together elements of God’s life which superficially appear in contradiction (transcendence and embodiment, say) and which we would otherwise be tempted to separate, to turn into a hierarchy or to ignore. Second, discovering the nature of God by learning to re-order our lives according to the promise of God’s endlessly hidden appearances beyond, in and between us. Third, constantly repeating (in speech, sacrament, song, deed and thought) the figurative grammar which goes on linking us to the modes of God’s life and God’s modes of living to us. In this way we "become Christians".
The chief difficulty we have with all of this, I suspect, apart from the fact that it demands our lives not merely our assent, is that the components that make up this all-embracing 'traditional' Christian speech about God have come to us in abstract Greek metaphysical categories - ones which address questions and formulate responses that seem remote from our habits of thinking. Our task, then, is to so inhabit what our predecessors were trying to say that, discovering its fruitfulness, we can say "if they put it like that then, how would we put it in our language today?" ....
How would we put it in our language today? What are the questions that trouble us as we try to speak of God and live out our discipleship?
Simon rightly draws attention to the fact that the technical language used at the time the doctrine was formulated, "persons" and "substance" for example, meant something quite different then to what they mean in contemporary usage.
For example, I once heard a well-known theologian wrily observe that grasping Trinitarian language is not too difficult... once you realize that ‘one’ and ‘three’ aren’t numbers in a sequence (but rather ways of speaking of a singularity embracing beyond the merely numerical); that ‘persons’ in the Trinity are not human persons (the Greek means something like dramaturgical ‘masks’ or ‘appearances’, and was deliberately chosen to avoid what we now denote by ‘personalness’); and that ‘substance’ applied to God doesn’t mean ‘stuff’ (but true essence beyond our knowledge of ‘thingness’)!
In other words, Trinitarian doctrine is not trying to describe God as you would a person or an object. But nor is it simply a mirror held up to our nice ideas about God. Instead it refers to what we can know by participation, rather than 'forensic examination' or speculation, about the life and affection of God encountered through the excess of the world, the unrestrained humanity of Jesus, the limitless donation of the Spirit, and the outstretched community of the church. It is therefore about image and relation, not some silly empirical claim to see into the very core of God when, frankly, most of us couldn’t claim to have much of a clue about what makes our spouse or neighbour’s cat tick – let alone the giver of the universe!
Further comment
On the Ekklesia Project blog on Trinity Sunday some comments by Debra Dean Murphy that makes a similar point:
http://ekklesiaproject.org/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1
The doctrine of the Trinity is foundational for Christian discipleship and for the ongoing shaping of Christian community. And yet our grasp of this doctrine is not merely a mental operation by which we give intellectual assent to the historic claim that God exists as one ousia and three hypostases. The truth of this doctrine is not available to us outside of our own participation in forms of life that bear witness to God as triune.
Earlier this week I attended a seminar on immigration sponsored by the North Carolina Council of Churches. The title of this event was “From Hostility to Hospitality: Immigration and People of Faith.” In listening to several presentations, I thought about hospitality in relation to immigrants in relation to the Trinity.
In Rublev’s famous icon we are invited to “see through” the art itself (something every icon asks us to do) and to recognize that the divine life is one of eternal communion in which we are invited to dwell.
Hospitality is the nature of God’s triunity and is the call of the Church in the world.
Indeed, it is the work of God as Trinity to make icons of us—to conform us to the image of the crucified and risen Jesus (image= eikon).
It is Jesus the Son, our hospitable host, who, through the will of the Father and the power of the Spirit, meets us at the table and transforms us into icons of Trinitarian hospitality in and for the world. When we offer such welcome to others—to immigrants, beggars, strangers of all kinds, we “entertain angels unaware” and we practice the Holy Trinity.
So no clover this year, please.
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