One by one, the sharers in this mortal damage have borne its burden out of the present world ... At times perhaps I could wish them merely oblivion. But how can I deny that in my belief they are risen?
I imagine the dead waking, dazed, into a shadowless light in which they know themselves altogether for the first time. It is a light that is merciless until they can accept its mercy; by it they are at once condemned and redeemed. It is Hell until it is Heaven. Seeing themselves in that light, if they are willing, they see how far they have failed the only justice of loving one another; it punishes them by their own judgment. And yet, in suffering that light's awful clarity, in seeing themselves within it, they see its forgiveness and its beauty and are consoled. In it they are loved completely, even as they have been , and so are changed into what they could not havbe been, but what, if they could have imagined it, they would have wished to be.
That light can come into the world only as love, and love can enter only by suffering. Not enough light has ever reached us here among the shadows and yet I think it has never been entirely absent.
Remembering, I suppose, the best days of my childhood, I used to think I wanted most of all to be happy - by which I meant to be here and undistracted, I thought I would be at home.
But now I have been here a fair amount of time, and slowly I have learned that my true home is not just this place but is also that company of immortals with whom I have lived here day by day. I live in their love, and I know something of the cost> Somewhere in the darkness of my own shadow I know that I could not see at all were it not for this old injury of love and grief, this little flickering lamp that I have watched beside for all these years. (p.326 - pagination from the the reprinting of A World Lost in Three Short Novels)
Showing posts with label Resurrection. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Resurrection. Show all posts
Saturday, 4 December 2010
Light, Love and Resurrection in "A World Lost"
At the conclusion of Wendel Berry's short novel A World Lost, Andy Catlett who has told the story of his Uncle Andrew, his murder when he was a child and his attempt many years later to unpack the events of that day, reflects on the members of his family and the way their story has unfolded.
Tuesday, 14 April 2009
Late call on Easter Sunday and the Awefulness of Resurrection
A late call on Easter Sunday - an entry delayed because Jillian and I have spent much of the four day holiday (Australia for all its secularity closes down for Good Friday to a degree that is matched only by Christmas Day and Anzac Day and we get Monday as a public holiday as well) at the National Folk Festival here in Canberra - of which more later.
Ched Myers in his Closing Meditation on Mark's Gospel in Who will roll away the Stone? Discipleship Queries for First World Christians captures the awe-fulness of the resurrection. Commenting on the message of the young man at the tomb "He's gone on ahead of you" Myers observes:
Here is a possiblity we never considered, a prospect too terrible to contemplate. An invitation fo follow Jesus - again. To resume the Way, the consequences of which we now know all too well. Suddenly, form deep within us, for that unexplored space beneath our profoundest hopes and fears, roas a tidal wave of trauma, ecstasy and terror all at one. We race out of that tomb as if we had just seen a ghost. And so we have: In Jesus' empty tomb there is nothing but the ghost of our discipleship past and our disciplesship future. (p.412)
Myers reminds us that we can encounter Jesus only by following him. Whenever the church imagines that the resurrection introduces a new and different story that replaces the way of the cross it makes a fatal mistake and opens the way to the worship of the idols of economic success, social comfort, compliance with national real politic and the self referenctial comfort of Jesus in our hearts.
Ched Myers in his Closing Meditation on Mark's Gospel in Who will roll away the Stone? Discipleship Queries for First World Christians captures the awe-fulness of the resurrection. Commenting on the message of the young man at the tomb "He's gone on ahead of you" Myers observes:
Here is a possiblity we never considered, a prospect too terrible to contemplate. An invitation fo follow Jesus - again. To resume the Way, the consequences of which we now know all too well. Suddenly, form deep within us, for that unexplored space beneath our profoundest hopes and fears, roas a tidal wave of trauma, ecstasy and terror all at one. We race out of that tomb as if we had just seen a ghost. And so we have: In Jesus' empty tomb there is nothing but the ghost of our discipleship past and our disciplesship future. (p.412)
Myers reminds us that we can encounter Jesus only by following him. Whenever the church imagines that the resurrection introduces a new and different story that replaces the way of the cross it makes a fatal mistake and opens the way to the worship of the idols of economic success, social comfort, compliance with national real politic and the self referenctial comfort of Jesus in our hearts.
Sunday, 28 September 2008
Discipleship and Resurrection
Craig Hovey has produced a remarkable challenging reading of Mark's Gospel in To Share in the Body: A Theology of Martyrdom for Today's Church, Brazos Press, 2008
One quote from his discussion of the resurrection and discipleship in the Gospel will have to suffice.
Like the Emmaus disciples, the church is constantly tempted to make Jesus "stay with us", to possess him and control his movements. He vanishes because he had intended to go further: as for the women at the empty tomb in Mark. He was going ahead into Galilee, and "thee you will see him." He will not be seen by a sight that grasps, but only by a vision that crosses the space between the disciple and Jesus with the movement of following. The church faces this temptation when it attempts to prove to the world that the resurrection has happened, when it builds a case for it on apologetic grounds, when it construes a logical case for its belief. The problem is not only that such efforts may fail to convince anybody. Indeed, the attempt tow win the argument on logical or juridical grounds is meant to fail, a point exemplified by the fact that women are entrusted to ber witness. The reliabiity of their testimony is disabled by their gender in that patriarchical milieu. And yet it is the women who are promised to see Jesus in Galilee, who had not abandoned Jesus at the cross, and who, Mark explains, had followed and served Jesus in Galilee (15:40-41). These unlikely witnesses are undermined in their authority for the same reason that Peter will amaze the crowds at Pentecost: the proclamation of the gospel does not rely on the gender or education of the witnesses. After all, a gospel proclaimed by women and uneducated fishermen is a social sign of a cosmic reversal that the gospel heralds. (p.127)
Sunday, 27 April 2008
Engaging the world
Recent readings from the daily readings from Bonhoeffer I Want to Live these Days with You bring into view an understanding of what it is to be a Christian that was more than academic.
Those who affirm the resurrection of Christ in faith can no longer withdraw from the world, nor can they become slaves to the world, for in the midst of the old creation they know God's new creation. (April 23, p.118)
Unlike believers in the myths of redemption Christians do not have a last escape from earthly tasks and difficulties into the eternal. Rather they must completely and fully enjoy earthly life as Christ did. Only when they do this will the crucified and resurrected One be with them. Only when they do this will they be crucified and resurrected with Christ. The present age must not be prematurely abolished. In this Old Testament and New Testament remain united. Myths of redemption arise from human boundary experiences. But Christ meets human beings in the middle of their lives. (April 24, p.119)
Those who affirm the resurrection of Christ in faith can no longer withdraw from the world, nor can they become slaves to the world, for in the midst of the old creation they know God's new creation. (April 23, p.118)
Unlike believers in the myths of redemption Christians do not have a last escape from earthly tasks and difficulties into the eternal. Rather they must completely and fully enjoy earthly life as Christ did. Only when they do this will the crucified and resurrected One be with them. Only when they do this will they be crucified and resurrected with Christ. The present age must not be prematurely abolished. In this Old Testament and New Testament remain united. Myths of redemption arise from human boundary experiences. But Christ meets human beings in the middle of their lives. (April 24, p.119)
Wednesday, 9 April 2008
Living the Resurrection
As we live beyond Easter it is worth remembering that each of the central days of that festival has particular themes that we could reflect on as a way of shaping our lives as disciples.
Good Friday provides us with the challenge of accompanying with compassion those living in the shadow of death and those who experience the power of death daily through their experience of injustice, deprivation and the ravages of war.
Easter Saturday, the most neglected day of the three, points us toward living with patience, perseverance and an underlying trust in the activity and presence of God in the face of the long haul of everyday life, between crucifixion and resurrection.
Easter Sunday is about resurrection as a way of living not simply as a theological or doctrinal proposition to which we give intellectual assent and then move on with our lives as though nothing has happened.
What we need then are not “Bible believing” or even “resurrection believing” Christians” but Jesus following, resurrection living disciples.
While the resurrection is about the way we live, in the life of the church there has been relatively little reflection and guidance that I could find about what a resurrection shaped discipleship looks like. And this is really strange, because if we were to go into a Bible study looking fir the meaning of the resurrection for our life as disciples as members of the Christian community we would be here for a very long time. Beyond the stories of the resurrection of Jesus at the end of the Gospels, we have Acts and the New Testament epistles that are shaped profoundly by the arguments that they contain on what living out of a resurrection shaped faith is all about.
The Anabaptist tradition has given expression to the significance of resurrection living; it comes to us through a single yet powerful phrase from in the Schleitheim Confession in 1527 – one of the earliest statements from the radical, peace church tradition of the reformation period. Entry into Christian discipleship is for …all those who desire to walk in the resurrection of Jesus Christ”
Walking in the resurrection was no easy matter for the Radical Christians of the 16th century with their commitment to make the church independent of the state their refusal to bear arms. It was not a matter of a spiritual high detached form the hard realities of life. Many of those involved in drawing up the Schleitheim confession were killed within a matter of months.
To walk in the resurrection is to walk in the path of the Resurrected Crucified Jesus. The one who was resurrected is the same Jesus who healed the sick, who affirmed the value of those caste out from society, who partied with those of dubious reputation, who challenged the religiously comfortable and confronted the Roman Empire with a non-violent witness to God as the true ruler. The Jesus who was resurrected, in whose resurrection we are called to walk, is the Jesus who suffered capital punishment at the hands of the Roman Empire. Walking in the resurrection is to live as those for whom violence and injustice do not have the last word
With the resurrection of Jesus, God created a new world and sent Jesus’ followers off to announce it to the world. If you go to the resurrection chapters in Luke 24, or in Matthew, or Mark, or John, and say, “What do the evangelists think this stuff means; why are we telling this story?” The answer is not, “Jesus is risen again, therefore, we can go to heaven when we die and be with him.” It’s interesting they never say that, those resurrection chapters. Rather, they say, “Jesus is risen from the dead. Therefore, God’s new creation has begun, and you are commissioned to go off and make it happen.” That’s the emphasis. And it’s a new world of justice and freedom; it’s the exodus world, the return-from-exile world, the world where Jesus already reigns as Lord, it’s the world with good news for all, especially as in the New Testament, for the poor. (Tom Wrights The Resurrection: A Sermon Nov 11, 2001) http://www.thefallschurch.org/templates/custhefalls/details.asp?id=29455&PID=244903&mast=
Resurrection is about justice, freedom and God’s new creation. To share in Christ’s resurrection is to be empowered by God to be witnesses to and participants in God’s preaching of peace not as some purely inner spirituality but as part of a whole new creation and to live in a way hat is paradoxical bringing into question the social norms of the time but is the start of a new creation that is lived out in the midst of confusion and pain, violence and political conflict.
So what does living in the resurrection look like?
• The issue is one of the practice of hope. There is a deep connection between peacemaking and hope. We do not have to use violence to make things come out right. Patience, compassion and a non-violence – all are elements of hope.
• Living beyond our means – living with open hands in both giving and receiving - not needing to control or force the outcome. Learning to live generously.
• Embodied life – how could a resurrection life be a ‘spiritual’ life detached from the body. Expressed by Jesus in the sharing of meals – Jesus is recognised in the breaking of the bread. Resurrection about living practicing for a new heaven and a new earth now.
• Living out God’s coming kingdom now – practicing – living the new creation now – wherever there are signs of brokenness, destruction and injustice trying to find practical ways to address them. learning to live generously
• Seeking the justice that God desires now.
• Living with the freedom that we are not controlled finally by the state or the powers of violence, rather witnesses to God’s coming kingdom of peace
The ‘kingdom’ of which Jesus speaks is an entirely new order of relationships grounded in mutual forgiveness, open table fellowship, the sharing of wealth, peaceable politics, healing for the sick, welcome for the stranger, and good news for the poor. “How Easter Brings Regime change” by Simon Barrow (Ekklesia, April 14, 2006) http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/content/barrow/article_060414easter.shtml
See also
“For they were Afraid” Sermon by Jim Barr (Easter 2006) http://www.canbap.org/sermons/2006/sermon-20060416.html
“Resurrection: The Ultimate Answer to Empire” Sermon by Rick Derksen (2003)
http://peace.mennolink.org/articles/rickderksen.html
“Threatened with Resurrection” by Simon Barrow (Ekklesia, April 29, 2006)
http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/content/barrow/article_060429resuur.shtml
Good Friday provides us with the challenge of accompanying with compassion those living in the shadow of death and those who experience the power of death daily through their experience of injustice, deprivation and the ravages of war.
Easter Saturday, the most neglected day of the three, points us toward living with patience, perseverance and an underlying trust in the activity and presence of God in the face of the long haul of everyday life, between crucifixion and resurrection.
Easter Sunday is about resurrection as a way of living not simply as a theological or doctrinal proposition to which we give intellectual assent and then move on with our lives as though nothing has happened.
What we need then are not “Bible believing” or even “resurrection believing” Christians” but Jesus following, resurrection living disciples.
While the resurrection is about the way we live, in the life of the church there has been relatively little reflection and guidance that I could find about what a resurrection shaped discipleship looks like. And this is really strange, because if we were to go into a Bible study looking fir the meaning of the resurrection for our life as disciples as members of the Christian community we would be here for a very long time. Beyond the stories of the resurrection of Jesus at the end of the Gospels, we have Acts and the New Testament epistles that are shaped profoundly by the arguments that they contain on what living out of a resurrection shaped faith is all about.
The Anabaptist tradition has given expression to the significance of resurrection living; it comes to us through a single yet powerful phrase from in the Schleitheim Confession in 1527 – one of the earliest statements from the radical, peace church tradition of the reformation period. Entry into Christian discipleship is for …all those who desire to walk in the resurrection of Jesus Christ”
Walking in the resurrection was no easy matter for the Radical Christians of the 16th century with their commitment to make the church independent of the state their refusal to bear arms. It was not a matter of a spiritual high detached form the hard realities of life. Many of those involved in drawing up the Schleitheim confession were killed within a matter of months.
To walk in the resurrection is to walk in the path of the Resurrected Crucified Jesus. The one who was resurrected is the same Jesus who healed the sick, who affirmed the value of those caste out from society, who partied with those of dubious reputation, who challenged the religiously comfortable and confronted the Roman Empire with a non-violent witness to God as the true ruler. The Jesus who was resurrected, in whose resurrection we are called to walk, is the Jesus who suffered capital punishment at the hands of the Roman Empire. Walking in the resurrection is to live as those for whom violence and injustice do not have the last word
With the resurrection of Jesus, God created a new world and sent Jesus’ followers off to announce it to the world. If you go to the resurrection chapters in Luke 24, or in Matthew, or Mark, or John, and say, “What do the evangelists think this stuff means; why are we telling this story?” The answer is not, “Jesus is risen again, therefore, we can go to heaven when we die and be with him.” It’s interesting they never say that, those resurrection chapters. Rather, they say, “Jesus is risen from the dead. Therefore, God’s new creation has begun, and you are commissioned to go off and make it happen.” That’s the emphasis. And it’s a new world of justice and freedom; it’s the exodus world, the return-from-exile world, the world where Jesus already reigns as Lord, it’s the world with good news for all, especially as in the New Testament, for the poor. (Tom Wrights The Resurrection: A Sermon Nov 11, 2001) http://www.thefallschurch.org/templates/custhefalls/details.asp?id=29455&PID=244903&mast=
Resurrection is about justice, freedom and God’s new creation. To share in Christ’s resurrection is to be empowered by God to be witnesses to and participants in God’s preaching of peace not as some purely inner spirituality but as part of a whole new creation and to live in a way hat is paradoxical bringing into question the social norms of the time but is the start of a new creation that is lived out in the midst of confusion and pain, violence and political conflict.
So what does living in the resurrection look like?
• The issue is one of the practice of hope. There is a deep connection between peacemaking and hope. We do not have to use violence to make things come out right. Patience, compassion and a non-violence – all are elements of hope.
• Living beyond our means – living with open hands in both giving and receiving - not needing to control or force the outcome. Learning to live generously.
• Embodied life – how could a resurrection life be a ‘spiritual’ life detached from the body. Expressed by Jesus in the sharing of meals – Jesus is recognised in the breaking of the bread. Resurrection about living practicing for a new heaven and a new earth now.
• Living out God’s coming kingdom now – practicing – living the new creation now – wherever there are signs of brokenness, destruction and injustice trying to find practical ways to address them. learning to live generously
• Seeking the justice that God desires now.
• Living with the freedom that we are not controlled finally by the state or the powers of violence, rather witnesses to God’s coming kingdom of peace
The ‘kingdom’ of which Jesus speaks is an entirely new order of relationships grounded in mutual forgiveness, open table fellowship, the sharing of wealth, peaceable politics, healing for the sick, welcome for the stranger, and good news for the poor. “How Easter Brings Regime change” by Simon Barrow (Ekklesia, April 14, 2006) http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/content/barrow/article_060414easter.shtml
See also
“For they were Afraid” Sermon by Jim Barr (Easter 2006) http://www.canbap.org/sermons/2006/sermon-20060416.html
“Resurrection: The Ultimate Answer to Empire” Sermon by Rick Derksen (2003)
http://peace.mennolink.org/articles/rickderksen.html
“Threatened with Resurrection” by Simon Barrow (Ekklesia, April 29, 2006)
http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/content/barrow/article_060429resuur.shtml
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