Onward into healing

The notion of an all-powerful God who gives up His power to create the world isn't new, of course. A recent version comes from Hans Jonas, Jewish-German philosopher, who wrestled with the question how an all-powerful, caring God could have let Auschwitz happen. He concluded that God didn't intervene because He couldn't. God creates the world, says Jonas, by completely handing Himself over to its unfolding. His power is what fuels and sustains the process of life, and He suffers with life as life runs its course. His only "plan" is to be with His creation as it staggers through the vagaries of evolution, of becoming and dying.

From a Christian perspective, this view is appealing, for it parallels the traditional teaching on Jesus as God giving up His power to take birth, and emptying Himself during his ministry and his death on the cross. (And Jesus did say: "If you have seen me, you have seen the Father." We may not have taken that seriously enough.)

The problem with this view, as with all attempts at understanding God, is that it still doesn't quite capture all the experiences of God one can have. Sometimes people do feel that God actively intervenes in their life, restoring them to grace. Sometimes the splendor of a simple sunset or the vivid spiritedness of the sky speaks of more than notions like those above can hold. 

I am one of those people. I do believe that God works for healing in the world. I feel I am being healed and guided. I do not know how or where, but I can't deny the healing or the guidance.

I have to conclude that God's power isn't lost to the world, only that it works in different ways than we usually think of when we speak of power.

Maybe speaking, then, isn't the best way to find God.

We shall see.

A new Easter

If we believe that Jesus is indeed God in human form, then the God we pray to is not a powerful God in the sense the world conceives of power. He is a God whose absolute might consists precisely in relinquishing all power: to share our common lot, to let us know, once and for all times, that He is neither wrathful nor absent. He is present with us, weak and frightened as we are. He goes into the darkness as we do, not knowing what awaits beyond.

This was the meaning of Jesus' ministry. He sealed it with his blood on the shameful, glorious cross. The double miracle of his self-emptying sacrifice and resurrection affirms an even deeper miracle: the fallen, broken world is the Kingdom of God's love.

If Christ is God, we are allowed to be human.

Good Friday, indeed

The imagery of the crucifixion has made the Christian mind prone to dark fantasies and violent imagination. But what it really means is simply this: God, in human form, took the worst of human suffering upon Himself. 

The cross is liberation. No matter what we go through, our pain has been felt. 

Christ died to testify that God is suffering with us. He poured his life out for us to save us from our deepest fear: pain and death do not mean that we are being punished. We have always been safe. We have always been loved.

His blood is the living witness to this covenant.

To realize this is to be forgiven.

A cross, half seen
bread oozing blood

arrived

Love, crucified by righteousness

Our original sin is righteousness: the idea that our own notions of good and bad are more profound than God's unfaltering love. This week, we are reminded of the consequences: It was the righteous who crucified Jesus, not the sinners.

Nothing has changed: progressive or fundamentalist, liberal or conservative, we all continue to crucify one another on the Calvaries of our respective righteousness. Meanwhile, the sinners and the infirm continue to weep, longing for reprieve.

We need notions of good and bad to structure our daily life. But Jesus' challenge to Christians is to be aware of their limits. To constantly probe into what is beneath them.

Holy Week

As our Pastor aptly reminded us this morning, the great teaching of Holy Week is to walk into the Unknown, fully awake to our vulnerability and weakness. For our sake, Jesus gave up all power to show us who we really are: weak and frightened beings whose strength comes from loving alone--loving ourselves, loving one another, loving that which is beyond our willful grasp. Such love bears unpremeditated joy in its depths.

In giving up God, we find God
In giving up hope, we find hope
In giving up faith, we find faith
In living love, we find love.

Lord of all things beyond all things
May we meet you within all things.

Amen.

Present grace

Grace is the gift of touching the world, letting creation happen. 

Being created

We always try to create the moment, instead of being created by it.

Clarifying Stillness

In my previous post I wrote about stillness as a remedy for raging passions, political and otherwise. Just to clarify: Stillness is not about passions coming to a halt. It's the opening up of a space in which all passion can move and subside freely.