hall

over the coming days i intend to share some of my favourite quotations from a book i read by douglas john hall, the cross in our context

while it was not an easy book to read for the technical brilliance of the man ( in terms of his mastery of the language as well as his knowledge of scripture ), it was a venture i enjoyed; i intend to revisit ..

" .. no 'theology of glory' will be able to bring closure to the question " What are people for ?". For that anxiety, the only answer that will suffice is the participation in our lives of a God who shares the question, whose Presence gives us the courage of hope. " 

(133)

imagine .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. `` `` `` `` `` `` ``

imagine you're hit by a bullet ..
try to bring your imagination to bear enough to bring yourself to seeing you being hit by a bullet
try

............................................................................................................

can you ?
even a hint of it ?
as if you were standing there knowing you were going to be shot ..
try it

............................................................................................................
anything ??

if you were able to generate some kind of feeling about it, even if you know it wasn't like the real thing, it was a poor imagining ..
even if
take that same effort and imagine there is a God
a God that lives and moves and has being
a God in whom we live and move and have our being

try
as if God was standing there looking at you
this is God

imagine it

and you are face to face with God
what do you imagine God to be like ?
with what words would you describe ..
" God is .. "
not what God looks like, but what is God like
to you

and after you've tried to look into the face of God
what do you imagine you would say
to God ?

what indeed ..

i need no other argument, i need no other plea; it is sufficient - Jesus died, and he died for me
[ an old hymn, adapted ]

i stand there
i can only stand there
there is no other place to stand if i would look God in the face, for this Jesus is the Way
i stand there
i have no defense other than this
i am his brother, he is my advocate before all accusers, and there is none better because he's been the distance
he has arrived

where are you ?

you looking to the tele preacherboys ?
listening to them ?
you looking to your church ?
your pastor ?
your christianity ?
your theology ?
your ministry ?
your calling ?
your history ?

look no further, friend
those things are not the last Word on anything
there is one Word only that matters
and he sits at God's right hand right now

there's where my faith is
my hope
my love
my life

i follow that man
and him alone

Jesus is my master
the only one to whom i account
and the day he looks me in the eye i want to have a clear conscience
clean
i love him for what he has undertaken and undergone for me and for us and for all humanity
i owe him everything
and he is right there with God
now
God's commander in chief
king of kings and lord of lords
the IAM
the IAMWHOIAM
Jehovah himself
Yahweh
Messiah
that's the one i follow
you can tell who he is - he has a nail scar on each hand and one incredible smile
and he's looking me straight in the heart
in love with me

how could i ever ever not
i owe him everything

.............................................

imagine ..
just try
maybe God's standing there waiting for you to approach
maybe God's been trying to get your attention

maybe it's time for you to get real

maybe it's time to stop playing christian
stop playing church
stop playing hymns
stop playing prayer
stop playing

God isn't playing
Jesus is not playing
they're real

imagine ..

then do something

You Are Being Led

" You Are Being Led

Ripening reveals much bigger or very different horizons than we realize. The refusal to ripen leads to what T.S. Eliot spoke of in “The Hollow Men,” lives that “end not with a bang but with a whimper.” I hope that you are one of those people who will move toward your own endless horizons and not waste time in whimpering. Why else would you even read this? Perhaps these meditations may help you trust that you are, in fact, being led. Life, your life, all life, is going somewhere and somewhere good.

Ripening, at its best, is a slow, patient learning, and sometimes even a happy letting-go—a seeming emptying out to create readiness for a new kind of fullness—which we are never totally sure about. If we do not allow our own ripening, and I do believe it is somewhat a natural process, an ever-increasing resistance and denial sets in, an ever-increasing circling of the wagons around an over-defended self. At our very best, we learn how to hope as we ripen, to move outside and beyond self-created circles, which is something quite different from the hope of the young. Youthful hopes have concrete goals, whereas the hope of older years is usually aimless hope, hope without goals, even naked hope—perhaps real hope. Such stretching is the agony and the joy of our later years.

Old age, as such, is almost a complete changing of gears and engines from the first half of our lives and does not happen without slow realization, inner calming, inner resistance, denial, and eventual surrender, by God’s grace, working with our ever-deepening sense of what we really desire and who we really are. This process seems to largely operate unconsciously, although we jolt into consciousness now and then, and the awareness that you have been led, usually despite yourself, is experienced as a deep gratitude that most would call happiness. Religious people might even call it mercy. "

end quote

rohr
        [underline mine for emphasis]

my cross .. take it up, embrace it

as i read dj hall's comments on death ( see previous post ) and thought about the truth of how we have turned the dread of it into something palatable to the human event, even the christian human event, i remember the Hebrews passage ( ch 2 )
since the children have flesh and blood in common, Jesus also shared in these, so that through His death He might destroy the one holding the power of death—that is, the Devil— and free those who were held in slavery all their lives by the fear of death. 
 a lot of ' death ' in those few words ..

' we ' evangelical protestants have managed ( both in the sense of arriving at, and in the sense of working to that end ) to refocus the obvious injustice and wicked manipulation of the human state by the satan into a future-focus, an ' it-will-be-alright-in-the-end ', which, while creditable in its own right, reduces death to a doorway to paradise
it is, after all
but we dare not undermine that disruptive force that dogs us on this liferoad, moreso in our later-in-life period ..

Jesus' ministry of the cross drove hard at initiating reconciliation for us, and that reconciled recreation of the human state deals with death, not by suppressing it or otherwise by-'passing' it, but by facing it head-on in all its horror as it sucks life out us, the very imago dei

modern theology tends to avert this admission at a huge cost to itself, for only by taking up our cross, our own place and instrument of death, can we finally be disciples of Jesus
he didn't use those words lightly; he wanted us to see the reality in all its darkness, understand that sobering end, embrace a life soaked in atrophy and decay, a worldlife of death that was never God's intention

that's the balancing act that must take place in me ..
while seeing my state and that of all humanity as currently wrapped in burial clothing, we for sure see too the hope, by faith, of God's re-creation, life out of death, out of nothing
surely Jesus is our forerunner and faith-full high priest, and ours is to trust him, hope in him, see his life through the death that is ours

we do see Jesus —made lower than the angels for a short time so that by God’s grace He might taste death for everyone— crowned with glory and honor because of His suffering in death. For in bringing many sons to glory, it was entirely appropriate that God ( all things exist for Him and through Him ) should make the source of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For the One who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one Father. That is why Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters ..
see the progression: Jesus is exalted because he suffered death, suffered in dying, suffered in the path to that dying death, and that was appropriate for him who embraced our humanity; we are his siblings ..
thus, the implication is that we too suffer, must suffer, as humans
he honoured that condition by immersing himself in it, and then using it as a referent for following him

we look forward to the recreation, certainly
but that's only one side of our lifecoin
as NT Wright often avows, we are in the ' not yet ' stage
the kingdom awaits; it is our hope; but the twisty debilitating road that leads there is fraught with distress at our own human condition, and the required compassion that accompanies that as we look to recognize Jesus in the faces we meet and to be Jesus in their eyes and lives .. no greater calling exists

there is death, and there is the embracing of death, the alter ego to the recreated life that sings sweetly in Jesus-tone
we might well be careful not to downplay or dumbdown the 'value' of that, for ultimately it is in dying that we live .. anyone that will save their life will lose it, but anyone that will lose their life for my sake, finds life .. Jesus

apostle Paul, a much-denigrated apostle in modern theothink, once said that his is to fill up in himself the sufferings of Messiah Jesus for the sake of Jesus' Body, the Church ..
who are we to take any lesser view of life in this deathlife we call ' life ' ?

and so .. when i see death in my life, the death of my life, the death of what i thought was my life, even the seemingly to-me laudable and commendable lifethings that i thought were Jesus things ( and maybe was right in seeing them to be so ) - when those things die i must embrace their dying as a part of my journey into life for Jesus' sake, for mine is not to be overly sorrowful or regretful, but balancing - take and embrace the death of them in hope of new life, tomorrow .. or the next day

God is still working on reconciliation; i need to be involved in that work as well as open to the reconciliation of me

may my dying be seen as life to someone else, in someone else
may Jesus be exalted and may God get the glory

.. .. .

O Love that will not let me go, I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe, that in thine ocean depths its flow may richer, fuller be.

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 flows from Thee.
[adapted from an old hymn]

dj hall on death ..

windblown .. .

it's cold out, and blustery
the leaves trying to hold their own, vigorous gusts trying hard to dislodge them

sometimes it's cold in, and blustery
i try to hold my own as vigorous gusts try hard to dislodge me
tossed, fluttering this way, then that
shaking at my roots
scared ? ..


" The wind blows where it pleases, and you hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”


sometimes i get scared at what God is doing  ..


" .. anyone who lives by the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be shown to be accomplished by God. "

blow !
just blow
then breathe
on me ..

compassion ..

compassion: a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering
com-passion: passioning with someone
note both aspects of the definition; it's similar to empathy, but goes farther - it wants to relieve the suffering
.. ...    .

in recent times i've attempted to explain something of homelesslife to friends and acquaintances
it has been difficult
( and this is in no way deprecatory of those people; it is not uncommon in the western world of now )

apart from the fact that they had a difficult time grasping the concept ( i believe out of a tradition, a culture, an education, and a never-been-there mentality ), there was a denial and rationalization colouring the discussion ..
my only recourse was to provide examples, personal experiences, and stories from my homeless brothers and sisters

leading to this ..
Mark Twain made a comment - " i have never let my schooling interfere with my education " - the motivation being we can be indoctrinated by our cultural and social environment to think a certain way, believe certain things, while rejecting other think, assume this or that .. meanwhile the truth of life ( even in that very environment ) is simply not so
hence, ours is to question, investigate other sources, take a critical position and, most importantly, head heartfirst into God, the source of wisdom

the in-credible think that says because we live in 2014 we are wiser is just that
knowledge is not wisdom
our modern penchant for infobites and dreadfully briefly-stated arguments, our drive to condense so that we can consume so much more, is fraught with the danger of oversimplification and surface-engagement

there is a huge difference between knowing about something and engaging the issue with a view to some form of change in myself - the latter requires so much more
engaging a topic in order to affect any meaningful change in me deserves depth and breadth, consideration of this and that viewpoint, and should result in a challenge to our off-the-bat, knee-jerk response to a paragraph or soundbite  ..

thus, in this case, a willingness to understand homelesslife by listening first, by investigation, and by recourse to God would go far in opening my mind to the millions that live there in this country, not to mention the billions of impoverished in the world at large
to simply dismiss those people as lazy, as bums, addicted or alcoholics, insane or mentally disturbed - the intimation being that they deserve their circumstance, made their own bed to lie in - is to do massive injustice, probably on par with the inhumanity that allows for such a huge incidence of that lifecondition in the first place, and further allows that lifecondition to persist ..
it does not speak well to wisdom

further to that, to assume that i can sit here in my comfortzone and understand homelesslife is, at best, foolhardy - it smells of arrogance and judgmentalism, selfishness and a complete misunderstanding ( worse yet, dismissal ) of Jesus' primary teaching - i must love my neighbour as i love my own self

there is widom in the thought ' you can't truly understand my situation 'till you've walked a mile in my shoes '
did you think people actually choose homelesslife, like they were choosing a car or a university or a career ?
really ??
really ..
have you considered what a homeless life must be like ? as in, sat there and tried to walk yourself through some part of their day, or night ?
virtually walking in their shoes ..
and that still leaves a vast fissure in understanding, since ' virtual ' is a long-distance view

i am not being rude, nor am i castigating anyone; simply put, perhaps before we express our opinions or draw conclusions from our boxed-in point of view, we should consider compassion, particularly when it speaks to humanity in its manifestations

be wary of allowing your culture, your politics, your education, your religion, your whatever to dumb-down your inquisitivenss, your imagination, your reasoning, for the true you lies beyond that, as Twain implied

above all else, i must go to my spirit ( not mind ), where the spirit of the living God can access and bypass my own arrogance and insularity
stretching my self towards true reality


p.s. - a friend recently posted something similar to this on fb .. ' anyone has some cash i can borrow? i'm about to be evicted '
well, you could look down your long nose at them, but bear in mind this person has 30+ years in photojournalism, still employed, and was recently featured on a major network ..

p.p.s. - " It is not some religious act which makes a Christian what he or she is, but participation in the suffering of God in the life of the world. " .. bonhoeffer

p.p.p.s - " .. everything the most serious Christians would consider essential to Christan faith: the primacy of love; the demand for justice, especially towards the underprivileged; the insistence upon forgiveness ( not just once, but seventy times seven ); the equality of all human beings, without reference to race, culture, gender, and all else; above all, I think, the insistence upon a continuous and prophetic orientation toward truth and a concomitant vigilance against hypocrisy, subterfuge, and oversimplification. " .. dj hall

p.p.p.p.s. - " Christians, we have maintained, are those who through confrontation with death are given a new freedom from the sting of death and so a new freedom for voluntary service to others. ... The theology of the cross is intended to give rise not only to an ecclesiology of the cross, but to an ethic, the essence of which is the attentiveness to human and worldly suffering that is made possible in those who have been and are being delivered from self. " .. dj hall

peace to you