cairns

the day dawns

December 25, 2007 by me

The sun is just coming up, my wife is in the other room still wrapping presents.

I am sitting here for a brief moment before going back to help, wondering about the almighty swaddled. 

This year I cannot escape the thought of the Logos unable to articulate words, the hands that formed man and woman from clay now unable to hold an object, the power that sustains the universe unable to control bodily functions…

What does it mean to follow this light, this path of complete surrender of all power?  Perhaps we would spend more time caring for people we do not have answers for, fellowshiping with folks who do not buy our answers, risking love in the face of overwhelming violence, watching mockingbirds with no idea why they leap.

Time for family and love that transcends explanation.

peace

6 Responses to “the day dawns”

1. cherylwonders

   Thanks for this. It’s unthinkable. I guess that’s why we spend so little time and so few sermons articulating it. The “disabled God” – sounds somehow totally offensive an idea, but why would being disabled be somehow “more disabled” than to be a helpless infant? It’s theology we can’t make sense of. But we do need to wonder about it!

   
   

2.   crookedshore

   for some unknown reason I found myself reflecting this morning on Jesus being umbilically connected to another human being. And what it meant when this was severed. It is an incredible thought. Thanks both of you.

   
   

3. me

   Christmas was in truth very hard here. There is still grieving to be done for my dad even though years have passed. He was a true believer in the magic of Christmas. Our family is struggling to establish new patterns of gathering, schedules, celebrating as we adjust to grown children and more households to please. The end result is that nobody seemed to actually enjoy anything…Then one of our dogs had to be put down and the other disappeared for about an hour right after I got home…

   By yesterday afternoon, I was a wreck. All that negative sharing to say this. Only a God who has chosen helplessness on His path to relationship with us, is sufficient for my needs when I find myself helpless.

   peace

   
   

4.   virtualmethodist

   Yet so often as Christians and particularly as pastors we offer those who are bruised and broken a God who is omnipotent… “our all sufficient, saviour”…

   
   

5.  Joy

   the Queen’s speech touched on this (was proud of her!) – about the knowledge Jesus had of exclusion and rejection, and how this brought something very special to his ministry.
   do ’stick with it’, drg and others who struggle with the insistence that we all be ‘cheerful’ at this time of year.
   we are what we are, and we’re ‘where’ we are.
   …and God ‘gets’ that… thank God…

   
   

6. me

   This is also the message I read in the Psalms as the author so often starts out proclaiming needs/troubles/dangers before ending in praise. And David was known as a “man after God’s own heart!” I wonder why it still surprises us that a broken world needs “wounded healers.” Glad God understands slow learners too! peace

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“If just one person believes in you

Deep enough and strong enough

Believes in you hard enough and long enough

Before you knew it, someone else would think

‘If he can do it, I can do it.’

Making it two.  Two whole people who believe in you.

And maybe even you can believe in you too.”

Robin and the Muppet Gang

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tempted to be distracted by the distracted, i refuse,

its all about the baby,

tempted to be distracted by the parents, the time frame, the inn keeper, the shepherds, the Romans, i refuse,

its all about the baby,

tempted to be distracted by my own musing, writing, thinking, pontificating, i refuse,

its all about the baby,

infant beyond human imagination or comprehension,

Creator God become not just mortal but mortal most vulnerable,

All Mighty God come not in power but in helpless weakness,

He came, as a baby, He came.

we are not alone, He came.

it is, I Am, is all about the baby.

Come let us adore Him indeed!

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Much of what I was looking for Rieger to add in the various chapters is present in the Conclusion. It is also there in the Introduction if re-read informed by the rest of the book.  (Tim probably already knew that!) But, it would not have the same power without working through the ages of empire in the various chapters.  When the book is finally read in full, Rieger’s arguments have a fullness.  I do highly recommend this book to any willing to do the work of encountering all of it.

The relationships of power and empire are everywhere I live and work.  They are in the small daily interactions with children in coerced public education and in the meta structures of the system.  They are as evident in my church interactions as in a Humvee in Iraq.  And I have much to contemplate about my understanding, my role, my theology, and my response.

And I think the questions of basis for argument will have to be part of every conversation from now on.  In a world that has surrendered all notion of absolute, external, verifiable truth neither science nor religion can assume that anyone will respond to our facts or revelations as anything more than opinion.  How do we ‘prove’ anything to anybody in a world where there is no acceptance of the possibility of unassailable first postulates or laws?  How do we shake people out of the comfortable numbness of ignorant surface level relativism — is it not the new opiate of the people?

Meanwhile, as this book points out very well, empire thrives unexamined, unchallenged, unnoticed even if it is now killing us all, not just the 30,000 children a day of the poor.

peace

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If anybody is still reading this who is also reading theology (or philosophy or some other ology), who is currently writing ‘theology’ that makes sense to you?  I’m looking for people who do not just deconstruct, but actually put forth what it is that they believe.  What are they saying that I should get my hands on?

peace

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Fifth grade enquiring mind asked me why everyone at school was so weird about saying, “winter” party, break, holiday, etc. instead of Christmas.  I started to explain the political correctness of non-offensive language and Muhammed (who voluntarily participated in the Ramadan fast even though he was the only one in a school of 750+) interrupted as soon as I said somebody might be offended.  “Yeah! He means me!” and laughed an open friendly laugh.  His mom was one of the parents who came and helped with the party today. 

As much as I agree with the need of those in power to be sensitive to the subtle applications of that power, I do long for a world where more of us adults could take ourselves as seriously as this twin culture young man does.  He is my teacher as well as my student.

peace

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I am almost finished with Christ and Empire,difficult but very intelligent review of the interplay of various forms of christian thought and empire from the early church councils until now.  It is more than worth the effort.  But, maybe I shouldn’t try to do theology during advent.

My heart’s thought and brain’s emotion keep going back to, “but if He is True!”  If that baby truly was God Incarnate, so much quibbling about whether Christianity has a superiority complex is nonsense.  If Jesus Christ was who He said He was, and yes I do believe He claimed it, then His way IS superior to all others.  If God became flesh in order to give His Word to us and be the Way for our reunification, I do not need a Muslim, a Buddhist, a baptist, or a postmodern prophet to lead me beyond where He takes me.  He is the goal.

I can buy that folks of other faiths and philosophies may have much to teach me about being fully human, but He was that as well.  I can accept that all defense of human empire based on knowledge of Him is truth twisted into lie, but His is the Kingdom.  I can buy that we need to be careful and reflect on the ramifications of all the theologies, doctrines, and trappings that we add as we try to understand and apply the gospel to our lives and times, but He is beyond need for apology or He is fraud.

I am struggling through the last days of the school term and the first days of family holiday chaos.  But, I am also kneeling by a manger in anticipation of the new coming of He who Was, Is, and Will be.  I AM in full human frailty, more than example or inspiration, more than belief or imagination, the Beginning and the End of all that we are meant to be. 

If the Incarnation is True there is no need to rush to Easter.  If the Incarnation is True, then my theological questions are all around whether I am accurately comprehending, teaching, and living Him, not theology.  Who is this peasant child?

peace

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I am reading Christ and Empire, (Thanks for the recommendation Tim).  At the end of chapter two, Rieger is explaining how the early councils’ theologies of Christ’s oneness with both God and humanity open up the world of understanding of both God and each other.

“Is the divine somehow linked with the success of those in power (or other preconceived notions of the top down), or is the divine linked to the Christ who cannot easily be defined and whose power moves from the bottom up instead of from the top down?  Second, how do we understand humanity and its relationship to divinity?  If we understand humanity or divinity according to the private-property model (as if humans would “own” some part of God), we will not get much beyond an identity politics that closes the doors to deeper encounters with Christ and the complexity of his full humanity and full divinity.  Only if we do not own the divine can divinity in Christ yet surprise us by being other than we imagine.”

That gets at the darkness I am comfortable in — not darkness as the absence of the light I have been given so far — but darkness in comparison to the light I yet expect.  There is such joy in waiting to be surprised by the God who is both known and beyond all knowing! peace

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OK, first, this came in an email summary of ‘religious news’… 

“According to a new study on global warming cited by CNSNews.com, climate scientists at the University of Rochester, the University of Alabama, and the University of Virginia found that the climate change models based on human influence do not match observed warming. That is contrary to the views held by former Vice President Al Gore, who accepted the Nobel Prize on Monday along with the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and who thinks that climate change is largely caused by human action. The new report was published in the December 2007 issue of the International Journal of Climatology of the Royal Meteorological Society. “Our findings basically are that fingerprints – that is to say the pattern of warming – that’s predicted by greenhouse models does not match the fingerprints of observations, so there is a disconnect between greenhouse models and the actual reality of observations,” said study co-author S. Fred Singer of the University of Virginia.”

Check out the website for this ’scientific society!’  Under FAQs you can find that they invite all types of articles and do not wish to limit themselves to just that scientific stuff!!  And we Christians republish ‘findings’ to each other making it all look like its science.  Why?

Today’s real headline is that the ice melt is progressing much faster than predictions.  Is it comforting some how to think, “but its not my fault?”  Is it easier to face catastrophic change if you can chant, “but it wasn’t what that Democrat said?” 

If you live on physical high ground get ready while the conservative church takes the intellectual low ground, but seriously get ready, we are all coming to your door for room and board — well at least the species who survive.

peace — not ignorant passivity and false calm — peace

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I am still exploring something of this that is beyond my grasp.  How do I go out into the dark to seek others if the fire travels with me?  Does the light shine out where I go?  Is that determined more by the power of the light or my degree of transparency?  How does my small frail self hold the Light of All Lights?

Sunday the song “Come to my heart Lord Jesus, there is room in my heart for Thee.”  Really?  If I go beyond sentimental meanings of “Y’all come now Jesus,”  room?  seriously enough room in my small heart for the Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer, Restorer and Lord?

This is a great mystery I am exploring, not trying to solve.  I’m not looking for simple verses or easy answers.  I am just blown away by the immensity of what we claim so casually!  And yet, in some ways, it is the same mystery I was describing earlier in my little heresy post.  In the moments when I am unable to perceive light, when the darkness of this world and age loom largest, when the educated of the world including theologians proclaim that the God I know is dead, I find Him right there in me!

I do not know how that can be.  I do not know how His own earthly body could contain Him. 

But, I know it is true.  He said it.  I have met Him there on the border of hell speaking out from within me.  I have found Him on the mountain top bringing me home to work again. 

What I am musing about here are the questions which draw me to understand how much bigger, other, beyond — and at the same time close, intimate, and available He is.  What a great wonder that all present light is darkness compared to the full understanding of Him, and my darkest days are pure light compared to life without Him.  I am exploring mysteries in great gratitude.

peace

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