« December 2005 | Main | February 2006 »

I took time tonight to begin to try out some concepts that I have been working on with Benedict's encyclical. I do so with some trepidation, open to correction by those who know much more and think much better than I. But I think that this is very important.

Commentators that I have briefly examined have not picked up the deeper theological structure of the encyclical in the Ressourcement or Nouveau Theologie that structured much of Vatican II, (though not its immediate reception in European cultures). If this analysis is correct, one sees the convergence of Benedict's thought with other forms of "post-modern Augustinianism" that have run like an undercurrent in contemporary thought and practice.

Tomorrow I will try to develop the argument of Section 1 in detail, and show some parallels with other "neo-Augustinians" -- non-Roman Catholic neo-Augustinians. This provides a wonderful way forward for conversation and dialogue in retrieving the full catholicity of the body of Christ in the world.

Please correct any inaccuracies in this post. I am a little uncomfortable in the wide categories that I use for explication -- I hope they are more helpful that distorting. If they do distort, please comment! Or if not, please comment!

A Commentary of Deus Caritas Est -- #2

by John W. Wright

It seems to me that it is very important to read Deus Caritas Est in light of the structure given to the reader. While the depth of the truth, goodness, and beauty of the language shines through the text in its parts, the depth and precision of its thought emerges when one sees the deeper structure of the text. The text shines actualizes the program of Henri de Lubac, who himself developed his thought, not as his own, but as explicating the very structure of the relationship between the natural and the supernatural in the Christian tradition. The first part of the encyclical clearly shows that Benedict, famed for his Augustinian background, upholds a Augustinian Thomism. If I was correct in my explication of the introduction as reading the encyclical as nonfoundationalist, then Benedict emerges here as what Tracey Rowland calls a “postmodern Augustinian Thomists.” Almost imperceptibly, Benedict renounces both an explicit theological liberalism and a Whig Thomism, the Catholic “neo-conservatives” who argue for a congruence between a theological confessional orthodoxy and the democratic liberal nation-state and late capitalist political theory and practice by a Thomism heavily influenced by Jacque Maritain.

While both Kung and Neuhaus have praised the encyclical, it seems to me that they miss the basic theological issue that structures the letter. To use the language of Henri de Lubac, the encyclical is really about the relationship between the supernatural and the natural in relationship to the human experience and divine revelation of love. Unlike Kung, for Benedict, the natural does not set the categories into which one must translate the supernatural; unlike Neuhaus, the competitive, Darwinian conflict of the modern liberal state and capitalism do not provide one realm upon which the supernatural then rests to ameliorate. As for Thomas, Benedict argues for a Christian conception of love where grace perfects nature. Human love does not exist completely distinct from divine love. But one cannot collapse human and divine love into each other in the terms of human love, with divine love merely a higher degree of intensity that human love.

As one reads the encyclical carefully, we discover that Benedict carefully teaches that we cannot know what love really is without knowing divine love. Human love evidences a desire for love, a desire itself given as a gift from God in creation, but a desire that is fulfilled in a completely unpredictable way in the revelation of divine love in Jesus Christ. The natural is taken up into the divine and made supernatural in a way that the natural, in and of itself, could never predict. Benedict wisely does not engage in polemics about different theological structures to understand love. Yet the text clearly differentiates his teaching in ways that arise from a Ressourcement understanding of Vatican II. Benedict therefore distinguishes Christian love from two prominent misunderstandings. Liberal thought understands the continuity between human love and divine love. But it makes the mistake of making the supernatural natural by translating divine love into categories of what has been given, rather than as a gift. Liberal thought places the divine into categories given by a transcendental, philosophical concept of the human. For instance, such a perspective would argue that we know what love is by psychological theories and then we can project these concepts upon the divine to understand God directly through human nature as defined by modern philosophical and political liberalism.
Catholic Whigs, on the other hand, make divine love a distinct realm from the competitive conflict that characterizes the natural. In Whig Catholicism, one engages in the violence of the nation-state or the market-drives of capitalism, and then responds to its negative vicissitudes with a charity outside and beyond the competition. It therefore embraces a “compassionate conservativism,” a doctrinaire Catholicism that morally demands full participation in a society determined by the categories of human nature as defined by modern philosophical and political liberalism. Benedict shows a third option, largely unexplored in contemporary society and thought, but one that lies at the center of the Christian tradition. It is “the Unity of Love in Creation and Salvation History” in which the love given in creation is overwhelmed and fulfilled by the divine love found in salvation history, that is, in God’s revelation in Jesus Christ.

Section 1 thus possesses a clear structure: Love in Creation (paragraphs 2-8); Love in Salvation History (paragraphs 9-15) that culminates in “Jesus Christ – the Incarnate Love of God;” and “Love of God and Neighbor” (paragraphs 16-18). This conclusion thus shows that these two loves, love in creation and love in salvation history, are unified as one: “Love of God and love of neighbour are thus inseparable, they form a single commandment. But both live from the love of God who has loved us first. No longer is it a question, then, of a ‘commandment’ imposed from without and calling for the impossible, but rather of a freely-bestowed experience of love from within, a love which by its very nature must then be shared with others. Love grows through love. Love is ‘divine’ because it comes from God and unites us to God; through this unifying process it makes us a ‘we’ which transcends our divisions and makes us one, until in the end God is ‘all in all’ (1 Cor 15:28).”

Human love is not annulled by divine love, but completed, purified, made whole and perfect by the gift of divine love. Human love comes to its true end, its telos, its completion, in divine love. The natural becomes supernatural, exceeding its wildest explications by the complete surprises and gratuity of the revelation of the Love that is God in Christ. The speculative, section 1 of the encyclical thus takes us back to the very beginning of the text: “God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” Benedict sets the stage to work out the practical implications of this dogmatic teaching in the second section of the letter.

Posted by johnwright at 9:02 PM | Comments (2)

As part of my rest this afternoon, I began a commentary on Benedict XVI's encyclical of last week, "God is Love." It might surprise some to find a theologian and pastor in the Church of the Nazarene not only caring, yet positively endorsing, the writings of the contemporary bishop of Rome. I am convinced, however, that the commitment to holiness of heart and life in the tradition of the Church of the Nazarene must drive us to conversation and shared life with those within the Roman Catholic church, even or especially the bishop of Rome. We must because our Lord prayed that we be sancified in truth so that we might be one as the Father and the Son are One. Secondly, the message of holiness finds its most consistent teaching and embodiment in the Christian tradition within the teachings of the Catholic Church and the bodies of the saints. Thus I offer this series of essays, as I can get to them, in hope that the fragmented body of Christ may some day be healed so that the world may know the God who is Love.

Commentary on Benedict XVI Encyclical Letter “Deus Caritas Est”

by John W. Wright

In the introduction to his encyclical, Benedict XVI calmly states the core convictions of the Christian tradition, or, as he states, “the heart of the Christian faith.” Some might think such a claim pretentious – surely one cannot claim that the Christian faith has a single center. It is because the Christian faith has no “heart,” no center but only different, disconnected historical manifestations that get expressed in different ways. It is up to an individual to find a “center” for himself or herself, or the elite philosopher/theology to make this historical language relevant by translating it into the latest philosophical idiom. Benedict kindly defers from such modernist readings. There is a heart, a center, to the Christian faith. While the depths of this heart are unending, capable of enfolding the mightiest intellects into an explorations of its depths, this heart is extremely simple, summarily stated in 1 John 4:16: “God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.”

We should not miss the significance of Benedict’s move here. He begins his first encyclical with a quote from Scripture. What follows is not to be understood merely as his idea, as solely his words. Benedict begins his papacy here as a witness, one whose job is to point to God in Christ via the Scriptures, not to his own experience or authority. We find the “heart of the Christian faith” already stated within the Holy Scriptures, presented to us by Benedict to take up and read. Without fanfare he uses the chair of St. Peter to direct believers and unbelievers to look simply at the Scriptures. The ease with which the encyclical flows from the verse masks the importance of this move theologically. There is a heart to the Christian faith, and it is found already attested to in the Scriptures.

We should read the whole encyclical as an exposition and meditation upon this Scriptural verse. It is a move that should please even a Southern Baptist, though curiously leave one formed by the canons of rationality of the Enlightenment wondering why he would start with the Scriptures to speak of God – why not start with reason, with philosophy or better, psychology, with a universal starting point to which any rational individual might assent. Benedict knows of no such universal reason. Benedict is speaking in the encyclical from faith for faith, a faith not contrary to reason, as he will make clear later in the encyclical, but a rationality that begins with faith nonetheless. Meet Benedict, the nonfoundationalist Pope, a pope genuinely writing subsequent to the modern.

Benedict begins with an exposition of the “heart” of the Christian faith. The word “heart” is carefully chosen. Of course, it corresponds with his theme of love. The word “heart” bears connotations as a seat of the affections in Western culture – his use of the term, however, might require some “translation” for different cultures! Yet the term also embeds the center of the Christian faith in a body, a human body. Benedict does not speak of an “essence of Christianity” as its core, but its heart. Earlier nineteenth and twentieth century Protestant theology (and some Catholic thought as well!) had searched for an “essence” of Christianity, a disembodied, foundational proposition that one could affirm or a universal experience to express. From this rational starting point, it was thought that one could build a theology that could coerce consent, provide a universal rational argument into faith – build “evidence that demands a verdict” or describe a core human “experience” into which the west might collapse all other ‘religions” as subspecies.

The result, of course, was a cultural colonialism of Western Europe imposed upon the world in which the church often has and continues to participate, a violence that continues to this day. The tie between Enlightenment rationality, the European nation-state, and this violence is not hard to see. If one will not “be reasonable,” then the state must use violence to restrain and coerce those who will refuse to assimilate to this universal reason. Similarly, if one will not consent that one must confine one’s “religion” to private experiences or values, obviously a secular state needs imposed, by violence if necessary, so that everyone in a society might understand themselves as “rational individuals” with personal “freedom” to their own chosen private experiences and/or personal values. In such a situation, the state will control the body by violence, threatened or implemented.

Given this setting, we should not miss the context in which Benedict places his encyclical. Benedict addresses a context of divinely justified violence with the teaching that “God is love and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” Benedict understands the heart of the Christian faith to respond to the deepest socio-political and personal need of the world: “In a world where the name of God is sometimes associated with vengeance or even a duty of hatred and violence, this message is both timely and significant. For this reason, I wish in my first Encyclical to speak of the love which God lavishes upon us and which we in turn must share with others.”

Those in the United States and Western Europe will most likely think of radical Islamic jihad, what has come to be called “terrorism,” as the referent for the Pope’s statement. No doubt it is one of his references. Yet it is interesting that he places “vengeance” as the crucial point where people invoke God to legitimate their violence. One does not need to look far to see this as a not-so-subtle response to the God of America, invoked by the United States government and in churches often after September 11, 2001, and continually so in order to justify the United State’s preemptive war in Iraq. Benedict desires to distance God from the violence of the nation-state. He understands that love by its very nature cannot participate in the cycle of violence.

As his predecessor Benedict XV, Benedict XVI calls Christians and the world to peace where vengeance is the Lord’s, not ours. Instead of a response of violence with violence, “the love which God lavishes upon us and which we in turn must share with others,” even our enemies, becomes the Christian response to the world of violence controlled by the contemporary nation-state. As the second half of the encyclical will show, this is not liberal sentimentality, but a concrete response of believers in the world grounded in God’s very revelation of God’s own Being in Christ by the Spirit. Benedict offers a world of violence a concrete God of Love.

Where does this Love become known and concrete? In perhaps his most profound statement in the encyclical, Benedict writes, “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.” Of course, this event, the person that we encounter is the person of Jesus Christ.” In one deft sentence Benedict distinguishes the Christian life from its Kantian (“ethical choice”) and Hegelian (“loft idea”) modernist distortions. The precise language has echoes with the work of Karl Barth, an overlap found elsewhere in Cardinal Ratzinger’s textual corpus (particular in his use of Christ as God’s Yes! to humanity). In Church Dogmatics 1.1, Barth writes, “the experience of God’s Word involves a relation of man as person to another person, naturally the person of God . . . Jesus Christ Himself lives in the message of his witnesses, lives in the proclamation of His Church on the basis of this message, strides forward as the Lord of grace and judgment to meet the existence of the hearer of the Word. Experience of God’s Word, then, must at least be also experience of His presence, and because this presence does not rest on man’s act of recollection but on God’s making Himself present in the life of man, it is acknowledgement of His presence” (p. 205-06). Encounter with a person, an event, the experience of the God who is love in Jesus Christ by the power of the Spirit becomes fundamental. God meets us in the particularity of our own history by becoming particular in history in Jesus Christ so that we might participate in an encounter with an event, a person.

The observant reader will see here the real fruition of Vatican II coming to bear. Barth supposedly was a “reformed” theologian – how could his work, especially 1.1 with its constant references to Luther and Calvin, find echoes with the Roman pontiff in the early 21st century? The answer is found in Vatican II’s return to sources, particularly the Christological center of the Christian faith, the God of love seen in the sacred heart of Jesus as the heart of the Christian faith – a heart of love that beckons for human beings to participate within. In the event of Christ according to 1 John 4:16, we literally participate in God as we participate in the Love that is Christ. Christ is with us – Christ is the Love that is God in whom we live and move and have our being. A good and true and beautiful ontology of Love emerges under girding Benedict XVI’s encyclical. In response to the violent nihilism that the secular world, the world in denial that it results from the Love of the God who created it from nothing through God’s Word, Benedict offers the good news that God is Love.

Posted by johnwright at 6:01 PM | Comments (11)

Last Sunday we had the honor of hearing Craig Keen deliver the Word of God. I think that we've finally made the connection and I post it here in response to the several requests made. Craig is a profound friend and member of our congregation, and a Professor of Systematic Theology at Azusa Pacific University.

I'm working on a paper on vocation and political theory in Max Weber and 1 Peter. I hope to get some time to reflect on Benedict XVI's encyclical before long. It has spurred much reflection already from me.

Enjoy Craig's sermon!

Let us pray: Father, in ourselves we are nothing but dust and ashes, so by the breath you have given us we pray that you will send your Spirit upon us, that you will fill us, bathe us, saturate us with your Holy Life, that together we might be gathered into the body of your Son, with him be crucified, with him be raised, that the life we are thus given might be poured out to this world you in Christ love. We pray this in the name of your Son—the one who was and is and is to come . . . crucified. Amen.

Thank you for opening this time to me, thanks for letting me in. It’s not to be assumed that a crowd of people will be friendly and hospitable. Thank you for being that every time we’ve joined you—and for being that this morning. I pray that you will not regret it.
Elesha and I are sort of transient members of this church. We love this church—even if too often we do so from afar. Whenever we worship with you, we find that we have been gifted with hope. You are, you know, the hope of the world. . . . Really. You are the hope of the world. . . . I guess I should say, though, before you begin to get self-inflated that every local church is that: the hope of the world. Even when a local church otherwise loses its way and betrays or denies its Redeemer, it is still—as a church—the hope of the world. It is the body of Christ, the Christ who was hanged on a tree, the cursed Christ who was cut and broken, the damned Christ who was and is the glorification of the holy God in the pit of despair, the Christ through whom God filled to overflowing every corner, room, crack, and alcove of hell. Every local church is—as a local church—the body of that Christ, and so, the hope of the world.

Having said that, I think, though, that I should also say that you are to me not just any local church. It is in fact this little church—The Church of the Nazarene in Mid-City—that I think of when I think “church”—wheat, tares, and all. So, assuming I’ve not made a terrible mistake, look around and behold the glory of the holy God reflected on the faces of your brothers and sisters. Really. Look around. Do you see it shine?

That there is glory in this world has nothing to do with the suitability of the reflecting material—us. In fact in this case the material isn’t important. Just as God has the wherewithal to make children of Abraham out of stones strewn haphazardly along any given dirt road, God is also free to shine off any inherently light-absorbing surface, even your face and mine. And God shines off of yours and God shines off of mine—because you and I are together the body of Christ, the body of the Crucified One in whose crucified body the whole fullness of God is shockingly pleased to dwell. And as God does that shining and as we turn toward one another we find ourselves gazed upon by the one who raised the crucified Jesus from the abyss. And as the gaze of the Father of our humiliated/exalted Lord cuts its way to you and me, it is warm—the way a gaze always is that has the open invitation of love and the future about it.
So.. . hi! Thanks for having me.

This is the season of “Epiphany,” the season in which we consider in a sustained way the light of God that shines, that shines upon us—especially upon us Gentiles. It is the season in which we find ourselves particularly halted by the concussion of God’s entry into this world. It is the season between Advent (that season in which we consider in a sustained way the coming of God) and Lent (that season in which we consider in a sustained way. . ourselves as the ones to whom God comes, we who are dust and ashes—we who are going to die and have death all over us).

Here in the season of Epiphany we are in between—Advent (the season of God’s coming) and Lent (the season of our mortality). But it is also true that already during Advent our mortality is displayed. God comes to us as a baby—and in the Gospel narratives that take us to that coming, we are reminded with some force that babies are easy to kill—even a whole town-full of them. And it is true as well that when we consider our mortality in the season of Lent, we do so only to remember in hope that God in Christ swallows up death in victory—precisely as the dead and damned Jesus is raised from the pit of hell—that is, precisely as God comes to us—we who have death (and damnation!) all over us.

So, here we are in between. As we always are. In between. In ourselves dust and ashes, looking for the coming of God. In ourselves dust and ashes, already children of the abyss-and “Out of the [abyssj I cry to you, 0 [Sovereignj. / [Sovereignj, hear my voice! / Let your ears be attentive / to the voice of my supplications!” as Psalm 130 puts it. And Jeremiah 3 replies: “If you return, 0 Israel, / says the [Sovereignj, / if you return to me, / if you remove your abominations from my presence, / and do not waver, / and if you swear, ‘As the [Sovereign] lives!’ / in truth, in justice, and in uprightness, / then nations shall be blessed by [the Sovereign], / and by [the Sovereign] they shall boast.”

And yet this word of reply-articulated so well while the Book of Jeremiah is beginning-this word does not come to us as a faint and distant decree, not in this season of Epiphany. Rather, it comes here(!), alongside us(!), in your face. . . and mine(!)-the word is here with us who are under the shadow of death. We read in Mark: “Now after John was arrested”-John the Baptist, the prophet soon to be beheaded-”after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God.” Jesus came with words not unlike those of Jeremiah-with whom he was compared-but with even more urgency and force he declared the answer of the Sovereign to the cries of the desperate: “The time is fulfilled, and the [Reignj of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

Here we are—afraid, uncertain, one foot in the grave, the other unsteadily teetering on the verge—No! Here we are, both feet in the grave—laid out, flat. Shovel-full after shovel-full of grave-digger’s dirt rain down on us . . . and when it seems that we have no voice left, our throats open as if from the outside and we cry out: “[Sovereignj hear my voice!”

I realize that I am laying a lot on you, that this kind of stuff is hard to take. To say all that I have said here indeed seems so extreme, so negative, so pessimistic—pathological, even. But someplace under the piles of garbage that our “optimistic Western society” has dumped on us, I think we know better. We pretend and we pretend and we pretend that the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government; the masters of technology; and a fleet of buses full of managers, healthcare professionals, and laboratory technicians will forever stave off the end of our days. But someplace in us we know better. You and I know that you and I are going to die. Death may come in the morning, death may come at noon, death may come in the evening. . . but no matter how much we keep our hearts in tune, death will come—and it is coming for more and more people in this world at the hands of the unrighteous, the unjust.

It seems so wrong to point that out. Aren’t we already afraid enough?! Isn’t it enough that every news report reminds us of the immanent threat of terrorism, rogue nuclear powers, axes of evil, pandemics; of the droughts, floods, and hurricanes that global warming is already beating us with? . . . “Frankly, I go to church to get away from that kind of thing! And here this bozo I don’t even know is beating me over the head with more doom and gloom hysteria!” . . . Well, maybe I am and maybe I’m not. But in any case I really am not out to make you more afraid. In fact the phrase I want to speak to you today is this simple one: “be not afraid!” Really. “Be not afraid!” But “be not afraid” for a different reason than the ones the champions of this world’s principalities and powers preach every election year. Rather “be not afraid” because you are convinced that “neither death, . . . nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

It is Christ Jesus our Lord whom we consider in this season of Epiphany. And what we consider is that through him God has come to you and to me, has faced you and has faced me, and has addressed us both, right up close. Through Christ Jesus our Lord, God has looked you in the eye, has called your name, and after a pause as wide as a whole life has said “Come!” “As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake . . . . And Jesus said to them, ‘Follow me . . . .“ The call of Jesus is a personal one. It isn’t individual, as if his call split us apart from each other and destroyed our solidarity with each other. It isn’t isolating. It is in fact a social event. To turn to Jesus is to turn to the one who above all is inseparable from his neighbors—from Jews and Greeks, slaves and free, males and females. But it is personal, as if there were a sea of humanity, a flow of men and women whose lives were utterly entangled in each other— and Jesus points at one very particular human being, one woman with a face, with a story, and says, “Come, Teresa, follow me!”

What we are sometimes slow to remember, however, is that finally Jesus calls us from the cross. In the season of Epiphany, the season between Advent and Lent, we are encouraged to remember this. “When I am lifted up on the cross,” Jesus says in the Gospel of John, “I will draw all people to myself.” Jesus calls us to join him in crucifixion. Certainly, that doesn’t mean that Jesus is all about the snuffing out of one life after another, perhaps joining Queen in gleefully singing with each new casualty, “Another one bites the dust.” No, the one who calls from the cross is the one whom God’s Spirit embraced and saturated with the life of new creation. The one who calls from the cross is the one who calls to us through his empty tomb. His voice echoes in the tomb’s emptiness and is a living voice, when it is broadcast through his bloody cross and so through our own graves. He says “Come!” And to answer his call is to follow him.. . to death. To answer his call is with him to die. That is why we are baptized. In other words, when we are baptized, we answer his call, walk into it—through our own graves, through his cross, and out the other, open side of his emptied tomb. And he is with us every step of the way—gaping wounds in his hands, feet, and side. To answer his call is with him to die . . . to die to death. In him death itself has died—but it has died where death does its worst.

This is good news. When you have died to death, death cannot hurt you—and it cannot make you afraid. When you have died to death, you can face whatever the principalities and powers of this life dish out—because you have already gone through it and have come out the other side. That is why Paul can speak those words of 1 Corinthians that to our enlightened, egalitarian democratic, activist ears sound so hard: “let each of you lead the life that the Lord has assigned, to which God called you. This is my rule in all the churches... Were you a slave when called? Do not be concerned about it. Even if you can gain your freedom, make use of your present condition now more than ever. For whoever was called in the Lord as a slave is a freed person belonging to the Lord, just as whoever was free when called is a slave of Christ.” . . . This is something I—a member of the privileged class—do not have a right to say (and frankly it is not something I want to say), but Paul says it. Even if you are a slave, he says, they cannot hurt you, they cannot make you afraid. Even if you are a slave, you are free—not in some abstract, ethereal way, some phony “spiritual” way—but really, concretely, in your muscles, blood, skin, and bones. Be free, he says, where only fools think you cannot be free. You have died to slavery. Slavery cannot hurt you. “You were bought with a price,” Paul says—and by that he is saying that where you are enslaved Jesus is enslaved with you and slavery cannot and does not hold him—let it not hold you either. To think that any institution can hold you is to forget that God raised Jesus Christ from the tomb of damnation. When someone who thinks that he is your slave master looks down on you with disdain, look back without fear, look back with freedom, the freedom of the one whom no fist can hold.

And you know what? Living in this way—loving in this way—forgiving in this way—will totally weird out everyone who lives off of human misery and fear. That is Paul’s point at the end of Romans 12—and the beginning of Romans 13. When you are not out to get even, when you don’t play the game of competitive violence, when you don’t acquire, own, have, possess—no one can take anything away from you. These goods are not my own, they’re just a-passin’ through. And so, in Christ we are forgiven, we are gifted, we are gifts—not to be owned, but to be given away in the most inefficient and unprofitable ways. That is to say, freely. As if we forgot how to keep score, how to keep books—as if we forgot how to keep.

To be baptized is to leave the economics of the bottom line and enter the economics of God who through Christ in the Spirit freely gives and forgives—to the point of death, even death on a cross. It is a glorious way to live. It is a way of life that shines with the light of the coming of the Holy God. It is a way of life that is transformed into the image of God, the image that is Christ—transformed from one degree of glory to another. It is a way of life that is without fear. It is a way of life that has eaten the flesh and drunk the blood of the Crucified One and thereby has made the path through his death to his resurrection its righteousness. It is a way of life that prays without ceasing, rejoices evermore, and in everything gives thanks. It is the way of life of the church—the church, which you may have heard is the hope of the world.

Posted by johnwright at 7:48 PM | Comments (8)

The past several weeks I've been working on an essay on ministry for a Pt Loma Press publication. As we try to think outside the modernist categories of liberal/capitalist or socialist/Marxist, I discovered that these political economies have determined the churches understanding of ministry. I'd like to post some excerpts from my article in terms of implications when ministry is understood as "service" versus what I believe the sense of the Greek word diakonia really meant and means: re-presenting an authority bodily in a new situation. I hope to continue work on the subject as time allows in the future.

Modern political and economic practices have been divided into two systems that function as mirror images of each other. The first is that of a liberal-democratic political order. Within this system, the state keeps economics “free” so that the market might provide for the efficient distribution of goods through competition. To ensure that competing self-interests do not break out into overt physical violence, the state emphasizes a private realm of personal preferences alongside a public realm. The market functions to determine what is valuable and what is not. Economic competition provides value in the public sphere so that consumers might enjoy their own preferences in the private sphere.

The private sphere provides a realm for individuals to discover personal meaning in their lives and to survive the brutal competition in the public sphere. What sociologist Christian Smith describes as a “therapeutic individualism” results: “Therapeutic individualism defines the individual self as the source and standard of authentic moral knowledge and authority, and individual self-fulfillment as the preoccupying purpose of life. Subjective, personal experience is the touchstone of all that is authentic, right, and true.” The state functions to allow individuals to choose their own preferences. This is what the liberal state calls “freedom.”

The second modern system is a Marxist-Socialist perspective, which provides the mirror inverse of the first system. In the Marxist political economy, the individual exists for the good of the state so that the state might distribute goods to all persons in a just fashion. The state, rather than the market, must regulate the distribution of goods. Left to themselves, markets exploit the poor and the weak, the worker and the producer, for the benefit of the owners. By contributing to the good of the state, the individual contributes to the regulated redistribution of goods. The whole society then may function so that each individual has an appropriate standard of living to contribute to the well-being of the state.

These two systems generate two very different concepts of ministry, but both understand ministry primarily as service. Within a capitalist political economy, ministry becomes a product that one can offer to the demographic niche that one seeks to address through entrepreneurial activity. Ministry is placed within an economy of profit-cost analysis as a means to address the personal, therapeutic needs of individuals. It is, according to the famous maxim of Robert Schuller, “Find a need and meet it; find a hurt and heal it.” Thus George Barna argues that ministry correlates with marketing: "Ministry, in essence, has the same objective as marketing: to meet people's needs. Christian ministry, by definition, meets people's real needs by providing them with biblical solutions to their life circumstances." Rick Warren in The Purpose-Driven Church states that the congregation that he pastors, the Saddleback Community Church, “exists to benefit the residents of the Saddleback Valley by providing for their spiritual, physical, emotional, intellectual and social needs." Upon closer inspection, the service that ministry provides is really for the inner, private, and therapeutic needs of an individual: "anybody can be won to Christ if you discover the key to his or her heart." Social, political factors are governed by the state and the market. Likewise, the church is a business that in its ministry meets the private needs of individuals, needs determined by the society in which the church lives, that is, by an individual’s “life circumstances.”

As the direct, inverse, mirror image, ministry as service from the perspective of a Marxist political economy relates to the public, bodily, economic needs of the poor to protect their human rights. As Gustavo Gutierrez states in his famous work, A Theology of Liberation, “In Latin America the world in which the Christian community must live and celebrate its eschatological hope is the world of social revolution.” Anivaldo Padilha similarly describes the development of the practice of diakonia in South America in the twentieth century:

"Until the early 1960s diakonia was meant to respond only to the consequences of poverty. However, as Christians in Latin America began to develop their own biblical theological methodology, the prophetic content of the diaconal praxis started to become evident. . . . This prophetic diakonia became even more intense during the period when most of the countries in the continent were ruled by military dictatorships and violation of human rights had become an integral part of state policy. . . . Gradually, however, the concept of diakonia became synonymous with conscientization or popular education. It was understood that it was necessary to unveil to the poor the structural causes of poverty. Solidarity became a synonym for political action on behalf of the poor. . . . Despite its mistakes, the politicization of diaconal praxis led the churches and ecumenical organizations to respond positively to cutting-edge issues that emerged out of the political, social and economic situation."

Diakonia comes in political action, action to reform the state and the market economic structures that oppress the lives of human beings.
At first glance, these two understandings of ministry as service seem to oppose each other directly. Yet underneath the disparity, one finds a certain commonality. Like ministry determined by a capitalist, liberal political economy, ministry in the Marxist perspective receives its mandate from outside the life of the church in the wider society in which the church lives: “The perspective we have indicated presupposes an ‘uncentering’ of the Church, for the Church must cease considering itself as the exclusive place of salvation and orient itself towards a new and radical service of people.” Similar to an entrepeneurial approach to ministry, the world outside the church, not the church’s own nature, determines what ministry is for liberationists. As entrepreneurial surveys of the felt-needs of a local population help determine ministry in the capitalist political economy, so in the Marxist political economy “the Church must allow itself to be inhabited and evangelized by the world;” “this renewal cannot be achieved in any deep sense except on the basis of an effective awareness of the world and a real commitment to it . . . .The point is not to survive, but to serve.”

Ministry understood as service has no integrity in and of itself as an ecclesial practice. Ministry becomes a derivative concept, a practice that only responds to the situations in which the church finds itself. The church empties itself, not of its social status as in the “kenosis” passage of Philippians 2, but of any inner integrity and mission that it might have as a particular people called into existence by God. If diakonia indeed means lowly service, then the church becomes a secondary, unnecessary social organization in God’s redemptive plan for the world. The real work of God’s redemption, the real work of ministry, will find itself in those who directly engage the world through the market or the state, not those who engage in “ministry” from within the church.

. . .

The implications of this study for our understanding and practice of ministry are striking and far-reaching. Technically speaking, not all Christians are ministers, except as they represent Christ as a result of their baptism. Nor is just any type of “service” activity done by a believer a “ministry” in the biblical and historical sense. Ministry is not humble service, except as it requires submission of a person to a particular congregation in order to represent the Triune God on behalf of the congregation, a submission that becomes clearest in the authority granted to the elder to consecrate the elements at the Lord’s Supper in prayer. The Eucharistic re-presentation of the body and blood of Christ to the church by the sanctification of the Spirit enfolds all other acts of ministry within it.

More importantly, the ministry of a congregation and of those commissioned to represent it is not set by the perception of needs formed by any political systems. Ministry is set by the economy of God, that is, the Trinitarian relations of love in the Persons of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The revelation of this Triune God is seen in Jesus Christ and is witnessed to in the scriptures. While a church softball league might be fun for members of a congregation, it is not a ministry. Such an activity is not opposed to or against genuine ministry; it is just tangential to it. It is simply an activity of a different category. Some activities, however, seem contrary by nature to ministry. For example, one cannot run a church brothel nor operate a youth group as a para-military exercise and call it ministry. Such activities violate the character of the Triune God, which ministry must re-present.

By contrast, the nature of the Triune God seems to require that ministry encompass two factors if it is to preserve the faith given to the saints: 1) an ecclesial body must commission the person(s) conducting the activity to represent the church; and 2) the activity must reflect the character of the Triune God that has been revealed in Jesus Christ. At times this will look like what the world calls lowly service: activities like the proclamation of the Word of God or leading a congregation in prayer or engaging a group in the traditional Christian works of mercy by feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, visiting those in prison, providing shelter to the homeless, overseeing the sick, and burying the dead. These activities may look lowly, even servile, from the world’s perspective. But Christians know that this is the highest office that a human being can be given: it is to re-present Christ and Christ’s church, the body of Christ which God has called into being for the redemption of the world. For such a gift, those called by God and the church to minister can only give thanks.

Posted by johnwright at 3:06 PM | Comments (10)

I have been asked from without and within about my conviction concerning Christ's real presence in the Eucharist, and the importance that I place on it for the life and witness of the church -- both our local congregation in Mid-City and the church catholic throughout the world. There have been times when it has been insinuated that I violate the discipline of the Church of the Nazarene in this conviction. The social implications, it's horizontal embracement of believers throughout the world and therefore, the potential to embrace all humanity, is wanted to be embraced without individual participation in Christ. The social meaning is set off against the real personal participation in Christ. In reading some historical documents from our local history in Mid-City, I can see that this has been an issue throughout our life together.

I would readily admit that the majority members, and even clergy of the Church of the Nazarene, even its governing elders, would deny Christ's real presence in the Eucharist for a memorial view. Attempts to use Paul Tillich's doctrine of symbols does not really help us move beyond the revivalist emphasis on personal, subjective experience as the normative locus for Christ's presence for most of the Church of the Nazarene. I am a minority position as far as "counting heads" is concerned.

Yet it seems to me that this has resorted from a poor understanding of our own heritage -- the insistance of understanding ourselves as a "Protestant denomination to promote the experience of holiness" rather than a disciplined movement within the church catholic for Christian to preserve the faith given to the saints, with a special charism on Christian perfection. Thus, we have not been able to read well our discipline as we shift the locus from which we read.

I'd like to make this argument from comparing the Call to Communion in the Manual of the Church of the Nazarene to an essay written by Benedict XVI. While Benedict is much more elegant and thorough in his explication, I would argue that he explicates what is already present in the Eucharistic teachings found in the Manual's Call.

It should be noted that this call dates back, and has remained unchanged from the original Manual written by Phineas Bresee and the Church of the Nazarene arose out of a Christian love feast, presumably with the Lord's Supper celebrated, as its central act. In the original Manual, Nazarene's were instructed to take the elements while kneeling -- an act of adoration and submission that presupposes Christ's presence, especially when one recognizes that Puritans required the taking of the Supper sitting around a Table in contrast to the Anglican and Catholic practice. While the Eucharist prayer has been changed (and distorted) as the Church of the Nazarene become Protestant evangelicals, the Spirit has kept this call to the table for us. It is one of the few continuities that the Church of the Nazarene has had unchanged throughout its history.

The ritual reads as follows, with emphasis added:

The Lord himself ordained this holy sacrament. He commanded His disciples to take of the bread and wine, emblems of His broken body and shed blood. This is His table. The feast is for His disciples. Let all those who have with true repentance forsaken their sins and have believe in Christ unto salvation, draw near and, by faith, partake of the life of Jesus Christ to your soul’s comfort and joy. Let us remember that it is the memorial of the death and passion of our Lord; also a token of His coming again. Let us not forget that we are one, at one table with the Lord.

I would like to highlight two aspects from the emboldened print. First, the statement has a strong, realistic participatory language. The calls remembers Christ's death and passion, but believers "partake in the life of Jesus Christ." The call does call for faith to be exercised in the reception of the elements, but it is Christ's life, Christ's presence, that one participates within. The only way that I know how to account for this language of participation in Christ in the emblems of the Lord's Supper from within the Christian tradition is to speak in terms of Christ's real presence.

Second, the final clause, what I would like to call the "deLubac clause" in honor of Henri de Lubac, a very important twentieth century Roman Catholic theologian, highlights the catholicity of the participation in the elements that demands Christ's presence in the elements. We are to remember that we are, in the elements, "one at one table with the Lord." The horizontal dimension of unity with each other depends on our personal participation and unity in "the Lord." If Christ is not really present in the consecrated elements, we lose the point of our unity in Jesus. What God has done in Christ becomes reduced to a sociological interest group.

It is interesting to compare this with the eloquence of Joseph Ratzinger, ie, Benedict XVI, in his collection of essays, On The Way to Jesus Christ, particularly the essay, “Eucharist—Communio—Solidarity: Christ Present and Active in the Blessed Sacrament." He is trying to help the post-Vatican II Catholic Church, in reacting against the individualistic "pre-Vatican II" Eucharist teaching, merely reproduce its error in a different direction. He wants to emphasize, like the Manual statement, the personal participation in Christ's real presence in the Eucharist, as the basis for its social implications, ie, catholicity.

Benedict identifies the error of anchoring the significance of the Eucharist on its social dimension, rather than in Christ's real presence: "Communion is still generally understood in a horizontal sense – as a complex network of correlations . . . The horizontal dominates. The emphasis is on the idea of self-determination within a community on a wide scale. Now in all this, naturally, there is much that is quite true. However, the basic approach is not correct" (p. 115). Though he does not use the language, one could say that such a teaching makes the the church catholic a protestant voluntary band of believers. In contrast, Benedict teaches, in the Eucharist, "We all ‘eat’ the same man, not only the same thing; in this way we all are wrested from our self-enclosed individuality and drawn into a greater one. We all are assimilated into Christ, and so through communion with Christ we are also identified with one another, identical and one in him, members of one another. To be in communion with Christ is by its very nature to be in communion with one another as well. No more are we alongside one another, each for himself; rather, everyone else who goes to communion is for me, so to speak, ‘bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh’ (cf. Gen 2:23) (p. 117).

But Benedict will have no privatized Eucharist piety. He recognizes the radical implications of this for catholicity, a genuine catholicity that can only be found in Christ. In a moving passage he writes:In my prayers at communion I must, on the one hand, look totally toward Christ, allowing myself to be transformed by him and, as needed, to be consumed in the fire of his love. But precisely for this reason I must always realize also that he joins me in this way with every other communicant—with the one next to me, whom I may not like very much; but also with those who are far away, whether in Asia, Africa, America, or some other place. By becoming one with them, I must learn to open myself toward them and to become involved in their situations. This is the test of the authenticity of my love for Christ.
Whenever I am united with Christ, I am also united with my neighbor, and this unity does not end at the communion / rail; rather, it is just beginning there. It comes alive, becomes flesh and blood, in the everyday experience of being with others and standing by others. Thus the individual element in my going to communion is inseparably interwoven with my membership in the Church and my dependence upon her life (p. 117-8). Thus, "It is when the Eucharist is understood in the full intimacy of the union of each individual with the Lord that it automatically becomes also a social sacrament in the highest degree" (p. 118).

To read the Manual of the Church of the Nazarene side-by-side with the teachings of a Pope may surprise us -- God is a God of surprises! Yet it should show us two things: the fundamental commitment to catholicity found in the tradition of the Church of the Nazarene and second, the profoundly Christian witness within contemporary Roman Catholicism as it implements and delves ever deeper in the "return to the sources" as a result of Vatican II. Ultimately, God may only mend the unity of the body of Christ as its individual members and its collective branches commitment themselves to personal sanctity, so that God might sanctify us so that we might be one, as Christ and the Father are One.

Posted by johnwright at 1:09 PM | Comments (8)

We continue to watch the time in which the church was at peace -- healings and now, the movement of the gospel to the gentiles. Verse 17 begins right as v. 16 ends, with no gap between them. Peter is up on the housetop -- and still hungry! The story continues in its setting the story of the healing of Dorcas and Peter's welcome in Joppa (9:36-43). The narrative moves quite quickly as God complicates Peter's life once more!

v. 17-18: The focus stays on Peter. Given the story line of Acts so far, what does it look like is happening when the three men, Gentiles and a Roman soldier, show up at the place with Simon is, three men sent from a Roman centurion who has on good terms with the synagoge in Caesaria? Does Peter know what is going on, even in terms of the vision?

Vv. 19-20: Give this, what is the significance of the Spirit's communication with Peter? What does the Spirit demand of Peter?

V. 21: What would it take for Peter to identify himself to these three? Does Peter give them any indication that he knows anything about their presence? Does he know why they are there?

v. 22: How do the three reply? How do they identify Cornelius? Are these words necessarily any comfort to Peter? How do they view Peter in relationship to other Jews? Does anyone yet know what is going on?

v. 23: How does Peter respond to them? What would it take for him to welcome them into Simon the Tanner's (!) house for the evening? What would it require of Peter to do? What does it say that some from the church in Joppa when with them? Where they invited? Why would they go? What does that tell you about the congregation there? What virtues would Peter have to have to set out at this time with this group?

One sees here the tremendous uncertainty amidst what God is unfolding around Peter and Cornelius, the social dynamics, the dynamics of friendships within a local congregation, the simple, concrete materiality for requirements of the situation. How have you experienced such complicating uncertainty of life in setting out in obedience to God without knowing the full picture? What is it like to experience?

Have a wonderful evening. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone Sunday evening for the group meeting!

Posted by johnwright at 10:07 AM | Comments (0)

The past week we began school. I've also been working on an article for a small book. I hope to share some of this with you. I've also completed reading On the Way to Jesus Christ by Joseph Ratzinger, better known now as Benedict XVI. I hope to share reflections and thoughts that have arisen here as well.

Before that, however, I wanted to post my sermon from last week. It was the first Sunday of Epiphany -- and I try to broach the subject of Revelation, and it's relationship to secularism in a practical and pastoral way. Anyway, I offer it to you for your comments and feedback.

Acts 10:34-38

Epiphany celebrates the Revelation of God to the Gentiles. It starts with the visit of the magi from the East – from Iran and Iraq. Epiphany means manifestation – the manifestation of God, the God who is Invisible, who is Other than creation, Other than us, becoming visible by becoming human, becoming us. Today the Gospel reading focuses on Jesus’ baptism, the beginning of his public ministry. But the Acts passage helps us to see the full significance of this time of God’s manifestation to us in the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Mary. We find here the good news that God has revealed God’s Own Self in Jesus. When we hear this, we find that the confession of this revelation of God in Jesus Christ sets us off from those around us, forces that have deeply formed us by living within land called the United States today, but more deeply, a land shaped by a European culture that has become profoundly secular.

We have to come to terms that we live in a world that has denied even the possibility of Revelation, a denial that has even subtly shaped our experience within the church.
We live in a society that tells us that history encompasses all life. There is no depth dimension; all we can do is endlessly remake the new and improved. You don’t believe me? How many “reality TV” shows can there be? Can anything ever be really new? “Dancing with Stars?” “Skating with the Stars” – hey, that’s innovative!?! And what in the world is meant by “reality” in these series? We’re taught that change is endless and meaningless because that is all that history is. We therefore have to try to make our own individuality, make our own experience. We get quickly pulled into a common interest demographic group recorded by the cookies on our internet, the bar codes when we purchase something, our conversations recorded by the NSA. There is no escape, we’re told. There is nothing Other. There is no Transcendence; there is no Mystery; there is no God that exists outside the history that we find ourselves trapped within. There is just a brutal struggle within history for us to assert our own will, to project our values upon others in history, to create and prove our own significance.
Even when we talk of God in the church, we talk of God only within what is already known, what is supposedly already given. In response to radical closure of the world, we open up a little place within our selves, psychological impulses from within, maybe a spot buried deep in the brain, and we can call that God. God does not really reveal God’s own self as Other to us. No, we have to discover god, and therefore god becomes the same as ourselves. We don’t need revelation, a gift that stands outside ourselves which calls us to God. We instead speak of spirituality, self-discovery, community, the assurance of our own subjective meaning as we struggle through the blandness that is the repetition of sameness that we experience. Nothing lies outside the system. God chased from the world finds residence in deepest self.
Revelation is not allowed; we live in a world that denies revelation by definition. Our talk of God has succumbed to the loss – often without even realizing it and we end up with an idol, a big projection of our own selves, our own culture.

We’re stuck. We have this desire for God that God has given us as a gift. We are from God; we are for God. It is God in whom we live, and move, and have our being. Yet because of the secularism in which we’ve been immersed, our desire for God gets twisted into an idol, especially the idol of our own will, or we struggle to keep out of the swirling nothingness that seeks to suck us into its whirlpool. The European culture in which we’ve been formed seals us off from even the possibility of God, the One who is Absolutely Other. Why try to fill the void by a quest for more and more experience. We demand affirmation of our significance from others because we can’t find our meaning, our life, our significance in God. Giving this up, we slip into a banal materialism, or its mirror reflection, a superficial Oprah spirituality. I remember eves dropping in line at Comic Con, listening to the conversations around me as we waited to get previews of this fall and winters movies. Two young men, in their mid-twenties, talked about life. “Man, you have a good life. You get to do what you want. You have your apartment, a decent job. Look at all your video system and movies that you have and watch.” Is this a good life, sealed from the Mystery that is God, the endless repetition of the new and improved? In light of our situation, we need the good news of today. We don’t have to go on a quest to find God in the given, for God has revealed God’s Very Life as a Gift. Revelation has happened! This is what we find when we turn to Acts 10.

Peter proclaims to Cornelius: God sent a message to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ-- he is Lord of all!
Peter begins his message to Cornelius with God. God is not the end of his argument, but the presupposition of all that follows. The God mentioned by Peter is not an idea, or an abstraction, or a power within history, but One who Communicates, One who Reveals God’s Own Self as Other than History – the Beginning and End of history. The Mystery, Transcendence, that which is Wholly Other has smashed into the world, to Israel, to the Jews in the person of Jesus Christ – He is Lord of All. The Revelation of God begins in Israel and reaches its culmination, its completion, its fulfillment in Jesus Christ. In Jesus we see the meaning of all things. We see in Jesus that what is truly Good, True, and Beautiful are really One and the Same in God, and therefore, radically Other than what we’ve been socialized into thinking. God has ripped asunder the continuity of history, the closed horizons of what lies at hand, and revealed behind all things is the Peace, the Love, the Gift that is God. Peter does not live within a closed universe. The Mystery transcends what we see and experience in the history around us. God sends! God reveals!
In Jesus, we see that revelation has become public, the only way true revelation can be. What was secret, hidden except to Mary and the Shepherds and the Magi in the baby of Bethlehem has now become visible, evident in Israel in the man Jesus. The Love that is God became flesh in this baby, and becomes known publicly amidst Israel in the livfe and ministry of Jesus. In Jesus we find that history finds its meaning in God, not vice versa. God’s revelation is no private, subjective revelation within each individual soul, no secret insight for those who are wise, who have leisure to meditate, to project their will upon others and name themselves god. God preached peace by Jesus Christ – He is Lord of All.
The yearning of our hearts is found in Jesus. Jesus is the Revelation of God – God has found us by becoming flesh and dwelling among us. Hear the good news: God preached peace by Jesus. The restless desire in the deepest parts of our lives for that which is Other, for Mystery, for God finds its completion, its end in a way that the our desire could not predict, could not shape, could not expect. The revelation comes as a gift, not as what is given. Jesus is God preaching peace, the revelation of God made public. God preaches peace in Jesus. Having found rest for our restless hearts in God’s gift of God’s Self in Jesus by the Holy Spirit, we live the Peace that is God through non-retaliation in our present lives, not returning evil for evil, nor participating in mortal violence amidst God’s creation. In Jesus, we see the revelation of God – God preached peace by Jesus Christ.
He is Lord of all! God has revealed that which is beyond the sameness of the new and improved to us – God sent a message in Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ. In Jesus we see the public, objective, visible revelation of God!

Well, what now? Should we nod our heads and turn the channel to the newest reality TV show? NFL playoffs? No! To participate in this Peace, to participate in God’s Revelation in Jesus requires faith – a deep, undivided allegiance, loyalty, devotion, even adoration of this revelation – in God through Jesus.
It is one thing to say that God has revealed God’s own Self in Jesus, to think this thought; it is another thing to believe it. It is different to rationally assent to a proposition about Jesus, and another to have the Mystery that is God’s revelation in Jesus sink into the depths of our being. It is different to call some inner experience or inner light Jesus than to have a living faith in Jesus as the Revelation of God. Faith is more than assent; faith is more than self-discovery. Faith requires an object, requires something outside its own self. Faith requires the Other, Revelation itself, if it is genuinely faith. You can’t just say, “I have faith” – that’s meaningless. Faith must have an object, something outside one’s own self to attach to, to participate with. Faith is not opposite rationality – if you have faith that Harry Potter will deliver us from the dangers of Lord Voldemort, well, we probably need to have a little talk about the difference between fiction and non-fiction. Faith is the beginning of rationality, of thought, of desire that ends in love that is true knowledge. Faith is not wholly other than thought, than rationality.
We have to understand that faith in God can only be understood as loyalty, allegiance, devotion to, even adoration of Jesus. Faith in God is attachment to Jesus for Jesus is the revelation of God. Faith is the confession that Jesus is Lord of all. Faith is ordering our whole life around the Lord of All, the revelation of God, Jesus, for in Jesus we find our beginning and end, the beginning and end of all things.
God’s revelation in Jesus is real no matter what. Jesus doesn’t become revelation only when you believe. If it so, then revelation in not found in Jesus, but in you. Revelation would not be a gift, but what is already given if revelation is not outside of you. That’s the reason faith can only be fulfilled by an object in creation – Jesus. By allegiance to Jesus, since Jesus is the revelation of God, you are also showing your loyalty to true and living God, not an idol. You can only participate in this revelation through faith in the very particular body of Jesus, the one who roamed Israel, in whom God preached peace. You can only discover revelation in Jesus through faith, when Peace begins to pull you into the life of God. God, not an idol, can only become real for you through this personal allegiance, attachment, desire for the body, the blood of Jesus, revealed as God within creation. Faith allows one to see Jesus who he really is – the revelation of God, and thus participate in the peace that God preached in Jesus.
Faith in Jesus allows the Mystery that is Revelation , the Epiphany of peace that is God to become open to us.

God the Father sent Jesus filled with the Holy Spirit preaching peace. This is the revelation of God, the Transcendent revealing God’s Otherness within the realm of history. It is also what takes place at this Table. We pray to the Father to send the Spirit upon these elements so that Christ might be really present in these common elements, the bread and the wine. God reveals God’s self in the peace of this Table, the Peace that is the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is to participate in this feast by faith with Thanksgiving. In loyalty to Jesus, made present by the calling upon the Spirit to descend upon these elements and upon us, we come in allegiance and even adoration, to participate in the peace that is God. Come, friends. Come in faith. Come to participate in the very revelation of God in Christ’s real presence at this Table.

Posted by johnwright at 10:02 AM | Comments (3)

I quickly check juancole.com every day to keep up on the affairs in Iraq. He does emphasize the negative, but his command of Arabic allows him to read papers that I cannot access.

This morning I saw a reference to this Reuters report. Among other things it helps us see what the American invasion and occupation of Iraq continues to do to the Christian witness among non-Christians, and why Muslims believe that the American church is a religion of violence. Such activities demand that somehow we discover some way to distinguish an authentic Christian witness from these profoundly misguided brothers and sisters, or unbelievers who seek to use the cross as an offense, not only to Muslims, but to Christians as well.

How profound a difference from our reading from Acts 10:34=38 this morning about God sending a message to Israel when Jesus came preaching peace.

U.S. troops raid Sunni clerics' Iraq office
08 Jan 2006 13:58:03 GMT

Source: Reuters

(Updates throughout with new quotes, detail)

By Aseel Kami

BAGHDAD, Jan 8 (Reuters) - U.S. troops, some in helicopters, launched a pre-dawn raid on Sunday on the headquarters of the influential Sunni Arab Muslim Clerics' Association and detained six people in what they said was an anti-terrorist operation.

An association spokesman slammed the raid as a "crime" to punish his group for its stand toward the U.S.-led occupation.

Witnesses said American soldiers slid down ropes from helicopters as troops on the ground simultaneously burst into the Umm al-Qora mosque complex in western Baghdad at 3 a.m. (0000 GMT), blowing doors off hinges and ransacking offices.

U.S. military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Barry Johnson said they had been reacting to a tip-off of "substantial terrorist-related activity" in the complex.

Reuters Television footage showed spent shotgun shells and special explosive charges used to blow out door locks lying on the ground. Many office doors showed signs of forced entry.

In one room, cupboards used to store the shoes of those attending prayers had what appeared to be Christian crosses scrawled on them. Other footage showed papers strewn on office floors and windows smashed.

An association official who did not want to be named said U.S. soldiers had disarmed about 20 Iraqi guards stationed in the complex and confiscated their weapons.

Johnson said the raid had been deliberately timed to minimise risk to any civilians and that the soldiers involved in the operation had respected the fact they were in a place of worship. He rejected as "unbelievable" any suggestion they may have been responsible for the crosses.
"During the search six men were detained for further questioning to determine their knowledge or involvement in terrorist activity," he said.

He declined to say if they were still being held in custody or had since been released.

Muthana Harith al-Dhari, the head of the association's media department, said among those detained were Sheikh Unis al-Ugaidi, a member of the association and a number of employees and guards.

"These forces violated the sanctity of the mosque, drawing crosses on some of its walls, raiding some of the association departments ... breaking the doors with guns, spoiling the offices and stealing some property," he told a news conference.
"The association believes this crime was committed to provoke and punish it for its attitude towards the occupation," he said.

The Muslim Clerics' Association is an influential group of Sunni scholars who hold sway over many Sunnis, especially in western Anbar province, heartland of the insurgency. Its leaders have called on U.S. forces to withdraw from Iraq and boycotted the Dec. 15 parliamentary election.

About 20 percent of Iraq's population is Sunni Arabs. (Additional reporting by Ross Colvin)

Posted by johnwright at 4:59 PM | Comments (4)

'Tis finally the last day of Christmas -- tomorrow is Epiphany, the celebration of the revelation of God to the Gentiles in Jesus. There is much that could be discussed about this scene from the Gospel of Matthew -- but perhaps we could see the magi as they wandered into the hostile territory of the Roman empire under Caesar's Jewish minion Herod in light of Benedict XVI's recent First Things article on "Europe and its Discontents."

Benedict's essay is learned and traces this historical origins and vicissitudes of "Europe." He does not "essentialize" Europe, as he shows its shifting historical nature. Yet he does not want to dismiss its cultural achievements and goods -- nor is he blind to its atrocities. There does seem a bit of Constantinian nostalgia behind his discussion. The essay ultimately asks, "Is there a European identity that has a future and to which we can commit whole heartedly?" (p. 20), a question that I am not very interested in asking. Yet his essay is quite perceptive. He is writing to get Europeans (a cultural, not geographic term) to reflect on their own secularity, to see secularity as a denial of their own historicity.

He thus writes want to embrace a multiculturalism, but does not think that a European society can sustain a true multiculturalism from within secularity: "multiculturalism, which is so passionately promoted, can sometimes amount to an abandonment and denial, a flight from one's own things. Multiculturalism teaches us to approach the sacred things of others with respect, but we can do this only if we ourselves are not estranged from the sacred, from God. With regard to others, it is our duty to cultivate within ourselves respect for the sacred and to show the face of the revealed God -- the God who has compassion for the poor and the weak, for widows and orphans, for the foreigner; the God wo is so human that he himself became man, a man who suffered, and who by his suffering wtih us gave dignity and hope to our pain" (p. 23). I find wonder if he has been reading some Levinas here, and extends Levinas' looking for the face of God in the other as seen especially clear in the incarnation. This is no right wing reactionary, though some will read him that way. He understands that catholicity brings a harmony to multiculturalism in the city of God that differs deeply from the conflict of interests and the reduction of multiculturalism to power-games within a secular multiculturalism.

Rather than reject multiculturalism to impose a European identity on the world, he wants a truthful multiculturalism, as that seen within the church, that he is convinced can only be sustained in God. He thus is empowered to speak truthfully to Europeans about their smug secularity from the perspective of non-Europeans: "To the other cultures of the world, there is somethign deeply alien about the absolute secularism that is developing in the West. They are convinced that a world without God has no future. Multiculturalism itself thus demands that we return once again to ourselves" (pp. 21-22).

What then is the role of the church? It is interesting that even with hints of his Constantinian nostalgia, he ends up vigorously rejecting it. Benedict wants no return to papal states, nor control of crusading armies: "we must agree with Toynbee, that the fate of society always depends on its creative minorities. Christian believers should look upon themselves as just such a creative minority, helping Europe to reclaim what is best in its heritage and thereby to place itself in the service of all humankind" (p. 22). While this isn't exactly Stanley Hauerwas' argument that the churches main job is to tell the world that its the world, it isn't far from this either. Here is an ecclesiology for believers not to succumb to the secularity of the world around them, not merely to be different, but to use their own creative resources that life as a minority provides for the sake of calling that secularity beyond itself, to the Triune God.

Benedict here converges with the thought of George Lindbeck, emeritus professor of theology from Yale and official observer of Vatican II. Lindbeck in The Church in a Postliberal Age writes,

"I once welcomed the passing of Christendom and found Richard John Neuhaus' demurrers misplace; but now,.. . I am having uncomfortable second thoughts. The waning of cultural Christianity might be good for the churches, but what about society? To my chagrin, I find myself thinking that traditionally Christan lands when stripped of their historic faith are worse than others. They become unworkable or demonic. There is no reason to suppose that what happened in Nazi Germany cannot happen in liberal democracies, though the devils we no doubt be disguised very differently. From this point of view, the Christianization of culture can be in some situations the churches' major contribution to feeding the poor, clothing the hungry, and liberating the imprisoned. So it was in the past and, given the disintegration of modern ideologies, so it may be at times in the future. Talk of 'Christian America' and John Paull II's vision of a 'Christian Europe' make me uncomfortable, but I have seen a number of totally unexpected improbabilities come to pass in my lifetime, such as Roman Catholic transformations and communism's collapse, and cannot rule these out as impossible" (p. 7).

When I read of Benedict's comments from David Jones at ressourcement.blogspot.com, I immediately thought of Lindbeck, Barth, Hauerwas, and others that helped move me beyond the 'evangelical-liberal' theological impasses (which I've come to see as really two versions of the same theological commitments), and their similarity to Benedict's vision. I planned to write this post as a discovery, as my insight, as an invitation to come along and see if we can be the faithful creative minority that Benedict and Lindbeck see, at MidCity, and then, through friendships here and around the world, with those who share the conviction of Lindbeck that "the crumbling of modernity . . . brings Christians closer to the situation of the first centuries than they've been in more than a millenium and a half. We are not better placed than perhaps ever before to retrieve, critically and repentantly, the heritage of the Hebrew scriptures, apostolic writings and early tradition. This retrieval is also more urgent than ever if the chares are to become the kind of global and ecumenical community that the new age needs" (Lindbeck, p. 9). I doubt that Benedict would disagree with Lindbeck at all about this assessment.

Yet while I still offer it as an invitation to come along, I cannot say that this convergence between Benedict and those formed at Yale is my observation alone. In a wonderfully sympathetic article on Benedict XVI from Francis Schuessler Fiorenza in the Harvard Divinity Bulletin (www.hds.harvard.edu/news/bulletin_mag/articles/33-2_fiorenza.html), Fiorenza writes, "one can readily compare Ratzinger's position with the theological appropriate that Hans Frei and George Lindbeck of Yale have made of the thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Clifford Geertz in order to understand Christianity as a community with its specific narratives and language." Now I might quibble that Fiorenza interpretation of Frei and Lindbeck as modernist mediators of Christian theology through Wittgenstein and Geertz is misplaced. Yet we see that others too recognize this convergence. To move on now, to see where the Spirit takes us, not only in thought, but in bodily friendship, that is an exciting prospect.

Posted by johnwright at 9:20 AM | Comments (6)

It has been a full week. Three days of rain led to opening the church building as refuge. Then Tuesday night we gathered at the Salvation Army to feed the hungry. Thanks to all those who participated in such works of mercy. We have to remember that such works are not optional or voluntary, but commanded by our Lord for all believers. Last night at the Bread of Life I spoke some with Frank who had been with us the previous three evenings -- Eric introduced us. It was profound to experience such a depth of friendship in such a small time with someone. Frank deeply humbled me with his presence and thankfulness as he spoke of the depth of fatigue those evenings that even allowed him to fall asleep with the Samoan congregation overhead celebrating the turn to the 'new year' until 2:00 am Sunday morning. He spoke of his hope for a job at a recycling center; the care of his disabled wife who stays at Rachel's (maybe Sarah C. knows her!). Surely Christ was present there with us and in those evenings of rain.

The ways of God are always mysterious, unpredictable, and surprising. This is what we will find when we turn to Acts 10 for our study this week. It is interesting that the story begins with the 'conversion' of Cornelius, but ends with the conversion of the church.

Acts 10 stays within the section when the church is at peace from outside threats. Following Peter bringing Tabitha back to life, the scene turns away from Peter. It begins with a description of a character that the narrative had yet to introduce.

Vv. 1-8: we can divide these verses into four different subsections. What is remarkable about the verses is all that the text does not tell.

Vv. 1-2: What does the text say about Cornelius? His location in Caesarea provides a geographical context for the rest of the story. Caesarea was built by Herod the Great to suck up to Rome. It had a large Temple to Jupiter and the Emperor within it -- a temple that faced the harbor, not inland, to great those who came, like Cornelius, from Rome. Devotion to the emperor would have been mandatory.

We know from Josephus the tensions around this time between the Romans and the Jewish populace. Josephus tells a story about how a Roman soldier mooned and emitted flatulence during a Passover in derision to the Jews. The legions were known to have reacted to any possible political unrest brutually throughout Judea. What would have been the reaction of his peers to Cornelius for his behavior that the text speaks about? Who would the Jews have reacted to him, at first, and then over time?

Vv. 3-4: Cornelius has a vision. How does his response differ from Paul's vision? Why has the angel visited him? Why would God so chose Cornelius?

Vv. 5-6: What is Cornelius' instructions? What is the rationale that the angel gives him? Do we know what is going on here so far?

Vv. 7-8: What does Cornelius do in response? Why would he not go himself? What does this say about Cornelius' social status?

Vv. 9-16

V. 9-10 provides a transition. What is the interaction between Peter and those sent from Cornelius? What happens to Peter? With all the information left out of the text, what does his hunger have to do with it? What does the trance stop Peter from doing?

vv. 11-13: What does Peter see in the trance? What does it tell Peter to do? How does this relate to v. 10? What is God doing here?

v. 14-16: Why would Peter object? What does the voice say? Why would it repeat three times?

How much, now, do we know? What mention does Peter's vision make of Cornelius and what does Cornelius know about Peter? What is going on?

We tend to see the contingencies of life as something distinct from God (or we slip into a sentimentality regarding our life in the world in God). But if you have only this part of the story here, what would you know? Would we understand? Can either Peter or Cornelius know what is going on in the midst of the affair? Why not? What does this tell us about our lives and creation? What does this tell us about God?

Posted by johnwright at 2:17 PM | Comments (4)