« February 2008 | Main | April 2008 »

Robert Wilkin writes in The Spirit of Early Christian Thought, "Christian thinking did not spring from an original idea, and it was not nourished by a seminal spiritual insight. It hads its beginnings in the history of Israel and the life of a human being named Jesus of Nazareth, who was born of Mary, lived in Judea, suffered and died in Jerusalem, and was raised by God to new life. That this history was the history of God's self-disclosure does not make it any less historical, but it does mean tha twhat is seen with the eyes is not the fullness of what there is to see" (p. 24). Our readings this week help us see the fullness of what there is to see in the resurrected Jesus. Perhaps it is good to start with the Gospel and move to the Epistle and then to the OT reading.

John 20:19-31

Why would the disciples be locked away on the first day of the week "for fear of the Jews"? What does this say about their initial response to the news of Jesus' absence from the tomb? What is the significance of Jesus' words in this situation? From Jesus' situation?

What is the significance of Jesus showing his hands and side? Why does this elicit joy from the disciples? What is the significance of Jesus' repetition of his initial saying? How does the mission and the Spirit related to this scene? What is the significance of Thomas' absence?

What does it tell you that the disciples were still in the house with doors shut a week later? What is the function of this resurrection appearance? How does it relate to the relationship between the disciples, then and now?

The final saying has the narrator speaking. Maybe sometime we could gather and talk about this saying. New research has come out the past few years that make this really interesting. But for tonight, let's keep our focus on the resurrection appearances in John.

What is it to see the "fullness of what there is to see" in Jesus in this scene? What is it to see oneself as a disciple who sees this fullness?

1 Peter 1:3-9

Why would this passage be read on the first Sunday following Easter? Who is it related to the baptisms that took place on Easter?

What here is the end or goal of human life? How is the resurrection of Jesus relevant to this end? How does this help one rejoice? Why would such joy be important?

How do "various trials" test the genuinness of one's faith/allegiance/loyalty? To what is this loyalty given? When is it affirmed? How does the local congregation play in to this affliction/affirmation? How does the end of the passage relate to the scene about Thomas from John?

Why is it important on the basis of the Johanine passage to see Jesus fully?

Genesis 8:6-16; 9:8-16

The OT reading is fun, because it shows the way the Noah story has functioned as a type of the church entered via the resurrection. Why would it be read immediately following the resurrection of Jesus? How does it help us see Jesus fully -- how do we find the meaning of this story in the resurrection of Jesus for our lives?

Benedict XVIth writes, "the overcoming of eath, its real, not simply its conceptual elimination, is still today, as it was then, the object and desire of the human quest.
The Resurrection of Jesus says that this victory is in effect possible, that death does not belong principally and irrevocably to the structure of the creature, to matter. Certainly it also says that to overcome the confines of death is not possible, definitively, by sophisticated clinical methods, through technology. This comes about through the creative power of the word and of love. Only thse powers are sufficiently strong to modify so fundamentally the structureof matter, to make it possible to overcome the barrier of death. Hence in the extraordinary promise of this event there is also found an extraordinary call, a vocation, a whole interpretation of human existence and the existence of the world" (Journey to Easter, p. 132).

How does the seeing Jesus fully in light of the resurrection event free us to be members of a concrete congregation in Mid-City and to be a people who love, particularly within our congregational, neighborhood, and multicongregational context?

Posted by johnwright at 3:16 PM | Comments (2)

This Monday and Tuesday Nazarene Theological Seminary is presenting the Nees Lectures in Social Justice. NTS wisely overlaps recruiting visits with lecture series, and have put together a time of reflections and group discussions to go with the social justice lectures.

In the Wiley Lectures at PLNU, George Marsden mentioned the rise of the evangelical left in the late '60s, a group through persons like Tom Nees, Ron Sider, and Ron Benefiel, impacted me. They produced a call to social engagement by evangelicals in 1973. Interestingly, this groups was largely evangelical social scientists. In some ways deeply impacted by the presuppositions of the social gospel movement (in some ways, itself very evangelical in its underlying pietism), aspects of this movement, particularly in younger persons, moved towards liberation theology and now liberataion/post-colonial theology to express this evangelical left. Yet it's presuppositions remain tied to a mediating theological tradition that seeks to discipline the church by a social criticism found in "nature" to mobilize the church to the right type of political action in the world.

The recruitment visit is on "compassionate ministry" and "social justice". It brought to mind an excellent lecture that I heard from Michael Baxter of the University of Notre Dame. He documented how the American Roman Catholic Church adopted the same distinct categories: mercy and justice to define their "social witness." As this developed, Baxter argued that it meant practically that the bishops lobbied Washington DC while the nuns ran the "works of mercy, i.e., compassion. Individual congregations might be called upon to support one or the other "cause" through voting or financial support, but direction action was left to the "specialists." Baxter argued that such categories fit the church's social witness within the constructs of the liberal society, and thus basically neutered the witness of the church before it even started, by assigning "compassion" and "justice" to specialized ministries with the church, thereby separating these acts from the life of eveyday congregations. The church's social witness does not find its end within the church, but outside it.

Here is where theological errors, no matter how well intentioned, without critical engagement with the liberal political system in which we live, leads to long terms errors that bring God's judgment upon the church. As the evangelical right has moved to a neo-conservative embracement of American political hegemony, the evangelical left, which ironically called evangelicals to political activity within the categories provided by the liberal democracy, produce the same errors but on another side.

John Milbank and Conor Cunningham have an interview in Belief and Metaphysics that is relevant (pp. 501-04). The interview begins with a question on liberation theology -- probably as a kind of litmus test to see if one sides with the "capitalist oppressors" or "the poor and oppressed." Milbank's response is helpful as he tries to avoid the "trap". He responds:

This is a question that I perhaps have to answer with a certain amount of caution, because it could well be that in terms of politics I am on the same side as the liberation theologians, but nonetheless I often have a lot of problems with them in theological terms." Milbank engages Gutierrez's a Theology of Liberation as an important work. Yet he accurately notes: "in advocating a greater integration of grace and nature in the social sphere, Gutierrez opted for a Rahnerian account of our natural orientation to the supernatural, rather than the account favoured by Henri de Lubac and Hans Urs von Balthasar. . . . For Rahner, there is at once too much stress on nature aspiring to grace and as predetermining the way it can be received and also on the specific superadded anticipation of grace as dincontinuous with nature ('the supernatural existential'). De Lubac and Balthasar, by contrast, are much more abruptly paradoxical: all true nature is obscurely orientated to the beatific vision , and yet grace transforms nature (without destroying it) down to its very roots. In sociopolitical terms this suggests a much greater haziness between the secular and the religious and a greater capacity for theology to reinterpret social realities."

Milbank chases this -- he didn't speak in sound bites very well for the interview: "the problem with liberation theology, as I see it, is its enormout confidence in modernity and its location of theology within this normative framework. . . . the earlier tradition of Christian socialism was much more critical of Enlightenment and modernity, and concomitantly tried to develop its version of socialism more directly out of theologicla resources than liberation theology has done."

Milbank arises at a conclusion much like Baxter: "The ethical consequence of this was that it much more sustained the idea that justice is only fulfilled as love, mercy and forgiveness than liberation theology has done, even though it also insisted that there is an ordo amoris in love, that love itself must be distributed justly. Liberation theology by contast too often surrenders to a relativism of a supposed circumstance in making justice primary, whereas if one insists on th euniversal primacy of charity and the attainment of real substantive social reconciliation, one can in fact make a more radicl -- because theological -- challenge to current social conditions."

Social justice then is not the solution, for it is run by state agents. Milbank rightly sees that "the political consequences of the greater theological stress of earlier Christian socialism were often an advocacy of co-operative or guild socialism which less of a role for the state and an insistence on the importance of intermediary associations, the widest possible distribution of private property (which remains valid) in the interest of the common good, and decentralization wherever this is most appropriate."

It seems to me what Milbank here describes is very similar to the food distributions that take place weekly at Mid-City. We are still having over 400 persons per week that move through our building, getting staples for food for the common good -- we distribute justly, although this takes some work because of tendencies to hording by some. But more, it's a place of love. We bless the food as Christ blessed the loves and fishes and more often than not, everyone eats there fill with even some left over for the next day. We don't bring the kingdom to God here; we are merely an occasion for God to bring forth the kingdom that those who participate are able to receive.

Saturday 160 persons went through the line -- receiving bread, oranges, sweets, salad (cabbage for the Russians to make "borsch"!) and an expression of thanks for coming on the way out. Miraculously, 160 persons passed through in 28 minutes -- without any rush, harsh words, but smiles, laughter and thanksgiving. With the 15 or so volunteers, and others who had helped unload before, we neared 200 persons through.

Justice finds its culmination in love because if truly justice, it involves the worship of the Triune God, the Creator of Heavens and Earth. As we learn to think "justice", we need to think seriously, as Alasdair MacIntyre has taught us to ask, "Whose Justice" -- for the account of justice that we give might be very important to whether we receive the kingdom of God and God's justice -- not the justice of the politics of the world around us, either on the right or on the left.

Posted by johnwright at 5:31 PM | Comments (260)

I've just gotten back from a paper and presentation at Azusa Pacific yesterday. It was an honor to be invited to speak. Dennis Okholm and Craig Keen helped arranged it and were wonderful hosts. I have known Craig for a while, but it was good spending time with Dennis -- the author of Monk Habits for Everyday People. It suddenly occured to me that Dennis was the one who, years ago, set up the Wheaton conference on Evangelicals and Post-liberalsm. I hope that we have many conversations yet to follow.

This week's Scriptures present a sign of what is to come in Easter. This is important because it helps us to remember, as we soon will go through Holy Week, that we don't do so in ignorance of what culminates -- the resurrection. We'll start with the Ezekiel passage, move to the Gospel, and finish with the Epistle.

Ezekiel 37:1-14

In light of the horrors of war that we still watch and hear of today, we need to see the beginning of the vision as the results of a battle in which a large contingent had been masacred. What would be presupposed if one saw a valley full of human bonds from a lost battle that were now "very dry"? How had they become dry? Why would no one come to bury them? What is the impact of the "hand of the Lord"'s question to the prophet?

What is it precisely what happens as a result of the prophet's word? What is the difference in the end result from the presupposed setting of how they become dry? What has happened to their status as an army?

What is the message that of the vision? What does this presuppose about Israel? What is the purpose of the resurrection here? What is the means of the resurrection?

John 11:1-44

As throughout the Johanine readings in Lent, this one is very long. The parallel with Ezekiel looks towards, of course, the end of the story. What are the main parts that lead towards Jesus's encounter with the grave of Lazarus? What is the attitude of Jesus towards death? How does he treat death? What does Jesus say they will see if they take away the stone? Where do they see this? How is Lazarus described as he comes out? What are Jesus' instructions? To whom?

What is your basic reactions to the whole flow of the story?

Romans 6:16-23

How does the resurrection form the background of these instructions? What is the "form of teaching to which you were entrusted"? What is it to present "your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification"? How does this related to the "teaching to which you were entrusted"? What is the "end" of sanctification -- being made holy? "Where" is eternal life that is the free gift of God?

Why is it that the reminding of the resurrection life given by God in Jesus is significant for our lives as a congregation? What difference does it make for reading the Scriptures? Participating in the Lord's Supper? Engaging in the works with and among the poor?

Have a wonderful time together!

Posted by johnwright at 3:46 PM | Comments (3)