The Image of God

Last week, I noted that Bonhoeffer, in The Cost of Discipleship, completed his wanderings through and reflections on the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew’s gospel, allocating the remainder of his book to some general thoughts on the life of discipleship.  Following his lead, a week ago, I offered a short piece of my own on a topic Bonhoeffer, also, considered in that closing section, i.e., the body of Christ.  This week, I take up another topic Bonhoeffer considers in his closing section, i.e., the image of God. 

Over the coming week, we will address the image of God from a variety of angles.  During chapel, we will collaborate with a range of groups on campus to address mental health and its intersection with the image of God.  And, later in the week, we will turn to thoughts on the image of God as related to Earth Day and our need to become vigilant participants in the care of creation.  Given this latter, ecological turn, I offer this excerpt from a reflection I crafted a few years ago, navigating the intersection between the image of God and creation.  Enjoy.

Have a great week.  See you along the way. 

Seeing Creation Anew: 

A Theology of Ecology

Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’  So God created humankindin his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. 

–Genesis 1:26-27

In Christian theology, we regularly turn to biblical texts as the first stop in the long, creative process of articulating doctrine.  Often, we turn and return to particular texts, as those particular texts seem a rich resource, abundant in insights, informing divergent yet indispensable theological positions.  Many analyses of these texts and the positions they underscore are ancient, supplying the foundational claims for many central doctrines.  And, on those occasions when a tangential or new issue arises on which the church has less frequently or never definitively spoken, theologians will, again, turn to these seminal passages, extrapolating a new doctrine from ancient doctrines emergent from these primary interpretations. 

The above text from Genesis is just such a text.  Poured over and sifted through for the germ of such pivotal and ancient doctrines as the Trinity and the imago dei (i.e., our being created in the image of God), in more recent years theologians have turned to this text as a means to imagine how we might speak to issues of ecology.  Frequently at question is how to deal with our being conferred “dominion” over creation. 

Does having dominion mean domination?  Does having dominion mean humanity is justified in exploiting the environment for whatever (short-term) benefit might be gained?  Unfortunately, more times than can be recounted, the answer to these questions has been “yes.”  Yet, such a reading of the text is only a partial interpretation of the text.  The text, it seems, provides a balancing, additional source for theological guidance. 

Returning to those two pivotal and ancient doctrines possibly alluded to within the text (i.e., the Trinity and the imago dei), we find the governing concepts for what it might mean to have dominion.  If (1) the concept of the Trinity speaks to the character of God and (2) if the concept of the imago dei speaks to the derivative character of humanity relative to that character of God, then transitive logic suggests an indelible, essential correspondence between who God is as Trinity and who we are as persons created in that God’s image.

If, as many have understood the doctrine of the Trinity to suggest, God’s unique character is to be simultaneously both uniquely one while corporately many, then God is an essentially and intimately intertwined sociality.  In technical language, God’s character is expressed perichoretically.  In more accessible language, God is one while, also, many.  Moreover, if we are created in that image, then quite possibly, we, too, exist fundamentally as corporate individuals.  

Such a doctrinal notion places a great deal of significance on our sociality and the social systems generative of and created by our sociality.  Additionally, the care for those systems becomes paramount because those systems must exist in order that we exist.  Said more positively, such care seems a natural outgrowth of our own recognition that systems are essential to all life and that having dominion is more about responsibility for those systems and sustaining those systems than it is the exploitation of those systems.  Such exploitation would be out of character for a people who understand their very essence to be wrapped up in the sustained presence of systems. 

Because of this possible essentiality of systems within Christian doctrine, I have entitled this piece a “theology of ecology.”  Ecology is the study of systems; the study of the interrelatedness of various things.  Interestingly, if not purposefully, the word “ecology” derives from the same Greek root for our word “church,” oikos.  The church is understood to be a vibrant, diverse, dynamic yet singularly interconnected entity.  (The church is one body with many members, as Paul reminds us.)  In other words, while we discover the very essence for what it means to be church, we, also, discover what it means to be ecological.  This means that Christian theology’s interest in and passion about the environment should be a natural and inevitable outcome. 

All people, regardless of our faith commitments, would benefit from such a shift in emphasis away from dominion as domination toward an ecology of care.  If the excerpt from the creation story cited above narrates anything, it is the realty that we are, literally, in this together.  Our brothers and sisters in the Hindu tradition share an equally compelling and foundational description of this created connectivity.  The Ishavasya Upanishad reads:

This universe is the creation of Supreme Power meant for the benefit of all;
Individual species must therefore learn to enjoy its benefits by forming a part of the system in close relationship with other species;
let not the other species encroach upon the other’s right.

Creation care is our common concern.

If the church and institutions of the church like Young Harris College are to be faithful to our created imaginings, then we must be environmentally responsible, engaging proactively in social and political systems seeking to care for creation. 

 

 

The Body of Christ

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.”  After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.  Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”  When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.  If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

 

John 20:19-23

 

Having completed his wanderings through and reflections on the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew’s gospel, Bonhoeffer allocates the remainder of his book to some general thoughts on the life of discipleship.  Following his lead, here, I offer a short piece of my own “wonderings” on a topic Bonhoeffer, also, considers in that closing section, i.e., The Body of Christ.

 

This week, many read the story sometimes called the Johannine Pentecost, the recounting from John’s gospel of Jesus’ appearance to his disciples following the resurrection and Jesus’ giving of the Holy Spirit.  This Pentecost story and the more familiar story of Pentecost from Acts have several differences and similarities.  Unlike the account told in Acts, here, Jesus personally gives the Spirit to his disciples and that gift is not delayed but offered immediately after the resurrection. While those and other differences are interesting, what are most useful, on this occasion, are those parts of the story that overlap with the Pentecost story from Acts.  In both accounts, the disciples are gathered in an upper room, locked behind closed-doors, and waiting for something, anything that might turn tragedy into joy.  

 

In that moment of trepidation, the Spirit comes, whether delivered by a mighty wind or through the words of precious friend.  And, that gift of the Spirit has transforming effect.  Captured in the words describing the inherited authority gifted to the disciples, the effect simultaneously both boldly asserts and subtly implies.  As a bold assertion, the disciples receive the authority to forgive and retain sin, a powerful capacity granted a group just moments before found cowering in a locked room.  Importantly, it is in this grant of authority that the subtly implied effect appears. 

 

Prior to this moment, only God was assumed to possess the capacity to forgive sins.  Recall the condemnation of Jesus following his efforts to forgive sins in Mark’s gospel:  “‘Why does this fellow speak in this way? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?’”  (Mark 2:7)  Jesus was reject, in that story of forgiving, precisely because he asserted an authority to forgive sins, an authority assumed to be God’s alone.  In other words, by forgiving sins, Jesus is claiming something about himself and his proximity to divinity.  (Hence, the charge of blasphemy!) 

 

Yet in this passage from John’s gospel, the disciples receive the very capacity that before was believed to be reserved only for God.  So, in a subtle way, Jesus moves the disciples to a position he held while on earth.  The disciples are now standing in the same proximity to God as Jesus understood himself to occupy.  Said another way, the disciples become significantly more than what was implied in the sending narrative at the end of Matthew’s story of the Sermon on the Mount.  In that story from Matthew, the disciples come to represent Jesus and the kingdom.  In this pentecostal moment, the disciples cease simply to represent God but to become God’s embodied presence on earth, a presence previously embodied by the incarnate Word named Jesus. 

 

Both the Pentecost stories from John and Acts suggest this transformation.  Remember the formulaic patter established in scripture for the suggestion of divine presence.  Think of the creation story, where stuff of the earth and Spirit of God unite to make the embodied presence of God called humanity or God’s own image.  Consider the story of the incarnation, where the stuff of the earth, Mary, and the Spirit of God unite to make the embodied presence of God called Jesus.  In both instances, stuff plus Spirit unites to mark the Divine’s incarnate, real presence.  Therefore, it is no surprise, that in each Pentecost story, the disciples transform from the hidden to the empowered, from the fearful to the embodied presence of God.  In a new moment yet in a repeated way, those disciples are the stuff of the earth that unites with the Spirit of God to make the embodied presence of God called the Body of Christ.

 

The story of Pentecost, whether told here or in Acts, is the story that reminds us that the faithful are not simply God’s representatives but God’s actual embodiment.  Divinity is not distant and reserved—the story reminds us—but present and active.  It is because of this embodied character that I regularly mind those who will listen that we are God’s hands and feet, eyes and ears, heart and head in the world.  Our challenge, our responsibility is never to forget to hold and to help those in need, to go to those who struggle and suffer, to see injustice and to hear the cries of oppressed, to care and to love with God’s compassion, and to imagine new solutions and new possibilities when and where previous attempts have failed. 

 

Recently I learned of a Haitian proverb.  That proverb states that God only gives but does not share.  On the surface, such a declaration seems, at best, contradictory and, at worst, potentially offensive.  Why would someone claim that God gives yet simultaneously does not share?  That seems internally inconsistent and incongruous.  Alternatively, why would anyone want to claim that God selfishly hoards?  Such a claim seems cruel in a world with so much and such poor distribution.  Yet, upon deeper reflection, the proverb seems as if it could have directly emerged from this passage of scripture from John’s gospel. 

 

What the proverb suggests is that God, out of generosity and love, gives everything.   However, God leaves the sharing of those gifts to us, the hands and feet and eyes and ears and heart and head of the divine.  It is our responsibility as God’s continuing presence on earth to complete the work entrusted to humanity. 

 

What a gift.  What a challenge.  What an opportunity.  We have a busy day ahead of us.  Let’s get to work.  See you along the way.

(New) Life Together

Welcome back to another week of work, study, and transformation at Young Harris College.  This week, having just returned from our protracted weekend of rest and celebrations, I turn to an Irish-born writer, Katharine Tynan, to supply a poetic beginning our time together. 

 

Enjoy her lyrical rhythms and join us in chapel this week as we induct another class into our College’s honor society, Alpha Chi.

 

Everyone is welcome to attend.

 

Have a wonderful week and see you along the way.

 

“Easter”

Bring flowers to strew His way,

Yea, sing, make holiday;

Bid young lambs leap,

And earth laugh after sleep.

For now He cometh forth

Winter flies to the north,

Folds wings and cries

Amid the bergs and ice.

Yea, Death, great Death is dead,

And Life reigns in his stead;

Cometh the Athlete

New from dead Death’s defeat.

Cometh the Wrestler,

But Death he makes no stir,

Utterly spent and done,

And all his kingdom gone.

Fruit

“Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.”

 

—Matthew 10:40-42

From our bedroom window, we have a sight that simply brings me joy.

We can see a peach tree, a tree belonging to our daughter having been a birthday present several years ago.  Each year, I know that spring has arrived when I see dozens of pink blossoms decorating its branches.  Every flower serves as the site of a small promise, a site where blossom exchanges with a golden, sweet fruit.  As the summer stretches towards autumn, we regularly go outside, stand under our tree, and count the peaches hanging from its branches, delighting in implied pledges of pie and ice cream and snacks.

Those peaches do not just carry in them something good to eat. While they do offer the hope of a nice summer’s snack, those peaches also carry much more with them. They carry with them a summer-worth of rain and sun; rich nutrients; and countless encounters with pollen-happy bees. They carry with them knowledge, the knowledge we gain as a family as we learn to care and tend to our tree. They carry with them joy, the joy we share as parents with child who gleefully count the blossoms and name the treats the fruit will make. They carry with them new connections, connections that we will make with yet-to-be-known friends and neighbors who will certainly share in a belly-warming cobbler sometime next autumn. They carry with them love, the ripening love from a friend to our child as a reminder that someone cares for us.

These little blossoms represent so much more than simply the site of this season’s fruit. These blossoms represent the efficiency of nature, the joy of eating, and the fruit of relationships had and to be had. They represent more than just themselves. They represent those who planted the tree, cultivated it, sold it, transported it, bought it, and replanted it. Presently, the fruit represents seemingly endless imaginings of who touched our tree in the past and whom its fruit will connect us to in the future.

Often times, it appears that what looks rather simple at first glance is much more complicated, more intricate that initially assumed.  A similar observation made of our peach tree can be made of Jesus’ sending of the disciples in Matthew’s gospel.

In this final section of chapter ten in Matthew’s gospel, we return with Bonhoeffer and the gospel writer to the theme that started the chapter: the command to send the disciples in Jesus’ name.  This “bookending” of the chapter with this repeated emphasis underlines the importance of the disciples’ being sent. Yet, not to be lost in this repeated emphasis is the reminder that when they go, the disciples do not travel alone. They take with them Christ, himself.

The disciples carry with them the plans of a kingdom, the hopes of a redefined world, the promises of new life. Yet, more than these three, the disciples carry with them the presence of Jesus and, in turn, a direct connection to God, the Creator of all things. It is this representative role that is so profound in the work and role of the disciples.

Here, Jesus reminds the disciples that the presence that they offer is not just simply their own, but that within them they carry the very essence of the kingdom, of Jesus, and, therefore, of God. The disciples do not stand on their own. They stand with and on behalf of many.

At times, such a corporate nature—representing many and carrying many with you—might serve as a great gift to the disciples, supporting and buoying them when the road they travel gets lonely. Discipleship can feel isolating and remembering that others and God stand with them will take them that one step further when additional steps seem too difficult to take. Yet, at other times, disciples need to remember that their actions do not just represent themselves but an entire community of people who have gone before, who currently witness to the same faith, and who are yet to come. Even more, disciples have to be reminded that they stand in for God, embodying the divine presence to the world in real and imagined ways.

Such a representative role may prove enlivening and encouraging yet burdensome and daunting. However, like our peach tree carrying new blooms each spring, in the discipleship’s representative role, while much is carried, much more is promised. Each carrier of the gospel bears the possibilities of the kingdom, a kingdom of transformative and life-altering love, a kingdom of justice and peace, a kingdom of common care and individual worth, a kingdom of tomorrow’s hopes sprouting in the promises of today.

A harvest of transformative love, peace, care, and hope . . . that sounds like pretty good fruit to me, fruit worth waiting for and working to cultivate.

Have a great week and see you along the way.

 

 

The Decision

‘Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 
For I have come to set a man against his father,
and a daughter against her mother,
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household. 
Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me.  Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.

 

—Matthew 10:34-39

 

In this passage from Matthew’s gospel, Jesus does not pull any punches. The belligerent Prince of Peace is on a roll. Having called the Twelve, instructed the masses, he, now, commissions the disciples, charging them to go and spread the news of his radical and transformative kingdom. The message at the heart of that kingdom, Jesus realizes, will cause considerable controversy, controversy he seems happy to provoke having “come not to bring peace but a sword.” That sword is a challenge, a challenge to everything we hold dear and to every assumption we resist examining. To symbolize the very controversy and questioning rigor required of and caused by his message, Jesus marks that most precious of places as the very site of his message’s most certain affect—the family.

If anything would be assumed to be so sacred to be spared the tumult of his challenge, if anything would be assumed to be safe from ridicule and examination and question and evaluation, it is the family. After all, families seem to be the most fundamental of our relationships, the most sacred of our connections, the most certain of our foundations, the most precious of our possessions. However, it is precisely because of family’s fundamental nature and sacredness and certainty and preciousness that family serves as the perfect example and target of Jesus’ reordering message.

Family needs to be questioned because we often assume it is beyond reproach and beyond criticism and beyond examination because, after all, who is not in favor of family. Yet, Jesus understands his message to be precisely so penetrating and transformative that no assumptions are beyond reappraisal and reordering, especially those assumptions we assume need no reappraisal and reordering. In fact, it is precisely what we think we know definitively that needs the most reworking. And, Jesus recognizes that if we come to understand that even our most preciously held convictions and institutions are up for radical reworking as the very work of this coming kingdom, then nothing is off the table, nothing is too sacred to be ignored or protected or assumed or dismissed or taken for granted.

Faith, it turns out, is a completely penetrating, completely reevaluating, completely redefining, completely renewing practice. If family is on the table, what isn’t.

My assumptions—our assumptions—about family and sexuality and marriage and war and peace and faith and life and death and economics and creation and race and gender and propriety and impropriety and virtue and vice and friends and enemies and government and structures and certainties and uncertainties all seem to be on the table. How can they not be? How can I read the above text from Matthew and not assume that no assumptions are safe?

This certain of uncertainty might prove problematic.

Such regular, reflexive churning has the potential to bring about uncertainty and instability and chaos. Is such a potentiality defined by uncertainty, instability, and chaos commendable; is it even survivable?

Interestingly, that potentiality does not seem to concern the gospel writer. The writer appears less interested in the certainties of the moment than in a confidence in the transformative value of the journey. In the gospel, over and over again, the disciples and Jesus do not rest nor do they stay put for long. They are always on the move, always relocating. Moreover, there is urgency in their movements.

The one constant seems to be the lives and journey they share with each other. Their constancy is the fact that they stay connected to each other even while those connections evolve. The message of the kingdom is one of developing the skills necessary to always reexamine and relocate while maintaining connections that are fluid yet stable. Only with the well-practiced skills of adaptation and reevaluation will the disciples be capable of making the protracted and evolving journey required of the kingdom.

I regularly try to remind myself of this declaration by Jesus, to remind myself that there is nothing that is too sacred to be beyond both the reach and renewal of God’s faithful love. There is rarely an hour of a given day that I do not question a presumed certainty or internally challenge a personal conviction. (Sometimes, it can be hell to be in my head.) Recently, I had a conversation with someone who surmised that I was the most self-reflective person he had ever met, and I don’t think he meant it as a compliment. Yet, he may be right. I do spend a lot of time in my head reappraising and reexamining. He gets no argument from me there.

However, such a practice, while potentially destabilizing, seems to be the very essence of what Matthew’s Jesus requires of us. The journey of faith always seems to be a willingness to walk away from one place to reach another, reassessing and reevaluating along the way. That might be what Jesus means when he says that “[t]hose who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” We regularly need to lose ourselves in our pursuit of God, in our journey of faith. Such a willingness to be lost means gaining both a comfort with uncertainty and a humble willingness to assume we might not be right and to ask for help when we do not know where we are. Both those skills seem essential to faith that is filled with mystery and that includes a need to give up ourselves and our immovable convictions that might keep us stagnant and stuck while the band of the faithful have moved on to another point along the road of faith.

I am sure that is right. However, let me think it over. In the meantime, get moving. And, see you along the way.

The Apostles

Then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness. These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon, also known as Peter, and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; Simon the Cananaean, and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him.

—Matthew 10:1-4

 

Having finished his reflections on the Sermon on the Mount, Dietrich Bonhoeffer turns his attention to the disciples and their work as embodied representatives of the kingdom outlined in that Sermon.  The gospel writer mentions on several occasions that Jesus has identified and sent 12 disciples.  In the above passage, all 12 disciples are listed by name.  Importantly, in the four gospels, while the list of names of the 12 disciples differ from each other one thing remains the same—the number 12.

 

The fact that the number 12 repeats itself in the gospel iterations proves important because the disciples become a walking, living embodiment of the people of Israel, a people composed of 12 tribes.  This 12-fold people serve as the continuation of a task believed to have been started generations earlier.  And, of all the gospel writers, this role of continuation is most important for Matthew.

 

In Matthew’s estimation, Jesus takes up the task begun by Abraham, directly linking the work and role of Jesus to that begun by Abraham in the Genesis story.  Through this inclusion of Abraham as Jesus’ distant grandfather, Matthew’s gospel underscores that the work of Jesus is but a continuation of what was started once before.

 

And, just what had Abraham started?

 

Given the importance of highlighting Jesus’ Jewish roots and his task of identifying 12 disciples as a representative core of Israel, we might assume that Abraham’s work assumed by Jesus and his followers is a specifically Jewish task, directed toward a Jewish people for those people’s benefit.  Such an assumption would seemingly be apropos.  Yet, interestingly, such an assumption is entirely too limiting for Matthew’s message and Jesus’ task.

 

Rather than a specific work limited to one people, Matthew understands Jesus’ role and work to have universal ramifications . . . as did Abraham’s before him.  While looking limited in nature, Abraham’s work in Genesis is not just a work meant to set Israel aside to be God’s chosen people.  That fact of being set aside was just the first part of Abraham’s task when he and Sarah are chosen by God to leave Ur and travel to a new land. 

 

Israel was established through Abraham.  However, that establishment was for a greater purpose than simply setting aside one people.  We learn that Israel’s larger role is to serve the whole of humanity so that through those people “‘all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’”^*  In other words, Abraham has a specific task with a general purpose.

 

By deliberately linking the work of Jesus to the work of Abraham through both the reference to Abraham in Jesus’ genealogy and through the repeated use of the number 12 in the selection of the disciples, the gospel writer is intimating that Jesus’ work has import for the whole of the world. 

 

The breadth of Jesus’ work is reinforced in the listing not just of the number of disciples but by listing their names and offering some descriptions of their backgrounds, too.

 

The disciples fish, work for the government, are zealots, are beloved and betrayers.  The disciples seem to be not just representatives of all of God’s people with the implied responsibilities inherent of those people, but these people come from all corners of life’s social and relational iterations, confirming and expanding the representative work that the disciples fulfill.  Said in many different ways throughout the text, the disciples are doing God’s broad and all encompassing work.

 

This work is specific and general, public and private, reasonable and mystical, healing and confounding, separating and uniting.  The work of Abraham and of Jesus and of the disciples and, ultimately, of God is understood to be limitless and boundless and powerful and transformative, affecting powers understood and powers inexplicable.

Put another way, the life of faith is life itself.  There is not space into which God and faith do not stretch or a time at which they should not be assumed to have an effect.

 

Often, especially in our modern worlds, we tend to compartmentalize life into sacred and secular, holy and humane.  Yet, the message offered from Abraham and Jesus and taken up by the disciples is a reminder that all of life is embraced by God’s love and every moment a possibility to encounter the Divine. 

 

Importantly, this declaration has an inverse that should be remembered and appreciated. 

 

While faith has potential meaning and import for all aspects of life, faith and people of faith must not assume that the space we enter is unoccupied nor not to be shared with many other voices and ideas and positions and convictions.  (After all, if we enter the world, we should assume that the world will be there.)  To say that faith has a reach into everything assumes a concurrent claim that everything has a reach into faith—confounding, confronting, challenging, and complementing. 

 

Such a recognition requires an assumption of hospitality to make it manageable.  It seems no accident that following Jesus’ declaration of sending is an outlining in that same chapter of how to react and maneuver in the social complexities such sending and receiving assumes.  Such work mandates a willingness to receive and to be received, to share and to be shared, to risk and to be risked. 

 

So in a week on our campus when we return from our breaks to share our adventures and reflect on what was learned and experienced, we seek to rebuild our community anew, having been changed through the venture yet willing to be the same people if not slightly altered from the diversions of our resent courses. 

 

Receive each other well for the roads traveled are not always welcoming, easy, expected, or joyful.  Sometimes tragedy becomes a way station that requires traveling companions to help us endure.  Sometimes experiences alter us so significantly that we become barely recognizable to each other.  Sometimes gifts become burdens and burdens gifts.  Sometimes the only way forward will require a bit of rest before continuing the journey.  Sometimes hope becomes the beacon for a tomorrow that promises more than today.  Yet, as this gospel text reminds us, it is not a journey to be taken alone but with friends and mentors and fellow pilgrims and unexpected travelers who become a living reminder that the empowering Divinity of All Life walks with us into joyful or painful new towns and into anticipated or surprising places and into welcomed or uncertain tomorrows still unknown. 

 

That seems like good news to me.

 

Have a great week, share the journey, and see you along the way.

It’s Go Time

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its fall!” Now when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.
Matthew 7:24-29

I remember, years ago, when I first started my postgraduate degree at St. Andrews, all postgraduates were encouraged to take a course in research methods and writing. The professor tasked with leading us through the course, Daphne Hampson, began by reminding us that at some point in our research we needed to start writing, so, she suggested, we might as well begin that day. She offered that rather terse and seemingly premature advice following a discussion on the topic of research, data collection, and information cataloguing.

After years of her own research and writing, she recognized that sometimes the greatest hindrance to the writer is simply starting. Especially after having compiled stacks of research and having surveyed a wide field of study, she knew all researchers, particularly new ones like us, faced a potentially crippling dilemma: Where to start? With so much material covered and possibilities to pursue and just enough exposure to a discipline to know how much there was to know, all writers face the danger of not wanting to start for fear of starting in the wrong place or heading off in the wrong direction. From personal experience, she knew the ossifying potential that comes from knowing you need to start but not knowing where that place is.

So, she offered this simple advice to new scholars. Just start.

Knowing lots of information and reflecting on lots of information were great. But, they were not everything. Knowing and doing are not exactly the same thing. You need both. She wanted us to merge the two together . . . and to start them simultaneously. Now, of course, we would certainly not always start in the right place. But, at a minimum, we would have started.

At least, if we started researching and writing and found ourselves wandering down a blind alley or reaching a dead end or chasing theories into a perplexing rabbit’s warren, we would have done something and would be in a position to start editing and correcting and revising and jettisoning. And, all along, we would have been writing and working and moving. We would not be fixed in one place either because of a lack of direction or motivation or certainty. We would have just gotten on with the work of being scholars and writers, refining our theories, our research, our craft, and ourselves throughout the process.

I have always appreciated her advice.

And, after reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s reflections on the concluding remarks from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, I could not help but remember that brisk autumn afternoon’s lesson. Both Professors Bonhoeffer and Hampson seem to have come to the same conclusion: When the work before us seems so large and looming, sometimes we just need to get started.

As you may recall, this section from Matthew’s gospel coined the Sermon on the Mount was proceeded by Jesus calling his first sets of disciples after he has begun his ministry. We are told in each instance that the disciples are working, Jesus walks by, speaks to them, calls them, and they “immediately” follow. Then, having gathered these disciples who dropped everything, Jesus takes them (and others who are straggling along) to a mountaintop to deliver his law for this expanded kingdom that his ministry inaugurates. The fact that the disciples’ response is recorded in the text and is in such close proximity to Jesus’ substantive and lengthily ministry’s inaugural address is no accident. The immediacy of the disciples’ response sets the tone and underscores the energy implicit in the Sermon on the Mount.

For as quickly as Jesus called his disciples, delivered his protracted discourse on the work and character of the life of discipleship to which he has just called these responsive men (and others), Jesus ends the discourse, astounds the crowds, and returns to the work of kingdom living. Moving right into the work of that kingdom seems to be the only way to manage it.

All of the descriptions and expectations that Jesus has just outlined for his disciples have the distinct possibility to overwhelm even the most seasoned follower. And, Jesus is dealing with anything but seasoned followers. Here, Jesus is working with those who hours before were casting nets and gutting fish. Now, they are being called to live into the high and rigorous demands of discipleship and kingdom-making.

There is so much to be done, so many places to start, so much material to review, so many assessments to be made. Yet, the kingdom that Jesus offers does not seem to wait for such deliberate and calculated movements. Rather, the kingdom Jesus offers seems suited to those who can think on their feet, readily and nimbly adjusting as they get on with the work of loving God and the world. Discipleship and kingdom work, it seems, requires on the job training. That type of training might be for the best because to wait for all parts of Jesus’ kingdom manifesto to be in place, analyzed, and systematically arranged would stagnate the work, if not perpetually postpone its inception. And, as we learn over and over again throughout Christian scriptures, God seems less interested in perfect, prepared followers than in willful, responsive participants.

Lives of faith—for most any faith—is about a willing readiness to share in the journey of faithful living and not to serve only as a spectator or evaluator or naysayer. This need to get on with the work of living into the reality of the vision cast seems all too necessary.

Consider Jesus’ story conveyed at the end of the Sermon on the Mount of the two men, each building a house on a different foundation. Both build. It does not work out for both men. Some might see this story as a warning, a cautionary tale, suggesting that careful assessment and calculated planning appear critical to a successful project. And both are. Yet, I take a slightly different lesson from this story. The “successful” builder has a house the stands because he did two things: (1) he chose a good material and (2) decided to get on with the work. The “unsuccessful” builder is unsuccessful not because he chose to build but because he chose to build with the wrong materials. His error was not in building. In fact, building seems to be what both men did correctly.

A life of faith, it appears as outlined in the story told in Matthew’s gospel, has an indispensible characteristic of action linked to something else. Doing the work of faith is not in doubt. Recognizing the importance of living intentionally faithfully is what both men get right.

Now, this lesson is certainly not the only lesson we can take from this parable in Matthew’s text, but it is an important lesson. Sometimes, we just need to get on with it.

So, over the coming weeks, whether you are at work or home or school or on vacation or with family or with friends or alone or wherever and with whomever, get on with the work of loving. That call to action seems to be the essence of Jesus’ manifesto and Matthew’s story.

It’s go time! A whole world is waiting.

“Immediately they left their nets and followed him.”
—Matthew 4:20

Have a great week. See you along the way.