The theologian Karl Barth once gushed about the Biblical interpretive skills of his famous predecessor, Friedrich Schleiermacher, that he, above than all others, was able to “play Scripture like a Stradivarius.” So thrillingly adept was he. But then, with typically Swiss precision and devastating effect, Barth immediately countered his own compliment, declaring that the problem with this is that we are not supposed to play Scripture. It is supposed to play us. We are the instruments through which its music is heard, and reversing this order gets everything wrong. It was one of the most incisive remarks he ever made, both a warning and a beckoning.
There are some days when brilliant texts shouldn’t be sullied with commentary that, inevitably, diverts attention away from its exposition of us to lesser matters – our own clumsy ruminations about rules or virtues or inspiration. Today is one of those days, when what has been set before us in the Scripture readings speaks with overwhelming eloquence of the radical heart of the Gospel. Ezekiel, in his restless condemnation of our blatant disregard and thievery, and John, in his utter confidence in God’s persistent reclamation of us all: these together show how it is that being Christian is deeply subversive, as Barth noted, inverting the things we tend to trust most deeply and wrongly. Our most insistent, hidden motivations are made subject to withering critique, in Ezekiel three times repeated: “You, shepherds, who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves in wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep… You do not feed the sheep.” What more needs to be said? Is this not indicative of our own time too: when everyone is chasing after oil, when behind every deal there seems to be a whole host of greased palms, when daily we are treated to scandals marked by names like Abramoff, Skilling, Fastow, Lay, Rowland, Ellef, Tomasso? With dreary repetition such conniving, indeed, proves to be the way of the world… and of all of us in some ways.
And yet, even when crushed in judgment, we are not abandoned, neither to despair nor resignation. For the word of the prophet is succeeded by the word of God, the Good Shepherd, who, in freedom, chases us down, regardless of the cost, who, in freedom, gathers us in, who, alone, opens such goodness to us that we, choosing the same freedom, may exhibit ourselves a similar, surprising, and disarming grace.
Being Christian is profoundly subversive – in spite of the fact that the church is often broadly portrayed as being thoroughly and stiflingly proper, hopelessly staid, and suffocatingly dull. Too surely, it can be all of these, in a thousand different forms keeping rituals that are both irrelevant and vacuous. But these can only be hollow in so far as the church’s true speech is neither spoken nor heard, when its practices are merely endured, complacently, when God’s promise is neither absorbed nor pondered nor ever realized with the kind of gratitude that shears through the thick layers of our narcissistic indifference. This failure, however, is the fault of our souls and not the weakness of the text. What is announced before us is the redemption of all things, which subverts all the deep impulses we have – the many desires, with glee, to see others get their due, while we, hidden still, quietly, advantageously, make our way. Neither Ezekiel nor John allows this.
I am fully aware that in our time, so inundated with gossip and prattle and the incessant chatter of cell phones, instant messaging, and blogging, the tight bond of word to person has been severely loosened. It’s quite possible now to talk a lot and never mean anything. Nonetheless, this morning we have dared to put into our mouths and voices words of astounding courage and expectation, poetic verse that announces something no less than the transformation of the core logic of the world. This was our testimony:
“My song is love, unknown.”
It would be enough to stop with this phrase alone. However mundane we think it, this single line announces our departure from all that is usually assumed to be inevitable, the entire plodding course of our habits. Music interrupts. Song erupts. And love is expressed – not a love of our own, not fickle, not coy, not deceiving, not jealous, not vulnerable to slipping suddenly into an equal, consuming hatred. We must acknowledge this difference: it is love unknown. It is not natural to us. Its fortitude is alien. Its expansiveness is disquietingly foreign. Its dedication is uncompromised. It is the love of God. Yet we have been so bold to fit this into our song, our life, our own commitments to one another.
“My song is love unknown, my Savior’s love to me,
love to the loveless shown that they might lovely be.”
In this one verse, we name the overcoming of the world, a new disposition set in stark contrast to all that Ezekiel saw; the dis-positioning of all the practical wisdom of our terrorist driven age, when so much of our energy is turned toward securing ourselves against our fears, when in nearly every matter we are urged toward this singular end – succeeding by defeating others. Our protest is an invitation, without qualification. There is no deserving in this love, no carefully measured apportionment, no convenient exception for what we have received. It extends indefinitely, even to the least, even to the worst, even to the most repulsive. Because its passion is transformation, a transformation that does not succumb to disappointment or stumbling or even ferocious resistance. It is love that has the patience of the infinite, because, again, it is not our own and did not arise from our own hearts. It is, (and now this must be said with the absolute focus of perfect literalness) it is God’s, given tangibly and conclusively in the unwavering reality of death and resurrection. “Let us not mock God with metaphor”…
We are all included in this embrace. Woefully loveless, still, God names us otherwise: he declares us lovely.
Need more be added? We talk of many things, religiously, constantly falling to the temptation of making the institution of the church the instrument that is supposed to play our favorite song: inclusion, orthodoxy, tolerance, morals, social justice, social order. We argue at great length, sometimes angrily and with pointed accusation. But this is all dross and meaningless if, first, we haven’t fully taken in this proclamation, this song, the astounding generosity of God’s covenant, determined, dared, and done. This message doesn’t need interpretation or explanation or long trails of apology to make it more credible and to our liking. It asks only a vigilance of heart, such attentiveness that we might be stopped, moved, amazed and changed – and then inclined to “stay and sing, no story so divine.”
The Rev. Peter Vanderveen
Let us not mock God with metaphor,
Analogy, sidestepping, transcendence:
Making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
Faded credulity of earlier ages:
Let us walk through the door.
The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
Not a stone in a story,
But the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
Grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
The wide light of day.
John Updike, Seven Stanzas at Easter
Friday, May 19, 2006
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
Created Time
Thomas Friedman, the highly regarded columnist, is notable for his skill in turning a memorable phrase. He writes simply about enormously complex issues, without compromising either analysis or insight, and his creative quips often serve as reasonable lenses through which to see the vagaries of international politics with greater clarity. The title of his latest book provides as good an example of this as any. The World is Flat, he declared. Of course, he did not mean this geographically, but now, because of the many developments of our technology, this, he argues, is our new reality geopolitically and economically.
It’s an effective pun, playing off something we believe unquestionably. The world, in fact, is round. Copernicus demonstrated this centuries ago. It was one of the great revolutions of science, which shook the foundations of all our knowledge and radically changed the way we look at everything. Friedman’s point was to announce that in globalization another revolution has occurred, of similarly Copernican dimensions, and very few of our traditional assumptions of life and livelihood will be left untouched or remain the same. Modern technology has wiped out many of the hurdles to advancement that gave natural advantage to advanced nations and kept third world economies languishing. In unprecedented ways, markets are open to anyone who wishes to succeed, and thus competition has been exponentially increased. And every presumption to inherited wealth and status has been conclusively flattened. The incumbent challenges are daunting.
In just as dramatic a way, a coinciding effect has been the flattening of time, no less. In the course of the last several decades we have progressively lost the fullness and roundness of our experience of time, our glad recognition and acceptance of its clear divisions, primal distinctions like day and night, work and Sabbath, toil and recreation and rest. These rhythms are still readily apparent in the whole environment around us, but they are being strongly overridden by the sheer force of our desires and the extraordinary tools we have developed by which we can live at nearly non-stop pace, undeterred by any natural obstacle. Night and its darkness is no problem. We have light enough whenever we want it. Food is rarely dependent on seasons anymore. Supermarkets stock whatever we like for whenever we’d like it. Work rarely ends at 5:00 PM. Equipped with computers, blackberries, and cell phones, we can leave the office without its ever leaving us. Time is no longer as compelling as it once was, forcing us into its restrictions. We now drive through the hours, days, and seasons compelled primarily by our own agendas, which, largely untempered by other factors, can become as exhausting as they are edifying.
Time has become flat. Rarely constrained by external factors, we have steadily internalized a new motto: we are to seize the day. This is our modern wisdom: carpe diem. It appears on bumper stickers and T-shirts, and it has been given the unofficial imprimatur of being printed on coffee mugs for sale at museum gift shops everywhere. It sounds good, encouraging, enticing. But this slogan is far from innocent. A little inspection reveals that it is freighted with equal amounts of greed and anxiety: greed for all that can be grasped and taken for oneself; anxiety for all that others may get ahead of you, and, thereby, instead of you. Hesitation is risky. Patience is questionable. It is not that time waits for no man. In our modern world, it is we who do not wait for time. We dare not. There is too much to lose by living in consonance with time’s natural cycles. We are the restless ones, eager to get what we want, worried that others will beat us to the prize. Seizing is an apt description. Stemming from fear, it leans toward violence. We must grasp at all we can, clutch it close, and squirrel it away. Life is confiscation, and we, along with everyone else, feel we must grab as much as we can. Consequently, insatiability has become a chief virtue, in spite of its constant pressures – pressures we can easily mark in habits great and small, petty and broad.
What is dismissed by this view is the possibility that, in truth, the world is not ours to seize at all, not in any legitimate way. It is, rather, and appropriately, only ours to receive, which is a wholly different action, which arises from a wholly different perspective. Receiving, from the very first, is an acknowledgement of grace. It is unfettered by greed or anxiety. Receptivity implies that, already, before anything else, someone is giving and something is being provided. There is a generosity to the world that precedes us, that, without any work on our own part, sustains us and holds our lives. Of all the things we forget, this is probably most central and most intrinsic to our being creatures. We did not imagine ourselves into existence, nor did we construe the world. It was, however mysteriously, given to us. And part of that gift is its intrinsic order. Our world has a definiteness of both space and time. There are material rules that can’t be broken, laws of nature, elemental relations that give distinction and allow for possibility. In correlation with these, there are characteristics of time that are just as basic and necessary. The world has a history, from which it cannot be loosed. Everything that is has followed from what was. Being dynamic, and not static, creation consists of the interplay of many, harmonic rhythms – divisions of time that offer structure and meaning to what is. As creatures made in the image of God we live fully within this creation and yet, too, we have the capacity to reflect on it, as if from a distance, so that, more than all other creatures, we may marvel and rejoice in the blessing of our allotted time and the richness of God’s world. In this timeliness there is a robust roundness, a deep dimensionality that we ignore only at our peril.
Seen aright, there is no flatness in creation. Nor is our task a striving after seizing. We are, rather, from the Christian perspective, recipients of God’s invitation to delight in the amazing complexity and order of all things, and to do so with an unabashed freedom, a freedom that comes from the confidence that God’s own passion will preserve what he has brought forth – in all its spectacular particularity. Time is not something to race against and defeat. It is what affords us endless variations of gladness, in all that transpires within the arc of God’s providence. In this, we have reason to offer supreme adoration, when time is perceived not as brute fact but as an integral part of the promise of God, good in every way.
In the Gospel that was read this morning, Luke was very careful to note how Jesus’ resurrection confirms this. The nature of our hope after death is not some ambiguous continuance in a ghostly fashion, that we will achieve immortality as diaphanous souls set adrift from the world, (which is often the little that people believe when they believe nothing else). Instead, in a very calm manner, in his return, Jesus informed his disciples that he was precisely the same man that he had been. He was so demonstrably: flesh, bones, able to touch and able to eat. Death did not destroy his life. Resurrection did not make him someone or something else. All who he had been, remained. And in him, said Luke, God’s promise was being extended to all. This was Jesus’ word, made obvious in his presence. To which the disciples responded with joy and wonder, experiencing a reality of such intensity that it bordered on the utterly inconceivable.
The beauty of the disciples’ reaction is that it doesn’t refer only to the point of resurrection. In addition, their response shows us how, in the light of resurrection, we may approach all of life, in its essential timeliness – because every moment we live discloses the actual substance of what will be raised. Time, thus, is not a tragic dimension of the world, that eventually sweeps us away, to be forgotten – a flatness that flattens us. It is the form of the disclosure of God’s glory and love, in the expansive extravagance of the cosmos, and in the tight intimacy of friends reuniting, even when thinking that all was lost, even as they hid themselves away. Our wisdom is not carpe diem; the panic of seizing. It is found in two alternative words: laudate Dominum – give praise to God, praise in concert with all that creation brings about, which is delivered to us, a splendor always immeasurable.
This is the Copernican revolution of faith that overturns the world. It undoes all despair and resets our lives in gratitude and astonishment. This is the opportunity laid before us, with every turn of time, nighttime to morning, season to season, generation to generation, incarnation to resurrection. Laudate Dominum: for in our own finiteness, something of God’s eternity is being unfolded, as gift upon gift. And arising from this trust, with every given moment, we are free, above all, to be astounded, with gladness, noting well how we receive without ever having had to stoop to ask. The many dimensions of created time mark how this is so. Our witness is to rejoice in this marvelous fullness.
It’s an effective pun, playing off something we believe unquestionably. The world, in fact, is round. Copernicus demonstrated this centuries ago. It was one of the great revolutions of science, which shook the foundations of all our knowledge and radically changed the way we look at everything. Friedman’s point was to announce that in globalization another revolution has occurred, of similarly Copernican dimensions, and very few of our traditional assumptions of life and livelihood will be left untouched or remain the same. Modern technology has wiped out many of the hurdles to advancement that gave natural advantage to advanced nations and kept third world economies languishing. In unprecedented ways, markets are open to anyone who wishes to succeed, and thus competition has been exponentially increased. And every presumption to inherited wealth and status has been conclusively flattened. The incumbent challenges are daunting.
In just as dramatic a way, a coinciding effect has been the flattening of time, no less. In the course of the last several decades we have progressively lost the fullness and roundness of our experience of time, our glad recognition and acceptance of its clear divisions, primal distinctions like day and night, work and Sabbath, toil and recreation and rest. These rhythms are still readily apparent in the whole environment around us, but they are being strongly overridden by the sheer force of our desires and the extraordinary tools we have developed by which we can live at nearly non-stop pace, undeterred by any natural obstacle. Night and its darkness is no problem. We have light enough whenever we want it. Food is rarely dependent on seasons anymore. Supermarkets stock whatever we like for whenever we’d like it. Work rarely ends at 5:00 PM. Equipped with computers, blackberries, and cell phones, we can leave the office without its ever leaving us. Time is no longer as compelling as it once was, forcing us into its restrictions. We now drive through the hours, days, and seasons compelled primarily by our own agendas, which, largely untempered by other factors, can become as exhausting as they are edifying.
Time has become flat. Rarely constrained by external factors, we have steadily internalized a new motto: we are to seize the day. This is our modern wisdom: carpe diem. It appears on bumper stickers and T-shirts, and it has been given the unofficial imprimatur of being printed on coffee mugs for sale at museum gift shops everywhere. It sounds good, encouraging, enticing. But this slogan is far from innocent. A little inspection reveals that it is freighted with equal amounts of greed and anxiety: greed for all that can be grasped and taken for oneself; anxiety for all that others may get ahead of you, and, thereby, instead of you. Hesitation is risky. Patience is questionable. It is not that time waits for no man. In our modern world, it is we who do not wait for time. We dare not. There is too much to lose by living in consonance with time’s natural cycles. We are the restless ones, eager to get what we want, worried that others will beat us to the prize. Seizing is an apt description. Stemming from fear, it leans toward violence. We must grasp at all we can, clutch it close, and squirrel it away. Life is confiscation, and we, along with everyone else, feel we must grab as much as we can. Consequently, insatiability has become a chief virtue, in spite of its constant pressures – pressures we can easily mark in habits great and small, petty and broad.
What is dismissed by this view is the possibility that, in truth, the world is not ours to seize at all, not in any legitimate way. It is, rather, and appropriately, only ours to receive, which is a wholly different action, which arises from a wholly different perspective. Receiving, from the very first, is an acknowledgement of grace. It is unfettered by greed or anxiety. Receptivity implies that, already, before anything else, someone is giving and something is being provided. There is a generosity to the world that precedes us, that, without any work on our own part, sustains us and holds our lives. Of all the things we forget, this is probably most central and most intrinsic to our being creatures. We did not imagine ourselves into existence, nor did we construe the world. It was, however mysteriously, given to us. And part of that gift is its intrinsic order. Our world has a definiteness of both space and time. There are material rules that can’t be broken, laws of nature, elemental relations that give distinction and allow for possibility. In correlation with these, there are characteristics of time that are just as basic and necessary. The world has a history, from which it cannot be loosed. Everything that is has followed from what was. Being dynamic, and not static, creation consists of the interplay of many, harmonic rhythms – divisions of time that offer structure and meaning to what is. As creatures made in the image of God we live fully within this creation and yet, too, we have the capacity to reflect on it, as if from a distance, so that, more than all other creatures, we may marvel and rejoice in the blessing of our allotted time and the richness of God’s world. In this timeliness there is a robust roundness, a deep dimensionality that we ignore only at our peril.
Seen aright, there is no flatness in creation. Nor is our task a striving after seizing. We are, rather, from the Christian perspective, recipients of God’s invitation to delight in the amazing complexity and order of all things, and to do so with an unabashed freedom, a freedom that comes from the confidence that God’s own passion will preserve what he has brought forth – in all its spectacular particularity. Time is not something to race against and defeat. It is what affords us endless variations of gladness, in all that transpires within the arc of God’s providence. In this, we have reason to offer supreme adoration, when time is perceived not as brute fact but as an integral part of the promise of God, good in every way.
In the Gospel that was read this morning, Luke was very careful to note how Jesus’ resurrection confirms this. The nature of our hope after death is not some ambiguous continuance in a ghostly fashion, that we will achieve immortality as diaphanous souls set adrift from the world, (which is often the little that people believe when they believe nothing else). Instead, in a very calm manner, in his return, Jesus informed his disciples that he was precisely the same man that he had been. He was so demonstrably: flesh, bones, able to touch and able to eat. Death did not destroy his life. Resurrection did not make him someone or something else. All who he had been, remained. And in him, said Luke, God’s promise was being extended to all. This was Jesus’ word, made obvious in his presence. To which the disciples responded with joy and wonder, experiencing a reality of such intensity that it bordered on the utterly inconceivable.
The beauty of the disciples’ reaction is that it doesn’t refer only to the point of resurrection. In addition, their response shows us how, in the light of resurrection, we may approach all of life, in its essential timeliness – because every moment we live discloses the actual substance of what will be raised. Time, thus, is not a tragic dimension of the world, that eventually sweeps us away, to be forgotten – a flatness that flattens us. It is the form of the disclosure of God’s glory and love, in the expansive extravagance of the cosmos, and in the tight intimacy of friends reuniting, even when thinking that all was lost, even as they hid themselves away. Our wisdom is not carpe diem; the panic of seizing. It is found in two alternative words: laudate Dominum – give praise to God, praise in concert with all that creation brings about, which is delivered to us, a splendor always immeasurable.
This is the Copernican revolution of faith that overturns the world. It undoes all despair and resets our lives in gratitude and astonishment. This is the opportunity laid before us, with every turn of time, nighttime to morning, season to season, generation to generation, incarnation to resurrection. Laudate Dominum: for in our own finiteness, something of God’s eternity is being unfolded, as gift upon gift. And arising from this trust, with every given moment, we are free, above all, to be astounded, with gladness, noting well how we receive without ever having had to stoop to ask. The many dimensions of created time mark how this is so. Our witness is to rejoice in this marvelous fullness.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
