Hope
As we take on more of the character of Christ, by necessity we will realize, relationally, how much of our existence is inherently sinful on a collective, national, or global level. At some level, this is unavoidable.
By this I mean that there are aspects of how we get our food, our clothing, our technology, our economy, that is inherently broken. We are in a broken system, and it cannot be made whole, though we can still work toward wholeness.
But a growing awareness of our role in the wholeness of the world and it's inhabitants will draw us into a growing awareness of how much is broken, and how much we are helpless participants in. Which, in turn, draws us further into an awareness of how great Jesus' grace toward us is in the midst of this.
The attitude I see classically around me is that sin is a list of actions which I can separate myself from or avoid, and then, even though I am still broken, i can at least be sanctified, and live a holy life in the midst of the broken world.
But holiness is not a part of my separateness from the world, but rather the difference of my character in my involvement in the world, for the one I follow "came not to condemn the world, but to save it." By being a disciple of Christ, I am engaged in participation in the saving of the world.
That participation cannot be absorbed in individual separation, but rather, washed in grace, wading into the darkest, dirtiest parts of that brokenness to bring hope, holiness, freedom and healing to those within it.
But it is precisely the attitude that, having been given a glimpse of wholeness, we thus retreat to places of purity, and hope that those dwelling in broken places will be drawn to our wholeness, that robs me of my hope.
Many participants within this effort we call 'church' have written or spoken of an understanding of God in which God is participating with us within the world in the redemption and healing of the brokenness and fragmentation of the world, and God moves within communities and individuals everywhere to achieve that healing, but only on the basis of where each of those participants is.
Which means that God is participating with individuals and communities engaged in healing the world who believe that gender or skin color makes people less than human. He is participating with individuals and communities who believe that nationality is the most important aspect of existence. He is participating with the individuals and communities who say that people who believe things, or want things, or practice things, are unholy and whose sin must be condemned, and he is participating with individuals and communities who believe that nothing can be condemned and that all positions are acceptable. He's participating and working with atheists, and Hindus, and Muslims, and all manner of other people.
Because God's objective is the redemption and wholeness of the whole world, rather than a particular people group, or creed, or belief system. Because God wants to bless everybody, and for everybody to be blessed.
Even the people who don't want to be blessed, or who don't want anybody else to be blessed.
Blessing, btw, is an odd word, because it doesn't mean, when we say it, what the people in Jesus' time would have meant by it, as with so many things.
For us, blessing means something like "Good fortune". i.e., "I got the non-handicapped parking spot closest to Walmart, I'm blessed". But for first century individuals, blessing had to do with God's favor, with alignment with the purpose and participation of God. It was an integral aspect of wholeness, of Shalom. When the Pharisee ruler asks "what do I need to do to have Aeon Zoe", he is asking precisely what he has left to do to live within God's blessing, in alignment with God's purpose, and he lists all of the laws which he lives within alignment of.
In the first century, it was a prime Jewish understanding that if you were living within the blessing of God, then you would have wealth and many children, and that if you didn't have these things, you or your parents had to have sinned against God. This is why beggars and the poor were so looked down on, they were a living example of the lack of God's blessing. Which is, in turn, precisely why the beatitudes are so powerful...Jesus says up front that many people are already blessed, in line with God, who the world of that day considers completely contemptible.
God is participating with, and blessing, those who you would never consider participating with, and who you consider cursed, or curseable. Because God is saving all of creation.
Jesus says to his followers, "Anybody whose sins you forgive will be forgiven, and anybody whose sins you don't forgive, will not be forgiven". But he also says "If you do not forgive others, God cannot forgive you."
Nothing for Jesus exists in some binary, dualistic setup where there are the things we do with or for God over here, in this box, and the things with do with or for other people, over there, in that box.
How we treat others directly reflects and acts on how we treat Jesus, and vice-versa. I've heard any number of people bristle at the idea that how we behave toward people is on the same level as how we act toward God, but Jesus says repeatedly that they're the same thing, that if we put God first, and put others last, we have actually put God last as well. Paradox exists.
Because in the end, God is relational, and communicative, and reciprocal. We cannot have the Trinity in a meaningful way outside of a relational, reciprocal, communicative existence, and when we taken on the character of Christ, we take on those characteristics as well.
Jesus says, nobody aligns with the blessings and participation of God unless I am in it. This has been translated as "Nobody gets to have eternity in heaven with God unless they believe in me", but I think that this is a problematic understanding of that passage in context of all of the other things Jesus says. It's Jesus' participation in the world, through the Spirit and through people, that brings them into alignment with the blessings and wholeness of God within creation.
Or, as somebody said this past weekend, the crucifixion wasn't for God. It was for us.
So, within this framework...I recently saw it asserted that what Jesus did on the cross was free us from death, so that we could live forever. But I think that this is an extremely flawed understanding of what Jesus was doing, within the context of the previous statement within this article.
God's allowing death to exist within creation is a merciful act, given our obsession as humans with unforgiveness and revenge and passionate hatred of one another. Can you imagine existing, unending, with others who delight in evil, who hate each other, who bring judgement and unforgiveness on each other? Death is a release valve, it's a way of gradually and continually wiping the slate clean.
Interestingly, Jesus speaks of those around him as already being dead. He says that life, Aeon Zoe, is this thing that is present with and in the Kingdom, and that it can only be grasped, here and now, by those who pursue it through Christ.
Aeon Zoe tends to be interpreted as immortality, but that's not the idea. Instead, it's life that's in alignment with God and God's purpose, it is blessed life, shalom life, wholeness. It's what the Pharisee Ruler was asking about. "How can I have the life that is in alignment with God?"
Rob Bell notes in his video "The gods aren't angry" that much of ancient culture (and current culture) is obsessed with the question of how we can know that we've appeased God, that God (or the gods) aren't angry with us, that we are blessed...how can we be righteous, how can we be sure that our crops will grow, that our business will be successful, etc.?
But he says that Jesus asserts that God is already on our side, and that God brings rain (to feed the crops) on the just and unjust a like. That God isn't in the practice of withholding favor or fortune based on what we haven't done, but rather gives more based on how we live in alignment with Him, and not out of a mercurial demand to be pleased, but rather because if we are in alignment with Him, we are in alignment with wholeness, with goodness... we are, in fact, being a blessing to others.
God says to Abraham that he blesses Abraham and his offspring so that they can, in turn, be a blessing to all of the nations. And I would argue that anybody who is in alignment with God is somebody who seeks to be a blessing to those around them, to bring them life and healing and wholeness. But that many people are doing that in their own way, out of their own understanding.
So there are some that bring life by condemning sin.
There are others who bring life by loving and serving.
There are others who bring life with judgement and rebuking and separation.
There are others who bring life through death.
One will note, not all of these means are, perhaps, the most effective at actually bringing life. But God is still working in and with all of them.
Much of Christian culture has this idea that once you're saved, you strive to become holy, which removes you further and further from the world, until finally you die, and in glorification, you live forever in another dimension where only the good saved people live forever with God.
But Jesus spends his time talking about how those who live in alignment with Him, who live in blessing, will be like fountains of living water to those around them. They will be sources of life, right now, in this world. Not because they're able to communicate an ontological idea which can be grasped and accepted by others, but because by living and being, they are forces of healing and blessing. They are Aeon Zoe, and the Kingdom they live in is here, and coming.
So, for me, Easter means that there are no more actions to take to please the gods, because Jesus allowed himself to be the last sacrifice, and calls everybody to choose life, instead. He allowed himself to be destroyed by us, and then rose to show that he was greater than all of our vengeance and betrayal and good intentions, and that his Kingdom was one of blessing and wholeness in participation with God. His kingdom is beyond power, and manipulation, and control, and bombs and war and hatred and revenge. That he doesn't need any of those things, and can forgive freely, so that all may live freely.
That's my hope. I just have to work hard to remember it, some days. Which also means that even as I see more darkness, and brokenness, and sin around me, things that I cannot escape, that I cannot get free of...
I don't despair, because I know that I'm in this with Jesus, with God, and that good is being worked and offered and provided constantly in the world, to work against the darkness, to work against evil, to work against selfishness, to work against despair.
And so I see goodness and wholeness happening and coming together in all things, in all places. I see it happening in the churches I don't agree with, and in the political parties who are for things I'm against, and in parts of the world where people are actively killing each other for terrible reasons, and on the internet where people are hating each other and engaged in destroying the image of humanity in others with their words and actions... in all of these places, in all of these things, God's love, God's goodness and wholeness, is seeking, a particle at a time, to bring healing and redemption into the midst of that darkness.
I think often of my friend Stephanie Drury, who works at the UR department of a hospital, and she sees many terrible cases come across her desk of patients that their hospital is dealing with, of people whose healing by the hospital can only be incomplete and fractured, who live in terrible in situations, in broken families, with people who see them as less than human, and all she can do is pray and try not to be overwhelmed by the darkness, and she fights and strives for the helpless around her, and she is a source of living water.
There are a lot of people in my life who are sources of life and water in their own ways. I'm very blessed to have them as examples and reminders.
My friend Damon recently messaged me with the phrase "Jesus didn't come to save the world, he came to save YOU...because by saving individuals...their individual journey affects the whole."
I think that I see what he's saying. And I think that that's very true for some people.
But salvation...I don't think it's like a light switch, either on or off. It's a lodestar, like the north pole...it orients us, within relationship to each other, within life.
So, if your alignment is not within wholeness, toward life, then what you bring to those around you likely won't be life. It will be whatever it is you're aligned with. Or, as Peter Rollins says, "...tell me what it is you do because you believe in God. What you do is what you believe. The things you say you believe, but which aren't present in what you do, aren't actually what you believe." (paraphrase)
So my hope is in spite of church, in spite of politics, in spite of current events, in spite of...everything. It's fighting my way free of the mess, to see what life is, to turn around and bring some life back into the mess, and then fighting my way free again to get another glimpse. It's constantly struggling against the tide of everything that wants my focus somewhere else, of all of the things that are part of our existence that don't bring life, or hope, or wonder, to find the things that do, and then emulate them in this world, and maybe find a way to get others to catch a glimpse too.
Because the more of us that are grabbing hand fulls of hope, of light, of wholeness, of beauty, and bringing them wholeheartedly into the world that we esteem and love and forgive, then the more room there will be for other people to hope and love and grasp and forgive as well.
Because Jesus is here to save the world, and he's participating with us to do it.
By this I mean that there are aspects of how we get our food, our clothing, our technology, our economy, that is inherently broken. We are in a broken system, and it cannot be made whole, though we can still work toward wholeness.
But a growing awareness of our role in the wholeness of the world and it's inhabitants will draw us into a growing awareness of how much is broken, and how much we are helpless participants in. Which, in turn, draws us further into an awareness of how great Jesus' grace toward us is in the midst of this.
The attitude I see classically around me is that sin is a list of actions which I can separate myself from or avoid, and then, even though I am still broken, i can at least be sanctified, and live a holy life in the midst of the broken world.
But holiness is not a part of my separateness from the world, but rather the difference of my character in my involvement in the world, for the one I follow "came not to condemn the world, but to save it." By being a disciple of Christ, I am engaged in participation in the saving of the world.
That participation cannot be absorbed in individual separation, but rather, washed in grace, wading into the darkest, dirtiest parts of that brokenness to bring hope, holiness, freedom and healing to those within it.
But it is precisely the attitude that, having been given a glimpse of wholeness, we thus retreat to places of purity, and hope that those dwelling in broken places will be drawn to our wholeness, that robs me of my hope.
Many participants within this effort we call 'church' have written or spoken of an understanding of God in which God is participating with us within the world in the redemption and healing of the brokenness and fragmentation of the world, and God moves within communities and individuals everywhere to achieve that healing, but only on the basis of where each of those participants is.
Which means that God is participating with individuals and communities engaged in healing the world who believe that gender or skin color makes people less than human. He is participating with individuals and communities who believe that nationality is the most important aspect of existence. He is participating with the individuals and communities who say that people who believe things, or want things, or practice things, are unholy and whose sin must be condemned, and he is participating with individuals and communities who believe that nothing can be condemned and that all positions are acceptable. He's participating and working with atheists, and Hindus, and Muslims, and all manner of other people.
Because God's objective is the redemption and wholeness of the whole world, rather than a particular people group, or creed, or belief system. Because God wants to bless everybody, and for everybody to be blessed.
Even the people who don't want to be blessed, or who don't want anybody else to be blessed.
Blessing, btw, is an odd word, because it doesn't mean, when we say it, what the people in Jesus' time would have meant by it, as with so many things.
For us, blessing means something like "Good fortune". i.e., "I got the non-handicapped parking spot closest to Walmart, I'm blessed". But for first century individuals, blessing had to do with God's favor, with alignment with the purpose and participation of God. It was an integral aspect of wholeness, of Shalom. When the Pharisee ruler asks "what do I need to do to have Aeon Zoe", he is asking precisely what he has left to do to live within God's blessing, in alignment with God's purpose, and he lists all of the laws which he lives within alignment of.
In the first century, it was a prime Jewish understanding that if you were living within the blessing of God, then you would have wealth and many children, and that if you didn't have these things, you or your parents had to have sinned against God. This is why beggars and the poor were so looked down on, they were a living example of the lack of God's blessing. Which is, in turn, precisely why the beatitudes are so powerful...Jesus says up front that many people are already blessed, in line with God, who the world of that day considers completely contemptible.
God is participating with, and blessing, those who you would never consider participating with, and who you consider cursed, or curseable. Because God is saving all of creation.
Jesus says to his followers, "Anybody whose sins you forgive will be forgiven, and anybody whose sins you don't forgive, will not be forgiven". But he also says "If you do not forgive others, God cannot forgive you."
Nothing for Jesus exists in some binary, dualistic setup where there are the things we do with or for God over here, in this box, and the things with do with or for other people, over there, in that box.
How we treat others directly reflects and acts on how we treat Jesus, and vice-versa. I've heard any number of people bristle at the idea that how we behave toward people is on the same level as how we act toward God, but Jesus says repeatedly that they're the same thing, that if we put God first, and put others last, we have actually put God last as well. Paradox exists.
Because in the end, God is relational, and communicative, and reciprocal. We cannot have the Trinity in a meaningful way outside of a relational, reciprocal, communicative existence, and when we taken on the character of Christ, we take on those characteristics as well.
Jesus says, nobody aligns with the blessings and participation of God unless I am in it. This has been translated as "Nobody gets to have eternity in heaven with God unless they believe in me", but I think that this is a problematic understanding of that passage in context of all of the other things Jesus says. It's Jesus' participation in the world, through the Spirit and through people, that brings them into alignment with the blessings and wholeness of God within creation.
Or, as somebody said this past weekend, the crucifixion wasn't for God. It was for us.
So, within this framework...I recently saw it asserted that what Jesus did on the cross was free us from death, so that we could live forever. But I think that this is an extremely flawed understanding of what Jesus was doing, within the context of the previous statement within this article.
God's allowing death to exist within creation is a merciful act, given our obsession as humans with unforgiveness and revenge and passionate hatred of one another. Can you imagine existing, unending, with others who delight in evil, who hate each other, who bring judgement and unforgiveness on each other? Death is a release valve, it's a way of gradually and continually wiping the slate clean.
Interestingly, Jesus speaks of those around him as already being dead. He says that life, Aeon Zoe, is this thing that is present with and in the Kingdom, and that it can only be grasped, here and now, by those who pursue it through Christ.
Aeon Zoe tends to be interpreted as immortality, but that's not the idea. Instead, it's life that's in alignment with God and God's purpose, it is blessed life, shalom life, wholeness. It's what the Pharisee Ruler was asking about. "How can I have the life that is in alignment with God?"
Rob Bell notes in his video "The gods aren't angry" that much of ancient culture (and current culture) is obsessed with the question of how we can know that we've appeased God, that God (or the gods) aren't angry with us, that we are blessed...how can we be righteous, how can we be sure that our crops will grow, that our business will be successful, etc.?
But he says that Jesus asserts that God is already on our side, and that God brings rain (to feed the crops) on the just and unjust a like. That God isn't in the practice of withholding favor or fortune based on what we haven't done, but rather gives more based on how we live in alignment with Him, and not out of a mercurial demand to be pleased, but rather because if we are in alignment with Him, we are in alignment with wholeness, with goodness... we are, in fact, being a blessing to others.
God says to Abraham that he blesses Abraham and his offspring so that they can, in turn, be a blessing to all of the nations. And I would argue that anybody who is in alignment with God is somebody who seeks to be a blessing to those around them, to bring them life and healing and wholeness. But that many people are doing that in their own way, out of their own understanding.
So there are some that bring life by condemning sin.
There are others who bring life by loving and serving.
There are others who bring life with judgement and rebuking and separation.
There are others who bring life through death.
One will note, not all of these means are, perhaps, the most effective at actually bringing life. But God is still working in and with all of them.
Much of Christian culture has this idea that once you're saved, you strive to become holy, which removes you further and further from the world, until finally you die, and in glorification, you live forever in another dimension where only the good saved people live forever with God.
But Jesus spends his time talking about how those who live in alignment with Him, who live in blessing, will be like fountains of living water to those around them. They will be sources of life, right now, in this world. Not because they're able to communicate an ontological idea which can be grasped and accepted by others, but because by living and being, they are forces of healing and blessing. They are Aeon Zoe, and the Kingdom they live in is here, and coming.
So, for me, Easter means that there are no more actions to take to please the gods, because Jesus allowed himself to be the last sacrifice, and calls everybody to choose life, instead. He allowed himself to be destroyed by us, and then rose to show that he was greater than all of our vengeance and betrayal and good intentions, and that his Kingdom was one of blessing and wholeness in participation with God. His kingdom is beyond power, and manipulation, and control, and bombs and war and hatred and revenge. That he doesn't need any of those things, and can forgive freely, so that all may live freely.
That's my hope. I just have to work hard to remember it, some days. Which also means that even as I see more darkness, and brokenness, and sin around me, things that I cannot escape, that I cannot get free of...
I don't despair, because I know that I'm in this with Jesus, with God, and that good is being worked and offered and provided constantly in the world, to work against the darkness, to work against evil, to work against selfishness, to work against despair.
And so I see goodness and wholeness happening and coming together in all things, in all places. I see it happening in the churches I don't agree with, and in the political parties who are for things I'm against, and in parts of the world where people are actively killing each other for terrible reasons, and on the internet where people are hating each other and engaged in destroying the image of humanity in others with their words and actions... in all of these places, in all of these things, God's love, God's goodness and wholeness, is seeking, a particle at a time, to bring healing and redemption into the midst of that darkness.
I think often of my friend Stephanie Drury, who works at the UR department of a hospital, and she sees many terrible cases come across her desk of patients that their hospital is dealing with, of people whose healing by the hospital can only be incomplete and fractured, who live in terrible in situations, in broken families, with people who see them as less than human, and all she can do is pray and try not to be overwhelmed by the darkness, and she fights and strives for the helpless around her, and she is a source of living water.
There are a lot of people in my life who are sources of life and water in their own ways. I'm very blessed to have them as examples and reminders.
My friend Damon recently messaged me with the phrase "Jesus didn't come to save the world, he came to save YOU...because by saving individuals...their individual journey affects the whole."
I think that I see what he's saying. And I think that that's very true for some people.
But salvation...I don't think it's like a light switch, either on or off. It's a lodestar, like the north pole...it orients us, within relationship to each other, within life.
So, if your alignment is not within wholeness, toward life, then what you bring to those around you likely won't be life. It will be whatever it is you're aligned with. Or, as Peter Rollins says, "...tell me what it is you do because you believe in God. What you do is what you believe. The things you say you believe, but which aren't present in what you do, aren't actually what you believe." (paraphrase)
So my hope is in spite of church, in spite of politics, in spite of current events, in spite of...everything. It's fighting my way free of the mess, to see what life is, to turn around and bring some life back into the mess, and then fighting my way free again to get another glimpse. It's constantly struggling against the tide of everything that wants my focus somewhere else, of all of the things that are part of our existence that don't bring life, or hope, or wonder, to find the things that do, and then emulate them in this world, and maybe find a way to get others to catch a glimpse too.
Because the more of us that are grabbing hand fulls of hope, of light, of wholeness, of beauty, and bringing them wholeheartedly into the world that we esteem and love and forgive, then the more room there will be for other people to hope and love and grasp and forgive as well.
Because Jesus is here to save the world, and he's participating with us to do it.