God Whose I Am

And yet, when all is said and done, advance which comes as continuous progress is an expansion of the circle of which self is still the centre. It may theoretically be so expanded as to include all mankind, even all spiritual beings. But self is still the centre, and if God Himself be included in the circle, He is peripheral, not central; He is, for me, my God, not God whose I am. (William Temple)

Help Us To Change

God, help us to change. To change ourselves and to change our world. To know the need for it. To deal with the pain of it. To feel the joy of it. To undertake the journey without understanding the destination. The art of gentle revolution. Amen. (Michael Leunig)

The Day the World Cried

[Today we enjoyed our Sunday Eucharist at the beach, complete with sand altar decorated by the children. The readings were Psalm 98:4-10 and John 2:1-11.]

We have a very cute little dog with a pushed in face. We also had her mother as a pet, and her name was Piggy because of the noise she made while eating. The day she died it rained. I said the world was crying at her death. A funny way of looking at things perhaps, but one not that far off Scripture. We often divorce spiritual and material to the point of paganism. But Psalm 98 reminds us that creation praises God in its own way. And the Gospel we read has the water cooperating with the wine in adding to the joy of the marriage, but more importantly allowing the saviour to be manifested to his disciples (Jn 2:11). We often think of the miracles of Jesus as him overpowering or taming nature, or manipulating inert, dead, material. But the alternative view of all of creation responding to the saviour makes just as much theological sense, if not more. The spiritual and material in the Christian scheme of things are not dualistically divorced. God made all that is, and if God ever stopped creating, everything that is would immediately cease to exist. Creation is continually in the presence of God, and might not be as 'unaware' of it as we think. The classic example of this is the darkness at the crucifixion of Jesus. We often think of this as God making the light fade to make a point. But what if it were the world mourning the loss of the saviour?

All this fits with a proper understanding of the Incarnation, sacraments and the bodily resurrection of Jesus. If God became human, and was bodily resurrected, and if we can receive God by eating and drinking, and doing this together, then it makes sense that the world mourned the death of the saviour that dark afternoon.

The Two Best Ways To Live (Kids' Talk)

Following on from the ten commandments as great ways to live, we have now the 2 greatest ways to live.

Remember when we talked about the 10 great ways to live? Can anyone remember any of them?

Hard isn't it? There are so many. But Jesus taught us a way to remember the ten. He noticed that the first four are about God, and the last 6 are about other people. So he made the 10 great ways to live into 2 greatest ways to live: Love God with everything you are, and love yur neighbour as yourself.

[If you want to impress everyone you can use this distinction between the first 4 and the last 6 as a mnemonic device to remember the 10 pretty easily.]

A Prayer to Accept the Wonder and Mystery of Faith

When your Son lived on earth he gathered the children into his arms and rejoiced in the simplicity of their faith. Give us such faith, that we who are bowed down by doubts and fears may know, deep in our hearts, the truth of your love, and with the children be ready to accept the wonder and mystery of faith without seeking always to understand. Amen.

A Practical Benefit of Forgiveness

A former inmate of a Nazi concentration camp was visiting a friend who had shared the ordeal with him.

"Have you forgiven the Nazis?" he asked his friend.

"Yes."

"Well, I haven't. I'm still consumed with hatred for them."

"In that case," said his friend gently, "they still have you in prison." (From Anthony de Mello)

I remember reading of a Mengele twin who said that if she met Mengele she would forgive him. Why? Because otherwise she let's him control her life. She forgives for herself, and is an extraordinary freedom - the freedom to forgive when the trespass is unforgivable.

Choosing Involves Renunciation

Many of us find it difficult to make choices. This is not because we cannot find anything that suits our preference, but precisely for the opposite reason, namely, we find it difficult to exclude the things which will not be involved in our choice. Scholastic philosophers had the dictum: ‘Every choice is also a renunciation.’ This is very true since whenever we choose one thing, we necessarily exclude certain other things.

For this reason we find it hard to choose a vocation, an occupation, a set of friends, a life companion or even a new house or car. The difficulty arises because, in choosing, we have to limit ourselves, and our lonely, insatiable insides rebel against this. Thus we often end up dissipating our creative and affective energies: hanging loose, spreading ourselves too thin, unable to make clear choices and commitments, procrastinating indefinitely, being wishy-washy and generally being unable to make decisions which could give our lives more direction and thus help us to love and work more effectively.(Ronald Rolheiser)

Argument For the Existence of God

The Bible has no arguments for the existence of God. There are moments of conflict with God, anger with God, doubt about God's purposes, anguish and lostness when people have no real sense of God's presence... Don't imagine that the Bible is full of comfortable and reassuring things about the life of belief and trust; it isn't. It is often about the appalling cost of letting God come near you and of trying to trust him when all the evidence seems to have gone. But Abraham, Moses and St Paul don't sit down to work out whether God exists; they are already caught up in something the imperative reality of which they can't deny or ignore. At one level, you have to see that the very angst and struggle they bring to their relation with God is itself a kind of argument for God: if they take God that seriously, at least this isn't some cosy made-up way of making yourself feel better. (Rowan Williams)

Crux

by Peter Steele

Seeing you go
Where the dead are bound, and having no resource
To twist those timbers out of their lethal course,
I want at least to know

What I can say
Now that the boasts have blown away and even
The cursing has grown faint, while the pall of heaven
Abolishes the day.

I was never wise
In word or silence, never understood
The killer in my members, thought of good
At what one might devise

From scraps of evil.
How can I learn a way for me or mine
To stand beside you? Vinegar, not wine,
Is all we give you still.

Among the dice
And the dirt, with more of shame than love to show,
All that will come to heart is 'Do not go
Alone to Paradise.'

The Free and Unmerited Initiative of God

It is significant that the origins of God's call of Israel are remembered no further back than the call to Abraham and Sarah. God initiates the call to Israel, and this free choice and initiative of God is always the practical, historical expression of what we call, generally, grace. God chooses, God initiates, and the relationship with God never begins with a movement from the side of creation. It is because God initiates that God is free to be surprising and novel in the relationship with creation, and God's response is never determined by human action (particularly failure). Later Israel's election was set in the broader context of the implied covenant of creation and the covenant made to Noah and all creatures. This is why the covenant through Noah precedes the covenant with Abraham. However, it is interesting to note that Israel never took its election to be a specific example of this wider covenant between God and creation. There is evidence in the Scriptures that Israel did understand her election in a broad and universal context, but as the fulfillment of the general, not a particular example of a more universal covenant. Israel's covenant was particular in itself and unique, related to the covenant with Noah, but not just an expression of it. See Hans Urs von Balthasar, Engagement with God, pp. 13-14.

2009 Blog Conference Posts

The Inaugural Adelaide Anglican Blog Conference is taking shape. The titles of the seven posts that will be published over the course of the conference are as follows:

'Inspiration, Inerrancy and Biblical Authority: Some Thoughts for those Navigating Treacherous Waters' (Right Revd Dr Stephen Pickard)

The Wisdom of Ants and the Storehouses of Snow: Fresh Readings of the Bible For a Planet in Peril. (Dr Lucy Larkin)

Prisoners of Belief: On Epistemic Privilege and Episcopal Fiats (Revd Dr David Willsher)

Penned, Pinned, or Patronized - the Word of God and Human Presumption (Revd Barbara Messner)

The Bible: The Living Word or a Golden Calf (The Very Revd Dr Steven Ogden)

Just How Plain is the "Plain Sense" of Scripture? (Revd Dr Phillip Tolliday)

A Seamless Garment: Reading Scripture as a Whole from the Whole. (Revd Dr Warren Huffa)

This promises to be an important contribution to the debate about Scripture in the Anglican Communion, emanating from little old Adelaide! And it all begins February 27, 2009.

People From the Past Might Not Have Been As Stupid As We Sometimes Think!

This post from Faith and Theology makes some very important points about historical theology. Essentially, our task in reading theology from the past is not simply a matter of sifting out what is trans-historical and what is culturally bound. When we do that we assume that we can tell what is core and what is not. Instead, we must acknowledge the integrity of the text, and then realise that it was possible to write this theology (whatever it was) and be Christian. This way the writings of the past can challenge us (for instance, those silly bits that we sift out might be quite challenging when worked theologically), and we can no longer assume that we possess the only way of looking at things.

The author critiised in the post responded later to the accusations. He agrees with the points made by Ben Myers, but just doesn't think he made the errors as accused.

The Freedom of God's Covenant With Israel

In a previous post I mentioned that in the story of Exodus 32 God's action is not determined by human behaviour, particularly human failure. This corresponds to the free initiative of God in choosing Israel in the first place. God chose Israel not because of its power or righteousness, but out of love. (See Deut 7:7-8) And because God's free choice of love was not determined by Israel's standing, to then break the covenant by destroying the people because of their abhorrent failure would be a denial of God's freedom. In the same way that God chose Israel not for any reason inherent in Israel (that is, God's action was not conditional upon certain human behaviour), so too God can, in God's freedom, bring a surprising word of forgiveness into the cul-de-sac of human failure. This foundation of the covenant upon the freedom of God also corresponds with the purpose of God's election: our participation in the freedom of God. (See Rom 8:21)

All of this continues seamlessly in the story of Jesus, particularly his crucifixion. The cross of Jesus is a low point in the history of human failure, but it becomes the means for a new and final word of forgiveness for all.

For Pentecost 22(A)
See Hans Urs von Balthasar, Engagement With God, pp. 13-18.

Perichoresis and Hospitality

This is very good on perichoresis, the Trinity and our salvation. And while you are at it, check this out on Trinity and Hospitality.

Enough

Transcendent and eternal God,
how in our finitude, how in our humanity,
can we even pretend to know very much about you -
you, God of all creation, God of all ages,
God of all history, from everlasting to everlasting?

But we praise you that we know enough - enough because you have come to us in Jesus,

Because of his birth in Bethlehem, not in Jerusalem,
his childhood in Nazareth, not in Rome,
his healing of the sick, his teaching of the kingdom,

Because Jesus is the Good News, the Good News about you and from you,
Because of the people who followed him and were his friends,
the disreputable and the poor with whom he was identified,
his trial as a criminal, his execution as an outcast,

Because your love cannot be killed and no tomb can contain you.
God of Jesus,
when reason fails and hope lies dormant,
break into our wilderness with the news
that because of him we know enough:
enough for our trust to be restored,
enough for our faith to be renewed,
enough to hold because we are held.

Enough to know that you are our God and will never let us go. Amen.

(Terry Falla)

God is Faithful to the Covenant

Questions about the historicity of the flood shouldn't cloud the point of the story of the flood and of Noah and the covenant. The point is the contrast between God's attempted destruction of all living things because of the continual evil of the human heart (6:5) with God's recognition that this is not the way to deal with that evil. (See 8:21-22; 9:8-17) This is preparatory to the calling of Abraham and Sarah as God's response to the evil of the human heart, leading to the new covenant prophesied by Jeremiah and others (Jer 31:31-34) fulfilled in Jesus (Matt 26:26-29). I don't take the Genesis story to mean that God had to learn this. The story is a literary device to make the point; and it does so effectively. And it is not difficult to see this, especially given the function of Genesis 1-11. Incidentally, this story also criticizes human beings,, for we have not learned that killing off the 'evil ones' will not magically bring righteousness.

We meet something similar in Genesis 18 and Exodus 32. In these stories Abraham and Moses respectively convince God that destroying people is not necessarily the best thing to do, and frankly questionable considering the kind of God God is. Some people are tempted to read this as literally true, which makes God needing to be persuaded. (Or at best a test of Abraham and Moses). Whether these stories have some more ancient source and began their life with such an interpretation, this is not how they function in the Bible now. They are, again, literary devices highlighting that, even under extremis God is just and merciful (Gen 18) and faithful to the covenant (Exod 32). In the latter case, it is the covenant that is more important than the sin itself, and God acts on sin, not the other way around. This comes directly out of the source of the covenant, but more on that later.

For further discussion of this point see Rowan Williams, Tokens of Trust, pp. 17-19, or point 12 in my Chapter 1 study notes.

For Pentecost 22(A)

The Courage to be Non-violent

When my father was dying, my daughter was holding his hand and said, ‘Well, Granddad, what are the recipes for a good life?’ And he said, ‘The recipe for a good life is to have courage, love, and hope.’ And I think that’s the major challenge facing a pacifist, and that’s why I think religious pacifists in a sense are better able to move in this direction than humanists. And that is to have the courage in a conflict situation to be willing to sacrifice yourself, to bring the pain of the situation on to yourself, rather than to inflict it on others.And that of course was the challenge of Gandhi, and Martin Luther King and all the others that have adopted the non-violent witness. And the challenge for me personally there is whether confronted by those situations, I would have the courage to make that sacrifice.

Kevin Clements, a member of the Religious Society of Friends and Professor and Foundation Director of the Australian Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Queensland, speaking on Radio National Encounter: The Far Side of Revenge http://www.abc.net.au/rn/relig/enc/stories/s1534166.htm