As part of my Lenten mediations this year, I’ve been re-reading The Heart of the World by Hans Urs Von Balthasar. Even in translation, the force of his metaphors shapes words into images that pierce with heart with stunning clarity. I might try to jot down a few highlights that are cause for particular celebration.

Von Balthasar opens by focusing upon the thrust of the book, the cross of Christ at the center of all things. He says,

The very form of the cross, extending out into the four winds, always told the ancient Church that the Cross means solidarity: its outstretched arms would gladly embrace the universe. (13)

He quotes Cyril of Jerusalem, “On the Cross God stretched out his hands to encompass the bounds of the universe.” The cross is real power revealed in real weakness, and it reveals the love of God that beats as the heart of all things—anticipating and sustaining all things by his Word alone.

The broken body of Christ becomes the focal point of the people of God. And in Christ we who were not a people become a people. Thus the cross is at the heart of all restored relations: between man and God and between man and man.

In chapter 1, Von Balthasar highlights the despondent condition of humanity: “Prisons of finitude! Like every other being, man is born in many prisons.” In the fall, the cosmic harmony of particularity and universality collapse. All humans wander alone in their grief—longing for and resisting the restored bonds of relation. He says,

How far it is from one being to its closest neighbor! And even if they love each oter and wave to one another from island to island, even if they attempt to exchange solitudes and pretend they have unity, how much more painfully does disappointment then fall upon them when they touch invisible bars—the cold glass pane against which they hurl themselves like captive birds. No one can tear down his own dungeon; no one knows who inhabits the next cell. (19)

We as isolated beings long for communion, but we don’t live in a vacuum. We live in the endlessly moving stream of time. “The rigid ground under is already beginning to tremble and give way” (21). In one sense, all of existence appears in a flux. He says,

Are you grieving? Trust Time: soon you will be laughing. Are you laughing? You cannot hold fast your laughter, for soon you will be weeping. You are blown from mood to mood, from one state to another, from waking to sleeping and from sleeping again to waking. (21)

Time continues to swirl and move and nothing can stop it. “You cannot draw the river onto the dry bank, there to trap its imperative to flow, as if it were a fish” (22). “The wise among men seek to fathom the foundations of existence, but all they can do is to describe one wave of the current” (22). As Von Balthasar continues discussing the ever changing, transforming nature of time, he looks to the fact of our existence in this ocean as a sign of love. And the rhythm of the oceans of time might be likened to the beating of a heart, the heart of this world: the love of God. Beneath the ever changing flux of existence, beneath the seeming chaos of this world, is a love that cannot be denied.

You sense Time and yet have not sensed this heart? You feel the stream of grace which rushes into you, warm and red, and yet have not felt how you are loved? You seek for a proof, and yet you yourself are that proof. You seek to entrap him, the Unknown One, in the mesh of your knowledge, and yet you yourself are entrapped in the inescapable net of his might. You would like to grasp, but you yourself are already grasped. You would like to overpower and you yourself being overpowered. You pretend to be seeking but you have long (and for all time) been found. (29)

As long as we are blind to the hand of God that sustains and supports our every breath, we continue to struggle in the darkness like blind, drunk men. But when God in His grace opens our eyes to the presence of His love, the isolation of space and endless flux of time become the very realms where I rest in the endless flow of His love. I am his servant and He is Lord of all.

Last year I downloaded a bunch of lectures from the James Houston website and lately I’ve been re-listening to these lectures. Well into his 80s, Houston is a seasoned follower of Jesus Christ and offers the gentle wisdom that comes from years of following. A former Oxford Don, he helped start Regent College in the early 70s. He talks primarily on the spiritual life and while living in the light of the Reformers, he draws from the whole rich history of spiritual devotion. I think it would be worth your while to visit his site, read his writings and listen to his lectures.

Yesterday after church, a few of us went to our usual Sunday lunch spot: El Sazon. Michelle brought a friend, “Kirby” to meet us, and we immediately dove into a lengthy discussion on Wendell Berry, technology, and the challenge of living as persons created in the image of God.

This morning, I ran across an interesting essay that connects with this challenge of technology vs. persons about the New Media and the implications for values choices. Some of you might find it worth spend a few minutes reading. Media Determinism in Hyperspace. Note: the links to essay sections are at bottom of page.

Update: The author provides an interesting highlight of some the thinkers who have contributed to the conversation about the the impact and potential impact of technology in the human situation. Does technology makes us more or less human? This is mostly a quick overview but wortwhile for catching some of the highilghts of this ongiong discussion.

As I read, I was thinking about how Dumitru Staniloae interprets the Fathers to teach that God creates time and space as a realm when humans can enter into relationship with him and with one another. Sin thwarts this natural order and in turn time and space are no longer transparent to love but become opaque and actually block the light of love.

Update: That link for Staniloae led to other links that were dead or not in English. This link provides a little more background on the theoligan and his works. Staniloae

Yesterday’s lectionary reading focused on Jesus healing the blind man. At the end of the story, Jesus says,” For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.” The healing of the blind man becomes a way for him to speak of sight and blindness in a whole different way. Speaking to those who view themselves as God’s elect, Jesus action and statement reinforces a constant theme: “Your hope and your confidence must be in God alone. Election, following Torah, the temple, all your religious observances, all the promises–these are all rooted in God’s goodness. So don’t misplace your trust.” His stories and actions and words continually remind the listener that they must look beyond all these externals to the Father and trust in the Father for their redemption. By failing to do so, they reveal themselves as blind, as cursed by God.

Thus some people are blind and in darkness, whereas others can see and are in the light. There’s a contrast apparent all through the gospel, in fact all the Scripture. People in darkness and people in light. In John 3, Jesus calls this judgment, “the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil.”

If you follow this line of thought throughout the bible, you’ll find many contrasts between people who are in the darkness and people who are in the light. Just reflecting on the metaphor itself, we see the obvious: people in the darkness cannot see, people in the light can see. As the Proverbs say:

18But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn,
which shines brighter and brighter until full day.
19The way of the wicked is like deep darkness;
they do not know over what they stumble.

It might be beneficial in our spiritual study, to take time and list out contrasts throughout the text of those in darkness vs. those in light. One stumbles, the other walks along a brighter and bright path. Romans contrasts Adam as the father of those in darkness vs. Jesus as the Father of those in the light. Like the fateful act in the garden, those in the darkness take what is not given; those in the light receive all things as gifts from God. Darkness is characterized by striving; light is resting. Those in the dark look inward for their identity; those in the light look upward for their identity. Paul’s discussion of the works of the flesh vs. the fruit of the Spirit might be seen as a continuation of this dark vs. light theme.

19Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, 21envy,[d] drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. 22But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. (Gal 5:19-23)

The other New Testament reading from Sunday was from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. At one point he says, “For at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light…” (Ephesians 5:8). Paul presents this contrast in a way that helps us to create a framework for personal reflection. He says you were in darkness but now you are in the light. We have moved from darkness to light. This didn’t happen by chance, but is a gift from God. As Paul writes in Colossians, “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Col 1:13-14).

Just as Jesus heals the blind man, God is the one delivers us from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light. So Paul suggests that our position is in the light. Our trust in Jesus is a sign that God has opened our blind eyes. He has freed us from darkness and brought us into the light of His son. After Paul writes that “now you are light in the Lord,” he says “Walk as children of light.” Thus Paul says in effect, “you’re in the light, so walk in the light.” He first indicates our position: light. Then he follows with a command: walk in the light.

In other words, be who you are. We are not striving to become children of the Light. We are not striving to produce spiritual fruit. By the grace of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit in accordance with the will of the Father, we are children of the light, children of the Spirit. Thus the fruit of the Spirit is our natural expression. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control are all naturally part of who we are in Christ. Thus Paul is exhorting us to live as what we are.

When we notice the absence of such fruits or the presence of the “works of the flesh,” we look to the author and finisher of our faith, Jesus Christ and ask for his mercy and grace. He is working in us to will and to do for His good pleasure. He shows us who we are in the light, then we long to walk and live in the light, and he works it out in us.

Our life becomes a journey of trust. We trust that the same God who opened our blind eyes, and has delivered us from the kingdom of darkness, will ultimately present us as blameless. So we move toward who we are. I have been made perfect in love, so in trusting obedience I move toward love. I have been given fullness of joy, so in trusting obedience I move toward joy. I am the righteousness of God in Christ, so in trusting obedience I move toward righteousness. All movement is a movement of trusting obedience that God has completed this work in me and will eventually fully reveal it through me.

These texts are perfect reminders of our Lenten journey to become who we are. Blessings!

March 1, 2005

Happy St. David’s Day! St. David is the patron Saint of Wales much like Patrick is to Ireland. Many churches throughout Wales are dedicated to him and he is remembered for planting monasteries. It appears that Celtic Christians often spread the gospel by planting monasteries, small communities of faith. Like leaven, the members of these communities sought to live the reality of the kingdom in the midst of the world. Some writers have suggested that they might be known as “outposts of heaven.”

One challenge for any ongoing community is to keep the vision alive and not fall into patterns that lead to decaying faith and relationships. Thus these communities often returned afresh to their roots of faith to rediscover who and what they were called to be. Part of St. David’s mission may have been to help foster spiritual renewal in these communities.

His life’s final message played an important role in communicating and forming Welsh spirituality. He said, “Lords, brothers and sisters, be joyful and keep your faith and your belief, and do the little things that you have heard and seen from me.” The call to an honest, joyful and simple working out of faith in the “little things” still resonates today.

St. David’s message may help us in our travel through the Lenten wilderness. In one sense, Lent is about returning to our roots—reconverting in a sense. So many outside the Christian faith fail to see the true reality of the “good news” because we often get so distracted by the battles or trends of the moment.

Let us return afresh to the good news that Jesus Christ is Lord, meaning that in the mystery of His great love and providence, God has entered human history. He has identified with human suffering by taking the pain and brokenness and sin of an anguished world into himself and thus restoring all things.

While evil may still seem strong and threatening upon our planet, it cannot quench hope. The joy and peace of the gospel will prevail. Not through human strength, not through some church planner’s agenda but through the goodness of our God. Let us embrace this hope and become people who live not by the strength of human power or our ingenuity always striving to get ahead, but rather people of faith who live by radical trust in the love revealed in our sweet Lord Jesus Christ.

Here is a wonderful poem in honor of St David by the great Welsh poet, Gwenallt. Early in life Gwenallt sought to bring social change as an atheist Marxist, but the emptiness of this worldview eventually became apparent and he returned to the faith of his fathers, continuing to work for live for the reality of the kingdom.

St. David (Dewi Sant)

There is no border between two worlds in the Church;
The Church militant on earth is the same
As the victorious Church in Heaven.
And the saints will be in the two-one Church.
They will come to worship with us, a little congregation,
The saints, our oldest ancestors,
Who built Wales on the foundation of
The Cradle, the Cross, and the Empty Grave;
And they will go out as before to wander through
Their old familiar places
And bring the Gospel to Wales.
I saw David strolling from county to county like
God’s gypsy
With the Gospel and the Altar in his caravan;
And coming to us to the Colleges and schools
To show the purpose of learning.
He went down to the bottom of the pit with the miners
And threw the light of his wise lamp on the coal-face;
On the platform of the steel works he put on the
goggles and the little blue shirt
And showed the Christian being purified like the
metal in the furnace;
And led the proletariat to his unrespectable Church.
He carried the Church everywhere
As a body, which was life and brain and will
That did little and great things.
He brought the Church to our homes,
Put the Holy Vessels on the kitchen table,
And got bread from the pantry and bad wine from the cellar,
And stood behind the table like a tramp
Lest he should hide the wonder of the Sacrifice from us.
And after Communion we chatter by the fireside,
And he spoke to us about God’s natural order,
The person, the family, the nation and the society of nations,
And the Cross keeping us from turning one of them into a god.
He said that God shaped our nation
For His Own purpose,
And her death would impair that Order.
Anger furrowed in his forehead
As he lashed us for licking the arse of the English Leviathan,
And letting ourselves, in his Christian country,
Be turned into Pavlov’s dogs.
We asked him for his forgiveness, his strength, and his ardour
And, before he left us, told him
To give the Lord Jesus Christ our poor congratulations,
And ask Him if we could come to Him
To praise Him forever in Heaven,
When that longed for moment comes
And we have to say “Good night” to the world.
(1951)

I met new brother in the Lord today. A delightful passionate Scotsman living and ministering in Australia. His blog reveals an intense devotion that should stir your soul, so I encourage you to stop by and listen afresh to power of the Good News.

Dick Staub writes about faith and culture and usually has some interesting perspectives. On his latest update, he references Hedgehog Review. The articles provide a thoughtful analysis of various cultural challenges.

When I was in graduate school, Robert Bellah’s Habits of the Heart profoundly affected my understanding of church in America. Bellah and his team of researchers suggestion that individualism is at the heart of American worship. And unfortanately, this individualism precedes community and often overwhelms any movement toward community.
I just finished reading a fascinating talk he delivered to the Unitarian Universalists in 1998: Unitarian Universalism in Societal Perspective. He argues that social dissent is at the heart of American religion, making Baptists and Unitarian Universalists both seperate strains in the grand untradition of dissent. His talk is challenging and critizuing the UU for tendencies to devalue notiions that provide a framework for developing true community. I think all churches could benefit from reading his lecture. Along the way, he references Mark Lilla who makes the case that the sixties social sexual revolution and the eighties economic boon are both sides of the same coin.
He says:

The revolution of the sixties did not come from nowhere. I would argue that it was another stage in the unfolding of what I have already described as our deepest common value, respect for the individual conscience, the individual person, a respect that is rooted in our dominant religious tradition of dissenting Protestantism

And again:

I called to mind the dissenting tradition. What was so important about the Baptists, and other sectarians such as the Quakers, was the absolute centrality of religious freedom, of the sacredness of individual conscience in matters of religious belief. We generally think of religious freedom as one of many kinds of freedom, many kinds of human rights, first voiced in the European Enlightenment, and echoing around the world ever since. But Georg Jellinek, Max Weber’s friend, and, on these matters, his teacher, published a book in 1895 called Die Erklärung der Menschen- und Bürgerrechte, translated into English in 1901 as The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens, which argued that the ultimate source of all modern notions of human rights is to be found in the radical sects of the Protestant Reformation, particularly the Quakers and Baptists. Of this development Weber writes, “Thus the consistent sect gives rise to an inalienable personal right of the governed as against any power, whether political, hierocratic or patriarchal. Such freedom of conscience may be the oldest Right of Man—as Jellinek has argued convincingly, at any rate it is the most basic Right of Man because it comprises all ethically conditioned action and guarantees freedom from compulsion, especially from the power of the state. In this sense the concept was as unknown to antiquity and the Middle Ages as it was to Rousseau. . . ” Weber then goes on to say that the other Rights of Man were later joined to this basic right, “especially the right to pursue one’s own economic interests, which includes the inviolability of individual property, the freedom of contract, and vocational choice.” (1978:1209) So, almost from the beginning the sacredness of conscience, of the individual person was linked to “the right to pursue one’s own economic interests.” Remember that Weber locates the famous “Protestant ethic” in the intersection of Calvinism and sectarianism out of which our own dissenting tradition comes. Freedom of conscience and freedom of enterprise are more closely, even genealogically, linked than many of us would like to believe. As I hope to show, they are both expressions of an underlying ontological individualism.

For those willing to wrestle with Bellah’s ideas, I think he raises many valid challenges that face the contemporary church and society. We must seriously consider how our actions (praxis) is derived from ideas or dotrines (doxis) that may lead to unrestrained individualism–even when we are proclaiming the value of community. For Bellah, he finds hope of connecting with the sacraments, the communion of the saints and in a social ontology rooted in Trinitarian theology.

Chronic illness can crush the human spirit and yet in the mystery of grace it can also make it flower. Some people who have endured unbearable anguish still blossom in radiant beauty. If you want to listen to the struggles of those facing chronic hep C or interact with them or even connect them with others facing chronic illness, here are two blogs worth visiting: Buzz Trexler and Debbie .

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.
From The Stolen Child by WB Yeats

The world is weary of weeping and war: nation against nation and even brother against brother. Our news baptizes us in the causalities of multiple wars in multiple lands. From the violent birth of a nation in Iraq to the ongoing genocide of a people in Dafur: death and destruction are the only life many people know. And in some strange irony, we Americans complete the cycle by entertaining ourselves through an endless parade of murder mysteries.

Yeats seems to be right, “the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.” Some would escape to fairylands and beyond, hoping to enjoy some tiny bit of happiness in this evil infested planet.

Pain, suffering, war and death characterize life for many people in this world. We may protest wars and we may voice our opposition to tyrant leaders (either at home or abroad) but that does not change the reality for millions of mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, sons and daughters, sisters and brothers who will lay down tonight in terror and grief over the unending real pain in this world.

How can we ever really face the magnitude of suffering and evil in this world? Some may choose to ignore it for as long as possible, living a life of hedonistic delight as the world burns around them. Others may deny any ultimate significance to the material world, suggesting it is all an illusion or all subject to destruction anyway. One popular approach is to suggest that everything is some part of divine life: of course, this carries with it the disturbing notion that evil and good are equally divine.

Is it possible things are not the way they are supposed to be? Is it possible the longing we have in our hearts for goodness and truth and beauty are intuitive longings for a world that might have been or might still be?

Today is the beginning of the second great cycle in the Christian year known as Lent-Easter-Pentecost. It is a time of honestly facing the evil in our world but it is also about facing the possibility of becoming humans who know the reality of giving and receiving love.

In the Lenten journey, we face the disturbing truth that the problem of evil in this world is a human problem. When we despair over the tyranny of evil in faraway places, we must not ignore the reality of that evil within. Think of the anger we have felt at times to other people in the workplace, on the highway, or in the community. Someone might say, “But my anger is justified. Did you see what they did to me?” Do not all perpetrators of evil feel justified in their actions?

“Of course, some innocents will die, but this is the only way to maintain peace and order.”

“They deserved to die for what they did to me!”

And on and on the excuses for evil continue. During Lent, we honestly face this propensity toward evil within.

The strange and often misunderstood story of Jesus, suggests that God does not ignore evil but takes the pain and power of it onto Himself. Jesus comes to tell Israel that their God has come to dwell among them in a way they never could have imagined. He will become the suffering servant. He will take the pain and hurt and very real anguish of this evil world onto Himself. In so doing, He will make a way for humans to become truly human: truly beings shaped and fully revealed in the beauty of perfect love.

The Lenten journey is about facing the real hope offering in this action and message of Jesus.

I invite you to take this Lenten journey with me: this means facing and confronting our own personal failings and attitudes of anger and violence and unforgiveness. And yet at the same time, it means looking with hope to Jesus whose life makes that stunning proclamation that God has taken the pain and evil in this world including my life onto Himself, freeing me to become a lover. This amazing good news frees me to embrace the suffering persons around me—even if that means I may suffer in the process.

Blessings on your journey.