What Did I Do?

I am not entirely sure what I started here (as you could tell from my comment in the previous post).  I started with asking the question regarding Jesus' intent in giving the Sermon on the Mount (or Matthew's . . . whatever).  I do not want to lose sight of the fact that there is an establishing of authority here.  And that from this Jesus is clarifying the authority of life and the authority of death.  I assumed that this meant that part of the intent was to create a crisis between the two authorities/economies.  From this I broadened the question to ask whether not natural/political occurences also speak of this crisis.  I felt that this was most certainly the case for Isaiah and the Gospels too I should add have the natural and political order shake at the resurrection and apocalypse.  So from here I hoped to move to the contemporary.  Now I would like to keep in mind the stimulating conversation on demythologization over at The Fire and the Rose.  Is the natural order any longer connected to the Word of God and further, to what is the Word of God connected?  The social practices of the church?  The sacramental practices of the church?  The preaching and hearing of the Bible?  The expressions of the Good, True and Beautiful in the world wherever they may be?  Does all of reality carry the potential of hearing the Word?  Is serenity as much a medium as crisis?  In the discussion below I moved quickly to the extreme of the Holocaust.  The other move I suppose is to 9/11.  This event has significant markings of a prophetic/apocalyptic event.  Punks and gangsters sang about 'dropping bombs'

 

but then some guys came along and dropped bombs not in strategic empirical move nor in random desperate move but in a symbolic move.  An Abomination that causes Desolation.  If we can assume that there is an overlay of the Economy of God and the Economy of the World then to what extent to these orders run parallel and to what extent do they rupture and hemorrhage?  Would subscribing to a Bultmannian view of demythology mean that there is no overlay and they there is only surface or perhaps a palimpsest of interpretation and translation?  This would mean that all of existence is interpreted within the kernel of truth that is Gospel, right?  I can't really follow that path.  But I suppose prophecy only becomes canonized after the event and perhaps after the community has discerned the event.

I understand that my thinking is not getting much clearer but I hope (at lest for my own sake) that continuing this monologue will help either develop my thinking or expose its absurdity. The question again is whether God acts in nature/social order with the purpose of creating crisis.  My gut response is still to say yes, yes, yes.  And then to say that this has nothing (necessarily) to do with condemning or justifying people's actions within that economy.  It is only to say that there are multiple economies that at times run contrary to one another.  Sometimes our actions create ruptures and other times we are caught in something larger than our personal actions.  Does this make any sense?

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God Did It

At a Christmas party this past December I was in a friendly conversation in which I was asked what I hoped to achieve or accomplish in my sermons. I talked a little about how at the very least I hoped the congregation could actually learn something about themselves, God or the world. I talked a little about my hope that the sermon contributed broadly to a person's overall spiritual formation. Then today I preached partially on Jesus's command to store up treasures in heaven. This passage of course is found in The Sermon on Mount. As I prepared for this message I began to ask myself what Jesus possibly could have hoped to 'accomplish' in his sermon. Before I could to anything very relevant I felt as though Jesus was first of all establishing his authority. Going up the side of the hill evokes images of Moses ascending Mt. Sinai to receive God's instruction. The imagery in Matthew is complete with a tiered ascenscion with Jesus at the top, the disciples in front of him, at the crowds in background (at Sinai the 70 elders ascended partway while the rest remained at the foot of the mountain). Jesus acknowledges the law but places under his authority. Following this I wondered whether Jesus hoped to create a crisis for the people. The sermon runs along in dialectical fashion always exposes the audience to the appeals of two authorities from which they must live.
I shared some this in the sermon and then in the adult educaton time afterwards we talked a little about the message. I asked the group about my suggestion that perhaps Jesus was trying to create a crisis in his audience. There was some general agreement to this idea but then the conversation quickly turned to whether or not God wills or creates 'crisis' in people's lives. To this we could not of course agree. God does not creates crises, right, though he seemed to be doing in so in his message.
Is this the difference between natural theology and dogmatic theology? Does natural revelation function in the same manner as special revelation. It did for Isaiah. And today I would argue that at the very least natural (and manmade) crises are in fact revelatory. Crises expose false foundations and de-centre our lives. The expose the spirit of a person or community.
Is it so horrible to say that indeed God caused perhaps even that God sent that crisis? Why does this have to then be equated with retribution for sin? Most often what a crisis reveals today is not the sin of those who suffered but of the ones who ordered things so that those might suffer. The connection of God with natural events carries a whole host of unhelpful associations. I am asking honestly, is it so horrible to say that God causes all or particular (I am not sure what is more helpful) crises? Is it possible to say that in a manner that then allows us then to appropriately discern and respond to the revelation latent within that event?

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A Review of Tripp York's The Politics of Martyrdom

The first volume of the polyglossia series provided me with a wonderful reentry into Mennonite theology. Volume Two was not a bad follow up . . . (thanks to Canadian Mennonite for the review copy)
In The Purple Crown: The Politics of Martyrdom Tripp York offers commentary on the social and ecclesial implications and meanings of dying for one’s faith. Perhaps more importantly for us York demonstrates how the possibility of martyrdom is tied up in the basic practices of the church which are inherently social and political. Martyrdom is not reserved for the super-human Christians but Christians are made able to become martyrs as the journey down the path of Christian practice and worship.
In the first chapter York lays out the fundamental themes of his book. By looking at the early church York demonstrates that martyrdom is public act. This act can be understood as a contest and a testimony. Often times potential martyrs were brought into the coliseum for public display to see if individuals would recant or at least break down and plead for mercy. Many of the early Christians did not see the contest as being between them and the wild beasts that they faced or even against an emperor. Rather the Christian “provided a vision of the actual celestial battle taking place between Christ and Satan” (35). The martyr’s life was taken up into the cosmic battles between good and evil. This understanding was possible because not only was the death of the martyr important but so was their life. Martyrdom was not possible because of a sudden burst of spiritual strength and resolve but because of the daily and nourishment of the church life. Martyrs are an example to us as much in their life as in their death.
After establishing his basic themes York goes on in chapter two to explore the Christian’s physical body as the field of conflict between faithful and unfaithful expressions. York then moves to the sixteenth-century in chapter three which is a move from pagans killing Christians to Christians killing Christians and the tension over who is a martyr and who is just a criminal. In chapter four York addresses the particular type of politics that the martyr’s demonstrate. Finally in chapter five York explores the life and message of Oscar Romero as a contemporary example of the politics of martyrdom. While the final chapter can be viewed as the ‘practical’ expression of York’s historical and theological accounts in the earlier chapters it would a mistake to do so missing the pervasive and persistent pleas to his readers throughout the book.
Chapter two, Body: The Field of Combat, demonstrates the sensual and bodily nature of early Christian spirituality. York is clear that the early martyr accounts view the spiritual battle waged by Christ as happening on the plane of the bodies of the faithful. Throughout this chapter York is asking the contemporary church to consider how it handles the bodies of its members through life and worship because for him the possible political significance of the church hangs in these practices.
Chapter three, Performance: The Sixteenth Century Debacle, attempts to walk the line between a Christian being persecuted or being prosecuted. After Constantine and into the Reformation church practices and beliefs were ecclesially but politically. Beliefs about baptism and communion were matters of life and death. And so to die a martyr or to be executed a criminal was a matter of doctrine. From this situation York asks the contemporary question of truth and its relations to doctrine and denomination. Is it possible that both the Catholic and Anabaptist church were faithful to Christ in the midst of its persecution and prosecution?
Chapter four, City: Enduring Enoch, attempts to flesh out some of the implications of his study. He frames the post-Reformation relationship between the church and state as own of the state’s perverse parody of the church establishing its presence as body with its own story of salvation. York then describes the church not simply as an alternative to the state but rather as preceding the state founded and nourished by the body of Christ. The church functions as a city that overcomes the world’s boundaries of space and time allowing fluid participation of people across borders and eras.
After exploring the life of Oscar Romero in chapter five as an example of some of what he has been trying York concludes by offering the Eucharist as the centre and source of the vision we are given from the martyrs and then reminds us that the martyrs are important because they point to Christ which is to be the aim of any faithful expression.
York takes some very large strides in this book moving across disciplines, eras, denominations, and continents. While this has surely limited York’s ability to flesh out any one aspect thoroughly I would rather view the entire book as a type of introduction that is calling for the church to continue to recover and enact the resources that are offered to us here. In presenting to us the martyrs York offered no militant call to heroic and dynamic exploits. Instead York followed the arc back from their deaths into their lives and pointed us to the daily practices that shape a world without end.

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Weil on Affliction: Only the Contact Matters

God's mercy is manifest in affliction as in joy, by the same right, more perhaps, because under this form it has no human analogy. Man's mercy is only shown in giving joy, or maybe in afflicting pain with a view to outward results, bodily healing or education. But it is not the outward results of affliction that bear witness to divine mercy. The outward results of affliction are nearly always bad. We lie when we try to disguise this. It is in affliction itself that the splendor of God's mercy shines, from its very depths, in the heart of its inconsolable bitterness. If still perserving in our love, we fall to the point where the soul cannot keep back the cry, "My God, why have you forsaken me?" if we remain at this point without ceasing to love, we end by touching something that is not affliction, not joy, something that is the central essence, necessary and pure, something not of the senses, common to joy and sorrow: the very love of God.
We know then that joy is the sweetness of contact with the love of God, that affliction is the wound of this same contact when it is painful, and that only the contact matters, not the manner of it.

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