Tuesday, 19 August, 2003

From William C. Placher’s “Narratives of a Vulnerable God”



Such images of God (separate, omnipotent, powerful…) comport well with many of the values that contemporary society still hold. We admire success and strength and being number one. “To possess power,” as Carter Heyward puts it, “is to be on top – of someone else…It is to be above the common folk – to flex the muscles of our brains, bodies, or ideologies – and to win.”

As Eberhard Jungel has written, “This is the earthly way of thinking of a lord: first he has all power and then perhaps he can be merciful – but then again, perhaps not.” This is the sort of God to whom speakers at political conventions appeal or pray to bless America, victor in the cold war. For theologians who begin with such a picture of God, Christology (study of Christ Jesus) can only take the form of a series of radical paradoxes, because a God so described has little in common with the crucified Jesus.



After reading this piece I thought of the strong movement by some elements of the Christian Right who are financially and politically supporting Israel in the hopes that Israel’s establishment of power in the middle east will bring about the second coming of Christ. Quite frankly, it is a frightening picture and though they have the television stations to push this kind of theology, it stinks. More than that, the vulnerable, crucified Lord, is given over to a futuristic war-lord that had little in common with the Jesus we teach about from the gospels. Sometimes fundamentalism loves to make their Lords into super-powers cast onto a world stage in order to make their side the victor. I find this “power” god has nothing to do with Good Friday and the Jesus we are called to follow.



Connection: Listen to the language of religious people. It is filled with an agenda that goes deep to the heart of news that is more out of the mouths of the powers of this world than from the prince of Peace.



Lord of the New Creation, continue to bring us to the merciful and peaceful reign of your beloved, Jesus, that we may enter our lives encouraged by your love assured of your presence as we walk along your way to the cross. Amen.