Thursday, 11 September, 2003

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



Only a God “weak in power but strong in love” can be strong enough to take on all the world’s pain and die on a cross. Trust in such a God can give human beings the strength to risk following on the path of compassion and vulnerability, to think what it means to live lives whose first priority is love. In a broken and complex world, we Christians may sometimes find ourselves driven to force and even violence in spite of our best intentions, but we need to acknowledge that to choose such alternatives is always to admit a failure of imagination, a concession to weakness, always to have betrayed the image of the power of love we have encountered in the powerless Jesus on the cross.



I was not sure what to do on this anniversary of the crashing of four jets and the devastation of so many lives in so many places on September 11, 2001. This just happened to be the next piece from Placher’s book. “Only a God ‘weak in power but strong in love’ can be strong enough to take on all the world’s pain and die on a cross.” We are not a people who move through the horror and brutality of our world by responding in just such violence and hatred. By the power of the Holy Spirit we are always led into the pathway of peace. Yes, that will mean great lamentation and unbearable grief and loneliness that rips at our hearts, but it also means there is no end…never an end…to God’s loving presence that will shape new life. Unfortunately, when we are being consumed by the pain of the day, we do not often let ourselves follow the way of peace for it demands our whole life and it demands that we let go of our desire to destroy or hurt or harm those who would take our lives from us. Love is a dynamic that is not well known among us. And yet, our God abides in love and calls us to rest in God alone.



Connection: In place of the brutality of the world that comes through both words and actions, how can there be a space and time in this day in which we can abide in God’s love put to life? There are ways.



Compassionate Lord, you know what it is to suffer loss and be left out alone to endure the acts of a fear-filled world. Be with all those who are in the grip of the pains and dangers of our world. Be the resting place and the comforting moment that brings healing and wholeness. Amen.