27 July 2006

Today is a longer section of Douglas John Hall on the Character of Christian Suffering.

Christianity, so long as it remains true to its own sources, cannot embrace any of the heroics of death, including those associated with war or various causes, because its orientation is toward life. Life should not be easily or lightly thrown away. Christianity has this life-orientation from its parental faith, Judaism, a religion that , unlike many other religions of the human species, never succumbs to the subtle whisperings of death -even when it is hounded to death and rounded up by death and shipped to factories whose sole product was the transformation of the living to the state of death. One of the most astonishing facts of human history, surely, is that a people whose whole recorded history is one of suffering at the hands of others, more powerful peoples manifested and still manifests the most intense and jubilant commitment to life - a people whose most cherished motto is "To Life" (l'chaim).

We move toward life. The beloved community is all about life. Life that comes in the face of death and whenever and wherever death appears to have won the day. In each day, we sing a new song that does not sing the melodies of the powers that like to rule other and run the world in a way that will limit the lives of any. "To Life"....of course, to life...of course we have a memory of what it means to be hounded even though we may have not present notion of what it is to be hounded by the power of death because Christianity tends to be walking in step with the powers that have a history of hounding the underdog...the lowly...the minority. But we are a people of the Book and that makes us a people with some sense of memory. We remember the story of Israel and we remember the story of the suffering servant and we remember the story of Jesus walking with great compassion into the lives of the forgotten and we remember the life of the body of Christ, the church, that lives in, with, and under the very fabric of life as it is often rejected and despised. We move toward life even when death is an overwhelming and real presence among us.

Connection: Some days we have to really give ourselves to reality that the Church is made up of a people with such a contrary vision for life that death,through real and terrifying, does not have the last word. It has a word - a strong word - but, not the last word.

Come, Lord of LIfe and Death, be the bright light that comes into this day to reveal the life that makes us all followers of Jesus who are not too afraid to venture out into the adventure that come when we walk along your gracious way . Amen.