25 August 2006

The week comes to an end with what will be the last of our run through a section of Douglas John Hall's book The Cross in our Context."

Christians, we have maintained, are those who through confrontations with death are given a new freedom from the sting of death and so a new freedom for voluntary service to others. Surely if this claim has any truth in it, then it is not our own suffering but the suffering of the world beyond us that must claim our attention. Indeed, is not the whole purpose of our liberation from excessive personal anxiety the creation within us of a new consciousness of and care for others? Just here we encounter the transition from theology to ethics. The theology of the cross is intended to give rise not only to an ecclesiology of the cross, but to an ethic, the essence of which it the attentiveness to human and worldly suffering that is made possible in those who have been and are being delivered from self.

When we walk from the gathered saints who are present to hear the word and share the Lord's Supper, we walk into an arena of people suffer in many and various ways. The stories we hear in worship are not ones that tell us how we are to use power to overcome the world. Rather, we use this odd notion of love - Jesus' love for the lost and the least and the lowest - and it is given away so freely it is down right offensive. In some of my most recent reading, I'm seeing that many of the growing "Christian" movements in our country do not know of the way of the cross. They can only pull from Scripture ways that give them an excuse to want to take over and rule other. No longer are they drawn into the lives of others in order to serve - rather they come to create conformity and to rule with an iron hand that can only see the world in black and white. I don't think I have ever noticed that Jesus' love was black and white. It was and is unconditional. That is what puts him up on the cross. Had Jesus been a part of the movement of some of the extreme and powerful forces of today's Christian right, there would have been no crucifixion...excuse me, maybe Pilates.

Connection: I think the sign out from our church building says: Dialogue is the beginning of love. I really do think that is part of the ethic of the followers of Jesus who move out into the world. We do not go out into this day armed with a mindset that is ruled by fear. We engage and enter into the lives of any.

When you send us out into this day, O Lord, send us with your Spirit. Send us as ones empowered to love rather than rule. Within that loving presence, shape us into the way of your beloved, Jesus, so that the world may see over and over again - your presence alive among us. Amen.