9 August 2006

Today we look at what it is to have faith in the crucified Lord - again Douglas John Hall.

Faith in the crucified one, which means both trust in him and conformity to his death and life, delivers us from the sting of death - not as a once-for-all deliverance but as an ongoing liberation. Or, to say the same thing in another way, such faith frees us from the kind of self-preoccupation and morbid anxiety that hold us back from the abundant life that the Creator intends for our creaturehood. And such faith is brought about...when the divine Spirit takes us by the hand, so to speak, and puts us into the company of the crucified one, where we are caused to face, finally, our utter vulnerability, mortality, and impermanence but in the company therefore of one who befriends us and shows us that the ending is also the beginning, that this death is the entrance into newness of life.

In worship these past few weeks we have been hearing about the bread of life from John's gospel. In some ways it is difficult to hear because mixed in the images of bread and eating are the realities of death and life that comes through death. It is not always easy to understand life coming through death. Usually life comes again...as we are able to stir clear of death...as we are able to defeat the threat of death...as we are able to pull ourselves up by our "bootstraps" and make something of ourselves. But for John the gospel writer and what I hear in Hall, the power of death is overcome by facing it. We face death and are not pushed and pulled by it because we trust that the resurrected Lord walks with us through any form of death so that we will not give death power over us. When power is given to death and its many faces, we lose what both writers have called the "abundant" life. This kind of life is what has been given to us. And yet, it is so often cut short and abandoned when we are unable to face death and literally move through it into the life that awaits us whenever death is denied its power over us.

Connection: It is always good to meet and talk with faithful people who do not seem to be run by the many shapes of death that attempt to hound us. It is good because they are people just like all of us. Death has and does try to smack them around and own them and it is able to create anxiety and fear. Then again, we can learn that even brave looking faithful people must do what everyone else must do - face death everyday and greet the life that is given to us through death. Remember your baptism today.

You, O God, abide with us so that we can face this day open to being vulnerable and confident that you will be with us in and through all things. We give you thanks, again today, for your love that will be our guide in all we do. Amen.