Friday 1 June 2007

We end the week with more on sabbath rest by Walter Brueggemann.



Sabbath practice is to break the denial and become "truth-tellers," for the truth will make us sabbath free.

Brueggmann now lists seven ideas of truth telling. Here is one example:

Tell the truth, free of ideological rancor, about the pain of the world for it is the truth of pain on the cross thorugh which the world is saved. (and then he continues)

We always stand, as did Jesus, before the governor who notoriously asked, "What is truth?" The truth withheld from the wise and given to babes is that pain is the matrix of newness. Tell the truth without pious protectiveness, without ideological reductionism, stay close to the text, tell the truth and you will find the weariness easing as you come clean to the one who is the truth, and the way and the life, a way of pain, a life of vulnerability. Imagine a sabbath church filled with truth-tellers that are neither red nor blue. But stay close to the one of whom we say, "And him crucified."



Truth-tellers do not let the silence win. It can be a pain-filled existence to press on within a community that longs for the truth. Such a sabbath truth-telling keeps insisting that we share in a journey that will bring us into conflict with ourselves and one another. The conflict will not be destructive, it will be an honest exchange so that we all can look again at what is able to silence us and how we settle for something less than the truth so often in our lives. Somewhere in that exercise of becoming free, all things begin to be seen with new eyes. It is, I suppose, like the the 21st and 22nd chapter of Revelation spilling on and on about the new heaven and earth. Truth-telling brings that which is promised right to our doorsteps and we are invited to step into it and...rest. The way in which we have some notion of what is the truth is to do exactly what Brueggeman suggests, "stay close to the one of whom we say, 'And him crucified.'" That is our check point - our ground - our point of contact with the Reign of God and the life within this world. The truth-teller Jesus goes before us and we are invited to come and see what life is now available to us and through us in Jesus, name.



Connection: I think truth-telling is difficult. I am always grateful to have people around me who are gifted with such voice. It is the kind of voice that helps to pull be back from how I want the day to go and begin to see how else it might go. I don't always like to have the truth press in on me...but it sure does help me breath and take another look at what is going on around me and in me.



Lord of All Truthfulness, we come to the cross and we find our way into and through all that will encounter. Grand us wisdom and grant us courage to face the way of the cross and to listen to the way it brings truthfulness into this day. Amen.