Tuesday 15 September 2009

More from William Willimon on Christ Triumphant.

God has created us as relatively free beings who can make relatively free choices and decisions, including the choice to attempt to live our lives without God. Note that I say that we are "relatively free." Christians are relativists, believing that who we are and what we can do in life is related to a Jew from Nazareth. To reject that salvation that is offered in Jesus Christ would be a tragic decision, a slap in God's face. Yet it is hard to know just what such a human decision means, in the final scheme of things. Scripture is clear that our human decisions are relative to all the decisions that God is making for us. We made a tragic decision when we not only slapped the Son of God in the face but also crucified him on a cross. And yet that cruel stupidity on our part was challenged, defeated, and blocked by the raising of crucified Jesus from the dead.

It is as though our every move runs into our God who is so eternally for us that even when we attempt to run from God or refuse to live without God...there is God. This is the God who before us and after us remains our God. What happens in between this beinning and ending my look a bit stupid or out of place or unfaithful...but none of that changes who God is and the love that is the ruling power of our God. Again and again, the Scriptures show us ourselves. We are a people who are easily turned to abide in the presence of other powers. Not only do we abide there, we choose to be servants of such powers expecting to be more than who we are. And then ( that is an image of God...we do something, and then God makes things new), we find out that God is waiting to dress us up for a feast and a banquet of new life. Our bumbling and un-faith cannot overrule the life God has waitiing for us.

Connection: There is no time in this day in which God is waiting to act according to what we have done. God is consistently God - for us. We have to learn to deal with that truth.

Before all things, O God, your love was the source of creation and the power to sustain that which was created. Today, your love continues to open us up to your future where you Reign is our place of rest and peace. Amen.