Monday 13 July 2009

Today we are moving into a new section of Willimon's book (Who Will Be Saved) that is about "Learning to endure the Love of Jesus."

Pastoral care in the church is the sustained attempt to be with the people whom this God has erotically turned, those who are being snared in the great dragnet of God's grace. Alas, much that passes for pastoral care is mere adjustment to the cultural status quo, adaptation through therapy or chemistry to governmentally sanctioned definitions of reality. True pastoral care in the name of Christ consists of encouragement to rebel against the illusory world that is produced by the modern state and its salvations and join God's revolution. I expect this is what Barth meant when he said that the mercy of God was much more demanding and difficult for humanity than the judgment of God. To be actively loved by God, really to know that God has decisively moved in with us and taken up our cause is desperately to need pastoral care to assist us in enduring such severe mercy.

Jay Bakker (son of Jim and Tami) started a church in Atlanta, Georgia, called Revolution. He now has one in NYC. From what I have seen, he is drawing in those folks who have had enough - even too much - of the way churches rip off people with their theology of greed and money and forget about offering the love of God that cracks open new life even when we are lost and hopelessly unable to do anything about it. It really is a revolution - this grace of God that is. Nothing is able to be as it once was when God has "moved in with us and taken up our our cause." God's mercy takes our usual way of dealing with one another and dismantles it all so that we will face the illusory world that so often has such a hold on us it is next to impossible to pull ourselves away and be renewed and reborn and resurrected to new life. And yet...nothing is impossible for God...even when it means changing us and redirecting us and empowering us to be responsible within a new world of life.

Connection: This revolution of grace is and will be that which will turn us over and help us to see this day with new eyes and to also act within the way of this contrary love and mercy.

Lord God, it is by your mercy and grace that we are able to see what new life is like. It is not always the way would choose to go. We want your Reign to be a comfortable place for us to continue living as we have lived. And yet, to live in your Reign offered to us is to take steps into a life that will turn over all that we have considered the safe patterns and places where we can remain just as we are. Take us along this new way and open us to the life that will unfold before us. Amen.