| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | | I'm tagging on the material that directly followed yesterday's piece from Moltmann. 'Fellowship' doesn't take by force and possess. It liberates. We offer a share in our own life, and share the life of another person. Fellowship lives in reciprocal participation and mutual acceptance. Fellowship springs up when people who are different find something in common, and when something in common is shared by different people. There are fellowships of shared objective concerns: interest groups, working parties and study groups. There are fellowships in a mutual relationship: felllowships constituted by a shared life. In most human fellowships objective and personal relationship are linked. there is a fellowship between people who are alike: 'bird of a feather flock together.' But there are also fellowships between people who are quite unlike. The people who are unlike find interest in each other, whereas people who are no different from each other soon become indifferent to each other. The differences do not have to be that great in order for the differences between us to give us a bit of a relational jolt. Even the closest relationship - where there is much in common - often have enough edges to them to keep us refreshing to one another. No matter how similar we are or how different we may be, there is still a bit of risk involved in connecting with others. We can never know when we may get burned or we might be the one who sets the fires. This Spirit of Life is present to see us through all that will come when we go out there and engage the other - no matter how different the other may be. In the meantime, we pray for the fellowship of the Holy Spirit to recreate us and open us to life we do not presently hold in our hands. Connection: How much do you risk when it comes to fellowship? Lord of Life and Spirit of Joy, take us on another ride today to a place we do not control so that we may see a bit more of your Reign and begin to be reshaped in your presence. Amen. |
| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | | I'm tagging on the material that directly followed yesterday's piece from Moltmann. 'Fellowship' doesn't take by force and possess. It liberates. We offer a share in our own life, and share the life of another person. Fellowship lives in reciprocal participation and mutual acceptance. Fellowship springs up when people who are different find something in common, and when something in common is shared by different people. There are fellowships of shared objective concerns: interest groups, working parties and study groups. There are fellowships in a mutual relationship: felllowships constituted by a shared life. In most human fellowships objective and personal relationship are linked. there is a fellowship between people who are alike: 'bird of a feather flock together.' But there are also fellowships between people who are quite unlike. The people who are unlike find interest in each other, whereas people who are no different from each other soon become indifferent to each other. The differences do not have to be that great in order for the differences between us to give us a bit of a relational jolt. Even the closest relationship - where there is much in common - often have enough edges to them to keep us refreshing to one another. No matter how similar we are or how different we may be, there is still a bit of risk involved in connecting with others. We can never know when we may get burned or we might be the one who sets the fires. This Spirit of Life is present to see us through all that will come when we go out there and engage the other - no matter how different the other may be. In the meantime, we pray for the fellowship of the Holy Spirit to recreate us and open us to life we do not presently hold in our hands. Connection: How much do you risk when it comes to fellowship? Lord of Life and Spirit of Joy, take us on another ride today to a place we do not control so that we may see a bit more of your Reign and begin to be reshaped in your presence. Amen. |
| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | | We continue with a portion from "In the Fellowship of the Holy Spirit." 'Fellowship' doesn't take by force and possess. It liberates. We offer a share in our own life, and share the life of another person. Fellowship lives in reciprocal participation and mutual acceptance. Fellowship springs up when people who are different find something in common, and when something in common is shared by different people. We are a part of the fellowship of the Holy Spirit as we are free to be the person God created us to be and we bow and bend to the life of the other - who is not like we are. In this way, we must be content to listen and learn who these other people are and then let them be that. In the middle of that sharing and listening and honoring the other - and this is done by all sides - we all change and become more a part of this banquet fellowship that is called the Reign of God. It is no easy trip - but it does happen. We can let go of our need to control and possess and we can be the power that helps others do the same. In the end, we all enter a new beginning. That may be why we use alpha and omega language. Together within the liberating power of the Holy Spirit we will see the end of what was dragging us down and separating us and we are able to see the beginning of a life that was not alive previously. Sounds like resurrection to me. Connection: I really do see people change. It never happens quickly or completely - but it does happen. We can each benefit from some profound liberation. Lord of Liberation and Freedom, you continue to invites us and woo us and pull us into the ever-present life within your Reign. We too often lay back and do not enter. Again we ask - move our hearts. Amen. |
| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | | This week we will look at another chapter of Jurgen Moltmann's book "the Source of Life." It is called: "In the fellowship of the Holy Spirit." 'The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.' So runs an ancient Christian benediction (2 Corinthians 13:13). Why is the special gift of the Spirit seen to be it fellowship, whereas grace is ascribed to Christ, and love to God the Father? In his fellowship the Spirit is more than a neutral life-force. The Spirit is God himself in person. He enters into fellowship with believers and draws them into fellowship with him. He is capable of fellowship, and willing for fellowship. That is something special, for we hear nothing about the lordship of the Spirit here, as we should expect. Hey everybody. God is in the room - in the midst of us - between us - around us - hovering over us - whipping around us and through us. God is present as life being pulled into God's Reign among God's beloved. I go back to the wonderful language of in, with and under. God is present and we need only look around at others. Here and now the fellowship of God's Reign is at hand. That - is the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is what is happening. It is the fullness of the Reign of God - grace and love - taking shape as we gather and are sent out. The character of God shows forth as this wind of life that never stops blowing us into directions we had not anticipated and alongside people we absolutely would never embrace. So it goes with this fellowship. Connection:Between us is this Spirit that promises to bring life - always. Spirit of the Most High God, order our day and let the fullness of God's Reign break into all the events and moments we share with others. Amen. |
| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | | We continue to unfold into into the ever-present Reign of God - taken up into a life is full and present and available. Finally, in order to unfold, our lives do not just need the strength to live, undivided love for life and sharpened senses. All these things happen within us. But we also need a surrounding space for living. That is also an experience of the Holy Spirit: our hearts are opened wide because we experience a wide space round about us: 'He also allured you out of distress into a broad place where there is no more cramping', says Job 36.16. 'Thou hast set my feet in a broad room', acknowledges the Psalmist (31.8). What is this 'broad room' initially, except the unbelievable nearness of God in the Spirit, which surrounds us from every side? 'Thou surroundest me from every side and holdest thy hand over me,' says Psalm 139.5. If the infinite God surrounds our finite life from every side, then we stand in 'the broad room', and we live and unfold 'in God' as our life-space. We can live in God. According to Jewish traditions 'the broad room' is therefore a secret name for God: Makom. Again, we see that this journey of ours is not one that is a solitary action. We unfold in that which is God's Reign - a place and time that is the fullness of time into which we become God's beloved. This broad room is big enough for all people. It is, I imagine, a place in which we are constantly surprised by all who can be and will be and are present. Too often, religious folks tend to make this life in God a narrow space so that we can somehow control how that space and time will be run. But then God refutes our attempts at such self-indulgent spinning. This is 'the broad room' that becomes known to us as God continues to be revealed to us. Our adventures in spirituality never close us up or push us away from any table. We are always pulled into this room filled with all God's beloved. Maybe we must see the disciplines of contemplation and spiritual renewal as worthwhile when we find our lives as conspirators within God's rooms. Connection: There is a place in the room for each of us and all of us. Knowing that, the journey of life is shaped and brought to its fullness. Spirit of Life, bring us near to our God that we might be brought near to all of God's beloved creation and in that, we might see our way through this day. Amen. |
| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | | This is another example of why I read Theologians as I would a poet. Some of them, like Moltmann, are able to make the Reign of God so real - so present - so available. If the love for life awakens in us again, our senses also waken afresh. We may call this the sensuousness of the Holy Spirit. How should we think of it? In a great grief, after the loss of a beloved child or after a divorce, we feel that our senses have been extinguished like a candle. We don't see colours any more. We don't heart sounds any more. We don't taste anything , and our feelings seem to be dead. We become more or less indifferent, and although we are alive, we are as if turned to stone. If in the Spirit of life we again experience the unconditional love of God for life, the divine joy in living stirs in us anew. Then we suddenly see the brightness of the world. We hear melodies again, our sense of taste comes back, and we can feel once more. Our senses are quickened and we again participate in life. This is the sensuousness of the divine Spirit, who kindles all our senses. Do we trust that this Spirit of life is the power to open our lives to experience the unconditional love of God for life? When that is the case, the Spirit opens up our day to life that has been taken from us or life we have let go. Moltmann is writing here about a transformation that is as bold and bright and beautiful as the many stories we hear of the power of the resurrection to bring into being a whole new world never before experienced. In the cycle of death and sadness and destruction that is so real, there is also the word of profound love for us that kindles life even when we cannot see it or feel it or hear or touch it. But that Spirit is always pulling us into new life by making us aware of God's power of life within all that we can sense around us. In essence, we are given back our world - all of it. The world is not only given back to us, it is given back to us so that we can have our senses renewed - maybe even made sharper. Who knows? Why not! In the midst of everything there is a fullness that ready to fill our senses beyond belief. Connection: It is not easy to rise up after we have experienced great loss. And yet, this Spirit is all about lifting us up to life. |
| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | | There is something that takes us beyond ourselves so that we can sense what is a part of the whole in which we live. We are always being pulled to move out and among others. Again from Moltmann: If they want to resist the cynicism that manifest itself in the annihilation of the living in the human world and the world of nature, people must first overcome the growing indifference of their hearts. We feel numbed by the mass deaths in Burundi and Bosnia. We accept the mass extinction of animals and plant species without a quiver. But the spirituality of life breaks through these inner numbnesses, the armour of our indifference and our emotional frigidity toward the suffering of others. We can cry out again and weep together. We can laugh again and dance, once this divine love for life awakens in us and the divine Spirit rouses our vitality. those who begin to love life again like this - and not their own life alone - will resist the death drives in themselves and the powers of death round about them, and will fight for the future of life. Breaking through that indifference of our hearts is not easy. Rather, it is easy to stay indifferent - to go our own way - to turn our face - to never let the words cross out lips. That is why we are people who speak of this Spirit and long for the power of this wind to take us up into the life it brings. And yet, it is so odd that what is part of the nature of our lives is that we resist the wind - we resist the hopefulness. this makes me wonder about how we use the word resistance. So often it designates those who resist that which is going on all about us - like war resisters - resisters at world economic conferences. In reality, the status quo - that which is and that which seems to be in power - are really the elements of resistance. They quite often resist the living presence of the Holy Spirit that never allows for the injustice and bias and prejudice that has become common among us. It is a strong resistance. It is even able to convince most of us to 'go along' and leave things as is. We count on this Spirit of life to resist 'the death drives' that reduce our future and attempt to rule our present. Connection: The answer my friend is blowing in the wind Come. Wind of Life, Loving Breath of Renewal. Come and move us into the ever-present reality of your Reign as it comes upon us each day. Come and pull us again. Amen. |
| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | | Today we will enter into the last section of "Life's New Spirituality" in "The Source of Life" by Jurgen Moltmann. It is called New sensuousness. True spirituality is the rebirth of the full and undivided love of life. The total Yes to life and the unhindered love of everything living are the first experiences of the Holy Spirit. That is why from earliest times Yahweh's ruach hs been called the source or well of life (fons vitae). The Spirit is the breath that begins what we would call life. It is the motion. It is the action that takes place wherever there is life. It is what happens between us when our lives are whipped up and placed in the midst of others. The Holy Spirit is not merely a Spirit that comes to some who claim to be 'religious.' How stifling that would be! Rather it is the wind of life that is pull and pushing us all even when we do not want anything to do with religion and all of its sporting adventures. We can step back from religious movements, but this well of life keeps invading our lives with a tickle that attempts to bring us to the wholeness of all things. Life in its fullness is life for all - available and waiting to be entered. It is life in which the barriers come down and the fear is turned aside by dialogue and - the love that dismantles separation. That Spirit I would call Holy is moving among us all - not more on one than another - but always in full force. Sometimes, some of us just like to name it when we know we have been pulled beyond ourselves. Connection: Rather than seeing the 'other' as 'other,' it would be a real trip within God's Reign to see as another one of us. Not distant - not enemy - but part of the cosmic family that knows no end. |
| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | | Sabbath rest has an impact on the individual and the day and then also the vast ways we live within the world - more from Jurgen Moltmann. Coming to rest on the sabbath or Sunday needs practice. It has to be learnt. Peace doesn't come of its own accord, and is not just a matter of doing nothing and vegetating. It is still true that most family quarrels take place on Sundays, and most murders in a family on Sunday evenings. Not least, the political spirituality of liberation belongs to the spirituality of the lived life, liberation of the people we have oppressed. If we want to be free ourselves, we must free others; if we want to arrive at peace, we must leave other people in peace. True spirituality cannot be a solitary, selfish experience of the self, for every self exists in the network of social and political relationships. If these are oppressive for other people, then liberating inward experiences of self are linked with liberating actions for others. Many people have arrived at their mystical experiences of the self in protest movement and actions for political liberation: contemplation in the very midst of the struggle for liberation and greater justice. There is no such thing as an inward journey if it does not become tied to the journey of liberation and wholeness of all things. Such a self-focused journey without a way out into the world around us seems to be self-absorbing. And yet, the inward journey is necessary as we begin to walk with those around us who long to be set free. On the other hand, it may be the work alongside those who long to be free that we enter into that inward journey of liberation and freedom. Once again, the pattern of liberation and setting free all people is not a programmed endeavor. We live within it with the many sides that become transformed as we make time to rest in God alone - a sabbath journey. Connection: We will have our God alongside us in our journey. And yet, we do need to enter the journey and begin to see how God takes us and shapes and makes us into something that sounds like the coming together of the Lord's Prayer. God's will being done - for all - in all times. Lord God you bring us into this day to be a part of the grand work of your creative powers. When we come upon the rest you offer us, it is there that we give ourselves and one another the opportunity to see the expansiveness of your will. Help us breathe in that life-giving will. Amen. |
| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | | Good words from Moltmann on work and rest and the fullness of life. It is in the rhythm of the times and the alternation of work and rest that we find the pulse of life. That is the spirituality of the lived life. Whatever the mystics sought in solitary inwardness as the seventh step in the soul's union with God can be found simply and naturally on that seventh day. According to the Jewish idea, on the seventh day Queen Sabbath enters Israel's families and unites God's Shekinah with the eternal God himself: the Shekinah being God's indwelling in his people in its wanderings in the exile of this world. That is the primal biblical image for the soul's 'mystical bridal' with God. I found it interesting that Moltmann previously points out that prior to the command to rest there is the command to work: "six days you shall labour." That is the fullness of life. We become whole as we enter into all of life - work and rest is a must. There is also the beauty of the image of God's people living within the movement of the world as wandering exiles. The world around us may live in one way, but we will live another way. It is in the living of the day-to-day that we find ourselves within the depths of what is holy and there we find what a gift life can be. That rhythm is not something we fall into naturally. It must become a discipline. We must seek it out and follow its beat and dance within its flow of life. Thinking about being a wandering people in the wilderness, this sabbath command is like the one about the manna. We would - if left up to our own ways - grab hold of more than enough and store it away for ourselves. And yet, the discipline of this holy community is to take enough - enough is enough and all will have that when we are people who care about the ebb and flow of life within the community. This spirituality is no mere personal, individualistic journey. It is a corporate adventure. Connection: Finding what is enough and how to rest within the movement of our work is not always easy - it is always necessary, though. Presence and Eternal God, as you dwell among us continue to shape us with your breath of life that we will be free to live in you alone. Amen. |
| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | | This 'source of life' continues to bring us back to the life we have as a body - in the flesh and in the midst of all things. Today I will suggest that this is not only talk of sabbath, but, for me, talk of the body as the body of Christ. According to Israel's exilic traditions, the holy place of God's silent presence is no longer the space of the Holy of Holies in the temple in Jerusalem. It is now found in time, in the time of the holy rhythm of the sabbath days. God lives in time, and interrupts the plans and purposes of human labor through his resting presence. I would like to suggest that this rhythm is the beat of the Christ as the image of God present in the world. A whole existence that brings all things into the form of the Reign of God. In that sense, all days become sabbath days - days when we rest in God alone. This is how the ethics of everyday become transformed or transfigured into something that is not the ways of the world but the way of the fullness of our humanity. Though I like the image of the day of rest, I all the more like the image of the life of rest. It is not earned - it is a gift - it is a life handed to us in which God is for us before we even step off into the day. It is with that frame put around the day that we become a part of the image or picture of God's Reign - all of us and all of time. My other thought about this kind of holy rhythm is one in which we let go of the notion of 'holy land' that has become idolatrous. All that we see in that land that is called holy is the great display of all that is not holy. It is a land of destruction and brokenness and no sense of forgiveness - that is, no sense of 'God with us.' Wouldn't it be a sign of amazing grace in action if the followers of Jesus let go of the need to act like land owners gripping onto things so tightly we forget about the life we have been handed? Connection: Holy rhythm. Be for us, O God, the way that we sway and move through this day so that the world around us will be wooed into dancing to the tune of your shalom. Make our time into your time and your place and your will. Amen. |
| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | | This 'source of life' continues to bring us back to the life we have as a body - in the flesh and in the midst of all things. After six working days, people are to rest, and that means not intervening in nature, either nature outside ourselves or our own nature within. On this day of divine rest, men and women will stop looking at nature from the angle of cost-benefit calculations. They will 'let it be' as God's creation, and will enjoy it. On this day of the week, the nature which human beings process and utilize should be allowed to breathe and to come itself again. Our mental and purposeful concentration on reason and will is relaxed. On this day the mind or spirit can return again to the body which it had made its instrument. The body becomes the temple in which God's Spirit can live and rest. I find it interesting that this day of rest is considered a time when the body is so much of the focus. The body must rest and in that real physical resting comes the wholeness of the day. I wonder if that is why new ideas and fresh insights come when we allow the body to chill a bit. I know that a good, long, walk at the beach or even in the morning can be refreshing to my whole life. There is no agenda - no getting ahead - no need for a calendar - no 'what's next? There is only the walk. When I walk in the morning, I recently switched my music from listening right through an album to putting the ipod on 'shuffle.' I've noticed that it allows me to let go of what is coming up next. Have you ever noticed that once you listen to a CD a number of times, you actually start singing the next song before it begins. Not with the shuffle. You get one at a time. You don't know if your are coming to the end of a CD - for there is no end - there is only now - the fullness of now. I wonder if that is part of sabbath rest?! Connection: Maybe it would be a good exercise to shuffle all the way through a day. Spirit of Creation, we know that we can rest in you and find there a peace that will bring us back to life when we are exhausted and overextended. Remind us that your peace is eternally available so that the exhaustion does not overwhelm us. Amen. |
| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | | Today we move into a new section called "A new lifestyle" in Moltmann's book "The Source of Life." Parts of it eventually will sound a bit like Walter Brueggemann's previous words on sabbath. God's Spirit which makes us live does not merely free the soul from its miscarried love. It also liberates the body from its tensions and poisons. The new spirituality comprehends the whole of life, not just the religious sides that used to be called 'the life of faith' or 'prayer life'. The whole of life as it is lived is seized by God's vital power and is lived 'before God', because it lives 'out of God'. What we call prayer in a one-sided way includes rejoicing and complaint before God, and lays before God the life we live and suffer. Faith isn't something special, cut off from everything else; it is the trust in life which finds utterance in all the ways in which we express life. This being so, we can also see this new spirituality as a new lifestyle, a facon de vivre. This is where we are always to be going as we call ourselves followers of Jesus. We are people in the midst of a lifestyle. This is a full of life experience that makes up all that we are. There is to be no compartmentalizing. We are as whole as God is whole. From the very small things in life that seem to pass by and mean nothing we are called into the fullness of the moment or the place or the time. It is there - in the midst of things - that God's breath of life is seen among us. If we cannot become caught up in the work of the Spirit of God even as we plod through the many sides of this day, how is it that we can claim to be caught up in certain times and places. Do wee need to limit God's touch to a few places and times? Are we unable to exercise the brilliance of God's Reign right where we are now? Maybe that is why it is so easy to limit our way of following Jesus to those few moments and places that "look" religious or "sound" like something other?! Connection: Think of this hymn as you enter this day; Holy, Holy, Holy. Now what does that change among us? Come. O Spirit of Life and awaken us to experience the wideness of God's Reign so that we will be swept up into its glory and in the midst of the ordinary we will take on the wonder of your holy Reign. Amen. |
| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | The very end of the section "New Spirituality: life against death" in The Source of Life by Jurgen Moltmann ends with what I think is a good way to begin the week. If we are seized by the Spirit of the resurrection, we get up out of our sadness and apathy. We begin to flower and become fruitful again, like the plants and trees in the spring of the year. An undreamed-of love for life awakens in us; we drive out the sweet poison of resignation, and our painful remembrances of death are healed. We encounter life again like children, in eager expectancy. This is not a questioning "if". It is an "if" that is more like a "since" or a "considering the fact that". It is what is. The Spirit of the resurrection does seize us. We may fight like hell to get away from it and crawl into another life that seems like it will be best for us but that does not stop this Spirit from residing among us. When I am within the bounds of the land of sadness, I know that there is a short step into the domain of apathy. I do not like to be there. And yet, when I am dragged there - I go there. It is overpowering and it can take the best of the day or life and make it all seem worth-less. And yet, we are told again and again that the Lord of all hopefulness is eternally available to us for life. The life has a shape to it even when we are are sinking so low we do not want to wear its baptismal robe and rise again to new life. Only the Spirit can heal us and cleanse us when that 'sweet poison of resignation' is pressing in and will not stop. When those tears filled with fear and sadness and an unknown despair that makes no sense and is yet so real - are at hand, it is time to breathe. Breathe simply for the purpose of taking in this promise of healing and wholeness and child-like joy. Connection: What do you do when you are being sucked dry and there doesn't seem to be any specific reason or any specific way of stopping the sucking? Maybe step one is to acknowledge that it is real....and wait to see what the Spirit throws out into the way. Renew us, O God. Breathe life into us, O God. Restore us, O God. Bring your Reign of peace among us and within us. Amen. |
| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | It is the end of the week so why not offer a bit more on "New Spirituality: life against death" in The Source of Life by Jurgen Moltmann. |
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