| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | As Alison writes of this recasting of sin and God he adds Furthermore, as it became clear that the whole purpose of raising Jesus from the dead was to make forgiveness possible (i.e., none of this happened for the benefit of God, and all of it for the benefit of humanity), so it becomes clear that that forgiveness stretches into our human death. That is to say, the forgiveness which flows from the resurrection affects not only such acts as we may have carried out, but, much more importantly, what we had hitherto imagined to be our very natures. If death is something that can be forgiven us, we were not only wrong about God, but we were fundamentally wrong about ourselves. Okay this may take me a few attempts at some reflection here. Today is sounds to me as though the resurrection changes our nature. By that I think I am saying that we are no longer limited in our view of who we are when we are seen as the beloved of God. Usually the power of death defines us. Usually, we say sin defines us. When we do that, are we giving too much power to sin - right from the get go!? I don't mean that there is a suggestion that we get rid of sin. That is laughable. The evidence is too vivid. And yet, can we not say, "Yes, sin and brokenness and death are always among us - but, damn them. That is - to hell with them. That is, let us live as though God's love is a power that becomes us even in the midst of all of our old story telling." Is this forgiveness - this tomb now empty - this Jesus now alive - the making of a life in which we press beyond all that has been holding us in place and that the image of God really does shine? Connection: This kind of life - this resurrection life - this forgiveness life, is powerfully fresh. It is also more power than I can even imagine. So again I fall back to that plea: Come, Holy Spirit, Come. That may well be the power that ushers in the unimaginable. O God of life, you take us beyond our limits and our boundaries and make us into fresh new beings shaped by your love. Now, encourage us to set out and live. Amen. |
| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | Onward with God recast as love through forgiveness - James Alison call this the 3rd step of this recasting process. It was not just that God loved his son and so raised him up, but that the giving of the son and his raising up revealed God as love for us. This is the witness of the remarkably similar passages found in John 3:16-17 and Romans 3:21-26, as well as of course 1 John 4:9-10. If the third step reveals God as forgiving us (and the presence of the crucified and risen victim was exactly this revelation), then it also simultaneously reveals that death is not only a human reality, and one inflected by sin, but that the human reality of death itself is capable of being forgiven. I read this last line as the power of death has lost its hold through the power of forgiveness. It could be that forgiveness is the power that takes the 'sting of death' away. No sure. And yet it sounds as though God's love - as forgiveness - disregards death's ways. It is as though the story line changes.First there is the power of death - but it gets trumped. Separation does not win the day. Love - the reuniting of the separated - is the reality within God's Reign. It is this love that does not let our sin - our brokenness - have the last word. From the last word being God's love through the power of forgiveness, we are left with how all things began - God's creative love. What potential. Connection: The potential for forgiveness to bring about new life is amazing. Too often I do not trust it. Too often I really don't want to go there. Maybe it is because I will not let myself enter that experience - face the empty tomb - rise to new life. O God of life, carry us into the domain of your forgiveness and refresh our days with you love. Amen. |
| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | Here is the '3rd step' in recasting God and sin. I find it to be the essence of who we become as followers of Jesus. God did not raise Jesus from the dead merely to demonstrate his own deathlessness, or rescue Jesus from the middle of the human reality of death as a bodyguard may rescue a beleaguered pop star from the midst of a pressing crowd of fans, to get her away from it all as quickly as possible. The third step in recasting God and the recasting of sin is that God raised up this man who had been killed in this way for us. The victim of human iniquity was raised up as forgiveness; in fact the resurrection was the raising up of the victim as forgiveness. This it was which permitted the recasting of God as love. There is no rescue in the sense that we are able to be saved from the reality of the brokenness around us. We go through it - face it - suffer from its brutality. What is dynamic is the way we move through it. We move through it as ones who forgive. That is, in the image of God. Forgiveness instead of 'pay-backs' or retribution. God is one who forgives - that is God. Therefore, the power that is handed to the victim is the power of the living God - forgiveness. That is the life that death is not able to destroy. Death cannot hold down the love of God - or - I would suggest - the love that is embodied in the merely human ones - like all of us. I think we all might be a bit afraid of such a suggestion as this. It takes God's love so seriously it means the end of what is and the emergence of God's Reign - even now. In some ways, this piece today makes me shake - as in the shaking of a foundation. The shaking is not a breaking, it is a full-body reminder - a reminder that can be experienced right down into the very center of life. Connection: I for one am a bit overwhelmed. This is an unbelievable story and made even more unbelievable because it is our story to live. That, I suppose, is why we keep asking for the Spirit of God to keep coming and pulling us along the way. |
| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | Today I will tag on what Alison says is the 2nd step in recasting sin. (From Yesterday) What I would suggest is that it is exactly this paradox that is also present in the recasting of sin. The two steps by which the understanding of God was recast are also, simultaneously, steps in the recasting of sin. In the first step it is exactly in the degree to which the understanding of God is separated from death that the fulness of the human nature of death becomes apparent. This is so because there is no longer any divine necessity or fatality about death: whatever death is, God has nothing to do with it. That is to say, it become apparent not only that death is simply as something which just is, but, precisely because of the resurrection of Jesus, it becomes present as something which need not be. The second step shows that death is not merely something which has nothing to do with God and which need not be, but that as a human reality it is opposed to God. It is not only that our representation of God is inaccurate, needing refocusing, but our representation of God is actively contrary to the understanding of God which God wishes to make known. That is to say that death of this man Jesus showed that death is not merely a biological reality it is also a sinful reality. To put it in another way: it is not just that death is a human reality and not a divine one, but as a human reality it is a sinful reality. God in raising Jesus, was not merely showing that death has no power over him, but also revealing that the putting to death of Jesus showed humans as actively involved in death. I really appreciated Alison's note: "our representation on God is actively contrary to the understanding of God which God wishes to make known." Death is not of God. It is contrary to the whole vision of the shalom of God. When we play in death's arena, we all fall down - we find ways to make death rule us - we go along with war-making - we find ways to scapegoat. In other words, we participate in a life that is not the gift that was given to us. Instead, we take the gift of life and bend it and twist it in many and various way so that death will somehow fit into our pictures of God. But once the tomb was emptied and death was left in a position of less than imagined power, God's shalom is once again the way of life in front of us - the power to transform - to heal - to create - to step forward along the ways of mercy and kindness and radical love. All of which is meant to be power-less within the realm of death's grasp. So - death - to hell with you. God Reigns! Connection: One of the reasons I like Alison's remarks here is that there are so many voices that try to put God in a box and that box is often pieces of boxes that have been thrown around since the beginning of time. And yet, there is no box here - not even the box of death. Our God will be the God that God is - open up even the power of death and the grave to life present now and available in and through all threats. O God of life, remind us to trust in you alone when the power of death attempts to lead us around and make a hell of our lives. It is through your power of unending love that death will not rule us. Amen |
| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | From resurrection to sin. What I would suggest is that it is exactly this paradox that is also present in the recasting of sin. The two steps by which the understanding of God was recast are also, simultaneously, steps in the recasting of sin. In the first step it is exactly in the degree to which the understanding of God is separated from death that the fulness of the human nature of death becomes apparent. This is so because there is no longer any divine necessity or fatality about death: whatever death is, God has nothing to do with it. That is to say, it become apparent not only that death is simply as something which just is, but, precisely because of the resurrection of Jesus, it becomes present as something which need not be. Death need no be. Really. Is that where the saints and martyrs of old and of today place their bets. No. It is the reality that has been shared with us as real - in the resurrection of Jesus. God - who claims us and hold us and blesses us and loves us - will have nothing to do with death. The beast - like the monster under the bed - is not real within the scheme of God's creativity. In our storytelling we hear it as a voice on Good Friday when everything is done and the grave is sealed. The voice says to all of us: 'This is not the last word - nor is it the truth. Come and see.' Connection: To often it seems like it is impossible to listen to those words that bid us all to walk pass death's pull. Come and see - wow. O God of life, keep holding onto us as we stammer and stutter and seem broken down by death and sin. Inspire our living through death's illusions. Amen |
| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | Alison notes that we have a paradox at hand (in the resurrection). He will then (tomorrow) tie that to sin. Here we have an apparent paradox: it was the extraordinary proximity of God to the human story - such that God was actually involved in it as one of us - that permitted us the possibility of understanding for the first time the degree of the distance of God from any of our representational possibilities. In more traditional terms, it was only the complete immanence of God in our history as raising a concretely dead man from the dead that revealed the complete transcendence of God. In some ways, God's intimate connection to the human story helps to address the question of every little child: Where is God? If death rules life and is the power that controls how we can go about out everyday life experience then God is not a part of what is here. That is, God cannot and is not contained by our everyday reality. In fact, with the resurrection - with God right in the middle of the way death tries to rule all things - with death being left with death's pants pulled down, God redefines all of our understanding of life. The resurrection of God's Beloved gives us a glimpse of the beyond pulling us out of our locked in stories so that new life can emerge and we can begin to live within it. I would imagine that death must be really upset with God because right in the face of all the 'authority and witnesses' to the brutality of Jesus' death, God is a power able to live within death's grasp and yet able to break death's bond. The ultimate outsider doing a cosmic inside job. Connection: I need to know that God is available even as I fear death and expect to be overcome by death's pull. I need to know that I am connected and beloved by a power that will side with me in and through the best that death can throw at me. O God of life, reaching in and save us as you always promise. Amen |
| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | Onward - with death and God and life. The resurrection of Jesus, at the same time as it showed the unimagined strength of divine love for a particular human being and therefore revealed the loving proximity of God, also marked a final and definitive sundering of God from any human reprresentational capacity. Whereas before it could be understood that God did no die, not change, nor have an end, this was always within a dialectical understanding of what does happen to humans. With the resurrection of Jesus from the dead there is suddenly no dialectical understanding of God available, because God has chosen his own terms on which to make himself known quite outside the possibility of human knowledge marked by death. The complete freedom and gratuity of God is learned only from the resurrection, not because it did not exist before, but because we could not know about or understand it while our understanding was shaped by the inevitability of death. At the time of death, it is over. There is nothing else to be said. That is death - utter separation. No wonder death and sin are so closely linked - co controlling. But then comes the laugter. In the resurrection, the beginning and the end are made into something new. What appears to be the end is not as it appears.In the resurrection everything must be reconsidered. If death is not as it was seen, could it be that life before death is also not as it seems. Could it be that we do not need to fear death - or see it as a threat - or be anxious at its mere mention? Could it be that life is now shaped by - as the old hymn puts it - 'a love that will not let us go, today, tomorrow, or yesterday (If only I knew that yesterday!). Yes death come, but it com Connection: Our identity never changes - we are beloved of God - and as Paul writes "nothing can separate us from the love of God." Yes, death appears to be the power of the day (we know its many forms) but what else is within the grasp of the possibilities of our God. Too much to even consider for now. Acts of mercy and kindness and love seem to be the beginning of our trip through that door. O God of life, when we are marked as you beloved, no other story can rule over us. Keeps us mindful of your endu |
| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | Today we continue with Alison's notion that 'death itself is a matter of indifference to God. This marks a decisive change in the understanding of God, one which had been a long time in the making, since if God has nothing to do with death, if God is indifferent to death, then our representations of God, all of which are marked by a human culture in which death appears as, at the very least, inevitable, are wrong, a Jesus remarked to the Sadducees: "You are greatly mistaken" (Mark 12:18-27). There is that door. It opens slightly so that we can take a peek into a place and time that was considered 'other' or totally disconnected from us. From my first reading and a simple reflection on what is being said here, all of the discussion of what will happen after death - as though it is the end of our story - is changed. Too often, preachers and teachers use death and its power and its end of things as a motivator to have people enter into a 'religious experience' in order that death does not eat us up and make things a real hell for us. Well, death is a blip that cannot put an end to the pursuit of God's love for us. As much as God claims to be with us now, that reality that brings life and comfort and builds our character cannot be stopped by death. God endures beyond death as God for us. Could be why we often hear prophets and the like tell us us not to fear - not to be anxious. God continues to reveal God's fullness of love and mercy and hopefulness through all things. Connection: Our identity never changes - we are beloved of God - and as Paul writes "nothing can separate us from the love of God." Yes, death appears to be the power of the day (we know its many forms) but what else is within the grasp of the possibilities of our God. Too much to even consider for now. Acts of mercy and kindness and love seem to be the beginning of our trip through that door. O God of life, when we are marked as you beloved, no other story can rule over us. Keeps us mindful of your endu |
| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | I must be feeling better. Last week I said i was 6 months out after surgery - it is only 4. Nice. More from Alison The resurrection of Jesus was not a miraculous event within a preexisting framework of understanding of God, but the event by which God recast the possibility of human understanding of God. Alison goes on to say this is done in the person of Jesus, through his life and teachings, leading up to and including his death. Then he notes: There is a first step in this recasting of God through the resurrection of the crucified Jesus, and this is the demonstration that death itself is a matter of indifference to God. He goes on to day: The content of the teaching was made available when Jesus himself was raised, and it became possible to seee that God's love for this man was such that that love was unaffected by death, and that for that love death was no necessary separation, for love could carry on begin reciprocal even through death. For God, death is as if it were not, which is why Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob live in God. The love of God is the end of death. It becomes a power within life that has claimed to be the end all. And yet, God's love cannot be contained or ruled or owned by such a boundary as that. I hear that as another 'turn the world upside down' notion that is well known among the followers of Jesus - but it needs to be said again and again in new ways. Is this why the martyrs of the Church could and did stand their ground in the most brutal of times? The witnesses of God's Reign that has no end and will go on beyond all that we can imagine - even death - is enough to grant us peace and life and healing in and throughh all things. Death means nothing to God - doesn't break our relationship with God - is not able to separate us from God - will never be the last word. Therefore, we are invited to live. Live as though life has no end. Live as though all of our fumbling and stumbling and falling short and making a mess of things will not put an end to us in the sight of God. Our God never loses sight of us. Our God is both here and now and will be forevermore. Think of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob - not so much as in the clouds, rather they are living beyond our imagination for sometimes we can only imagine what life is now. Connection: Sometimes, the smallest new phrases and the reexamination of those faithful lines trips me up and makes me wonder at a level quite different from what I wondered previously. Maybe that is the invitation we always are handed by our God - to wonder again - even when we seem to be at the end and can see no further. Wonder about God's endless promises. O God of life, you open up time beyond time and help us to see the power of life you hand to us all. In that opening, you expand our hopefulness and secure a future we have yet to understand. Praise to you, O God. Amen. |
| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | Please excuse me if I go slowly through my use of James Alison's writing. It simply catches me wondering and wandering. The resurrection of Jesus was not a miraculous event within a preexisting framework of understanding of God, but the event by which God recast the possibility of human understanding of God. For this to happen God simultaneously made use of and blew apart the understanding of God that had developed over the centuries among the Jewish people. God did this in the person of Jesus, through his life and teaching, leading up and including his death. Within the fullness of the life of Jesus - that must include his death - the vision of the realm of possible life within God's loving embrace is expanded and made to be eternally concrete and eternally present. What becomes visible is the Reigning story of the powerlessness of death. Even when it is an ever-prsent reality, death is not a power within what Alison calls a 'preexisting framework of understanding God.' It will be within the Jesus Story that death is exposed as a lie and the power of death is no longer able to be a power that rules us. What is alive and vibrant is the sustaining love that reunites all things - rather than the powers of division. Among us - God's Beloved - is a gift that announces and exposes the grand hoax of death that is usually able to lead us around by the nose and scare us into believing anything that is not the power of God's love. Connection: I find that the power of death - in all of its many forms - is a tough foe to face and defeat. The tapes of 'this is the way it is' or 'this is the way I want it to be' can be deafening. So we are told to gather and rehearse the story of a truthfulness that does not bend to what appears to be the strongest voice in room. O God of life, you open us to wideness of your love so that all the powers that attempt to contain us must |
| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | Please excuse me if I go slowly through my use of James Alison's writing. It simply catches me wondering and wandering. The New Testament is concerned in the first place with an announcement about God. This is made absolutely clear in 1 John 1:5: This is the message we [i.e., "John" representing the apostolic witness] have heard from him [i.e., Jesus] and proclaim to you [i.e., the Church, actual or yet to be], that God is light and in God there is no darkness at all. There are too many ways to take what is written in 1 John. Though I usually do not like the image of light verses darkness (it carries -for me- to many historical hints at race), here I am taking darkness to be the story of the way things are in the world. Within the domain of God Reigning power - that must be announced without condition and without end - the ways of the world are no longer our guides and our mentors. Now and forever, God Reigns. To life! We can look all around us and see that the-evidence-of-the-day places the power and principalities in charge of all that is and all that will be. (just look at the power given to corporations to determine how we will be nation and who will be considered people). The welfare of all is diminished as the welfare of some becomes the operational practices that are meant to shape who we become. As I noted in the sermon yesterday, this is all a lie that is sugarcoating garbage - again. The God who rescues and liberates and heals the whole even as we long to be separate will not be silent in the midst of the powers of separation. In the realm of God's creative wind, the power of separation is not a power. It is useless - it is powerless - it is what 'has been,' that is death. The announcement about our God is that God Reigns - no other power. Even when we are asolutely sure that there are ways to beat down the powers and principalities with our own might (making us one of those powers), there is this light that opens up the room for life beyond our vision and our expectations. Connection: It is as though God is an announcement that pops up to ask, 'What else" or "Is that all you have?" This is only to show us that the works of the powers and principalities are really nothing in the grand scheme of the day at hand. Therefore, when we live within the announcement of God's Reign, we can risk living within the shalom that puts an end to divisions and brokenness and blame. O God of life, your love shines as a beacon to remind |
| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | James Alison takes an interesting look at 'the resurrection and original sin. He tilte's this section the same as he does his book - The Joy of Being Wrong. After noting that the doctrine of original sin, like the doctrine of the trinity, is not found explicitly in the apostolic witness. Alison goes on to say they are legitimate as a proper working out of the shape of salvation produced by the death and resurrectionof Jesus and that they are parallel and mutually dependent outworkings of the presence of that salvation in the midst of humanity. He writes: Any doctrine that does not - ultimately flow from the resurrection, as a development of its content and consequences, must properly be questioned as to its starting point and as to its validity. It is this event - this event without physical evidence - that becomes the rock (so to speak) of how our lives will be shaped as we step out into this day as followers of Jesus.It is a genesis event even as it is a resurrection event. Something new - a life - an outlook - a perspective - a journey - begins to move forward from this episode in that garden in which the tomb was empty and death was no longer the victor. So the resurrection really does start it all - life begins here. From the empty tomb and with Jesus alive beyond the bounds of death, life must be redefined from the ground up. Does life end at death? Is death to be the power that none of us can escape? Isn't that how we often see it - we hope to escaped death? I know that was in my thoughts before heart surgery. I wanted to get to the other side of surgery - I wanted things to keep on going as they were once going. But that is not the adventure into which we are pulled when resurrection breaks into our lives. We are told the brokeness of life that comes to its depths in death is no longer the power of life that owns us. There is a life that is it now available in which our brokenness - our sin - our part in the games of evil - everything we thought has been controlling us - is over. It has no power. I wonder if this is what gives Alison the wording: the joy of begin wrong? We live too much of life under the wrong ruler - death is no longer the defining way - resurrection is. That is a joy-filled reality. And yet, it is one that I too often run from - like those first disciples. We were wrong! Yes! Connection: I already made a connection to my thinking about surgery. But more importantly, this 'joy' of being wrong about death and sin and brokenness comes with a way to enter back into the movement of this day. We - as followers of Jesus - have a way to reenter this day that will be one in which we do not go along with the powers of death - we counter death with life and promise. That is the genesis of joy put into life - now. O God of life, it is within your blessed grasp that we are pulled into your Reign of peace and set into this day as your beloved |
| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | It has been just about six months since I send out a weekday devotion. At first it was an inability to focus - literally. Then it was an unwillingness to focus. There were so many things changing around me, I did not know what to say. Then is was the importance of giving time and energy to preaching and teaching in the parish. During that time there was an attempt - several of them - to begin to write and reflect. Either the stuff I was trying to read didn't do anything for me or I just lost my grip on what was necessary for me. Well today is a much needed personal return to the writing of these weekday devotions. I don't even know if there are still people on the list to receive them. Then again, that is how I started these back in 2001 until my surgery in 2012. I simply put them out there - they were for the healing of my soul. That may be what is going on even now - always healing and growing and stumbling around - a bit lost and a bit found. I'm not sure how I will move forward. More than likely I will be using someone wiser than me to be the trigger for my reflections and comments. As of late I have been listening to how people talk of death and 'after-life' and the whole 'what is next' or 'who are we to be when we say we are spiritual people - from a biblical perspective' and the meaning of sin and all that talk about resurrection. That is where I will be trying to go. Ha. I am being drawn back into he writing of a South American Roman Catholic writer named James Alison. He has stirred up my soul many times and is doing it again. There has never been a system set up for people to respond or comment on what I write so if there is something you want me to know my e-mail is adebelak@redeemerluth.com Since I don't receive these, I'm told you can connect on our webpage: www.redeemerluth.com Each devotion will have an introduction - a quote from James Alison (as a beginning) - a 'connection' - and a brief prayer. |
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