From "The Prophetic Imagination"
In Luke's presentation of the story of Lazarus and the Rich man, we see the contrast of the numbness of the rich man with the pain of Lazarus.
...the narrative suggests that the rich man who is numbed by his possessions and social status has no future; there is nothing but an end for him. By contrast, the poor man Lazarus, unencumbered either by possessions or by social status, is beset by grief and pain. And, says Jesus, this it the bearer of the future. The contrast, in the context of our discussion, concerns the numbed one who knows no future except more of the present, and the suffering one who receives from the Father.
The key for me in this comment by Brueggemann is that this story is the bearer of the future. This is not to say that the you must be poor to...in the end...receive much. That would be a great opiate wouldn't it. Rather, the parable tries to pull us into the vision...the future...so that all of us - the rich and the poor - may have a new life now. This is a life that is seen as a gift with each of us having the blessed opportunity to be a part of a people who are not numb to one another so that there can easily be division and strife between "classes" of people that have no existence in the Reign of God. The door of God's Reign is always open and we are being invited to share in what is promise and not try to live on what we can grab hold of for ourselves.
Connection: When we start grabbing in order to secure our present, we let the wonder and blessedness of God's Reign out of our hands for we are too consumed by our consuming and cannot see what life God promises. Again, I think we need one another to help us to reach out and take hold of what is promised for all of us.
Lift us up and carry us into the abundance of your promises, Precious Lord. We can become so attached to what is around us and the way it all seems to be that we forget to let go and watch how your Reign will fill us just as you always promise. Set us free, O God. Amen
Thursday, April 28, 2005
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
28 April 2005
We continue with "The Prophetic Imagination."
If the groans (of the hurting ones) become audible, if they can be heard in the streets and markets and courts, then the consciousness of domination is already jeopardized. ...Jesus had the capacity to give voice to the very hurt that had been muted and therefore newness could come. Newness comes precisely from expressed pain. Suffering made audible and visible produces hope, articulated grief is the gate of newness, and the history of Jesus is the history of entering into the pain and giving it voice.
"Entering into the pain and giving it voice." This is not voice to my pain - a in a complaint about the conditions of my life that are not as I want them to be. This pain within the history of Jesus is the pain of those who have been left out and made into "nothing at all." To give voice to this pain and this side of the reality of life is dangerous because the dominant society would rather stay numb to that part of reality. Like Jesus...like Ghandi...like Martin Luther King, Jr.,...like Bishop Oscar Romero - when people rise up to give voice to the pain that has been ignored, the powers that have tried to stay numb will do whatever is necessary to stay numb. But as we have learned, those voices that lift up the pain of the world do not die. They give life again and again and from age to age to those who are the disinherited and those who have the courage to hear those voices and stand with them. The difference between this kind of prophetic voice and that which claims to be a righteous voice in much of American Christianity today is that these "Christian" voices are merely being the voice for those who have everything and want to keep it the way they have it. There is no threat to their lives - really. It is nothing more than anxious hearts that do not want to give voice to the real pain and suffering of our world. Instead they build on sentimental views that are easy to draw in people's hearts and money with fear-filled scenarios that are all self serving.
Connection: Be patient. The voice of the Lord of Life will be heard...here and there. It will never be the dominant voice...for if it becomes that, we can be sure it is not the Lord of Life...it is the Lord of the Life that is. Be patient and listen for the voice of the compassionate Lord who longs to awaken us all.
Come among us, O Breath of Life, so that we may be drawn into fellowship with those who long for the opportunity to live without the constant terror of hunger and illness and homelessness and oppression of all kinds. Pinch us so that we will not become numb to the pains of our world. Amen
If the groans (of the hurting ones) become audible, if they can be heard in the streets and markets and courts, then the consciousness of domination is already jeopardized. ...Jesus had the capacity to give voice to the very hurt that had been muted and therefore newness could come. Newness comes precisely from expressed pain. Suffering made audible and visible produces hope, articulated grief is the gate of newness, and the history of Jesus is the history of entering into the pain and giving it voice.
"Entering into the pain and giving it voice." This is not voice to my pain - a in a complaint about the conditions of my life that are not as I want them to be. This pain within the history of Jesus is the pain of those who have been left out and made into "nothing at all." To give voice to this pain and this side of the reality of life is dangerous because the dominant society would rather stay numb to that part of reality. Like Jesus...like Ghandi...like Martin Luther King, Jr.,...like Bishop Oscar Romero - when people rise up to give voice to the pain that has been ignored, the powers that have tried to stay numb will do whatever is necessary to stay numb. But as we have learned, those voices that lift up the pain of the world do not die. They give life again and again and from age to age to those who are the disinherited and those who have the courage to hear those voices and stand with them. The difference between this kind of prophetic voice and that which claims to be a righteous voice in much of American Christianity today is that these "Christian" voices are merely being the voice for those who have everything and want to keep it the way they have it. There is no threat to their lives - really. It is nothing more than anxious hearts that do not want to give voice to the real pain and suffering of our world. Instead they build on sentimental views that are easy to draw in people's hearts and money with fear-filled scenarios that are all self serving.
Connection: Be patient. The voice of the Lord of Life will be heard...here and there. It will never be the dominant voice...for if it becomes that, we can be sure it is not the Lord of Life...it is the Lord of the Life that is. Be patient and listen for the voice of the compassionate Lord who longs to awaken us all.
Come among us, O Breath of Life, so that we may be drawn into fellowship with those who long for the opportunity to live without the constant terror of hunger and illness and homelessness and oppression of all kinds. Pinch us so that we will not become numb to the pains of our world. Amen
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
27 April 2005
More of a look at Jesus from the viewpoint of "The Prophetic Imagination" by Walter Brueggemann.
Jesus is remembered and presented by the early church as the embodiment of an alternative consciousness. In his compassion he embodies the anguish of those rejected by the dominant culture, and as embodied anguish he as the authority to show the deathly end of the dominant culture. Quite clearly, the one thing the dominant culture cannot tolerate or co-opt is compassion, the ability to stand in solidarity with the victims of the present order. It can manage charity and good intentions, but it has no way to resist solidarity with pain or grief. ...The imperial consciousness lives by its capacity to still the groans and to go on with business as usual as though none were hurting and there were no groans.
Why is the embodiment of compassion such a force within our world? Could it be that it is so contrary to how our culture moves that is disarms us for a moment? By that I mean it creates a feeling within us. It stirs us up...even if just for a moment. The stirring may not be identified as a corresponding compassion because compassion is such an alien experience since we have been made numb to the reality of pain around us. Yes, we can be moved to stay in touch with and be moved by the "anguish" of those around us - and I would suggest that it is the Holy Spirit that moves us in that alien direction - or we can react to anything that opens up our eyes and ears and hearts. When we are reactive...when we try to keep things just as they are...even through acts of charity, the dominant culture or mood will prevail and as it does, we easily become numb once again to the life around us. Isn't that how wars start?
Connection: Would it be a good exercise to stop in the middle of our day and try to sense how or why there is a lack of compassion in what we are hearing and seeing in the news...from our government...in our homes...from our churches? And then...what will we do?
Lord of New Life, you walk in our steps and you also bid us to come walk in yours. Open our hearts so that we will become aware of the pain in our world and not fear it or run from it but rather, like you enter into it and begin to dismantle its control over all of us. Amen.
Jesus is remembered and presented by the early church as the embodiment of an alternative consciousness. In his compassion he embodies the anguish of those rejected by the dominant culture, and as embodied anguish he as the authority to show the deathly end of the dominant culture. Quite clearly, the one thing the dominant culture cannot tolerate or co-opt is compassion, the ability to stand in solidarity with the victims of the present order. It can manage charity and good intentions, but it has no way to resist solidarity with pain or grief. ...The imperial consciousness lives by its capacity to still the groans and to go on with business as usual as though none were hurting and there were no groans.
Why is the embodiment of compassion such a force within our world? Could it be that it is so contrary to how our culture moves that is disarms us for a moment? By that I mean it creates a feeling within us. It stirs us up...even if just for a moment. The stirring may not be identified as a corresponding compassion because compassion is such an alien experience since we have been made numb to the reality of pain around us. Yes, we can be moved to stay in touch with and be moved by the "anguish" of those around us - and I would suggest that it is the Holy Spirit that moves us in that alien direction - or we can react to anything that opens up our eyes and ears and hearts. When we are reactive...when we try to keep things just as they are...even through acts of charity, the dominant culture or mood will prevail and as it does, we easily become numb once again to the life around us. Isn't that how wars start?
Connection: Would it be a good exercise to stop in the middle of our day and try to sense how or why there is a lack of compassion in what we are hearing and seeing in the news...from our government...in our homes...from our churches? And then...what will we do?
Lord of New Life, you walk in our steps and you also bid us to come walk in yours. Open our hearts so that we will become aware of the pain in our world and not fear it or run from it but rather, like you enter into it and begin to dismantle its control over all of us. Amen.
Monday, April 25, 2005
26 April 2005
Walter Brueggemann in "The Prophetic Imagination" continues to address himself to need for compassion in an world that is overcome by numbness. He draws on the parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal son by writing:
Both the Samaritan and the father are Jesus' peculiar articulation against the dominant culture, an so they stand as a radical threat. The Samaritan by his actions judges the dominant way by disregard of the marginal. The ones who pass by, obviously carriers of the dominant tradition, are numbed, indifferent, and do not notice. The Samaritan expresses a new way that displaces the old arrangements in which outcasts are simply out. The replacing of numbness with compassion, that is the end of cynical indifference and the beginning of noticed pain, signals of social revolution. In similar fashion the father by his ready embrace of his unacceptable son condemns the "righteousness of the law" by which society is currently ordered and by which social rejects are forever rejected.
The move to be engaged demands attention to that which we would usually walk right by as we go along "our" way. Compassion pulls us into engagement and when that begins, the present structures begin to fade as people feel and experience and touch what was previously untouchable or unloveable. The vision of the Reign of God pulls us...across the road into the ditch or running across town to embrace a real outcast. What arrives at that moment is something beyond our plans and, quite frankly, beyond our expectations. I often wonder about how difficult it is to go back to what once was after we have been pulled into a new life like these two parabolic characters. That must be the task of the church...to keep us wondering about the life we enter through baptism and how that keeps pulling us beyond a world that is willing to settle for numbness.
Connection: Have you ever thought what you need to be the story or the action that would bring life into your numbness? We are all numb to the pain around us...at some times more than at other times. Important for this day is trusting that we can be moved into something new and dynamic.
Lord of the Exodus, just as you delivered Israel from the grasp of the powers of Egypt, we expect that you will be with us today to pull us through your living water and into a promise land in which justice, mercy, peace, and compassion prevail among us. Amen.
Both the Samaritan and the father are Jesus' peculiar articulation against the dominant culture, an so they stand as a radical threat. The Samaritan by his actions judges the dominant way by disregard of the marginal. The ones who pass by, obviously carriers of the dominant tradition, are numbed, indifferent, and do not notice. The Samaritan expresses a new way that displaces the old arrangements in which outcasts are simply out. The replacing of numbness with compassion, that is the end of cynical indifference and the beginning of noticed pain, signals of social revolution. In similar fashion the father by his ready embrace of his unacceptable son condemns the "righteousness of the law" by which society is currently ordered and by which social rejects are forever rejected.
The move to be engaged demands attention to that which we would usually walk right by as we go along "our" way. Compassion pulls us into engagement and when that begins, the present structures begin to fade as people feel and experience and touch what was previously untouchable or unloveable. The vision of the Reign of God pulls us...across the road into the ditch or running across town to embrace a real outcast. What arrives at that moment is something beyond our plans and, quite frankly, beyond our expectations. I often wonder about how difficult it is to go back to what once was after we have been pulled into a new life like these two parabolic characters. That must be the task of the church...to keep us wondering about the life we enter through baptism and how that keeps pulling us beyond a world that is willing to settle for numbness.
Connection: Have you ever thought what you need to be the story or the action that would bring life into your numbness? We are all numb to the pain around us...at some times more than at other times. Important for this day is trusting that we can be moved into something new and dynamic.
Lord of the Exodus, just as you delivered Israel from the grasp of the powers of Egypt, we expect that you will be with us today to pull us through your living water and into a promise land in which justice, mercy, peace, and compassion prevail among us. Amen.
Sunday, April 24, 2005
25 April 2005
We continue with Walter Brueggemann in "The Prophetic Imagination.
Brueggemann compares Marks notation of Jesus' compassion for the great throng on the shore with Matthew's similar story. But Matthew describes the people as "harassed and helpless."
Those words are polemical, for the people did not get helpless by themselves but were rendered helpless. And to speak of harassment is to suggest that some others are doing the harassing. Thus the Matthean version is much more direct and critical.
Sometimes it is easy to think that people just are as they are because of their own doing. That is the light in which the poor and minorities are cast by so many of us. And yet, their situation is cannot be simply something we say is their own doing. It is much bigger than that. To remember that Jesus is noted as calling them "harassed and helpless" may mean that this is the case due to their life situation but that "situation" includes the systemic "way of life" that tends to favor those who are in power and those who have...but also turns its back on those who are in need of the bare necessities of life. Not only that....those who do not have - those who are "disinherited" are then put through hell - harassed by those of us who have enough and more.
Connection: Can we walk with those who are helpless before we take that move to harass them in one way or another? We may then find that there is less and less for which we would even think to harass them. They may even become as a brother or sister to us.
Peacemaker and Healer of All Life, though it is so easy for us to create division or simply see to its continuation, you call us into relationship. You help us to see the humanity in the ones we attempt to turn into mere objects within our lives. Continue to let your light of holy insight guide us. Amen.
Brueggemann compares Marks notation of Jesus' compassion for the great throng on the shore with Matthew's similar story. But Matthew describes the people as "harassed and helpless."
Those words are polemical, for the people did not get helpless by themselves but were rendered helpless. And to speak of harassment is to suggest that some others are doing the harassing. Thus the Matthean version is much more direct and critical.
Sometimes it is easy to think that people just are as they are because of their own doing. That is the light in which the poor and minorities are cast by so many of us. And yet, their situation is cannot be simply something we say is their own doing. It is much bigger than that. To remember that Jesus is noted as calling them "harassed and helpless" may mean that this is the case due to their life situation but that "situation" includes the systemic "way of life" that tends to favor those who are in power and those who have...but also turns its back on those who are in need of the bare necessities of life. Not only that....those who do not have - those who are "disinherited" are then put through hell - harassed by those of us who have enough and more.
Connection: Can we walk with those who are helpless before we take that move to harass them in one way or another? We may then find that there is less and less for which we would even think to harass them. They may even become as a brother or sister to us.
Peacemaker and Healer of All Life, though it is so easy for us to create division or simply see to its continuation, you call us into relationship. You help us to see the humanity in the ones we attempt to turn into mere objects within our lives. Continue to let your light of holy insight guide us. Amen.
Friday, April 22, 2005
22 April 2005
More from Walter Brueggemann.
The characteristic word for compassion, splagchnoisomai, means to let one's innards embrace the feeling or situation of another. Thus Jesus embodies the hurt that the marginal ones know by taking it into his own person and his own story. Their hurt came from being declared outside the realm of the normal and Jesus engages with them in a situation of abnormality. Concretely, his criticism as embodied hurt is expressed toward the sick (Matt. 14:14)...the hungry (Mark 6:34, & 8:2)...the one who grieved the dead (Luke 7:12-13)...the whole range of human persons who are harassed and helpless (Matt. 9:35-36).
When Jesus embodies the hurt of these marginal ones it includes his moving in with them - to be with them and to take on whatever force may be overpowering them. Compassion is not displayed as a sermon or some well spoken word. Compassion is a life moving force that seeks the well being of another. This life moving force may mean that my life will be exposed to life situations I would never be in if I was not moved out of my path into the path of this other person. Someone is compassionate as someone is moved. The world and our communities begin to be healed and saved as we are moved out of our way to make sure that those out on the edge of life are embraced and by that, made whole just as the ones who show compassion. Both sides of compassionate lives are healed and what was once a reason to stay separate does not exist anymore.
Connection: There must be ways today to be a part of a compassionate journey. Sometimes it means facing that uncomfortable feeling in our "gut" and not turning to make it numb.
Creating Lord, your people are so diverse in many ways and yet we are all called your children. Train us up by your Holy Spirit to look after our brothers and sisters and give up our love affair with ourselves that so often keeps us locked up in our own worlds and ready to go to war with those not a part of the world we like. We know it will take transformation and death but we pray you will walk with us as you have always promised. Amen.
The characteristic word for compassion, splagchnoisomai, means to let one's innards embrace the feeling or situation of another. Thus Jesus embodies the hurt that the marginal ones know by taking it into his own person and his own story. Their hurt came from being declared outside the realm of the normal and Jesus engages with them in a situation of abnormality. Concretely, his criticism as embodied hurt is expressed toward the sick (Matt. 14:14)...the hungry (Mark 6:34, & 8:2)...the one who grieved the dead (Luke 7:12-13)...the whole range of human persons who are harassed and helpless (Matt. 9:35-36).
When Jesus embodies the hurt of these marginal ones it includes his moving in with them - to be with them and to take on whatever force may be overpowering them. Compassion is not displayed as a sermon or some well spoken word. Compassion is a life moving force that seeks the well being of another. This life moving force may mean that my life will be exposed to life situations I would never be in if I was not moved out of my path into the path of this other person. Someone is compassionate as someone is moved. The world and our communities begin to be healed and saved as we are moved out of our way to make sure that those out on the edge of life are embraced and by that, made whole just as the ones who show compassion. Both sides of compassionate lives are healed and what was once a reason to stay separate does not exist anymore.
Connection: There must be ways today to be a part of a compassionate journey. Sometimes it means facing that uncomfortable feeling in our "gut" and not turning to make it numb.
Creating Lord, your people are so diverse in many ways and yet we are all called your children. Train us up by your Holy Spirit to look after our brothers and sisters and give up our love affair with ourselves that so often keeps us locked up in our own worlds and ready to go to war with those not a part of the world we like. We know it will take transformation and death but we pray you will walk with us as you have always promised. Amen.
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
21 April 2005
We continue to look at Jesus through the eyes of "The Prophetic Imagination" by Walter Brueggemann.
...the compassion of Jesus is to be understood not simply as a personal emotional reaction but as a public criticism in which he dares to act upon his concern against the entire numbness of his social context. Expires live by numbness. Empire, in their militarism, expect numbness about the human cost of war. Corporate economies expect blindness to the cost in terms of poverty and exploitation. Governments and societies of domination go to great lengths to keep the numbness intact. Jesus penetrates the numbness by his compassion and with his compassion takes the first step by making visible the odd abnormality that had become business as usual.
Unless we begin to see how our lives are meant to be connected, we will either construct walls to separate ourselves from others or we will simply turn our back and act as though we do not see the true condition of life around us. This is a part of the numbing that takes part in all of our lives. Being numb to the reality of life around us is to live as though the pain and suffer, joy and wonder of life is not as real as it is. The Good News never fears feeling, seeing, and touching the reality of life because it is all viewed as something less than the vision of what life is to be. Therefore, when there is brokenness, the Voice of the Resurrection is not afraid to step into it and be apart of a contrary existence in which we move more deeply into what is broken rather than run from it. When we are made numb to the world around us, we do not fear because we cannot be connected to the world. We stand away. When we live within the reality of the Good News, we do not fear because though we are afraid and anxious about the shape of the world, we stand with one another in the middle of all the dis-ease and continue to remind one another of another way to live.
Connection: Do not be afraid to face what is ugly and distorted and painful. Instead, be reminded that the one we call Lord, Jesus, is right there in the midst of it all and we can find life there - even in what seems to be something we would like to avoid. Compassion pulls us into the healing of our lives. Without it, we will be numb to our lives and the lives of others.
Lord of all Hopefulness, we are easily defeated and the potential for new life is often drained from us so that we dare not engage the world as your beloved people. Free us to see and feel and touch so that your Reign may be experienced by others. Amen.
...the compassion of Jesus is to be understood not simply as a personal emotional reaction but as a public criticism in which he dares to act upon his concern against the entire numbness of his social context. Expires live by numbness. Empire, in their militarism, expect numbness about the human cost of war. Corporate economies expect blindness to the cost in terms of poverty and exploitation. Governments and societies of domination go to great lengths to keep the numbness intact. Jesus penetrates the numbness by his compassion and with his compassion takes the first step by making visible the odd abnormality that had become business as usual.
Unless we begin to see how our lives are meant to be connected, we will either construct walls to separate ourselves from others or we will simply turn our back and act as though we do not see the true condition of life around us. This is a part of the numbing that takes part in all of our lives. Being numb to the reality of life around us is to live as though the pain and suffer, joy and wonder of life is not as real as it is. The Good News never fears feeling, seeing, and touching the reality of life because it is all viewed as something less than the vision of what life is to be. Therefore, when there is brokenness, the Voice of the Resurrection is not afraid to step into it and be apart of a contrary existence in which we move more deeply into what is broken rather than run from it. When we are made numb to the world around us, we do not fear because we cannot be connected to the world. We stand away. When we live within the reality of the Good News, we do not fear because though we are afraid and anxious about the shape of the world, we stand with one another in the middle of all the dis-ease and continue to remind one another of another way to live.
Connection: Do not be afraid to face what is ugly and distorted and painful. Instead, be reminded that the one we call Lord, Jesus, is right there in the midst of it all and we can find life there - even in what seems to be something we would like to avoid. Compassion pulls us into the healing of our lives. Without it, we will be numb to our lives and the lives of others.
Lord of all Hopefulness, we are easily defeated and the potential for new life is often drained from us so that we dare not engage the world as your beloved people. Free us to see and feel and touch so that your Reign may be experienced by others. Amen.
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