This week I'm taking material from a section of "Christ is Present in Faith" that falls under this subdivision: In faith "everything of the world and the law comes to an end, and the divine begins. This is by Tuomo Mannermaa.
...Luther's notion of the law is marked by the idea that the law belongs only in the "world." Thus, it applies to the "old Adam," or the "flesh." But, in contrast, it must not reign in "heaven," that is, in the Christian's conscience, in which not the law but Christ - the righteousness granted by God - is to sit on the thrown. He is the "law of the law," that is, freedom, and the "death of death," that is, eternal life and blessedness.
The law is good stuff. It is good stuff when we think about the rules of society and how they word to keep order....it is good stuff. The law deals with keep us "in line" or even "on target" within the realmm of everyday life. But in our relationship with our God - the relationship that has the power to create a new being and does create the new being, the law has not power. I find the reminder that Christ (the saving - forgiving - reconciling one) sitting on the throne in the Christian's conscience as being quite powerful. We are already in the realm of "heaven." That is in the bag. That is the beginning and ending of the story. Before God, we are the beloved. Certainly that does not mean we do not abide by the law of the land - we all need to have that "old adam" brought into line so as to maintain the order and life of the community. But remember that we are citizens of a Reign that shapes and lifts us our character so that we are not playing games with our lives in an attempt to do good in order to be loved by God. When we are already citizens of that Reign, we are set free to live as though that is the only word among us.
Connection: Knowing what "knotheads" we can be to and with one another, we need to also know who is ruling our hearts and lives even as we stumble and fall. Such love for us is the power to stand up and face the rest of the day.
By your grace, O God, you set up the domain of your love and we are drawn into your presence. You become the power that shapes us and frees us in the middle of all that takes shape around us. Amen.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Friday 28 September 2007
Here's more Luther writing about being "justified by the Law." He really presses the point.
Luther uses many different and strong expressions when describing the "Sisyphus character" of the "righteousness of the law." For example:
" Trying to be justified by the Law is like counting money out of an empty purse, eating and drinking from an empty dish and cup, looking for strength and riches where there is nothing but weakness and poverty, laying a burden upon someone who is already oppressed to the point of collapse, trying to spend a hundred gold pieces and not having a pittance, taking clothing away from a naked man, imposing even greater weakness and poverty upon someone who is sick and needy, etc."
And yet, we try again and again. The word of life that announces to us that we are justified before God and we are free to begin again - just as we are...with nothing to do but be who we are (already) in the eyes of God. To live within such confidence and assurance and promise is a grand gift that is ours for the living! It seems to me that as we come to trust that word of life, we will begin to trust that we do not need to spin our lives trying to justify our existence to one another. Rather, we can be who we are. That doesn't mean "to hell with everyone else...I'll do what I want to do." I think it is more as though we are free to be a part of the whole. We need others and others need us. We are part of a community of hope and therefore, each of us helps to shape the life of grace and freedom by living such a life. We each stand within the whole as one who is to play his/her part in the life of the Reign of God.
Connection: Remember whose you are...it is the beginning of a renewal that we have not yet experienced to its fullest.
Lord God, dress us up with your love. Remind us that it is within your blessed Reign that we are called to live and begin this day. Encourage us to walk within the freedom and blessedness that is already ours for the living. Amen.
Luther uses many different and strong expressions when describing the "Sisyphus character" of the "righteousness of the law." For example:
" Trying to be justified by the Law is like counting money out of an empty purse, eating and drinking from an empty dish and cup, looking for strength and riches where there is nothing but weakness and poverty, laying a burden upon someone who is already oppressed to the point of collapse, trying to spend a hundred gold pieces and not having a pittance, taking clothing away from a naked man, imposing even greater weakness and poverty upon someone who is sick and needy, etc."
And yet, we try again and again. The word of life that announces to us that we are justified before God and we are free to begin again - just as we are...with nothing to do but be who we are (already) in the eyes of God. To live within such confidence and assurance and promise is a grand gift that is ours for the living! It seems to me that as we come to trust that word of life, we will begin to trust that we do not need to spin our lives trying to justify our existence to one another. Rather, we can be who we are. That doesn't mean "to hell with everyone else...I'll do what I want to do." I think it is more as though we are free to be a part of the whole. We need others and others need us. We are part of a community of hope and therefore, each of us helps to shape the life of grace and freedom by living such a life. We each stand within the whole as one who is to play his/her part in the life of the Reign of God.
Connection: Remember whose you are...it is the beginning of a renewal that we have not yet experienced to its fullest.
Lord God, dress us up with your love. Remind us that it is within your blessed Reign that we are called to live and begin this day. Encourage us to walk within the freedom and blessedness that is already ours for the living. Amen.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Thursday 27 September 2007
In dealing with the topic of the law, here is an interesting quote by Martin Luther and the source of several of the comments from yesterday.
Anyone who wanted to grow rhetorical here could develop these words further: actively, passively, and neutrally. Actively: the Law is a weak and beggarly element because it makes (people) weaker and more beggarly. Passively: because it does not have of itself the power and ability to grant or confer righteousness. And neutrally: of itself it is weakness and poverty, which afflict and trouble the weak and the poor more and more all the time. Trying to be justified through the Law, therefore, is as though someone who is already weak and sick were to ask for some even greater trouble that would kill him completely but meanwhile were to say that he intends to cure his disease by this very means; or as though someone suffering from epilepsy were to catch the plague in addition; or as though a leper were to come to another leper, or a beggar to another beggar, with the aim of giving him assistance and making him rich. As the proverb says, one of these is milking a billy goat and the other is holding the sieve.
Luther does have a way of getting to the point and then pressing it...again...and again. The Law becomes double-trouble as we turn to it as a way to make us better and better. Rather, it brings more heart-ache and more of a disability into our lives. The Law cannot do what it promises. It falls short and when we fall for its promises, we fall down - again. I must admit, I chuckled when Luther notes how strange it is to seek to be justified through the law - "someone who is already weak and sick were to ask for some even greater trouble that would kill him completely but meanwhile were to say that he intends to cure his disease by this very means." And yet, it is such a temptation to cling to more law and more order in order to become the new being in Christ. It is as though we would sooner trust the imposition of law rather than venture into the land of radical mercy and hope and love that we are told is already in, with, and under all we are. We take part in the beginning of a new righteousness by trusting who we are "in Christ" already...not in what we hope we will be able to become by living by the Law - whether it is called a new law or an old one.
Connection: When you find yourself being the kind of person who insists on the way of Law to transform your life...I would suggest we all learn to giggle and smirk and simply call on our God to keep reminding us of whose we are already. It may make the day a bit more real and human and honest and compassionate.
You, O God, hand us a gift for new life and we are free to wander around throughout its entire reality so that we find moments of utter joy that surpass anything the world can offer us. Within that joy...the joy of the angels in Heaven...today really does begin to look and feel different - like hope in the midst of the power of despair. Amen.
Anyone who wanted to grow rhetorical here could develop these words further: actively, passively, and neutrally. Actively: the Law is a weak and beggarly element because it makes (people) weaker and more beggarly. Passively: because it does not have of itself the power and ability to grant or confer righteousness. And neutrally: of itself it is weakness and poverty, which afflict and trouble the weak and the poor more and more all the time. Trying to be justified through the Law, therefore, is as though someone who is already weak and sick were to ask for some even greater trouble that would kill him completely but meanwhile were to say that he intends to cure his disease by this very means; or as though someone suffering from epilepsy were to catch the plague in addition; or as though a leper were to come to another leper, or a beggar to another beggar, with the aim of giving him assistance and making him rich. As the proverb says, one of these is milking a billy goat and the other is holding the sieve.
Luther does have a way of getting to the point and then pressing it...again...and again. The Law becomes double-trouble as we turn to it as a way to make us better and better. Rather, it brings more heart-ache and more of a disability into our lives. The Law cannot do what it promises. It falls short and when we fall for its promises, we fall down - again. I must admit, I chuckled when Luther notes how strange it is to seek to be justified through the law - "someone who is already weak and sick were to ask for some even greater trouble that would kill him completely but meanwhile were to say that he intends to cure his disease by this very means." And yet, it is such a temptation to cling to more law and more order in order to become the new being in Christ. It is as though we would sooner trust the imposition of law rather than venture into the land of radical mercy and hope and love that we are told is already in, with, and under all we are. We take part in the beginning of a new righteousness by trusting who we are "in Christ" already...not in what we hope we will be able to become by living by the Law - whether it is called a new law or an old one.
Connection: When you find yourself being the kind of person who insists on the way of Law to transform your life...I would suggest we all learn to giggle and smirk and simply call on our God to keep reminding us of whose we are already. It may make the day a bit more real and human and honest and compassionate.
You, O God, hand us a gift for new life and we are free to wander around throughout its entire reality so that we find moments of utter joy that surpass anything the world can offer us. Within that joy...the joy of the angels in Heaven...today really does begin to look and feel different - like hope in the midst of the power of despair. Amen.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Wednesday 26 September 2007
Let's hike up this notion the the law belongs to the "world" - Tuomo Mannermaa on Luther.
"Hypocrites," that is, those who want to become righteous through works, trouble themselves day and night, but "unskillfully," because "the law is not a source of either advice or refuge." Efforts to achieve salvation and find peace of conscience with help of the law - that is, through works demanded by the law - are works of "Sisyphus"... A hypocrite is "milking a billy goat" and "holding a sieve."
Isn't is something that so much of the face of the church is a face that is built, or a least attempts to build itself, on what it is able to do. We reject gays and lesbians because they "do not live and act like me." Odd. Some say they will not stay with a congregation or within a denomination if "those people" are given full life within the church. We literally say, "they must perform in a certain manner in order to be one of us." What an odd thought among us! More and more I think that we are a fear-filled community and when fear lead us and pulls us, we are not being pulled into the Reign of God. Rather, we are being pulled into the way of the world...the way of the law...that way that moves counter to the movement of the Lord of Life...who gives life away for the well-being of all...not some...not the good....not the righteous - for the Lord of Life is Lord of all...the Lord of the good the bad - the just and unjust...Lord of the unrighteous who are righteous only by way of the Lord who make us just like the Lord. What are we continuing to be? Yes, it is a club of well-wishers. Yes, it is a club of right-ones. Yes, it is a club of people who long to pat one another on the back and say "we are not like those people." And yet, the Lord of Life looks at the whole bunch of us...all of us...without exception...and the Lord of Life claims us and nothing separates us from that place within the Reign of God.
Connection: Whew! Don't limit the community. Keep it open and see what gift we will be handed by those we thought did not fit in with us.
Come, Spirit of the Living Lord, and release among us the power of your gracious Reign so that as we face the world, we will face it all with arms open - like yours...with lives made whole by the presence of the rest of your body that comes to us as our neighbor...strangers...outsiders...and the forgotten. Come, shape us into your living Reign. Amen.
Tuesday 25 September 2007
More from "the law belongs to the world."
The law cannot create this kind of "strong and powerful" life, nor does it make a human being a new creation. Only faith, that is, Christ alone, can give birth to a new human being.
There are always longs lists of things to do. We have all been raised up in the Church with such lists. Luther reminds us that it is all foolishness - even idolatry. Nothing brings us closer to God just as nothing can separate us from the love of God. It is God who acts and brings about this "birth to a new human being." I know I use the image of being pulled into the Reign of God quite a bit. I use it because I know a bit of me...and that bit that I know is not going to go along with the love of God that is the power to transform life and bring me into a life that I cannot even imagine at this time. I count on the Christ to take hold of me...mold me...be me...and that is not anything I can plan to do on my own. For when I do the planning, it becomes so "me" focused, I'm simply trying to work my way into a life that is already handed to me - for free.
Connection: Don't ignore the pulling that is taking place today. It is real. It does become us. It will be a gift to us and then, also, to those around us.
Come, Lord of Life, take hold of us and when you pull, encourage us to follow and be shaped by your welcome. Amen.
Monday 24 September 2007
This week we will reflect on the "law." It begins with a section Tuomo Mannermaa labels The law belongs to the 'world.'
The first point Luther makes about law is his absolute denial of the law's capability to serve as a way to salvation. This means that works of love must not be required of human beings with the intention that they should achieve righteousness through such works. To regard love as the basis for one's salvation would be the primary source of corruption of faith. Contrary to this, God's wants, out of pure and sheer love, to grant God's forgiving righteousness - that is, Godself - to human beings and to be their "life and blessedness."
It is probably odd to hear that "works of love must not be required of human beings"...but keep reading for the next part of the sentence is vital... "with the intention that they should achieve righteousness through such work. To love...can become and often is...nothing more than something to do. This doing...is often with the intention of showing just how much we are followers of Jesus. And yet, it is not our love...but the Christ who takes us up into the fullness of Christ's beings that bring us within the domain of the righteousness of the Reign of God. No act - not even love - is a way into the Reign of God. We are brought in...we are pulled in...we are gifted and that is on the basis of God's action not anything - anything - that we do. Are we to love? We love as response to the gift we are given. It is a part of our being...not something we do to fit in.
Connection: We are set free to be the beloved of God who are claimed and shaped by God's action for us. Love is the life we are handed. How will that come to life for each of us today?
Love of our Life, you take hold of us and you make us into the loving community that is shaped into the Christ alive today. As you continue to transform our living into the life of your Reign, remind us of the great freedom we are handed and the great gift we become to the world. Amen.
The first point Luther makes about law is his absolute denial of the law's capability to serve as a way to salvation. This means that works of love must not be required of human beings with the intention that they should achieve righteousness through such works. To regard love as the basis for one's salvation would be the primary source of corruption of faith. Contrary to this, God's wants, out of pure and sheer love, to grant God's forgiving righteousness - that is, Godself - to human beings and to be their "life and blessedness."
It is probably odd to hear that "works of love must not be required of human beings"...but keep reading for the next part of the sentence is vital... "with the intention that they should achieve righteousness through such work. To love...can become and often is...nothing more than something to do. This doing...is often with the intention of showing just how much we are followers of Jesus. And yet, it is not our love...but the Christ who takes us up into the fullness of Christ's beings that bring us within the domain of the righteousness of the Reign of God. No act - not even love - is a way into the Reign of God. We are brought in...we are pulled in...we are gifted and that is on the basis of God's action not anything - anything - that we do. Are we to love? We love as response to the gift we are given. It is a part of our being...not something we do to fit in.
Connection: We are set free to be the beloved of God who are claimed and shaped by God's action for us. Love is the life we are handed. How will that come to life for each of us today?
Love of our Life, you take hold of us and you make us into the loving community that is shaped into the Christ alive today. As you continue to transform our living into the life of your Reign, remind us of the great freedom we are handed and the great gift we become to the world. Amen.
Friday, September 21, 2007
Friday 21 September 2007
Though it is Friday, we will move into a new area of Tuomo Mannermaa's writing - faith formed by Christ.
...Luther holds that participation in the divine life in Christ takes place in faith. In order to analyze the Reformer's concept of faith, it is helpful to examine his criticism of scholastic interpretations of faith, which were familiar to him.
According to scholastic notion which Luther criticizes particularly sharply, faith means that something which is beyond the reach of rational knowledge is regarded as truth; thus, in this view, faith belongs to the domain of the intellect but is logically uncertain.
The relationships with God can be realized, however, with the help of the human being's basic tendency - namely, the will, or the e-motio, that is, love.
Let's just say that nothing...nothing brings us into relationship but the God who in Christ, comes to us and fully enters our lives. We do not love enough and in that love enter into a relationship with God. That would be as though we were saying that our faith is complete in our loving. Without that, there is always something needed. God does 90% and we add 10%. NOT. Manneraa stresses the point that for Luther, takes this notion of faith formed by love and replaces it with what he comes to call faith formed by Christ. It is that complete gift handed to us. Christ is the power in, with, and under our coming to faith. We believe in the one who creates a whole new reality that is not run by that which we can do on our own. This faith is a life that has its basis not in my thought or my love but in the mind and love and being of the Christ who is now present with me in faith.
Connection: Always first is the one who gives the gift...we live from that gift...we begin the day from that gift...this day of our lives is formed by the gift of Christ with us and for us. When things begin like that, we are free to be that gift.
Before the world becomes what we see, you, O God, already have been spinning things into a shape and a form that is your being alive in the world. It makes us alive and courageous and ready to face all things - for you have your hand in all that comes into being. Turn our heads to your active love for us and all creation. Amen.
...Luther holds that participation in the divine life in Christ takes place in faith. In order to analyze the Reformer's concept of faith, it is helpful to examine his criticism of scholastic interpretations of faith, which were familiar to him.
According to scholastic notion which Luther criticizes particularly sharply, faith means that something which is beyond the reach of rational knowledge is regarded as truth; thus, in this view, faith belongs to the domain of the intellect but is logically uncertain.
The relationships with God can be realized, however, with the help of the human being's basic tendency - namely, the will, or the e-motio, that is, love.
Let's just say that nothing...nothing brings us into relationship but the God who in Christ, comes to us and fully enters our lives. We do not love enough and in that love enter into a relationship with God. That would be as though we were saying that our faith is complete in our loving. Without that, there is always something needed. God does 90% and we add 10%. NOT. Manneraa stresses the point that for Luther, takes this notion of faith formed by love and replaces it with what he comes to call faith formed by Christ. It is that complete gift handed to us. Christ is the power in, with, and under our coming to faith. We believe in the one who creates a whole new reality that is not run by that which we can do on our own. This faith is a life that has its basis not in my thought or my love but in the mind and love and being of the Christ who is now present with me in faith.
Connection: Always first is the one who gives the gift...we live from that gift...we begin the day from that gift...this day of our lives is formed by the gift of Christ with us and for us. When things begin like that, we are free to be that gift.
Before the world becomes what we see, you, O God, already have been spinning things into a shape and a form that is your being alive in the world. It makes us alive and courageous and ready to face all things - for you have your hand in all that comes into being. Turn our heads to your active love for us and all creation. Amen.
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