Happy (Derridian) Advent

"As soon as you address the other, as soon as you are open to the future, of waiting for someone to come: that is the opening of experience. Someone is to come, is now to come. Justice and peace will have to do with this coming of the other , with the promise."
--Jacques Derrida, Deconstruction in a Nutshell, 24 (1997)

Advent, expectation, waiting...and Derrida. Of course, a natural fit. This is found in an explanation of Derrida's concept of the messianic which comes out of his understanding of other and otherness. What are we waiting for at Advent if not something other than our own selves. As I wrote in Sojourners in December 2005, Advent is a season of possibility, possibility that something might change, that it might not be the same as it has always been. This is the root of otherness, possibility outside of ourselves.

If we want to talk about salvation, liberation, mission, coming kingdom or anything else in Christian vernacular associated with the "coming of Jesus" past or future, we definitely have to talk about otherness. None of this is to be found inside of ourselves, individually or collectively or institutionally. What a lesson for the church to undertake every 12 months, for congregations as representations of one of the largest institutions in the world to recognize that are value is found outside of our own institutional existence.

Does our individual, collective, or institutional faith (or waiting or expectation) find its object within the self or the other? Do we still wait for ourselves to do it right the next time even though we know we won't. Otherness is the root (for Derrida) of justice and peace. We must look to the other as other, not as extension of self. Wait this Advent for other to enter in, for God to come in a way that is not familiar and internal but that is other, for in the other--not the self-- is real hope. That is what we wait for in Advent.

Seeing a Great Light (nearsightedly)

This morning in our staff devotions at First Pres, Berkeley we listened to part of Part I of Handel's Messiah--the part everybody knows. The Bass Air immediately preceding "For unto us a Child is born" is from Isaiah 9:2, "The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light; and theythat dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined."

While most around me sat with their eyes closed in postures of prayer and reflection, I had my eyes open in my usual posture of prayer and reflection. The bass soloist repeats numerous times, "The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light." While I was hearing this and looking around the room at this group of people with whom I work in ministry I noticed that a large portion of them were wearing glasses (and probably a bunch with contacts but I wasn't staring that closely at anybody)--corrective lenses so that they could see clearly. It is more than common knowledge that if you have trouble seeing (in the literal, physical sense) you wear corrective lenses and you accept the assistance of the optometrist and those tools to help you see clearly at all times.

The connection is easy to see...all of us are walking in darkness (to some extent or another) and Isaiah says that we have seen a great light. Those of us in the church who are celebrating Advent in this season are hopefully focusing on the fact that we have seen this great light in the incarnation of Jesus, God drawing near to us in human form. We have seen the light, but the fact is that the light came into the world for all to see and most around us have seen no such light, and are very possibly (maybe this year more than ever) walking in deep darkness.

Often our ideas of evangelism or sharing our faith might be akin to going to someone who is not a Christian and saying, "I have the light. Why don't you have the light? What's wrong with you that you haven't seen the light...." I could go on. But here is the beauty of Advent, a great season in which to let the joy, hope, peace, and love of Jesus get way beyond our sanctuary confines: God came near to us, became human, and lived a very specific, face-to-face life on this earth for us. A lot of what is offered to those around us by churchy folks is a far away vision of God, an abstract theological metaphysical concept that we assume the rest of the world is just waiting to embrace--we can be farsighted and only offer the world this far off god concept and nothing up close.

But all of us, Christian or not live nearsighted lives. We wake up, wipe the sleep from our eyes, grope for coffee and start our days of nearsightedness, taking care of us and ours. No criticism, that's the way we are. In the Christmas story, Jesus born in an all-too-human way, via a bloody birth canal, Jesus entered our near-sighted reality. Jesus came close enough that we could see him close up. What we have to offer the world is Jesus and the God who drew near in a close up way and we need to be nearsighted to those close to us to touch their lives with some love, hope, joy, peace in a nearsighted way, with lives of generosity, justice, and care.

God didn't stay far away in theological abstract. God answered the centuries of calls by the Israelites to come by coming way closer than we expected, in infant baby form. Let us come closer to those around us than they expect. Maybe, just maybe, we could surprise a neighbor, coworker, family member, or friend by getting closer than they expected us to with hope, peace, joy, love. That is advent. God drawing near to us, us drawing near to others, the space between violated and our farsighted sensibilities surprised by closeness.

Be close this year to the nearsighted Jesus and your nearsighted neighbors. Be nearsighted enough to not overlook them and their real lives. God didn't.

Something about Atonement (I)

So my friend Jon sent me an email saying:

we've been having a lot of discussions about at our
bible study about the tour and a friend read
"fingerprints of God" which bell recommended in one of
his book. i'm trying to straighten all this our in my
head. from what it seems like, was bell saying that an
atonement was not needed on our behalf? i understand
the part where he quotes
scripture in essentially saying that "it's not like i
needed these sacrifices from you. you couldn't
understand how much i love you so i told you to do
these things and hopefully in acting them out, you can
grasp my grace." i get that. but when it comes to
Jesus is this the same thing? if he did intend this,
then how do we reconcile it with a lot of the new
testament?

And I responded saying...

(this deserves lots of disclaimers like I was tired and it is not perfect...just to be clear. all my theologizing is a work in progress.)

haven't read "fingerprints of God," I haven't read any of Bell all the way through, but I have been to Mars Hill BC a lot of times and listened to his sermons on line. So, I will speak some of what I know and think about it, not what I think Bell thinks...Really though, this is a much larger question/discussion than Bell or any other current authors and debates. It has huge history and some people get really fired up about it.

First, I am glad your group of friends is willing and able to have really searching questions about things like atonement and I will generally phrase the topic, "How Jesus/God saves." Some groups of Christians make this topic to kind of be an untouchable and that is a bad idea. There are and have been active disagreements about the meaning of the cross/How Jesus saves since the first generations of the Apostolic church, so it is nothing new. Reading things like the Epistles of John and 1 Corinthians reveal to us that there was debate in the earliest Christian communities about the theology of cross/resurrection all related to questions of Jesus humanity/divinity. Questions about this are as old as dirt and as fresh and contemporary as anything in theology. I point all that out to say that I don't think there is a single monolithic Biblical voice on the meaning of Jesus' life, death and resurrection, hence we have 4 gospels, all with different foci and accounts plus a pile of letters with different authors to very different communities. There is not "1 Biblical answer" to the question of atonement/How Jesus/God saves. There are lots.

Now I actually try to answer your question. Did we need atonement of Jesus on our behalf? I go back to pre-Jesus to try to answer. I think the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible reveals the truth/reality of who Yahweh is through the story of the Israelite people. It tells us that this Yahweh (Y) is a saving God. Y saved Israelites from slavery. As chroniclers and prophets testify, God is saving poor people from oppression, God is restoring Zion all the time. God is also a forgiving God and that is saying something about the character of Y. Y saves and forgives the people whom he has claimed and loved. In the earlier parts of the OT this is the Israelites, but the prophets are clear that God's saving and forgiving and relationship is extending beyond Israel to other nations and all of creation. Cf. Isaiah 40-55. It is about God helping Israel through Persia. Persia is involved in the plans of Y. I digress. That is the character of God and that is who God is. There is an elaborate sacrifice and purity system in place during some periods of the OT and Rob Bell is suggesting that these are human religious practices to reflect devotion to God, not to actually appease an angry God. I believe that. Sacrifice and religion and purity codes are always human systems. God is God. My answer from the OT is that God does save and heal and forgive and make whole and make things new before Jesus walked the earth. That's who God is.

Jesus is fully God and fully human. Jesus in his life, death, and resurrection reveals to us the fullness of who God is and the fullness of what it means to be human. My capsule. Jesus proclaimed the present kingdom of God and lived as if it were actually wholly present, healing people, breaking through boundaries of purity code, loving unconditionally, respecting women, tax collectors, etc. I believe that because of all this craziness Jesus lived out that is the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, he was marked as a political revolutionary and disturber of peace and the powers that be conspired against him and killed him. He died because of how he lived. He was resurrected by the power of God and I believe the central point of that is that he was vindicated. Death does not have the final word over divine love and thus Jesus lives, God is that kind of crazy Jesus love, and in the resurrection Jesus was revealed to many to be truly divine and...

All who have come after Jesus, in our records starting with Paul, Mark, Luke, Matthew, John,...early church... theologians for centuries...up to us have tried to interpret what all this life, death, and resurrection of Jesus meant. I really emphasize that. Even the earliest apostles were trying to make sense of everything that happened with Jesus. They had no reference point for most of it. It may seem tame and familiar to us, but not to many there in their reality. They had to use existing categories to describe new realities of community, Spirit, ressurected presence, etc. Many of the first generations of Christians were trying to make sense of it through their worldview of emerging Judaism (Judaism as we know it started it's wheels cranking in 1st c. BCE, just before Christianity), including their knowledge of Torah. The word atonement is all over Exodus and Leviticus. The word describes specific sacrifices and rituals that symbolized God purchasing back the whole Israelite nation in the Exodus, symbolized forgiveness of sin, etc. and it did have to do with an economic exchange. People gave atonement offerings to priests as part of this scheduled ritual (see Ex. 13 and 30). This is one of the lenses through which Paul and others began interpreting Jesus' sacrificial death and resurrection. For Paul salvation clearly has at least as much to do with resurrection as the cross, if not more (See 1 Corinthians 15). One of the other major lenses is Jewish apocalyptica. A major study. The super brief is that Paul saw Cross as the end of an age ( a present reality) and the resurrection as the beginning of a new age ( a new and present/imminent reality). Jesus as Messiah brought us out of an old age of sin/judgment/condemnation

/barriers into a new age of grace/forgiveness/new life/love/justice. Very much an exodus motif into which the atonement motif also fits. This is how I see the very earliest formulation we have of an attempt to interpret what actually happened in life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Atonement is one set of language that influenced this theology for years.

I stop there and that is like 60 CE with Paul. From there forward there were three major theories of atonment: Christus Victor, Sacrifice (sometimes with Substitutionary language), and Satisfaction/Divine Justice. These all have old histories and innumerable current reinterpretations. Maybe another day. Hope I spurred endless questions.

I am getting tired and I have tons more reading for my own classes to do tomorrow.

FREE Derek Webb

So I have had this new Derek Webb CD for a while and I really can't get enough of it today at least. You can get it 100% free at www.freederekwebb.com

One of the great things that has got be back to going on it is the recent posts by the Sojourners interns on the God's Politics Blog. The interns went down to the SOA protests in Georgia over the weekend and have posted some excellent essays on what the experience has meant to them. Derek Webb hits so right on about the radical nature of being a Christian in the United States right now. And if you don't mind a slightly folksy guitar strumming, you might really enjoy the music and the message. Check it out.

Cranking on "Missional"

A classmate, a professor and I have been thinking and exchanging thoughts on "missional" in my Intro to Ministry class. I keep on coming across good stuff so I am going to actually resurrect this never before alive blog and try to interact with some of the other stuff I am finding. We'll see if my time committment sustains this or not. I am really excited about this post of ten things one will not find in a missional church found on David Fitch's blog.

We are trying to analyze whether a congregation we are visiting actually is missional or maintenance. These ten standards help a lot. Read and respond if you get a chance.

Initial Post

Got a cool name. Story involves Havana and supposed hostile territory. Might actually write on this in weeks to come.