God and Empire

a quoteadapted from John Dominic Crossan’s book God and Empire:

The Second Coming of Christ is not an event that we should expect to happensoon, violently, or literally. The Second Coming of Christ is what will happen when we Christians finally accept that the First Coming was the Only Coming and start to cooperate with its divine presence.

In other words, on Reign of Christ Sunday, we are invited to remember that the “Kingdom of God” or “Reign of God” — to which Jesus constantly pointed — is as fully available now and always as it was 2,000 years ago. The question that remains each Reign of Christ Sunday is whether we will choose to live as if the one who reigns is not Caesar, but God.

In Paradise

I could never get much excited by the notion

of Paradise / heaven / the hereafter.

It sometimes seems to be a construct of the church,

attached to the teachings of Jesus

and distracting us from his command

to get on with the work of love.

At best, it is a bit-player, thrust

on to the centre-stage, to claim the spotlight.

There it assumes the role

of an all-controlling Master of Ceremonies

through whom ecclesiastical authorities,

popes, priests and everybody in-between,

direct the thinking and the behaviour

of the masses. If you want to get there,

as opposed to the other place,

remember; we hold the keys!

It suited, too the civil authorities

with its message of divinely ordered patience.

No need for revolution, in Paradise

you will receive your reward / recompense

for all the indignities, pains and brutalities

suffered during your earthly sojourn!

In Luke’s story of the passion

the word is placed upon the lips

of the cross-suspended Jesus,

as he responds to the justice and compassion

of a fellow criminal. Truly I tell you,

today you will be with me in Paradise.

To die with Jesus; perhaps this

is the proper meaning of Paradise.

© Ken Rookes.

From Brad

These writings, in the Hebrew apocalyptic style, can be seen to come from times of extreme hardship, when human hopes are crushed by overwhelming catastrophe. Isaiah 65 evokes the catastrophe of the crushing of Jerusalem in war and deportation, and Luke’s reminds us that it is written during the Roman occupation and crushing of the Judean insurrection. You can be optimistic in good times, when there is enough food, enough peace, and time to enjoy family life. Few people have experienced directly the violent disruption seen in Germany, Russia and Poland, or Vietnam last century.  If you came recently to Australia, full of hope but surrounded by strangeness, prejudice and discrimination, that must come close to what we would call tough times. Even after Black Saturday, where the destruction was great, it did not compare with the deaths of millions, and the decades of suffering and humiliation of the last 100 years.

Those are the conditions in which Isaiah’s spiritual insights were formed. It is a truism that in enormous suffering comes insight into God’s life amongst us. The other side is that in times of plenty, hearts grow hard and the Spirit seems so far away as to be forgotten by whole populations. Lest we forget.    Brad

Cosmic correction

  This hope for an Ultimate Cosmic Correction is not only a Christian hope. I think it's an innately human hope rooted in our sense of and longing for a Future and Final justice. For every Kurd gassed by Saddam Hussein, for every girl in Darfur gang-raped by janjaweed militia, and for every homeless person who wanders America's streets. I think this is why Psalm 98 for this week summons not only "all the earth" (98:3,4) but all creation (98:7,8) to celebrate the expectation of divine judgment. Many people think of divine judgment in negative terms; the psalmist rejoices in it, for at long last "God will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples with equity" (98:9). That will be a good day, not a bad day.

           How will all this happen? I have no idea. We needn't know the details of the "last days" described by Isaiah, Jesus or Paul. I like CS Lewis's analogy of actors in a real life drama. We don't know everything about the play, whether we're in the first or last act, or even which characters play the minor and major roles. In our ignorance, we have no idea when the End of the play ought to come. But the plot will find fulfillment, even if our limited understanding right now obscures it. Perhaps the Author will fill us in after it is over, but for now, says Lewis, "playing it well is what matters infinitely."

http://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20101108JJ.shtml

Light

Light
The visible reminder of Invisible Light.

Oh light invisible, we praise Thee!
Too bright for mortal vision
We see the light but see not whence it comes
O Light Invisible, we glorify thee.
T.S.Eliot 1888-1965
Choruses from the Rock (last lines

Impossible?

   It helps, now and then, to step back and take the long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work. Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
   No statement says all that could be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection. No pastoral visit brings wholeness. No program accomplishes the Church's mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
   This is what we are about: we plant seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities.
   We cannot do everything and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for God's grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.
-attributed to Oscar Romero 1917-1980
http://www.edgeofenclosure.org/proper28c.html

Not one Stone

Prophets and other dreamers

Dreaming aloud as the perplexing words

of the strange and mysterious God

dance to their unique rhythms;

catapulting into the prophet’s

conscious thoughts and out again.

Words, this time, of hope;

encouraging affirmations of renewal,

with the troubled times retreating

into non-memory.

For the once great city

there is a promise of restoration,

of joy and delight; and of blessings

that will become for all an invitation to life.

Words of domestic contentment;

people dwelling in houses

they have toiled hard to build,

and granted the greatest of all

signs of hope, the birth of a child.

The words continue their unconstrained dance

singing of enjoyment and satisfaction in old age;

and of planting vineyards with the expectation

of enjoying their fruit. “You plant grapes

for your grandchildren,”

a winegrower once told me.

The words dance crazily as they tell

of wolves and lambs feeding side by side,

and of lions and oxen

sharing the same bale of hay.

At his point we know that the dreaming

has taken over from reality,

and that what really counts

is the abiding presence of the God

who answers even before she is called.

© 2010 Ken Rookes

The locust

There was a locust

when I went outside yesterday.

It saw me coming and hopped away,

landing near the recycling bin.

“G’day,” I said.

“G’day,” it replied.

“Are you all alone?”

“Yes.” it answered.

“I was expecting about

five hundred thousand billion

of you blokes.”

“No, there’s just me,”

“Where’s the rest of them?” I asked.

“Dunno.”

I paused for a moment,

reflecting on the situation.

“In that case,” I said, gesturing

towards my lush, green garden,

“You might as well go ahead, then.”

© 2010 Ken Rookes

Will you follow me?

Effectively Jesus is saying “Will you follow me?” And what these blokes are doing is asking more and more questions to avoid answering that one question from Jesus.

“Will you follow me?” “Do you think it’s right to pay taxes or not?”

“Will you follow me?” “Can you explain the resurrection for us?”

“Will you follow me?” “Do you believe in miracles?”

“Will you follow me?” “What do you say about the authority of the bible?”

“Will you follow me?” “What do you think about sex outside of marriage?”

And Jesus explodes. “You’re not serious. You’re just playing games. You’ll just keep asking questions and keep asking questions to avoid facing the one question that really matters. “Will you follow me?” You’ll always make out that you just need it all clear in your mind before you can make a decision but there will always be one more question.”

Genuine questions will always be welcomed by God if we are asking them from a position of committed discipleship. Those who have already said “yes” to Jesus question and are actively following him and growing in faith and maturity can ask anything they like. Jesus encourages their questions because it is part of the road to growth and fullness of life. But if your questions are just a way of avoiding the real issues. If you stand on the outside and use questions only to try to undermine Jesus’ credibility and put off facing up to the implications of what he’s on about, the response will be different. Like with the sadducees he’ll answer for a while, but it won’t be long before he puts the tough question to you. And then its on your response that your right to keep asking questions rides.
http://www.laughingbird.net/ComingWeeks.html

a cartoon from Richard