Decaying
Dear Eugene,
Last night I had a strange dream.
In the dream, J. I. Packer was thumbing through a Bible, while mumbling and grumbling, "Here we go again, N. T. Wright, undermining justification, saying this and that, blah blah blah...The Bible clearly says here--wait, I will find it (thumbing violently through the pages)--but the Bible says...here the Bible says--wait, almost got it..."
Of course that ain't the real Packer, though it might be the right Wright (from the fake Packer's perspective). In real life Packer does not need to thumb through the Bible violently to find his proof text. In real life, despite their serious disagreement in even some crucial doctrines, Packer proclaims, "Brilliant Bishop Wright is one of God’s best gifts to our decaying Western church..." Here are two great Christians, great human beings showing us how God's family members disagree--even "fight"--in the Spirit, in the name of Christ, for the sake of the Gospel. Magnanimous is the word.
More and more I've come to realize I and my Christians friends are suffering from years of neglect and unfaithfulness in the decaying Western church. We say we live by God's words but we don't really care about the Bible; I can't recall the last time someone I know gushing over the Bible the same way they frequently gushed over their vacation, their food, their kids, their new superhero movie, or even their walk in the park or a slight drop in gas price. We say we want God but wouldn't notice if there is less of him in our next decision. All lip services. The fake Packer in my dream.
I shared with a friend who was baptized this past Sunday what Rowan Williams wrote about baptism:
"As the Church began to reflect a bit more on this in the early Christian centuries, as it began to shape its liturgy and its art, another set of associations developed. In the story of Jesus' baptism he goes down into the water of the River Jordan, and as he comes up out of the water the Holy Spirit descends upon him in the form of a dove and a voice speaks from heaven: 'You are my Son' (Luke 3.22). Reflecting on that story, the early Christians soon began to make connections with another story involving water and the Spirit. At the very beginning of creation, the book of Genesis tells us, there was watery chaos. And over that watery chaos there was, depending on how you read the Hebrew, the Holy Spirit hovering or a great wind blowing (or perhaps one is a sort of metaphor for the other). First there is chaos, and then there is the wind of God's Spirit; and out of the watery chaos comes the world. And God says, 'This is good.' The water and the Spirit and the voice: you can see why the early Christians began to associate the event of baptism with exactly that image which St Paul uses for the Christian life – new creation.
So the beginning of Christian life is a new beginning of God's creative work. And just as Jesus came up out of the water, receiving the Spirit and hearing the voice of the Father, so for the newly baptized Christian the voice of God says, 'You are my son/daughter', as that individual begins his or her new life in association with Jesus.
In the tradition of the Christian East especially, when the baptism of Jesus is shown in icons you will usually see Jesus up to his neck in the water, while below, sitting under the waves, are the river gods of the old world, representing the chaos that is being overcome. So from very early on baptism is drawing around itself a set of very powerful symbols. Water and rebirth: rebirth as a son or daughter of God, as Jesus himself is a son; chaos moving into order as the wind of God blows upon it.
So it is not surprising that as the Church reflected on what baptism means, it came to view it as a kind of restoration of what it is to be truly human. To be baptized is to recover the humanity that God first intended. What did God intend? He intended that human beings should grow into such love for him and such confidence in him that they could rightly be called God's sons and daughters. Human beings have let go of that identity, abandoned it, forgotten it or corrupted it. And when Jesus arrives on the scene he restores humanity to where it should be. But that in itself means that Jesus, as he restores humanity 'from within' (so to speak), has to come down into the chaos of our human world. Jesus has to come down fully to our level, to where things are shapeless and meaningless, in a state of vulnerability and unprotectedness, if real humanity is to come to birth.
This suggests that the new humanity that is created around Jesus is not a humanity that is always going to be successful and in control of things, but a humanity that can reach out its hand from the depths of chaos, to be touched by the hand of God. And that means that if we ask the question, 'Where might you expect to find the baptized?' one answer is, 'In the neighbourhood of chaos'. It means you might expect to find Christian people near to those places where humanity is most at risk, where humanity is most disordered, disfigured and needy. Christians will be found in the neighbourhood of Jesus – but Jesus is found in the neighbourhood of human confusion and suffering, defencelessly alongside those in need. If being baptized is being led to where Jesus is, then being baptized is being led towards the chaos and the neediness of a humanity that has forgotten its own destiny."
A new humanity, going "out of the depths" only for the purpose to plunge into the deepest chaos and muddle within ourselves and in this world, God's creation that he has never ceased to love--What? In my decades of church experience no one has ever told me that, not even a remote hint. All along I thought it is about buying a passport to heaven by showing up at church, preferably on time and frequently, and taking the right stand on some hand-picked moral issues and be Calvinistic in my theology. Of course we would never put it so crudely. We only live so crudely.
Do you feel the same, Eugene, that it is easier to talk about God to non-believers than to so-called "Christians"? All the gospel stories are playing themselves out all over again.
I feel lonely all the time.
Thank you for always being there for me. Alex
Last night I had a strange dream.
In the dream, J. I. Packer was thumbing through a Bible, while mumbling and grumbling, "Here we go again, N. T. Wright, undermining justification, saying this and that, blah blah blah...The Bible clearly says here--wait, I will find it (thumbing violently through the pages)--but the Bible says...here the Bible says--wait, almost got it..."
Of course that ain't the real Packer, though it might be the right Wright (from the fake Packer's perspective). In real life Packer does not need to thumb through the Bible violently to find his proof text. In real life, despite their serious disagreement in even some crucial doctrines, Packer proclaims, "Brilliant Bishop Wright is one of God’s best gifts to our decaying Western church..." Here are two great Christians, great human beings showing us how God's family members disagree--even "fight"--in the Spirit, in the name of Christ, for the sake of the Gospel. Magnanimous is the word.
More and more I've come to realize I and my Christians friends are suffering from years of neglect and unfaithfulness in the decaying Western church. We say we live by God's words but we don't really care about the Bible; I can't recall the last time someone I know gushing over the Bible the same way they frequently gushed over their vacation, their food, their kids, their new superhero movie, or even their walk in the park or a slight drop in gas price. We say we want God but wouldn't notice if there is less of him in our next decision. All lip services. The fake Packer in my dream.
I shared with a friend who was baptized this past Sunday what Rowan Williams wrote about baptism:
"As the Church began to reflect a bit more on this in the early Christian centuries, as it began to shape its liturgy and its art, another set of associations developed. In the story of Jesus' baptism he goes down into the water of the River Jordan, and as he comes up out of the water the Holy Spirit descends upon him in the form of a dove and a voice speaks from heaven: 'You are my Son' (Luke 3.22). Reflecting on that story, the early Christians soon began to make connections with another story involving water and the Spirit. At the very beginning of creation, the book of Genesis tells us, there was watery chaos. And over that watery chaos there was, depending on how you read the Hebrew, the Holy Spirit hovering or a great wind blowing (or perhaps one is a sort of metaphor for the other). First there is chaos, and then there is the wind of God's Spirit; and out of the watery chaos comes the world. And God says, 'This is good.' The water and the Spirit and the voice: you can see why the early Christians began to associate the event of baptism with exactly that image which St Paul uses for the Christian life – new creation.
So the beginning of Christian life is a new beginning of God's creative work. And just as Jesus came up out of the water, receiving the Spirit and hearing the voice of the Father, so for the newly baptized Christian the voice of God says, 'You are my son/daughter', as that individual begins his or her new life in association with Jesus.
In the tradition of the Christian East especially, when the baptism of Jesus is shown in icons you will usually see Jesus up to his neck in the water, while below, sitting under the waves, are the river gods of the old world, representing the chaos that is being overcome. So from very early on baptism is drawing around itself a set of very powerful symbols. Water and rebirth: rebirth as a son or daughter of God, as Jesus himself is a son; chaos moving into order as the wind of God blows upon it.
So it is not surprising that as the Church reflected on what baptism means, it came to view it as a kind of restoration of what it is to be truly human. To be baptized is to recover the humanity that God first intended. What did God intend? He intended that human beings should grow into such love for him and such confidence in him that they could rightly be called God's sons and daughters. Human beings have let go of that identity, abandoned it, forgotten it or corrupted it. And when Jesus arrives on the scene he restores humanity to where it should be. But that in itself means that Jesus, as he restores humanity 'from within' (so to speak), has to come down into the chaos of our human world. Jesus has to come down fully to our level, to where things are shapeless and meaningless, in a state of vulnerability and unprotectedness, if real humanity is to come to birth.
This suggests that the new humanity that is created around Jesus is not a humanity that is always going to be successful and in control of things, but a humanity that can reach out its hand from the depths of chaos, to be touched by the hand of God. And that means that if we ask the question, 'Where might you expect to find the baptized?' one answer is, 'In the neighbourhood of chaos'. It means you might expect to find Christian people near to those places where humanity is most at risk, where humanity is most disordered, disfigured and needy. Christians will be found in the neighbourhood of Jesus – but Jesus is found in the neighbourhood of human confusion and suffering, defencelessly alongside those in need. If being baptized is being led to where Jesus is, then being baptized is being led towards the chaos and the neediness of a humanity that has forgotten its own destiny."
A new humanity, going "out of the depths" only for the purpose to plunge into the deepest chaos and muddle within ourselves and in this world, God's creation that he has never ceased to love--What? In my decades of church experience no one has ever told me that, not even a remote hint. All along I thought it is about buying a passport to heaven by showing up at church, preferably on time and frequently, and taking the right stand on some hand-picked moral issues and be Calvinistic in my theology. Of course we would never put it so crudely. We only live so crudely.
Do you feel the same, Eugene, that it is easier to talk about God to non-believers than to so-called "Christians"? All the gospel stories are playing themselves out all over again.
I feel lonely all the time.
Thank you for always being there for me. Alex
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