At some point in my life I decided that Jesus was all about creating a new political order. Of course not in the sense of setting up some sort of violent revolution, but instead, an alternate non-worldly “political” system of interactions that is inherently oppositional to all human authority that oppresses and destroys. The kingdom of God being the mustard seed that destroys all Empire. I still maintain this belief rather strongly, but somewhere along the line this divorced itself from God’s personal concern for me. God ceased to be a loving being that was with me in my suffering and existential pain and was in some sense only a distant community organizer of sorts.
This season, God has been uncovering for me the God that actually cares about my own existence and the grief and joy that I experience no matter how unimportant I might try to convince myself that experience is.
My thinking about the resurrection has been similar, and I have been finding some comfort in Paul in this regard. Maybe it is because I am taking a class on Paul or because, like Paul, my encounter was not with the disciples at the resurrection, but a subsequent appropriation of a new direction based on God’s own work in my life (though, this downplays somewhat the dramatic event that he experienced on the Damascus road).
A real odd place to reflect upon the resurrection is Galatians, but I have found some things there recently that I have been reflecting on and have helped me make a little sense out of the situation, so briefly:
Firstly, Paul’s initial autobiographical excursion (Gal 1-2) is interesting in the way it describes his life and mission. The beginning begins with his upbringing in his ancestral traditions. He is a “zealot” for those traditions, but his actions are always an “I”. The radical change occurs when Paul receives an apocalypsis (an apocalyptic vision; 1:16). Many translations talk about Jesus being revealed to him, but the radical nature of this vision is apocalyptic, the use of this word occurs elsewhere in Galatians and should not be downplayed. From that point forward, the actions are no longer his self-motivation but the actions of God in him. He even goes up to Jerusalem in response to an apocalypsis. It is the encounter with the resurrected Jesus that makes his life a radical disjuncture from what it was before. This revelation is not about himself any longer and he has radically broken from his former existence.
Secondly, Paul’s subsequent life is defined not by moral maxims or even trying to represent Jesus’ life in a WWJD fashion. Instead his life becomes defined by crucifixion (2:15-21).
For Paul, his story is no longer his own. He in fact, in living his life, is guided by and enacting the living presence of Christ. He in his own “crucifixion” has become one with Christ in such a way that radically changes his existence.
Paul’s “story” is not “the Paul who follows Christ” it is the story of Christ which is lived out by Paul. His life (and the life of the church) is the enacting of the gospel, not simply a life based on precepts. This occurs by the radical nature of the encounter with Jesus and by the power of the Holy Spirit.
But incarnational living that is so much more than following a moral example certainly does not exclude the resurrection. It is the resurrection that we live into. Paul is very aware that he is experiencing the resurrection now in this story he is living. In our pain and suffering we also experience the life of the resurrection. We are living Christ in his suffering with creation, his destruction and protest against those things that destroy, and the freedom of new life that springs newly in each person and in his community.
In honesty, however, this has been difficult to appropriate; largely because my life experiences pre-easter pain, but it has been difficult for me to see the joy of resurrection through such pain. May God give me the eyes to see and the incarnational experience to live the true life of Christ. And specifically this season, I have come to believe (maybe again) that this life in Christ and the care of God are of the loving nature that I have always been told they were. May we all experience the resurrection more in our lives with God and with each other. May we never believe that our personal pain is unimportant to God or our sisters and brothers, and may we pray in our sufferings and pray in our joy to have that apocalyptic resurrection always.
So this song has nothing to do with anything I just wrote. I write what I write and I wrote two of them yesterday! So please give a listen. It is called:
Also if you have never listened to Max Richter’s memoryhouse, do yourself a favor.
1 comment:
Tim, I really like "All My Furniture" outstanding!
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