Thursday, December 18, 2008

Jesus: Worshipped as God

The unique identity and sovereignty of YHWH in the Old Testament demanded the exclusive worship and obedience of Israel, the people he identified as his own possession. With Jesus inclusion in the divine identity in 1 Peter, the obedience, worship and identity of God’s people are now focussed around Christ. While Achtemeier notes that 1 Peter ‘appropriated without remainder the language of Israel for the church’17, he restricts the study of it’s christological significance to 1 Peter’s use of Isaiah 53. This is clearly inadequate. Belonging to the family of God is now only for those who obey the gospel of God (1 Peter 4:17). The list of titles traditionally given to Israel in 2:9-10 and especially a restored Israel in 2:1018 are now given
to those who obey the message about Jesus(2:8) and contrasted with pagans (2:12). In Exodus 24:4-8 Moses confirms Israel's covenant with YHWH by the sprinkling of blood, for obedience to God. In 1 Peter the believers are sprinkled with Jesus Christ’s blood, and are sanctified for obedience to Jesus Christ(1:2). While 1 Peter exhorts the believers in 1:16 ‘Be holy because I am holy’, quoting Leviticus 19:2, the shape of that holiness in the ethical material (2:11-5:9) comes from imitating Christ’s actions and attitudes. Through Christ the spiritual sacrifices of the believers are declared acceptable to God (2:5) and God is praised in their actions (4:11). The ambiguity of the doxologies (4:11, 5:10-11), as to whether they are speaking of Christ or only generally of God, further reinforces how far 1 Peter includes Jesus in the identity of God. In 1 Peter Jesus is included in God’s unique role of forming a people for himself, for his glory, praise and rule.

Monday, December 15, 2008

Prayer Mondays: Brueggemann

Re- text us


We confess you to be text-maker,
text giver,
text-worker,
and we find ourselves addressed
by your making, giving, working.
So now we bid you, re-text us by your spirit.
Re-text us away from all our shallow loves,
into your overwhelming gracefulness.
Re-text us away from our thin angers,
into your truth telling freedom.
Retext us away from our lean hopes,
into your tidal promises.
Give us attentive ears,
responsive hearts,
receiving hands;
Re-text us to be your liberated partners
in joy and obedience,
in risk and gratitude.
Re-text us by your word become wind. Amen


Walter Brueggemann "Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth"

ps. buy the book, it's awesomwe

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Is living ethical?

Barth in his Ethics, having raised the question of war as the actualization of a nations will to live, moves on to the individual. Though we may not be actively killing each other, all our various strivings in life are ethically questionable.

"I cannot live without striving. I cannot strive without it some way competing. I cannot compete in the serious competition of life without restricting the life of another, without impairing it in its movement, without stealing a march on it, and therefore without entering on that sharply inclined plane at the end of which man is the butcher of man.... As I live for myself, I necessarily live against others. In this action of mine, however, I am answerable to the command of respect for the life of others.We should have to drain the ocean dry if we were to describe the questioning of our action by the command with anything even approximating to completeness. Some hints may suffice at this point- hints that show we cannot really hide from the question of command, that we have to wrestle with the posing of this question at every step."
Barth "Ethics" T&T Clark Edinburgh 1981, 162-63

Barth leaves us with very little room to hide.
Firstly we cannot hide in naivity, that we simply did not know that our lifestyle impinged on others. Ethics doesn't quetion our intentions but our actions.
Secondly, even if we know what we are doing, we have have a nasty habit of obscuring the real violence of our living behind a complex web of relations
"When members of the white race enjoy every possible intellectual and material advantage on the basis of the superiority of one race and the subjection of many other races, and of the use that for centuries our race has made of both, I myself may not have harmed a single hair on the heads of Africans or indians. I may be very friendly toward them. I may be a supporter of missions. Yet I am still a member of the white race which, as a whole, has obviously used very radically the possibility of appropriation in relation to them. My share in the sin against Africa and Asia for the last hundred or fifty years may be very remote or indirect, but would Europe be what it is, and would I be what I am, if that expansion had never happened? Our ecenomic life clearly needs a whole series of delegated relations which apparently- only apparently- allow the individual to watch the struggle for life in the harmless role of the spectator, and even, it may be, in the very satisfying role of an actively critical spectator... But we cannot get away with the irresponsibility of this indirect grasping and taking. Again the law of God does not ask how close or distant our participation is" 164-65

Thirdly we do not absolve ourselves if our competing is part of a collective egoism, rather than simply an individual one. A bad action doesn't become good simply because it is done by a group. I am answerable for what my country does. Even in a difficult situation where I may oppose the country and simply look after my own family.
"The family is, of course, the mighty fortress of middle class morality which can easily unite a touching loyalty and concern for those in one's own nest with the laissez-faire of ruthless capitalism." 166
Barth has no time for socialism either, that simply opposes one collective egoism, the middle class, with another, the labour movement.
Fourthly, even as christians, acting for the gospel, our good intentions don't spare us from the command.
" Wherever there is a struggle between man and man, we are in this arena. This is not in itself forbidden. We cannot leave the arena. But it is fit that we should make only very circumspect use of the christian flag in this arena, for at the smallest step we take the danger is very great that we shall at least compromise severely the Christian name, and, in any case, Christ will triumph in spite of our Christian flagwaving and not by means of it".
Fifthly,
the fact that our existence takes place in certain generally recognized forms of tradition or rules will not absolve us.
While the rule of law is necessary, even good, we should be careful of over estimating things like the concept of personal property. His general point is that legal landholders can be, and indeed are often, the worst theives of all. The only way you are an ethical owner is because God has given you the land, and he may well give it to someone else. Again, the division of labour,a necessary thing so that all tasks are done, doesn't absolve the more privelleged from listening to the complaints of those under them.
Nor will any principle of recompense do, where I can claim that I have what I have due to being better and behaving more dilligently. Barth has a crack at puritans and America
"what still seems to be overlooked by the great majority of American- and not just American- Christians today, is that a morality which has practical success as its reward could finally be one which also makes this reward its goal.... We might well have been all the more guilty of cruelty and injustice in putting others under the wheels on which we so merrily rolled, even though we did smear those wheels with the oil of morality and Christianity" 170

And finally Barth turns to technology, which at first glance (to Barth) seems to have nothing to do with our struggle with others.
"Even the finest inventions become really interesting only when industry, and through industry the banks, become interested in them... not to mention the fact that the last war made it clear to us that the wonderful world of human technology can in an instant, if need be, transformed into a veritable hell of instruments of slaughter" 171

Nor is the ivory tower of scholarship, even philosophy and theology, breathing clean air in this respect.

Even our own love comes under judgement

"Is not love as such, apart from the means it may have to use, exempt from the law of struggle of all against all and therefore from the responsibility which we have to shoulder in this struggle? May there not be seen here in the world of ambiguity, of unbounded questionability, in which we normally live, a world of purity and therefore of innocence that needs no justification? Yes, we may say, if we really dare to claim that our love is real love, if we really know an actualization of love in which there is no grasping, taking, and ruling, in which there is no forcing of the one who is loved by the one who loves, if we really know a love in which no pain is caused, no pressure exerted, no burden imposed, no mastery enforced, in which the other is truly sought and not the self. It is true that love is not judged. But who of us has and practices the love which is not judged?" 172-73

"Why does the exercise of Christian love so seldom make any different impression on the world, and not just the wicked world, than that of a particular expression of the Christian will to power? We should not forget that the love of which Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13 is an eschatological possibility and that in 1 John God is called love. If love is to justify us in the judgement, then it will not be the love that we have produced and demonstrated and proved, but the love which we can understand only as the love ascribed to us by God. In this love it may be that the command for respect for life is really kept and fulfilled by us even though, twist and turn as we like, we can understand ourselves only as its transgressors" 173.

Friday, December 12, 2008

Jesus is still my boyfriend...but we're going on a mission trip to a third world slum

I couldn't help noticing that Hillsong, the large pentecostal church, has subtly changed it's message over the past few years.
The message of social action, and especially global social action has taken a larger and larger portion of their message. I think it began with their womens conference, COLOUR, engaging with some African orphans in Uganda, but it has grown from there.
Listen to this from their latest documentary release " We're all in this together"

"people aren't just created to exist, or even called just to sing love-songs to God, but we are also required to be God's hands and feet- to bring releif and practical answers to the ever present needs of others"

The documentary is designed to illustrate the inseperable union of worship and justice.

While they are probably still a long way from many of us, culturally and theologically, this development is promising.
Hillsong has a long history of engaging non christians as a wisdom tradition with their prosperity gospel. ie. being a christian is a wise way to live because it brings blessings. Hopefully their emphasis on social awareness as followers of Jesus can be just as infectious to the affluent Hills district.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Jesus: Enthroned above all

1 Peter shows an extremely high christology by including Jesus in the eschatological role of YHWH.
This eschatological role is achieved for Jesus by including him in the divine sovereignty over all things. 1 Peter uses Psalm 110 in 3:22 to place Jesus at God’s right hand, with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him. The exaltation is related to Jesus’ resurrection and the salvation that comes from the resurrection. This, however is not an achievement of Jesus, but a recognition of who he is. Jesus is not a ‘Son of Man who, like a second Prometheus, stormed heaven for himself and thus won divine worth for humanity’ 14 Nor is Jesus ‘one divine emanation among many others’15 1 Peter’s use of Psalm 110 is not one step towards a Nicene christology by identifying Jesus as an intermediary or angel. To set Jesus Christ at God’s right hand with angels, powers and authorities in submission to him was to identify him as God.
‘The spatial relationship between Jesus on the divine throne and the angelic powers is precisely how Jewish pictures of the heavenly realms portrayed the relationship between the divine throne and the angelic powers subject to God. The point is that Jesus now shares God’s own exaltation and sovereignty over every angelic power.’(Bauckham, God Crucified)
In the extremely high christology of 1 Peter, Jesus Christ is then more than an intermediary
figure, an exalted angel or demigod, he shares in God’s unique divine sovereignty

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

I've been randomly dipping into some ethics over the past few weeks, in the form of the Hauerwas Reader and O'Donovans New College lectures.
I have some thoughts on their perception of time. Just a vibe, and not particularly thought through, but hey, thats what blogs are for.
O'Donovan seems to portray ethics as acting into a very proximate future, that is, all action is taken up in the moment attached to the present. That is the only future we have available to us. The reality that conditions that action and gives it meaning for christians can lie a long way in the past (ie the resurrection of Jesus).

Hauerwas seems to go the other way. The reality that conditions the meaning of our action is a proximate past, in the form of the traditions and practices given to us by our community. The action christians take is into a distant, eschatological future (even if we describe this future as breaking in now, it is still distant in its hiddeness).

Would those who know far better care to correect my muddled thoughts?

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Church is...

the tangible experience of God's love for us, through the Spirit led love of the siblings of his Son

Monday, December 8, 2008

Prayer Mondays: Jungel

Everlasting God, almighty Father,
From the beginning, you have been our help. You are the source of all
good gifts, granting each of us more than we deserve. We give you
thanks, and we ask you to open our eyes to the blessings with which
you so richly surround us on every side.
Lord Jesus Christ, you human God [Du menschlicher Gott],
You have lived our life and suffered our death in order to begin a new
life with us. You embrace us in a mystery where we are forever safe.
We praise your hidden presence, even as we yearn for the future glory
when, fully visible, you will meet us and all the world. Come, Lord
Jesus!
God, Holy Spirit,
Power from on high; you want to burn within us as a holy fire. Kindle
in us a love for truth that yields an earthly knowledge which does not
destroy the secrets of this world but rather enters them protectingly
and lovingly. Deem us worthy to know even you, opening our
mouths in awe.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Jesus: God coming from the future

By combining the words of the prophets with the gospel of Jesus Christ, 1 Peter includes Jesus in the eschatological role of YHWH. This is most obviously seen in 1 Peter 1:24-25, where the writer quotes Isaiah 40 and tells his readers ‘this is the word that was preached to you’. The context of Isaiah 40 is a message of comfort and salvation for the Jewish exiles. (40:1-4). God himself will come with power (40:10) and will gather his people like a shepherd (40:11). The glory of YHWH will be revealed in this salvation for all mankind to see (40:5). The passage is then followed by a long monotheistic passage extolling the uniqueness of YHWH over idols, in creation and salvation (40:12- 41:7). 1 Peter takes this message and applies it to his audience by framing them as the exiled diaspora (1:1). Through the resurrection of Jesus they also hoped for the salvation of God to be revealed in the last time (1:5). Yet what was to be revealed was Jesus Christ himself (1:13, 1:7). 1 Peter equates the time of his readers to the last time (1:20), because Jesus
has already been revealed. They are filled with joy now because of faith and salvation (1:8-9), yet will be overjoyed when the glory of Jesus is revealed to all (4:13). This is the glory that believers will share in (5:1), and already do share in, the glory of the Spirit of God, when they suffer for their identification with Christ (4:14). Thus in the christology of 1 Peter, Jesus Christ is not only the perfect human whose steps we should follow for salvation (2:21-22), but also the God who brings that salvation and reveals his glory. 1 Peter does not ignore the monotheistic intentions of Isaiah, or replace God with Christ, but includes Christ in the identity of YHWH. Both Christ and God are seen as the shepherds of the flock (2:25, 5:4),
the gospel is God’s gospel(4:17), spoken of Christ by the Holy Spirit (1:12) . The glory on the last day is still God’s glory (2:12, 5:10). Speaking words of comfort to the dispersed christian community, 1 Peter shows an extremely high christology by including Jesus in the eschatological role of YHWH.

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Church is...

"...a communion of holy men and works, in that it submits to sole rule by Jesus Christ, in whom it is founded, that it also aims to live solely in the fulfillment of its service as ambassador, that it recognizes its goal solely in its hope, which is its limit." - Barth

Monday, December 1, 2008

Church is...

one of the few places left in our society that knows how speak of both loss and hope.
-Brueggemann

Prayer Monday: A Prayer Book for Australia

Lord God, bring us together as one,
reconciled with you and reconciled with each other.
You made us in your likeness,
you gave us your Son, Jesus Christ.
He has given us forgiveness from sin.
Lord God, bring us together as one,
different in culture, but given new life in Jesus Christ,
together as your body, your Church, your people.
Lord God, bring us together as one,
reconciled, healed, forgiven,
sharing you with others as you have called us to do.
In Jesus Christ, let us be together as one. Amen