Tag Archives: Moltmann

The Com-Passion of God

by on April 2, 2012

This Moltmann Monday, here are some wise words from our German friend about Jesus’ suffering and death. They come from p.178 from The Way of Jesus Christ:

The theology of surrender is misunderstood and perverted into the very opposite unless it is grasped as being the theology of the pain of God, which means the theology of the divine co-suffering or compassion…If we abide by our conviction that Jesus is the messiah and the Son of God to the point of his death on the cross, then he brought the messianic hope and the fellowship of God to all those who have to live in the shadow of the cross, the mean and women who suffer injustice, and the unjust…But God does not cause Christ’s suffering, nor is Christ the meek and helpless victim of suffering. Through his surrender God seeks out the lost beings he has created, and enters into their forsakenness, bringing them his fellowship, which can never be lost.”

Jesus was not cast out into suffering by an angry God. He entered into suffering as God and with God, that all might be brought in. This is the com-passion and fellowship of Christ, our brother. And it creates the kind of community which can never be lost. If there is something for us to ponder this Holy Week, it is this great com-passion made manifest in the journey of Jesus to the cross and to the tomb.

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A Theology of the Cross and Christian Honesty

by on March 12, 2012

It’s been a while since I’ve posted a Moltmann Monday, and today will be a little different. I wrote a follow-up piece to Erik Leafblad’s article “God Loses” in this month’s Immerse Journal. You can read it here.  In it I talk about my first experience with Moltmann’s The Crucified God and how it literally saved my faith. Be warned, though- it’s not a fluff piece.

I actually wrote this piece a number of weeks ago, but if it were possible to believe it more now than I did when I wrote it, I do. This past week, a childhood friend took his life. And after something like that, there is no place for a theology of glory. It mocks my friend, and it mocks those of us who are grieving. Before we can arrive at our own Easters, we need the Jesus who knows suffering, who knows grief and loss and sadness. We need the Jesus who knows what it is like to want his cup taken away. We need the Jesus who stays anyway, the one who says “Father forgive them because they have no idea what they are doing.” Because we don’t.

But because of that Jesus, I can find a hope that says his kind of love for me and for this world and for all of us who are lost and don’t know what we are doing may actually be enough.

I hate the cross, but I absolutely trust the Jesus who bore the cross and made a way for resurrection. That’s really the only gospel I know, and the only one I care to know.

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The Song of Creation

by on January 9, 2012

In today’s excerpt from The Way of Jesus Christ we hop into a discussion Moltmann is having about creation, and specifically Genesis 1:2 (“The Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters”):

The Hebrew word rahaph is generally translated ‘hover’ or ‘brood’. But according to Deut. 32:11 and Jer. 23:9 it has rather the meaning of vibrating, quivering, moving and exciting. If this is correct, then we should not think only of the image of a fluttering or brooding dove. We should think of the fundamental resonances of music out of which sounds and rhythms emerge. In thinking about ‘creation through the Word’, we should not therefore think primarily in metaphors of command and obedience. A better image is the song of creation. The Word names, differentiates and appraises. But the breath is the same in all the words, and binds the words together. So the Creator differentiates his creatures through his creative Word and joins them through his Spirit, who is the sustainer of all his words. In the quickening breath and through the form-giving word, the Creator sings out his creatures in the sounds and rhythms in which he has his joy and his good pleasure. That is why there is something like a cosmic liturgy and music of the spheres.

Sleeps a song in every thing

That is dreaming still unheard.

And the world begins to sing

If you find the magic word.*

I recently finished reading Out of the Silent Planet, the first in C.S. Lewis’ science fiction trilogy, in which the main character, Ransom, meets otherworldly creatures who are described as having not vocal chords and lungs but resonances. This may be why Moltmann’s description of the Spirit seems particularly poignant to me this week, but I do find it to be a lovely and true-feeling image. I confess I never did envisage creation as a dove flitting about; I picture it more like a whirl, or a big rumble from the deep. Whatever the case, if there is to be a sound connected with it, (and what is a good story without an equally good soundtrack?) I’m quite happy with the idea of resonance and vibration. I suppose that’s because in my estimation the story of creation is to be for us something like a good opening chapter in which we find ourselves captivated by the story. It’s to be a song that beckons us to keep listening. It’s a story in which some magic word that holds all of reality and being and goodness together is hiding, sleeping even, waiting to be discovered.

I confess I will never quite understand why so many people have made Genesis about facts and charts and arguments. Why one would choose to do that rather than to be taken away with the song of creation, the cosmic liturgy, the music of the spheres, is beyond me. As Moltmann said, this isn’t a story of God barking out commands. I imagine you could make a good chart out of that. It’s a story of the Word breathing out a resonance that is God’s joy and good pleasure. It’s not something to prove. It’s something to experience.

*poem by Joseph Von Eichendorff

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The Immanence of the Transcendent God

by on December 12, 2011

Happy third week of Advent! This morning’s Moltmann Monday quote comes from Sun of Righteousness, Arise!. This is a great book for people new to Moltmann, and it’s written in a more conversational style than some of his other more theological works. The quote below comes at the beginning of a section on the Shekinah of God, which is one of Moltmann’s favorite concepts:

I should like to talk about both these things: about the Merciful One who shares our suffering, and about the Holy One who goes ahead of us and leads us to the eternal home of identity. But the presupposition for both these experiences of God is the descent and self-lowering of the Eternal One into our earthly and transitory world–the immanence of the transcendent God. Or in the words of the prophet Isaiah (57:15): ‘I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a humble and contrite spirit.’ It is not just for us that it is important to experience the nearness of God in what happens to us. It is important for God, too, for God wants to live among us and on this earth for ever and ever.”

 

Here’s something I love about Professor Moltmann- he doesn’t forget about God. That may sound strange to say, but I get the sense that many theologians get to talking so much about God-the-concept or God-the-idea or, heaven forbid, me-the-smart-theologian-talking-about-the-complexity-of-God-the-idea, that GOD actually gets lost in the shuffle. Moltmann has made great contributions to theology because he doesn’t forget to ask the question, “What does this mean for GOD?”

In Advent, we spend most of our time talking about what it means for us that God became human and lived among us. And that is right and good, because it is mind-boggling and beautiful and the biggest and strangest gift we could imagine. As we enter these last two weeks of Advent, I wonder if we could also remember to consider what this means for God. I like to think that God becoming immanent even in God’s transcendence is something God has anticipated eagerly because it brings to fruition something intrinsic about who God IS. And at Christmas, this immanence of God becomes known to us in a way that it wasn’t before. That’s good news for us–but let’s not forget it’s good news for God, too.

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Hope Keeps History Moving

by on December 5, 2011

View of dark alley with people in the distance

We’re immersed in Advent as we enter the mid-point of the season and the light of our hope slowly grows brighter. Some words from Moltmann this morning from Theology of Hope p.164-165:

God is not somewhere in the Beyond, but he is coming and as the coming One he is present. He promises a new world of all-embracing life, of righteousness and truth, and with this promise he constantly calls this world into question- not because to the eye of hope it is as nothing, but because to the eye of hope it is not yet what it has the prospect of being. When the world and the human nature bound up with it are called in question in this way, then they become ‘historic’, for they are staked upon, and submitted to the crisis of, the promised future. Where the new begins, the old becomes manifest. Where the new is promised, the old becomes transient and surpassable. Where the new is hoped for and expected, the old can be left behind. Thus ‘history’ arises in the light of its end, in the things which happen because of, and become perceptible through, the promise that lights up the way ahead. Eschatology does not disappear in the quicksands of history, but it keeps history moving by its criticism and hope; it is itself something like a sort of quicksand of history from afar.

 

Such beautiful imagery in here- the picture of the world being “staked upon” the coming promised future of God,  the perception of movement in the form of quicksand, and the most lovely Advent image of  the “promise that lights up the way ahead.” I’ll not comment further and just let the picture stand.

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The Promise of the Messianic Child

by on November 28, 2011

Hope all of you had a good Thanksgiving! Moltmann Monday is back with an excerpt from a Theology Today article on children, childhood and hope. Here’s a snippet:

The child, whose birth and whose future reign of peace devoid of violence and war Isaiah announced (chapters 9,11), is the “Son of David.” He is a descendant of David, endowed with the dignity of the chosen King David. Just as David conquered Jerusalem, making it the capital of Israel, the future “Son of David” will redeem Israel (from the Babylonian exile) and will rebuild Jerusalem. Most important, the coming “Son of David” will fulfill the prophet Nathan’s ancient promise to David: “I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom forever.” (2 Sam 7:12-13)  The promised “Son of David” is the messianic king for which Israel is hoping.

The hopes placed upon him do, however, explode all (historical) limits: “he will raise up the poor of the land,” he will “bring justice to the peoples,” and he will sow peace between humans and animals: “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fading together, and a little child shall lead them” (Isa 11:1-11). While this messianic hope exceeded all of life’s experiential limits, it was conceived during the time of the Babylonian exile, at Israel’s “ground zero.” From the very beginning, it was part of Israel’s traditions of hope.  [Abraham and Sarah's] promise brought into history an orientation towards the future, replacing the eternal return of the same in nature religions. Children were no longer merely included in the powers of origin through the veneration of the ancestors, but the generations were now aligned towards children as the carriers of hope and as signs of the steadfastness of the God of promise.

 

The hopes placed on the messianic child explode all limits. I love the imagery that conjures in my head, like an electric wire exploding from too much energy and making a fireworks show that lights up the night. I also appreciate that these hopes are beyond rational, really. They are not something most people walk around and assume. To have Advent hopes means to be willing to explode our limits of what is possible. Through this one promise, this one vulnerable human child, the whole world carries a new kind of hope for the future.

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Moltmann on Meditation

by on November 7, 2011

Happy Moltmann Monday, y’all!  Today’s excerpt comes from The Spirit of Life in his chapter on the theology of mystical experience. I’m giving you the first few sentences for context, but pay attention to the last half particularly.

The Greek philosophers, the [parents] of the Church, and the monastic Fathers comprehended things ‘with their eyes’. They ‘theorized’ in the literal sense of the word (theoreiz in Greek=to look at). We really arrive at understanding when we go on looking at a flower or a sunset or a manifestation of God until this flower is the flower per se, and this sunset is the sunset, and this manifestation of God is wholly God and nothing but God Godself. Then the observer becomes part of the flower, or part of the sunset, or part of God. For through his perception he participates in his object or counterpart, and is transported into it. The act of perception transforms the perceiver, not what is perceived. Perception confers communion. We know in order to participate, not in order to dominate. Theat is why we can only know to the extent in which we are capable of loving what we see, and in love are able to let it be wholly itself. Knowledge, as the Hebrew word (yada) tells us, is an act of love, not an act of domination. When someone has understood, he says: ‘I see it. I love you. I behold God.’ The result is pure ‘theory’, and pure good-pleasure.”

 

You’ve likely heard me say before I’m not a contemplative. I won’t get into a passionate discussion of why here; suffice it to say I have a hard time sitting around trying to zone out. I have a hard time thinking that is in any way Christian. (Okay, I got into my discussion a leeeeetle bit.) However I’m trying to learn, and stretch myself into the uncomfortable territory that is the great mystical Christian tradition. And I am learning that it is not a zoning out, but a honing in. It is not a removal from the world, but an immersion into the world at the deepest level. This is why I love the phrase “perception confers communion.” That phrase makes me want to practice meditation daily, just for the hope that I can get a  taste of that happening in me. It is when we return to that feeling of being transported into something so much bigger and wider and more loving and present and real, which is to say, being transported into the presence of God. You have to set your intention to be present to it, but you can’t go there like you walk to the store. You have to be lifted, transported there. You have to set yourself in such a place that you can be carried into it.

And it doesn’t carry you away. It carries you in and with. It confers communion. And isn’t that our goal?

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Moltmann on Church Reform

by on October 31, 2011

Happy Halloween, all! Today’s Moltmann quote comes from The Church in the Power of the Spirit in a section about the form of the church as fellowship on page 317:

 

The church will not overcome its present crisis through reform of the administration of the sacraments, or from the reform of its ministries. It will overcome this crisis through the rebirth of practical fellowship. The reforms of evangelization and the administration of the sacraments, and the inescapable reform of the church’s ministries, will spring from the rebirth of fellowship and friendship among the rank and file. The one certainly cannot take place without the other, but the starting point lies in the congregation and its form as fellowship. Fellowship in word and sacrament, fellowship in the profession of faith, fellowship in the institution and the  hierarcy, become lifeless and are petrified into formalities with which people can no longer identify themselves, if fellowship among the congregation’s rank and file is lost, and if friendship is not recovered from the ‘grass-roots.’”

 

I like this section for at least two reasons. One, I confess that I just might explain my entire task as a pastor of an emerging community of faith by saying it is an attempt at rebirthing practical fellowship. What I mean by that is we try to structure our communal life in such a way that it gives us the tools and practices we need to become who we think we ought to be becoming. What I also mean by that is participation in the life of the community itself is a practice, because if you stick around long enough you will have to endure some conflict, or personality issues, or differences of opinion, and it’s in those moments where the fellowship can really give way to practical Christian life application. (Not to make it sound like a title on the front cover of a trendy new Bible) If we want to reform, there’s no shortcut. It’s a lot of practice, every day, with the same people, continually seeking those places of growth and grace. The hidden shadow-point Moltmann makes here is that the church can be a place where practical fellowship is less than fully present…a gauge which we should take seriously if we’re pastors.

The second reason is that I believe firmly in the power of friendship. I believe firmly in its transformational power, to put it more strongly. It’s why I continue to give my time and energy to the work of Emergent Village. It’s why I believe in keeping intentional friendships with other clergy across a number of denominational lines. It’s why I enjoy hanging out with people whose thoughts vary greatly from my own. Reform happens in, with and through friendship. It’s true personally, and it’s true communally.

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