“There is no way of first perceiving something except through astonishment.  Because even in the everyday world of experience, which is so much a matter of course, nothing repeats itself exactly, everything we encounter also has a unique character.  The readiness to marvel at the fact opens our senses, so that we can observe the unrepeatable in the recurring, the unlike in the like, and the dissimilar in the similar.  It is true that out of judgment we judge ‘everything that is’ according to precedents and general laws, but at the same time we know that every case is different.  Events remain contingent.  Consequently the origin of all knowing is to be sought not in recognition but astonishment.” -p.175

Last night at Journey we spent some time talking about seeing things from a holistic worldview; that is, not seeing the world by constantly trying to take things apart and siphoning them down into something we can label, but by focusing on how things are connected and how the brokenness of the world can be put back together.  This is a subtle art, to devise this way of seeing the world, and I wonder if doesn’t require a way of seeing the ordinary, cyclical nature of things as in some way “astonishing” as Moltmann argues.  There is something that feels really fatalistic if we presume that everything is in such a constant state that we can no longer imagine changing it.  When we try to focus on the blips that make even our most basic days unique, I’d presume that it helps us cultivate the kind of holistic “seeing” that is required of us as people of God.  If our task is to be the people who, with God’s help, are trying to restore wholeness back to the broken parts of the ourselves, our communities and our world, we can only rightly see those potentials by taking the time to notice the remarkably astonishing moments waiting all around us.

And, while we’re on the subject, if you haven’t heard the exciting news, this fall’s Emergent Village Theological Conversation is going to be incredible.  We are hosting a stellar panel- Musa Dube, a New Testament feminist scholar from Botswana, Richard Twiss of the Lakota/Sioux tribe to provide a First Nations perspective, and Colin Greene of the UK, a scholar in postcolonial theology.  I’ll let you know when the registration page goes live.  You won’t want to miss it!

“When the heart expands, we can stretch our limbs and feel the new vitality everywhere, then life unfolds in us.  But it needs a living space in which it can develop.  Life in the Spirit is a life in the ‘broad place where there is no cramping’ (Job 36:16).  So in the new life we experience the Spirit as a ‘broad place’- as the free space for our freedom, as the living space for our lives, as the horizon inviting us to discover life.  ’The broad place’ is the most hidden and most silent presence of God’s Spirit in us and round about us.  But how else could ‘life in the Spirit’ be understood, if the Spirit were not the space ‘in’ which this life can grow and unfurl?  We explore the depths of this space through the trust of the heart.  We search out the length of this space through extravagant hope.  We discover the breadth of this space through the torrents of love which we receive and give.  God’s Spirit encompasses us from all sides and wherever we are (Psalm 139).  Christ’s Spirit is our immanent power to live- God’s Spirit is our transcendent space for living.”  -The Spirit of Life, p.178-179

Too often we have wrongfully believed that spiritual things are “otherworldly,” that they take us away from our physical present lives and move us into some cloudy atmosphere of abstraction.  The Spirit of God is not an abstraction.  She is not some force that distracts us from our “real lives” by transporting us into another more “spiritual” one.  The Spirit of God given to us at Pentecost is the force for life which makes us recognize where our feet are standing, and pay attention to what our eyes are seeing, and awaken to what our hearts are feeling.  And this feeling of being fully awakened to our present and rich reality very truly transforms us, because it gives us space to breathe so deeply that everything becomes possible.  Love becomes possible, and justice, and peace, and forgiveness.  We don’t feel cramped for space and choked for air, because we are surrounded by the Spirit of God that breathes upon us the very force of life.  When transformation happens in any and every way for us, it is because somewhere deep within us we have, even if only for a moment, believed this to be true, and felt it to be true, and acted knowing it is true.  And when we act from that place, the whole world can change.  When we act from that place, we claim that the whole world IS changing, even now, and we are called to be part of it.

In the first chapter of Moltmann’s latest book, he outlines 3 paradigms of leadership the church can follow.  The first is the hierarchical paradigm, in which there is one God, one Pope/Bishop, one Church.  He writes, “In the political world, one ruler on earth corresponds to the one God in heaven, and in similar correspondence to the one God in heaven is the one bishop and high priest of humanity.”  Moltmann finds difficulty in the way this de-emphasizes the unique role of each follower of Jesus.  “If the church is identified in a one-sided way with the hierarchy and its functions, then the task of ‘the laity’ can only be to say ‘Amen’ to the liturgical, dogmatic and moral instructions of the hierarchy.  This is in pure form a church for looking after people; it is not a self-confident church of God’s people” (p.21).

The second paradigm is the Christocentric paradigm.  Here Christ is the head of the Church rather than a human authority figure, and it is through him that unity is found and held.  The congregation members are brothers and sisters who proclaim Jesus in Word and Sacrament.  Theoretically, this creates a community of equals, because it acknowledges the priesthood of all believers.  The problem, he says, is that “the distinction between trained theologians and people without any theological training has taken the place of the priestly hierarchy” (p.23).  Theories don’t mean much when they don’t get worked out in actual practice.

The third paradigm is the Charismatic paradigm, by which he doesn’t mean denominationally charismatic, but rather a broad sense of being led and guided by the Holy Spirit.  He uses 1 Corinthians 12:4-6 as a description:  “There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit.  There are varieties of service, but the same Lord.  There are varieties of powers, but it is the same God who inspires them all in every one.”  In churches that are working in this paradigm, “everyone is an expert in his or her own life and personal calling, and all are experts in their original gifts and powers on behalf of the community and its mission” (p.25).  By this Moltmann is hardly arguing for relativism.  Instead, he is advocating for churches who take seriously their individual and communal calling to be active followers of Jesus in the world.  There is not a class of religious experts that ought to do the work for the “other kind” of people.  We are all called to follow, and the church ought to be structured in such a way that encourages and empowers and sends each person to do what they are uniquely called to do to bring life into the world.

As a pastor who hopes to work in this charismatic paradigm, I can’t say I’ve figured out a structure yet that fully realizes this potential, but I hope in our own small ways we are fumbling forward and figuring out how to enliven each community member to practice living into their unique callings more and more each day.

To kick off, here are some sentences from the preface of Moltmann’s latest:

“When I think back, I discover with some surprise that I have always understood Christian theology as a unity, irrespective of the persons who have thought it and maintained it.  From Orthodoxy to the Pentecostal movement in Europe, Asia, Africa and America, all theologians belong to the whole of Christendom on earth and to the thousand-year-old communio theologorum.  In Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither Greek nor barbarian, neither master nor servant, and neither man nor woman.  All become one because the frontiers that divide them have been broken down.  And the same is true in Christian theology…Christian theology reaches out beyond denominational frontiers and cultural barriers.  Its discussions do not run parallel to confessional boundaries…I believe that the only future for a divided Christendom before God, and hence on earth too, is a common future.”

To understand Christian theology as a unity is easier said than done.  One of the reasons I was so attracted to Moltmann’s theology is because while most theologians I read were whittling ideas of God down into smaller and smaller bits (and therefore more and more splintered factions that required defending), Moltmann was stretching out wider and wider to bring more pieces in.  This makes intuitive sense to me, as one who recently described my appreciation in the emerging church conversation on what we call “big tent theology.”  We are not attempting to create a new faction, but rather attempting instead to widen our listening to include a more whole and holistic voice of Christian theology, spanning time, denominations, continents, and other perceived borders.  Good theology ought to move OUT and not IN.  (And if you haven’t heard me beat this drum enough, I believe the story of God in Scripture only works that way, too.)

Certainly, I also LOVE his recurring refusal to pay attention to boundaries drawn by humans in favor of the God who so loves breaking them. (See:  The Boundary-Breaking God)

And I also love his beautiful declaration that if we are to have a future at all, it is to be a shared future.  And this future must be held together by the One who alone is able to bring us into unity.  I wrote that “Any human dictator can control a homogenous society.  Only the living God can hold together a diverse global world in love.”  This is the difference between our desire to shrink God/people/the world into easily understandable and controlled splinter categories, and God’s desire to free up people/the world to flourish in creative ways outside of our controlling categories.  This is why we have a common future that must be grounded not in our own whittling and splintering work, but in the unifying work of God.  That’s as true for theology as it is every other work we do as humans living together in this world.  How can we gather rather than shatter?

For the past few years I’ve been thinking through the relationship between church and nation/state/political powers. It’s a tricky affair. Truthfully, I haven’t figured out how to navigate those worlds together without feeling I’m rejecting one or the other. One trend that bothers me is what I think Moltmann meant by the peaceable kingdom. It is peaceable, but it is also removed. All of us agree it would be easier to pull away from society and live in our own little communities of justice. But then we would cease to be a peacemaking kingdom where it’s needed most. So the question is- without leaving our very complicated ties to political realities in favor of an isolated community, how do we live as people who seek God’s reconciliation?

If there’s one conviction I have, it’s that much of our action has more to do with our presence than anything else. I don’t mean just showing up- I mean the WAY in which we show up, the way we interact with others, the way we speak our words. Part of my frustration I shared yesterday is that we’ve seemingly lost the ability to be present in ways that aren’t selfish, egotistical and even violent toward others. As God’s people, we need to be incredibly thoughtful and intentional about how we seek change. They will know we are Christians by our love, no?

While “peaceable” describes a state of being, “peacemaking” implies movement and action. It’s the far more complicated of the two- but it also happens to be the one that God commands of us. Anybody have good examples or stories of how we can do this? Any tips?

1. When someone asks him a question, he fully listens to them- and takes the time to think about it before responding. In doing so, he has a way of honoring not only the question but also the person asking it.

2. He has a gift not only for writing poetically, but for speaking poetically as well. (Just check out the list of Moltmann money quotes that came in over Twitter.)

3. He seems completely unaffected by the fact that he’s the theology world’s biggest deal. (One of many examples- my theology professor friend Scott gave Moltmann a copy of his latest book on Moltmann’s work, and Moltmann asked HIM if he could autograph it.)

4. He loves to laugh at himself and at his own jokes. He has a great sense of humor.

5. He is truly an example of what embodied theology looks like- a seamless interweaving of story and thought, intellect and heart, wisdom and humility.

So thank you, Professor, for sharing your theology with us- but more importantly, thanks for sharing your life with us.

See you next week!

I mean at least two things when I say this. First, the style of Moltmann’s writings have an open quality to them. I can only describe it by saying that I can become claustrophobic when reading other theologians because they are intentionally leading you down a quickly narrowing corridor. Arguably, there is a kind of beauty to this way of logical reasoning; the downside is that you end up in a small, neatly organized closet. Moltmann does the opposite. He might lead you down a narrowing corridor, but he only does so to shove you at the end into an endless field and an open sky so you can realize how dumb it was to stand in the corridor.

To be fair, this is what some people don’t like about him- he’s not always exact. But Moltmann is more interested in helping us see from a certain “space” (the space of hope, for example) and he wants us to see that space EVERYWHERE. This is why he refuses to write theology in traditional categories. He doesn’t want to write about God Creator and then turn all the other parts of the story on blurry background mode. He wants to think about the act of God in creation and cast the net so far and wide that we end up considering the act of creation present in everything. Where other theologians narrow, Moltmann widens.

Secondly, Moltmann readily acknowledges that his theology is not a closed system, not a finished product, not in any sense complete, but simply a “contribution” to an ongoing conversation. Look- I know some other theologians say this, but then they write a multiple-volume systematic work of theology and sigh when they’ve finished it. Moltmann flatly refused to write systematic theology. He wrote a series of books on a variety of topics that contribute to theology but are not meant to be held as his final word, and certainly not meant to be seen as God’s final word. Theology for Moltmann is always theologia viatorum, theology on the way. We speak of God, but we do so as people who are moving, changing, reaching for God’s coming future.

Because he formulates theology openly, he has been able to dialogue with a variety of people with multiple perspectives- and he has freely allowed them and invited them to influence his own thought. He is genuinely interested in hearing what others have to say; consequently he’s more interested in adapting his theology with new insights from outside voices than he is defending his theology from criticism. He has sought out feminist voices (not least his wife, Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel, who is a rock star), liberation theologians, Orthodox and Catholic and Jewish and Muslim conversation partners, environmentalists, the list goes on. And because he’s such an authentically interested listener, he has this amazing ability to set up a place for open conversation to happen between some unlikely partners. Here’s Minjung theology for the ruling classes! Let’s talk about feminist theology for men! (Both of these examples are chapters in his Experiences in Theology.) Moltmann wants theology to be robust conversation, open dialogue, a plethora of voices, an expansive table.

Thanks, Professor Moltmann, for giving us an example of how to live graciously and openly-and yet not without conviction-in a pluralist world. You know how to throw a truly festive theological dinner party.