"Paradise" | Oil on canvas, 8 x 10

 

Did you know that for almost the first thousand years of Christian faith, there are no images of Jesus being crucified upon a cross?  Considering how ubiquitous the crucifix became in the second millennium, don't you find that a curious reality? 

 

It was that curious and mysterious question about the missing crucifixes which led two scholars, Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker, on a world-wide exploration.  First, they wanted to see if this absence was indeed true.  Second, if there was an absence of these later images of Jesus being crucified, then what did that mean.  Their exploration is detailed in the book they coauthored: Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire (Beacon Press, 2008).

 

In such a short space I will only address a key point of their exploration.  You'll have to read their substantial writing to hear more about their journey of discovery.  What fascinates me as I've listened to the perspective of Brock and Parker is this simple reality.  The earliest images of Jesus show him fully alive, risen from the dead.  Jesus is the Leader of Life.  And the cross, where imagined, is shown to be a tree of life. 

 

The earliest followers of Jesus and their communities of faithful imagination--for almost a thousand years--focused upon the abundant and overflowing goodness of the life they experienced within the Spirit of Jesus, the Christ who is risen from the dead.  Others who have studied these earliest communities of faith and their growing influence within the Roman Empire (for example, Rodney Stark), write about how this focus on the energizing life of the Spirit compelled followers of Jesus to engage in actions of compassion and mercy within their networks of relationships.  These actions of "heaven on earth" confronted the injustices of their culture, and at the same time, comforted those who were suffering and dying.

 

So as we go on our own adventures of faithful imagination today into the third millennium of faith in the way of Jesus, how are we practicing the paradise of God on earth in our own actions?

 

 

To the Others' Side

Image of Oil Painting "To the Others' Side"

"Jesus and his disciples came to the other side of the lake, to the region of the Gerasenes. As soon as Jesus got out of the boat, a man possessed by an evil spirit came out of the tombs" (Mark 5.1-2 CEB).

How do we respond when we are forced outside our comfort zone?  How does it feel to come face-to-face with strangers in a strange land, or even worse, enemies in enemy territory?  Even more, how does it undo the balance of our lives and our world when we discover that God is the one leading us into this liminal space of transition and possible transformation? 

I've tried to capture those feelings and our initial responses to such an adventure in the painting above entitled, "To the Others' Side."  I imagined Jesus leading his followers "to the other side" of the lake of Galilee. He led them from the comfort of their known world of the Capernaum fishing business into the strange and discomforting world of the "Decapolis." This was a region inhabited by a cosmopolitan variety of cultures. Most of these cities--including the city of Geresa--had been founded by Greek colonists after Alexander the Great had conquered this area.  These cities continued to enjoy their freedom as independent city-states under the watchful eyes of the Roman imperial legions during the time of Jesus.

The Gospel of Mark, as well as Matthew and Luke, tell us that Jesus compelled his followers to travel with him outside the comforts of their neighborhood into the storm of face-to-face encounter with "the other." Strange this other appeared to the small group of Galilean Jewish travelers.  He is described as a "Geresene man" who haunted the tombs with evil spirits after he had broken the bonds used by the local villagers.  They had attempted to control this man of uncontrollable force.

As this man confronted Jesus and his apprentices with his distorted and destructive spirit, Jesus confronted the man with the freeing Spirit of the healing reign of God. The man had been tortured by legions and destroyed by the spirits sent into the region's industrial pigsty. Jesus frees the man from these destroying powers.

These distorted powers then were terrified by this freeing action.  They wanted Jesus to leave their region.  And we can understand why the man wanted to leave, as well, don't we?  In his health and wholeness, the man was possibly now as much, maybe even more, of a terror to these ones who had in the past so terrorized his own distorted life.

The blessing Jesus gave to that man may very well be what we also need to hear.  Jesus is leading us into the storm of freeing ourselves as we free others.  Perhaps the Spirit also says to us: "Go home to your own people and tell them what the Lord has done for you and how he has shown you mercy" (Mark 5.19).  As we encounter that terrifying other with the freeing mercy of God, we will also be set free within our own entangled and stormy relationships.  In our journey of transformation, we are becoming witnesses to what the Lord has done for us.  Me and Mine against Those and Them, with mercy, become I and Us learning something new together with the Spirit.



"Good Samaritan After Van Gogh"

2011

oil on canvas

by Marty Carney

 

Source of Life Unfolding,

awaken us to your life--real life!

May your reality structure emerging life

in all its blossoming energies,

moving spaces,

and graceful interactions.

May your desire dance among us and all life,

freeing your cosmos for the wonders of fruitful feasting.

Open our prespectives to all that resists life

and rejects your reality within ourselves.

Move us to act within the freeing flow of your mystery,

as your lead us through chaos into the fullness of life.

Within the creativity of Jesus, we celebrate you

and your glorious energy of life

moving through all time and space!

May it Be So.

Rev. Dr. Martin James Carney

July 13, 2011

new day

delighting

Those who see the glory of God shining in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Cor 4.6), "no longer exist in the night when God is far off. They live in the daybreak colors of God's coming day (Rom 13.12). In this respect, to believe means trusting in God's promise, seeing the world in the advance radiance of God's future, and living life here as a foretaste of God's fullness." (Jürgen Moltmann, Sun of Righteousness, Arise!, p. 184).


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How do we live here and now in this "fullness" of God's promising future, when there is so much bad news? The bad news is global in scale: the destruction of the earth through pollution, continual wars among tribes and nations and peoples, religion distorted into practices of hate, shortages of food and water and patience and compassion. Into the night of this darkness, where God seems so far away, we trust in a light shining into this abyss of chaos.


As I listen to the way of Jesus, I am inspired in my imagination. My spirit comes alive as I see Jesus practice love of enemies, compassion for the suffering, liberation for the oppressed, restoration for the broken. This way of Jesus confronts me in the illusion of my comfortable distance from my enemies, the suffering, the oppressed, and broken.


I am challenged to wonder how I choose enmity instead of the neighborly way. I dare to question my comforts when I listen with Jesus to the cries of the suffering very near to me. I myself long for a glimpse of liberation from what oppresses me... and the choices I make that oppress others! The vision of Jesus confronts me with the brokenness of my own life, the broken relationships, and the broken creation that my comfortable lifestyle imposes upon this creation.


When we see this vision of God's glory in the face of Jesus, what do we see? We see "a child in a manger and a man on the cross" quotes Moltmann from Martin Luther (184). That is, the glory of God is the weak, vulnerable, suffering, wounded humanity of God in the history of Jesus.


This "pathos" of God, this passion of God, is the "daybreak color" of God's new day which confronts these last days of this world. We live in the dawn of God's new day when we embrace the suffering in our hearts, among our neighbors, friends, family, and especially, our enemies. We are reflecting the light of this new day into these dark days of destruction, when we shine with hope in God's promising future which will make "all things new."


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"O Lord,
remember not only the men and women of goodwill,
but also those of ill will.
But do not only remember the suffering
they have inflicted on us,
remember the fruits we bore--
thans to this suffering;
our comradeship, our loyalty, our humility,
the courage, the generosity,
the greatness of heart
which has grown out of all this.
Then when they come to judgement
let all the fruits that we have borne
be their forgiveness."


This poem was found written on a piece of wrapping paper lying near the body of a dead child at the Ravensbruck Nazi death camp, where 92,000 women and children died. (Peter Millar, An Iona Prayer Book, 120).


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Come, Creator Spirit, give new life to the earth, give new life to us!


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wondering

"I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God" (Ephesians 3.18-19 tniv).

This morning I began to read a powerful little book, The Truce of God, by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. He begins with a critique of our culture. He analyses our modern myths, the stories we tell ourselves in movies and through television. He finds massive fear and anxiety, coupled with pervasive and unpredictable violence in this stories. He is amazed to find, that in the ways we tell these stories, most often we perceive that we are powerless to do anything beyond reacting with further fear and violence to events that we believe are beyond our control.

Archbishop Rowan summarizes our cultural predicament:

"In our day more than ever, war and peace are 'spiritual' as well as tactical and political issues. We shall not understand our society and its terrors and anxieties about total war unless we grasp that behind these anxieties lies a profound sickness of spirit; and it is a sickness which only succeeds in reinforcing the structures that give rise to it in the first place."

"Gospel, good news, for a society like our must involve a clear and accurate diagnosis of this kind of sickness, because only so will it become possible to open the doors of repentance once again.... War is to be dreaded (if we can echo the words of Jesus) not so much because it likds the body as because it destroys both body and soul, because its casualties are health and truth and hope. To resist this destruction is to affirm a faith in a human future; and the Gospel, by driving us to penitence, grounds this affirmation of the future in the loving will of God, remaking us through conversion" (Rowan Williams, The Truce of God, 20-21).

I am profoundly challenged by this analysis of Rowan Williams. It pushes me to imagine the "fullness of God" and the "power" that flows from the knowing the amazing "love of Christ" confronting the spirit of our society which seeks to grasp, to control, and to dominate. I am challenged to wonder personally how I am coopted by this spirit in my own life. And dare I consider this: I wonder how the church has grown silent about the "good news" of this "love" which confronts our fears, anxieties, and brutalities?

I am wondering?

I am wondering. I am wondering about being a leader within the public community of faith. It is a community with a particular faith. We say we are a "community of the good news." The "good news" has a distinctive meaning. It is a code phrase for the whole story of Jesus of Nazareth: " the good news of Jesus, the Christ."

Having just mentioned that name "Jesus" and the title "Christ" I have already begun to tell a particular story. What I'm wondering about is how that story is "good news" for people today in this 21st century world. Will you wonder with me?