Foolishness

Crucifixion, Jesus Mafa, Cameroon, 1970s 

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written:

I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;

the intelligence of the intelligent

I will frustrate.

Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?  For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom,  but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,  but to those whom God has called,both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.  For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength ((1 Corinthians 1:18-25).

Who decides what’s possible?

Reword that: What framework do we use for deciding what’s possible?

What are the boundaries of plausibility?

And what does it take to break through the invisible walls of our plausibility structures?

The term “plausibility structures” was first used by sociologist Peter Berger to describe the interplay between culture and understanding, the ways that the undefined assumptions of our culture shape and control our ability to interpret information. Each culture, even subculture, has its own plausibility structures, its own ways of deciding what could be considered true.

Last week I quoted Lesslie Newbigin, missionary to India for forty years. Newbigin found that the idea of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection challenged the plausibility structures of his Hindu friends, who were happy to hear stories of the supernatural, and very willing to see Jesus as one more deity in a tradition that recognizes three hundred and thirty million of them. Less plausible was the idea that one deity might supersede all others, that one religious story might hold the clue to all existence, or that the divine would value the lives of those the culture deemed untouchable: widows, Dalits, slaves. 

Returning to post-Christian London, Newbiggin found a different reigning plausabilty structure, the “central citadel of our culture":

the belief that the real world, the reality with which we have to do, is a world that is to be understood in terms of efficient causes and not of final causes, a  world that is not governed by an intelligible purpose, and thus a world in which the answer to the question of what is good has to be left to the private opinion of each individual and cannot be included in the body of accepted facts that control public life.(Foolishness to the Greeks, p 79).

 Like Paul in First Corinthians, Newbigin recognized that the cross and resurrection, rightly understood, would challenge every reigning plausibility structure, from the days of the Greeks and Romans, through the rationalism of enlightenment, to our own post-modern pluralism. 

It is obvious that the story of the empty tomb cannot be fitted into our contemporary worldview, or indeed into any worldview except one of which it is the starting point.  That is, indeed, the whole point.  What happened on that day is, according to the Christian tradition, only to be understood by analogy with what happened on the day the cosmos came into being.  It is a boundary event, at the point where (as cosmologists tell us) the laws of physics ceased to apply.  It is the beginning of a new creation – as mysterious to human reason as the creation itself.

 But, and this is the whole point, accepted in faith it becomes the starting point for a wholly new way of understanding our human experience, a way which – in the long run – makes more sense of human experience as a whole than does the reigning plausibility structure.  That the crucified Jesus was raised from death to be the firstfruit of creation is – in the proper sense – dogma.  It is something given, offered for acceptance in faith, providing the starting point for a new way of understanding which, instead of being finally defined by the impassable boundary of death (our personal deaths and the final death of the cosmos), moves from death outward to an open world of infinite possibilities beckoning us into ever fresh regions of joy. (The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, p. 12)

Newbigin’s own agnosticism was shattered in 1929 at the age of 19, when he spent a summer working at a Quaker service center in the economically depressed mining region of South Wales. Troubled at the hopelessness of the unemployed miners he encountered, he experienced a vision of the cross “as the one and only reality great enough to span the distance between heaven and hell, and to hold in one embrace all the variety of humankind, the one reality that could make sense of the human situation” (Journey into Joy).

St Paul:Conversion, Granger Collection, 19th C

His experience was one in a long, long line of such conversions: illumination shattering the plausibility Damascus was another. Once so committed to the structures of his own Jewish tradition, willing to stone those who threatened the authorities and beliefs he held dear, he experienced physical blindness in a way that shattered his spiritual blindness and opened his eyes to the good news of  resurrection. 

structures that make it hard to see the unexpected. The Apostle Paul’s conversion on the road to

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,  that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born. For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. (1 Corinthians 15:3-10) 

As I celebrate resurrection, I find myself also wondering about the plausibility structures that obstruct my own sight, even now.

If the cross and resurrection demand a breaking down of walls between slave and free, Jew and Greek, male and female, Dalit and Brahmin, what does it demand of my own understanding of current categories: political, demoninational, economic, cultural?

If resurrection is the ultimate reality, and eternity the context of determining value, how should that reshape the contours of my day, or refine my daily priorities?

In a culture that demands evidence – now!

that wants results – today!

that judges every action, every person, by performance and appearance,

how do I live in a framework of grace, hope, endurance, compassion?

As both Newbigin and Paul made clear, the church – writ large or small – is no refuge from plausibility structures that enforce cultural norms and crowd out Christ’s good news. 

Even among Christians, it sometimes seems foolish to love those least loveable, to spend time on “lost causes,” to hope for change when change seems impossible, to insist on good news for those most in need of mercy. 

But if my life, if our corporate life, looks no different from those who doubt the resurrection, if my own plausability structures deny, or disregard, the power of the resurrection, surely I've missed the point?

Would that be the ultimate foolishness?

I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people,  and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. (Ephesians 1:17-21)

Saying Yes to the Risen Christ

Resurrection readings on this Resurrection Day.

An invitation

to live in the confidence that every act of compassion matters - not just now, but forever,

to celebrate the infinite possibilities beckoning  past "the reigning plausability structure,"

to say "yes" to the present risenness of Christ,

to stand in flux and change as bright "immortal diamond." 

Christ is Risen!

He is risen indeed!

Who Are You Looking For? Anna Kocher, 2006

from Resurrection, Rob Bell, 2010

resurrection announces that God has not given up on the world

because this world matters
this world that we call home
dirt and blood and sweat and skin and light and water
this world that God is redeeming and restoring and renewing . . .

resurrection says that what we do with our lives matters
in this body
the one that we inhabit right now
every act of compassion matters
every work of art that celebrates the good and the true matters
every fair and honest act of business and trade
every kind word
they all belong and they will all go on in God’s good world
nothing will be forgotten
nothing will be wasted
it all has it’s place

everybody believes something
everybody believes somebody
Jesus invites us to trust resurrection
that every glimmer of good
every hint of hope
every impulse that elevates the soul
is a sign, a taste, a glimpse
of how things actually are
and how things will ultimately be
resurrection affirms this life and the next
as a seamless reality
embraced
graced
and saved by God

there is an unexpected mysterious presence
who meets each of us in our lowest moments
when we have no strength when we have nothing left
and we can’t go on we hear the voice that speaks those
words

destroy this temple and I’ll rebuild it

do you believe this?
that’s the question Jesus asked then
and that’s the question he asks now

Jesus’ friends arrive at his tomb and they’re told
he isn’t here

he isn’t here
there is nothing to fear
and nothing can ever be the same again
we are living in a world in the midst of rescue
with endless unexpected possibilities

they will take my life and I will die Jesus says
but that will not be the end
and when you find yourself assuming that it’s over
when it’s lost, gone, broken and it could never be
put back together again,
when it’s been destroyed and you swear that it could never
be rebuilt

hold on a minute
because in that moment
things will in fact have just begun  

Resurrection, Manuel Panselenos, Greece, ca 1300

from The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, Lesslie Newbigin, 1989

It is obvious that the story of the empty tomb cannot be fitted into our contemporary worldview, or indeed into any worldview except one of which it is the starting point.  That is, indeed, the whole point.  What happened on that day is, according to the Christian tradition, only to be understood by analogy with what happened on the day the cosmos came into being.  It is a boundary event, at the point where (as cosmologists tell us) the laws of physics ceased to apply.  It is the beginning of a new creation – as mysterious to human reason as the creation itself.

But, and this is the whole point, accepted in faith it becomes the starting point for a wholly new way of understanding our human experience, a way which – in the long run – makes more sense of human experience as a whole than does the reigning plausibility structure.  That the crucified Jesus was raised from death to be the firstfruit of creation is – in the proper sense – dogma.  It is something given, offered for acceptance in faith, providing the starting point for a new way of understanding which, instead of being finally defined by the impassable boundary of death (our personal deaths and the final death of the cosmos), moves from death outward to an open world of infinite possibilities beckoning us into ever fresh regions of joy.

Doubting Thomas, Emmanual Nsama, Zambia, 1970

from Abba's Child, Brendan Manning, 2002

For me, the most radical demand of Christian faith lies in summoning the courage to say YES to the present risenness of Jesus Christ.  . . . I have lived long enough to appreciate that Christianity is lived more in the valley than on the mountaintop, that faith is never doubt-free, and that although God has revealed himself in creation and in history, the surest way to know God is, in the words of Thomas Aquinas, as tamquam ignotum, utterly unknowable.No thought can contain him; no word can express him. He is beyond anything we can intellectualize or imagine.

My YES to the fullness of divinity embodied in the present risenness of Jesus is scary because it is so personal. In desolation and abandonment . . ., in loneliness and fear, in the awareness of the resident pharisee, and in the antics of the imposter, YES is a bold word not to be taken lightly or spoken frivolously.

This YES is an act of faith, a decisive, wholehearted response of my whole being to the risen Jesus present beside me, before me, around me, and within me; a cry of confidence that my faith in Jesus provides security not only in the face of death but in the face of a worse threat posed by my own malice; a word that must be said not just once but repeated over and over again in the ever-changing landscape of life.

Resurrection, unknown artists, Istanbul, ca 1315

from That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection, Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1888

Delightfully the bright wind boisterous ropes, wrestles, beats earth bare

Of yestertempest’s creases; in pool and rut peel parches

Squandering ooze to squeezed dough, crust, dust; stanches, starches

Squadroned masks and manmarks treadmire toil there

Footfretted in it. Million-fuelèd, nature’s bonfire burns on.

But quench her bonniest, dearest to her, her clearest-selvèd spark

Man, how fast his firedint, his mark on mind, is gone!

. . .  Enough! the Resurrection,

A heart’s-clarion! Away grief’s gasping, joyless days, dejection.

Across my foundering deck shone

A beacon, an eternal beam. Flesh fade, and mortal trash

Fall to the residuary worm; world’s wildfire, leave but ash:

In a flash, at a trumpet crash,

I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and

This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,

Is immortal diamond.

Jesus: the Resurrected One, Jason Fowler, 2011

Earlier posts on the resurrection:

Where is Newness Needed, March 2013

Risen Indeed!, April 2012

Resurrection,, April 2011 

Invitation to the Cross

As part of my Lenten observation this year, I'm taking a break from writing new blog posts and updating and re-posting earlier material. Today's post was first shared on April 1, 2012.  For another Holy Week post from the past, consider also Thank You for the Cross, April 17, 2011.

Black Crucifixion, Fritz Eichenberg, 1963, New York

And God held in his hand
A small globe. Look,

he said.
The son looked. . .

On a bare
Hill a bare tree saddened
The sky. Many people
Held out their thin arms
To it,
As though waiting
For a vanished April
To return to its crossed
Boughs. The son watched
Them. Let me go there, he said.
  (from "The Coming," R. S. Thomas)

There is something unsettling about the story of Palm Sunday. Crowds gathered to cheer a likely candidate, one of their own who could draw a crowd, who could take back Jerusalem from the evil empire, who could promote their agendas and ensure their safety.

It’s easy to picture the crowd. The objects waved might be different (flags? pennants? streamers?), but the energy is the same.

It’s not so easy to picture Jesus, riding the donkey through the crowd. Luke says, "as he approached Jerusalem he wept.”

Not normal hero behavior.

Did the crowd notice? Did they wonder why?

With the cheers of the adoring crowd echoing in his ears, Jesus went on to the temple, where he upset the economic order by throwing over tables: money changers, merchants of sacrificial doves, commerce sent scrambling. The accommodating (well-recompensed?) religious leaders were enraged: how dare he?

From there, he went on to tell a series of stories meant to alienate the insiders, the holders of power, those most convinced of their own righteousness.

Then the Passover meal, with talk of sacrifice and death, and the embarrassing scene with the bowl and towel.

Foot Washing,  Gunning King, 1936, UK

It’s an odd story, shifting from adoration, to alienation, to anticipated grief.

There’s nothing in the story that sounds invented, “mythic,” polished.

It’s told in each of the gospels with a sense of quiet amazement, with a raw honesty unexpected in religious text. Facts outlined, dialogue sketched, strange stories reported as the lauded candidate for coming king deliberately dismantles the grand expectations of friends, followers and crowd.

.Vinoth Ramachandra, a Sri Lankan who has written and lectured extensively about pluralism, world religions, and the uniqueness of the Christian faith, notes in The Scandal of Jesus: Christ in a Pluralistic World:

If you wanted to convert the educated and pious people of the empire to your cause, whatever that cause may have been, the worst thing you could ever do would be to link that cause to a recently crucified man. To put it mildly, that would have been a public relations disaster. And to associate God, the source of all life, with this crucified criminal was to invite mockery and sheer incomprehension! This was indeed the experience of the first Christians

This message, if true, subverted the world of religion. For it claimed that if you wanted to know what God is like, and to learn God’s purposes for God’s world, you had to go not to the sages, the lofty speculations of the philosophers or to the countless religious temples and sacred groves that dotted the empire, but to a cross outside the walls of Jerusalem. The world of the first Christians was every bit as pluralistic, if not more so, than ours- culturally and religiously. But for the Jews a crucified Messiah/Saviour was a contradiction in terms, for it expressed not God’s power but God’s inability to liberate Israel from Roman rule. For pious Greeks and Romans, the idea that a god or son of a god should die as a state criminal, and that human salvation should depend on that particular historical event, was not only offensive, it was sheer madness.

This message, if it were true, also subverted the world of politics. It claimed that Rome’s own salvation would come from among those forgotten victims of state terror. Caesar himself would have to bow the knee to this crucified Jew. It implied that by crucifying the Lord of the universe, the much-vaunted civilization of Rome stood radically condemned. The Pax Romana was a sham peace. Like all imperial projects, it was built on the suffering of the many. And God had chosen to be found among the victims, not the empire-builders. Little wonder that the Christians’ ‘Good News’ (‘Gospel’) was labeled a ‘dangerous superstition’ by educated Romans of the time.

Now, it is the madness of this ‘word of the cross’ that compels us to take it seriously. I am a Christian today because there is something so foolish, so absurd, so topsy-turvy about the Christian gospel that it gets under my skin: it has the ring of truth about it. No one can say that this was some pious invention, for it ran counter to all notions of piety. And nothing was gained by it. All who proclaimed it suffered as a result.

Ramanchandra goes on to explore further the subversive nature of the cross: it subverts not only our ideas of religion and political power, but of self, autonomy, family, tribe, national identity:

White Crucifixion, Marc Chagall, 1938, Russia

"When illustrating what it means to belong to the kingdom of God, Jesus takes as his paradigmatic examples those who had least status in his contemporary society. In a world where children had no legal rights, economic possessions or no social standing, he makes them the model for those who receive the kingdom of God (Matt.18: 1-4; Mark 10: 13-16). When, on the eve of the crucifixion, he washes the feet of his disciples like a household slave, and requires them to do the same for each other (John 13:3-15), he makes slaves the paradigms for leadership in the kingdom of God. If the kingdom of God belongs to people such as slaves, the poor, and little children, then others can enter the kingdom only by accepting the same lack of status. The cross brings all human beings, men and women, rich and poor, religious and irreligious, to the same level before God. It is at the foot of the cross, that all human beings, without exception, are revealed as the objects of God’s forgiving and re-creating love. This is the egalitarian politics of grace." 

Jesus doesn’t invite us to Palm Sunday, to a triumphal politics of power, a proud exclusionary religion of exceptional righteousness.

He invites us to the cross, to the foot of the cross, to align ourselves not only with him, but with every marginalized, forgotten, condemned person who ever lived.  He calls us to set aside status, entitlement, self-justifying argument, self-protective agenda, and find a new home in his family of grace.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, struggling to understand the call of the cross in the face of Nazi fascism, wrote: 

“The Cross is not the terrible end of a pious happy life. Instead, it stands at the beginning of community with Jesus Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” (from  Discipleship and the Cross )

Come and die.

Christ of the Homeless, Fritz Eichenberg, 1982, New York

Jesus said “greater love has no one than this than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. . . This is my command: Love each other.”

The Christian faith is more than words, buildings, organizational structures, theological frameworks, philosophical exposition, like-minded people sharing like-minded values. At its core, the Christian faith is a community of deeply broken, deeply loved people, knit together by allegiance to a dying friend on a distant hill, choosing each day to sacrifice personal preference and self-fulfillment for the needs of a deeply wounded world.

Come and die. Not great ad copy. Not a catchy campaign slogan.

Yet that call sounds across the centuries, and we can trace the outlines of history through the lives of those who have understood and answered that call.

Please join the conversation. Your thoughts and experiences in this are welcome. Look for the "__ comments" link below to leave your comments. 

Consider the Sparrows

White-throated sparrow, George Tallman, 2014, Exton Park

As part of my Lenten observation this year, I'm taking a break from writing new blog posts and updating and re-posting earlier material. Today's post was first shared on January 16, 2011.

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

  (from Sometimes, Mary Oliver, Red Bird, 2008)

This is the time of year when every day brings something new.

The crocuses beneath my dogwood are fading. 

The daffodils along the driveway are swelling into bloom. 

White-throated sparrows sing their farewells from beneath my bedroom window, while a pair of glossy crows patrols the back yard, examining bits of fluff to line a hidden nest nearby..

Barbara Taylor Brown, in An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith, suggests that by consigning faith to church and overtly religious practices, we miss much of what God is doing in the world around us. As she says, “In a world where faith is often construed as a way of thinking, bodily practices remind the willing that faith is a way of life.”

One of the practices Taylor Brown offers is “the practice of paying attention.” For Taylor Brown, attention is closely linked to reverence: an awareness that we are not all there is. We’re not the center of the universe. We aren’t God. We’re part of God’s creation.

Annie Dillard, a strong practioner of paying attention, caught my own attention when I was a sophomore in college. I picked up Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, her Pultizer Prize winning account of a year spent stalking muskrat, beauty, and God Himself in the hills and woods around Tinker Creek, in Virginia’s Blue Ridge mountains. I was intrigued by her attention to detail, her willingness to wait and watch, to look beyond the disturbance on the water’s surface to see what was happening beneath. 

I remember being entranced with Dillard’s desire to see God at work in his creation, to know his character through the reality of nature’s complexity and abundance. Trees, leaves, bugs, shells were all clues for her of an invisible, powerful hand at work, through intricate processes, unexplained purposes. After pages describing textures of bird feathers, tree bark, various kinds of rocks, she paused to wonder: 

What do I make of all this texture? What does it mean about the kind of world in which I have been set down? The texture of the world, its filigree and scrollwork, means that there is the possibility for beauty here, a beauty inexhaustible in its complexity, which opens to my knock, which answers in me a call I do not remember calling, and which trains me to the wild and extravagant nature of the spirit I seek.

But seeing takes time, more than an hour or two on Sunday. Even reading about seeing takes time. Taylor Brown laments this:

No one has time for this, of course. No one has time to lie on the deck watching stars, or to wonder how one’s hand came to be, or to see the soul of a stranger walking by. Small wonder we are short on reverence. The artist Georgia O’Keeffe, who became famous for her sensuous paintings of flowers, explained her success by saying ‘In a way, nobody sees a flower, really, it is so small, we haven’t time – and to see takes time . . . ‘

It takes time to see how a flower is constructed, how a bird builds its nest, what a friend might be thinking.

It also takes time to see where God might be working, to understand where he might be leading.

White-crowned sparrow, George Tallman, Exton Park, 2014

It’s interesting to me how much of scripture assumes an understanding of nature: descriptions of trees planted by rivers of water, psalms describing sun, moon, stars, weather, a vast array of living creatures, and what they tell us about God’s glory and power, prophecies suggesting that the health of creation is a reflection of our obedience or disobedience to God’s priorities and plan, Jesus’ parables of wheat, vines, birds, flowers.

Is it possible to really hear God speak when we’re moving so fast we can’t even hear each other? 

Is it possible to understand what he’s doing when we’re moving too fast to see his hand in creation?

Jesus said “Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds!

He also said “Consider how the wild flowers grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.”

I went to Strong’s lexicon to see what I could find out about that word “consider.” The Greek word, katanoeo, (κατανοησατε), means “to perceive, remark, observe, understand, to consider attentively, fix one's eyes or mind upon."

When Jesus said “consider,” he didn’t mean “grab my point and move on fast.” He meant “slow down, examine, study, then follow the example of” things dear to him, parts of his creation that reflect his values, his care. That list includes ravens. Wild flowers.

Even sparrows.

Jesus said “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God.”

As a birdwatcher, I’ve discovered that sparrows are among the most difficult to identify, the most time-consuming of birds. If you want to get to know sparrows, you’re going to have to hunker down somewhere and wait. Many birders write them off as “LBJ”s, little brown jobs, the least interesting, least important, hardest to identify. I’m still struggling to learn them.

Yet Jesus says even sparrows are of interest to God:

"Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care."

As we pay attention, we find ourselves drawn closer to God, his provision beyond imagining, the grandeur of his vision, and the amazing reality that the God of the universe pays attention to our needs. Our own intentions are set in perspective; his plan for us gains focus and clarity.

Lent is a time to slow down and pay attention. To consider the sparrows, the ravens, the fleeting beauty of lilies.

Swamp Sparrow, George Tallman, 2013, Exton Park

It takes time, yet just the change of focus can make it time well spent, an avenue into closer fellowship with God, and an occasion for deeper, more honest praise and prayer. 

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
 another voice may speak.

 (Praying, Mary Oliver, 

       from Thirst, 2006)

 Please join the conversation. Your thoughts and experiences in this are welcome. Look for the "__ comments" link below to leave your comments.