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 

Risen Indeed? The Hermaneutic Community

Easter morning worship is the high point of the Christian year. I look toward it through the reflections of Lent, the fasting of Good Friday, the inner stillness of silent Saturday, with a sense of  anticipation.

Orthodox icon: Resurrection

Annie Dillard, writing of church attendance, asked:

"Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? . . . It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews." (Teaching a Stone to Talk)

I feel that most strongly on Resurrection morning. We gather to celebrate God’s power breaking through, the proclamation of life in a world of death, the promise of all-things-new in a world where we have been held captive far too long by the burdens and the boundaries of the old.

As a child, I attended a small, somewhat somber church. Our organist appeared to meditate before each change of chord. Our hymns echoed in a space too large for our meager few. But Easter morning we took part in a sunrise service with other congregations in a nearby park. I loved the trumpets, often off-key, and the exuberant songs sung together in the early-morning chill:

 Up from the grave he arose;  with a mighty triumph o'er his foes;  he arose a victor from the dark domain,  and he lives forever, with his saints to reign.  He arose! He arose! Hallelujah! Christ arose!

Watching adults I’d come to know and respect, I could see: they believed it. They sang with rare energy and conviction.

When my own children were small, we attended a much larger church where the rector (our lead pastor) encouraged everyone to bring bells and tambourines to the Easter service. At every proclamation of  “Christ is risen” we were to ring the bells, shake our tambourines or car keys. Our rector himself set the example, with exuberant banging of his tambourine, and our most staid and proper parishioners joined in the buoyant clamour. “Christ is risen!”  “The Lord is risen indeed!”

The Empty Tomb, Bertrand Bahuet, France

At my current church, sharing of space between two services led to the practice of renting a large tent for our contemporary Easter service. The worship community gathered to roll out carpet, arrange potted flowers, hang banners, truck in a large stone to remind us of the open tomb. As we gathered for the service it was with a sense of joyful awe: the community itself was a gift, those gathered were a gift, and we were there because we had seen, lived, experienced together the resurrection power we were there to celebrate.

Our worship itself can be an avenue to encountering God, and we have many in our church family who sat uncomfortably in the back row until God spoke to them in worship, until the resurrection power drew them further into the center of our celebration.

One Easter, as part of our worship, we prepared a visual way of sharing some of our stories. It still makes me cry to watch, as I reflect on the power of the resurrection in the lives of those I know and love.

I regret the few Easter mornings, a guest in other churches, where I’ve found myself listening to talk of “the ‘Easter story,” a weary myth passed down as part of a time-worn liturgy, metaphor for spring, occasion to speak of cocoons and butterflies.

“Go home,” I’ve felt like saying. If it’s just about spring, let’s go outside and pick tulips. I grieve that in far too many churches of my own Episcopal denomination, Easter will be celebrated with pomp, lovely music, and scant awareness of the power invoked and far too often ignored.

Without the resurrection, Christianity is just one more religion: a tattered set of rules, a philosophical construct patched together to shield us from our fear. As the apostle Paul said emphatically to the doubting Corinthians,

“If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God . . . And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. . . .If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.”

Over the years I’ve come to value thoughtful affirmations of the logical, historical evidence for a resurrected Christ. C.S. Lewis’ classic Mere Christianity was helpful early on. More recently, Tim Keller has done good work in defending the resurrection in an accessible way, while N. T. Wright takes a more scholarly approach in the Anglican tradition.  (Both have written books on this, but summary articles and video are available online: Keller in Relevant Magazine, and Wright in a summary video.) For a wider view, Telford Work of Westmont University offers a helpful summary of approaches, with some useful links.

Christ Resurrected, Anna Kocher, 2006

For me, though, the proof of the resurrection goes far beyond logic and historical record. The resurrection is visible in human lives across continents, across centuries. Dig back through the stories of Augustine, Jerome, or Patrick, any of those early saints whose lives were upended by the voice of the risen Christ, calling them to lives of forgiveness, compassion and bold witness of the resurrection.

Or listen to the stories of  Brother Yun of China, who came to know Christ through the miraculous healing of his father and the subsequent discovery of a Bible long hidden in rural China after the Cultural Revolution had done its best to suppress all knowledge of the Christian faith.

Spend time with Christians from other places and stories surface: men and women who met Christ in dreams or visions; teens dramatically transformed by an encounter with the Father who will never leave them; healings on sidewalks in London, under trees in Africa, on hillsides in Bolivia: resurrection power still pouring out, sometimes through human hands and voices, sometimes through the voice of God alone.

Leslie Newbigin, missionary in India from  1936 to 1974, returned to the UK to find a skeptical culture dismissive of the Christian faith. Wrestling with the question of apologetics, he asked:

"How can this strange story of God made man, of a crucified saviour, of resurrection and new creation become credible for those whose entire mental training has conditioned them to believe that the real world is the world which can be satisfactorily explained and managed without the hypothesis of God? I know of only one clue to the answering of that question, only one real hermeneutic of the gospel: a congregation which believes it. Does that sound too simplistic? I don't believe it is."

Continuing in his discussion of Evangelism in the City, he noted:

“The hope of which the church is called to be the bearer in the midst of a famine of hope is a radically other-worldly hope. Knowing that Jesus is king and that he will come to reign, it fashions its life and invites the whole community to fashion its life in the light of this reality, because every other way of living is based on illusion. It thus creates signs, parables, foretastes, appetizers of the kingdom in the midst of the hopelessness of the world. It makes it possible to act both hopefully and realistically in a world without hope, a world which trades in illusions. If this radically other-worldly dimension of the church's witness is missing, then all its efforts in the life of the community are merely a series of minor eddies in a current which sweeps relentlessly in the opposite direction.”  

Over the years I’ve watched many people come to faith, and many fall away. Those who see their faith as a list of rules to follow or services to attend, who have seen the church as an arbiter of dogma or shared "values" more than community of grace, are not likely to remain.

The Risen Christ, He Qi, China

Those who have seen, experienced, become part of a living community convinced of resurrection power begin to live that power in their own lives, to share it with others, in ways that build hope, and faith, and deepen love. As walls fall down between rich and poor, educated and illiterate, racially and ethnically divided, as God’s people demonstrate the freedom that comes from full forgiveness and the compassion that springs up from the knowledge that all that’s needed is provided, as gifts are affirmed in women, children, the marginalized, the previously ignored, resurrection becomes visible, inescapable.

If the truth of the resurrection is held in doubt, it’s not our apologetics that needs attention, but our lives together as visible community of love. 

“Jesus's resurrection is the beginning of God's new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord's Prayer is about. . . . Our task in the present . . . is to live as resurrection people in between Easter and the final day.”  ( N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church )

This is the first in a series considering what it means to be “Resurrection People.”

For others:

The Great Reversal: A Resurrection People

Earth Day Shalom: Ripples of Resurrection

Resurrection Responsibilities: Feed My Sheep

It’s also part of the April Synchroblog examining the truth of the resurrection. Here's a list of bloggers who contributed to this month’s Synchroblog.

• Marta – On Faith Seeking Understanding, Truth, and Theology
• Tim Nichols – How Would Life be Different if Jesus did not Rise?
• Glenn – Kingdom Come or Kingdom Now?
• Sonja Andrews – The Resurrection and the Life
• Josh Morgan – The Role of the Resurrection
• Abbie Watters – What if the Resurrection were a lie?
• Minnow – Resurrection Impact
• Leah – Resurrection – Or Not!
• Hey Sonnie – The Resurrection Hoax
• Liz Dyer – The Resurrection I Firmly Believe In
• Ellen Haroutunian – Is There a Christianity Without the Resurrection?
• Jeannette Altes – What if…
• Christine Sine – If the Resurrection did not happen, how would the world be different?
• KW Leslie – Supposing Jesus is Dead
• Travis Mamone – If the Resurrection was a Hoax
• Kathy Escobar – Jenga Faith
• Jeremy Myers – What if Jesus Did not Rise?

And for poetry and more resurrection art, visit Resurrection.

Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed!



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