Words Half Heard: newness

Showing posts with label newness. Show all posts

Sunday, March 6, 2016

After the Ashes: Newness

Five years ago on New Year’s Eve, a house not far from us caught fire. No one was home and no one was hurt, but the fire started in the basement, the firehouse was lightly staffed, and by the time

enough firefighters arrived to get the blaze under control the house was just a smoldering shell and needed to be torn down.

The new house built on the lot looks almost exactly like the old: same split-entry design, same windows, same narrow cement porch. The weird mansard roof is gone (roof tiles sloping down sharply from a flatter roof of the same material), and the siding is newer, but in many ways it looks the same.

I walk by the house often and find myself wondering: if you were going to build a new house, wouldn’t you want to make it really new? Start with a new, more functional design, rather than settle for new siding?

I suppose the interior may be totally redesigned, but from what I can see, it’s new, but not really.

That word “new” is a tricky one. There are two words in Greek that are sometimes translated “new”. “Neos” has the same root as new: “With neos the temporal aspect is dominant, marking out the present moment as compared with a former.”

That new house on Biddle is “neos”: fresh, recent, in the same way that the new growth in my yard is neos: fresh, green, but showing up where the same plants grew last year.

The other word translated “new’ is kainos: qualitatively different from what came before; unprecedented; unheard of; new not just in time, but in substance.

“Newness” is a recurrent theme throughout the Bible: promises of a new heaven and earth, a new creation, new covenant, new testament, new people.

That newness is almost always kainos: unprecedented, unheard of, new not just in time, but substance.

I’ve been reading 1 and 2 Kings. Israel had lots of new kings, from the first new king, Saul, to the last, Jehoiachin, living in exile on an allowance from his Babylonian captors. From first to last, they were new in time, but never new in substance. The very idea of “king” was borrowed from surrounding nations. God, through Samuel, described it as a derivative idea that would come to no good.

In 1 Samuel 8, the priestly leader Samuel described the reality the people were demanding:

This is what the king who will reign over you will claim as his rights: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. Your male and female servants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. (2 Samuel 8:11-18)

Those words echoed through the centuries that followed as kingly power was misused, labor and goods demanded by the increasingly profligate leaders while the people themselves slipped closer and closer to the status of slaves.

Sometimes we think “new” will bring relief from the old, but if new is simply “neos”, new in time, new face, new surface, but not “kainos”, new in quality, substance and structure, little really changes.

We are living in a time when the cry for “new” is very loud. Our old structures seem more and more to benefit the few at the expense of the many: party politics, consumptive capitalism, fossil-fuel-dependent progress, ethnic loyalties, nationalist agendas.

Potential leaders promising “new” are met with energy and eagerness, but what’s promised is too often a recycling of failed paradigms: ideas that have led to tragedy before and will lead to tragedy again.

Like the Hebrew nations longing for new kings, we hope a new leader will bring relief.

The real relief looks very different from what’s currently on offer: an unprecedented newness brought by an unexpected leader who said the last will be first and the least shall be greatest, who refused to inhabit the failed paradigm of power and instead offered an outrageous new “kainos” testament of sacrifice, grace, and love.

I am hungry for that genuine newness: a new form of leadership, a new economic model, a new conversation, a new community.

We live in that already/ not-yet kingdom, invited to follow the example of Christ, called to live as new people, with new agendas, in the not-new world of distrust, envy, anger, pride.

It’s a painful, challenging place to live.

I’ve been wondering about John, author of the gospel of John, three short epistles, and the book of Revelation. More than almost any other, he saw the new life Jesus promised, but knew the cruel reality of this present world. He was at the foot of the cross when Jesus was crucified and was no doubt well aware of the martyrdom of so many of his fellow disciples: beaten, stoned, and clubbed to death; killed with sword or spear; beheaded; crucified.

The Siege and Destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans

under the Command of Titus, David Roberts, Britain, 1850

According to many scholars the letters of John were written late in his life, sometime after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. By the time they were written, most of his fellow disciples were dead, along with many others martyred for their faith in Christ. Thousands of his people had been massacred by Roman procurator Gessius Florus. Many thousands more died during the four-year Jewish-Roman War. A five-month siege of Jerusalem ended with starvation, slavery, and complete dispersal of the remaining residents of Jerusalem. Anything of value in the temple was carted off to Rome, then all that remained was smashed and burned.

John had more reason than most to long for revenge, give way to hatred and bitterness, long for renewal of the old ways, the old places.

But his letters speak of astonishing newness, grounded and governed by love:

Dear friends, I am not writing you a new command but an old one, which you have had since the beginning. This old command is the message you have heard. Yet I am writing you a new command; its truth is seen in him and in you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining.
Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness. Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble. (1 John 2:7-10)

After the ashes of Jerusalem John was able to speak of newness: an unprecedented command that repeated one of the oldest commands, but put it in a new, unheard of, unimaginable context.

Love your neighbor as yourself. The command was passed down by Leviticus, encoded in the ten commandments, an essential part of the Torah.

“Yet I am writing you a new – kainos – command,” John wrote. “It’s truth is seen in him and in you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining.”

That new command took the idea of love, expanded it, enriched it, bathed it in light.

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. if anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. (1 John 3:16-18)

It’s hard to imagine talking of love when one’s whole way of life has been burned by the oppressor.

It’s hard to live as children of light when darkness seems to be closing in.

Yet we’re called to a newness that springs up from ashes, called to live as light in a world of darkness, called to welcoming, active, sacrificial love when all around are voices of anger, hate and exclusion.

Called to walk in a newness of life that grows deeper, richer, more surprising with every step. A newness that will never grow old.

"Behold, I am making all things new."

This is the fourth in a Lenten series.

Sunday, April 14, 2013

What If Newness Was the Norm?

The Synchroblog theme for April is “What If . . .”

Waiting for Godot, Roger Commiskey,
2005, Dublin

The invitation is to “try to imagine that some or all of the Bible narrative is not necessarily true history, but is myth of one sort or another. What sort of effect would that knowledge have on your faith? What effect might it have on the larger church? How would it change you? Would it change you and how you view the world?”

Maybe I’ve spent too many years in the Episcopal Church, or too many years working with youth and young adults, or maybe it was my years of graduate study at an Ivy League university, but I find the “what if” of “maybe this is myth” a dreary, far too predictable dead end.

I’ve seen how it affects the church to casually discount large swaths of scripture as myth, and I’ve seen, up close and personal, the shaken commitment when each of us becomes arbiter of what is, and isn’t, true.

I’m willing to talk that through with someone I care about, over a good latte, if occasion demands it. But heading down that rabbit hole reminds me of an endless “Waiting for Godot” performance I attended years ago. Interesting to visit, but I wouldn’t go for fun.

Puzzling about the “what ifs” that energize and engage me, I came across a recent post by Byron Borger at Hearts and Minds booknotes. I’ve been blogging about newness – and this post, “Resurrectionary Reading,” seemed to pick up just where I left off. I wrote last week about the way the newness of the gospel undermined the Roman empire, helped bring the downfall of Communism. Borger’s piece picks up the story, and digs further into this question:

What if our understanding of Christ’s resurrection has been too narrow, too personal?

What if that newness was meant to bubble up in every arena of human endeavor?

What if newness was meant to be the norm for the daily Christian life?

I agree so strongly with Borger’s post I’m quoting it at length, and yes, even borrowing some of its graphics.

Protests in the streets of Poland, 1989

“Poland, 1984. ‘Christ is risen!’ As the cry went out, the crowd of mostly Catholic trade unionists shouted back with confidence ‘He is risen indeed!’ Not unusual for a resurrection service, the cadence of the call and response echoing centuries of proclamation and hope. Yet, as this crowd understood, such public proclamation was pregnant with possibility -- revolutionary, even. Soon, the dictatorial regime of communist Poland fell to non-violent protestors, Solidarity workers, alternative civic organizations, all swarming the streets inspired by the hope of the gospel, the truth of Christ's goodness unleashed in the world. Many of those history-makers understood the vast implications of Christ's bursting forth from the empty tomb. We might borrow an image from musician Bruce Cockburn's Santiago Dawn, which tells of the Christian hope that drove peaceful protestors to resist the junta in 1980's Chile, the people ‘rising like grass through cement.’ Indeed, in every hemisphere and continent the good news of Christ's resurrection has supplied courage for those resisting injustice.

For many the resurrection is a vindication of the belief that through Christ and his cross, God forgives our sins and we are reconciled with Him. This is gloriously true! Yet, we might ponder these brave revolutionaries resisting totalitarianism, inspired by Easter; why did their belief in Christ's resurrection cause them to take on dictators?

The answer is endlessly provocative: they realized that Christ's resurrection is more than a final touch on the process that assures us of salvation but also a socio-political event. The Roman regime had locked Christ in his tomb, secured with a draconian royal seal and armed guards. Easter's uprising broke the Imperial seal and in doing so broke the power of all repressive forces.

This aspect of the Easter morning narrative includes vivid anti-empire imagery, suggesting that Christ's sacrificial death accomplished more than the forgiveness of solitary sins. The gospel's implications are broader: Christ does more than show mercy, but also transforms all of life. His resurrection revokes the power of personal sin and systemic evil, inner disorder and corporate dysfunction. Christ is victorious over death as it is writ large over a cursed creation. Colossians 2:15 exclaims that Christ has disarmed even the "principalities and powers" by triumphing over them. Romans 8 reminds us that the entire creation has been groaning, oppressed. The visionary of Revelation promises "all things new" (the "all things" an echo of the early praise chorus of Colossians 1.) A core New Testament conviction concerning the meaning of Christ's bodily resurrection is that Christ rules over this material world, across all aspects of life, in every sphere of culture, and that His new regime is coming ‘On Earth as it is in Heaven.’

The resurrection is the central reality of human history, the truest truth that upsets idols and ugliness, defeats disorder and disaster. This means that in the living Christ there can be a restoration of order, rightness, shalom. God's Kingdom is best understood as a renewal of the good but fallen creation. Christ is King of His creation, and those united in His death, resurrection and reign are called to live into this shalom. The distorted ways of the broken culture are replaced, as we - like grass through cement - bring forth healing examples of new life. From sustainable economics to meaningful aesthetics, from dignified labor to trusting families, we imagine and then work to create hospitable neighborhoods, holistic health care systems, wise schools, responsible engineering; we explore all the implications of the resurrected life in a creation that is being restored. The deathly Imperial seal lays broken, hurt is healed, God's life-giving Spirit is loose in the world, ambassadors of His holy rescue plan scattered like salt, like leaven, like light.

Ahh, but here is the rub. To announce socially-constructive, culturally-relevant, Biblically-directed new life, we must necessarily ask what it looks like to embody this great good news. Christ's victory extends "far as the curse is found" (as we sang in promissory hope during Christmastide) but what in the world do we do about it?

One of the answers--besides gathering regularly to announce through Word and sacrament the truth of Death's defeat in Christ's resurrection--is to read, and to read seriously.

If we are to do more than be "hearers" of the resurrection news, but are to embody it as good citizens of God's movement, we must unlearn a lot of the old ways and relearn even more. Our way of life in the world is informed considerably by the ideas that we hold, which is why the Bible calls for the "renewal of our minds." We are formed as new creatures by Word and worship, but also by study. If Christ is bringing newness to all of life, then we must study all of life. Christian people, God's vanguard of newness, must think well about "every square inch" of our lives, and should read and learn and talk about it all. Where should we shop? What parenting styles might we embrace? What do we think about gender assumptions, how has racism distorted our attitudes and relationships, can we possibly have Christ-like holiness amidst sexualized media? What sort of entertainments are most renewing? How do we fruitfully embrace technology, with whom should we live, for whom should we vote, how do we think about are careers and callings?

If Christ is risen and brings renewal to all of life, and we are to be agents of reconciliation in all of life - well, we've got work to do. . .

Those of us who are swept up into Christ's agenda of bringing newness might do well to step back from public proposals and pontificating, instead committing ourselves to a season of what might be called resurrectionary research. Given that Christ is risen, what should we think about the nature of our culture (its worst idols and greatest dysfunctions; its best graces and most normative strengths?) What are the most pressing problems in our world, and what insights might come from the creation-regained worldview brought by Jesus the risen King? Our habits of heart and the subsequent social architecture of our land must be transformed - what might the resurrection mean for that? All of this will demand considerable and concentrated thought. And we will have to be intentionally standing on the shoulders - by that, I mean reading the books of - those who have come before. Can we be agents of reformation by thinking deeply, offering well-informed glimpses of resurrection life? . . .

If we do not ground our Christian proposals in studied conversation, shaped by habits of reading widely and deeply, we will not have substantive contributions to make, our ideas will be thin, our proposals less than adequately wise or fruitful. For the full force of resurrection power to shake the world we will need to do more than shout out the truth of the victory. We will have to think through its implications, reading widely and deeply, unlearning and learning much, praying and working for the mind of Christ, so that we offer truly good news of healing and hope to the watching world.”

Hearts and Minds booknotes and online bookstore offer great resources for the ongoing work of renewed minds, reclaimed culture, resurrection newness.

What if that newness bubbled up in our public discourse? In our economic systems? In our approaches to food and farming?

In federal budgets, immigration policy, urban schools, corporate goals?

What if newness was the norm, in every corner of a groaning creation?

That’s the “what if” that energizes and intrigues me, keeps me reading, thinking, writing, and sets the agenda for my day.

Other "What if" Synchroblog posts:

K.W. Leslie – When People Believe Christianity Is A Myth
Jeremy Myers – What If The Bible Is a Myth?
David Derbyshire – What If Genesis Is A Creation Myth?
Bud Brown – What if Paul was wrong about the life of Christ living in me?
Chris Jefferies – What If … Creation Was A Myth?
Paul W. Meier – Is The Bible A Myth?
Doreen A. Mannion – The Bible As A Source of Wisdom
Phil Lancaster – What If the Bible Were A Myth
Carol Kuniholm – What If Newness Was The Norm
Liz Dyer – Penultimate Truth

Other posts on newness and resurrection:

Newness Beyond Our Achieving, April 7, 2013
Where is Newness Needed? March 31, 2013
Risen Indeed? The Hermaneutic Community April 8, 2012
The Great Reversal: A Resurrection People April 15, 2012
Earth Day Shalom: Ripples of Resurrection April 22, 2012
Resurrection Challenge: Feed My Sheep April 29, 2012
Resurrection Laughter May 6, 2012
Resurrection Women – Happy Mother’s Day May 12, 2012
Words Half Heard: Reconciling Righteousness May 20, 2012
Resurrection Power: A Prayer for Pentecost May 27, 2012

If Only Apr 10, 2011
Resurrection Apr 25, 2011
Thank you for the cross Apr 17, 2011

Sunday, April 7, 2013

Newness Beyond Our Achieving

Yours is the kingdom….not the kingdom of death,

Ancient cross of India

Yours is the power….not the glory of death.

Yours….You….and we give thanks

For the newness beyond our achieving.

(Walter Brueggeman)

“Newness beyond our achieving.”

That little phrase, at the close of the resurrection prayer by Walter Bruggeman I quoted in my last post, has been traveling with me.

Isn’t that the ongoing evidence of Christ’s resurrection, the “newness beyond our achieving”?

The newness in the world around me, trout lilies in bloom, forsythia budding, reminds me how dependent we are on power beyond ourselves – the movement of the planets, the shifting of clouds and wind.

But beyond weather, seasons, discernable cycles, Christ’s resurrection promises newness unexpected, uncharted, astonishing.

The early church shaped itself around that astonishment.

No one inventing a religion would sign on Peter as patriarch. Self-absorbed lout of a fisherman, he had trouble thinking before he spoke, and understood almost nothing Jesus told him. As Jesus described the challenges ahead, Peter put himself center stage once again, interrupting: “I’ll never betray you! You can count on me!” And denied Jesus three times before the next sunrise.

Yet, following the resurrection and his experience of the promised Holy Spirit, he was a new person, with a newness beyond his own achieving or imagining. Willing to invite a lame man to stand and walk. Able to explain the sweep of Jewish history in a way that made God’s purpose clear. Courageous in the face of the same religious leaders who planned Christ’s crucifixion. Joyful in prison after a brutal beating.

Luke noted, in Acts 4, “When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.”

Peter and John weren’t the only ones.

“Doubting Thomas,” once his doubts were dispelled, carried the good news of the resurrection across the landmass of Iran and Iraq and through much of India, where the Thomas Christian community still carries his name.

Matthew, Philip, James and John, all the disciples but Judas Iscariot, carried their amazement and joy to the farthest reaches of the known world, planting churches, all but John losing their lives in service to the story of resurrection newness.

Forty Martyrs of Sebaste

First century Christians, in places like Antioch and Alexandria, Cypress and Seville, even as far north as Gaul and as far east as Madras, captured attention for their openness to outsiders, their care for those more often marginalized, their commitment to peace, their inexplicable joy and courage. Accounts of those early believers provides a catalog of some of humanity’s most creative, capricious acts of cruelty, yet the resounding testimony of those within the church, as well as those opposed, was that the mark of the Christians was peace and courage in the face of persecution, gentle response to violent attack.

According to the unknown author of the historic “letter to Diognetes,” (ca AD 130):

For the Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. . . Inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, according as the lot of each of them has determined . . .they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life.
. . .They love all men, and are persecuted by all. They are unknown and condemned; they are put to death, and restored to life. They are poor, yet make many rich; they are in lack of all things, and yet abound in all; they are dishonoured, and yet in their very dishonour are glorified. . . They are reviled, and bless; they are insulted, and repay the insult with honour; they do good, yet are punished as evil-doers.”

In North Africa, Tertullian (AD 160-225) echoed the same themes:

We are a body knit together as such by a common religious profession, by unity of discipline, and by the bond of a common hope. . .
Though we have our treasure-chest, it is not made up of purchase-money, as of a religion that has its price. On the monthly day, if he likes, each puts in a small donation; but only if it be his pleasure, and only if he be able: for there is no compulsion; all is voluntary. These gifts are . . . not spent on feasts, and drinking-bouts, and eating-houses, but to support and bury poor people, to supply the wants of boys and girls destitute of means and parents, and of old persons confined now to the house; such, too, as have suffered shipwreck; and if there happen to be any in the mines or banished to the islands or shut up in the prisons . . . See, they say, how they love one another, for they themselves are animated by mutual hatred. See, they say about us, how they are ready even to die for one another, for they themselves would sooner kill.

Athenagoras of Athens, writing to “the Emperors Marcus Aurelius Antoninus and Lucius Aurelius Commodus," explained:

Among us you will find uneducated persons, craftsmen, and old women, who, if they are unable in words to prove the benefit of our doctrine, yet by their deeds exhibit the benefit arising from their persuasion of its truth.
They do not rehearse speeches, but exhibit good works; when struck, they do not strike again; when robbed, they do not go to law; they give to those that ask of them, and love their neighbors as themselves.

Justin Martyr, c. A.D. 150, called attention to the same new priorities and changed behavior:

We who valued above all things the acquisition of wealth and possessions now bring what we have into a common stock and share with everyone in need.
We who hated and destroyed one another and because of their different customs would not live with men of a different tribe, now—since the coming of Christ—live familiarly with them, pray for our enemies, and try to persuade those who hate us unjustly to live conformably to the good precepts of Christ.

Was the Roman empire undermined by its dissolute, demented leaders, or swept away by the tide of newness welling up from the spread of Christian conscience and courage?

Historians have been arguing that for centuries. A similar discussion will someday focus on the fall of the Communist era. Laszlo Tokes, the Hungarian pastor who helped lead the Romanian resistance, has said “Eastern Europe is not just a political revolution but a religious renaissance.”

Hill of crosses in Lithuania

In East Germany, resistance to communism sprang up from teaching about the sermon on the mount at Gethsemane Church. Christian Fuhrer, the pastor who eventually led over thousands of Germans in peaceful protest through the streets of Liepzig, described his experience of God’s power at work through prayer:

People accepted Jesus’ message, especially the message of the Sermon on the Mount. We experienced in a very special way that everything that is written here is true. . . . “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit.” “He pulls the powerful from their throne and lifts up the poor.” “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” We experienced it just like that—the church as a refuge and a place for change, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, no mention of paradise and redemption, but the daily bread in the reality of political hopelessness.

The special experience that we had during the years of peace prayers and then with this massive number of non-Christians in the church, which was exceptional, was that they accepted the message of Jesus. They grew up in two consecutive atheist dictatorships. They grew up with the Nazis who were preaching racism, the master race, prepared for war, and replaced God with Providence, as Hitler liked to say. They also grew up with the Socialists preaching class struggle and vilified the church by saying Jesus never existed, that’s all nonsense and fairy tales, legends, and your talk about nonviolence is dangerous idealism; what counts is politics, money, the army, the economy, the media. Everything else is nonsense. And the people who were brainwashed like this for years and grew up with that.

The fact that they accepted Jesus’ message of the Sermon on the Mount, that they summarized it in two words—no violence—and the fact that they did not only think and say it, but also practiced it consistently in the street was an incredible development, an unprecedented development in German history. If any event ever merited the description of “miracle” that was it . . . A peaceful revolution, a revolution that came out of the church. It is astonishing that God let us succeed with this revolution. After all the violence that Germany brought to the world in the two wars during the last century, especially the violence against the people from whom Jesus was born, a horrible violence, and now this wonderful result, a unique, positive development in German history. That is why we are so happy that the church was able to play this role and enabled this peaceful revolution.

The most important thing for us was the power of prayer, which is still true today. We are not praying to the air or to the wall, but to a living God.

The astonishing power of prayer that eventually tore down the Berlin Wall is the same power that dissolved the Roman Empire, that brought apartheid to a close, that ended slavery in England, that bubbles up in newness wherever God’s people grasp the astonishing truth Jesus preached, then demonstrated in his death and resurrection: Love is stronger than hate. Peace is more powerful than war. The darkness of death dissolves in the light of resurrection.

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. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way. (Ephesians 1:17-23)