On Eremitical Life and Honoring Creation

[[Hello Sister,  First, I wish you an happy easter in the joy of the risen Christ ! I have questions for you. You're an urban hermit, if I understand well. I was wondering if sometimes you missed contemplating the Creation ? As a lay cistercian. . . I need the nature to pray - walk in the woods, animals, etc... (See Laudato Si : When we can see God reflected in all that exists, our hearts are moved to praise the Lord for all his creatures and to worship him in union with them" n°87) Do you pray for the Creation, if yes, how ? Also, if there's urban hermit, are they hermits who are called to live closer to nature, in a rural setting ? Do you think it can be a part of the vocation of an hermit ?]]

Hi there. A wonderful Easter to you! Yes, I am an urban hermit but in my case I live in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area. It is a relatively affluent town built in the East Bay hills. While I live in the middle of town there are lots of tress, walking and bike paths, creeks, a reservoir with lots of wildlife, as well as access to nearby State and other parks. However, if I was able to do this, I would enjoy living in the deeper silence of a more rural and even remote area. One place I go for retreat is Redwoods Abbey on the Lost Coast of California; you'll recognize it as a Trappistine Abbey. On those occasions I love the profound silence not only of the surroundings, but the silence cultivated by Sisters (and guests) for one another.

One of my fantasies is to live in a Tree house built by someone like "the Treehouse Master" in our Pacific Northwest so I would live in a canopy of trees and perhaps even feel the motion of the wind to some extent, etc. It would allow for a simplicity of dwelling, sufficient space for oratory, small library, and living area, as well as being ecofriendly. However, this is not really feasible so I am happy enough using my patio with redwood and other trees nearby in order to pray, read and write during the late Spring and Summer. I especially love doing this at night and early mornings. At these times there is significant solitude and silence. Living close to nature, especially in a silence which opens one to a world of natural sounds has always been seen as an ideal for hermits. God does not merely dwell in silence and the natural world, He is the abyss and ground of silence. The hermits I know build in as much access to the beauty and silence of nature as is possible for them; it is a privileged environment for meeting God and oneself without distraction or distortion.

Do I pray for creation? I am not exactly sure what you mean by this question. I try to honor creation. I think of our world as suffering serious depredations at the hands of human beings, as being God's own, and as requiring much better stewardship by all of us. I pray, as I pray for all things which concern me/the Church. In terms of theology I read and am reading more extensively as time goes by on the intersection of science and faith, evolution and the coming to be of a "new heaven and earth."  I completely reject the simplistic dichotomous treatment of the temporal and eternal, earth and heaven, and I write consistently about the interpenetration of heaven and earth, the bodiliness of resurrection, and the God who one day will be all in all. These are theological pieces of regarding the whole of God's creation as a sacramental reality and they are a significant part of the theological underpinnings which make honoring creation imperative and part of every person's calling.

Not sure I have answered your question but I hope this is helpful. If this raises more questions for you please get back to me. In the meantime all good wishes for the season!

I Go to Prepare a Place for You: Ascension and Jewish Marriage Imagery (Reprised)

So much of what Jesus says about the event we call "Ascension" is meant to remind us of the Jewish theology of marriage. It is meant to remind us that the Church, those called and sent in the name of Jesus, is the Bride of Christ --- both betrothed and awaiting the consummation of this marriage. This Friday's Gospel passage from 16 John prepares the disciples for Jesus' "leaving" and the Church wants us to hear it now in terms of the Ascension rather than the crucifixion. Thus, it focuses on the "in-between" time of grief-at-separation, waiting, and bittersweet joy.

Thus too, especially with its imagery of labor and childbirth, it affirms that though Jesus must leave to prepare a place for us, the grief of his "leaving" (really a new kind of presence) will one day turn to unalloyed joy because with and in Christ something new is being brought to birth both in our own lives and in the very life of God. It is an unprecedented reality, an entirely New Life and too, a source of a joy which no one can take from us. Just as the bridegroom remains a real but bittersweet presence and promise in the life of his betrothed, so Jesus' presence in our own lives is a source of now-alloyed and bittersweet joy, both real and unmistakable but also not what it will be when the whole of creation reaches its fulfillment and the marriage between Christ and his Bride is consummated. The union of this consummation is thus the cosmic union of God-made all in all.

The following post reflects on another Johannine text, also preparing us for the Ascension. I wanted to reprise it here because the Gospel texts this week all seek to remind us of the unadulterated joy of Easter and the Parousia (the second-coming and fulfillment) as they prepare us for the bittersweet joy of the in-between time of Ascension and especially because they do so using the imagery of Jewish marriage. This Friday's childbirth imagery in John 16 presupposes and requires this be fresh in our minds.

The Two Stages of Jewish Marriage

The central image Jesus uses in [speaking of his leaving and eventual return] is that of marriage. His disciples are supposed to hear him speaking of the entire process of man and wife becoming one, of a union which represents that between God and mankind (and indeed, all of creation) which is so close that the two cannot be prised apart or even seen as entirely distinguishable realities. Remember that in Jewish marriages there were two steps: 1) the betrothal which was really marriage and which could only be ended by a divorce, and 2) the taking home and consummation stage in this marriage. After the bridegroom travels to his bride's home and the two are betrothed, the bridegroom returns home to build a place for his new bride in his family's home. It is always meant to be a better place than she had before. When this is finished (about a year later) the bridegroom travels back to his bride and with great ceremony (lighted lamps, accompanying friends, etc) brings her back to her new home where the marriage is consummated.

Descent and the Mediation of God's Reconciling Love:

This image of the dual stages in Jewish marriage is an appropriate metaphor of what is accomplished in the two "stages" in salvation history referred to as descent and ascent. When we think of Jesus as mediator or revealer --- or even as Bridegroom --- we are looking at a theology of salvation (soteriology)  in which God first goes out of himself in search of a counterpart. This God  'empties himself' of divine prerogatives --- not least that of remaining in solitary omnipotent splendor --- and in a continuing act of self-emptying creates the cosmos still in search of that counterpart. For this reason the entire process is known as one of descent or kenosis. Over eons of time and through many intermediaries (including prophets, the Law, and several covenants) he continues to go out of himself to summon the "other" into existence, and eventually chooses a People who will reveal  him (that is, make him known and real) to the nations. Finally and definitively in Jesus he is enabled to turn a human face to his chosen People. As God has done in partial and fragmentary ways before, in Christ as Mediator he reveals himself definitively as a jealous and fierce lover, one who will allow nothing, not even sin and godless death (which he actually takes into himself!)** to separate him from his beloved or prevent him from bringing her home with him when the time comes.

Ascension and the Mediation of God's Reconciling Love:

With Jesus' ascension we are confronted with another dimension of Christ's role as mediator; we celebrate the return of the Bridegroom to his father's house --- that is to the very life of God. He goes there to prepare a place for us. As in the Jewish marriage practice, that Divine "household" (that Divine life) will change in a definitive way with the return of the Son (who has also changed and is now an embodied human being who has experienced death, etc.) just as the Son's coming into the world changed it in a definitive way. God is not yet all in all (that comes later) but in Christ humanity has both assumed and been promised a place in God's own life. As my major theology professor used to say to us, "God has taken death into himself and has not been destroyed by it." That is what heaven is all about, active participation and sharing by that which is other than God in the very life of God. Heaven is not like a huge sports arena where everyone who manages to get a ticket stares at the Jumbo Tron (God) and possibly plays harps or sing psalms to keep from getting too bored. With the Christ Event God changes the world and reconciles it to himself, but with that same event the very life of God himself is changed as well. The ascension signals this significant change as embodied humanity and all of human experience becomes a part of the life of the transcendent God who is eternal and incorporeal. Some "gods" would be destroyed by this, but not the God of Jesus Christ!

Summary

Mediation (or revelation) occurs in two directions in Christ. Christ IS the gateway between heaven and earth, the "place" where these two realities meet and kiss, the new Temple where sacred and profane come together and are transfigured into a single reality. Jesus as mediator implicates God into our world and all of its moments and moods up to and including sin and godless death. But Jesus as mediator also allows human life, and eventually all of creation to be implicated in and assume a place in God's own life. When this double movement comes to its conclusion, when it is accomplished in fullness and Jesus' commission to reconciliation is entirely accomplished, when, that is, the Bridegroom comes forth once again to finally bring his bride home for the consummation of their marriage, there will be a new heaven and earth where God is all in all; in this parousia both God and creation achieve the will of God together as it was always meant to be.
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** Note: the Scriptures recognize two forms of death. The first is a kind of natural perishing. The second is linked to sin and to the idea that if we choose to live without God we choose to die without him. It is the consequence of sin. This second kind is called variously, sinful death, godless death, eternal death or the second death. This is the death Jesus "takes on" in taking on the reality and consequences of human sinfulness; it is the death he dies while (in his own sinlessness) remaining entirely vulnerable and open to God. It is the death his obedience (openness) allows God to penetrate and transform with his presence.

The resurrection is the event symbolizing the defeat of this death and the first sign that all death will one day fall to the life and love of God. Ascension is the event symbolizing God taking humanity into his own "house", his own life in Christ. We live in hope for the day the promise of Ascension will be true for the whole of God's creation, the day when God will be all in all.

Feast of the Sacred Heart

Today's ordinary (daily Mass) readings use the text from 2 Corinthians I spoke about earlier this week, namely, "We hold a treasure in earthen vessels so that the surpassing power will be of God and not from ourselves." You may remember that in conjunction with that text and the Feast of Corpus Christi I spoke of Sue Bender's experience of seeing a broken and mended piece of Japanese ceramics. (Marking the Feast of Corpus Christi) She wrote, [[“The image of that bowl,” she writes, “made a lasting impression. Instead of trying to hide the flaws, the cracks were emphasized — filled with silver. The bowl was even more precious after it had been mended.”]]

That image has been with me all this week in prayer and also as I have reflected on the various readings, especially those from Paul. It seems entirely providential to me then that this year today, the day we would ordinarily hear a reading about treasure in earthen vessels, is the Feast of the Sacred Heart. The image of this bowl --- broken, healed, and transfigured  reminds me of the Sacred Heart --- traditionally the most powerful symbol we have of the indivisible wedding of human and divine and of the power of Divine Love perfected and glorified (revealed) in both human and divine weakness; thus it has provided me with a wonderfully new and fresh image of the Sacred Heart and (at least potentially) of our own hearts as well.

The heart is the center of the human person. It is a deeply distinctive anthropo-logical or human reality --- at the center of all truly personal feeling, thought, creativity and behavior. As a physical organ it stands at the center of all physical functions within us as well empowering them, marking them with its pulsing life.

At the same time, it is primarily a theological term. It refers first of all to God and to a theological reality. Of course it cannot be divorced from the human (and that is the very point!), but theologically speaking, the heart is the place within us where God bears witness to God's self, where life and truth and beauty, love, integrity call to us and invite us to embrace them, reveal them in our own unique ways. As I have noted before, in some important ways it is not so much that we have a heart and then God comes to dwell there; it is that where God dwells within us and bears witness to himself, we have a heart. The human heart (not the cardiac muscle but the center of our personhood) is a dialogical event where God speaks, calls, breathes, and sings us into existence and where, in one way and degree or another, we respond to become the people we are and (we hope) are called to be.

Everything comes together in the human heart --- or is held apart and left unreconciled by its distortions and self-centeredness. It is in the human heart broken open by love that the unity between spirit and matter is imagined, achieved, and then conveyed to the whole of creation. Here the division between earth and heaven, human and divine is bridged and healed. It is in the human heart that the unity of body and soul is achieved and celebrated.

The vulnerable and broken human heart is the paradoxical place where everything is brought together in the power and mercy of God's love; it is the place where human life is transfigured and then --- through us and the ministry of reconciliation entrusted to us in Christ --- extended to the whole of creation itself. It is in the human heart that prejudices, biases, bitterness, selfishness, greed and so many other things are brought into the presence of God to be healed and transformed. At least this is the potential of the heart which is meant to be truly human and glorifies God. The human heart is holy ground and despite its limitations, distortions, darknesses, and narrownesses it is meant to shine with the expansiveness of God's creative "Yes!" Here is indeed treasure in earthen vessels.

And if this is true anywhere it is true in the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. The Sacred Heart is the symbol of the reunion of all of reality, the place in that unique life where human life becomes completely transparent to the love of God, the sacrament par excellence of the ministry of reconciliation where human and divine are inextricably wed.

Imagine then an image of the Sacred Heart similar to the image Sue Bender described, a clay pot broken and broken open innumerable times by and to the realities it dares to be vulnerable to and allows to rest within itself. Imagine too that God, that supreme potter refashions it, mends it with his love --- a love that allows the cracks to glow with the light of heaven, a light that transforms the entire pot and all who are touched by its transcendent beauty and truth. This is what we celebrate on today's Feast. The scars will remain, but transfigured --- as though mended with brilliant silver. Light and love, water and blood will pour from this heart and, in time, God will love all of creation into wholeness through Jesus' mediation and through the ministry of each of us who allow our hearts to become the Sacred places God wills them to be.  We "hold" a treasure in earthen vessels. In us the surpassing power of God in Christ is at work reconciling all things to himself.

Marking (the Feast of) Corpus Christi: Divine Power Perfected in Weakness

[[Dear Sister, if a person is chronically ill then isn't their illness a sign that "the world" of sin and death are still operating in [i.e., dominating] their lives?  . . . I have always thought that to become a religious one needed to be in good health. Has that also changed with canon 603? I don't mean that someone has to be perfect to become a nun or hermit but shouldn't they at least be in good health? Wouldn't that say more about the "heavenliness" of their vocation than illness? ]] (Concatenation of queries posed in several emails)

As I read these various questions one image kept recurring to me, namely, that of Thomas reaching out to touch the wounds of the risen Christ. I also kept thinking of a line from a homily my pastor (John Kasper, OSFS) gave about 7 years ago which focused on Carravagio's painting of this image; the line was,  "There's Another World in There!" It was taken in part from the artist and writer Jan Richardson's reflections on this painting and on the nature of the Incarnation. Richardson wrote:

[[The gospel writers want to make sure we know that the risen Christ was no ghost, no ethereal spirit. He was flesh and blood. He ate. He still, as Thomas discovered, wore the wounds of crucifixion. That Christ’s flesh remained broken, even in his resurrection, serves as a powerful reminder that his intimate familiarity and solidarity with us, with our human condition, did not end with his death. . . Perhaps that’s what is so striking about Caravaggio’s painting: it stuns us with the awareness of how deeply Christ was, and is, joined with us. The wounds of the risen Christ are not a prison: they are a passage. Thomas’ hand in Christ’s side is not some bizarre, morbid probe: it is a  union, and a reminder that in taking flesh, Christ wed himself to us.]] Living into the Resurrection

Into the Wound, Jan L Richardson

My response then must really begin with a series of questions to you. Are the Risen Christ's wounds a sign that sin and death are still "operating in" him or are they a sign that God has been victorious over these --- and victorious not via an act of force but through one of radical vulnerability and compassion? Are his wounds really a passage to "another world" or are they signs of his bondage to and defeat by the one which contends with him and the Love he represents? Do you believe that our world is at least potentially sacramental or that heaven (eternal life in the sovereign love of God) and this world interpenetrate one another as a result of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection or are they entirely separate from and opposed to one another? Even as I ask these questions I am aware that they may be answered in more than one way. In our own lives too, we may find that the wounds and scars of illness and brokenness witness more to the world of sin and death than they do to that of redemption and eternal life. They may represent a prison more than they represent a passage to another world.

Or not.

When I write about discerning an eremitical vocation and the importance of the critical transition that must be made from being a lone pious person living physical silence and solitude to essentially being a hermit living "the silence of solitude," I am speaking of a person who has moved from the prison of illness to illness as passage to another world through the redemptive grace of God. We cannot empower or accomplish such a transition ourselves. The transfiguration of our lives is the work of God. At the same time, the scars of our lives will remain precisely as an invitation to others to see the power of God at work in our weakness and in God's own kenosis (self-emptying). These scars become Sacraments of God's powerful presence in our lives, vivid witnesses to the One who loves us in our brokenness and yet works continuously to bring life, wholeness, and meaning out of  death, brokenness, and absurdity.

To become a hermit (especially to be publicly professed as a Catholic hermit) someone suffering from chronic illness has to have made this transition. Their lives may involve suffering but the suffering has become a sacrament which attests less to itself  (and certainly not to an obsession with pain) but to the God who is a Creator-redeemer God. What you tend to see as an obstacle to living a meaningful profoundly prophetic religious or eremitical life seems to me to be a symbol of the heart of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It also seems to me to remind us of the nature of "heavenliness" in light of the Ascension. Remember that one side of the salvation event we call the Christ is God's descent so that our world may be redeemed and entirely transformed into a new creation. But the other side of this Event is the Ascension where God takes scarred humanity and even death itself up into his own life --- thus changing the very nature of heaven (the sovereign life of God shared with others) in the process.

Far from being an inadequate witness to "heavenliness" our wounds can be the most perfect witness to God's sovereign life shared with us. Our God has embraced the wounds and scars of the world as his very own and not been demeaned, much less destroyed in the process. Conversely, for Christians, the marks of the crucifixion, as well therefore as our own illnesses, weaknesses and various forms of brokenness, are (or are meant to become) the quintessential symbols of a heaven which embraces our own lives and world to make them new. When this transformation occurs in the life of a chronically ill individual seeking to live eremitical life it is the difference between a life of one imprisoned in physical isolation, silence, and solitude, to that of one which breathes and sings "the silence of solitude." It is this song, this prayer, this magnificat that Canon 603 describes so well and consecrated life in all its forms itself represents.

Bowl patched with Gold

We Christians do not hide our woundedness then. We are not ashamed at the way life has marked and marred, bent and broken, spindled and mutilated us. But neither are woundedness or brokenness themselves the things we witness to. Instead it is the Sacrament God has made of our lives, the Love that does justice and makes whole that is the source of our beauty and our boasting. Jan Richardson also reminds us of this truth when she recalls Sue Bender's observations on seeing a mended Japanese bowl. [[“The image of that bowl,” she writes, “made a lasting impression. Instead of trying to hide the flaws, the cracks were emphasized — filled with silver. The bowl was even more precious after it had been mended.”]]  So too with our own lives: as Paul also said, "But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing power will be of God and not from ourselves."  (2 Cor 4:7) It is the mended cracks, the wounds which were once prisons, the shards of a broken life now reconstituted entirely by the grace of God which reveal the very presence of heaven to those we meet.

We are all Sons, heirs of the Kingdom of God's own Life

Today's readings struck me in several places. One of these was the responsorial psalm whose antiphon we repeated several times:  "You are my Son, this day I have begotten you." I know that many persons will change the language here so that it does not seem sexist but I think we have misunderstood what is being affirmed in this reading if we hear it in a sexist way. We are losing the countercultural sense of the usage in such a reading, blunting its sharpness and capacity to undercut our usual ways of seeing reality. Jesus made no distinctions between who became heirs of the Kingdom of God, whether women or men, no distinction based upon gender was involved here. Moreover to be called God's Son meant that one had been baptized into Jesus' own death and were indeed an heir to his resurrection and the Kingdom of God. The use of the term "Son" indicates an identity dependent upon and a literal share in Jesus' OWN Sonship, an identity we share in without losing our own unique masculine or feminine characteristics. It meant one was a new creation in whom godless death had been transfigured by the very presence of God. We, as heirs of this Kingdom have become responsible for proclaiming the Good News in season and out --- a good news that turned the gender-based society of the time on its head. (Please check out an original post on this subject: Driven into the Desert by the Spirit of Sonship)

The second place I found quite striking is the story of Jesus' farewell with the promise that he goes to the Father to prepare a place for us. So long as we think of heaven as some space separate from (though including) God Himself we will not understand how incredible this affirmation is but as we prepare for the Ascension and Pentecost we need to start thinking about this. Once upon a time our world had no room for God, and certainly not for a God who assumed human life and turned a human face toward us so that he might be fully revealed both in the sense of being made fully present and in the sense of being made fully known to us. This revelation of God walked among outcasts, ate with sinners (and here we mean BIG TIME sinners), touched the untouchable, made the rich poor and raised them to the humility of those who know they are loved by God no matter what! That has all been blunted somewhat by the Greek notion of God's omnipresence but we must see the original scandal, the terrible offense of such a God.

But heaven means a share in God's own life and sovereignty, wherever that exists! It is not a space somehow surrounding God but separate from Him where God is a Being --- just a Supreme Being. Instead, since God is not A Being but instead the ground, source and goal of all being, the hope of Christians is that one day we will all dwell in God's own life. When Jesus says he goes to prepare a place for us it means he goes to the Father with whom he is in the most intimate union and through his mediation human life will now have a place in God's own life. God's and Jesus' descent and kenosis is mirrored by an ascent and glorification or movement to pleroma or fullness. This is simply part of God's becoming All in All. It is the Love that does Justice, that sets all to rights. We focus on the first movement (descent and kenosis) but not sufficiently on ascent and pleroma. Imagine a God who has made room for us in his own life! A God who has taken sinfulness and death inside himself and not been destroyed by them! Imagine a God who humbles by raising us to life within the delight of his gaze, who forgives guilt and heals shame with a simple embrace, who makes whole by making us and the whole of creation one with himself!

This, after all is God's will, the desire and intention that one day God will be all in all. It is a vision cosmic in scope but at the same time which does not exclude the smallest portion of God's creation, not the greatest sinner or the most humble saint, the smallest virus or the largest star. As Sons of God in Christ we are part of a new creation which calls upon us to see with new eyes. Old exclusionary ways of doing business, conceiving of justice and of entrance into God's presence must be jettisoned as some of the baggage belonging to a different story and Kingdom. 

A New Heaven and a New Earth: God With Us

In Friday's reading from Revelation we heard John's vision for the future, a vision that might be really different than that which many of us have entertained over the years of our faith, and yet it is a profoundly Christian vision and one which is meant to carry us into and through Advent.

Now, there is no doubt that Revelation is a difficult book, and not one most Catholics (nor many mainline Protestants for that matter) have sat down to read. It is filled with imagery that needs to be decoded for us; the theology has been connected to cultic movements, some of them quite destructive, books about rapture and the antiChrist (despite the fact that neither word appears in Revelation), and generally associated with something very far from that of the other canonical books of the Bible. Critics have referred to its author as a drug addict, characterized its theology as that of a slaughtering Christ, spoken of its inclusion in the canon as an evil, and in less critical moments pointed out that at the very least it requires a revelation to decode it.

But if we think of the Bible as a library of books we might be surprised to find that Genesis and Revelation begin and end a great deal of history with very similar visions. Genesis begins with a view of God and human beings dwelling together in a garden. They walk together and it is only human sin that alienates human beings from this state. Today we read this text in two ways: 1) synchronically as a narrative about the original nature of the human/divine relationship and vision of the nature of earthly existence, and 2) diachronically as a vision of what human beings are therefore made for and what a renewed heaven and earth will one day look like. In Revelation, difficult and confusing details aside, John (et al) gives us a vision of an ultimate new creation, a "new heaven and a new earth" where "God is all in all" and death and sin are destroyed. God and human beings exist in communion with one another and God is revealed as God with us in the fullest sense.

The theme of "God with us" and the idea that this is truly the will of God occurs again and again throughout the Old and New Testament Scriptures. In Exodus God writes his law on the hearts of his people and gives them the Law -- a sign of the covenant between them, the covenant where God's faithfulness always means God is with his People in ways limited only by human sinfulness. God gives them explicit and detailed instructions on constructing the Tabernacle ("mishkan") a symbol of his dwelling (tabernacle or mishkan means dwelling) with his people in a way which allows his Shekinah or glory be revealed.

Similar instructions are given for the construction of the Temple in which heaven and earth meet and heaven (wherever God's sovereign presence is shared with and by others) interpenetrates our world. In his definitive revelation in Christ, Jesus, the new Temple of God, the One who penetrates the realms of sin and death and breaks down  the boundaries between sacred and profane, is explicitly named Emmanuel or God With Us. In the sending of the Spirit we are given a consoler so that God may be with us in a new and pervasive way while in the Church, her Eucharist and other Sacraments God reveals himself again and again as the One who would be God-With-Us. The Incarnation is not God's bandaid solution to the problem of human sin (though it does effectively deal with sin) but the definitive act in which God is revealed (made known and made real) in space and time as Emmanuel.

John's vision of a new heaven and a new earth in which God and human beings dwell in union with one another, where God is all in all, is not a vision we are used to imagining. We are more used to thinking in terms of dying, going to heaven and eventually being re-embodied in a resurrection there in heaven. But throughout our Scriptures the theme of creation and recreation, the remaking of heaven and earth into a single reality and a God whose will is to dwell with us, "walking side by side" with us (as is celebrated in Genesis' poetic imagery) recurs again and again.

Our own move into Advent invites us to open ourselves and our imaginations to God doing something new (kaine or qualitatively new!!) --- something beyond the historical Jesus we look back to, or even the risen Christ we know now. It is an invitation to share John's vision in Revelation and imagine the complete destruction of sin and death that was begun in Nazareth so long ago as well as our world's ultimate fulfillment in God's final act of new creation in Christ. Imagine a Kingdom in which human beings have a dwelling place in God's own heart while God as Love-in-Act is entirely at home in our own transfigured and glorified world. This, after all is John's great vision in Revelation and the image the Church gives us the day before we begin our Advent period of waiting and preparation. It is the vision Israel placed at the beginning of the OT as they characterized God as present and walking hand in hand with Adam and Even in the Garden. With this in mind, I would encourage folks to open themselves throughout Advent more and more to a new way of seeing reality, a new vision that is not only genuinely sacramental and sees reality as it is now, but, because God reveals his very nature and will as Emmanuel, also imagines reality's promised future which culminates in a new heaven and a new earth, a future in which God will be God-with-us in an exhaustive way.

Recommendations for Advent reading:

Elizabeth Johnson CSJ's Ask the Beasts, Darwin and the God of Love (The second part of the book is especially recommended but the whole is wonderful)

Ilia Delio, OSF, From Teilhard to Omega, Co-creating an Unfinished Universe

Consecrated Virginity, Eschatological Secularity and the Descent and Ascent of the Bridegroom

[[Sister Laurel, when you talk about consecrated virginity as a form of eschatological secularity you are talking about it in terms of this same eschatology you have been explaining the Ascension in aren't you? The bridal imagery Jesus uses to explain the Ascension applies directly to this vocation then doesn't it? It is an icon of this new creation and this new heaven and earth the Scriptures talk about. Is that right? If that is the case then I understand better why you have insisted this is a "significantly qualified secularity" defined in terms of eschatology and consecration. It is not only that CV's are icons of something still to come but that they are icons of something already here; both consecration and secularity are essential dimensions of this. . . .]] (Paraphrase and transcription of part of a conversation I had with another Sister on this matter. It builds on the following article among others: Consecrated Virgins and the Interpenetration of Heaven and Earth)

Yes, exactly.  When I write about consecrated virginity lived in the world as a form of eschatological secularity I am specifically thinking of the ascended Jesus and his mediation of God into the world as well as his mediation of the saeculum or created world into God. The new heaven and new earth we look forward to, that reality in which God is all in all has begun to exist but is not here in fullness. CV's living in the world are icons and apostles of this proleptic reality in a way which is unique not only because of the bridal imagery associated with the vocation but because of the vocation's secularity as well. Just like the Bridegroom CV's are called to mediate between heaven and earth by representing both fully. They are not to flee the world as some forms of religious life stress, nor do they represent an unchanged secularity. Instead they are icons of the ascended Christ and the new creation, the new heaven and earth his own life in God represents and mediates.

You see, when I think about Jesus as mediator there is an amazing symmetry about it. It is quite literally beautiful to me to see the way Jesus as God's Christ stands between two worlds and brings them together in himself.  All vocations participate in Christ and in his role as mediator but the bridal imagery used in the Gospel of John to speak of the Ascension and his "going to prepare a place for us" in the very life of God seems to me to be especially explicit in the vocation to consecrated virginity. So is the transformed secularity, that is, the eschatological secularity, of this new heaven and new earth. It may well be that any Christian consecrated in baptism can represent this kind of secularity but because of the explicit bridal imagery associated with it it seems to me that consecrated virgins represent this is a more vivid, explicit, and perhaps too, a more integrated way than other forms of consecrated life.

In the early Church folks were in greater touch than we are today with the fact that they belonged to an earth which was objectively different than it had been prior to Jesus' death and resurrection. They lived and breathed a truly eschatological secularity because they saw the new heaven and new earth both now present and its coming in fullness being right around the corner. We have lost touch with this sense but the renewal of this vocation, it seems to me, could represent a completely new (and very ancient) approach to the cosmos which is profoundly eschatological. Christ as Bridegroom models the movements of descent and ascent, kenosis and pleroma, self-humbling and glorification. It is in Christ that things which were once separated and alienated from one another are reconciled so that God might be all in all.

Remember that it was typical of religions to believe these things did not belong together in God or in the Divine (God could not be associated with kenois, humbling, sin, death, godlessness, suffering, etc); thus it was similarly typical to believe that created reality or material reality did not belong to the spiritual realm or vice versa. The Christ Event changed all that and it is Jesus as mediator and bridegroom that makes the reconciliation and eventual transfiguration of these both real and vivid. Christ mediates the sacred to the secular and the secular to the sacred, so to speak; the reality that comes to be in him, whether proleptically or in fullness, is an eschatological secularity --- a new heaven and a new earth. His Bride (the Church) shares in this mediatory vocation. It should not be surprising then that consecrated vocations serve to demonstrate a similar paradoxical "belonging together" of those things which were once seen as incompatible and rightly alienated.  So you see, I continue to believe CV's living in the world are called to demonstrate this in a privileged way. Those who reject the eschatological secularity of their vocations seem to me to have missed this central piece of what the NT bridal imagery is really all about.

On Consecrated Virginity and the Interpenetration of Heaven and Earth

[[Dear Sister, thank you for your post on Star Trek and the Resurrection of Jesus. (cf., StarTrek and the Resurrection of Jesus) I was most interested in the way you spoke of the interpenetration of heaven and earth and the tearing of the veil between sacred and secular, heavenly and fleshly. You see I am a consecrated virgin and have been reading what you say about eschatological or consecrated secularity. I hadn't appreciated that your insistence on the secularity of the CV vocation comes from a much broader and more fundamental theology. I know you have tried to explain this before so I just wanted you to know that your post helped me to see this more clearly as well as it did the nature and meaning of Jesus' resurrection. Thank you.]]

Thanks for your comments. Gratifyingly, a number of people found that post helpful. You are exactly right about the basis for my insistence on the secularity of the canon 604 vocation. While it is true that I don't think anything else makes sense, and also that I am convinced by the discussion of the matter by Sister Sharon Holland, IHM as well as by texts associated with the rite itself, my insistence is more profoundly driven by an eschatology which does not see heaven as remote but instead understands that in Christ it has begun to interpenetrate this world. The imagery of the rending of the veil between sacred and secular or profane, eternal and mortal (fleshly) is terribly important to the notion of a new creation occasioned by Jesus' death and resurrection. But this same veil becomes symbolized by the veil often associated with consecrated life, and especially that of consecrated virgins, I think. It truly symbolizes the interpenetration of heaven and earth and what could say this more powerfully than a form of consecrated life which is not driven by the "fuga mundi" impulse of some religious life but is instead both thoroughly consecrated and thoroughly secular?

There is a second symbol of this eschatology which I have mentioned before which the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus makes central, namely, the two step process of matrimony in Judaism. While the interpenetration of heaven and earth occasioned by the resurrection is real it is also proleptic of something that will only one day be fully realized when God is all in all. With Jesus' resurrection the new creation begins to be realized. The first step of the Divine union with humanity has been accomplished; the betrothal is a fact for those who are baptized into Jesus' death and resurrection. With the ascension Jesus returns to the Father to prepare a place for us in the very life of God and we look forward to the day when there will indeed be a new heaven and a new earth in which God is all in all.

In other words we look forward to the consummation of the wedding/union between God and humanity which represents the fulfillment of creation and God's will to share God's love/life exhaustively. Consecrated virgins are called to stand as icons of this reality and promise. It is not, as I have noted in other posts, the promise of disembodied existence in a remote heaven but of existence in an entirely transformed world/cosmos in which heaven and earth have been made to be a single reconciled and transfigured reality. Though a tad awkward, it would not be a big theological stretch to call life in this new heaven and earth "eschatological secularity." So, to suggest that CV's are called to a form of eschatological or consecrated secularity right here and right now in the midst of this new creation in witness to a betrothal that has occurred in the Christ Event and a consummation that is yet to come seems to me to be an accurate description of  a profoundly significant vocation.


As you recognize, the theology which underpins this vocation is indeed much broader and more substantive than some have perceived from considering the canon which defines the vocation or the rite which establishes it. Its scope is cosmic. The bridal imagery is the imagery of new creation and eschatological fulfillment achieved by the boundless and eternal love/mercy of God which will completely remake not only THIS world/cosmos but God's own life as well. (Our share in this is what we call heaven and Jesus goes to prepare a place for each and all of us in the Divine life.) It makes sense that an icon of this covenantal state is the consecrated virgin living an eschatological secularity. However, as I have written before, so long as consecrated virgins resist the secularity of their vocation or fail to understand their own betrothal as proleptic and iconic of a consummation/wedding which will occur for the whole of creation instead of as something elitist or entirely individual, they will simply ensure that their vocations are theologically and pastorally irrelevant and even destructive. (Link for this article: Consecrated Virgins and the Interpenetration of Heaven and Earth)

On Star Trek Next Generation and the Resurrection of Jesus

In one of the Star Trek Next Generation episodes (yes, I admit I am or was a fan of most all the Star Trek series!) Command-der Geordi La Forge and Ensign Ro Larren are caught in a transporter accident. There is some sort of power or radiation surge during a return "beaming" and when the two of them "materialize" back on the Enterprise they cannot be seen or heard. Neither can they interact with the ordinary material world they know in a way which will let folks know they are really alive (for the crew of the Enterprise have concluded they died without a trace). La Forge and Roe try to get folks' attention and learn that they can walk through walls, reach through control panels or other "solid" objects, stand between two people conversing without being seen, and so forth. It is as though the dimension of reality Geordi and Ro now inhabit interpenetrates the other more everyday world, interfaces with it in some way without being identical with it. Their new existence is both continuous and discontinuous with their old existence; they are present but with a different kind of bodiliness, a bodiliness in which they can connect with and be present to one another but which their crewmates must be empowered to see.

They leave a vague radiation trail wherever they go and in attempting to purge the ship of this trail the Enterprise crew causes the boundary between these two dimensions to thin or dissolve and LaForge and Roe are made visible briefly in the other world, fleetingly, time after time.  It is only over time that the crew come to realize that their friends are not dead but alive, and more, that they exist not in some remote corner of empty space, but right here, in their ship amongst their friends. In fact, it is at a somewhat raucous celebration in memory of and gratitude for their lost friends' lives, that this clear recognition occurs and Geordi and Roe become really present to their friends and shipmates.

It is not hard, I think, to see why this story functions as an analogy of Thursday's Gospel lection, and in fact, for many of the readings we have and will hear during this Easter Season. In particular I think this story helps us to think about and imagine two points which Jesus' post Easter appearances make again and again. The first is that Jesus' resurrection is bodily. He was not merely "raised" in our minds and hearts, his "resurrection" is not merely the result of a subjective experience of grace and/or forgiveness --- though it will include these; Jesus is not a disembodied spirit, a naked immortal soul. Neither does he leave his humanity behind and simply "become God" --- as a pagan emperor might have been said to have done, nor as though his humanity was merely a matter of God "slumming" among us for several decades and then jettisoning this. Instead, Jesus is raised to a new form of bodiliness, a new form of perfected (glorified) humanity. He is the first fruits of this new bodiliness and we look forward in hope because what has happened to Jesus will also happen to each of us. Jesus' resurrection raises Jesus to a life which is both earthly and heavenly --- like the story of Geordi and Ensign Ro, Jesus' existence straddles (and integrates) two worlds or dimensions. It brings these two together (reconciles them) and also mediates between them. It symbolizes, in the strongest sense of that term, the reality which will one day come to be when God is all in all.

The second point that this story helps us to imagine and think about then is the fact that Jesus' resurrection makes Jesus the first fruits of a new creation. Jesus' participation in literally Godless, sinful death and his descent into hell has implicated God in and transformed these with God's presence. Godless death has been destroyed (how can it be godless if God is there?) and one day, when God is all in all, death per se will be ended as well. In other words, the world we inhabit is not the same one we inhabited before Jesus' death and resurrection. Instead it is a world in which the veil between sacred and profane (or secular), heavenly (eternal) and fleshly (mortal) has been torn asunder and heaven and earth begun to interpenetrate one another, a world which signals that one day there will be a new heaven and a new earth with the entire cosmos remade. We who are baptized into Christ's death are, as Tom Wright puts the matter, citizens of heaven colonizing the earth; as a result we are privileged to see reality with eyes of faith, and when we do we are able to see when the boundary between these two interpenetrating realities thins and Jesus' new mediating bodiliness is revealed to us.

For Christians this "thinning" (only a metaphor, of course) occurs in many ways. In baptism we are initiated into Jesus's death and made both part of this new creation and capable of perceiving it with eyes of faith. In prayer we become vulnerable to Jesus' presence in God. In times of grieving and loss we may also become uniquely vulnerable and open to it.  And there are especially privileged ways this happens as well. There is the bodiliness of the Scriptural text where the Word is proclaimed and Jesus is able to speak to, challenge, comfort, and commission us to act as ambassadors of this New Creation. The stories within the Scriptures, most especially the parables, serve as doorways to this new creation; they ask us to let go of the preconceptions, achievements, defenses, etc which work so well for us in the pre-resurrection world and step into a sacred space which is, because of Jesus' resurrection and ascension, always present here and now. There is the ecclesial body where even two or three gathered together in Jesus' name (or, for that matter, even a single hermit in her cell praying in the name of the Church) reveals this New Creation in a proleptic and partial way. And of course, there are the other Sacraments which mediate Christ's presence to us; among these especially is the Eucharist where sacred and profane come together and ordinary bread and wine are transformed into a form or expression of Jesus' risen and unique bodily presence.

Too often we locate heaven in some remote place "out there" in space. But in a real though imperfect (proleptic) way heaven is right here, right now, interpenetrating and leavening our ordinary world. Jesus is the New Temple, the new One in whom heaven and earth meet; he Rules not from some remote heaven, but from within this New Creation. The Star Trek Next Generation episode is, of course, science fiction where this challenging and consoling reality is not. Still, it helps me imagine a more genuinely Scriptural paradigm of the nature and meaning of  Jesus' resurrection from death than the even more inadequate ones I grew up hearing!! I hope it will do the same for you.

N.B.,  Jesus' ascension will modify the form of bodiliness or presence the original disciples experienced and, among other things, mark both the end of the unique and privileged post-Easter appearances and the beginning of a kind of intermediate state between these and the "second coming" or parousia when God will be all in all. Even so, this does not change what I have presented here. With the ascension we move from the period of time when people saw (via these privileged appearances) and believed to that time when they "do not see" but believe. Still, the essential truth is that we belong to a new creation in which heaven and earth interpenetrate one another as they did not prior to Jesus' death and resurrection. In Christ we also straddle, reconcile, and mediate between these two worlds.

On the Feast of the Ascension, Continuing the Scandal of the Incarnation in the Very Heart of God

A couple of years ago I wrote about a passage taken from one of the Offices (Vigils) on the Feast of the Ascension. In that passage we hear the remarkable statement that, [[It is he who gave apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers in roles of service for the faithful to build up the body of Christ, till we become one in faith and in the knowledge of God's Son, AND FORM THE PERFECT MAN WHO IS CHRIST COME TO FULL STATURE.]] It is an image that has intrigued me since, and of course, one that I hear and reflect on again each Ascension Day. Imagine that it is we-as-church who quite literally make up the body of Christ and who one day will be taken up into the very life of God just as Christ was --- and that in this way, Christ will have "come to full stature." He will live in us and we in him, and all of us in God as God too becomes all in all. (Sounds very Johannine doesn't it?)

When I was an undergraduate in Theology (and through a lot of my graduate work as well), the Ascension never made much sense to me. It was often mainly treated as a Lukan construction which added little to the death and resurrection of Jesus, and if my professors and those they had us reading felt this way, I didn't press the issue --- nor, at least as an undergraduate, did I have the wherewithal TO press the issue theologically. It didn't help any that the notion of Jesus' bodily ascension into "heaven" was more incomprehensible (and unbelieveable) than resurrection, or that I understood it as a kind of dissolving away of Jesus bodiliness rather than a confirmation of it and continuation of the Incarnation. (The notion that a docetist Jesus had just been "slumming" for thirty-three years, as one writer objects to putting the matter, and that Ascension was the act by which he shook the dust of humanity from his sandals when his work was done, was probably not far from my mind here.)

Finally therefore, it was really difficult to deal with the notion that Christ, who had been so close to us as to appear in his glorified body with which he walked through walls, ate fish, allowed his marks as the crucified one to be examined, etc, was now going to some remote place far distant from us and would be replaced by some intangible and abstract spiritual reality. Of course, I had it all wrong. Completely. Totally. Absolutely wrong in almost every particular. Unfortunately, I have no doubt that most Christians have it wrong in all the same ways. And yet, it is the passage from Ephesians which is one key to getting it all right, and to rejoicing in the promise and challenge that Jesus' Ascension represents for us.

What actually happens in the Ascension? What about reality changes? What does it mean to say that Christ ascends to the right hand of God or "opens the gates of heaven"? The notion that Jesus' life, death, resurrection, and ascension changes reality is novel for many people. They may think of redemption as a matter of changing God's mind about us, for instance, appeasing divine wrath, but not really changing objective reality. Yet, on the cross and through his descent into the very depths of Godlessness (sin and godless or sinful death), as I have written before, Jesus, through his own obedience (openness, and responsiveness) opens this realm to God; he implicates God into this realm in definitive ways. God's presence in all of our world's moments and moods is, in light of the Christ Event, personal and intimate, not impersonal and remote. And with God implicated in the very reality from which he has, by definition, been excluded, that reality is transformed. It is no longer literally godless, but instead becomes a kind of sacrament of his presence, the place where we may see him face to face in fact --- and the place where being now triumphs over non-being, life triumphs over death, love triumphs over all that opposes it, and meaning overcomes absurdity. This is one part or side of Jesus' mediatory function: the making God real and present in ways and where before he was not. It is the climax of God's own self-emptying, his own "descent" which began with creation and continues with redemption and new creation; it is the climax of God first creating that which is other so that he might share himself, and then entering into every moment and mood of creation.

But there is another aspect or side to Christ's mediatory activity, and this is made most clear in the Ascension. The language used is not descent, but ascent, not journeying to a far place, but returning home and preparing a place for those who will follow. (Yes, we SHOULD hear echoes of the parable of the prodigal Son/ merciful Father here with Christ as the prodigal Son journeying to a far place.) If in Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, the world is opened to God, in Jesus' ascension, God's own life is opened definitively to the world. In Jesus' ascension, the new creation, of which Jesus is the first born and head, is taken up BODILY into God, dwells within him in communion with him. In Jesus we meet our future in the promise that this will happen to us and all of creation in him.

When Paul speaks of God becoming all in all he is looking at the culmination of this double process of mediation: first, God entering the world more profoundly, extensively and, above all, personally in Christ, and second, the world being taken up into God's own life. When he speaks of Christ coming to full stature, he is speaking of the same process, the same culmination. When theologians speak of the interpenetration of heaven and earth, or the creation of a new heaven and a new earth they are speaking again of this process with an eye towards its culmination at the end of time. The Ascension marks the beginning of this "End Time."



It is important to remember a couple of things in trying to understand this view of ascension. First, God is not A BEING, not even the biggest and best, holiest, most powerful, etc. God is being itself, the ground of being and meaning out of which everything that has being and meaning stands (ex-istere, i.e., "out of - to stand"). Secondly, therefore, heaven is not merely some place where God resides along with lots of other beings (including, one day, ourselves) --- even if he is the center of attention and adoration. Heaven is God's own being, the very life of God himself shared with others. (Remember that often the term heaven was used by Jews to avoid using God's name, thus, the Kingdom or Reign of Heaven is the Sovereignty of God) Finally, as wonderful as this creation we are part of is, it is meant for more. It is meant to exist in and of God in a final and definitive way. Some form of panentheism is the goal of reality, both human and divine. Jesus' ascension is the first instance of created existence being taken up into God's own life (heaven). It is the culmination of one part of the Christ event (mediation seen mainly in terms of descent and creation/redemption), and the beginning of another (mediation seen in terms of recreation/glorification and ascent).

When the process is completed and God is all in all, so too can we say that the God-Man Christ will have "come to full stature," or, as another translation of today's lection from Ephesians reads: [[. . .in accord with the exercise of his great might: which he worked in Christ, raising him from the dead and seating him at his right hand in the heavens, far above every principality, authority, power, and dominion, and every name that is named not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things beneath his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of the one who fills all things in every way.]]

For those who have difficulty in accepting God's assumption of human flesh and revelation of himself exhaustively in a human life -- most especially in the weakness and fragility of such a life, Jesus' ascension offers no relaxing of the tension or scandal of the incarnation. Instead it heightens it. With Jesus' ascension the Godhead NOW has taken created reality and bodily existence within itself as a very part of God's own life. This is what we are meant for, the reason we were created. It is what God willed "from the beginning". If, in the Christ event human life is defined as a covenantal reality, that is, if our lives are dialogical realities with God as an integral and constitutive part, so too does the Christ Event define God similarly, not simply as Trinitarian and in some sort of conversation with us, but as One who actively makes room within himself for us and all he cherishes --- and who, in this sense, is incomplete without us.

Human being --- created, redeemed, recreated and glorified --- assumes its rightful and full stature in Christ. In the acts of creation, redemption, and glorification, Divinity empties itself of certain prerogatives in Christ as well, but at the same time Divinity assumes its full stature in Christ, a stature we could never have imagined because it includes us in itself in an integral or fundamental way. Whether this is expressed in the language and reality of descent, kenosis (self-emptying), and asthenia (weakness), or of ascent, pleroma (fullness), and power, Christianity affirms the scandal of the incarnation as revelatory of God's very nature. We should stand open-mouthed and astounded in awe at the dignity accorded us and the future with which we, and all of creation is "endowed" on the "day" of Christ's Ascension.

Octave of Easter, Thursday Readings

Last Thursday there were two intriguing readings. The first is from the Acts of the Apostles where Peter stands up and castigates the Jews for what they did to Jesus, but also offers them a chance to accept a place in the new covenant. The second is from Luke and follows the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. In this lection they are explaining to other disciples how Jesus met them on the road and they recognized him in the breaking of the bread when suddenly he shows up in their midst. What is so striking is the degree of fear they experience. They are startled of course, but Luke makes clear that they are also terrified and think they are seeing a ghost. Jesus has them touch him, shows them his hands and feet, allows them to know he is flesh and blood --- though not as they are used to given his capacity to appear and vanish at will --- and eats some baked fish.



Both readings mean to demonstrate that something astounding has happened, something which changes everything. Whatever this is, it gives courage to those who were hiding for fear of their own lives and allows them to speak about Jesus with a new kind of boldness (parrhesia). Peter, despite his own denials of Jesus is now a community leader and returns to his own people, the very ones who condemned and militated for the crucifixion of Jesus as a blasphemer and would certainly have condemned Peter and the others as well, to tell them about belief in a crucified messiah --- an incomprehensible combination of words until this point! What Peter knows is that the crucified messiah lives; he has been raised from godless death to new and eternal existence by his Father; he has been completely vindicated and the result is a new and everlasting covenant, a new and everlasting dialogical form of existence with God for all who will follow him and be baptized into his death. Awesome as this all is though, it is not enough, as the gospel reading makes plain.

It is not simply that Jesus has been raised to a new and eternal existence; he has been raised to a new and eternal BODILY existence, and this is something I think many of us miss when we think of resurrection. (Or we think of life after death as the real climax of the story when it is only the penultimate part of it.) Jesus moves between two worlds now; he moves between heaven and earth. In him these two realms interpenetrate one another in a way they had not before. The veil between sacred and profane has been truly torn asunder in the Christ Event. The life Jesus lives and offers to us is not simply life after death but a bodily existence in a remade world. When we speak of Christ as the new creation this is really what we are referring to --- to the fact that he has been remade by God to represent a new kind of bodily existence where heaven and earth interpenetrate one another in a new way and will do so more and more completely as Christians accept their own vocations to follow Christ until one day God is, in Paul's words, all-in-all.

I found the readings challenging in several ways. Once my immediate response to the lection from Acts would have been something like: "Oh, Peter, who do you think you are sermonizing in this way?" But today I see him as an image of the church with its commission to every Christian to proclaim the gospel with boldness in spite of past sinfulness, past betrayals and denials of Christ. Peter too has experienced the risen Christ, not least in the breaking of the bread just as we each do every day, and he has been transformed by the experience. And all the disciples have now had "the Scriptures opened to them" so that they may read older texts with news eyes and heart in light of their experience of Jesus' vindication by God. There is a new covenant, consistent with, but perfecting the older one, a new creation, consistent with but perfecting the older creation, a new Temple, a new Law rooted in Gospel, and in all this, a new hope for heaven and earth together.

The Gospel is especially challenging, not merely because it expects Jesus' disciples to put aside terror at something they were wholly unprepared for (THIS resurrection was NOT something they had foreseen really, nor was it something major versions of Judaism itself believed in per se), but because it expects us to accept that resurrection is a bodily reality, and that God's Kingdom will be realized here within space and time as eternity and spatio-temporality are allowed to more completely interpenetrate one another and God become all in all. We cannot simply hope for heaven and turn from efforts at building the Kingdom of God here on earth. We cannot simply relinquish a vocation to genuine holiness as something achieved elsewhere; instead God achieves it in our very midst, in the midst of space and time, in the midst of THIS life with these circumstances, weaknesses, and failings. Christ has obediently (responsively and openly) plumbed the depths of human existence, deeper than any of us will ever go ourselves (thank God!), and in so doing he has implicated God in every moment and mood of this existence.

He has made of us a new creation and asks us to bring it to completion in Him. So the good news of Jesus' resurrection is accompanied by a great commission issued to each of us. Proclaim the good news of a new creation with boldness. In me see with new eyes, love with a new heart, imagine with a new hope! In me make all things new! Resurrection, after all, is not simply life after death; it is a new bodily existence we already share in and owe to the world.

The Importance of Jesus' Bodily Resurrection. . .a beginnning. . .

For the last three weeks we have been celebrating the bodily resurrection of Jesus. There is no doubt that despite the fact we spend a lot of time on the Easter event, we really do not appreciate what we celebrate. It is common to hear Christianity characterized as a religion which is based on illusion, or a desire to escape the real world, or both. We hear it referred to as, "Pie in the sky by and by" or see Christians characterized as, "so heavenly minded they are (of) no earthly good," and the fact is many times these derogatory characterizations are true. Christians have a right to hope that in this world sin and death do not have the last word, but the idea that our salvation ULTIMATELY rests in a heaven distinct and removed from this world is something BODILY resurrection does not support.

I am only just beginning to explore this topic. I began as a result of readings from the first and second weeks of Easter. In those readings what was clear was how truly astonished and overwhelmed by what had happened to Jesus in the resurrection was. They were joyfilled, but also terrified, astonished, curious, disbelieving, etc and there was no way in light of those readings one could come away thinking that the resurrection was merely something occasioned by wish-fulfillment or the disciples' inability to deal with their own grief. What they experienced was discontinuous with what they knew or had conceived of --- not completely so, but enough to underscore how truly real in an objective sense this resurrected Christ was for them. This was no resuscitated corpse a la Lazarus, for this Christ walked through walls, came and went in an instant, was not recognized except as he called a disciple by name or in the breaking of the bread, etc. And yet, neither was he a ghost or mere "spiritual being" for he could be touched (not clung to perhaps, but touched nonetheless!), and he ate fish! Nor was his resurrection merely symbolic of the return of Israel from exile (though it signalled the return from exile of the true Israel nonetheless.)

The notion that Christians are those who must escape from this world to a remote heaven was contradicted by the fact that Jesus' resurrection was a bodily resurrection and thrust him back into this world to serve it, first in the Easter appearances, then at the right hand of his Father where he continues as the crucified and risen one, and so, one presumes, the incarnate God who is bodily present to the world, and in the giving of the Holy Spirit who makes both Father and Son present in power. In this resurrection heaven and earth interpenetrate one another in a way which allows us to see that the ultimate Christian hope is a new heaven and a new earth in which God is all in all --- not a remote and distant heaven! It seemed to me that Christians may in fact be the ones who are called not only NOT to escape from this world and all its evils, but to confront them face to face, not only because we know sin and death to be defeated in Christ, but because we know he remains committed to this world's transformation in him.

I moved next to consider the ascension on the basis of a comment I read by Kenneth Leech that dovetailed with what I had been thinking about bodily resurrection. Leech says:[[ to many people the doctrine of the ascension spells remoteness --- Jesus goes away into a remote heaven. . . .In fact the whole point of the ascension is missed here. Heaven and earth become crude geographical entities. But the New Testament teaches that Christ ascended so he might be CLOSER to us in his risen body, and that he might fill all things (Eph 4:10).]] (Leech, True Prayer, p 15).

And then I picked up Tom Wright's book, Surprised by Hope! Now, a couple of years ago I had read his work on the resurrection over a period some weeks, and Surprised by Hope is in some ways, a more readable version of that more technical work. Still, it is an amazing book and brought home to me just how common is our misunderstanding of what it is Christian hope truly consists. Most important are the implications for missiology of the bodily resurrection and the fact that we await a new heaven and a new earth. We really are called to transform this world because ultimately we hope to participate in that new heaven AND NEW EARTH the Scriptures talk about.

Over time I will write more about this because it is an idea too little heard about, and too often contradicted by various forms of spirituality and (non-Christian or insufficiently Christian) theological ideas. (It is also an idea I have not sufficiently grappled with myself!) For now, let me leave you with the questions: 1) how often have you thought about the significance that Christ was raised bodily, and that our ultimate hope is for bodily resurrection? 2) How often have you thought about heaven as someplace remote from this world rather than as the power of God which interpenetrates this world and, through the work of the Spirit, is the means by which this world is recreated? 3) And how much more compelling would your work to preserve, honor, and transform this world be if you grounded it in a theology which recognized that ultimately we hope for a new heaven and a new earth in which God is powerfully and fully present and which itself is completely part of (or, better put perhaps, taken into) the life of the Trinity?