“To embrace earth and live unreservedly in life as it is given us is to land in the arms of God. It is to embrace God and be embraced by God, the suffering God. Such living--throwing ourselves into life, embracing earth and its distress--is in fact the way of faith itself. It is responsible, "participation in the sufferings of God for the life of the world" and a faith that both saves life and savors life. It is earth ethics and our experience of "the power which still holds [us] by eternal, mysterious forces." It is life lived to the fullest. It may, in evil times, include the cross of resistance in the name of life itself. This is earth and its distress as "the Christian's song of songs." (Larry Rasmussen, Earth Community, Earth Ethics)
Each of us must live our lives, make our decisions, sing our song in our context. Nobody else can live for us.
The Confession of ‘67 says, “Life is a gift to be received with gratitude and a task to be pursued with courage.” I might rephrase the last part as… an adventure and task to be pursued with courage.
Something is asked of us, something required, on an adventure with toils and snares, hopes and fears, yet with grace and courage of the crucified One, who lives & walks with us—on the way home.
As Paul walked his path, he said, “For necessity is laid upon me… Woe is me if I preach not the gospel.”
What is asked of you? What is your necessity?
When we give of our gifts in community, and they are received, it is a feast. We are strengthened with joy in our inner person. We participate in the movement, the dynamics of grace on earth—in anticipation.
Yet life is hard, challenging.
Sometimes people don’t receive our gifts. In fact, the opposite. This is where courage and perseverance come into play.
As the Montgomery Bus Boycott began, Daddy King wrote to his son Martin, “Every way I turn people are congratulating me for you. You see young man you are becoming very popular. As I told you you must be much in prayer. Persons like yourself are the ones the devil turns all of his forces aloose to destroy.”
Shortly afterwards, King’s house was bombed. Later that year, shotgun blasts were fired into his home. Yet King, with Coretta Scott, and his community, persevered. “Negroes weren’t afraid to walk, King said. “Negroes were born walking,” he said. “We were raised walking … Walking is nothing new … walking never hurts us.” They would walk and fight, he promised, until they took “the heart out of Dixie.” (King: A Life, Jonathan Eig)
With partners across the land, they did.
And yet the battle continues.
The challenges of faith and love, “participation in the sufferings of God for the life of the world and a faith that both saves life and savors life,” arise. Grace amidst la lucha is breaking in, here and there, now and then. Do you not see it?
We live in an age of transition: the old is passing, the new has not yet come. It’s the passing of tired ways and idols… predatory capitalism, white racial framing, patriarchy, colonialism. Yet the change is not all blessing and relief…
Ecological shadows lengthen across the earth. The air we breathe in New Jersey this week was filled with acrid smoke from burning pine trees in Canada; the worst in memory. Even the baseball game was cancelled.
Another wake up call that we are disrupting our planet and that global warming has no boundaries. Homelessness and poverty are also increasing, while the robber barons get richer.
Our Post-Modern, Post-Industrial, Post-Colonial world is groaning in travail. It is a world in motion, with both fear of chaos and hope for new life.
For people of faith this is a time to stay close to Christ’s Spirit, walk on the way of radical truth-love, live the questions with integrity.
What do we hold onto? How do we let go? What are the principles to follow in regard to uncouth truth?
At the conclusion of his powerful memoir, Notes From a Wayfarer, Helmut Thielicke writes of underlying principles that guided him on the journey of living though the Nazi regime, the Cold War, radical cultural and technological change:
“I am only interested in whether truth is true and why it is true. Therefore I will first inquire after the truth itself and avoid questions concerning its temporal qualities. I will permit myself neither a reactionary nor a progressive expectation of the nature of truth.
Whenever, I encounter the truth in a novel and unexpected form, I will try to be open to it. On the other hand, whenever I discover the truth, and something that has already been established by living tradition and perhaps goes back to “archaic” times, I will greet it with [both] deference [and a hermeneutic of suspicion].
In my encounter with the Gospel I must be prepared for two things: first, for an eternal truth that has already carved its traces into millennia; and, second, for new horizons that I may enter without fear…
I was once invited to give a lecture and hold a discussion at the Space Center in Houston Texas. While, there I experienced the rapture with which the astronauts describe the sight of our earth from space: a green oasis of life, in the midst of the vast desert of the cosmos.
I also know that this beautiful planet, not only knows fragrant summer meadows on sunny hillsides, but also oceans of blood and tears, and deep, dark valleys. To be sure, in my journey through life I was not spared painful episodes, such as sickness, the torment of tyranny, and many other things… The future also cast its dark shadows over us, and seems to do everything in its power to plunge us into anxiety. Young people in particular are fearful when they think of what is to come; they after all, have the longest future.
Why then do I still dare to extol the time we spend on this perilous and beautiful planet? Why am I still glad of its hospitality? Why do I look back with gratitude…
Whenever my gaze wishes to bore its way into the overcast future, there comes to my mind God’s utterance after the flood with which God had judged the world: “And it will come to pass, when I bring the cloud over the earth, the the bow shall be seen in the cloud.” This rainbow is intended to assure us of God‘s abiding concern for our welfare: “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, I shall not cease.”
Time and again I have caught sight of the seven colors of this rainbow glowing in my life—at least when I have ceased to stare monomaniacally into the darkness and raise my eyes to search for it. Indeed I have encountered no darkness above which it does not shine, and no valley, no matter how gloomy, which some of God’s greetings have not reached.
Only because of the shining rainbow do I extol our time on this beautiful planet, and face the future with confidence. Only on its account am I certain that nothing can separate us from Him… We are admittedly only guests on this beautiful planet, wayfarers on call… But as Christians we are certain that the lifespan allotted us is only the advent of a still greater fulfillment. The land to which we are called is a terra incognita—an unknown, even inconceivable land. There’s only one voice that we will recognize there, because it is already familiar to us here: the voice of the Good Shepherd.” (Notes From a Wayfarer, Helmut Thielicke)
May we listen and heed Christ’s voice; with courage and love, keep walking.
The way will open, though not without struggle.
Thank you do much for this. It fills me with hope as I prepare to retire from PC, USA ministry.