Download - REIMAGINING GOD AND MISSION September 26, 2005. Introduction: Imagination, God and Mission
REIMAGINING GOD AND REIMAGINING GOD AND MISSIONMISSION
September 26, 2005
Introduction:Introduction:Imagination, God and MissionImagination, God and Mission
St. Joan, scene 1
Meeting with Robert de Baudricourt
Soldiers, horses and armor to rescue Orleans
“I hear voices. They tell me what to do.”
“They come from God.”
“They come from your imagination.”
• “Of course. That is how the messages of God come to us.”
Joan’s conviction…this evening’s reflections
• It is through the imagination that we are best able to get in touch with ineffable nature and saving action of God
• By exercising the imagination…Spirit continues to lead us into all truth (Jn 14:25)
Feminist theology …
• Traditional imagery about God• Particularly exclusively male imagery• Idolatry!• To counteract this: healing of imagination• Imagination is important!• McFague: God language only image language• Shea: don’t see images but through images• Helps us organize and give focus to deepest reality
Needed: “therapy of imagination”
• Move from exclusively male, dominating images
• To images of God as community of ec-centric, overflowing love
• Do this by exercising, playing, reimagining God
A second conviction
• The way we imagine God
• Implications for way we understand and commit ourselves to mission
• Mission, after all, is God’s mission!
Joan was right!
• It is through the imagination…
• Only through the imagination
• That God sends messages—revelation
• Reimagining God a key task in theology
• Especially today!
God Mission
• Elizabeth Johnson: speaking of God is “crucial theological question. What is at stake is the truth about God, inseparable from the situation of human beings, the identity and mission of the faith community.”
The symbol of God functions!• God as self-sufficient,
all-powerful male monarchmission as extension of God’s glory
• God as passionate lovermission as acting out that love
• God as communion overflowing with care for all creaturesmission as care for creation
I’d like to image, imagine, re-imagine 3 images ofGod…
…then see how they help to imagine or re-imagine Mission
This evening…
Share with you results of my own thought experiment
My own “therapy of the imagination”
I.I. DANCEDANCE
Joie d’vivre
Paula Turnbull, SNJM
Paraphrase of LaCugna
• A self-contained God, a closed divine society, would hardly be a fitting archetype of the divine dance
• Rather, the triune God of Christians is an image of total openness, invitation, givenness
The triune God, a community-in-mission…
• …can powerfully be imagined as Dance…
• …and mission as those women and men who have been swept up by the music and have joined in as partners in the divine dance
St. John Damascene—8th century
• Perichoresis
• Each person distinct, yet blends into each other to form dynamic unity of communion
In Latin Theology
CircuminsessioMutual
indwelling
CircumincessioDynamic coming and going
Especially because of latter
• Legitimate to interpret perichoresis (circular movement)
• by perichoreuo (to dance around)
• Kind of a pun
Elizabeth Johnson—Country dance, but…
“Dancers whirl and intertwine in unusual patterns; at times all hell breaks loose; resolution is achieved unexpectedly. Music, light and shadow, color, and wonderfully supple motion coalesce in dancing that is not smoothly predictable and repetitive, …and yet it is just as highly disciplined.”
Traditional theology
• Order or taxis of triune dance =
• Procession of eternal Word from bosom of Holy Mystery
• Procession of Spirit either thru Word or from Mystery and Word together
But as the dance irrupts into history…
• We speak of the Word sent from depths of deepest Mystery
• Incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth
• Sending Spirit to complete and continue his work
My own proposal …
• Pattern of dance in history begins with Spirit being sent “inside out” into the world
• God’s mysterious presence from first nanosecond of creation
• Giving life, stirring up prophecy, healing, calling Israel deeper into covenant
John Paul II…
• Spirit sows “seeds of word” in the world
• Preparing people of all places and times for Holy Mystery’s concrete presence in Jesus of Nazareth
Jesus gives the mysterious presence of the Spirit a human face
God’s dance in the world continues in a human body
Elizabeth Johnson…
“Jesus is the genuine Spirit-phenomenon, conceived, inspired, sent, hovered over, guided, and risen from the dead by her power.”
“Through his human history the Spirit who pervades the universe becomes concretely present in a small bit of it.”
He is the Lord of the Dance
They buried my bodyAnd they thought I’d goneBut I am the dance and I still
go on
They cut me downAnd I leapt up highI am the life that’ll never,
never dieI live in youIf you live in me—I am the Lord of the Dance,
said he
Jesus lives in those who recognize his Lordship by the power of the Spirit!
Faith in Jesus—not just intellectual…affective
Ultimately, faith means following, being a disciple, dancing his dance
“I’ll lead you all in the dance, said he!”
God’s dance in our world—invitation to do what Jesus did…
Proclaim and Witness…
Commit ourselves to healing and reconciliation
To lock horns with the powers and structures of evil
To inclusion of all people … to invite others to join the dance
To recognize God’s Spirit beyond….
One image—a “conga line”…
This is mission!
• Not a duty or burden• But being caught up in
God’s vision• Trinitarian faith –
practice: peacemaking, pluralizing, persuading
• Mwolweka—not understanding but imitating
• Imitating the divine dance!
II. II. STRANGERSTRANGER
Something about strangers!• Connection with God’s
ineffability?
• Reminder that fear of the Other is ultimately a wrong instinct?
• In any case, God of Christians intimately tied up with strangers
• God appears as stranger
• Through hospitality to strangers people meet God
Already alluded to Rublev…
• Maybe not revelation of Trinity, but certainly of God
• Common motif on OT• Jacob wrestling with
stranger• Melchizedek• Ruth• Ninevites• Cyrus• Kindness to strangers
God most manifest, of course…
• Sent from his “home country”… “pitched his tent among us”
• In general “world did not know him”
• “marginal Jew,” an outsider from “heathen Galilee”
Ministry filled with strangers, outsiders…
• Spoke of love of enemies—I.e. those not natural neighbors
• Praised faith of foreigners, and even learned from them
• Told stories of how foreigners were closer to God, more than professionally religious
• Associates with sinners, women
Sometimes, stranger to those who knew him well
• When he appeared on the Sea of Galilee
• Mistaken as the gardener by Mary M.
• By the disciples on road to Emmaus
• When he appeared to disciples at end of John’s gospel
Blindness of disciples before, after!
• Even after Spirit was bestowed
• Acts—gradual realization of Jesus’ meaning through encounters with strangers…
• Samaritans, Ethiopian Eunuch, Cornelius, Antioch
• Antioch—birthday of the church, move from being Jewish sect
Tradition: we meet God / Jesus in the stranger
Jesus in gospels—Mt. 25
Martin of Tours and beggar
Francis of Assisi and leper
Venit hospes, venit Christus
Works of Art!
Theology of migration: Cristos migrantes!
Implications for Mission: many
• Faith in such a God = being committed to being open and being transformed by the Other—different nationality, culture, social location
• Not enough to be committed locally—universally as well
• Dialogue with strangers=dialogue with other religions
• Opposition to all xenophobia and racism
Two more implications, however• First, commitment to
children, women and men among the world’s poorest and most discriminated against—migrants
• 1 out of 120!• A particular urgency in
Christian mission today• Not just mission to but
mission among—learning, being challenged by, receiving their gifts
Second—related but more general• Missionaries need to
appropriate their own status as strangers
• “To embrace the status and role of the stranger is to embrace ambiguity, uncertainty, surrender and vulnverablity. Jesus did it, and so must we. Yet in this very kenosis … mission becomes possible, God becomes all in all, the empty vessel becomes filled, the receiver becomes a giver, and the outsider is encountered and embraced.”
Strangers keep us on our toes!• They can be real
sacraments of a dimension beyond our comfort zones…
• Beyond our imaginations
• Offer rich opportunities to empty self in service
• They can be like God, who calls us to mission
III. PERSISTENT WIDOWIII. PERSISTENT WIDOW
Barbara Reid on Like 18:1-8
• “unjust judge?”
• “widow and judge”?
• “persistent widow”?
1st step: only vv. 2-5 = original
• Vv. 1 and 6-8 = interpretations by Lk
• V. 1—need for prayer• 6-8—reflect concerns
about delay of parousia
• Reid: not really about prayer at all!
Two reasons:• First: Judge is not a
good image of God• 2x—doesn’t fear God
and women and men• Just opposite of
biblical picture in 2Chr.
• Second: abhorrent image of God
• Not worthy of worship
A negative example?
• If even an unjust judge would give in…
• How much more easily would God answer our prayers!
• Interpretation of Joseph Fitzmyer
Reid—an easier interpretation:
The widow is an image of God persistently opposing injustice!
Makes sense for 2 reasons:
• This is third of 3 parables in the gospel where main character is a woman
• Other two are images of God…so…
• Second, more profoundly—images God as vulnerable, but ultimately powerful
This is in anticipation of full revelation of God in Jesus on the cross
“His seeming helplessness in the face of his executioners is transformed into the very defeat of the powers of sin and death.”
Imaging God as the persistentwidow—
Moves us away from images of a God who rules by divine
decree and raw—if benevolent—power
Who might be moved by our prayers
Puts us in touch with a God fully revealed in weakness and
powerlessness of the cross(our only hope!)
“weak is the new strong!”
Brings to mind…
• Seemingly powerless women like Ruth
• Or mothers and wives of Plaza de Mayo
• The Holy Spirit, gentle breath of God, stirs women and men to resistance
Points to God as one who suffers
• “I could neither have worshipped nor respected a God who had not himself cried out, ‘My God….”
• “The first heart to break when my son drove off that bridge was God’s”
God’s gentle but persistent resistance to evil
• What Christians share as they share in God’s mission
• God bent on justice, but achieving it justly
• Not just the goal, but the way goal is achieved is at center of mission
• Since mission is the presence of God as such
Justice constitutive of mission
• But never the work of violence
• True of other components of mission as well
• Always in dialogue and vulnerability
• “church proposes…”• Crucified minds!
Conclusion
God’s mission—ultimately ours
We are to live this mission…
With God’s vigor and creativity
With God’s capacity for surprise
With God’s gentleness and peristence against evil and injustice
David Bosch
“Only if we turn out backs on false power and false security can there be authentic Christian mission.”
This grace of mission
• Is ultimately beyond any capacity of ours to imagine
• Or re-imagine!