It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centres of energy and daring those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance [Bobby Kennedy Memorial, spoken South Africa circa 1966 – Arlington National Cemetery]
The last chapter of John Smith’s “Advance Australia Where” is about the impossibility of tying everything off, about the life imperative of loose ends.
Reducing life issues into neat compartments is as easy as nailing jelly to a brick wall.
A never ending stream of insightful courage, goodness and self sacrificing love leads to messy unpredictable non – structures, radical movements that as Kennedy knew lead to the smashing of destructive oppression and systems of power and control.
Radiology is an exact science. Certain factors in the same certain combinations produce predictable outcomes. Black, white and grey scales on digital or physical film tell stories beyond the physical eye. Appearances, knowledge, diagnosis, treatment.
Theology tries to explain “god” in black and white. Ecclesiology tries to explain “church” in black and white to put them both in reachable boxes on the shelves of our searching minds, and so to produce predictable understanding and behaviour.
Nice neat ideas. Nice neat lives. Nice neat “worship” Nice neat “disciples”
Jesus appears to be less than nice and neat. It seems that we have missed his dynamic in our hunger for love, understanding and behavioural modification.
Jesus really drags the tentative toe tippers into a water walking experience! Counter to the culture!!
Read my lips: God and his “church” are not boxed on labelled shelves. Anything that is up there in easy reach is full of white ants! Digital images from factor combinations are impossible when it comes to God and his “church idea”
My search for both was built on that scientific presumption. Trained as a rationalist in school, science and theology the tension is still there for the nailing down of the radiological equivalent. So why can’t I find it?
God and his “church idea” is living, organic, constantly creating, eternal.
What did Jesus Christ envision for this time in history when he said “I will build my church?” Is there anything around that looks like what he saw?
Check this out: ” Why did the [early church] gather? Most evangelicals, and indeed Christians of nearly all persuasions, traditionally answer that churches meet for worship. Paul’s consistent answer was “to build each other up.” The members met to use their personal endowments from the Spirit for the common good. They prayed, read Scripture, encouraged, sang, taught, and prophesied to one another as the Spirit enabled them. Paul never defined ecclesia [church] in terms of a vertical relationship of worship. The meeting was for one another. The gathering was a conversation – a rich, diverse, extended conversation….the focal point of reference was neither a book nor a rite but a set of relationships, and that God communicated himself to them not primarily through the written word and tradition, or mystical experience and cultic activity by through one another.” [Reframing Paul, Mark Strom IVP]
What Jesus had in mind was something always moving amoeba like across the time pages, slip slopping into eternity, unfinished, messy, unpredictable, counter to all the present power and control structures of all time frames, hanging loose, hanging together, growing in love but very much not black and white.
And why is this a pain to swallow?
Male control issues.
Let grace flow Peter Breen.
Urban mission in Brisbane.
Peter and Mavis Breen.
Discussion
No comments for “Don’t ‘Box in’ the Church”