No Bloody Abstractions
“Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”
The Gospel of Luke, "On the Road to Emmaus"
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"The story of Jesus as he goes to the cross is the story we all know: the story of what happens when our vision of the world and of ourselves come crashing down."
N.T. Wright, "Preaching the Cross in Dark Times"
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Dear Kate,
The Passion week is finally upon us. I don't really know how I am feeling now; there's no getting used to this, much more so than with Christmas.
In our "post-Christian," secularized world, people would still build rituals with artifacts of the past, allow ourselves to get sentimental rather than cynical about, for example, being together with our family, opening our hearts up just a little, even handing out goodwill to all, however abstractly.
Abstract, yes, that's the word.
There are things we know--wish to be true. But we also know, to follow through with our wish we will need to face the rest of the year, when the well-wishing is no longer a viable position to "make life work." I can afford to make a bigger donation or cut up some turkeys when the bells are jingling, but the sound will dissipate soon enough into thin air, and then we will need to leave each other alone to confront (and be confronted by) the "reality," the specific ugliness, difficulties, even impossibilities of life, made ever more ugly, difficult and impossible by people around us (or so we think).
What is ever truly good, that we can live for its cause all the remains of our days? Who can we trust to have our best interests in mind, in heart, and in-deed? Hope can only be articulated, if ever, in abstract terms and with the help of bloodless stand-in caricatures, such as Santa Claus and Easter Bunnies. How is one to get specific about "the reason for the hope" one has without finally being embarrassed by another false promise, another broken dream, another make-believe?
This coming Saturday we will use the video above to speak to each other about a hope that is specific, every bloody detail of it. Here are some questions for us to think about:
1) When was the last time you gave a specific account of the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ dying on the cross and rising again on the third day? How was it told to you when you first heard what this Gospel is about?
2) Jesus Himself was the first "evangelist" to give an account of this Good News, on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24: 13-35). How did He tell it?
3) What are the challenges to speak the way Jesus spoke, in the world we are living in now? Can we actually get so specific about this hope, when it is located so specifically in a very different time and place?
Yours, Alex
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