Loving Your Neighbor…Now

(Community Worship in the Park)

It is so beautiful out, and all of you look so wonderful gathered here in community.

Although it takes some work to get this service together, this community worship in the park is one of my favorite services of the year.

Just look around – these are our friends and family and neighbors and brothers and sisters in Christ!
And getting together like this, without caring about what church we belong to, without worrying about who is welcome and who isn’t… well, this is an awful lot of what I think the holy banquet of God will be like on Resurrection Day.
On that great gettin’ up morning, we will just pull up a chair and find our place around the table.
Soon and very soon, we’ll be in the presence of the King, in the place of no more dying and no more crying.
Heavenly music will ring out, the sounds of violence will cease, tears will be wiped from every face, the wolf will dwell with the lamb, enemies will learn to love, and peace shall be fulfilled.
All of those images take us to the city of God, the new creation, the heaven that awaits us. We read about them in scriptures, we sing about them in hymns, our hearts are full of hopes and dreams about that reality.
And this community gathered to worship our Lord and to share around his table this morning is a glimpse of that future. It is like the taste that you sneak from the pot simmering on the stove an hour before dinner is ready.
As Paul reminds us here in chapter 13… our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here.

That heavenly reality is just. Around. The. corner…

So I want you to close your eyes for a moment.

Imagine walking around through the City of God.

How will you greet your neighbors?

How will you treat the people that on earth were your enemies?

Do you hear anger and shouting? Or joy and laughter?

Ae you spending your days trying to get what is yours? Or sharing in the abundant gifts of God?

In everything that we do, here on earth today, we should live and love in anticipation of this reality.

We are called to live as if that Kingdom of God in which Jesus reigns IS the reality we find ourselves in.

As we open our eyes, yes, we find ourselves back in Marengo, Iowa. We find ourselves in the twenty-first century. We find ourselves in a world that is full of anger and violence, a culture that glorifies partying and licentiousness, a society that says “me-first, and screw the rest.”

But that doesn’t mean that we have to join them.

No, as Christians, we are called to a better way.

We are children of God.

And we are called to love.

But what do we mean by love? It is such a commonly used word that it has lost almost all significance for the Christian faith.

When Paul uses the word love here in Romans, he uses the greek word: agape. Agape is completely self-less love. It is love directed towards others. It has no pre-requisites, no conditions. Agape love doesn’t depend upon any loveable qualities the person you are loving possesses. It is love that expects nothing back in return.

Love is not a feeling.

Love is a choice.

Love is an action. Love is what we do… or do not do… to and for other people.

And Paul reminds us that all of those commandments – like don’t commit adultery, and don’t steal, and don’t be jealous of your neighbors possessions – all of them can be summed up with five words: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Love is what we were created to do. All of the law, all of those commands, are just put in place to help us remember – Oh, yeah, I’m supposed to love you.

The big question is… Why? Why should I love my neighbor when he borrowed my lawnmower last month and broke it? Why should I love that person who always cuts me off as I drive to work? Why should I have any love towards people who seek to do harm to me and my loved ones? Why should I love someone who has done damage beyond repair in my life?

It is a good question.

And Paul responds with one word: salvation.

You have been saved.

Which means the Lord of the Universe took one good look at you – with all of your faults and sins and mistakes and imperfections – and said, “I love you anyways.”

That holy, unconditional act of love that we call the cross, was freely given to anyone who would receive it. Whether we deserved it or not.

We love… because he first loved us.

Our love is an outpouring of the love that we ourselves have received in our salvation.

AND… as Paul reminds us, the fulfillment of that salvation is near. The time is coming when the night will end and the day will dawn. This world will pass away and the reign of Christ will come.

That holy, awesome, heavenly reality that we closed our eyes and imagined is just around the corner.

So why would we want to live in darkness? Why would we ever want to sink down to the ways of this world when right now, we can live in the light.

Right now, we can join together with other believers.

Right now, we can sing the heavenly songs.

Right now, we can laugh together instead of bicker.

Right now, we can seek peace with our enemies.

Right now, we can wipe tears from the eyes of the hurting and the grieving.

Right now, we can care for the sick and feed the hungry and clothe the naked.
Right now, we can love.
As The Message translates our final verse for this morning… get out of bed and get dressed! Don’t loiter and linger, waiting until the very last minute. Dress yourselves in Christ, and be up and about!
Right now, put on Jesus Christ.
That means that we spend time each morning in prayer – asking for God to guide us in our actions.
It means that we spend time in the scriptures – seeking wisdom for our daily lives.
It means that we break bread with fellow believers in order to remember the unconditional love of Jesus Christ in our lives.

It means that we don’t just wear a cross or wear a t-shirt that says we are Christian, or wear a bracelet that proclaims our faith – but we actually ask ourselves, “What would Jesus do?” in the situations of our day… and then we do it.

When we put on Christ, when we intentionally “wear” Jesus Christ throughout our day, people can see it.

We become light, shining out in the darkness, reminding people that a new day is coming.

We are the people of God, gathered together in this public place this morning, to proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord and that we want to follow him.

So when you leave this place… will you slip back into the darkness and go back to the ways of this world,
Or will you love your neighbors, like Jesus loved you, and will you be his witness?

Peace without Surrender

I was driving around this afternoon and caught a segment from BBC World News on the radio.  It was a story about how the peace talks between Israel and Palestine are being percieved in Israel itself.  One of the men being interviewed said very adamantly – I want peace, but I don’t want to surrender.

I kept listening to him say those words and found myself so frustrated by this attitude that says the only peace that is acceptable is the one that comes on my terms.

This week, our gospel lesson from Luke in the lectionary teaches us that we can’t have it both ways.  We can’t hang on to our own desires and hopes and dreams and things and also follow Christ.  We can’t have the peace that passes all understanding unless we are willing to surrender it all.

The truth is, most of the time, we think we don’t have what it takes.  Our families are too important to us. Our jobs and that sense of security is too important.  We aren’t willing to put it all on the line and so, the irony is that we do surrender – but to the wrong things.  We surrender to the idea that we will fail.  We surrender to the pressure of family values.  We surrender to patriotism and nationalism and consumerism.  We surrender thinking that we will keep our lives… but in the end, we will do nothing but lose it all.
Christ turns our whole lives upside down.  To save your life, you must lose it. To be exaulted, you must be humbled. To be first, you must be last.
No where in the gospel does it say that if you go to church on Sundays and the rest of the week work really hard at your job and raise a good family then someday after you die you’ll go to this happy and wonderful place called Heaven. I wish it did, but it simply doesn’t.
No, the gospel tells us that we must hate our parents and our spouses and children and put it all on the line and bear our crosses – and then we will be his disciples.
I have to admit, I’ve never been a person to think too intently about what waits us after this life.  I’m not the type of Christian who has her heart set on heaven.  I don’t care that much about blissful and peaceful eternity.  What I want is for the sick to be healed.  I want the poor to be lifted up.  I want the oppressed to go free. I want to experience Emmanuel – God-with-us – to be in the presence of God and to know that all things are well.
Those are the words and the promises that I find in scripture.  I believe in the God that will set all things right… and that includes my sorry-ass. And I think if I got to experience that for even a moment – that would be enough. I have to trust that if God says – turn it all over to me and I will make something beautiful of your life – that God means what she says.  Lay it all on the line…
Maybe the tricky part is that line.  You see, we draw our lines in very different places than Jesus would draw lines.  We draw lines around our family and say – I’m not willing to sacrifice this.  Or we draw lines around our jobs – and will sacrifice it all for the next paycheck.  We draw lines in the sand and say that this particular issue – whether it’s abortion or animal rights or Islamic religious centers or the creation of a Palestinian state – is the most important thing and that we will never give up until we have gotten our way and if you stand outside of that line then you are the enemy.  We refuse to surrender.  We refuse to give in.  And in the end, I think we loose it all.
Because you know what – Christ draws a line.  He doesn’t draw it around our houses or cars or children or institutions or issues – but he draws it right down the center of our lives.  And Jesus says, leave it all, come and follow me.
So I’m turning my life over.  I’m surrendering all of those things that I think I want and that this world tells me are so important. Here it is, Lord. Here I am, Lord. Use me to feed the hungry.  Use me to heal the sick.  Use me to lift up the brokenhearted.  Use me to speak the truth in love to those who preach lies.  Use me to stand with the oppressed.  Use me to say “no” to a world obsessed with more. And if by chance the world turns against me – so be it.

Already/Not Yet

Every Friday night we have dinner with the family – as we all set the table and prepare for everyone to come to the table and sit, and especially as all of the food is there and we are just waiting for the time to pray, my niece and nephew like to sneak bites from the food being set at the table.

The table is one of my favorite images of the kingdom of God… a great big huge table where are all welcome, all are loved.
And the amazing thing about the Christian community that is born out of the ministry of Jesus is that we today are like those little kids at the dinner table – and here and there we catch a foretaste of the glorious banquet.
In the Acts of the Apostles, Luke’s entire goal is to write down what happens to the disciples after Jesus leaves them. His goal is to document those early days of ministry, the birth of the church, the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God.

And if you went home and spent some time just reading straight through the book – you would find that it reads a lot like a journal. While the beginning chapters recall the story of what happened before Luke joined up with the band of disciples, the rest of Acts is Luke’s personal account of what happens in each leg of their journey. It is his personal witness to the Kingdom of God that has already taken root in the world. And, it is his testimony that the Kingdom of God was not yet fully in this world.

Now, the Kingdom of God is a phrase that we hear quite often.

John the Baptist preached that the Kingdom of God was at hand… just as he was preaching that Jesus was about to enter their midst.

When Jesus healed the sick, he said that the Kingdom of God has come near you. (Mt. 10:7)

But also on the gospels we hear all sorts of stories and parables that tell us funny things like the kingdom of God is like a tiny seed, or like yeast, or a priceless pearl. (Mt 13)

We hear things like the kingdom is hard for the rich to enter, but that it already belongs to little children.

We hear that the kingdom is something we are supposed to seek out, but that it’s not necessarily outside of us, but within and among us (Luke 17).

But I think the most confusing thing is that the kingdom has already come among us… and that each week, we pray for it to come in the Lord’s prayer.

The Kingdom of God is already here, but not yet fully here. This morning, I want to help us to see three ways that the Kingdom of God is already… but not yet.

Our first already/not yet has to do with the one we worship.

Already… Christ, the bearer of the Kingdom has been among us.

As the Acts of the Apostles begins, Luke reminds his reader that there is a whole other book that was written about the ministry of Christ from the beginning until the day when Christ ascended into heaven. But just in case they forgot the last bit of that story, Luke tells it again.

Jesus suffered for us and died for us and then by God’s power he showed up again – alive as ever and for forty days he stayed with the apostles. And he taught them about his Kingdom.

It was a kingdom that they had witnessed when the hungry were fed and the blind were healed and the oppressed were set free. It was a kingdom whose power was Jesus. The kingdom was where Jesus was.

And after forty days, Jesus takes his disciples out of the city and they begin to think that this is the moment they had all been waiting for. One of them cries out – Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom?!

Not yet…. The response Jesus gives is that it is not for us to know the times for these things. Not yet is the Kingdom fully come. And as a sign of that fact, Christ is lifted up before their very eyes – not to initiate the Kingdom of God… but he is taken away from their sight. Not yet, is the Kingdom of Christ fully present among us.

What we are left with are promises… the promise from Christ that he will be with us always. The promise of the Holy Spirit – the comforter and advocate who bears within us the seeds of the Kingdom. And the prophetic witness we have in the pages of Revelation that remind us that just as Christ came to be with us once… In the new creation, God will come and be with us again. “See,” the prophet John writes, “the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with him.” (Rev. 21:3)

As the church, we are sandwiched between these experiences of God. We carry with us the memories of Christ’s life and teaching and death and resurrection and we witness to these things. We share the story. Just like kids at the dinner table who sneak a piece of broccoli out of the bowl and quickly pass it to one another – we are eager and excited about this glimpse. But at the same time, we wait. We long for the time when all things will be ready – when all will be present at the table, and when God Godself will be with us.

Our second already/not yet has to do with life and death in the Kingdom of God.

Already, the disciples have witnessed how Christ brought back to life children who were dead and his own friend Lazarus. Already, the power to heal in Jesus’ name has been transferred to the disciples. Miracles have been seen everywhere – including the most amazing miracle of all… Christ died for our sins and then was raised from the tomb. Sin, death, and evil have been defeated for ever more! As we follow the apostles through Luke’s account in Acts – we see signs and wonders of more healings and resurrections, of life and life abundant!

But not yet… Lazarus would eventually die once again. Each of those apostles would all be killed proclaiming the new life of the Kingdom of God. In our own lives today, we experience suffering and pain, death and loss. We grieve, we weep, we mourn.

Brandon’s great-grandma passed away on Thursday at the age of 99 years. She lived a long full life, but we have all been acutely aware for some time now that at some point, her body would fail and she would no longer be with us. Death is the reality of human life. And when it comes, it is not always a sad thing.

Not yet have the promises of the Kingdom of God been fulfilled. For we hear in Revelation that the time will come when the new heaven and new earth are among us. And in that time and in that place, Death will be no more. Reality as we know it, with its cycles of life and death and life again will be no more. There will only be life. Life abundant.

As the church, our foretaste of that life comes when we baptize little children and we place them in God’s hands. Our foretaste of that Kingdom life comes at the altar table when we eat the bread of life and the cup of salvation. Our foretaste of that Kingdom comes at every single Christian funeral… when we carry our fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters and friends across the threshold of death and place them into God’s hands. As the church, we proclaim the reality that death has been defeated, even as we are standing beside the grave. Like little children who stand on their tiptoes and peer over the edge of the counter, we see the dessert that awaits us. We know the truth of the end of our stories. This morning at our graduation breakfast, Wilda shared the story of a woman who wanted to be buried with her fork because she knew, that the best was yet to come.

Our final already/not yet has to do with the joy of the Kingdom of God

Already, we know that when we abide with Christ, when we join in the fellowship of other Christians that we experience joy. As Christ gathered with his disciples in the upper room before he was betrayed he breathed into them the spirit of peace. And we hear stories from the first books of Acts about the joy and the community, the singing and the fellowship that the early Christians experience.

Whenever two or more are gathered, there Christ is among them. We support one another in our walk of faith and together we know the good news of the Kingdom of God.

But not yet fully. There are difficult days. There are times when our church brothers and sisters drive us batty. We argue and fight. We have our ups and downs. We join together as the Christian community around the dinner table, but before we eat, we must confess all of the ways that we have hurt and neglected one another since we met last. Our lives are not yet perfect, and our joy is not yet complete.

And to be sure, there is much that takes away joy from our lives. There is sickness and pain. There is oppression and want in our world. We turn on the television sets at night and the last thing that we find there is good news. To put on a smile and pretend that everything is okay and that we are happy in the face of all of that trouble is dishonest and hypocritical.

In the inbetween time between the already and the not yet, the church has the blessed opportunity to find joy among one another. We share what we have and experience true fellowship. But at the same time, united by our faith and the joy of what God intends for us, we can confront the pain and suffering and injustice of the world with a rightous anger. We can speak out against those places where God’s joy and peace has not been made complete, we can weep with those who suffer, and we can hold forth a vision of the day that is spoken of in Revelation – the day when weeping and crying and pain will be no more.

We gather today as children before the dinner table. Gradually, pieces of the meal are being set for us. And here and there we catch a wiff of the banquet, we sneak a taste of the bounty, we eagerly await with one another the glorious feast that awaits us. But we wait… until what we see already becomes the glorious feast that is yet to come.

Hope or Despair? Birth Pangs of the Kingdom

As I started exploring and reading our texts for this week, I was instantly transported back to my best friend’s kitchen – 1997. I was a sophomore in high school and my family had recently started going to church. I knew the basics of the Christian faith, but was becoming aware of how muc more there was to the bible.

The late 1990’s was a time of religious fervor – at least as far as I remember them. Mega churches were just starting to be noticed, the Left Behind Series of books were on everyone’s reading lists, and in my high school bible studies and prayer meetings were popping up all over the place. Oh – and the year 2000 was on the horizon and no one quite knew what to expect.

For the most part, I was a typical high schooler and oblivious to what was going on in the rest of the world. Living in rural Iowa, that scope of vision was even smaller. So as a new Christian, sitting in my best friend’s kitchen, my entire world was rocked when my friends and One of their moms started talking about end times prophecy.

I can’t remember why we started talking about it, but before I knew it they had pulled out these time lines and charts and bibles and were explaining to me what order things were going to happen for Christ to come back again. They talked with such certainty, such confidence, and I remember feeling nothing but lost.

In fact, my stomach turned as visions of the world being destroyed passed before my eyes. I remember feeling clammy when I thought about billions of people dying in the tribulation. I was terrified by descriptions of the seven seals being opened.

Perhaps most of all, as I sat on that kitchen stool, I remember how unprepared I felt. My friends knew all of this information – but more importantly, they believed and were confident in the face of impending doom! I, on the other hand, was uncomfortable, had questions I was afraid to ask, and if they were right, I was pretty sure that I wasn’t going to be among the faithful. That assurance they felt that told them they would escape the troubles… yeah, I didn’t have that.

I mostly avoided talking about it with my friends, but I nearly gave up on Christianity after a series of those conversations. I started reading the Left Behind books and I was so upset by them I stopped a few books in. The picture of God that was presented by them and by all of this prophecy just didn’t match up with the God I had met in my United Methodist youth group. There we talked about love and grace and forgiveness and becoming a new creation… and all I could see in what my friends were so sure of was judgment and destruction.

In some ways – we get that same kind of feeling from our gospel text this morning. We are told to be alert at all times so that we have the strength to escape from all of these things that are about to take place. We are told that people will faint from fear of what is to come because the heavens will be shaken. I hear a lot of doom and gloom in these few passages that come to us from the gospel of Luke.

But I hear these words very differently today than I did ten years ago. After we got past the Y2K scare and I started reading the Bible more, I realized that the sure and certain scenarios presented on those time lines in my friend’s kitchen weren’t the only possibility presented to us in the Bible.

As we have talked about in Sunday School recently – I started to see that Revelation isn’t a schedule for the apocalypse but a book of hope in secret code for a community being persecuted. I have now read just as many verses in Paul’s letters that talk about not knowing what is going to happen in the future, as I have the ones that seem to have the inside scoop. And – perhaps more importantly – I have started seeing the scriptures as a whole, and not in isolated verses.

When we look at the entire scope of the scriptures – we see the story of a God who created us out of love and has been continually yearning for relationship with us. We see the story of a God whose response to our endless denial was to come and be born in our midst. We see the story of a God who lived among us to show us the path of the righteous, and who died so that we could follow him. We see the story of a God who is not interested in scrapping this world and starting over, but who re-creates and redeems and transforms even the heavens and the earth.

Read in light of that story – these verses in Luke sound very different. People will faint and tremble not because terrible things are looming – but because they THINK terrible things are looming… they don’t understand what is happening… they don’t understand the signs.

About a year ago – my husband and I had some of our own signs to decipher. We go over to his sister’s house every Friday night to have dinner with their family. It is a wonderful time to eat good food and play games and hang out with our niece and nephew. A couple of weeks went by and I started to notice that my sister-in-law had stopped having her usual glass of wine with dinner. Then I noticed that she was eating less and less at our meals and was tired and seemed to be losing weight. And I started to get slightly worried, because I didn’t understand what was happening. Was she sick? Was there something that we should be concerned about?

And then the announcement came – Bevin was pregnant! She had stopped eating and was losing weight because she had such terrible morning sickness. She was tired because there was new life growing inside of her!

I had completely misread the signs.

If we go back a little bit further in Luke, chapter 21 this morning, Jesus is trying to tell his disciples not to be afraid by what might come next – by what appears to be happening around them.

They ask him for a simple answer – when are these things going to happen? How will we know? And in response he tells them not to listen to those people who say that the time is near. He tells them not to be afraid by the signs of the times. Or as the Message translation puts these verses: “When you hear of wars and uprisings, keep your head and don’t panic. This is routine history and no sign of the end … nation will fight against nation… over and over. Huge earthquakes will occur in various places. There will be famines. You’ll think at times that the very sky is falling.”

But those are just the outside symptoms. They are similar to the things I was seeing in my sister-in-law: weight loss and not eating and I thought something was wrong because I misinterpreted the signs.

Jesus goes on to talk about a particular time when it will seem as if all is lost, or as the Message bible puts it – “everything will come to a head.” And at that moment – when things appear to be their worst, when all appears hopeless – that is when the Son of Man – that is when Jesus will be seen.

I think all of this would be a whole lot easier to understand if Luke didn’t leave out and important detail. I think he left it out because Mark and Luke have almost identical passages. If you look at Luke chapter 21 and Mark chapter 13 – there are many similarities except for one… after Jesus reminds them that there will continue to be wars and natural disasters he says: This is but the beginning of the birth pangs. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.

I was with a group of pastors a few weeks ago in Indianapolis and we were reading this exact same passage in Mark. One woman spoke up and said – I’ve had five children… I know exactly what Jesus is talking about!!! It always seems to be the worst, it always seems like you just won’t survive, right before your child is born. That’s when the pain is the worst and that’s because you are growing and stretching and waiting for this new life to emerge. That’s a really different way to understand this passage.

Paul talks about the groaning of creation, he talks about the birth pangs and waiting for redemption and if we think about God’s Kingdom being born in our midst, its going to take a little bit of change and transformation. Things will be shaken up a bit just like when birth happens in our lives.

We could look around us at the melting of the icecaps and tsunamis and tornadoes and the strange weather we have had this past year and we could be worried about the end. We could look at the violence in our own community – much less in the world – in this past year and think that we are on a downhill slide into immorality and destruction. We could look at the wars we are engaged in – especially in the middle east – as signs that all is lost… as the impending day of judgment and doom.

Or we can listen to the scriptures. In our passage today, it says Stand up and raise our heads because what is coming is not destruction – but redemption. What is being born in our midst is the new creation.

Today is the first Sunday of the Christian year.

Today is the start of a season of hope in the midst of despair, the season of light when everything appears to be dark.

If last week we prayed for Christ the King to come on earth – then today is the day that we start looking for the Kingdom.

Today is the day we look around and see the signs of the kingdom everywhere. We see it in the hunger that young people have to understand and learn more about who God is. We see it in the hunger we experience as we gather to worship and pray. We see it in that spark of hope that is in our hearts – even though we could look at the world and think radically different things.

I think in many ways this church understands that because two years ago you were faced with a tough decision. You looked around and church attendance was declining and you had to decide if you were going to go to part time or stay with a full time pastor. Some churches in that situation would have said, well – we are pretty much hopeless.

But you said that something new is being born in our midst – and we are going to wait and see what happens. That’s why we light this candle today. We light this candle remembering that hope is just around the corner that the promises of God are almost in our reach. That all of the groaning and birth pangs around us are merely getting us ready for what is to come. There is no fear to be had. There is no trembling on this day. Because God is coming near to us. God is coming and so let us stand up and raise up our heads and await the glory of our King. Amen and Amen.

Moltmann Conversation – Eschatology/Science

Billboard in MN, said “Unless you confess God cannot bless”, more I thought about it, the more uncomfortable I got. It seems like a reformed idea, but I’m not sure it fits. It seems to me that God is by nature a non-contingent being. God isn’t sitting around waiting for me to do something, I don’t give God the power to forgive me. Once we do _____, then Jesus will return. Almost like God is handcuffed waiting for us to do certain things… If ___, then God _____. But this seems to be against the nature of God: I agree! You cannot make as a human being conditions to God. This is what it means to make God an object, and idol. God will bless whom God will bless, whether you confess or not. And with the relationship of God’s blessing and your professing – the initiative is God’s, He will bless and then you will be led to confess. God is God and not a bargain partner for you in your religion. This is completely heathen! The original idea of other religions in the world is ____ we give sacrifices and then God will bless us – but this is not Xian at all. It is a denial of the freedom of God. I am opposing completely this bargaining with destiny or with God. If I do this, God must do that – this is pure commitalism.

So let me ask you about Jesus. If God as subject has complete freedom and God’s activity is not contingent upon our activity. Yet Jesus teaching about prayer is almost unequivocally – be persistent and God will give you what you want. (widow & judge, keep asking for bread): These are not the only sayings of Jesus about prayer. Whenever you pray, God knows already what you need, otherwise it would be nonsense to pray. The hearing of God preceeds your prayer.

What does that mean about God’s relationship to time as we have experienced it? Can I pray for something in the past? What do you want to pray for? There is a long tradition of prayer for the dead. Medieval tradition of praying for the dead. Luther – pray 3 or 4 times for the dead and then hand it over to God b/c they are already included in the prayer to the lord. Calvin, don’t do that. I think I am praying for the dead, because the dead are not dead. They died, but we cannot say they are dead now. For Luther, they are sleeping until the day of resurrection. For Calvin, they are watching over us. Tradition from Asia – the dead are not in a modern sense dead and gone…. They are present and if you believe Romans 14 that Christ is the Lord of the living and the dead then we have a community with the dead in Christ and a community of hope because we were raised from death together. And therefore we must overcome this modern understanding of death as annihilation. We should learn from the ancestor veneration in Africa and Asia again. This would help and then you may pray for your grandmother.

• This idea of zimzum, which you borrow from kaabalism Judaism – I understand it as prior to creation, God was everything and in order to create something other, God withdrew Godself enough to make space for a relation, an object, creation with which God could have a relationship. Two questions: 1) what relationship does God’s self-relationship relate to panenthism 2) is part of God’s self-limitation that God voluntarily bound Godself to time? I am not the first one who took up this idea from kabalistic thinking – in Xian tradition for 300 yrs. Before God created, God decided to become the creator. 1st act of creation was not on the outside, on the inside. Out of his unlimited possibilities he took this one – to become a creator. He contracted himself from all the other possibilities to this one – to be the creator of the world. 2nd he created the world in time and space. So before he created heaven and earth there must be a womb/room place to which heaven and earth could be place – this is the place of creation and this is due to a contraction of God that another reality – the limited and finite reality of heaven and earth can be and can co-exist with God. The coexistence of a finite world with an infinite being presupposes a contraction so that they can both be there. This is the reason why there is freedom of the creatures… that there is creativity of the earth to the creatures in Genesis 1:26/24 – this is important. We can… whoever of you that has children, knows that at the beginning you must do everything for a child so that it can grow – but then 10-12 you must take away your sovereignty so that your child can grow and have freedom and responsibility and this is very creative to retreat into yourself to let another being be. This is the other side of creation. Normally we understand creation as act – but to take oneself back to oneself to let another being develop and flourish is very creative

• Very much in keeping with the activity of God in Jesus and the hymn of Christ in Phillipians: If you put it in Trinitarian terms it’s completely understandable b/c the F/S/HS are kenotic beings, giving self to the others and receiving the others into the selves, so you already have in perichoresis the self-limitation, so not only outside to the creation, but the true essence of the being of the son of God in relation to the father and the holy spirit. The kenosis is not only God’s acting to the outside in Christ, but already inside the Trinity – the persons self-giving to each other in the eternal Trinitarian love.

• So, do you think if God has a being by nature that is timeless, is part of God’s self-limitation that God has bound himself to time as part of his own self-limitation, that God is experiencing time with us? Yes – otherwise he could not be the Living God! The Living God has living, limited relationships to Israel, to the fathers, to Christ, to the church, etc. they are lively by limited relationships, otherwise you have a dead God. But if you have a living God then he must be able to have life giving relationships to other living beings. To put it more abstractly.

• Some of us who follow your theology are accused of being too Hegalian – that God is simply the unfolding of History… it is very easy to accuse a german theologian to be Hegalian, but Hegel did not develop an understanding of the Trinity – he had an understanding of world history as an autobiography of God, but this is not a good theology. He developed this dialectical understanding of world history as a history of God out of a self-consciouslness of the divine subject. But this had nothing to do with the God in Jesus. Hegelian closed system – nothing new can happen under the sun, no eschatology. Is this panentheistic? This terrible term was brought into the debate by a Hegelian – it means everything is in God, but this is only one side of the biblical understanding of the presence of God, the other part is that God is in everything! Understanding of OT, Shechinah – God dwells on high and in the souls and is dwelling in Israel – the cloud/fire – the indwelling of God. Behind the covenant with Israel is the intention: I will dwell among the Israelites. In the NT, you have a mutual indwelling especially in John & letters of John – the perichoresis, the mutual indwelling. I in you, you in me., remain in love – remains in God and God in him…. Much more than panentheism! …. The orthodox theology has a sacramental understanding of nature b/c God is already in everything which has life. This is alsot the understanding of the presence of God/HS that God is in everything in John Calvin (Institutes Book 1). For Calvin, the glory of God is already reflecting itself in all things. The burning fires of God are surrounding ourselves form all sides, but we don’t have eyes to see it! Had a strong understanding of creation in the HS. In Trinitarian terms, quite understandable. Theistic terms – you may end up in pantheism – then the question arises was God in the tsunami, with the terrorists. So I would put it all in Trinitarian terms and avoid an abstract philosophical theism.

• Also embrace an Easter theosis – God became man so that man can become God (Athanasius): Martin Luther had a wonderful idea…. God became human being so that we could, proud and unhappy gods become truly human in community with Jesus. God became human to liberate us from our god complex. Hubris is playing God with God – making conditions to the sovereignty of God.

• Original sin – Augustine thought was impt – condition genetically passed on that left God no choice but to have this transaction. On Original sin, Judaism doesn’t have a doctrine of original sin: I think these ideas of Augustine are leading to a Xian type of Gnosticism. That procreating is already bad and that sex is… original sin is like aids which we deliver from one generation from another and you had better stop this and become a monk or priest to stop this procreating of original sin – this is Gnosticism. This is not following the OT understanding of life and the joy of life. We have received life and we should give life to another generation and those who cannot are poor. Original sin has nothing to do with sex and procreation – the idea is more collective guilt. This was the understanding of Luther in the articles – one fundamental sin, capital sin and this is general. So everyone is guilty of everything which happens in the world because everything is related to everything – same as Dostoevsky – collective destiny because we share into everything and everything shares with us and we need liberation of this collective guilt of humankind. This has nothing to do with Adam or Eve – in the NT, still debate of whether sin came through Adam or Eve! This is all speculation I think. We can follow the church understanding that guilt came into the world through Cain and Adam through brother murder and since that time there is one against the other and there is war and murder in the world – this is more realistic I think.

• Many of us grew up in a church that had this forensic transaction that God’s anger could only be appeased by this sacrifice of the Son – we’ve talked about “identification” atonement but there area also scriptures that talk about the sacrificial nature of the crucifixion: Other religions, I give so that you may give. If you don’t sacrifice enough or in the right way, the Gods became angry and you experienced disease/earthquake – so whenever these things happen you look around for whether there was one who didn’t sacrifice/offer enough! Happen to Jonah. This is all not Biblical. The scapegoat is giving by GOD! He is not asking this from the people of Israel, but giving this to Israel so that the sins can be put there and then the goat carries the sins away to the desert. God is reconciling himself with the world – he doesn’t need a sacrifice. He is himself giving his own son to reconcile the world to himself. 2 Cor 5 – the initiative is God’s initiative. They used the old temple language, but something completely different is meant – it is the love of God by which he reconciles the whole cosmos to himself.

• If that’s the reformed part of your theology coming out so strongly – it makes God always the protagonist – God is always the initiator of the action between humans and Godself. How is that… in the Trinity image of perichoresis… there is so much in that relationship that it overflows and sweeps all of creation into that. How is God in that way the protagonist, in allowing that love to overflow – in creating so much love: Love takes God outside of himself – he wants to communicate the joy of his love. He creates creatures which can resonate this beauty and love of God. So he is not in need of the creation – the creation is a result of his overflowing joy and love.

• Speaking of love… known as eschatological theologian – seems to me both liberals and conservatives have a negative view of the end. Liberals: church is shrinking, society more banal; Conservative: when Jesus comes back there is going to be a shitstorm. It was good news when Jesus came the first time, it will be good the second time – but this is not the overwhelming understanding today: If there is a new creation, new heaven, new earth – new song this is not the end but the beginning! The new creation will be the eternal creation so we must look forward not to the end but the beginning – the beginning is not behind us, its before us – the best is still to come. This is a certain kind of dispensationalist which is not a Christian idea – the old Jewish idea that God created the world in seven days, so the world history will follow seven dispensations. With every dispensation, the world grows older and older and our time is running out. It’s coming shorter and shorter to the end. You can think about this without mentioning Christ. Christ had just one part in it between disp. 5 & 6 or 6& 7 what is lacking is the New Beginning which we experience in the resurrection! There is already a new beginning inside of world history in anticipation of the general resurrection and the new creation…. The new has already begun, the future of God is not far away or very short, but has already begun with the coming of Christ/resurrection of Christ. Read the prophets – don’t remember the things of old – behold, I create a new thing! Old and new are the categories of God’s work in world history, not dispensations.

• My synthesis of Moltmann and Gotteman? Is that there is this horizon that is approaching us – and as I grow, my interpretive horizon is growing and at some point, these horizons meet and this is the eschaton when them meet? They met already! Because the eschatological horizon has already opened up with Christ and the Spirit of the resurrection so you can speak of this horizon, otherwise you would develop your own person horizons into the unknown. If you still have resurrection hope, you develop your personal relations in the horizon of your life inside the horizon of the resurrection – Morning has come!

• Do you think there will be a moment in time that is the paraousia? That humans will experience a moment in time of Jesus return? Yes. Well, we have this time of linear concept of time, future/present/past – this is the time of our clock. In linear time, Jesus will not come – otherwise Jesus will come at 10:15 tomorrow on a train from Chicago… this is impossible to think. We also have kairos time – good opportunity. Our life experiences are not according to clock time, but kairos – a good time. This kairos is an anticipation of the eschatological moment wit hthe trumpets and the dead will stand up/rise up. So you can put it in terms of fulfilled time. In a fulfilled time, for fulfilled life, you don’t care about the clock anymore. You live so to speak in an eternal moment. Therefore whenever you come into an intensity of living, the clock goes away. Clock time is not very good understanding of time. I had a friend who visited and interviewed an Indian swami and said I must go and the Indian said you have the clock and we have time.

• Truly reformed person doesn’t think we cooperate with God in anything – yet you write, of us being co-creators with God and cooperating with God in creation, particularly in your ecological theology: Paul spoke about his work as a co-creator with God. I don’t think putting all the responsibility on God is a good Christian understanding of God’s presence in the world. It’s not that God has no hands apart from our hands, but that God enables us, gives us chances, and energy to work in accordance with his will. To resonante with his tune and to take responsibility to which includes response! If God would be all-in-all already, the reformed pastor would be right, but he is not all-in all, it is our responsibility. I think he was speaking to come of age and not little children to go and do anything. I think Calvin would disagree with this reformed pastor.

• Daniel Harrell – Nature’s Witness – my question/interest goes back to testimony of science that it brings to our understanding – creation bears the handprint of God. Trinity in creation esp that creation that science portrays for us is rife with decay, death, disease – all of this preceding the advent of the new creation. Who is the Trinitarian God in creation giving this nature? I think the fundamental question of natural sciences is do you understand what you know. Our knowledge is duplicating, we know everything it’s in the computers, but do we understand what we need. We need a hermeneutics of nature along with scientists. Interpret science of nature explained by scientists. Scientists explain, but we need understanding. EG: a doctor measures your blood pressure/temp/data from your body to tell if you feel not well. He takes the data as symptoms of a disease. He interprets the symptoms of a disease you have – then therapy can begin. Similar w/ natural science. They take the data, we must understand as symptoms of whatever we suspect and interpret these to understand what we know. And to understand the data we get from climate research and economic research as we put them together to see them as symptoms of the coming natural catastrophe and then we can react and put therapy in as requires to prevent the danger that is coming with a hermeneutics of nature.

• I would agree with that… original question – when you see what science reveals regarding nature, what is the Trinitarian interp. Of nature that comes to bear: we put whatever we know of nature in the transcendent dimension. The evolution of live – we see that they all belong to the same family. The transcendent dimension there is no progression of value – the primitive forms are just as important as the advanced lives! Bring us to Darwin understanding of evolution. Second – we can see the working of the HS as the immanence of transcendence in every complicated being forming their self-transcendence. Or biologists say more complex life forms are open systems, transcending themselves. This is an expression of the immanence of the transcendent spirit – there can be no self-organization in the natural world with out transcendence!

• So then part of the struggle for some Xians who try to see Darwinian evolution through a theological grid is the problem of decay/death/deformity – how is that an manifestation of the spirit? Is it a fallout of the spirit? You must differentiate between the HS herself and the energies of the HS – lots of different gifts of the HS – every Xian is filled with energies, therefore they form a community of different gifts and different energies. It is similar in the world There are different energies/gifts/ one spirit. The annihilating energies are not from the spirit. In each criminal act, or negative act of destruction, there is energy which must be redeemed! This is in another book of Dostoevsky that even the sinners redeem the sin – that is transformed the criminal negative activity into a positive life giving, affirming energy.

• Would you then say that the necessary organic death that happens in context of evolutionary epoch – is that redemption? Which would make that death a bad thing, or is that necessary death which leads to life a positive of the spirit? Lets start from the final end = if death is no more, there will be a creation without organic death. Not only death of the sinner, but no more death So new creation, new biology, so how is that different from now? The indwelling of God – we have only an anticipatory glimpse of the creation, that is not yet here in this experimental way of creation that this is.

• So kairos time in this new experience, it is something that has to be something that is so radical that we can’t really have an experience in our current life that would approximate it. There has to be this dramatic transformation if we are talking about brand new creation. If we are talking about physical/experienced reality. Maybe no different from whoever is in Christ is a new creation – what is new in you/ over and against… is there a radical discontinuity in the new creation ? You cannot talk about discontinuity without continuity – not an either/or question. But we have so many anticipatory changes from the old to the new that we cannot understand this quite easily. For Paul this was a change of name. new identity with Christ living in him. This is to some extent true for every Xian, whether we are conscious of it or not.

• So to the scientist/biologist for which such discontinuity would defy everything they know about created reality – how would you speak to them regarding that unfathomability? In biological terms, you either have an evolution of causes and everything is in development because everything isn’t already enveloped in the beginning – so nothing new can happen – everything is already included in the original. New term – emergence… something new can develop, the whole is more than the sum of the parts… always something new is happening and we try to integrate it in what is already… without the new, nothing would emerge. We cannot understand the coming new as a coming old from the past. To analyze the parts of something does not lead to an understanding of the whole. “Genome” – looking at a genome you can’t tell who someone is, because from the past of his genes, you cannot extrapolate who that person is!

• Given that this earth as we experience it will certainly end, if physics is correct. What does our hope anticipate for us on the other side of that. I strongly believe in the teliosis concept of the church fathers/orthodox theologians – God will be all in all! in every science, the end is not the annihilation of the world, but the deification of the world . Lutheran: annihilation and only God/angels/saved survive somewhere in heave; Reformed: not annihilation, but transformation of the world, into new creation; Orthodox: deification of the world, indwelling of God in everything – very close to reformed tradition of transformation.

• Part of this dialogue is for the theologian that is open to the contributions of science – there are ways theology adjusts to that, but you don’t see science adjusting to the hermeneutic that theology can bring, so I find a struggle there: The struggle between religion and science is better than ____ science. We came out with a book, the end of the world and the ends of God.