Monday, March 30, 2015

Places of God's Revelation 2


Places of God’s Revelation 2

Revelation, Fellowship, and the Holy Spirit

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            In this blog I wish to write a little bit about the sort of revelation of God in Christ which takes place in the Christian life. Sometimes we carry vague notions of what we might expect when we imagine God revealing Himself to us in Jesus Christ.

            We might associate the word “revelation” with dreams, visions, or a dramatic tearing down of the veil between the boundaries of our seen world with the unseen worlds of the unseen spiritual worlds surrounding us. We might imagine dramatic revelations startlingly different from our ordinary human experiences.

But from the Christian perspective God’s greatest revelation of Himself came when God entered human flesh in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus’ humanity was an expression of weakness and in so many ways of ordinariness. He slept, experienced hunger and thirst, grieved and got angry. I suspect that if we had been around him our thoughts would not be focused on how he was sinless. Would a sinless man appear that way to our imperfect understanding of reality? I suspect that if we had been among the disciples we would have been wondering, “Should he be putting himself in such a compromising place with that woman? We might have been thoroughly embarrassed when he seemed to get angry in the temple going around saying to those present “You have turned my father’s house of prayer into a robber’s den.” Instead of seeing him as sinless we might well have been left wondering if he had done something he shouldn’t have done or failed to do something he should have done. But this seemingly ordinary life lived in our midst would gradually come to be understood by us as the life of God in the fullness and the weakness of our shared humanity. We would have begun by imagining that God’s revelation of Himself would come in fire, lightning bolt, fierce wind, or mighty earthquake but instead it came in the soft weak voice of a whisper.

            Jesus used St. Thomas’ doubting to teach all of us an important lesson about God’s revelation of His Son to us. St. Thomas wanted to see the risen Christ and declared he wouldn’t believe unless he saw Jesus. When Jesus appeared to him he began to speak to all of the apostles about how they would soon be taking the word of His resurrection to the ends of the earth. They had been allowed to see him. None of them had fully believed until they actually saw him. Thomas was not of essence different from Peter or the disciple journeying with Peter towards Emmaus. They were discouraged and hopeless until they recognized Jesus as they ate together. It is in this context that he spoke to Thomas, whose doubts were representative of the disciples and not unique to Thomas. Speaking directly to Thomas, the disciples all heard him speaking to them as he said, “Thomas, because you have seen me you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” (John 20:29) The revelation we are discussing which comes to Christians in this season of human history is primarily the blessed unseen revelation that Jesus described when speaking to Thomas. It is a revelation that comes to us in the power of the Holy Spirit through the Word of the Apostles and through our participation in the fellowship of the community that has come to believe the message whose substance we have never seen with our earthly eyes.

            Our Protestant and Evangelical emphasis on “Sola Scriptura” has sometimes created unintended consequences among some of us Protestants. We have tended to turn the Christian faith into an academic exercise reduced to “open your Bibles to chapter and verse and this is how God speaks to us. But St. John in his first epistle describes his declaration of the Gospel as an invitation to us to be part of a fellowship that is a fellowship with God the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. The Gospel message is not simply “believe this and you shall live” but instead is expressed as an invitation to a community in words like “hear us and become joined to the fellowship where God’s Son dwells in our midst”. John says, “That which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.” (I John 1:3)

This is why the early Church described that salvation was not experienced outside of the church. This did not necessarily mean that the early church was completely hopeless about the persons who had never heard the message of Christ. But it did mean that they understood that salvation was not solely a belief in a doctrinal message, but an invitation to participation in a fellowship connected to the people of God in whose midst Jesus Christ had made his dwelling. Salvation therefore, specifically in the experience of it on earth, was unthinkable apart the invitation of the Gospel message to be a part of the community of God’s people. We have been invited to be made part of a community which has been witnesses of the incarnation and the resurrection and the ascension of Jesus Christ. That which was granted to be seen and handled by the Apostles; has been made ours through this fellowship. We have been granted in this community, the Church, to be connected to one another with Christ dwelling in our midst. It is in this context that we will be able to see these dramatically not dramatic ways in which God manifests his presence in Christ to us. He does this in the quietness of the word expressed through the Scriptures, in the sacraments, and within the Church.

 

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Places of God's Revelation 1


Places of God’s Revelation

In Jesus Christ

Introduction to a Blog Series

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            Many years ago I learned of a theology which emphasized that God’s revelation in Christ was especially revealed through three means, or loci (locations) of revelation. In this perspective Christ is known through the Scriptures, in the Sacraments, and in connection with Christ’s body, the Church. A few days ago I began to imagine writing concerning the importance of these three loci of revelation.


Holy Scriptures as a place of revelation

 


Sacrament as a place of revelation, downloaded from Shutterstock.com

 


Church congregation in worship; San Lazaro Catholic Church; El Rincon Cuba copyright American Spirit, downloaded from Shutterstock.com

  

            I was in the process of considering writing on this subject, without any definite decision to do so, when I entered a conversation that ended up making me rethink how I would write about these three places of revelation. The conversation did not start in any way like something which would reshape my writing goals.

            One of the people I follow on Twitter expressed a list of authors she had to confess she had not read much. She confessed to not reading very much of C.S. Lewis. I admitted that I had not read a lot either. In that context I described that Lewis’ book The Four Loves was one of the more influential books in my life. When I read The Four Loves I was left thinking or perhaps praying, “This Christian life is about our learning to be human, isn’t it?” It is so easy to make Christian redemption about being above the normal limitations of human sinfulness. We begin to try to strive to live more and more above ordinary human difficulties. But God became man in the person of Jesus Christ not to enable us to live above ordinary humanity, but to become fully human through Christ’s redemption. That was an extremely important change of perspective that continues to shape and reshape my life.

            Another person responding to the original person’s confession of not reading much of C.S. Lewis described how she has been disappointed by Lewis’ work Surprised by Joy which so many of her “dude friends” found so rich. Rather than write her off for dismissing Lewis’ greatness I sought to find out what she found lacking in her viewpoint concerning Lewis’ writing. She expressed that she found that Lewis spoke a lot about yearning to know Christ later and spoke little of knowing him in the here and now. It has been a very long time since I read Surprised by Joy so I will not try to evaluate her evaluation. More important to me was the validity of her concern. I see many Christian writings focused on the means of grace that we believe will lead us to knowing Christ, but the focus becomes more on our refining the processes of seeking rather than upon our finding of Christ. It is like chefs who come together to cook meals, but are so enamored with the different mixes of ingredients and cooking methods that they endlessly consider the how of cooking but never get around to eating the food they are cooking. Her focal point spoke to me about what my goal would be, if I did this series. It must be as much about finding Christ as discussing the methods of looking for him. I consider that conversation an important contribution in reshaping this blog series.

            We often have nebulous concepts about what it means to know Christ. For example, in the circles in which I have lived out my Christian life, there has been a strong emphasis on studying the Scriptures prepared by a consistent devotional life. Ministry to others was thought to be something which came as a result of your seeking Christ in prayer and reading Scriptures. I would not deny that there is truth in understanding Scripture and prayer as essential for strengthening us within ourselves to prepares us for dealing with those around us. But Jesus' teaching would also remind us that we discover Christ in one another. He described in his speaking about the separating of the sheep and the goats how he would bless those who had fed him when he was hungry, clothed him when naked, and visited him when in prison. In Jesus' teaching the righteous being rewarded would be puzzled over when they saw Jesus naked, hungry, or in prison. He describes then how they saw him when they saw the least among them in those circumstances. So we often think that we meet Christ when a passage of Holy Scripture excites us with a new thought about God, his mercies, or some teaching that becomes important to us. Yes many of those experiences are our meeting of Christ in the Holy Scriptures. But we also meet Christ as he is hidden in the experiences of the suffering, the poor, those undergoing trouble and temptation, and the oppressed. If we allow ourselves to be guided by our Lord's teaching we may well discover that we have been seeing Christ manifest to us both openly and hidden among those for whom he has come to bring redemption.