Still Thinking – The Atonement

There can be in our journey to Easter quite an emphasis on suffering.  Because the resurrection of Jesus is preceded by his violent death, many have argued that even in the new life the Christian is called to accept that both healing and suffering are woven together into their lives.

Throughout Christian history there has been many theories put forward in an attempt to explain and promote the relationship between Jesus’ death and its relationship to the Christian.  Most theories of what has been called the “atonement” are shaped by the world view of their proponents.  Many of the authors in the New Testament and the Hebrew Scriptures rely on a “blood sacrifice” view of atonement and reconciliation. 

Most hold the view that a price must be paid in blood, the blood of a perfect and innocent sacrifice, to a Holy God who is distant and often vengeful.  Many passages in the Bible are drawn from this world view.  However, that world view does not exist in our culture and time.  It is in fact both repulsive and abhorrent.

There are other views in the Bible about how the death of Jesus is understood and related to the present experience of Christ among us. It was in the twelfth century that the controversial theologian Peter Abelard began to argue that the death of Jesus was not about blood sacrifice, it was in fact, about love. This came to be named the "moral theory of atonement."

It the twelfth century, the common view of the atonement was that Jesus’ death paid a debt, either to God or to the Devil, that humans could not pay ourselves, but Abelard approached the matter from a more subjective angle. He explained that Jesus’ life and death were such radical demonstrations of the love of God that we are moved to love God in response, and God then forgives us on the basis of that love. He wrote

Our redemption through the suffering of Christ is that deeper love within us which not only frees us from slavery to sin but also secures for us the true liberty of the children of God, in order that we might do all things out of love rather than out of fear - love for him who has shown us such grace that no greater can be found.

This view of the atonement became popular during the Enlightenment, a time of intense scepticism towards anything transcendent or supernatural.

It was Peter Abelard who also made significant contributions to Christian thought in the areas of ethics and sin. He controversially taught that humans are not born with original guilt, as no person can be guilty for the sin of another.  He argued that there is no guilt until we have agreed with or acted upon our “sinful” inclination. Whether an act is good or evil depends entirely on one's intention.  And finally, Abelard insisted that no person can absolve another person of sin, so the function of confession can only be to instruct the sinner in the proper penance not to absolve the person from their sin.

While much of Abelard’s language and this theological constructs are foreign to the twenty-first century, he did give a fresh approach to the stale theology of the scholastics and their dogged ascent to time worn doctrines.  As we move toward Easter our hearts are fixed on the love of God demonstrated in the life and the death of Jesus; a God of love who is seen in the capacity to receive the violence of our world and not retaliate with violence.

Christopher 

Still Thinking – Death and Dying

I never thought much about my own death when I was a young person even through at the age of 13 I was in the house when my mother died.  While I had an awareness of what death was I was too much immersed in life to dwell on it.  I recall a real feeling of irritation as a teenager when a travelling evangelist came to Upper Mt Gravatt Baptist Church and at the conclusion of his sermon told us, “As you leave the church tonight and walk out into the street you could be hit by a bus and killed.  So if you don’t accept Jesus as your Lord and Saviour tonight you will spend the rest of eternity in hell!” As a “God intoxicated” sixteen year old whose mother had died when she was 32 years old, I truly felt that I knew more about life and death than this itinerant preacher did.

While my mother’s death left an indelible mark on my life the only time thoughts of my own death would pass through my mind as a young person was when I was engaged in something dangerous - like diving off the rocks into the surf at Currumbin beach and then the fear was more about being injured than actually drowning. However, life and aging does change our reflections on death and dying. 

At the ripe old age of 59 I do think more about my own death today than I did ten or fifteen years ago.  But, and I suspect this is true of most in the second half of life, my concern is not so much with death, that final terminus, but with the “process” of dying.  What can be worrying is the manner in which I will die.  I don’t lie awake at night fearful that one day I will die, neither do I want to live forever, but I know that dying often - not always - takes some time.  Perhaps it’s the fear of the loss of control when doctors or my wife or adult children make decisions for me; or the loss of dignity when forced to wear those hospital gowns designed to display ones rear end to the world. I don’t think I fear the pain or the discomfort and while I don’t want to be euthanized, I do want to have the right to both pain medication and the final say about the end of my life.

I am aware that such a discussion is much easier in the theoretical or hypothetical than it is when faced with the sting of death and the cloak of dying but the Christian faith has taught us that death is a part of life and that those who face their own death can then live more fully.  During my time in the desert on the men’s initiation retreat with Richard Rohr I spent a day by myself on the top of hill contemplating my death.  We all had a simple sentence we were to contemplate for 8 hours.  That sentence was, “You are going to die!” What began in the morning as a trite recitation of the sentence, ended after a day’s work with tears, longings and a love for living.  “Death,” someone said, “is too important to leave to the end of life.” 

This morning we will consider the story of Jesus drawing his disciples into the paradoxical truth that “only those who lose their lives for the sake of gospel will save their lives,” I hope that in this story we can still see the flowering of hope and life.

Christopher

Still Thinking – Jesus through the Centuries

John Churcher in his recent book Setting Jesus Free suggests that the

“Jesus of Nazareth was the breaker of barriers that separate and the final barrier to be broken was that between life and death.”

It goes without saying that Jesus still remains one of the most important figures in western civilization even as our society becomes more and more secular and materialist.  For those of us in the Christian church Jesus is far more than an influential figure his life, message, and teaching, is what shapes and forms us every day. But that only occurs when Jesus is “set free.”

The slow movement of history has a way of placing a kind of veneer over the facts and events it is carrying.  We know that the Christian Church has passed through several “reformations” and each time a different and sometimes a new view of Jesus has emerged.  Jaroslav Pelikan in his book Jesus Through the Centuries chronicles the various names and cultural identities given to Jesus through the last two millennia.  Would you believe that in English society in the nineteenth century it was common to refer to Jesus as the “perfect gentleman”? That does not sound like a barrier breaker does it?.  More common of course are the Biblical names that are attributed to Jesus of Nazareth. 

From the second century onward there was more and more emphasis placed on the divine names for Jesus as against the “earthly” names.  For example we know that the early church place a lot of importance on Jesus being a Rabbi/teacher.  In the story of the empty tomb Mary addresses Jesus as Rabbi.  By the third and fourth centuries AD Jesus is referred to as God. For some this was blasphemy for others it was the natural progression for a leader to be deified by his followers. It was left to the various Church councils to come up with some way to reconcile not only the many designations given to Jesus but to state what is the nature of this person who grew up in Palestine and was now seated at the right hand of God in heaven.  So in 451AD the Council of Chalcedon established what is called the doctrine of Hypostatic Union which states

…following the holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach people to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man, of a rational soul and body; consubstantial with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the Manhood;

It is probably not the language we would use today, but in its time it was a very successful marriage between Christian theology and Greek philosophy.  It stood until the nineteenth century when the inherent logical error that placed all of the godhead in one human being became apparent and so the formula began to collapse.

In the 21st century it seems that the most powerful way we can image the presence and nature of Jesus is in the human.  The Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonheoffer called Jesus “the man for others.”  And more recently the predominant way in which the designation, “Son of Man” is translated is as “the Human One.” That may sound strange to our ears because it is not as familiar as other names for Jesus, but it does resonate with our time and culture.

Someone once said, “…the more we worship Jesus the less we seem to follow him.”  The further we push Jesus away from being like us, the less we identify with his call to show love, justice, compassion and hopefulness.

Christopher

Still Thinking  - Choosing Freedom

I was 16 years of age when I first responded in a Baptist church to an invitation to follow Jesus.  It took a lot in me to overcome my embarrassment at claiming my private conviction in such a public way.  Some would say that that is the point.  There are no secret followers of Jesus, so overcoming one’s natural shyness catapults a person to a new and higher level of religious commitment.

After this first time, it got easier to come forward in response to the preacher’s call.  In fact, I made quite a habit of “walking the sawdust trail” as the Southern Baptists have called it.  Partly, as a deeply religious young person, I was always seeking a kind of religious perfection.  I knew that I was not as faithful as I could be; I knew that I had been sinful and failed to meet God’s standards.  But really, preaching about sin to adolescents is like shooting fish in a barrel, you know you will always hit a good number of them.

As I reflected on those experiences some forty years ago, I realize that they probably kept me in the church, but sadly truncated my experience of life and of God, Jesus and the Spirit.  It took some years to experience what the apostle Paul called in Romans 8:21, “the glorious liberty of the children of God.”  That experience came with the realization that it was not so much that I need to be “saved,” but rather what I craved was to be liberated; to be set free from that which bound and limited me in my spiritual and daily life.  And one of those things I needed liberation from, as I discovered later, was religion.  Now that may sound strange coming from a minister, but if we recognize that Jesus never established a religion and was in fact critical of binding oneself to rules, codes and religious practices, then freedom from religion is the goal of the good news that Jesus preached.

Don’t get me wrong I love the church.  I love the rich and diverse history that covers the last two thousand years.  And I am very aware that we need an institution that gives shape to the Body of Christ. However, if the church is a formal, boundary setting, belief testing institution, then we all know it is off track.  But if it is the living, breathing spirit of Jesus, alive in the world, then we are on track. 

Religious educators tell us that young people need strong, challenging and decisive institutions that give them boundaries and yet freedoms within those boundaries.  Young people want to be part of a movement, but they also want to know what the ground rules are.  As they mature they crave that strange paradox of wanting to belong and yet desiring unlimited freedom.  We know that young people, particularly young males are risk-takers and this can cause them and others a lot of heart ache.  But it really can’t be any other way and the church needs to provide for both aspects of youthful maturation.  While what we call “conversion” is an important experience for young people it should be associated with claiming the good news of life lived fully through Jesus and not the limited moralist, sin based view that many of us passed through in our teenage years.

Christopher

Still Thinking – This is your Brain of Prayer

Dr Andrew Newberg has worked for many years developing a field of research called Neurotheology. This field of enquiry takes seriously contemporary studies on the human brain and the history of Christian and religious theology, particularly the mystical approach and tries to understand why human beings as so predisposed to ideas and experiences of “God”.

Attempting to bring a coherent approach to this discipline, Newberg produced a book in 2001 titled, Why God Won’t go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief and more recently in 2009, How God Changes your Brain.   Both are fascinating reads, albeit a bit technical at times.  Simply put over a period of years, Newberg studied the brains of people in the act of meditation, prayer and visualizing religious experiences.  Using an Electroencephalography, (EEG) machine, he gathered data on the changes in particular areas of the brain when the subjects engaged in “spiritual” activities. He found that the parts of the brain that “lit up” during these experiments were associated with the limbic system.  

The limbic system is the part of the brain that contains the amygdala, hypothalamus, and hippocampus and limbic cortex. It is found on top of the brainstem. This system as a whole is responsible for our feelings of love, fear, anger, jealousy, embarrassment, pride and elation and the emotions needed to ensure survival including sexual pleasure and memory. The cerebral cortex lies above these structures. That’s the technical part, what is important is that this area is the oldest structure in the brain and it is the location of our religious and spiritual feelings.

When a person prayers or meditations the limbic system in the brain is activated and with sustained practice the individual can have two competing experiences, either a depth sense of calm and peace or a strong sense of union or oneness with God.  Newberg is quick to remind his audience that he is measuring only the human physiological response to an encounter or experience of the “holy”. This neither proves nor disproves the existence of God in the same way that he can measure a person’s response to eating a sandwich which neither proves nor disproves the existence of the sandwich.  But what it does do, perhaps for the first time, is to show that humans are predisposed to religious and spiritual experiences, beliefs and rituals and that our brains are in fact “designed” by evolution to be open to the holy, sacred and divine.

Dick Gross picked this up in the weekly article in the National Times some months ago. Gross, an atheist refers to the recent publication of the Oxford University project, Explaining Religion. He says:

Belief in the supernatural seems to have evolved to rule humanities heart and inhabit our breast… Rituals, conscience, notions of justice may have been introduced to the species through supernatural belief systems.  Thus faith might be an ever present part of the psychological landscape…

Of course this adds little to the life of the believer and in fact many, even in the Christian tradition, have moved beyond the craving for an interventionist/supernatural being of the type the atheists are fond of debunking.  The interest for me lies more in the ways in which Christian and religious practices can be bring about a meaningful life and encounter with what we call God.  It does seem that it is important that we should pay attention to several insights gain through studying the human brain.  They are:

1.        We all need rituals that connect us with our world and the “ground of our being.”  The practices that we do together, communion, worship, prayer, singing and general attendance at church gatherings do find a receptive place in our minds, “hearts” and lives.

2.        We should think about our faith.  Most studies suggest that religious thought and experience is not static, but rather evolving.  Our cognitive process and our emotional limbic system work together to produce healthy religion.

3.        The quest of the human mind and the processes of the brain developed over millions of years is progressing toward what theologians call the mystical rather than just rule based religiously which is more often the product of religious institutions and not of religious experience.  

~      Christopher

Still Thinking -Peace in Jerusalem

In 2007 I had a three month sabbatically with one month spent in Israel. In Jerusalem I stayed at St George’s College in East Jerusalem.  On the afternoon when I arrived I was given a tour of the campus by the College Chaplain.  After the tour I asked him about walking around the old city.  Was it safe?  Could I do it by myself?  Are there any places I should, or more importantly, should not go?  His answer was simple, “Walk out the front gate of the college, turn right and about three hundred metres down Salahadeen Street you will see Herod’s Gate.  Walk through the gate and then just get lost in the city!”  While to a newcomer that was a bit frightening nevertheless, I took his advice and got lost in the Old City.

In fact, it would be difficult to get lost in the Old City of Jerusalem.  Walled on all sides it has eight entrance gates (one is bricked up for theological reasons) and is an area of about a square kilometre.  I don’t think you really can get lost – as distinct from not knowing where you are – because the old city is a maze of never ending streets, lanes, stairways and footpaths.  And if you show any sign of not knowing where you are there is always a helpful local willing to take to one of the sacred sites - at a price of course.

Many will know that the old city is divided into four quarters – Christian, Armenian, Jewish and Moslem.  One can wander freely between the quarters and while there are not clear boundaries between the quarters they are each distinct in their own way.   Now while it maybe difficult get lost physically in Jerusalem, it is certainly possible to get lost in the sheer diversity and complexity of the place.  To the outsider everyone seems to get along well together, but as our lecturer and guide Rev Dr Kamal Farah said, “In Jerusalem we do not live together we merely co-exist.” I suppose this is the technical meaning of the word tolerate.  The three dominant religious faiths in Jerusalem presently tolerate each other.

Now while the old city is about many things the two that strike the tourist or pilgrim are commerce and sacred religious places.  From the stalls that line the narrow streets traders will sell you anything if you can haggle with them to arrive at the right price – a skill I discovered I didn’t have.  But it doesn’t take long in this city to get lost in the profundity of its religious significance.  Much has been written about the importance of Jerusalem to Judaism, Christianity and Islam.  Each religion claims a sacred connection to Jerusalem.  Each faith feels a God give right to be here, in Jerusalem.  It was a remarkable experience to in one day, visit the Western (Wailing) Wall; the Dome of the Rock; and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.  Each of these places sacred to its tradition and yet each has at some time in its history been occupied by at least one of the other faiths.  While the city is central to religious faith and pilgrimage, war and conflict over these sacred places has always been present in Jerusalem.

Two of our guest speakers during the course, one a Palestinian Christian, the other a Jewish educator used the same illustration about visiting Jerusalem. They both said, “After someone has been in Jerusalem for a couple of days they feel they could write a book; after a week perhaps a chapter; after a month a sentence and after a year they struggle to find a word.”  And I know what that is word.   I suspect we all know what that word is.  It is Al-Salaam, in Arabic Shalom, in Hebrew, Pax in Christian Latin and Peace is English.  All traditions see peace as more than the absence of conflict, more than mere tolerance and co-existence.  Peace in Christianity, Islam and Judaism is the restoration to wholeness - completeness.  The very experience of prosperity both physically and spiritually, but most importantly not just for me or for my tribe but for all people.

It was the Catholic theologian Hans Küng who said, “There will be peace on earth when there is peace among the world religions."  This Christmas 2011, let us prayer for the peace of Jerusalem, peace between religions and peace in our world.

Christopher

Still Thinking – Christmas in Australia

I had ten Christmases in Canada and only one was a white Christmas. We lived in Hamilton Ontario which is at the southern tip of Lake Ontario and the area doesn’t get as much snow as parts further north. On average the snow would arrive in our neighbourhood in late November, then melt by early December and not return until early January.  So white Christmases were few and far between.

Coming from the southern hemisphere I was often asked is we celebrated Christmas in our winter, in July.  Canadians found it difficult to imagine Christmas lights, decorations and roast turkeys happening in the summer.  When I told them that our shopping centres (malls) were decorated with fake snow (cotton wool) reindeers and overweight and overdressed Santas and that even the tree we decorate was not native to Australia but imported from north climes, they were bemused –as some us are today.  I tried to redeem our southern hemisphere summer Christmas celebration by telling them that we do have “shrimp on the barbie” (prawns) cold meats and salads often served outside on Christmas Day and that sometimes Santa even arrives on a surfboard!

When I have thought about our Christmas traditions, I realize that almost of them come from the northern hemisphere and perhaps the only local Christmas custom we have is Carol’s by Candlelight which has to be outside, on a warm summer evening to be successful.  Christmas traditions generally are a melting pot of historical-cultural-religious, symbols, customs and traditions that are transported one culture and one country to another and that’s probably a good thing.

Christmas celebrations imported from elsewhere are part of a larger question about Christianity in Australia.  In the 1970s, when I was a theological student it was popular to talk about an emerging “Gumleaf Theology” which was an attempt to indigenize the unique expression of Christian faith in this corner of our world.  It has never really succeeded.  Our love firstly, of all things British and European and more recently all things American, has seen the flow of traditions, customs and ideas move in one direction.  Nevertheless, I suspect the key to having meaningful sacred customs and traditions is to not just adopt them, but rather we adapt them to the local needs and conditions.  The playwright William Somerset Maugham said, “Tradition is a guide and not a jailer,” and even a religious traditionalist like T.S.Eliot wrote “A tradition without intelligence is not worth having.”

Of course what’s most important is to revisit the original story of the nativity and draw from it those meanings, images and symbols that resinate with our experience of Christian faith on our continent.  Remember the environment surrounding Jesus’ birth in Palestine was closer to Australia conditions than it was to northern Europe or Scandinavia.  And we Australians should know something about sheep and shepherds albeit a little less romanticised than most Christmas scenes. However, what is significant is to remind ourselves and our culture that this baby was born in a humble state, attended by those who loved and honoured him and that he grew to be a man beyond measure, whose life and teaching transformed the ancient world and can transform both our culture and the human heart.  But for that to happen we must take seriously this Holy and sacred story of God with us, revealed in this small human life and celebrated every year at Christmastime.

Christopher