Sexy Back

Well...Shannon (of Erosophy) said i should move to wordpress. Her words 'its sexier'. This, of course, is a great way to make me NOT move. I mean, 'sexy', is the buzz word of teh sonsumer culture. To use that as my justification is to opt in to a system that uses its marketing notions to create zones of 'approved' and 'not approved'.

But, i do want to be sexy.

So...http://theopoetics.wordpress.com/?p=21&preview=true

Laity as Theological Calling

In conclusion, theology is not a private subject for theologians only. Nor is it a private subject for professors. Fortunately, there have always been pastors who have understood more about theology than most professors. Nor is theology a private subject of study for pastors. Fortunately, there have been repeatedly congregation members, and often whole congregations, who have pursued theology energetically while their pastors were theological infants or barbarians. Theology is a matter for the church. (Karl Barth, God in Action, Round Table Press, 1963, pp. 56-57)

I found this today at Emerget Voyagour (sp?)
http://emergentvoyageurs.blog.com/616685/

"Stanley Hopper's solution for our sense of mythic vertigo is a new appreciation for the role of imagination. He recommends that we replace theology, the rationalistic interpretation of belief, with theopoetics, finding God through poetry and fiction, which neither wither before modern science nor conflict with the complexity of what we know now to be the self. This is a theology for a period highly influenced by technology and by psychoanalysis.

"If we could make this shift, which is being forced on us by our very success in science and other areas of knowledge, we might find a more solid security, one that is not easily disturbed by the findings of science or the shifting of mores. We would realize that our conceptions about the nature of things are always provisional and therefore may best be served by a poetic sensibility that looks deep into experience. Our sense of the religious life might be less external, less factual, and less rationalistic."

Theopoetic Passion

Thoughts:

I've been reading 'Love and Good Reasons: A post-liberal approach to literature and ethics' and 'Theories of Reading: Books, Bodies and Biblomainia'.

'Love and Good Reasons' is approaching literature as a means of studying Ethics and Christian Ethics in particular. While I often disagree with his notion of what it means to be a 'Christian Ethic' - and hes drawing very strongly off of Stanley Hauerwas - I do agree with his approach to literature as ethical/philosophical study.

The failure of Philosophy - and much of academia - is the false attempt to create theory and ideas that are divorced from human passions. Language and idea is constructed in such a manner as to de-value the emotional life of the reader and the way in which language, image and idea evoke passion! In deed as any passionate reader will tell you many of the ways in which we know and think are in the passions that story, metaphor and narrative stir up in us.

Likewise Theories of Reading addresses the way in which the devalued reader has been exited from consideration all together. From here we can easily see the dangers of what Wendell Berry refers to as the specialization of poetry. The further the reading and writing of poetry becomes the specialized domain of a few - and the longer society allows it to exist as pretty language done by moody teenagers and over-achieving academics the longer we are able to insist that the words we say and the story's we tell have no import.

We cannot, then, evaluate the way in which Henry James sought to function as a ethicist. His work, and those who comment on it, are separated away into a specialized field. But if its true that culture is shaped and formed by stories then we have an obligation to allow story, metaphor and language to exist as discourses whos job it is to engage us in the wider realities we live in.

Scott Holland calls theology the poetry of the laity. Wendell Berry say poetry is never truly concerned with eternity but with the here and now. To insist that poetry is specialized and only a 'pleasurable exercise' instead of an 'intellectual discourse' is to say that the laity - the common people - have no ideas worth exploring.

The danger of the specialization of poetry mimics also the danger of the specialization of theology/church (see 'Theopoetic as Way Forward' for a further exploration).

But the implication is important to note: we insist on a separation of story and thought, poetry and audience, book and reader and church and state. The things that stir our spirits are specialized and removed from our daily lives. God, then, has no more relevance to us than the sunday morning stirring in our stomachs.

Recent examples would be the foot-washing controversy in Vancouver. A church was not allowed to wash the feet of the homeless because that was a social service. Churches were only supposed to conduct religious services like prayer and worship.

The specialization of the church then prevents it from participating in the wider living-world that we find our selves embedded in. Likewise if our stories are separated from their audience (and their author) they then become another specialized field of discourse.

What does this mean for the church?
For Theology?

The THEOPOETIC is the Way Forward!

Theopoetic: Whats next for Jason

Tomorrow I will return to transcribing my thoughts from my Scholars Journal - a little black notebook containing random 'theologizing'. Soon after I am hoping to start posting an online "Theopoetic of Water". I intend to build story, poem and theology around water and water crisis.

Im still figuring out what that means. It came to me in a dream!

Here is another definition of the Theopoetic:
THEA/OPOETIC, METAPHORIC AND SYMBOLIC
METHODS


Thea/opoetics - A method of interpretation in the field of religion (mythology, theology and comparative religions) developed by Stanley Romaine Hopper and David L. Miller in the 1960's. This method is used to articulate the spiritual import or meaning of a text or symbolic object, especially, by deriving and amplifying 'radical metaphor' ('ontological metaphor'; 'antimetaphor') for 'ontic' experiences, i.e., experiences of existence, being, becoming, iterativity, or aftermath. Such experiences are 'concealed' with experiences of everyday objectness or activity in the life-world. The criteria for the validity of an interpretation is not its 'falsifiability' but its 'compellingness.' Thea/opoetics names and characterizes the divinity that manifests itself in a particular material object of symbolic sacred significance.

"What . . . theopoiesis does is to effect disclosure [of Being] through the crucial nexus of event, thereby making the crux of knowing, both morally and aesthetically, radically decisive in time."

"[Like Rilke] . . . we must learn, with trust, to be one with, a breathing with the inhale and exhale of Being, in order that "the god" may breathe through us, and we, through the translation of its breath into song, may be . . . the eyes of becoming and a tongue for Being's utterance."

Hopper, S. R. (1967). Introduction. In S. R. Hopper and David L. Miller (ed). Interpretation: The poetry of meaning. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World. pp. xix, xxi.

Stringfellow/Theopoetic

Apocalypse/Utopia

William Stringfellows North American liberation theology/theology of the cross requires us to read the contemporary world through the apocalypse. In contrast to other popular views of the apocalypse Stringfellow does not view the text as a road map to the end of the world but instead as an imaginative telling of the possibility and future of the world captive to the principalities and powers he names as Babel. If we bring into that conversation the comments of Gustava Guiterrez that the utopia is not a pronouncement of a world that could be but instead a critique of the world that is then we find ourselves entering the land of the theopoetic as it relates to liberation theology and a theology of the cross.

The Utopia for Gutierrez exists less as an idealized future but instead as a great refusal of the present reality. To enter into the task of the utopia and the utopia dream with all of its implications for the human condition is to enter into an imaginative task that seeks to make an announcement and renouncement. The utopia renounces the current way things are and seeks to provide an announcement of the ways they could be.[1]

The utopia, like the apocalypse, moves forward. They project what can be into the future and invite the reader to participate in creating that world. Revelations is less about the way the world would be but more about the way it was and the way it might be with out prayerful action. To speak of utopia and apocalypse is to speak about a world that can only come into existence through the participation of human beings in their creation, through praxis.[2]

We can criticize the utopia for creating an impossible vision of reality just as we can criticize the apocalyptic for creating an unrealitistic vision of the end of time. But to do so negates our responsibility in engaging with these as storytelling devices of theopoetic and prophetic import in our contemporary world. To engage in utopic visioning is to engage with the crisis of our time. This utopic vision is built upon creativity and dynamism in relations to our work in the world.[3]

To participate in the utopic and the apocalyptic here understood, is to participate in the building and creation of a new humanity.[4] By envisioning a new way of telling Gods story as informed by our current context and reality we are also envisioning a new way for the human person to participate in Gods story and Gods world.

The theopoetic asks us to reclaim our religious imagery as a system of images, stories and symbols that overturn the basic assumptions of our culture and faith. In short it asks us to engage in the apocalyptic and utopian task of telling our faith as a living and present tense event in which we are all living participants. The apocalyptic was not a one time experience of poetic theology but is instead a theopoetic task used to critique the ways in which culture and church have become entwined to allow for the dreaming of a better tomorrow. The apocalyptic and the utopic exists as conversation pieces bent on drawing us into a dawning revelation of what could be in the present tense.

The theopoetic task is not another form of theology but is instead, in this instance at the least, a form of doing theology in the world. The apocalyptic imagination is dependent on our being able to envision and enact our creative commentary on the present as a religious and moral duty. A quick look at the contemporary and classic cinema scene provides more than enough evidence of this sort of thinking. Movies like “The Quiet Earth”, “Metropolis” and TV shows like “Jerhico” function not as a prophecy of the future but as an annunciation of and to the present.

To take on this sort of work recognizes that human work and life are shaped more by fables, myths, story and imagination and that it is here that any full engagement with life actually takes place.[5] This is not to say we rely on the apocalyptic in image and story to facilitate liberation as a replacement for Christian action but that we must recognize the role of these things in the shaping of identity for action.[6] The stories we tell of God, when we tell Gods story in other words, is more of a story that contains our desires and hopes for the present tense world and for the future that could be birthed. It’s a way of naming the contradictions in our culture. To name God as a weak force is to recognize in our world the way in which our own world holds on to power and has created ways in which mass scales of violence through war, economics and environment can effect the majority of human life. Likewise the middle-ages, suffering at the whims of disease, feudal powers and petty politics, viewed God as a powerful force in contrast to their own weakness in the light of these events.

The apocalypse then does not sit at odds with what was once called the Age of Aquarius. Instead it sits in conjunction with that age, entering into its imaginative discourses and listening to the voices their that need to be freed and to find freedom. The mythic hungers of our age work together with our apocalyptic impulses towards creating a new and ongoing articulation of our deepest spiritual hungers and longings. The imagination is the birthing ground of liberating apocalyptic impulses.

It is with this apocalyptic and utopic imagination that we are able to envision liberation in the world. Liberation theology tends to take the cross as its articulation of Gods liberating work, but to work with Stringfellow means that we are called to engage with the theopoetic task of speaking truth to power by way of fable, myth and story. This is the goal of the apocalyptic: to create a story that is a truth, that conveys an understanding of God story in our present situation. Stringfellow is dependent on this telling always recognizing that as society we will always be captive to ‘babel’ – to destructive forces that demand our allegiance and worship.

The Word as Event

To engage in this task is to become involved in a form of reading world and text that opens up the present. Stringfellow names this way of reading as seeing the Word as event. To do this does not mean to read the bible as literal, which Stringfellow names as a failure for exegesis. Instead we are to engage with the text as a living testament, to fail at this is to not encounter the dignity of our own participation in the text and the vitality of the very Word that invites and teaches us.[7] To see the word as event is to encounter the text as a force for revelation and conversation in our present realities and contexts. It is an event that is happening now and not just in the past.

This does not mean Stringfellow avoids the exegetical when it comes to reading and interpreting the Apocalypse. But instead he focuses on the Apocalypse as a polemic. On the one hand it functions as a theological conversation and equally as a political document. When we talk about the theopoetic as it relates to the apocalyptic and the utopia dream we are talking about this very function: conversation and political ideal are always pregnant and implied by our images and stories.[8] To tell an apocalypse, to critique the present, warn of the dangers of the future and to hope for Gods reigns, is always to come into conflict with the ruling ideologies and stories.

To read the apocalypse this way is to read it as a liberating text. It is to see the captivity to power and the role of Jerusalem and Babylon as being symbols, stories, metaphors that can be mined in our present tense as a way of creating new stories and myths that critique and free. We must find a freedom to be in both the order of imagination and social dream, between theology and politics.[9]

Hall says that the role of the apocalyptic is toward a visioning of God’s universal reign of justice and mercy. To not view the apocalypse in this sort of theopoetic daydreaming of the ‘kin/gdom come’ is to participate in a shallow dreaming of the world more intent on a lust for power and a perversion of religious institution into an instrument of crude self-centering fantasizing.[10] To envision God’s reign is an ongoing task in which the church is constantly asked to participate. We must learn to shape into story these mythic hunger for a better world. Dry rational is easily explained away. Myth and story can go straight to who we are as people and how we desire the world to be.

Even Luther was even skeptical of viewing the apocalyptic as a way of reading the end of the world. But his work suggests a theopoetic approach as well, that of viewing the text as a way of reading the signs of the times.[11] The danger we encounter here is that we may have a constant need to fit the social world that we live in into the text of our faith. This sort of thing can lead us to the cheap apocalypses of Hal Lindsey and the ‘Left Behind’ books. While Lindesy is focused on reading the times in the light of the apocalypse he is looking for an actual end to the world. He misses the opportunity provided by the apocalyptic impulse to call the world to repentance and to revelation.

This is the same Luther who taught on Genesis for 12 years. Luther always taught and worked as a biblical scholar in the light of the contemporary issues.[12] For Luther the ‘word as event’ had meaning as a living force in our own context. To live with the word was to live with the present tense, was to live at this time where we were alive and to speak of present tense as being a part of biblical revelation. Here the scripture, I would say, becomes alive in the way it is freed from the past for the liberation of the present. If we are able to, as the historical critical method tends to do, keep the scriptures as an event that lives solely in the past then we have declared that the Bible has no gift for a contemporary humanity.

But on the on the other hand if we believe that the scripture is not just an historical event that happened sometime in the past but instead view them as the imaginative and poetic response to their human realities then we can understand the way bible study in the present functions to open us up to the ways in which we tell Gods story for the liberation and empowerment of the present.

The Cross as Theopoetic

The task of liberation from a theopoetic point of view is not to assist in the toppling of the systems that cause oppression to happen.[13] Instead the task is to take on the underlying myths, stories and images that enable such oppression. By working from the apocalyptic we are able to take captive the prevailing images, whether they be freedom by way of war, capitalism or even democracy, and place them in a story structure that reveals their dark sides and oppressive natures. Part of the liberation sought here is to liberate those who participate in oppression so they might see the ways in which they have enabled apocalypse.

Working with Jurgen Moltman we can even see the ways in which the cross itself has a function that is theopoetic. If Moltman is correct in his assumptions that the religious life of the Roman empire helped solidify the power of the emperor then we can begin to see how the cross functions as a theopoetic of resistance. In Moltman’s view to engage in the cross as revelation of God is then to take up a politically scandalous object and brandish it in such a way that its scandal actually mocks the powers that be.

In other words it functions as a theopoetic image that undercuts and damages the assumptions of power that are found in the emporeror and the states cultic religious practices. The early church was able to brandish this image in a way that was able to take the scandal of political power and find in it the revelation of God.

To participate in liberation theology from a theopoetic perspective is to engage in symbol and image making in such a manner that we find ways of telling Gods story as a present tense reality as it pertains to our local realties. As I’ve argued before its important that our poetic and liberation impulses are articulated in the ground realities of our local context. The downtown eastside exists in a network of images, symbols and interpretations that are specific to its context. To create a theopoetic of liberation there requires us to engage in the actual human lives, hungers and spiritual desires of that region.

If we are to believe that the power of the cross is the way it mocks and reverses the way our institutional religions and the powers of death are at work in our culture then it is to this that the cross, and any new images we create to convey the particulars of the cross, must engage with.

In his book on theopoetics Amos Niven Wilder names as cause for liberal, evangelical and secular mystic, the cause of reclaiming a theopoetic of the cross that is able to speak to all.[14] The task of the liberation theologian here then is to speak of a image and story of the cross that is not so indebted to doctrines, theologies and institutions that it cannot also speak of a freedom and liberation for all. The cross must convey a sense of freedom in the theopeotic sense that can have implications for those people at home in the church and for those who do not feel that they can honestly call themselves a Christian.

The cross then, as Moltman points out, is not a religious symbol but is instead a profane symbol. To align ourselves with the profane is to announce that the profane is the home of true holiness, that that which contradicts our assumptions, notions and bias’s of what the holy is more revealed in the profane than in our tightly controlled systems and structures of holiness.

Our apocalyptic and utopic visions are geared towards making and revealing symbols, images and stories that enable the profane to become a reality in our world. The profanity of the cross stands in contrast to our notions of salvation and revelation. The very profanity of the cross leads us to consider the notion of universal salvation that Guiterrez suggests.

Universal Salvation

Is this what Gutierrez means when he says that the liberation theologian must seek a universal salvation? To find in the cross a salvation does not mean to find a cross that takes away our suffering but instead reveals the reality of suffering and mocks the powers who cause suffering. What the world seeks to kill God reveals godself in. Salvation then is not to be saved from a certain experience or reality but saved to it. To seek a salvation then can mean more than just the ending of oppression but can also mean our global, corporate and intention confession of suffering and our deliberate entering into those circumstances and realities and becoming participants in them.

Guiterreze talks about this when he talks about our responsibility to be saved to the neighbor. Here we encounter the idea of the hidden God. On the cross the hidden God is revealed, that what we try to kill, torture and silence revels God to us. Likewise to be saved to the experiences of our neighbor is to be saved to the reality and ways in which they bring God to us. To confess to the realities of suffering and to enter into oppression and otherness on purpose is to live present with the hidden God and to make godself known to the world.

A universal salvation then is to be constantly turning toward the other as a way of discovering the hidden God and of being saved to that persons experience. This hidden God reveals the folly our attempts at controlling salvation and the process by which salvation needs to be saved. Garcia critiques liberation theology as being more interested in saving society than souls. To be saved to the other – to undergo a process of conversion to the realities of the other – is to encounter a type of salvation of the soul, a salvation of spiritual alignment which will enable us to save society.

A universal salvation does not negate the soul but nor does it stop there. The theopoetic seeks to help enable the various forms of salvation by asking us to tell Gods story in such a way that our souls, our personal selves in relation to God and world undergo a transformation, can then work out its revelation in the world.

This search for God in the other then asks that the theopoetic imagination take up the task of telling Gods story as it exists in the manger, among the dirty, the forgotten and the vulnerable. For us to tell Gods story as entering the world in the dirty and with a head that you can crush with the palm of your hand has implications for the church. When we tell this story we must ask of the ways in which the vulnerability of God is welcomed among us as institutions and what to whom our identity as people formed around this vulnerable God are brought to.

The Church as Theopoetic

Too often the church has told Gods story in relation to the power it seeks or has in its own possession. The cross has been used to promote the glory of earthly kingdoms instead of as a way of undermining the symbols of power and power worship that are used to dominate our world. We have tended to turn the scandal of the cross into a scandalizing event, one that imprisons and condemns instead of frees.

Part of the theopoetic task is to reimagine the church as it exists in our world today. The theopoetic seeks to tell a story to the church that reimagines the way the church can be and exist and how it serves the cross. To seek to serve the cross as a place interaction with the world is to seek to find a new story of the church. The reality of the churches confluence with cultural powers and allegiances.

By agreeing with Hall that the church is to be a suffering polis and that the world teems with those who have been oppressed and discriminated against then we are given the option of saying something new about the very nature of the church. The church, the ecclesia or called out, then can be seen as being made evident in the mangers of society. Church then is not we Christians who have responded to the call of God in Christ who constitute the church but instead the whole of humanity in their variety of situations who are a church active in the world, are a suffering polis. Church is anywhere and everywhere the incarnation of God comes to us as the other, the outcast and the foreign.

To engage in a view that encounters the entire world as an event of church then is to move beyond rigid church hierarchies and into a view more akin to Gustavo Gutierreze which asks us to view out neighbor, our surroundings and even our life situation, as a sacrament. If we are saved to the other and are seeking an universal salvation then every moment is a sacrament. Let us move beyond Gutierrezes concept of the neighbor as sacrament and into a new idea: the sacrament of the ordinary.

In this I envision the very work of world and church as being to announce that every ordinary object, event and person – like the elements of the Eucharist – are ordinary things made extraordinary. To be church in this sort of mindset is to be a church beyond institutions and is to participate in the holiness of that which we have announced as profane to the world. If we can view ordinary bread and wine to have extraordinary existence, in whatever theological model we choose to view it, then we are equally called to see average people, situations and institutions as having extraordinary lives. I take this to be the definition of the priesthood of the believer.

But to say this is not to say this and to recognize in the suffering of the other the churches true vocation is not to say that the church must suffer, or that we receive glory and validation by suffering. As Hall points out there has been serious critique of our fixation on suffering, death and violence.[15] But to enter into the sacrament of the ordinary and the suffering is to view the call of Christ as one who knew that a life of compassion, mercy and justice would result in suffering.[16] To save the world from its brokenness is to be subject to the violence of that which you are trying to save it from.

This is the ordinary that we must view as sacred. The ordinary suffering of humanity, the world that teems with the everyday reality of suffering and oppression and loss. It is here that the holy one of God is revealed to us, is incarnate. We as church seek our own destruction so we can better be on the side of those who are marginalized and left outside by our institutions. We say God is revealed here in the manner in which revelation in suffering upsets our safety nets, our security and our self identity.

Conclusion

The apocalyptic and utopic provided us with a theopoetic way of enacting liberation theology in our world and lifestyle. To do so requires us to engage with the hungers and desires that are present our age as being visions of reality that contain the seeds of a new way of being human in the world. In order for us to view this as a gateway to liberation we are asked to tell both the biblical story as having present tense import and our own story as being a form of theopoetic and spiritual insight and resistance to the powers that be.

But to do this we must avoid the pit falls of reading the world as being on a road map to hell/destruction as displayed in the apocalypse. Our apocalyptic vision draws us toward deeper and greater insights into our own way of being in the world. This sort of reading provides for, in Stringfellows words ‘a faulty exegesis’ as well as locks us into a literal mythic structure that does not allow any room for reading the world as its own text that we can explore through biblical imagery.

If we cannot read our own story as an event that takes place in conjunction and in response to the biblical narrative then the biblical event comes to predominate our world. The hungers and voices of the poor are full of their own stories and desires by which they explore the implications of the biblical event. We tell these stories together, in the apocalyptic and the utopic, as a means of becoming church in the world.

To do this, to work for liberation, means that our imaginations must be freed for, from and in our traditions and aligned with the hungers of the world. This freedom allows us to speak a new voice to the churches that calls them towards being church in the world.

---

[1] Guiterrez, 136

[2] Ibid

[3] Ibid, 137

[4] Ibid, 137

[5] Wilder, 2

[6] Ibid, 3

[7] Stringfellow,

[8] Stringfellow, 16

[9] Wilder, 27

[10] Hall, 229

[11] Hall, 228

[12] Altmann, 46

[13] Holland,

[14] Wilder, 12

[15] 151

[16] 153

from my Theopoets Journal

I am not a Systematician nor am i a Constructive. I am a THEOPOET! The Theopoet works in fragments, ideas, stories, myths. We work in image and language, with the hungers and desires of our age.

Where the scholar pretends that they have no emotion, that the body can be removed from knowing and knowledge - that the reader and what the reader feels - is not important - the Theopoet knows better!

Inspired by Jan Zwicky and her idea of Lyric Philosophy, Witeensteins fragments and Rubem Alves Theopoetry I present the notes, fragments, corners of ideas and undeveloped Theopoetry from my Scholars Journal.

FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT:

To speak about the Kingdom of God is to speak about a non-kingdom. This is seen most clearly in our notions of the historic Christ, Jesus of Nazareth. In this person, in whom we say we encounter the passion and incarnation of God, we have named a reality we call 'prince of peace', 'king of kings' and 'Lord'. All these phrases offer up a reversal of expectation - princes, kings and lords are not born in mangers, nor do they die on crosses as politically scandalous/political subversives.

For Jesus to be prince is to be non-prince, to be King is to be non-king, to be Lord is to be non-lord. The non-kingdom of God as revolutionary ideal is a revolution that never fully arrives in our time, nor is it only a future event which can never be grasped.

The Revolution of God, a more fitting title than Kingdom, is a revolution of community and Incarnation. To say Jesus is Lord is to name the powers-that-be that are present in Ceaser as Lord have failed to incarnate the radical inclusiveness of Gods Revolution.

Cesar, or the Powers and Principalities present in every era of every age of every culture, will always be beholden to the pursuit and maintainance of his/her own power. Governments, even the best of them, will fall into that sin of selfishness - this could be war-making, human rights violating, environmental disaster or economic death. To name the non-kingdom present in Christ is to say that those communities that gather in the name of the Incarnate Passion of God (or Spirit, or Universe) are called to live out a radical communal life that challenges the powers-that-be.

For example - where cultures can not be inclusive, diverse, welcoming and peace making the communities of spirit (churches, community groups, social justice groups) have then a responsibility to live out a way of being that is 'the kingdom come' or 'the revolution present'.

The great sin of the churches is that where our culture has failed to include female, queer, minority and other voices the church should have been embodying these ways of being as a witness and testimony to the world which, by its idolatry to power and wealth, can never be Gods revolution.

To what end, then, does the non-kingdom of God function in the world? Are we to retreat from the world and set-up tiny, counter-cultural outposts on the margins of society?

Yes!

Are we to embody in widening circles the realities we live in our revolutionary lives? Do we embody another way of being and then enter into the public world as a call to conversion.

Yes!

Here we cut to the heart of what it may mean to be saved. For the conservative xtian it means a personal relationship with God which leads us to seek the salvation of another - to get their butts into heaven/out of hell.

For Liberals it means a communal salvation from poverty, injustice and war.

I am here suggesting a Integral Salvation. This is a conversion to Gods revolution that includes our MIND, BODY and SOUL. A spiritual conversion leads to mental conversion of my thoughts, focusing me on the incarnate other and their needs and the physical realities they live in.

To convert culture from a spirit of death, oppression and injustice is to convert the Spirit, but if we do not convert our mental systems then the realities we expierence bodily will never change. Salvation can beging with any one of these. But must also include the other.

If salvation is to be purley spiritual, or only of the soul, then we have no responsibility for our physical realities, how we treat our body or the wisdom of our bodies. This form of salvation only ever leads to post-world thinking.

To rely on a social gospel for salvation alone only ever suggests that salvation from physical realities is necessary but does not recognize the spirit of the age that allows for such a form of sin - societal oppression - to exist in the first place.

Integral Salvation insists that their can be no salvation that does not take all three into consideration. A mind/body/soul (integral) salvation seeks to engage with the whole human reality as it is revealed from these 3 positions. This then is a kosmocenteric salvation - respecting the interdependence of all systems on all levels of being.

To seek salvation of the world - kosmocentrically - is to work across the 3 positions in order to model ways of health for the whole of Creation. Salvation in this manner seeks the conversion of the war-mongering president as well as the health of our rivers and the lives - human and non-human - that rely on them.

When we speak of the Community of Spirit being the revolution that the world cannot be we are recognizing that we are doing this as part of the system and participants on multiple levels of the Kosmos and that our actions have ramifications even for those systems we cannot expierence directly.

Conversion then is not to only come into right relationship w/God but to come into right relationship w/humanity, the earth, our bodies and our famallies and our culture. It is to begin a process of mind, body, spirit that seeks to have a healthy way of being in the world. It is also to recognize that such a process is a never ending journey.

The non-kingdom of God is a kingdom of Kosmocenteric responsibility. It is to pray for - by contemplation, action, community - the breadth of relationships in the Kosmos and our place in them from atoms, molecules, to cells, to beings, to consciousnesses. Likewise it is to seek salvation that is true across all levels of relationship - the balance of natural and living systems.

TO BE CONTINUED

To the founder of Theopoetics.net

I am very excited to be included on your website.

The occasion of your website is a cause for celebration. The website its self is an Theopoetic – an event of God-Speak situated within the language by which our ages hopes and dreams are voiced and using technology by which future thinking is shaped. A quick, and not thorough I should add, glance around the internet shows that there is no liberationtheology.com, processtheology.com or constructivetheology.com. While there are innumerable websites that reference, debate or by which articles in this field can be accessed I have found no single site which attempts to rally the movement of that theology to its self. Your website, a rallying point for the Theopoetic community, is a first and a rarity.

This it’s self is interesting and allows us to further understand why the Theopoetic endeavor is important. The crime of much of what is called the ‘academic’ is that what we construct as ‘academic’ is its self a part of the capitalist model that much of our theology seeks to critique. The ideas and theory constructed in the academy are done so by individuals who produce, consume and discard their theories as new fads, trends and theories come into view. I am not criticizing this as such; it is important to be in touch with the latest thinking and theories. I only bring this up to recognize that theology has tended to be a ‘solitary’ act and an act dependent on the consumer moods of the academic world.

What we can come to here is that the Theopoetic is a post-academic theology, or at least allows for it. And you are correct, I have criticized the faddishness of most theology and I have jumped into the trend of putting a ‘post’ before a word. And by calling it a post-academic theology I do not mean to say that is a theology outside or beyond the scope of the academy and the academic theologian. To borrow a phrase from Ken Wilber, the force behind Integral Philosophy – the Theopoetic ‘includes and transcends’ the academic.

To illustrate this I will turn to Marianne Sawickis concept, mentioned in passing in her book ‘Seeing the Lord’, of the three tables of theology. Sawicki says that theology should be constructed from a meeting of the academic, the worshipping community, and the hungers and desires of the poor. Not as three separate forces working in isolation but as a communal event. A theology born in such a manner escapes the consumer market mentality of the academy and returns to its roots as a source for communal life and provocation towards justice. The Theopoet would remind Sawicki of a fourth table as well – the insights, hungers and articulations of the artist.

The danger for both theology and poetry is in its ineffectiveness and its retreat from the world into specialized fields. Poet/essayist/farmer Wendell Berry point out that poetry has become a specialized field of a few with a self-generating audience of MFA students and former MFA students. The danger of this is that poetry then becomes art for arts sake exercise with no responsibility to the world beyond the impulses – an erotic urge so to speak – of the artist who created it. Poetry becomes a sort of self love, an intellectual and emotional masturbation.

The application to theology is obvious. MA and M.div students, theology Phd students etc become consumer-producers for a self generating market. In the meantime the masturbatory nature being as it is, the pews for which theology is generated become increasingly isolated from the thinking of the churches/communities theologians. We become a field of ‘theology for theology’s sake’ with out considering our communal responsibilities. This is why theology – why a Theopoetic working from a 4-table model – is a post-academic theology. The 4-tables is about lovers embracing.

The Theopoetic by its nature – which says our stories and symbols have meaning, our hungers have meaning, our dreams have meaning, the life and death of our communities have meaning, that the God whom we focus on but is never finally definable (thus, poetry) - has an implication. When we resort to a ‘theology for theologies’ sake, if our theological endeavors become a race up an academic career ladder or a career instead of a vocation and divorced from the community’s life, we have just insisted to the world that theology and poetry have no gift or implication for the world.

The Theopoetic challenge before people like ourselves is to insist to the world that theology and poetry (by which we can/may/do mean the mythic and narrative hungers of our age) still have a role to play. Plato’s republic was threatened by God-speakers, theologians, poets who spoke about the Gods. Plato could say this because he knew poetry, and God-Speak, contained the voices of those power trampled on. Likewise he knew a good poem, good God-Speak, could pose a question so powerful that the people would swerve, change their course, lead into a new life and a new way of being.

In the Theopoetic world our primary source documents by which we construct our theologies do not exist primarily in the peer-reviewed journals (include and transcend). Instead the Theopoetic can choose as its primary documentation vandalism, chapbooks, editorials, alternative newspapers, poetry, film, advertising etc. For example the Theopoetic task, I hope, will work like the video art of Diane Derr (this authors sister). Diane Derr presents screens of ordinary objects – three women with lollipops – and allows us to be impacted by the underlying sexual implications of ordinary objects. The publications of the Theopoet, I am hopeful, will move into such work. The web provides an opportunity for us to deliver multi-platform publications integrating scholarly research with artistic delivery, feedback from communities etc. Storytelling nights in public venues, poetry nights etc also function as publications of the Theopoet – though again I insist we avoid any ‘art for arts sake’ and ‘spectacle for spectacles sake’. I’m sure that Theopoets of the future will discover other multi and single platform opportunities for publication.

We are the future of Theology.

Jason Derr

MA in Theological Studies, Vancouver School of Theology (on leave)

Chaplain Assistant, Lutheran/Anglican Campus Ministry – Simon Fraser University (lamm.ca).

Theopoetic As Way Forward

The Theopoetic as Way Forward.

By Jason Derr

Chaplaincy Assistant – LAMM(Lutheran/Anglican Mountaintop Ministry) – SFU

THE CHURCH AS S/HE IS LIVED

The unavoidable truth is that the church as we know it is dying. Wherever I travel in the church I hear grumbling about shrinking attendance, the increasing isolation of the church from the post-modern generation and the lack of relevance of faith to the world. Add to that the arguments, bitter disputes and controversy’s which cut straight to our heart of what it means to be ‘church’ in today’s world and our dilemma starts to become clear.

As a person involved in ministry – Chaplaincy Assistant at Simon Fraser University – I feel like I’m expected to defend the church, and as a theological student and theologian I feel as if I am expected to do border patrols around the church insisting on some sort of ‘true Lutheran’ doctrine. Such a view leaves me feeling as if my only obligation – as a Christian and Lutheran – is toward preserving a certain ideal of church that is located in certain faith contexts.

I cannot in good faith do either of these. If the church is dying – or in my preferred language, transforming – there is little we can do to stop it. Both liberal and conservative members of the church (brothers and sisters all, lest we forget) falsely believe a redirection in theology will bring new members to us in droves. And as a member of the post-modern generation I am also post-Lutheran. My identity is rooted in Lutheran liturgical language, Eucharistic imagery and the life of the church. But I am also a post-modern Christian, with little interest in denomination divides, doctrinal wars and the latest church fads. I am much more interested in a faith that speaks to the human condition as s/he is lived today. To use the words of Intregal Philosopher Ken Wilber, as a post-Lutheran I seek to ‘include and transcend’ my Lutheran roots.

The current controversy of the church – and this one will fade eventually to make room for the next – is the conversation around homosexuality, the bible and the life of the church. Many times in this conversation I hear much complaint around the divide between pulpit and pew. Again and again I hear that the theologically minded of the pulpit and the pew which has had less time to peruse such interests usually have a gap in thinking between the two.

In another phrase; theology has become a task separate from the life-work of the community. The crime of this is that theology is, theoretically, created for the community. That there is a gap in theological literacy between pulpit and pew speaks to a crime of ineffecitude on the part of theology. Can theology be seen as a responsibility of the community?

THE THEOPOETIC

And it is here that the problem lies. My own work focuses on the role of the Theopoetic as theological method. Dr. Scott Holland defines the Theopoetic as:

Good theology is a kind of transgression, a kind of excess, a kind of gift. It is not a smooth systematics, a dogmatics, or a metaphysics; as a theopoetics it is a kind of writing. It is a kind of writing that invites more writing. Its narratives lead to other narratives, its metaphors encourages new metaphors, its confessions more confessions...

-Scott Holland

from Theology Is a Kind of Writing

If we use the Theopoetic to create a conversation bridge between the theological and the poetic then we can come to a very simple but sincere conclusion. Theology shares the same problem of being that poetry does. Poet/Essayist/Philosopher/Farmer Wendell Berry names the failure of poetry as its insistence on specialization. Poetry has become an ‘art for arts sake’ task by people working on an MFA in poetry or who have an MFA in poetry writing for each other. It is a self-generating market. The idea that poetry has an obligation, responsibility and role in the culture has been lost to us.

We can likewise see the implications for theology as it regards the pulpit/pew divide. Those who have or work on an MA, M.div or PhD in theology tend to work and write in a virtual bubble where there work is only consumed by others who have or are working toward similar degrees. Upon graduation from seminary the theologically educated pastor or priest finds his ability to speak from his theological convictions limited due to the preference of the congregation or the fear of being labeled a heretic.

The Theopoetic, as I have defined it above, insists on a sort of post-academic theology. To return to the words of Ken Wilber the post-academic is not an abandonment of the academic – a fool-hearty task if their ever was one – but instead asks that theology work inside the world of the congregation, sitting in position between pulpit and pew and thus enabling the relevance of the church.

When poetry becomes ‘art for arts sake’ and stops insisting that the words, ideas and language by which we name the world have relevance then we have retreated into a sort of artistic abandonment of the world. Likewise if we allow a divide between pulpit and pew, if we insist on ‘theology for theologies sake’ or as a purely academic exercise divorced from the church’s life then we have insisted that the church has no relevance for our age.

If the church grows or shrinks is not the issue before us. The church, as churches always have through time, will change to better minister and speak to its cultural and social location. I am content that new ways of being church and being Lutheran will emerge. The task before us is to envision a church that is relevant so that transformation is a healthy one for the world (and not just the church).

The church – like poetry and theology – has become in many ways a task for and of itself. The longer we insist on church as a separate realm of being from the rest of life – a Sunday morning lifechoice instead of a 24/7 lifestyle – the more it will become segregated from the life of the world.

With that in mind we can say that if the church must turn to a Theopoetic as a way forward, as a way of allowing the theological conversation to exist as a task of the whole community and not as an exclusive few, then we must begin to imagine the church as a Theopoetic in the wider community and culture. The church must envision it’s self as a voice among a multiplicity of voices.

A MULTI-TABLED THEOLOGY

When we speak of theology as being a post-academic pursuit then we by rights are insisting that the community itself function as theologian and has a purpose and voice in the community. To say we include and transcend the academic is to say we work with the insights and revelations of academic fields but add to that our communal insights and artistic endeavors that name our human and spiritual desires that may fall outside of the community .To better clarify what I mean by such a phrase I will turn to the work of Marianne Sawicki.

Sawicki, a Catholic theologian, in her book ‘Seeing the Lord’ makes a passing reference to the idea that theology is a meeting of three tables of theological discourse. Table one would be the academic. Any endeavourer to speak theologically would be amiss if it did not take into consideration the historical and latest conversations of theology, philosophy, sociology and many other fields. The second table would be the voices, concerns, life and reality of the worshipping community. The third table would be the hunger and desires of the poor and the marginalized, those whom the world calls least and Christ calls greatest. We included them as participants in our conversation for we must remember the insights and contributions of those whom are outside the church, who are on occasion trampled by the church and who the church is called to serve.

In this way the community takes on the task of theologian. By applying a multitude of voices from multiple communities we prevent theology from becoming a solitary act. Additionally it recognizes the gifts and contributions of those both inside and outside the community and brings their voices, observations and conversations to bear.

In no way am I trying to indicate that I feel that such a move will rescue the church. As stated previously I have little or no concern about the survival of the church. I am confident that the church will survive, though I also assume that the form it takes will evolve. Nor am I proposing a way in which to negotiate the pulpit-pew divide as it regards the issue of homosexuality.

The multi-tabled theology does not even need to insist on a consensus between the three tables. The works produced in such way can be a joint publication, a midrash, a joint statement, a public forum or a public action. The theopoetic encourages us to view the artistic, the poetic, fiction, vandalism and the internet as primary documentation for theology. In order to avoid the solitary action of the academic theology the task we are discussing here would allow for an multi-platform publication: websites that combine scholarship with video/sound/art/poetry and community discussion, gallery shows and chapbook and zine publishing as well as traditional peer-reviewed academic publishing.

Instead I am proposing a form by which the church can enter into the task of asserting its self as a relevant place of public discourse. A multi-tabled, post-academic, theopoetic theology could provide formats by which the community as theologian can enter into the public conversation. Likewise, theology in such a collaborative model allows for a multiplicity of voices and a flow of conversation between previously segregated disciplines.

Berry’s critique of poetry applies to this as well. When we allow the life of the church to become specialized – worship over here, justice and service over here, and theology in another corner all together – we neuter the church and its voice. The multi-tabled and theopoetic insist on the role of the voice of Spirit in public consciousness. This does not necessarily mean a purely Christian voice, but insists that the multiple voices of spirit come into consideration.

Theopoetic Notes

Inspired by Jan Zwicky, Wittenstein, Rubem Alves etc...all those who blut the line between theology/philosophy/poetry - i give you these fragments.
1) To do theology as theopoetic enables us to do theology as not just an academic endeavourer but also as an exercise of communities on the ground dealing with the realities of their mission and to listen to the voices of the poor and marginalized, those who feel they have no place in our liturgical assemblies’ and who have been cut off from the world of the academy by economic realities, learning styles or life choices.

2) And to the ends that our work allows we want to take seriously this notion that the responsibility of the theologian in the new millennium, in the age after Christendom, is to take up the task of engaging with our ‘unconscious axioms and symbolics[1]’ by bridging the worlds of our imaginations and social drama. All theologies are by nature political, as are our spiritual practices whether in the contemplative movement, or as William Stringfellow has shown, in the experiences and spiritual ecstasies of the charismatic and Pentecostal movements[2].

3) This theopoetic of the cross continues to imagine the cross in a movement towards the edges of our society and culture. A theopoetic of the cross tries to imagine the ways in which crucifixion exists as a reality in our own day and age

4) To construct our theopoetry we will not only be working with and developing Wilders idea of the theopoetic. In addition to this we will be working with the style of writing suggested by Alves and Guynn’s notion, as well of that as Scott Holland[3] that theopoetics – as theology and as social action – are a ‘type of writing’[4]. Marianne Sawickis 3-tables will play a vital role in our attempt to articulate what this may mean and Adi Da Samraj’s book “The Mummery Book” provides an example of a form the theopoetic can take.

5. Our exploration of the theopoetic presents certain specific challenges to us. Very few major works have been written exploring the theopoetic and only one book has actually been written presenting its self as an example of the theopoetic[5].

4. After addressing the early theology of the cross in Luther I will then explore the roll it played in some theological thinking where the pursuit of suffering was prized and the cross was used as an example of obedience even unto suffering and persecution.

5. These insights will be placed next to the work of Bob Eckblad and his ‘The Peoples Seminary’. Eckblad is a Presbyterian theologian/pastor doing liberation theology with immigrant communities. Eckblad has found that the majority of his ministry is with immigrants with Pentecostal backgrounds, and as such developed language, ideas, images and worships inspired by the meeting of liberation theology and Pentecostal worship[6].

6. As Guiterreze states, a new creation of the poor that must happen, assuming that their can be a time in history when all things are made perfect and human nature is somehow removed. It is to a new creation of the church that we must turn.

7. Altmann explores Luther as a man who had to understand himself in his own weakness[7].[8]

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[1] Cite again?

[2] Stringfellow, William. An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land. (Eugene, Oregean: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1973) 146-151

[3] Holland, Scott. “Theology is a kind of writing: the emergence of theopoetics”…..

[4] Guynn, 100

[5] though I am sure other examples can be found by books and organizations alike who are just ‘doing’ the work with out worrying about our limiting labels.

[6] Eckblad

[7] Altmann, 2

[8] this along with his theology of the cross and Caputo’s ‘The Weakness of God’ will provide us with conversation points in how to address the powerful weakness of God and the Cross.

Priesthood of the Beliver - ROUGH DRAFT

I am often asked by my seminary and church colleagues if I feel limited in my calling by not pursuing the path of ordination. The tragedy of such a question is that it misses an important reality of the life of the laity in the church: they are already ordained by their faith and the identity named as their reality in baptism (if by water or holy spirit is of no concern). Any limitation I may feel in my calling originates in the institution of the church and not with the Holy Spirit. In fact when I turn my attention to the holy gospels and to that radical troublemaker and Holy One of God, Jesus Christ, then I am more than able to recognize that I am, as a believer, a member of the Priesthood of All Believers which is the highest form of ordination the church has to offer.

That last statement may cause some to pause and scratch their heads. The ordained priest is a member of the laity who has been forced into a restricted ministry. The community appoints – ordains – this one person to exercise Word, Sacrament and Mercy ministries in such a way that his/her ministry is restrained from participating in the full life of the Ordained Believer. This person is set aside and restricted in their ministry as a visible example of the true reality of those of us who sit in the pew. The ordained priest takes on the symbolic ministries, the light on the hill so to speak, of the realities that the laity must live.

For example we have set aside the role of the priest to perform the Eucharist in public worship. In seminary we jokingly refer to this as receiving the ‘magic hands’ in ordination, the ability to bless the elements. I must recognize here that I am speaking for my own Anglican/Lutheran tradition and that other traditions have other realties. Please bear with my argument as I feel that in the long run there are trans-denominational implications. The assumption then by many is that the priest and the priest alone has the ability to name the grace of God that is a reality in the Eucharist. This is so far from the truth that it would be funny if it were not a common assumption. The priest is the enactor of the symbol of what the community of Priests lives. What the priest does on a Sunday to the elements is the summation of what we are called to do. This is not to say that the Sunday Eucharist is not the Real Presence, but it is to say that the Real Presence of the Sunday Eucharist functions as a powerful narrative symbol of the reality that the Priesthood of Believer is called to live everyday.

While the priest can preside over this one meal and use it to surmise what all members of the Priesthood are called to do, we the regular Ordained Believers are given the holy task of naming all meals as holy meals. Every time we gather with family, friends, strangers we are called upon to name that meal as ministry and as a place where we can encounter the Real Presence of Christ in the world. This is even more radical as we come to recognize international food crisis’s, poverty and hunger in the world and our own dependence on foods designed to be unhealthy. To share a meal in radical welcome to share that bounty with out regard to persons is to name the real presence of God in Christ in that meal.

The Priesthood of the Believer, unlike the ordinary priest who is limited in his or her task, needs no words of institution to perform this sacrament. The Ordinary Beliver may choose to bless a meal or activity but that is of no regard. It is by participating in a radical welcome and ministry of hospitality that we name the Real Presence. Here again the ordinary priest is limited in their work. They must perform a ritual in order to do what I can do by making a sandwich , lending an ear and advocating for justice.

This is the danger of having and empowered laity. Living into my ordination is to make this danger real, to name all meals that are shared together as Eucharistic events, Agape Meals, in which we proclaim the unconditional welcome and acceptance of God. The early church knew itself as being engaged in the making of families, where women, men, children, slaves and foreigners by their faith belonged to each other in a new type of family.The equality that society could not share the church lived. In our own world where so many must eat alone due to poverty, illness, war, drug abuse, addiction and relationship disconnection, where so many are rendered unequal the task of the Priesthood of Believers is kick doors open and name the overlooked holy spaces of our world. Not only do we make meals holy we also name all places where people gather as holy, we enact Mercy and Pastoral Care with each other and we proclaim the Word-As-Event in bible study and public witness. We are able to engage in what Gustavo Guttierreze calls the ‘sacrament of the neighbor’ and what I call the ‘sacrament of the ordinary’ – we are called to participate in the ordinariness of the world and name it as holy, as places of grace and real presence.

I am grateful for those people who choose to have their ministries restricted by official ordination, but to be honest I do not fully understand it. To be a member of the Priesthood of the Believer is to celebrate sacrament while the priest who is officially ordained can only enact a reminder, a symbol, a summary of what has happened during the week. There is power in that symbol and there is a mighty strength in it but it is nothing compared to what the true Priesthood is able to do.

In the future I hope this Empowered Laity will take up the call of Priesthood wherever they will be. I hope we will always welcome people to our tables, will engage in acts of mercy and justice. We are too dependent on those people whose roles are limited by official ordination. It is not up to Bishops, Congregations and Synods (or what have you) to engage in ministry. It is the task of the Priesthood of The Believer to live into their ordinations and to work as priests in the world. I am hopeful that we will see more small groups, house churches and worship parties as well as Priesthood Teams who will take on the roles of Pastoral Care, Preaching and Ministry. I hope we will see the rise of the Agape Meal in both public worship and private use as a true sacrament that belongs to the Ordained Believer.

If we face with honesty the fact that the church is dying and numbers are shrinking then we must also recognize that the role and function of the church is also changing. I am hopeful that the true ordained, the Ordinary Believer, will recognize this for the incredible possibility it is and the ways in which it contains the future of the church. We cannot let the fears of the Officially Ordained and the institution of the church get in the way of us naming the gift of our faith and acting it out in the world. It is up to the Priesthood of the Believer to not save the church but to find new ways of being church, to recognize that no matter the size of the church or its financial situation the call of Christ and the Holy Spirit must go on even if that means redefining what the gift of the church is in the world. It is up to the priests who sit in the pews to make this happen.

Jason Derr, POTB (Priesthood Of The Believer).

MA student, Vancouver School of Theology

Creed

Tirechan's Credo

Our God is the God of all humans.
The God of heaven and earth.
The God of the sea and the rivers.
The God of the Sun and the Moons.
The God of all the heavenly bodies.
The God of the lofty mountains.
The God of the lowly valleys.
God is above the heavens,
and he is in the heavens;
and he is beneath the heavens.
Heaven and earth and sea,
and everything that is in them,
such he has as his abode.
He inspires all things,
he gives life to all things,
he stands above all things,
and he stands beneath all things.
He enlightens the light of the sun,
he strengthens the light of the night and the stars,
he makes wells in the arid land and dry islands in
the sea,
and he places the stars in the service of the greater lights.
He has a son who is co-eternal with himself,
and similiar in all respects to himself;
and neither is the Son younger than the Father,
nor is the Father older than the Son;
and the Holy Spirit breathes in them.
And the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are
inseparable.

it looks like its going to rain tonight
and i,
with no lover,
will sit by the rain with tea
dream of songs i could sing to the mirror
listen for the voice of God
in the stilling air.

I dont belong here.
I cant be loved.
I cant learn.

Why am i here God?
Why cant she love me?
Whats so wrong with me?

excercising demons

I dont belive in magic. But i belive in myth and ritual. I belive that we use story and action to create new ways of seeing the world come alive inside of us. As ive been praying - for freedom, for peace, for love, for the future - ive been praying with paper and fire. Each strip of paper represents a desire, a prayer, a hope. And as i give them to God/dess i give them to the fire. Its a symbol that i hope will open a space in me for change and chance.

rough draft from my new thesis chapter

The dinner party has settled at the table, the hostess is inspecting the silverware, passing around the new wine. A young man at the end of the table is eager to talk politics, religion, wants to talk all the things your not supposed to say in polite company, in the company of politeness. The theopoet is smelling his dinner, he is high off of the intoxication of dinner, friends and conversation.

He is passionate.

This is dangerous for a theopoet. Theopoets get rilled up so easily, they fall in love with the God and the world over and over again, only to have their hearts break. The hostess is on edge, this is one of her husbands friends, she thinks, and not suitable dinner company.

Before us now is the task of the theopoetic and the cross. This cross is the so-called scandal of the church but functions more often than not as an instrument of torture, abuse and conquest.[1] We have ceased to be scandalized by the cross but have taken on the task of scandalizing with the cross. Those of us who have faith must live with this scorn, that the holiness of our religious imagery is the image of abuse, as Brock says, of divine child abuse.[2] But the cross as scandal exists as such by the merit of its being a place of reversal, of danger. It is an unholy event, it is a profane event and it is as such that it becomes for the Christian a place of revelation and of hiding of God.[3] We hold the cross as revelation next to the idea that Jesus was killed by political authorities and for political ideals.[4] The cross is a scandal in that we turn to a politically dangerous and revolutionary leader for our inspiration, it is dangerous because by wearing the cross around our neck we reveal that we will not be had by their torture, by the way states and corporations cut down criticism, shut off protest, even death can’t silence this cross, this revelation, this hiding and revealing and hiding again of a God who prefers to make godself known in death, in margin, in prison, in execution and in political scandal and in resurrection, that’s right, even in the unknown, the unpredicted, the surprise of God and life.

The cross announces embarrassment to the church and to the world, that the unholy is the holy, that it is revelation that faith is not wrapped up in our neat moralities, our safe pleasantries. It is a degrading punishment, a punishment done in public, hung up for your mother to see, for your friends to balk at.[5] The Israeli people knew this, that to be hung on a cross was to be rejected by your people, to be cursed among Gods people, to be excluded from the covenant life.[6] To worship a God revealed in crucifixion is to be inappropriate, it is to enter the task of Holy and Wholly Inappropriateness as spiritual calling.[7] It is to take up the holy task of profanity.

Our Moral Majorities are interested in a clean country, a strict sense of what is moral and what is not. Our Moral Majorities announce who is rejected by God, who is outside the blessing. This, of course, is not the cross. The cross wants the reverse, wants to drag our eyes to dangerous places. The cross wants us to be shocked that whenever we announce something as unholy God pops up there, spirituality pops up there, faith and life flourish. To be moral in this sense is to not be inappropriate; it is not to be a scandal and a shock. How can we announce the ‘enterprise of God’ come if we are busy maintaining the moral order? How can we announce the enterprise of God if we are too busy turning away from the scandal and revelation of bodies that break?

Alberto L. Garcia places Luther and the theology of the cross squarely in the liberation theology tradition; he says that the key to the theology of the cross is to see it as living, as active, as a form of discipleship in the world.[8] This cross of discipleship is not a cheerful object, is no rose color cross, it is no multi colored cross[9]. Those cross’s can come out of the theology of the cross, can be a way of speaking revelation in a particular context, a way of voicing discipleship in a particular community. But to get there is to go through a repugnant object, an ugly thing, a scandal.

This scandal of the cross is a cross against the church, against society. It is a cross that reveals the broken bodies, the holiness of being profane and inappropriate. As Luther would have told us in this theology we bring Christ to others and also carry others in their burden as Christ would have carried and embraced them.[10] But it assumes that they must be saved out of their revelation, must be saved into our condition, our place in society. To do this requires them to be saved away from the cross, away from the experience and revelation of God. Instead we must come to a new place, a place where we not save the neighbor but are instead saved to them[11].

CRASH

The hostess has dropped her fork, one hand to her chest, her breathing a little rough, a little tight in her chest. She is unsure of what to say, her eyes search faces and one hand plays at the edge of the table pulling at the table cloth.

“Excuse me?”

“We are saved out of holiness and into the profane; we are called into profanity, into immorality, into the filthy.”

A young man at the end of the table is fidgeting; he is excited and scared by the idea all at the same time. Words want to bubble out of him in a mess of language and emotion. He is not sure how to proceed, not sure what to say or do. He pushes the chicken around his plate.

“But” he is stammering, his words are yawning out of him. “What about…poor people, and the children on TV, the starving ones in Africa? What about all the alcoholics’, the perverts, child molesters…”

“Jesus Christ!”

“Don’t swear.” Your hostess is pouring another wine, a deep red in crystal. She doesn’t get it, your so-called swearing, that you are declaring revelation, you are declaring virgin birth, a God who gets godself born into impossible situations, into dangerous messes and among animals and shit and filth and political danger.

Bibliography

Altmann, Walter. Luther and Liberation : A Latin American Perspective. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992.

Gutiérrez, Gustavo. A Theology of Liberation : History, Politics, and Salvation. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1988.

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[1] Cite

[2] Brock,?

[3] Walter Altmann, Luther and Liberation : A Latin American Perspective (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992).?

[4] Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation : History, Politics, and Salvation (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1988).81

[5] Moltmann, 33

[6] Moltmann,33

[7] Ibid, 34

[8] Garcia, 92

[9] Moltman, 34

[10] Garcia, 24

[11] Gutiérrez., ?