Be ready

‘So stay awake, because you do not know the day when your master is coming. You may be quite sure of this that if the householder had known at what time of the night the burglar would come, he would have stayed awake and would not have allowed anyone to break through the wall of his house. Therefore, you too must stand ready because the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.’

Matthew 24:42 - 44

When we look forward to a special event, a birthday, a trip away, a party, we can always put our finger onto the calendar and count down the days. As it approaches, so does our excitement. Our sense of anticipation and expectation grow. I watch my grandchildren as they prepare to head off to a birthday. They really do want their friends to throw a great party and have few goodies to take home for after. Then there's the palpable eagerness and delight on arrival, and on the return home the pleasure of showing everyone what's in their party bag.

The first Christians expected the second coming of Jesus to be in their own lifetimes. There was an urgency in their preparation: don’t marry unless you have to; live out the Gospel right now (Romans 13:11 – 14) – for you know not the day when your master is coming (Matthew 24:42). There was undoubted disappointment that this day did not arrive. But when it became apparent that the second coming would be later rather than sooner, Christians adjusted their expectations. They began to take a longer view of when this day would occur.

So how do you await or watch out for something that you cannot put your finger on? Our ancestors figured that Halley’s comet would be seen every 76 years, winter followed autumn, even the moon and planets followed observable, predictable patterns. Over the centuries we have had soothsayers, fortune tellers, millenialists, prophets of doom and gloom haranguing us to accept the imminent end to the world as we know it. They have all been wrong.

For the Christian the tension between the present and that unknown future is where our lives are lived out. What and how we are is played out into the future. It is a flip of the hands, one side is now, the other is ‘then’. The coming of the Lord is filtered back into the present when the Gospel is lived out, when the kingdom of God takes on flesh and substance in our daily lives.

Advent (Latin) is a direct translation of parousia – the Greek word for the second coming of the Lord and the first two first two Sundays of Advent highlight this notion of the parousia, while the second two Sundays focus on the Incarnation of the Lord. Advent also marks the beginning of the Church’s liturgical year. Our Sunday readings move from Year C to Year A.

Like the preparation time that precedes Lent, Advent provides a key opportunity for self-reflection, penance and self-renewal, and upon our lips and in our hearts we should urge, ‘Come, Lord Jesus, come.’

Peter Douglas

Pope Francis: Religious fundamentalism

is a ‘plague’

 

Interreligious dialogue is an important way to counter fundamentalist groups as well as the unjust accusation that religions sow division, Pope Francis said.

Meeting with members of the Argentine Institute for Interreligious Dialogue Nov. 18, the pope said that in "today's precarious world, dialogue among religions is not a weakness. It finds its reason for being in the dialogue of God with humanity."

Recalling a scene from the 11th-century poem, "The Song of Roland," in which Christians threatened Muslims "to choose between baptism or death," the pope denounced the fundamentalist mentality which "we cannot accept nor understand and cannot function anymore."

"We must beware of fundamentalist groups; each (religion) has their own. In Argentina, there are some fundamentalist corners there," he said. "Fundamentalism is a plague and all religions have some fundamentalist first cousin," he said.

According to its website, the Institute for Interreligious Dialogue was founded in Buenos Aires in 2002 and was inspired by then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as a way "to promote understanding among men and women of different religious traditions in our city and the world."

The pope welcomed the members of the institute who are in Rome to reflect on the document on "human fraternity" and improving Christian-Muslim relations, which was signed Feb. 4 by Pope Francis and Sheikh Ahmad el-Tayeb, the grand imam of al-Azhar and a leading religious authority for many Sunni Muslims.

The intention of the document, the pope explained, was a way to adopt a "culture of dialogue" while respecting each other's unique identity.

"This is key: Identity cannot be negotiated because if you negotiate your identity, there is no dialogue, there is submission. Each (religion) with its own identity are on the path" of dialogue," he said.

The "complex human reality" of brotherhood, the pope continued, can be seen in scripture when God asks Cain about the whereabouts of his brother.

That same question must be asked today and lead members of all religions to reflect on ways of becoming "channels of brotherhood instead of walls of division," he said.

To see the dangers of fundamentalism, Christians must also reflect on their own history, he said, including the Thirty Years' War, which began in 1618 as a conflict between Catholic and Protestant states, and the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572, which saw the targeted assassinations of Huguenots by Catholic mobs in France.

"A bit of history should frighten us," the pope said. "Whoever doesn't feel frightened from within should ask themselves why."

Pope Francis said he hoped that the document on "human fraternity" would be "welcomed by the international community, for the good of the human family who must pass from simple tolerance to true and peaceful coexistence."

"It is important to show that we believers are a factor of peace for human societies and in doing so, we will respond to those who unjustly accuse religions of inciting hatred and causing violence," the pope said.

by Juno Arocho Esteves. T be found in America Magazine, 25 November 2019

KIng

The people stayed there before the cross watching Jesus. As for the leaders, they jeered at him. ‘He saved others,’ they said, ‘let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, the Chosen One.’ The soldiers mocked him too, and when they approached to offer him vinegar they said, ‘If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.’ Above him there was an inscription: ‘This is the King of the Jews.’

Luke 23:35ff

The Feast of Christ the King is celebrated this Sunday next around the Christian world. It is the last Sunday of the liturgical calendar. The church’s new liturgical year begins with the 1^st Sunday of Advent.

The extinguishment of European monarchies throughout the early 20^th century gave rise to a rash of ‘isms’ – most of which have now disappeared in their turn.  Nevertheless kingship survives in many of our neighbouring Asian and Pacific countries - Tonga, Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, not least of all, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and ourselves. Many Maori of Aotearoa recognise Tuheitia Paki as the Maori King.

The Feast of Christ the King was instituted by Pope Pius XI in 1925 as his response to rampant nationalism, atheism and growing Fascism. It was Pius’ way to impress on the faithful that Jesus’ sovereignty was superior to all forms of political governance: Christ has sovereignty over all. This teaching, however, clearly distinguishes between God’s kingdom and the Church. The Church is not the kingdom of God and vice versa. The Church is a servant of the kingdom. Its role is not to draw people into the Church itself, but to herald the kingdom.

From this we must accept that genuine and loving acts of goodness, kindness, and creativity may lead to the kingdom whether or not the ‘actor’ is Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu or animist … for all humanity might say: ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ And his answer to us is: ‘Indeed I promise you, today you will be with me in paradise (cf Luke 23:42f).’

While hereditary, elected, nominated, constitutional or absolute monarchies are relatively few they are in sharp contrast to the recent American presidential elections where the promise of good governance was overwhelmed by personal battles. Only Jesus can invite us into his kingdom and the only deal worth mentioning is that we must love another.

Living out a vocation

by Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI

11 November 2019

What does it mean to have a vocation? The term gets batted around both in religious and secular circles and everyone assumes its meaning is clear. Is it? What’s a vocation?

Karl Jung defined it this way: “A vocation is an irrational factor that destines a man to emancipate himself from the herd and from its well-worn paths.”  Frederick Buechner, a famed preacher, says: “A vocation is where your deep gladness meets the world’s hunger.”

David Brooks, a renowned journalist, reflecting on vocation in his recent book, The Second Mountain, gives us these quotes from Jung and Buechner and then writes:  A vocation is not something you choose. It chooses you. When you sense it as a possibility in your life you also sense that you don’t have a choice but can only ask yourself: What’s my responsibility here? It’s not a matter of what you expect from life but rather what life expects from you.  Moreover, for Brooks, once you have a sense of your vocation it becomes unthinkable to turn away and you realize you would be morally culpable if you did.  He quotes William Wordsworth in support of this:

My heart was full; I made no vows, but vows

Were then made for me; bond unknown to me

Was given, that I should be, else sinning greatly. 

Brooks suggests that any number of things can help awaken your soul to its vocation: music, drama, art, friendship, being around children, being around beauty, and, paradoxically, being around injustice. To this he adds two further observations: First, that usually we only see and understand all this clearly when we’re older and looking back on life and our choices; and, second, that while the summons to a vocation is a holy thing, something mystical, the way we actually end up living it out is often messy, confusing, and screwed up and generally doesn’t feel very holy at all.

Well, I am older and am looking back on things. Does my vocational story fit these descriptions? Mostly, yes.

As a child growing up in the Roman Catholic subculture of the 1950s and early 1960s, I was part of that generation of Catholics within which every Catholic boy or girl was asked to consider, with considerable gravity, the question: “Do I have a vocation?” But back then mostly that meant: “Am I called to be a priest, a religious brother, or a religious sister?” Marriage and single life were, in fact, also considered vocations, but they took a back seat to what was considered the higher vocation, consecrated religious commitment.

So as a boy growing up in that milieu I did, with all gravity, ask myself that question: “Do I have a vocation to be a priest?” And the answer came to me, not in a flashing insight, or in some generous movement of heart, or in an attraction to a certain way of life. None of these. The answer came to me as hook in my conscience, as something that was being asked of me, as something I couldn’t morally or religiously turn away from. It came to me as an obligation, a responsibility. And initially I fought against and resisted that answer. This wasn’t what I wanted.

But it was what I felt called to. This was something that was being asked of me beyond my own dreams for my life. It was a call. So at the tender age of seventeen I made the decision to enter a religious order, the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, and train to become a priest. I suspect that few counsellors or psychologists today would put much trust in such a decision, given my age at the time; but, looking back on it now, more than fifty years later, in hindsight, I believe this is the purest and most unselfish decision I’ve ever made in my life.

And I’ve never looked back. I’ve never seriously considered leaving that commitment, even though every kind of unsettling emotion, obsession, restlessness, depression, and self-pity have at times haunted and tormented me. I’ve never regretted the decision. I know this is what I’ve been called to do and I’m happy enough with the way it’s turned out.  It’s brought me life and helped me serve others. And given my personal idiosyncrasies, wounds, and weaknesses, I doubt I would have found as deep a path into life and community as this vocation afforded me, though that admittedly can be self-serving.

I share my personal story here only because it might be helpful in illustrating the concept of a vocation.  But religious life and priesthood are merely one vocation. There are countless others, equally as holy and important.  One’s vocation can be to be an artist, a farmer, a writer, a doctor, a parent, a wife, a teacher, a salesman, or countless other things.  The vocation chooses you and makes the vows for you – and those vows put you at that place in the world where you’re best placed to serve others and to find happiness.

Fr Ron has a blog at https://ronrolheiser.com/

We remember

Jesus replied, ‘The children of this world take wives and husbands, but those who are judged worthy of a place in the other world and in the resurrection from the dead do not marry because they can no longer die, for they are the same as the angels, and being children of the resurrection they are sons of God.

Luke 24:34 - 36

My grandmother Maggie didn’t live to a great old age. She died in her 50’s. She sent three sons into the Second World War: one to the Pacific and two Europe. The two who went to Europe never returned. Of her own brothers who went to war, one also never returned. How do you heal the heart of a woman who has lost her flesh and blood on the bloodied battlefields of a foreign land, far from home? That she and millions of mothers on both sides of that war, and that our young men and women continue to die in battles not of their choice, is a tragedy of our humanity.

In the past few week we have seen the parade of bereaved Kurds as they fled the Turkish incursion and to be sent into the arms of Assad and his Russian allies. The world is no better, no safer than 75 years ago. Who will remember them? Who will put out their hands to make a difference?

Anamnesis is the remembrance of events past. In a liturgical and theological sense anamnesis means remembering, reliving and re-experiencing. When we memorialise in the Eucharist, we remember not only the past experience of that first Eucharist, but it becomes present, happening in the now, in this very moment. Anamnesis we can also use to remember the dead of war.

Yet there are many today who would question the need to remember and pray for the dead, since the living bereaved are in dire need of attention. In the perspective of the church, ‘all those who have gone before us’ are members of the Body of Christ, the Church. While they have gone to their eternal reward, they await, like all humanity the full unveiling of God’s kingdom. That being so, they – like us, will very much benefit from the prayer of the individual and the community.

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus proclaims that our God is not a God of the dead, but of the living, ‘for to him all men are in fact alive (Luke 20:38).’ In God, past, present and future flow in perfect unity. And so it is, as we recall our dead, past, present and future are made real in our shared anamnesis. Our grief is renewed, our hope for peace is firmly determined, and our desire to be reconciled with and joined together in eternity is realised in anticipation. But we must never forget, that whatever relief we can offer right here and now we must give, and give generously and unselfishlessly.

May Paul’s blessing (Thessalonians 2:16) be recalled everywhere on this solemn Remembrance Day this Monday: ‘May our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father who has given us his love and, through his grace, such inexhaustible comfort and such sure hope, comfort you and strengthen you in every good that you do or say.’

We will remember them.

The Image, Gender and Personhood

 

Andrew Bunt 21 October 2019

In earlier posts, I have argued against the common idea that the image of God was lost or damaged by sin, noting that it is hard to find a scriptural warrant for this view, and have proposed an understanding of the image as denoting a general family resemblance between God and humans and a protective mark placed over humans which designates every human life as being worthy of protection and preservation. In this post, I want to show why I think this is really important, especially in discussions on gender and personhood.

The Image and Gender

In Genesis 1:27, the creation of humans in the image of God is placed in parallel with our creation as male and female. While this doesn’t necessarily mean that our creation as male and female is part of what it means to be in the image of God, it does suggest that there is a parallel between the way in which we are in the image of God and the way in which we are male or female.

If we go with the common view (which I have argued against) that the image of God is damaged or destroyed by sin, then the implication is that the image of God is a standard to which we have to live up, thus the extent to which we are in the image of God is dependent on how we live. Given that theologians who take this view tend to argue from New Testament passages about the image being renewed or about being conformed to the image, presumably the idea is that part of salvation is the freedom and power to return to living in line with God’s creational intent which makes us more like him. Thus the image is something we have to create through our performance.

If this is correct, then the parallel structure in Genesis 1:27 would suggest that the same is true of our identity as male or female. On this reading, male and female would be standards to live up to and identities which we create through our performance. Such an understanding of sex/gender puts pressure on us to fit into a certain mould to be a real man or real woman and, one could argue, even opens up the possibility of someone changing their gender by changing the way they live it out.

However, as I have argued before, this is not how the Bible talks about the image or our gendered identities. Instead, we find that both the image of God and our identities as male or female are static statuses given to us by God which cannot be changed. We live from a position of being in the image of God and being male or female, rather than living in a certain way to attain either status. If we get the image wrong, we get sex/gender wrong.

The Image and Personhood

The primary importance of the image in Scripture is the way it is evoked as the reason why human life should be protected and preserved (Genesis 9:6; James 3:9). In this way, it acts like the modern concept of personhood. Personhood is a quality ascribed to living beings which is different from just being alive or being a human and which is deemed to require the protection and preservation of life. In modern secular thinking, it is personhood which underlies the right to life.

Debates over abortion and euthanasia are thus now about personhood: if personhood is not there then the life can be ended. The key question of course becomes, ‘What are the grounds of personhood?’ As Nancy Pearcey has shown any acceptance of abortion or euthanasia is an implicit affirmation of an answer to that question. It is often claimed that agreeing to one individual’s wish to die because of their inability to care for themselves says nothing of the value of the lives of others in the same situation, but that cannot be maintained as true. If we agree that the individual can end their life, we are agreeing that their life is no longer worthy of protection and preservation, thus we are agreeing that their situation means they no longer have personhood. It follows that anyone else in the same situation also does not qualify for personhood. This is why any acceptance of voluntary euthanasia is dangerous, as it always makes a statement about personhood and that makes the step to involuntary euthanasia much easier.

If we subscribe to the view that the image is damaged or lost because of sin, we have a tricky situation. Given that the image is the biblical grounds for the protection and preservation of human life, how much of the image has to remain to make a life worth protecting? If the image is about how we act, what does someone have to do to lose the right to life? In the Bible, the image of God acts exactly as personhood acts in secular ethics. Because someone in created in the image of God they have the right to life, just as someone who has personhood is believed to have the right to life. If the image can be lost or damaged, then so can the right to life.

It is good news, then, that the image of God is actually a static status, given to us by God and unaffected by sin. Even after the Fall, and despite our rebellion against him, God declares that our lives are worthy of protection and preservation because we are made in his image. The image is a stamp of protection and, in this way, an example of common grace.

Conclusion

Getting the image of God right is really important. Holding to the view that the image is lost or damaged because of sin is not only unbiblical, but also dangerous. We should be those who boldly declare that every human who is every conceived is equally made in the image of God and continues to carry this status throughout their life. This will help people to enjoy the freedom of their God given gendered identity as they live from the status of being created male or female and will offer protection to all human lives and especially to the most vulnerable in our societies.

Published at: https://thinktheology.co.uk/blog/article/the_image_gender_personhood