From last week: "Deep needs wide. High needs long. Personal needs corporate. Remembering that God says more than anything "Do not be afraid" we can trust the interplay between personal and corporate. Trust matters. Jesus will show us how."
The interplay of personal and corporate is one of embodiment. And when we are thinking about Jesus in his last days this embodiment is dramatic and meaningful. It speaks of a reality that connects us to God. As a drama it plays out with others, with the powerful, with pretenders, with onlookers, enemies and pawns.
Because the drama is meaningful it is played out purposefully. It witnesses to truths about us and truths about God. Like the Fourth Gospel the miraculous acts of Jesus are called signs because they are witnessing to more than changing water into wine so a party can continue, more than the new view of life had by a man born blind being healed, and more than a multitude of people getting a good meal from a meager collection of fish and bread.
Always accompanying these signs is a conversation about listening and hearing, about blindness and seeing, about physical hunger and spiritual food.
That's why trust matters. When we follow a drama to a painful ending or when we are made aware of meanings that we have previously not known there is a displacement. It starts as surprise or curiosity. Sometimes it feels like the ground is shifting under our feet, like none of the rules we learned will work, or like our friends are abandoning us.
No wonder God keeps saying "do not be afraid." This embodied and meaningful drama is not just about a Jesus of Nazareth disappointing expectations and confronting the powers of first century Roman occupied Jerusalem. It is about us, too. It is personal.
Remember the other word for embodiment is incarnation. For us that means that the death of Jesus of Nazareth on a cross is also a moment in the drama with meaning. When he says "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit." he is speaking as one of us. He is showing the world how to die and in so doing creating meaning that informs our dying nearly 2000 years later. It is about us, too. It is corporate.
Our lives can't be lived otherwise any more. Our lenten choices aren't either/or choices. They are both/and choices. The drama is now our drama, both personal and corporate; the meanings are now for us to know, both deep and wide; the story for us to tell now and forever. Fear not.
No comments:
Post a Comment