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To the Cliff-top: The
Cliff of Grace
This sermon attempted to speak of the amazing grace that is unconfined by any practice or understanding. The title "The Cliff of Grace" is both a reference to the attempt to throw Jesus off a cliff in the Lukan story and to the "edginess" of living a life of Grace. The Holy Fools of Russia, like St. Basil, were constantly reminding the pretentious priests, mayors and land owners that underneath all their pretense to "glory," God's grace is given equally to rich and poor, and to wise and fool. The formal wisdom of Jesus, exposed in his capacity to cite from the Isaiah scroll, is received by the village with astonishment and appreciation. Perhaps they were amazed that such a one as Jesus could do so well in quoting scripture. Rather than bask in glory, Jesus immediately challenges those who give him such praise by suggesting that the grace of God is not something awarded to a spiritual elite by a spiritual elite. This grace, as in the stories of Elijah and Elisha, respects no tradition of religious authority or cultural distinction. It is given freely, and without reference to the structures commonly accepted as eternal. This raises some very real questions in our own culture, where success is measured by wealth and power. It even pokes holes in the idea that hard work is a good thing in itself. The final paradoxical impact of this is to locate meaning and the ultimate good that transcends all of these things in the least and the smallest. Moreover, our good work is rooted in a free response to this amazing grace, not out of compulsion. Beyond all this, is the amazing reality of "Cliffs of Grace," cliffs that we fall over and thereby into the arms of Wonder. Beyond all the expectations of religious and social construction there is this Amazing Grace! Dr. Dan. |
| The
story of Jesus reading the scripture raises many interesting points for
discussion, some peripheral, and others more central to our thought and
action.... Was there a synagogue at Nazareth? Marcus Borg thinks that given the size of the town, this was unlikely at the time of Jesus. If not, where did the reading take place? It was somewhere one went into. Was this some sort of a house church? Or did the whole village walk over to a synagogue somewhere in the big Whistler North of a city that Herod was building just down the road? Dr. Dan suggests it is unlikely Jesus was able to read. The usual translation of Luke states that Jesus "stood up to read," but the word anagnwnai (anagnwnai means to "know again," or to "recite," as in oral history; only by an extension of thought does the word convey the specific act of reading). He also is reported to have "found the place"- quite a difficult task in a tattered Hebrew scroll. We also have Jesus at a later point "writing" in the sand- or was he just doodling? Was there really a cliff-face near to the synagogue? Dr. Dan suggests that Nazareth was flat. I have only been there once, but seem to remember a fairly steep hill down into the centre of town; of course, Biblical geography is all a bit vague, and we can't really be sure if the Nazareth of Biblical times corresponds with the modern city. Perhaps the most disturbing concept that Dr. Dan advances is "to poke holes in the idea that hard work is a good thing." It is certainly a mistake to slave away at things in the hope of earning the Grace of God, but to my mind this does not negate our responsibility to make full use of our available resources in terms of both our muscles and our brains; does the risen Christ have muscles and brains to tackle the tasks of the Kingdom other than those that we bring forward? Can we, for instance, blunder over the cliff-face of ecological disaster, hoping that somehow the arms of Wonder will sustain us? Isn't this almost the temptation that Jesus faced in the wilderness? Roy Shephard. |
| The
existence of a cliff in the Nazareth of Jesus' time is questioned in
some of the commentaries and archaeology-- some see it as evidence that
Luke apparently didn't know the geography of Palestine very well.
The passage has a number of striking features, but I am always struck by the way in which the "hometown" crowd move from awe to anger because Jesus suggests that the whole construction of their understanding is based on what we might call "tribal" rules of exclusion and inclusion. The references Jesus makes to Elijah and Elisha appear to break apart the tight religious world of the villagers. Thinking about the ways in which we presuppose the working out of salvation brings me to the comment that truly good work comes freely-- it is itself an act of grace. This is the meaning I take from Aquinas when he suggests that to become good is difficult, but being good comes from leisure. In fact the reason we might be approaching the precipice of ecological destruction might be precisely because we believe in our capacity to control the whole of creation through hard work and technological brilliance. The point in grace is that we can come to know our gifts as gifts, and thereby become deeply aware of our dependence and need of other's gifts. We cannot control creation, even for the good, but we may offer our gift into its life. The hubris of believing we control creation rather than participate in its life is the central reason we approach ecological catastrophe. We have forgotten that our gift is a gift, and that we cannot beyond a certain level control its impact. Limits or propriety are central to grace; grace is precisely that which reminds us of our limitation as the gift of being part of the wonder of the whole of creation. We fall over the cliffs of grace, and into the arms of the wonder of belonging to something beyond our control and making. Dr. Dan. |
| I would not deny that
an excessive belief in our own creative powers has played a large role
in bringing us to the cliff-face of ecological disaster. We both
fear and mock the Fundamentalist perversion of Christianity, with its
view that an increase in the consumption of fossil fuels will merely
hasten the rapture of the end-times. However, to my mind, simply
hoping that the acceptance of God's prevenient grace will permeate our
world with
sufficient speed and in sufficient universality to rescue our globe
from ecological collapse may also be a misreading of the role we should
play as Christians in a profligate society. Roy Shephard. |
| The
point I make is not that God's prevenient grace means we do
nothing. Rather, experiencing the grace changes our actions from
ones of attempts to control creation to imagining ways to enhance
creation- not by compulsion, but by appreciation. Good work is
not compulsion, but is finding the fitting, proportionate action that
brings us into a right relationship with the human and nonhuman
community that is creation. It may be that in our condition
compulsion is needed--we may need to outlaw automobiles in certain
areas, we may need to exclude the purchase of certain devices, we need
to outlaw processes and ways of living that use energy beyond a certain
limit, etc. But the aim of such acts should be the recovery of
the grace of good work that is always fitting and free, because it is
in our nature as a gift, and is found in the very rhythm of creation
itself. This is not to say that evil, or brokenness, or human
frailty disappears with grace. Rather the struggle is
grace-filled when it recognizes such things as not the end of the story
or a closure of possibility, but rather as a shaping of the needed
response. Grace is the possibility beyond our control, the hope
we might participate in, but that transcends our grasp. What I am suggesting is that the awareness of grace shifts our way of proceeding. I am unconvinced that what we require is a technical solution (religious, political, social or economic) so much as a radical cultural shift away from assuming we can ever control creation. There are convivial tools and technologies that are at an appropriate level of complexity and are fitting to the place and community. There are tools and technologies that abstract us from place and time and destroy the links of creation. Incarnation and grace in my view require living well in place, with fitting tools and acts and with particular people, not people in general, or in the abstract "global marketplace," or with technical processes that demand human compliance. We must learn how to live well in the limits of our place, for it is there we find grace. The infinite creativity of cultures that live within the limits of what is appropriate "technology" for their place is a very different response than thinking we need to create another level of complex devices to control the problems created by the foolish notion that what we is need is more and more devices and products. Wendell Berry, in "Life is a Miracle," points out that we can never have complete knowledge, and no device can ever be operated with an awareness of all of the consequences of its impact. He notes, "If we lack the cultural means to keep incomplete knowledge from becoming the basis of arrogant and dangerous behaviour, than [technology itself and the disciplines that create it] become themselves dangerous." Grace, as the appreciative reception of the gift of being, our own being and the being of others, is the necessary "cultural" discipline that can inform our actions, and nurture our goodness. I guess what I am saying is that grace means a way of moving/acting/doing in creation that is modest, because it recognizes the wonder beyond human control as that which gives life and not technical manipulation. The way beyond ecological crisis is grace, acts of grace that do not seek to solve the problem of creation-- creation is not a problem for us to solve-- but rather teaches us how to move more deeply in its gracious rhythms. This means accepting limits, and working creatively within these limits. The modest proposal is grace. It will require a radical shift of cultural patterns as well as the addiction to "more." Grace is a "standard" of propriety that recognizes we are dependent on other lives, that place and context unavoidably mean limit and proportion. Jesus was bringing his hearers into full awareness of their context and place as the time of grace. What he does is disturb those cultural/social/political/religious constructs that do not attend to the particular other--the poor, the oppressed, women etc-- in all their humanness as a gift. Rather the technical devices of those cultures attempted to close grace into a predictable pattern. Here is the paradox, I suppose, Jesus who broke the patterns of Empire and the Shame/Honour based culture of Ancient Palestine, did not do so on behalf of a new technical device or a controlling culture, but for the operation of grace that calls persons into "right relationship" within the place and community of creation in all its particular and locally known shapes. Incarnation means Grace is en-fleshed in the particularity of human life. Grace is living well, grounded in the flesh and bone of our humanity, knowing its limits and possibilities as grace... Well, those are some more thoughts for the journey into wonder's arms. Dr. Dan. |
| Another reason why people may have been
opposed to Jesus in the synagogue was because it was only the upper
stratum of village society who were "supposed" to speak. Yet here
was this young man, the son of someone who may well have been a
day-labourer. The
Greek word behind carpenter thrusts me back into a
piece of research that I never completed on the origins of the word
"technology". The word is tekton
(tekton
), loosely meaning someone who
builds or crafts. The word
techne (tecne) is the root word, and it carries a
broad meaning of skill or trade. No real help here in seeing the
social position of Jesus, except that these skills were one every
peasant would
have had. I think an artisan class existed in larger centres, under the
employ of the wealthy land holders. The Roman Centurions would
themselves be artisans and engineers, having to engineer and build
roads, bridges, walls and even buildings. Dr.
Dan.
|
The Throne speech in Victoria might seem to
suggest that we were a little ahead of the curve in our discussion of
current ecological problems. Our creed speaks strongly of "Living
with respect in Creation." But I wonder if we really are ahead of
the curve? We ask for specifics
from Premier Campbell, but what are we
doing specifically as a church to reduce our
environmental footprint? How are we going to reduce our
energy consumption by 33% over the next few years?
Roy
Shephard.
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