This session will be led by none other than the Dr. Jono Linebaugh. To register for the conference today, click here.
I have a question.
“God is love” (1 John 4:8). That’s not a question, but it raises one—the one.
That “God is love” is a confession grounded in the cross of Jesus Christ: “This is love…that God loved us and sent his Son to be a sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:10, see also Romans 5:8). But, to sing an old song, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” No? Neither was I.
Remember Lessing’s “ugly, broad ditch”? “Accidental truths of history”, he wrote, “can never become the proof of necessary truths of reason.” There is, in other words, a gap between the “then” and “there” of Jesus’ death and the “here” and “now” of my life. U.G.L.Y.
But it gets uglier. If the death of Jesus, which happened in a distant “then” (the first century AD) and “there” (“in a tiny corner of the earth,” Reimarus), is the definitive demonstration of God’s love, how does the divine “I love you” spoken “then” and “there” get to me “here” and “now”? To adapt Lessing: can an accidental love given in history be a new word of love received now? Can a past tense “I love you” be the basis for a present tense “I am loved”?
This, for me, is the “uglier ditch”—the time and space between God’s first century love and my life in the present tense. Let me put it more honestly: the “uglier ditch” is the disconnect between the “I love you” that is the cross of Christ and the “I am not loved” that is the fear and feeling of so much of life.
So, my question (“with a little help from my friend”, St. Paul): How is Jesus, “the one who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20), received today (and tomorrow) as the one who loves me and gives himself to me?
I don’t know… But I know a few guys and gals who might be able to help.
I hope you can help, too.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ql2qlO8HH20&w=600]
COMMENTS
3 responses to “NYC Preview: The Uglier Ditch: First Century Love in the Present Tense”
Leave a Reply
Jono, there are an awful lot of folks who are discovering rthat the answer is right there in Paul’s Magnum Opus, Romans. It is the other half of the Gospel: The resurrection and Christ IN you, the hope of glory. After we become delightfully aware that we can never exhaust the joys of justification, we discover what Paul meant in Romans 5 when he said we will be saved by His LIFE. And in Romans 8 when he said the law would be fulfilled in us who walk “… according to the Spirit.”! It is the very God inside us to be with us and for us and through us that is the grace given to us to live a life we cannot live. And as we stumble to life learning to fulfill the law by simple faith in his mighty indwelling, we are assured we have already been forgiven for all our failed attempts!
The Catholics have addressed this very question with the transcending space and time aspect of the Eucharist; but most of us Protestants accuse them of re-sacrificing Christ each Mass or of idolatry…see link below:
http://godinallthings.com/2012/03/14/catholic-mass-time-travel/
I have a very bad habit of reading mbird.com and dailymail.co.uk every day. It is a psychologically lethal combination which only us drinkers should undertake. The lead story on the mail site contained various photos of grossly deformed and mentally stunted children in Vietnam, whose conditions were the result of residual agent orange exposure, and whose wretched lives were spent in metal cages in orphanages. Then I see here a piece concerned with the burning question of how the life and death of Jesus, 2,000 years ago, might be relevant to ME feeling loved. I’m not suggesting that to address this question of “what’s it got to do with me” is to ignore the orphan, etc.. I am just saying that, for me, the contrast was so sharp, so disturbing, that I really don’t know how to process it. But a little Knob Creek helps.