REIMAGINING GOD AND REIMAGINING GOD AND MISSIONMISSION

September 26, 2005

Introduction:Introduction:Imagination, God and MissionImagination, God and Mission

St. Joan, scene 1

Meeting with Robert de Baudricourt

Soldiers, horses and armor to rescue Orleans

“I hear voices. They tell me what to do.”

“They come from God.”

“They come from your imagination.”

• “Of course. That is how the messages of God come to us.”

Joan’s conviction…this evening’s reflections

• It is through the imagination that we are best able to get in touch with ineffable nature and saving action of God

• By exercising the imagination…Spirit continues to lead us into all truth (Jn 14:25)

Feminist theology …

• Traditional imagery about God• Particularly exclusively male imagery• Idolatry!• To counteract this: healing of imagination• Imagination is important!• McFague: God language only image language• Shea: don’t see images but through images• Helps us organize and give focus to deepest reality

Needed: “therapy of imagination”

• Move from exclusively male, dominating images

• To images of God as community of ec-centric, overflowing love

• Do this by exercising, playing, reimagining God

A second conviction

• The way we imagine God

• Implications for way we understand and commit ourselves to mission

• Mission, after all, is God’s mission!

Joan was right!

• It is through the imagination…

• Only through the imagination

• That God sends messages—revelation

• Reimagining God a key task in theology

• Especially today!

God Mission

• Elizabeth Johnson: speaking of God is “crucial theological question. What is at stake is the truth about God, inseparable from the situation of human beings, the identity and mission of the faith community.”

The symbol of God functions!• God as self-sufficient,

all-powerful male monarchmission as extension of God’s glory

• God as passionate lovermission as acting out that love

• God as communion overflowing with care for all creaturesmission as care for creation

I’d like to image, imagine, re-imagine 3 images ofGod…

…then see how they help to imagine or re-imagine Mission

This evening…

Share with you results of my own thought experiment

My own “therapy of the imagination”

I.I. DANCEDANCE

Joie d’vivre

Paula Turnbull, SNJM

Paraphrase of LaCugna

• A self-contained God, a closed divine society, would hardly be a fitting archetype of the divine dance

• Rather, the triune God of Christians is an image of total openness, invitation, givenness

The triune God, a community-in-mission…

• …can powerfully be imagined as Dance…

• …and mission as those women and men who have been swept up by the music and have joined in as partners in the divine dance

St. John Damascene—8th century

• Perichoresis

• Each person distinct, yet blends into each other to form dynamic unity of communion

In Latin Theology

CircuminsessioMutual

indwelling

CircumincessioDynamic coming and going

Especially because of latter

• Legitimate to interpret perichoresis (circular movement)

• by perichoreuo (to dance around)

• Kind of a pun

Elizabeth Johnson—Country dance, but…

“Dancers whirl and intertwine in unusual patterns; at times all hell breaks loose; resolution is achieved unexpectedly. Music, light and shadow, color, and wonderfully supple motion coalesce in dancing that is not smoothly predictable and repetitive, …and yet it is just as highly disciplined.”

Traditional theology

• Order or taxis of triune dance =

• Procession of eternal Word from bosom of Holy Mystery

• Procession of Spirit either thru Word or from Mystery and Word together

But as the dance irrupts into history…

• We speak of the Word sent from depths of deepest Mystery

• Incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth

• Sending Spirit to complete and continue his work

My own proposal …

• Pattern of dance in history begins with Spirit being sent “inside out” into the world

• God’s mysterious presence from first nanosecond of creation

• Giving life, stirring up prophecy, healing, calling Israel deeper into covenant

John Paul II…

• Spirit sows “seeds of word” in the world

• Preparing people of all places and times for Holy Mystery’s concrete presence in Jesus of Nazareth

Jesus gives the mysterious presence of the Spirit a human face

God’s dance in the world continues in a human body

Elizabeth Johnson…

“Jesus is the genuine Spirit-phenomenon, conceived, inspired, sent, hovered over, guided, and risen from the dead by her power.”

“Through his human history the Spirit who pervades the universe becomes concretely present in a small bit of it.”

He is the Lord of the Dance

They buried my bodyAnd they thought I’d goneBut I am the dance and I still

go on

They cut me downAnd I leapt up highI am the life that’ll never,

never dieI live in youIf you live in me—I am the Lord of the Dance,

said he

Jesus lives in those who recognize his Lordship by the power of the Spirit!

Faith in Jesus—not just intellectual…affective

Ultimately, faith means following, being a disciple, dancing his dance

“I’ll lead you all in the dance, said he!”

God’s dance in our world—invitation to do what Jesus did…

Proclaim and Witness…

Commit ourselves to healing and reconciliation

To lock horns with the powers and structures of evil

To inclusion of all people … to invite others to join the dance

To recognize God’s Spirit beyond….

One image—a “conga line”…

This is mission!

• Not a duty or burden• But being caught up in

God’s vision• Trinitarian faith –

practice: peacemaking, pluralizing, persuading

• Mwolweka—not understanding but imitating

• Imitating the divine dance!

II. II. STRANGERSTRANGER

Something about strangers!• Connection with God’s

ineffability?

• Reminder that fear of the Other is ultimately a wrong instinct?

• In any case, God of Christians intimately tied up with strangers

• God appears as stranger

• Through hospitality to strangers people meet God

Already alluded to Rublev…

• Maybe not revelation of Trinity, but certainly of God

• Common motif on OT• Jacob wrestling with

stranger• Melchizedek• Ruth• Ninevites• Cyrus• Kindness to strangers

God most manifest, of course…

• Sent from his “home country”… “pitched his tent among us”

• In general “world did not know him”

• “marginal Jew,” an outsider from “heathen Galilee”

Ministry filled with strangers, outsiders…

• Spoke of love of enemies—I.e. those not natural neighbors

• Praised faith of foreigners, and even learned from them

• Told stories of how foreigners were closer to God, more than professionally religious

• Associates with sinners, women

Sometimes, stranger to those who knew him well

• When he appeared on the Sea of Galilee

• Mistaken as the gardener by Mary M.

• By the disciples on road to Emmaus

• When he appeared to disciples at end of John’s gospel

Blindness of disciples before, after!

• Even after Spirit was bestowed

• Acts—gradual realization of Jesus’ meaning through encounters with strangers…

• Samaritans, Ethiopian Eunuch, Cornelius, Antioch

• Antioch—birthday of the church, move from being Jewish sect

Tradition: we meet God / Jesus in the stranger

Jesus in gospels—Mt. 25

Martin of Tours and beggar

Francis of Assisi and leper

Venit hospes, venit Christus

Works of Art!

Theology of migration: Cristos migrantes!

Implications for Mission: many

• Faith in such a God = being committed to being open and being transformed by the Other—different nationality, culture, social location

• Not enough to be committed locally—universally as well

• Dialogue with strangers=dialogue with other religions

• Opposition to all xenophobia and racism

Two more implications, however• First, commitment to

children, women and men among the world’s poorest and most discriminated against—migrants

• 1 out of 120!• A particular urgency in

Christian mission today• Not just mission to but

mission among—learning, being challenged by, receiving their gifts

Second—related but more general• Missionaries need to

appropriate their own status as strangers

• “To embrace the status and role of the stranger is to embrace ambiguity, uncertainty, surrender and vulnverablity. Jesus did it, and so must we. Yet in this very kenosis … mission becomes possible, God becomes all in all, the empty vessel becomes filled, the receiver becomes a giver, and the outsider is encountered and embraced.”

Strangers keep us on our toes!• They can be real

sacraments of a dimension beyond our comfort zones…

• Beyond our imaginations

• Offer rich opportunities to empty self in service

• They can be like God, who calls us to mission

III. PERSISTENT WIDOWIII. PERSISTENT WIDOW

Barbara Reid on Like 18:1-8

• “unjust judge?”

• “widow and judge”?

• “persistent widow”?

1st step: only vv. 2-5 = original

• Vv. 1 and 6-8 = interpretations by Lk

• V. 1—need for prayer• 6-8—reflect concerns

about delay of parousia

• Reid: not really about prayer at all!

Two reasons:• First: Judge is not a

good image of God• 2x—doesn’t fear God

and women and men• Just opposite of

biblical picture in 2Chr.

• Second: abhorrent image of God

• Not worthy of worship

A negative example?

• If even an unjust judge would give in…

• How much more easily would God answer our prayers!

• Interpretation of Joseph Fitzmyer

Reid—an easier interpretation:

The widow is an image of God persistently opposing injustice!

Makes sense for 2 reasons:

• This is third of 3 parables in the gospel where main character is a woman

• Other two are images of God…so…

• Second, more profoundly—images God as vulnerable, but ultimately powerful

This is in anticipation of full revelation of God in Jesus on the cross

“His seeming helplessness in the face of his executioners is transformed into the very defeat of the powers of sin and death.”

Imaging God as the persistentwidow—

Moves us away from images of a God who rules by divine

decree and raw—if benevolent—power

Who might be moved by our prayers

Puts us in touch with a God fully revealed in weakness and

powerlessness of the cross(our only hope!)

“weak is the new strong!”

Brings to mind…

• Seemingly powerless women like Ruth

• Or mothers and wives of Plaza de Mayo

• The Holy Spirit, gentle breath of God, stirs women and men to resistance

Points to God as one who suffers

• “I could neither have worshipped nor respected a God who had not himself cried out, ‘My God….”

• “The first heart to break when my son drove off that bridge was God’s”

God’s gentle but persistent resistance to evil

• What Christians share as they share in God’s mission

• God bent on justice, but achieving it justly

• Not just the goal, but the way goal is achieved is at center of mission

• Since mission is the presence of God as such

Justice constitutive of mission

• But never the work of violence

• True of other components of mission as well

• Always in dialogue and vulnerability

• “church proposes…”• Crucified minds!

Conclusion

God’s mission—ultimately ours

We are to live this mission…

With God’s vigor and creativity

With God’s capacity for surprise

With God’s gentleness and peristence against evil and injustice

David Bosch

“Only if we turn out backs on false power and false security can there be authentic Christian mission.”

This grace of mission

• Is ultimately beyond any capacity of ours to imagine

• Or re-imagine!