Homily On Abraham & Isaac

Readings: Genesis 22:1-14 & Matthew 10:40-42

"I recently finished the DARK TOWER series, by Stephen King. The main character in the story is a man named Roland, who is a cross between and Authurian Knight and an Old West sheriff. And Roland is on a quest to save the world, and to find this place called The Dark Tower which is for him God or the presence of God. Early on in the story, Roland is faced with a decision over whether to let his surrogate son Jake die, or to continue on his quest, and he chooses his quest and Jake dies. Later on, through a bit of magic, Jake is returned to Roland and so the whole cycle becomes this commentary or reflection on the Abraham and Isaac story. But as you go on in the series, you realize the whole thing is a commentary on that story because Roland discovers that the journey to the Tower is not measured in miles and towns but in people and relationships. He finds out that the very substance of his journey is learning how to form tight connections with the people he meets against his own nature. But as Roland learns to love these people he is tortured by the thought that if he was faced with the decision he had to make with Jake, he'd make the same one because his highest duty is to the Tower.

The same thing is definitely true of the Abraham and Isaac story. Isaac was everything Abraham had gone out into the desert to find. He was proof that God loved Abraham and that God keeps his promises. If God called Abraham into anything, He called him into relationship with Isaac, but in a moment at God's word Abraham turned away from his son.

That is true of us as well. When you get deep into your faith you feel your connection to those closest to you deepened. The love in your heart swells, and it comes to you as a miracle. You realize God, the Eternal and Almighty God, has called into into those relationships. Yet you know, in your heart, that the God who calls you into them can call you away from them. Now, it isn't like we are required to do what Abraham almost did or what Roland did. The Abraham and Isaac story is in part a commentary on the Canaanite practice of child sacrifice. The Israelites are saying in essence, 'yes we love God enough to make that kind of sacrifice too, but God doesn't require that of us. God is life and not death and He doesn't call us to take human life.' The story is about the animal sacrifices replacing child sacrifice for the Israelites.

Yet God can call us away from those we love most. He can call us to missions and projects that physically take us away from those people. He can call us to die for strangers, which removes something vital from those relationships that truly made our lives worth living. He can call us to give resources that could be spent on family and friends.

You know, if you don't have God as your highest commitment you can just sit and bask in the glory of the people that mark your life. You can say 'this one thing I will give up for nothing else, these people are my highest duty'. But that is humanism. That is the uncalled life. Christianity is something altogether different. It proclaims that there is one relationship that supersedes all the others. It seeks a higher duty to a higher authority. And so there is a sadness to our love. We feel this magic in our hearts but we know that the one who put it there can call us away from it.

So we're stuck asking: "is there a fraud in the universe? Is Goooood just messing with our heads? Is love inherently contradictory?" The answer to these questions can only be 'no' if they are seen in the shadow of the Cross and more importantly in the light of the Resurrection. You see the god Roland finds is justice, but not Love, and so Roland's life is inherently tragic. Yet we proclaim that God is Love, and as such our commitment to Him first cannot be the negation of the particular loves of our lives. It must in some sense be their fulfillment.

That is because when Jesus Christ is your highest commitment, your love and relationships attain a redemptive quality. If the Gospel reading today teaches us anything, it teaches us that: that our faith helps bring salvation and healing into the world. The connections we make with people become a part of their salvation. We are drawing those around us with us into the Kingdom of Heaven.

And that brings up another point about sacrifice, because for us sacrifice is a statement of faith. A statement that God is who we say He is, and so we do not need to neurotically ensure the safety and security of those around us. The God we serve and love, loves them as well, and will care for them. It's not like sacrifice is some payment to God for His love and favor, that too is a mistaken Canaanite attitude towards sacrifice. No, it is us showing the world that we can entrust those we love to God's care, and that we are all going to the same place. In the end sacrifice is not the cost of faith. It is it's very substance. Amen."

Humans Of New York Comment

http://www.humansofnewyork.com/post/90268158526/ive-been-a-deep-believer-my-whole-life-18-years

I love the blog HUMANS OF NEW YORK, everyone should check it out and follow it. I'd like to comment on this man's experience. It seems to me that the repeated mistake made throughout the entire body of believers really comes down to the notion of God's control. This man's frustration with evil believers and the suffering of humanity stems from his adherence to the classical doctrine of omnipotence. It is just that simple. Does thanking God for the good imply God is the author of the bad? Only if we assume all God wills happens. Should faith ensure extreme commitment to the good? Only if God is the only spiritual force in the universe. Whitehead's simple suggestion that all power DERIVES from God but control of that power lies in the hands of the created makes sense of all of this. The suggestion that God moves reality by the creation of ideals and the power of persuasion via love, gives us a sense of how God can be active, have a will, enact that will, without us needing to attribute all states of affair to him.

Off-Topic: Comic Book Reviews 2

DC's JUSTICE LEAGUE #31
The league continues to struggle with the aftermath of FOREVER EVIL as Lex confronts Batman with his knowledge of Batman's true identity. Luthor continues to seek entry to the League, and Batman continues to resist, though at this point it is clear that his entry is a foregone conclusion. We also get to learn some more about Captain Cold, which I'm very happy about. Yet the real news is the return of one member of the CRIMINAL SYNDICATE: The Power Ring. Overall, this book is going very strong. Shazam is becoming more prominent, I like the turn with Cold and Lex, and I am so happy about everything that is happening here.
Storyline: 4 Stars
Dialogue: 4.5 Stars
Pacing: 3.5 Stars
Art: 4 Stars
Overall: 4 Stars

Marvel's GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY #16
Wow, is this book going a good direction. I said for so long that tight character-centric storytelling could cause this book to really take off, and it has. So far this storyline has been bringing us into some more negative territory with the characters all finding themselves in tough places. Now some are starting to turn their situations around, and I like it. All around, a great issue for a good book.
Storyline: 4.5 Stars
Dialogue: 4.5 Stars
Pacing: 4 Stars
Art: 3.5 Stars
Overall: 4.5 Stars

Marvel's NEW WARRIORS #6
The Warriors' first adventure took place within Wundagore mountain, which in the Marvel universe is famously associated with two famous villains: the High Evolutionary and Cththon and his Darkhold servants. Earlier the Warriors faced down the first villain, here they face down the second. The Avengers also show up and challenge the Warriors' handling of the situation. Most of this issue was good, but some of the Avengers come off kind of flat. This was a good but not a great issue.
Storyline: 3.5 Stars
Dialogue: 3 Stars
Pacing: 3 Stars
Art: 3 Stars
Overall: 3 Stars

Marvel's NEW GHOST RIDER #4
The storytelling here is getting a little frenetic and I'd like a little more focus. There is just too much going on. In other words, the pacing is off. The dialogue is also a little thin, though I actually like the story itself.
Storyline: 3.5 Stars
Dialogue: 3 Stars
Pacing: 3 Stars
Art: 3 Stars
Overall: 3 Stars

Off-Topic: Comic Book Reviews

Marvel's THUNDERBOLTS #27
This comic book is just fantastic, and I can't recommend it enough. I don't like that we are seeing a split in the team, because those kinds of story lines are never my favorite. But it is making for some great drama and dialogue and I'm happy with the overall effort. I like the operation of Red Hulk's mind, the way Ross is just an absolutist about 'the ends justifying the means'... it makes for some thoughtful reading.
Storyline: 3.5 Stars
Dialogue: 4.5 Stars
Pacing: 3.5 Stars
Art: 4 Stars
Overall: 4 Stars

Marvel's SILVER SURFER #3
This story arc ended in a bit of a frenetic way. I don't fully know what I feel about it, except to say that there was more bad than good. The art is getting a little repetitive and the pacing was off here, but in the overall I liked the tight storytelling and some of the dialogue was really good. All in all a good but not great ending.
Storyline: 3.5 Stars
Dialogue: 3.5 Stars
Pacing: 2.5 Stars
Art: 3 Stars
Overall: 3 Stars

Words

Preaching and teaching are the smallest part of Christian evangelism. Some Christians are called to it, and some aren't. The frustrating thing for a minister is to know how many of those you work with ARE called to it, or will be some day, and never really activate that part of their faith. Sometimes when you try to open people up to this part of themselves you misrepresent what you are trying to say.

My wife is a quiet person. She is not a person who is prone to strike up conversations with strangers. Her role in growing the Christian church is through support and by living the life she lives. I believe my wife is closer to God than I am, and that she is more of a Christian than I am. I do not think, I could not think because it isn't scriptural, that those who are called to proclamation or evangelism by proclamation are higher or better Christians than those who are not.

Yet there is something about being on the front lines of dialogue and debate, of apologetics, that some of us find exciting. And I think a great many Christians would find it exciting. The irony is that most of those Christians who are engaged in that kind of work are very bad at it. They tend to misrepresent what most Christians think and believe. There are certain institutions that are very good at using words and who are excited about the verbal part of Christianity. These institutions, however, tend to leave a lot out. They sometimes engage in bad theology and often leave fallow the far more important part of evangelism, which is preaching with our actions and our service.

The simple fact of the matter is that mainline Christianity remains, for me, a vital and important representation of the Church as the early Christians actually practiced it. Yet the mainline church is dying because it has gotten very bad at the smaller but still important part of the Christian faith, which is preaching and teaching. Evangelism has to include an element of apologetics and proselytizing. Proselytizing doesn't have to be negative, or destructive, or even judgmental. It is just the act of defending what you believe to be true. What is the quest to truth without critique and criticism? What is the point of believing something to be true if you don't want to bring that truth to others? Look, I understand the mainline distaste for engaging in words, I do. Christianity was nothing but talk for far too long. But evangelism has gained a negative connotation among some just because those who could do it right have given it up altogether.

I want people to tell me I'm wrong. I want people to question my faith and to push and prod me and to make my life difficult. Faith that is not tested in fire is weak. I also want the right to push and prod people about what they believe, to explain why I believe what I believe and why it is important. I love philosophy, for instance, and that is by nature a discipline founded in dialogue and debate.

I think there are a lot more mainline protestants who could find a path through all this and help make the world as a whole a better place not to mention helping to spread God's Kingdom. But this will never be the main calling of most Christians, and that is not only okay, it is good. One calling is never, can never be, higher than any other. What God calls you to, He calls you to, and that is that. But I get excited about THIS calling and I want to get some others who may be similarly called equally excited. I'm not fundamentalist, I don't think I'm going out to 'save souls'. But I am trying to bring the salvation of Jesus Christ to a world once wrought, to proclaim the Good News of what Christ means for me and for anyone who wants a relationship with Him. You can't remove the importance of speaking from that kind of life altogether.

From My Book CONVERSATIONAL THEOLOGY: On Atonement

So why did God identify with Jesus and save us through Jesus? Put simply, there was no other way to do it. What we really have in the conversations about messiah are continuations of conversations we found in the prophets, particularly surrounding the prophetic problem and the problem of evil, or put another way, we have two kinds of sin we have to find a cure for, in order to effect salvation for mankind: moral sin and metaphysical sin (notice how all our earlier conversations now seem to come into close contact in these New Testament messianic dialogues). Metaphysical sin, the not rightness of the universe, makes belief in God difficult. How can we believe in God in this evil world, how can we love Him if He abandons us to this terrible darkness? Paul's answer is eschatological, John's is to make Jesus' death the beginning of a cosmic transformation, an idea I think has merit and I'll return to later. But none of these answers is really satisfactory to the question of theodicy. I find more substance in the Church Fathers' fascination with God's kenosis, His self-emptying (Philippians 2:1-11) into the man of Jesus Christ, as a central reason for maintaining Christ's Divinity. Certainly, they did not posit this as the answer to cosmic evil, and instead adopted eschatological answers as did the prophets and Paul did, but for us it can serve as an answer to that pressing problem. Paul sees the darkness in the world, and posits Jesus as central to answering the question 'why is everything so bad'...the answer I glean from that meditation on the man Jesus is this: God is far different than what we expected Him to be. God is not like the Babylonian king, but is much more like the suffering servant, the Crucified Carpenter. God reveals to us this: I identify with this man Jesus. If you want to understand Who and What God is, and how God operates in the world, look at the whole of Christ's life. No doubt, the resurrection represents triumph, an act of creation and redemption. But look at what it takes to bring that creation and redemption about: suffering and death. God is that which exposes itself to the evils of the world, shows it undeserved love, and thereby ultimately transforms it. God's acts of creation are in and through His self-exposure to suffering and evil, and the taking on the consequences of evil into Himself. God is more like the woman in labor pains, than the sculptor or clock maker. God's power is suffering love, and that being the case, there are some things we just cannot expect God to be able to do. One of those is to ensure that we will be able to escape life without suffering.

We cannot expect more from existence than God gets. Bonhoeffer said once "cheap grace is grace without the cross...costly grace is the gospel. Grace cost God, it cost God the life of His only Son, and nothing can be cheap to us that is costly to God". I would expand this to say that we cannot expect to exist, to be, especially to exist in the midst of goodness, without suffering, since even God cannot exist without it. Jesus could not have known it, but even in His greatest moment of defeat, when all He thought was going to happen failed to, He was fulfilling a salvific role. I have already mentioned the moment on the cross when Jesus cries out "Eloi Eloi, lama sabacthani", or "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Traditionally, Christianity has tried to paint this moment as a moment of Jesus greatest humanity, but I say no, in this moment you get the clearest image of what Divinity really is all about. Understand God as a man turning to God in defeat, and you'll understand the whole of the gospels. We now can get a clear view of how Jesus can be all God and all man. Jesus is God's Word come to life, God revealing who God is through a human being. In much the same way I can give you a diary that will show you who I am and what I'm about...a way of getting to know me perhaps even more effective than direct contact with me, God gives us a human being who shows us what it really means to be God. So in one sense Jesus is, just a man, just as my diary is just paper and ink. But in another sense, it is the very heart and soul of God revealed, as well as God's activity in the world explained. Just as that diary in a real sense is my very self, my very soul, poured out on paper.

In this context, the juxtaposition between political messianism and Jesus' messianism takes on an important role. Christ's appearance was not incidental, He came at a time when many had adopted the view that Caesar was Divine, and Roman Power was something like "The Kingdom of God" made manifest. God's decision to self-identify with the carpenter on the Cross is a decision also to DIS-identify with the Caesar and with all political and military power. It is as if God said "is that what you think God is? I'll show you what God is, but you're probably never going to be able to accept it fully". Jesus' self-identification with the suffering servant was His living out God's Nature within Him. It was His revealing who God was, however unconsciously. And there is also a lasting moral relevance to all this. One can find it in Matthew 25. God's identification with the lowest and the weakest brought with it a call to treat these people as continued manifestations of God on Earth. To live in service to the weakest is to live in service to God, in that sense Jesus death also reinforced His call to a new moral community, which was radically different from the other human communities He encountered. This is what is known as the 'transvaluation of human values', the transformation of rational ordering of values into something IRrational, where the lowest is made highest, and the least important is made most important, it is an inevitable result of God's decision to reveal Himself in Christ.

This kind of Being, One who creates through suffering and by self-exposure to evil and danger, One who redeems us by taking the consequences of evil into Himself, is not one we can rightly get angry at for the evils of the world. To do so is to blame the victim. Now we understand the prophetic insight that we can discover God through our sufferings without resorting to the absurd formula that therefore God sent our suffering. Reconciliation after the prophets had to be two-sided, we needed God to be something we could accept and love, and we needed to be made acceptable to God. This kenosis idea is a hint of the answer the first half of that formula.

Before I begin talking about the second half, our own reconciliation to God, I want to address one issue that probably is bubbling under the surface. Often I am asked how we can worship a God that is not omnipotent, not like that Babylonian King in terms of power. I have had some put the question this way: well in what sense is that God at all, in what sense is such a god "worthy of worship"? Whenever I hear these comments I cannot help but think of the Romans putting a crown of thorns on Christ's head, and mocking the idea that He is a king. I do not know what 'worthiness of worship' amounts to, what I do know is that knowledge of a love this great forces me into a position of worship, and prayerfulness, even more than the idea of some omnipotent Divine potentate. "Amazing Love, how can it be, that you my King would die for me?" God doesn't have to bother with us, He doesn't have to relate to us intimately, and share in our own pains, but He does, because He loves us and wants to help us make of ourselves something meaningful and valuable. God as Christ is the source of all love, and the very ground of meaning and value. The very idea commands my worship, the very thought of this suffering love calls me to worship and prayer. Indeed, God as this man also means more responsibility for me, and less guarantees in life, it may mean that life in a world with God is harder, rather than easier, than the alternative. We must now take up our cross and bear it. I think we get angry at Christ; we get angry that God isn't what we thought He would be. We wanted someone who would give us political prestige, a Divine Potentate who could tend our every whim and smite our enemies. Christ frustrates human concerns and desires...a fact that is in itself concomitant with the important prophetic experience. Christ just isn't the kind of king we wanted. But, I would argue, He's the King we need. The God we yearn for, in our deepest hearts.

Truth & Love

When we lie, we destroy our ability to have genuine relationships. Anyone in recovery is familiar with this truth. Lies make it impossible for people to relate to us as the people we really are, and cause them to relate only to an imaginary person that doesn't really exist...the person they think we are based on the lies we've told. If we let the light of day shine on who we are, people who relate to us do so based on who we really, truly are. Until lies and secrets are exposed, our friendships and love relationships stand shattered. Where there is no truth, there is no love, and where there is no love death reigns supreme.

Faith In Action

You've probably noticed that this blog has been short on new content for about a week. As usual for this time of year, I went on mission trip. Me and four other adults led fifteen youth on an adventure of body and soul as we served Christ in and through our neighbors. The work was primarily building wheelchair ramps for impoverished and physically disabled residents of Brazoria County. Mission trips are really like community steps into the Kingdom of God in the here and now. There are moments and places where the line between Heaven and Earth blurs, and trips like this take such a place and time and extend it out for as long as it can go.

Of course God and our Lord Jesus Christ are the foundation of all we do. Worship, Bible study, these give form and function to the work, and allow a good experience to become a divine experience. But I am reminded again and again that such moments cannot happen unless people respond to the opportunities that God gives them. People are to God's Word what air is to human speech. They are the medium through which the voice of God moves. So many people came together to make this message loud and clear. The clients are central to that experience. When the people you go to help reach out to you, you realize the real meaning of mission. It is not so much going out as a salvific hand as having God's saving hand come to you in the encounter with the other.

There is also the community itself. The youth I lead worked so hard and focused on what is really important. I love them all so much. I realized that the depth of feeling and community that is formed is really only possible in the shadow of the cross. Rene Girard says that the only force that can create a deeper community than violence is Christ Jesus. I realized this week how true that really is. Gangs create community of deep power. But that depth is satanic, rather than divine. Christians are the only ones to offer a community with such a deep connection that is not based either on power or on complete renunciation of all attachments (Buddhism).

But ultimately, the biggest human element in all of this is the organization that provided us with work sites, clients, tools and plans. Faith In Action of Brazosport is an organization that I am proud to have worked with many times. This was the first time they organized work and opportunities for a camp run solely by one church, and it is something I'd wanted to work with them on for quite a while. We provided our own lodgings, food, and worship, and they supplied everything else. I cannot overstate how good they are at what they do, and they live out the call to serve Christ in others as few other organizations do. I've worked with many similar groups over the years, and I've not found one that is superior to them. We all had a great time, and grew in our relationship with God, thanks largely to their efforts and organizational skills. To them and to everyone involved, I say "thank you".

A Must-Read At MavPhil

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2014/06/peter-unger-on-bertrand-russell-on-the-value-of-philosophy.html

Re-Post: On Tobit & The Apocrypha

The Book of Tobit is found in the Apocrypha, which are the additional books that are found in the Greek version of what Christians call the Old Testament, which are not found in the Hebrew version. I think the Apocrypha is incredibly important to get a full grasp on what God is revealing throughout the rest of scripture, especially in the New Testament. There are so many shifts in values and worldview that take place during that period of Israel's history which also set the stage for all that happens in the New Testament. For instance, it is impossible to understand the prevailing Jewish political understanding of Messiah, which is found throughout the Gospels, unless one understands the events surrounding the Maccabean revolt, which is recounted in the Apocryphal books 1 & 2 Maccabees. You cannot fully grasp the apocalyptic worldview of Jesus without books like the Book of Tobit.

The modern protestant rejection of the Apocrypha is strange, to me. It is based on a kind of elevation of the Hebrew version of the Old Testament over the Greek. Strangely enough, many of the New Testament quotes from the Old Testament come from the Greek, not the Hebrew, version. In fact, the Jews only chose to canonize the Hebrew version over the Greek in part to counter Christian use of the Greek books to argue that Jesus was Messiah. 

So I take the Apocrypha to be of some value as records of God's revelation of mankind. This has been true of me for most of my life as a Christian, as I grew up Catholic and today work in an Episcopal Church, both of which to different degrees accept the Apocryphal books as having revelatory validity. The Book of Tobit has been one of my favorite books since I was a child. It tells the story of two families, ripped apart by evil forces. Tobit is an old prophet who was renowned for his virtue, who has been struck blind by an unfortunate series of events. Sarah is a woman who has a stalker that is literally demonic, a fallen angel names asmodeus. He has killed seven men on the night they married her. Both Tobit and Sarah pray for death at the same time, and the message is brought to God by the archangel Raphael. God instructs Raphael to find a way to help both people.

About this time, Tobit sends his son Tobias on a long journey to collect some money owed the family by a distant relative. He instructs his son to find a kinsmen from the town that will go with him. Raphael takes this opportunity to disguise himself as a relative of the Tobit clan, and applies for the job. Tobit sends Tobias on his way with his newfound friend. On the road they encounter a monstrous fish, which they kill for food and because the innards have medicinal powers. They then stop off at the house where Sarah lives, and the hidden Raphael urges Tobias to marry her, as he has the right of redemption. Tobias  resists at first, but Raphael convinces him that all will be well, if he undertakes a specific set of steps to ward off the demon that assaults Sarah's suitors. Tobias uses parts of the fish to ward off asmodeus, and Raphael uses his holy might to chain the demon up in the desert.

Tobias and the hidden Raphael collect the money and go back home with their now expanded family, the money collected, and a considerable dowry for Sarah. There Raphael instructs Tobias to use the rest of the fish to cure his father. At a party not long afterwards, Raphael shows his true form, and instructs the men to give thanks to God alone for all that happened, as Raphael is merely his arm.

This story may seem strange and comic book-ish, but there is so much rich theology here as well. There is the expanded Jewish understanding of suffering. Neither Tobit nor Sarah suffer because of sin, which was the common reason given by the prophets for all suffering in the world. Rather Tobit was undergoing a test, and Sarah was assaulted by a demon. These two explanations for the problem of evil are starting to supplant the old prophetic answers, which I think is a big step forward for Jewish theology. Tobit puts this changing view on display.

It shows the growing importance of angels. People believed that dark powers stood between man and God and that God could only work through intermediaries at this time in history. This is a very important part of Jewish cosmology to understand if one is going to get a full understanding of what is going on in the Gospels. There is the idea of the guardian angel. I just love the thought that some little nodule of the divine is always with us, and always looking after us. There is one of the funniest stories in all of the Bible, when Sarah's dad, convinced that the morning after the wedding Tobias will be dead, digs a grave to put his body in. It lays down, as The Book of Sirach does, a theological attitude towards medicine. The Jews debated what the proper attitude towards medicinal sciences should be. Some thought that healing was in the hands of God alone. Others thought that anything that brought goodness and health was itself the hand of God. Tobit, like Sirach, comes out strongly on this latter side. And we are better for it. On and on, throughout the strange and mythical storytelling, is a glimpse into the mind of the evolving Jewish movement. It is a perfect example of why the Apocrypha is so important to get a full Biblical picture. I simply love it. 

From My Book: On Moral Atheism

These are some selections on the subject from CONVERSATIONAL THEOLOGY

 

'We should be wary whenever we try to box in too tightly the way the Spirit might be working. But we also have license from that same spirit to hold fast to what we believe to be the truth, and to proclaim it as the unique and special revelation it is. A good way to look at other religions may be to see them similar to the religious eclectic that we cast a somewhat skeptical eye upon, but who we reject at the peril of losing a possible avenue to a deeper comprehension of God's Will for us. Finally, we can see how the atheist can be a part of God's redemption without relegating belief in Christ to pointlessness. The atheist may respond to Christ when he or she helps the suffering person. Christ's self-identification with the lowest and the weakest opens up a door to the non-believer. By responding to that person, at that time, they are responding to Christ. To respond to Christ is to be moved by the Holy Spirit, God is Christ over us, Christ is God with us, and the Spirit is Christ and God within us. When we respond to Christ, we are moving as an extension of God. A person can do this without understanding the full implications of what they do. What is always denied them is the knowledge of the fellowship they are being involved in and thus the joy and confidence that comes with such knowledge. God moves through them but they never gain the knowledge of His relationship to them. I imagine a father separated from his child, arranging that Childs life from afar. Such a father may love and help the child, without that child ever even realizing it, the child never knowing how much of his life is really an extension of his missing father, but the child still may responding to that love, that help, by living a good life.  "Bless them Father, for they do it without even knowing what it is they do".'

'The Hidden Church is the Holy Spirit alive within the world, various people and realities becoming Christ for others because God is moving within them... the institutional church should operate in the hope and even the belief that the hidden church is behind the veil there, within that institution, but it can never know it. If it did, it would violate its call to be a community of penitents and thus cease to be the church in any form. It must work for the betterment of the world, never knowing if its deeds are right, but simply making the best moral insights it can with its own sin-stained processes, and throwing itself on the mercy of God, confident only that in Christ God saves us from our sins. If it can do this it can preserve its job, and perhaps do more. There will be, ideally, moments, places, adventures where the church seen will become a visible sign of invisible grace, an outward veil of the hidden church, within which God's Kingdom really is advancing. Individuals may dimly perceive these moments, but the church can rarely lay claim to them, and then only in hindsight. Here I come in and create a bridge between the Pauline and Gospel commentaries on the church community. The church must always work for God's Kingdom, but it can never create it by its own power. Only God can transform any act into an act of grace, only God can make the profane Holy. God's call may lead even to proximate defeat and suffering, the church must accept this defeat confident that in God's hands it is always a doorway to victory. God often must temporarily be defeated in the world in order to bring about ultimate victory.

 In the same way that Jesus' remnant was more like a supernatural door through which God by His power would step, rather than some vehicle whose actions would build God's kingdom itself, the institutional church must do its duties only in the trembling hope that God will use those duties to make of this old world, a new world (Martin Luther King, Jr.). Any simplistic progressive formula, or any deification of the church’s activities, must be roundly rejected. Paul's emphasis on the individual activity of the Holy Spirit, and his rejection of the institutional church, gives us an enlightening glimpse into the ways of the hidden church. The institutional church must be aware of the possibility that the hidden church, that is, God's continuing salvific activity, may manifest itself anywhere, at any time, depending on God's abilities and desires. "The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." (John 3:8) The true church may be in the home of a person watching a televangelist, or in the cup of the homeless man on the street, or within other religious communities, or in the heart of the atheist. Mindful of the fact that it can have no confidence of its own holiness, it must continue to do its duties, and if it does so, in contrition and without the left hand knowing what the right hand is doing, more often than not that hidden church will appear within its walls, and many Sundays will be Pentecost Sundays.'