1 Corinthians 15:12-20
Epiphany 6 - Year C
All this propositional proclamation leaves my head spinning.
Might one say, "in truth Christ has been raised" instead of "in fact Christ has been raised"? This gets us out of a lot of unnecessary binds in regard to proofs engaging my experience against your experience.
As long as I'm changing things around, I would suggest that more folks ought to live in this life as though they hoped in Christ and then let the eternity question take care of itself. It is honorable, not pitiable, to live in the life we are in. Paul's direction here pushes us back into earning our way or so having our eye on heaven that we overlook the needs of the moment.
Give me a couple of folks who are intent on living (hoping) Christ right now, striving to imitate his focus on a loving G*D, and I'll take them over thousands gathered to gaze at the prosperity of now and ever. This is more than enough, not something over which to sorrow.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/february2004.html
Those who have fallen asleep, like Nicodemus at night, can still be awoken, raised again, born anew - pulled from above, pushed from below, encouraged from alongside.
Christ is that metaphor that reveals for us this resurrection/born-again motion that assures the past does not simply keep rolling on like some irresistible caisson but can change by degrees or quantum leap.
So who or what has been this sort of Christ-change for you this week?
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/february2004.html
If I proclaim there are WMDs in Iraq, how can some of you say there isn't?
If there aren't WMDs, then democracy is futile and we are controlled by terrorists.
In fact there are WMDs.
There is a vast gap between a proclamation and an experience. This difference is not notable for the one doing the proclaiming, but is for the one being proclaimed to.
We struggle to put our experiences into words that they might be approximately received by others, but ultimately we trust that we might make glancing contact with their experience and our imaginations might, together, be set loose to find more meaning in our experiences than we have heretofore found.
So it is that we find some proclamations to be more fruitful than others. Condemnatory proclamations generally are short-lived (though never short enough, for even one proclaimed off their experience is sufficient to slow the world). Imaginative proclamations have a much longer shelf life (though they too often take a long while to be recognized).
A proclamation of imagination that goes beyond our usual limit of death is a fruitful one. It is too bad that it is often delivered as a condemnation of another's current limit. How might you imaginatively proclaim resurrection without the use of consigning those who are not at that point to un-resurrected states?
- - -
faith in resurrection
opens our senses to its presence
sharpens our language of argument
grounds our institutionalization of samehope of resurrection
sets us up for disappointment
causes tentativeness in the present
cuts us loose from actionlove with resurrection
moves us toward a preferred future
softens our response to others
deepens our experience of time