The Kwanzan Cherry Tree

Exquisitely soft falls the chill April rain
that separates blossom from leaf
and petals the pavement with color,
as if in lamentation for splendor passing.

Beside the Ephemeral Pond

Beside the ephemeral pond,

among the low wild grasses

bent-brown and green,

winter-summer tangled

the earth-scurrying killdeer

nested four mottled eggs,

then brooded, vigilant

in April's lilting uncertainty

which is when we came along

and heard the anxious cry,

then observed, so keenly

the fierce urge toward life

Some Thoughts on Substitutionary Atonement

Reading a book of essays on NT Wright's thought, and coming out of reading Wright's "How God Became King" and participating in the Good Friday liturgy ....

It seems to me that much of substitutionary atonement thinking is highly individualistic. In this thinking, Jesus substituted for me, for each one of us. That is, Jesus the one man or one person substituted for the one man or one person. In this sense, Jesus capitulates Adam for me, for each of us. Now NT Wright, without denying or dismissing this, contends as well that Jesus capitulates Israel, the nation or people. This would broaden substitutionary atonement to corporate identity and action, not simply individual identity and action. That is, it would broaden it from a narrow emphasis on the sacrificial system alone to encompass the fullness of a people and a body politic (in the broad sense, not simply the political sense); otherwise we reduce the identity and history and formation of Israel, and God's saving action therein, to merely the sacrificial system. What if we then take all this further to recognize that Jesus capitulates not only Israel and humanity but creation itself, the whole of creation. Thus Jesus substitutes for creation in his life, death, resurrection, and even in his ascension (in the sense that God created humanity to rule in creation). That is, Jesus had to die because creation was dead, and only by taking on creation's death could Jesus (God in Jesus) take away creation's death. Thus: sacrifice, substitution, atonement; but not narrowly or solely construed and enacted within the meaning and mechanism of the sacrificial cult as seen in the temple.

Vision and Simple Pleasure

Mid day on a January Sunday, and we drive the cold miles of the toll road to visit family for the afternoon. Along one stretch on our right a wintered stand of mature tulip trees -- tall, straight, and well-spaced -- ranges across the rises and ravines through which the highway paves. My heart and spirit lift with the trees every time we pass this way.

We must inculcate in ourselves vision for and simple pleasure in these little instances of quotidian beauty scattered variously around us, else we miss them, we miss them, to the fading of heart and spirit.

When Love Came Down

When love came down to dwell with us -- to wake and sleep, to work and play, to live and die, as one with us -- we turned cold-away, nailed shut our hearts, and sledged along in the darkened commerce of our daily lives. We followed no bright-hoped star at night, nor woke to tendered mercy at dawn. We valued none the straw nor stone where love was laid, was laid to rest, for us, for us. Yet love was love, from first to last, through life and death then life again, to turn our straw, to change our stone, from poor rough things to coin of light, to endless count of golden days.

Christ in Word

Let us not so much invoke the name of Christ in proffered pieties as let the person of Christ inhabit the very grammar, dictionary, and essay of our common daily speech, neighbor to neighbor.

Why Let the Bible Shape Our Lives

Why should we Christians let the Bible shape our lives? Put more strongly, why do we assert that the Bible should inform and form who we are and what we do?

These questions arise acutely if we take seriously the exegetical criterion of reading in context. Namely, if we must read a Biblical passage first in its context without importing our contemporary and personal context, to the extent that we can do this, we must ask why something from another context, especially an ancient one, should have any significant bearing on our lives. If it is difficult to read in context, and if it is difficult to bring forward anything from that context to our own, why should we let that occur, why should we feel it ought to occur? It is one thing to say that we find an ancient text interesting, such that we want to understand it as well as possible, so we must read it in context as far as possible. It is another thing to say we must read it in context as well as possible because we must discover if it is relevant to our context and, if it is, let it shape our context as far as possible.

We could answer generally that we may and perhaps ought to read and understand well any text, including ancient texts, because we may and perhaps ought to learn from the wisdom of others. It is unwise to think our own selves so capable and right that we become snobs of truth, to assume that we are so advanced and superior compared to what others have thought, especially the ancients. In general, then, we should read other texts with an openness.

Yet this general openness is not sufficient to explain why we read and try to contemporize the Bible as we do. The only sufficient reasons are the axioms (1) that in some way the Bible is God communicating to us and (2) that God communicates to us, then and now, to inform and form who we are and what we ought to do; that is, to communicate what creation ought to be and to bring creation into being as it ought to be. Only on these bases are there compelling reasons why we let, why we must let, the Bible (God, really) from its time and place shape us in our time and place, that we might more truly and fully live in that creation which is God's time and place for us.