Each Wednesday,     Tim Carson shares 
the wonderings of heart and mind and the inspirations and quandaries of the spirit. You are invited to wonder along with him through the telling of stories, reflections on faith and observations on the events that shape our lives.  

Tim Carson

 

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Wednesday Wonder
May 18, 2016

I am currently reading Peter Rollins' The Divine Magician (Howard, 2015). Rollins is a leader of the latest iteration of Christians who are deconstructing and reconstructing the form and function of the Christian faith. It is not a new project, of course, and as I read I thought of other reformers through history who were compelled to do the same thing. He is, though, a voice in our current moment striving for a risky relevancy.
 
The guiding metaphor of the book is a clever one; he appeals to a disappearing act that moves from object (like a coin, for instance) to disappearance to reappearance. He focuses on our over-preoccupation with the object (as we are inclined to be falsely attached to everything). And he main thesis is that it is important for the false object to disappear so that we might discover, in astonishment, the real thing.
 
Rollins applies this schema to the crucifixion and resurrection. In the same way we are attached to Jesus, so he disappears from us in crucifixion. Only after our hopes are dashed, does reappearance or resurrection bring a real experience of transcendence that is not limited to one place and time.
 
Most of all, he critiques religion as humanly-made object. Religious structures and form are the human response to mystery. In time, the response, the form, comes to be revered as though it is the real thing. But of course it is not. No matter what smoke and mirrors and curtains and distraction the priestly magician uses the truth cannot be concealed: The church, what has become the object of adoration, is not the thing.
 
Only after religious structures, the church, are revealed for what they are and disappear can the truth of faith and life together be captured. On this score I felt as though I was reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
 
In a sense the broader culture is way ahead of the current struggle of Christians. They have already disestablished the church. They have already exposed the king with no clothes: The church is not God.  We know that but it is good to say it out loud. We don't even have a medieval understanding that the church mediates God.
 
If many in modern culture have a sense of transcendence it is not limited by or even shaped by the church. They often don't know how it is shaped (for it is by many other influences), but it is not dependent on the church.
Christians are finally getting over that the church has been sidelined. The magic trick has been exposed. But at the same time the disappeared coin is reappearing in exciting ways. The truth is that the church is simply a community of people who long for God. The church is a group of people who are trying to live together by faith. They know God is everywhere. But together they tell the ancient stories, practice the tradition, love one another and serve in the world.
 
Current day Christians don't fancy themselves as magicians or saviors, but rather as pointers - those pointing to the presence of God. And as they point, they become like that to which they point.
 
That's not magic. But it's real and powerful.
The Spirit is at work.
But the world thinks that we think that the church is something it's not and can't be.
We have to show the difference.
 

@Timothy Carson 2016

 

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