Relocating To Elfland

“[The] life of the children of God is always a life for Christ’s sake. The foundation of the Church is also its law and its limit. . . . By its inmost nature the Church is forbidden to want independence of Jesus Christ, or sovereignty in thought or action. If it did, it would relapse into the unjustified and unsanctified nature from which it is withdrawn in Christ. This will always find plenty of means to assert itself in its life. But it cannot want to relapse into it. It is born of the omnipotent Word of grace; it would only die if it were to become or to be anything but the fulfillment of that Word. Grace holds good only where grace rules. The rule of grace which is unfailing where men are God’s children for Christ’s sake, the dependence of these men upon the Word of which they are reborn – this is the reality of the Church . . . . And in the light of it, it is and must be true that extra ecclesiam nulla salus.” (Barth, Church Dogmatics, p. 2.216)

“Grant, we beseech thee, almighty God, that we, which for our evil deeds are worthily punished, by the comfort of thy grace may mercifully be relieved; through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

One of the things I love about being a parent is that you never know what’s coming. Never. Today I’m drying my four-year-old’s hair after his bath. Nothing profound going on in my head. The same couldn’t be said for him.

“Dad, I can’t wait to go and see Jesus.”

“We’ll see Him, son, very soon.”

“But He doesn’t have a body like men.”

“Oh, yes, Jesus has a body, son. He kept His body after God raised Him from the dead.” [Hanging up the towel, wondering where this is going.]

“Then He’s not God?”

“Yes, He’s God, He’s the second Person of the Godhead, but He kept His body when He sat down at the right hand of the Father.”

“Then we serve two Gods?”

“Well, no, son, we serve one God in three Persons. The second Person, the Son, took a body, and He still has it. As God He doesn’t have a body like men, but as the God-Man He has a body.”

“So Jesus is God, and He has a body, but God doesn’t have a body.”

“Something like that . . . .”

“People are gonna get messed up, Dad. They’re gonna think we serve two Gods.”

[Pause.]

“Good questions, son. I’ll have to think about this some more.”

[Four-year-old exits bathroom to go play. Dad reflects that it was not his finest theological hour.]

“Now it is no accident that for us the Virgin birth is paralleled by the miracle of which the Easter witness speaks, the miracle of the empty tomb. These two miracles belong together. They constitute, as it were, a single sign, the special function of which, compared with other signs and wonders of the New Testament witness, is to describe and mark out the existence of Jesus Christ, amid the many other existences in human history, as that human historical existence in which God is Himself, God is alone, God is directly the Subject, the temporal reality of which is not only called forth, created, conditioned and supported by the eternal reality of God, but is identical with it. The Virgin birth at the opening and the empty tomb at the close of Jesus’ life bear witness that this life is a fact marked off from all the rest of human life, and marked off in the first instance, not by our understanding or our interpretation, but by itself. Marked off in regard to its origin: it is free of the arbitrariness which underlies all our existences. And marked off in regard to its goal: it is victorious over the death to which we are all liable. Only within these limits is it what it is and is it correctly understood, as the mystery of the revelation of God. It is to that mystery that these limits point – he who ignores them or wishes them away must see to it that he is not thinking of something quite different from this.” (Barth, Church Dogmatics, p. 2.182)

“It was an unhappy truth, he told himself, that nearly all people in the world behave badly when there is something really big at stake.” (Mr. Willy Wonka, in Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator)

“As Adam refused to preserve the order of Paradise, i.e., the limits of his creatureliness, man as Adam’s child refuses to fit into the order of restoration. He will not understand and admit that he is flesh, stands under judgment, and can only live by grace. He will not admit that God is right in His verdict upon him, and then cling entirely to this God’s mercy. At the very least he insists upon still standing and walking on his own feet. He wants, at least in co-operation with what God does, to ‘save his life’ (. . . Mk. 8:35). By that very process he loses his life. On that very rock he suffers shipwreck. For by that very process sin in the flesh is not judged, but rather is committed afresh. By that very process man does afresh what Adam did.” (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, p. 2.157)

“We beseech thee, almighty God, look upon the hearty desires of thy humble servants, and stretch forth the right hand of thy majesty, to be our defence against all our enemies; through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

A part of great preaching is to be able to say something once and have it stick, to say it so vividly and well that it is instantly memorable. The preacher who has to say the same thing four times to make the lights go on is wasting three attempts, which suggests the lights are dimly lit in his own mind. Lacking a scalpel, he must flail about with his machete, and his audience is in for a very long sermon.

“Almighty God, which dost see that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves; keep thou us both outwardly in our bodies, and inwardly in our souls; that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul; through Jesus Christ, &c.”

In my last post, I noted in passing the MSNBC interview between Martin Bashir and Rob Bell. Here is a quite interesting follow-up in which Bashir comments at length on that interview.