(Ir)religiosity

I ran across this quote from Jürgen Moltmann last night while doing some research for my last written statement in constructive theology for the semester.

Christian eschatology must separate itself from the messianism of the modern world, and out of this world’s ruins must rescue the categories of redemption.              God for a Secular Society, 220.

It seems to me that one of the biggest theological challenges facing us today is speaking of eschatology in light of postmodernism.  If Lyotard’s critique of metanarratives is correct it would seem to spell the end of eschatology broadly conceived.  For Moltmann, however, eschatology could not be more important as it is the very medium and content of all theological discourse.

So the question then becomes the following one:  what is the ultimate Christian hope in the face of the failed and indeed violent narratives of the modern world, how can the Christian narrative be freed from those totalizing narratives, and how does it, at its core, differ from them?  What is its good news?  I think Moltmann is on to something here.  Yet I wonder how or if it is even possible to distinguish the Christian narrative from these other stories ontologically.  That is, how to speak of the Christian narrative without totalization.  In many ways this gets back to the question I asked a few months ago about whether Christianity is intrinsically a metanarrative.  Or does it spell freedom from the metanarrative?

I’m still working out where I come down on this, but it seems to me that eschatology is where the rubber meets the road as far as the interface between theology and postmodernism is concerned.

Thoughts?

Below is the manuscript — more or less, I tend to deviate quite a bit — of the sermon I will be preaching this morning, the first Sunday of Advent, at Quincy Community UMC.  It is based on the gospel text for this week (Luke 21:25-36)

There are probably two great “Fridays” people in the United States can readily identify.  Good Friday, of course, two days before Easter, marking the transition from one season to the next, and, perhaps even more popular, Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, the biggest shopping day of the year marking the beginning of the Holy season of Consumerism leading up to Christmas.  Today, we are in the midst of a transition, a cultural in-between time between the Fall season and the hectic Holiday season, the season of consumption where, if you are like me, you are tempted to spend money you don’t have, to buy things you don’t need, to impress people you may not even like.  We are in an in-between time:  between Black Friday, the biggest day of physical shopping, on the one hand, and Cyber Monday, the largest online shopping day, on the other.  Last year even amidst the growing economic crisis, on this same weekend, Americans managed to spend over $41 billion, an average of $373 per person.

We are in an in-between time.

Yet, as Christians, today marks another transition, another in-between time.  Today marks the end of ordinary time in the Christian year and the beginning of Advent, the beginning of our anticipation and celebration of God’s breaking into history through Jesus Christ.  This Sunday in particular, the first Sunday of Advent, we acknowledge a larger period of transition, between Christ’s humble coming in a manager in Bethlehem and God’s complete restoration of all creation in the future.  Today we celebrate God’s coming in Jesus so many years ago and at the same time we anticipate God’s breaking into history again, looking forward to the future redemption and salvation of all things.

So while the culture around us marks the transition into a time of unhealthy and unbridled consumption, we, as God’s people, celebrate and anticipate God’s liberating work in the world.  The question that I would ask all of us today, including myself, is whether we are marking God’s time today, or the time of Consumerism.  Do we look different from the rest of the world around us during this Advent season?  What are we celebrating?  Who are we celebrating? Read the rest of this entry »

This is Peter Rollins at his best.  I love it:

In the ethic of Empire one looks out for ones friends (inside the circle) and punishes ones enemies (outside the circle). It is an ethic that looks out for those who look out for us and loves those who love us. It is an ethic of economy (where we mutually give to one another). It would appear however that Christ ruptures this by giving preference to the one outside our systems (the alien, the enemy, the exile) over and above those privileged within our systems. This counter-ethic shows how the Christ trajectory is one that pushes outside the circle to those beyond its borders. Privileging those on the outside over those on the inside and offering a radical, impossible hospitality.

In this way, every time we draw a circle of who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’ who we love and who we hate the Christ-action involves pushing away from those who are ‘in’ and identifying with and helping the outsiders, the scapegoat, the stranger, the monstrous other. If the Empire ethic is an ethic that seeks to draw people into the circle of exchange the Christ ethic privileges the exception. Always pushing out to those who are excluded, who live beyond the fortified boundary.

By refusing to expand ourselves and our theology we limit our capacity to create space for The Other, constructing self-imposed boudaries that menace that which unites us.  We simply draw our circle too small.  Or, maybe the real problem is that we insist on drawing a circle in the first place.

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