Category: Blog

Here I sit. I can do no other… I’m sipping my coffee and I’ve been thinking about this bloodsplotch for a few days. For those of you who don’t know, this image is a design by Steve Mitchell for New Wine, New Wineskins. (Many of the thoughts that are rattling around my brain are from things that have been in discussion in some of Dr. Metzger’s classes, especially Theology of Cultural Engagement.) I’m having a difficult time organizing my thoughts, so here I sit. I thought I’d write down just a few of those thoughts in hopes that I would understand Christ’s love in a deeper way and perhaps to get some other thoughts from people who might stumble across this note.

At the sight of the bloodsplotch I think of Jesus sitting with the disciples at the Last Supper and his explanation of the cup of wine from which they drank symbolizing the new covenant inaugurated by the pouring out of His life for us (Lk 22:20). I think of His prayer to His Father in the Garden of Gethsamene and am reminded of the anguish He experienced when sweat fell like blood from His forehead (Lk 22:44). I see the splotch and my mind pictures His blood drops that hit the dusty road He walked to the cross, beaten and bloodied. In the gospel accounts there is a build – up of tension and an expectation of a reordering of powers. In the Fourth Gospel, the Apostle John creates this sense of anticipation by referring to Jesus’ ‘hour’ or ‘the hour of glory’. Of course we learn that Jesus’ ‘hour of glory’ (John 12:23, 27) was not the expected hour of power in which the Messiah would overthrow the Roman occupants. Jesus’ glorification was being lifted up, but on a cross to death. What does all this mean that Jesus, Lord of lords and King of kings chose this life of suffering?

For those of us who have been brought up in the church, we know the story of Jesus’ life, and we’ve got our favorite verses for swift employment and brief contemplation. For me, I held much tighter to a list of New Testament doctrines forgetting the life of Jesus from which those doctrines came. Don’t misunderstand me, I do not want to devalue doctrines in the least, but knowing the story in which these doctrines are framed literally gives flesh and bone to the teaching of God. It is in this taking on of flesh that we come to more clearly understand who God is because He so clearly presents Himself to us.

John, the author of the Fourth Gospel, synthesized the paradox of glory and the cross. In the 16th century Martin Luther saw the Late Medieval Catholic Church holding onto a theology of glory through power, contradicting the theology of the cross. They seem antithetical, yet Christ’s bride, the Church adopted the pursuit of power instead of following Christ’s path to the cross, the path of discipleship (Luke 14:25-35). For us today we’ve done something very similar. We avoid seeing the cross as the destination of discipleship. Somehow we miss it; we’ve made the same exchange for our glory and autonomy and have only submitted ourselves to Christ’s lordship on our terms, precisely confined to the gaps of our lives in which we sense he might be useful.

Let “my personal Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ” read something more like “Jesus, lord of my religious/spiritual self, or even just sunday morning.” But God is calling us to so much more! I am fighting to return to a theology of the cross and to bow my head and drop to my knees before my Lord who found me in His gallows. I need a theology for my whole self for the whole of my life. Is God any less God when all goes wrong and when I lose the life I expected? That expectation is what I made my salvation to be. When life has gotten dirty and doesn’t look like the optimistic brochures of the “American Dream”, Jesus’ lordship unites the spheres of my life. He brings together the entirety of my life and all that He has in store for me, sufferings or successes under His presence. That is what relationship with Him entails. To remain in Christ because He is my life.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer spent the last 2 years of his life in a Nazi prison because of his ties to assassination attempts on Adolf Hitler. He understood the cost of discipleship; he a was pacifist who felt it necessary to rid the evils of Hitler by killing him, a decision he did not take lightly. For that conviction and the courage that led him to the attempt, he came to know that God was not limited to the gaps in which he needed to be rescued. Jesus’ ministry was one in which He took on suffering. Jesus had no home, He was abandoned by those closest to Him and the authorities wanted His life and eventually got it. Yahweh, The Great I AM, whose presence made Israel a distinct people, was with Him in his sufferings, for He is God in the gallows and reaches out to us in His sufferings. It is through weakness and death that Jesus most clearly demonstrates and communicates Himself to us in His powerful presence and love. Bonhoeffer was concerned with living a ‘worldy – life,’ not one of sin, but one where he wanted to live (spiritually) unreserved in all of lives’ successes, and sufferings. I want the God in the gallows because I’m tired of drawing back out of fear for self protection and autonomy. I want a life where I increasingly see my life in Jesus’ life and my security in my Heavenly Father.

Teach me your way, O LORD, and I will walk in your truth; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name. Psalm 86:11

I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. Ezekiel 11:19

The word pluralism is a four letter word in many Christian circles, but to John Franke pluralism and plurality are words that describe the polyphonic testimony that point to Jesus Christ.

Dr. John Franke, Professor of Theology at Biblical Seminary was recently in Portland, Oregon presenting ideas from his forthcoming book Manifold Witness, Plurality of Truth. Multnomah Biblical Seminary and New Wine, New Wineskins invited Dr. Franke to share some his most recent work. The forum, on March 6th, began with Dr. Franke presenting an overview of his book and followed with various responses from  Drs. Al Baylis, Brad Harper, and Paul Metzger. The forum also gave the opportunity to the broader audience to ask questions of Dr. Franke and to present some of their personal concerns where they might have diverging opinions.

Personally I really enjoyed the opportunity to listen to Dr. Franke’s ideas. His insights about language as a cultural construct and the “word games” and symbols that the authors of the Bible use to point to Christ strike at the core of gospel contextualization. This point became especially evident in view of the Gospels. Instead of imposing a rigid systematization of uniformity, Franke seeks to preserve the distinctiveness of Gospel accounts, thereby highlighting there uniqueness as authentic witnesses to God’s revelation in Christ. He views the many voices united in Scripture as distinct and holding their own valid testimony. Franke referred to this as the “irreducible plurality” of Scripture’s testimony.

Franke pointed to this sort of contrived “reconciliation” of facts to be like racial reconciliation which at times can lead to the destruction of the minority through assimilation into the majority. Likewise, the assimilation of varying points of truth can lead to a loss of the richness of Scripture’s testimony. Franke follows this line of thinking and applies it to the church today. How can there be real unity in the Church when there seems to be so many disagreements? Franke surmises that instead of assimilating traditions and doctrines into one coherent whole, we should view the unifying thread of the Scriptures and church history’s witness as a unique pattern of the Christ – transformed life fundamentally important to each narrative.

Many of the issues brought up at the forum are sure to be provocative points to ponder as we move into a post – Christian era. The same issues that we face in contemporary culture are questions and concerns shared by Christians dedicated to bearing witness to Christ in cultures across all borders.

Sometimes as I read the Bible, I picture Jesus in his humanity with a sort of halo around his head during his treks through Galilee. The French painter Georges Rouault captures the humanity of Jesus (seen in his piece, ‘Christ Mocked’) in a much different way. His depictions of Christ are not with a halo but as a clown, one despised and mocked. A clown represents the victims of society, the refuse of the world, the perishable, the transient, the foolish (1 Cor. 1:26); this is what Christ took on in his humanity according to Rouault’s art.

Rouault was born 1881 in Paris into a poor family. At the age of 14 he began an apprenticeship as a glass painter and restorer. This early experience as a glass painter is the likely source of the heavy black contouring and glowing colours which characterize Rouault’s mature painting style. When you view Rouault’s work, as in the picture above, what do you feel?

The sorrow and suffering that comes with everyday life is something Rouault fully engaged in his art.  This is why Rouault commonly painted clown and prostitutes. In both Rouault’s depictions of clowns and Christ, there is the same downward curve of the lips, the same elongation of the face, and the same deep emanation of suffering from the eyes. This is the tragic plight of humanity according to Rouault.

There are those who have criticized Rouault for his melancholy depictions of Christ as a clown. Some have even labeled him irreligious. He explains, however, that his art was meant to give a taste of the extent of God’s compassion, “I saw clearly that ‘the clown’ was myself, ourselves . . . this rich, spangled costume is given us by life, we’re all of us clowns . . . wear a ‘spangled costume,’ but if we are caught unawares . . . who would dare to claim that he is not moved to his very depths by immeasurable pity . . . King or emperor, what I want to see in the man facing me is his soul, and the more exalted his position the more misgivings I have about his soul.” (Harvey Cox, A Feast of Fools, p. 139)

I think often we want the resurrection without the cross, the promise of hope without any suffering, new life without the death of the old. Rouault reminds us that it is through the pain and suffering that God’s joy and promises come. In the same way that Rouault’s paintings were made to have light shine through them, the light of God’s hope goes through the cross to the resurrection.

As a group of us reflected on a few paintings of Rouault’s today, we were astounded at how this master painter could portray Christ in utter sorrow but at the same time in amazing serenity. We came to the following conclusion: in the midst of taking on our shame and pain as the clown, Christ entered into a new confidence and peace in his Father’s love. There is symmetry between Christ’s endurance of pain and the embrace of his Father’s love. Christ only enters the pain because of the warmth of love he first feels from the Father and that warmth grows in the midst of the suffering.  And the cross extends this same love of the Father, amazingly, to us.

Rouault’s art has made me think about how Christ’s engagement of humanity as the clown impacts our interactions in society today. If you agree that Christ took on the form of a clown, how do you think this metaphor of the clown should inform how we should relate to others? Have you experienced a ‘clown encounter’ in your life?

Click here to see more of Rouault’s art.