The Living Legacy

The Soul in Paraphrase, the Heart in Pilgrimage

Ben Witherington, Julie Noelle Hare

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9781498252201
• eBook ISBN: 9781498274906
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

The Living Legacy is a resource for spiritual formation that involves original Christian poetry, theological analysis, and spiritual formation exercises following the lectio divina. Following the seasons of the Church Year, Witherington and Hare provide a guide to help those of us on spiritual journeys as we seek to explore 'the living legacy, ' which is our faith in the biblical God.

Kingdomtide

The Dimming of the Light

THE WORD’S WORTH

Spoken into being

The world from the word

Silence starts nothing

The void absurd.

His word was action

Not null or annulled

The darkness divided

His light not dulled.

The word became story

Symbol and sign

Metaphor and meaning,

Salvific design.

But the story was tragic

The plot past belief

The Creator rejected

His word came to grief.

The word seemed to falter

Its laws disobeyed

Its prophecy left dangling

Its promises mislaid.

But the word became flesh

His word was his bond

He fulfilled it himself

He came and was gone.

He disciplined disciples

He crucified sin

He passed on the story

The word born again.

Alpha, Omega

From first word to last

The living word creates

Future from past.

Light from darkness

Life from the grave

The New Testament story

Continues to save.

THEOLOGICAL MUSINGS

Kingdomtide is perhaps the least familiar of the church seasons. It is a time to contemplate some of the major features of the sacred story and particularly the nature of God’s divine saving reign on earth—God’s Dominion or Kingdom. One place to start such discussions is by focusing on God’s Word.

Sometimes less is more. Ben Jonson the great English writer once said ‘perspicuity is the chiefest virtue of a style.’ Clarity and brevity are important when one is conveying the truth, especially when one is in an emergency situation and one needs to be brief. In a modern world full of words, there has been a devaluation of the precious nature of the word. Sometimes we say “his word is his bond” and this is often said as if we are surprised when someone keeps their word. But when we are dealing with the Word, and it is God’s, we need to have a clear sense that God means what God says and vice versa. Furthermore, God’s word is an action. When God speaks, things happen, like for instance the coming into being of the whole of creation.

But this poem is not just about the power of God’s Word, it is trying to explore the nature of the relationship between Word and sacred story, a complex matter indeed. Salvation is not just about God’s pronouncements or God’s actions but both, which make up the theological substance of sacred story. Stories have plots, characters, developments, climaxes, denouements, endings. And God’s Word is not merely the catalyst or commentator on the story, it is in fact, in the person of Jesus, an actor in the story. In fact the Word who became flesh is the most important actor in the story. He’s the one who dramatically turns the story in a new and proper direction so there will be a satisfactory ending. This Word not merely acts in the story, he is the major determiner of its outcome. As it turns out, God not merely gets the first word, God gets the last word as well. It is much like the sign I saw on the highway the other day. It said at the top in bold letters- “God is Dead”—Nietzsche. Directly under this it said “Nietzsche is dead.”—God.

Yet it would be true to say that when Jesus came into the world, he was not merely acting out a pre-ordained script. Yes, there is a sense in which at various junctures he sought to fulfill Scripture, even fulfill all righteousness, but no his every move was not scripted. There were things that happened to Jesus that he surely did not expect. For instance, when the woman with the long term flow of blood touched the hem of his garment, Jesus asked “Who touched me?” Since Jesus’ life was not a charade, what he meant by this was “Who touched me?” He had neither expected, nor did he know who had suddenly touched the tassels on his garment. He asked for information. The Incarnation among other things means that Jesus assumed human limitations of time, space, knowledge and power. He asked honest questions. He swam through the same sea of possibilities and temptations we all face. His interactions with other human beings were genuine and much hung in the balance not only for the others whose lives he touched, but also for his own life. The story of his life developed on the fly, it was not all pre-scripted or prescribed.

And we need to bear in mind that sin always is against God’s word and will, it’s a violation of how God wants the story to go. Jesus asks his disciples to pray for the coming of the kingdom on earth and for God’s will to be done on earth for the very good reason that it often is not done on earth. Jesus operated in a world full of contingencies, and yet also a world in which God has plans and acts. Both things are true. Jesus was both an actor in the drama and an enactor of the intended drama as well such that the intended future is created out of the past and present. God indeed works all things together for good for those who love God, but sometimes this involves weaving together the good and the less good for not all things are good in themselves.

God, as it turns out, is a performance artist who enters into his own work and steers it in certain directions. He is not really a maker of pre-fab paint by numbers kits which we get to fill in on the basis of the instructions given and the paint provided. If our painting of our scenes was really pre...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Foreword
• Lecto Divina
• Introduction
• Advent and Christmas: The Dawning of the Light
• Epiphany: The Light Appears
• Lent: The Lengthening of the Light
• Holy Week and Easter: The Light Rises
• Eastertide: The Light Rises
• Pentecost: The Light Bursts into Flame
• Kingdomtide: The Dimming of the Light