Family Resemblance

Just got back from New York City, where I met up with my cousin Jeannie from New Zealand who was passing through town.  We hadn't met up for 15 years, and we spent a happy day walking around the Metropolitan Museum of Art, indulging our shared love of art.  As we walked and talked there was one moment when it suddenly occurred to me that I was looking at my late father's eyes and eyebrows.  There he was.  Jeannie probably shares 12 to 25% of my father's DNA with me, and it shows.

Jeannie flanked by her daughter Sarah and Linda

1 Colossians 15a reads "He [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God". There is a family resemblance between Jesus Christ and The Father.  Really this statement doesn't do it justice - as the context makes clear. The word 'image' (in Greek eikon) here can also be translated 'picture'.  He is the picture of His Father.   Jesus is the Father, revealed - a revelation.
Jeannie is her own person - and a wonderful one too.  She is not my Dad.  Jesus Christ is also His own person.  The difference is, Jesus IS The Father, and The Spirit.  As we encounter one we encounter the whole of God.
At the end of our day together, Jeannie and I hugged and kissed and said our goodbyes. "Who knows where or which decade we'll meet again?" I said.   I drove back to New Hampshire, and she is on her way to LA and then Auckland.  Jeannie and he family are Christians like Linda and me.  We share different parents, but the same Savior.  The family resemblance is growing beautifully.

Question, Answers, Jesus

It's been a horrific week in the USA.  The Boston Marathon Bombings, the massive explosion at a Texas fertilizer plant, and most bizarrely, an Elvis impersonator has sent ricin-pointed letters to the President and a senator.  As I write this, Boston is on lock down as thousands of police are hunting the surviving bomber, and two more policemen have died.  The maimed will be living with their devastating wounds for the rest of their lives.
Christian leaders have responded.  One friend was typical in his response.  He posted on Facebook "There are no easy answers. Count your blessings. Walk in love".  I thought 'two out of three ain't bad'.  Count our blessings - always great advice.  Walk in love - yes, and I can't do that for any length of time unless God is walking in me, through me. No easy answers?  Hmm.
It's fine to ask questions both of ourselves, of our society, of our government and of God.  We should ask questions.   We might not find answers to all of those questions and it's wise to distrust answers that are too easy.  My reservation is that Christians must ask questions, seek truth, and search for God in every situation.  Didn't Jesus Christ promise "I will never leave you or forsake you"?  So how does that play out exactly on the sidewalks of Boylston Street and in the ER at Mass General?

Suffering is at the heart of the Christian Way.  Our symbol is the cross.  On that cross God born as a man was hung like meat in a butcher's window, stripped naked, exposed, the flesh whipped from his back, blood blinding his eyes, tendons and cartilage severed by iron spike, slowly suffocating to death as the blood drained from his body.  God experiences all the pain and suffering in the whole world, all the time.  CS Lewis wrote that human suffering is one person deep and as wide as all humanity.  We get to experience one life's worth - some more than others. God enjoins us in all our joy, and in all our pain.

So there is one question we can answer.  Where is God at times like this?  Right with us, is the clear and unequivocal answer. What is He doing about it?  Leaving us room to love and room to hate - on each other, and on Him.

Christians affirm that there are two deaths.  One bodily, that moves us from this 'world' into the next.  There is a second death coming.  We call it Judgment Day, when God blows the final whistle on the human timeline.  Those alive will be joined by all those who have died, to be judged.  Christ opened His arms to all of humanity and took within Himself all of the evil, hatred, disdain, disinterest and ignorance that humanity will ever produce.  For those who put their deep trust in Christ, He has absorbed the second death for us.  So go ahead and be mad at God this week, if you want to.  He has already taken the punishment for all the evil in the world, and responds with giving us new life and His spirit.   This week, from Greater Boston, my hope is that Christians will point to the crucified God as the only intellectually satisfying, morally sound, life affirming answer to the agony we are sharing in during weeks like this.

Evil at the Boston Marathon.

Today, a senseless act of violence was committed in Boston, Massachusetts.  terrorism is nothing new, of course.  The best way that Christians can respond is to pray from the victims and the perpetrators. Then we ought to go about our business as usual. Christians know that justice is one aspect of salvation - are we are being saved.  Justice is not complete.  Vengeance is a dangerous response - and belongs only to God. Love your neighbor.

I am moved to re-post a poem by my late father.  God met evil on the cross - absorbing all it's pain and fury into Himself. 

AFTER SEPTEMBER 11^TH

The World is soiled now,

like sweat stained clothes

crumpled and cast aside,

trampled by boots heavy with filth,

all redolent of evil done.

Nothing now is certain,

Directions once safe now point to

quicksands and dark jungles.

Questions turn into riddles

that have no easy answers.

Poisoned clouds swirl round the globe.

Despairing faces cry for food

but desert dust falls through their fingers.

The tortured corpses lay in stinking piles.

Disease will putrefy the living.

Death stands ready for his harvest,

and God is angered.

Max Frost

1 Oct 2001