Hope

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  We have every reason to suppose that when the Jewish people celebrated Passover year after year they thought of it as the freedom festival that not only looked back to the original act of liberation, but ahead to another great act of liberation, especially when the people once more felt themselves enslaved or oppressed. And the point for our purposes is this: Jesus himself chose Passover as the moment to do what he had to do, and the first Christians looked back to Passover as one of the main interpretative lenses for understanding his death. Second, however, a great many Jews of the first century sharpened their hope for a fresh act of divine liberation in the light of the book of Daniel and similar writings. Here (in Dan. 9) they found assurance that the “exile” had not consisted merely of the seventy years in Babylon, but was continuing to their day in a different form, that of continuing pagan oppression. All the great prophets of the exile had insisted that Israel’s disaster (including the destruction of the Temple and the consequent sense of being excluded from the divine Presence) was the result of Israel’s own idolatry and sin. If and when, therefore, a fresh act of deliverance were to undo this long exile, it would be a divine act of “forgiveness of sins.” The great annual holy day at which confession of sin was made and forgiveness was available was the Day of Atonement. This had little in common with Passover, except that both took place in the Jerusalem Temple (after which the Passover meal was then eaten in private homes). But since, in the time of Jesus, many Jews were looking for a great event that would be both a “new Passover” and the “forgiveness of sins,” it is possible to see that the two might somehow be combined. Jeremiah had spoken of a “new covenant” in which sins would be forgiven (Jer. 31:31–34). All this generates a framework of potential meaning within which the actions of Jesus himself and the perceptions of his first followers could find fertile soil. Third, we should not imagine that any first-century Jews outside the Christian movement were carrying in their heads anything like the complex constructions that Jesus’s first followers quickly developed to talk about his death. Some were hoping for a Messiah or at least a prophetic leader who would point the way out of Israel’s present troubles, but nobody, as far as we can tell, thought that such a figure would suffer. Equally, some thought that a time of terrible suffering was to come, a time through which Israel would be delivered, but nobody connected this with a potential Messiah.

• From White Oleander (1999)

  “‘Do your own thing, man,’ was the wisdom of the day. If there was something you wanted, it was good, because you wanted it. There was no God, no dying. There was only your own pleasure.” He smiled at the word “pleasure,” as if pleasure was hideous, an abomination, and he felt pity for anyone who would be so weak as to value it. “And if anyone spoke of responsibility or consequences, they were held up to ridicule. ‘Lighten up, man. Don’t be square.’ “Yes, the young man had unwittingly contracted the deadly virus. It had infiltrated his heart, weakening the structure of his conscience, liquefying his judgment.” Reverend Thomas seemed positively overjoyed. “After a while, there just didn’t seem much difference between right and wrong.” So how could the kid have ended up as anything but one of the Manson killers? I had sunk back in my chair as far as Carolee by now, and Starr’s perfume and the hissing words of the Reverend were making me sick to my stomach. Luckily, in prison, the young man had a revelation. He realized he was a part of a raging epidemic of the sin virus, and through another inmate discovered the Lord and the life-giving serum of His Blood. Now he was preaching to the other inmates and doing good works among the hopeless. Although he was twenty-five years into a life sentence, his life was not a waste. He had a reason for being, to help others, and bring the Good News to people who had never looked an inch beyond their own momentary desires. He was redeemed, a new man, reborn in the Lord. It wasn’t hard for me to imagine the Manson kid in prison, his hardness, his warped thinking, a killer. Then something had happened. A light had come on, which let him see the awful reality of his crime. I imagined his agony, when he saw what a monster he had become and knew that he had ruined his life for nothing. He could have killed himself, how very close he must have come. But then came the ray of hope, that there might be another way to live, some meaning after all. And he prayed, and the spirit came into his heart. And now, instead of living out his years as a walking corpse in San Quentin, hating and more hate, he had become someone with a purpose, someone with the light within him. I understood that. I believed it. “There is an answer to this deadly epidemic laying waste our vital substance,” Reverend Thomas was saying, lifting his arms, like an embrace. “A powerful vaccine for the devastating infection within the human heart. But we have to recognize the danger we are in. We have to accept the grave diagnosis, that by acting upon our own desires instead of following God’s plan, we have become infected by this terrible plague.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  After my dad died, my willingness to consider faith grew. It was that smile that spread over my dad’s face as he passed into the next world that encouraged me in a way that words never could. I also turned 50, more years behind me than in front of me. More people dying and chapters ending. And so I surrendered my need for anything to make sense. I surrendered to comfort—and there’s surely no downside to that. Ask for a specific sign: Two years after Dad died, my best friend, Marie Forleo, invited me to a weekend workshop with psychic medium Laura Lynne Jackson. Ever wise, Marie knew I would benefit from learning how to connect with Dad and other loved ones who had passed. Laura encouraged us to ask for specific signs from loved ones and suggested we pick unusual ones, as an added way to bolster our faith. This made sense. I mean, picking a squirrel is kinda easy. Why not give the dead a harder job to do. So I picked a narwhal—a cross between a whale and a unicorn, with its long, spiraled tusk jutting from its head. If Dad could send me one of those, I was a believer. Days went by . . . no narwhal. A week went by; where was my frickin’ narwhal? Just when I was about to chalk it all up to nonsense, I walked into an antique store and right over the counter was a vintage print of a narwhal. “They can’t pick up the phone and call us,” says Jackson . . . “They can’t put their arms around us and hug us. But they can find ways to do the symbolic equivalent of those things and let us know that they are with us. And when you have that experience, when you get that sign, it becomes a truth to you and it changes the way you’re living: You know that death does not exist except for the physical and that you have a team of light rooting for you, supporting you, and guiding you at all times.” Turn your life into a treasure hunt: Pain may be loud, but reassurance is quiet. It waits for us to be aware. So whether you’re in a season of grief or peace, turn your life into a treasure hunt. Look for signs each day of the ways you are being offered love, joy, peace, and reassurance. Look for how you’ve grown during this time, how your heart has expanded and your wisdom has enriched you. Look for the continuity of the love. It’s still there. The goodness is still with you, just as real and sacred as the grief. You just have to keep searching for signs and say a silent Thank you whenever you see them.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  Somatic Experiencing (SE) is a body-based approach to healing trauma and stress-related disorders, developed by Dr. Peter Levine. During a Somatic Experiencing session, the therapist will guide you through various physical sensations and experiences, such as breathing exercises, movements, and other techniques that help you become more attuned to your bodily experience. The therapist will also help you identify and release tension and stress from your body, using techniques such as gentle touch or guided imagery. Somatic Experiencing is a gentle, noninvasive therapy that can be helpful for a wide range of issues related to trauma and stress, including PTSD, anxiety, depression, and chronic pain. It can be particularly helpful for people who have difficulty expressing themselves in traditional talk therapy sessions. EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a type of psychotherapy originally developed to treat symptoms associated with trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). During an EMDR session, the therapist will ask you to recall a traumatic memory while simultaneously tracking a visual or auditory stimulus, such as the therapist’s finger moving back and forth or a series of beeps. This is thought to facilitate the processing of the memory and reduce the intensity of the associated emotions and physical sensations. EMDR is a relatively brief therapy, typically lasting between 6 and 12 sessions. EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques), also known as “tapping,” combines elements of traditional Chinese medicine with modern psychology. It’s based on the idea that negative emotions and beliefs can lead to imbalances in your body’s energy system, which in turn leads to physical and emotional symptoms. Tapping on specific acupuncture points, while addressing the root cause of distress, sends a calming signal to the brain. This allows you to feel relaxed and in control. It’s a simple and noninvasive technique that can be learned and practiced on your own. And it can be used to address a wide range of emotional and physical issues, including anxiety, depression, trauma, chronic pain, and addictions. Trust your instincts: When it comes to finding the right healing modality, trust your instincts. Your healing may need you to experiment with different techniques in order to find what clicks for you. Remember, nobody does healing better than any other. We’re all walking different roads to the same destination. Trust that growth is possible: Most of us are familiar with the post-traumatic stress part, yet few of us have ever heard that growth is possible, too. When we go through difficult or traumatic events, we often think of the negative impact they have on our lives. But did you know that some people can actually experience positive changes as a result of these experiences? This is known as post-traumatic growth (PTG). Developed by psychologists Richard Tedeschi, Ph.D., and Lawrence Calhoun, Ph.D., in the mid-1990s, the PTG theory suggests that people who’ve endured psychological struggle following adversity can often see positive growth afterward.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  Second, therefore, even before we get to Paul, we find the challenge of the cross reaching us in quite new ways. It is indeed revolutionary. Nothing is lost. We do not (of course!) have to give up the idea of Jesus “dying for our sins.” Indeed, that remains at the very center. But that idea is refocused, recontextualized, placed within a narrative not of divine petulance, but of unbreakable divine covenant love, embodied in the actual person, life, actions, and teaching of Jesus himself. This means that in order to appropriate this for ourselves, to benefit from this story, it is not simply a matter of believing a particular abstract doctrine, this or that theory of how “atonement” might be thought to “work.” No doubt that can help, though with the abstractions can come distortions, as we have seen. No, the gospels invite us to make this story our own, to live within the narrative in all its twists and turns, to see ourselves among the crowds following Jesus and witnessing his kingdom-bringing work, to see ourselves also in the long-range continuation of that narrative that we call, in fear and trembling (because we know its deep ambiguities), the life of the church. In particular, as followers of Jesus from the very beginning have known, we are to make the story our own by the repeated meals in which the Last Supper is brought to life once more. If that was how Jesus wanted his followers not only to understand, but also to appropriate for themselves the meaning of the death he was to die, there is every reason to take it seriously as the sign and foretaste of the eventual kingdom, carrying within it the assurance that we too are those who share in the “forgiveness of sins.” And, with that, the gospels give to those who read them the energy and the sense of direction to be Beatitude people for the world, knowing that the victory was indeed won on the cross, that Jesus is indeed already installed as the world’s rightful ruler, and that his way of peace and reconciliation has been shown to be more powerful than all the powers of the world.

• From The Prophetic Imagination (1978)

  recover Miriam’s prominence, suggesting that originally she was an important figure in emerging Israel. [17] Prophecy cannot be separated very long from doxology, or it will either wither or become ideology. Abraham Heschel has seen most wondrously how doxology is the last full act of human freedom and justice. [18] The prophetic community might ponder what the preconditions of doxology are and what happens when doxologies that address this one are replaced by television jingles that find us singing consumerism ideology to ourselves and to each other. In that world there may be no prophet and surely no freedom. In that world where jingles replace doxology, God is not free and the people know no justice or compassion. The energy of Moses’ doxology includes: The speaking of a new name that redefines all social perception. A review of an unlikely history of inversion in which imperial reality is nullified. (Obviously that is not the kind of history taught in the royal court school.) An asking for the enactment of freedom in dance, freedom in free bodies that Pharaoh could no longer dominate (15:20). (We may ponder the loss of freedom for our bodies and about the ideological dimensions of the current wrath about human sexuality.) A culmination in enthronement, the assertion of the one reality Egypt could not permit or tolerate: “The LORD will reign for ever and ever” (15:18). (We must learn that such doxologies are always polemical; the unstated counter-theme, only whispered, is always “and not Pharaoh.”) It is only a poem, and we might say rightly that singing a song does not change reality. However, we must not say that with too much conviction. The evocation of an alternative reality consists at least in part in the battle for language and the legitimization of a new rhetoric. The language of the empire is surely the language of managed reality, of production and schedule and market. But that language will never permit or cause freedom because there is no

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  Grand Pop would have likely been horrified by my fluid, feral, and often fickle faith. Many decades later, I’m a deep seeker and a rigorous questioner. There’s so much I am open to learning, yet I have some clarity around what I do and don’t believe. For example, I don’t believe in divine judgment, punishment, or biblical folklore. I do believe in a loving energy that connects us all. I don’t believe that God is the sole provider of meaning or morals. Or that the divine is so delicate it can’t be challenged or questioned. I subscribe to the power of prayer (asking) and meditation (listening), and I feel comforted when I talk to angels, guides, and the God of my understanding—regardless of whether or not anyone or anything exists or can hear me. Simply put, it feels good to connect, and that’s enough for me. My therapist thinks it’s no surprise that I’ve struggled with faith, saying, “When you had a hard time trusting your original caretakers, it’s difficult to trust the bigger caretaker.” Drop that mic, Carole. That said, I’m finding that even the slightest willingness to trust in something greater helps me keep the door of faith open. Is my doubt gone? Hell no. But that’s OK, too. I share all this because not everyone has an easy time with religion or spirituality. It can be confusing, dogmatic, and just plain weird. And yet, folks who aren’t sure or just don’t buy it are often ridiculed or treated as if they’re not “evolved” enough or trustworthy. Faith is a feeling, not a fact. It can’t be forced. It’s a personal choice and practice that’s unique to each of us. In today’s world, faith can even be contentious. God is often trotted out like a puppet in our culture wars or is used as a weapon to separate and control us, especially women. The disingenuous and dangerous nature of these strategies not only diminishes how we think of God, but it turns many of us off to the very existence of a force beyond our knowing. One thing is clear: Whatever the shit pickle du jour, people in crisis tend to be more open to faith as a means of comfort. Maybe this openness starts from a desperate place, but ask anyone whose loved one has crossed over or who experienced some awe-inspiring synchronicity at the moment they really needed a lifeline . . . they don’t need science or validation from anyone else to know that what they felt brought some peace to their hearts. And that comfort can be a salve, often leading us to search for wider, more open horizons. At least that’s what’s happening for me.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  In fact, once again, the incredulity of many who heard those stories matches the incredulity of people in the first century, as well as in our own, when hearing the story of Jesus’s resurrection. And for the same reason. In both cases we are witnessing a new world coming to birth. Resurrection and forgiveness belong together. Both are the direct result of the victory won on the cross, because the victory won on the cross was won by dealing with sin and hence with death. Resurrection is the result of death’s defeat; forgiveness, the result of sin’s defeat. Those who learn to forgive discover that they are not only offering healing to others. They are receiving it in themselves. Resurrection is happening inside them. The wrong done to them is not permitted to twist their lives out of shape. Forgiveness isn’t weakness. It was and is a great strength. Resurrection and forgiveness together are vital for understanding the extraordinary and large-scale result of the victory won on the cross. The nations of the world were now set free to worship the one true God. Freedom One of the greatest achievements of the cross is routinely overlooked by modern Christians. We tend to think of the early mission to the wider non-Jewish world as simply a good piece of news to be shared as widely as possible: “Jesus died so you can go to heaven—seize the chance while you can!” But even when we have revised that formulation to focus on new creation rather than “heaven,” we are missing something deep that stands behind and underneath it. Because of the cross, the world as a whole is free to give allegiance to the God who made it. Up to the time of Jesus the people in the countries and cultures surrounding Israel had gone their own ways. They had worshipped idols and served them. That, at least, was the normal Jewish perception, and the records, both written and archaeological, back it up. To be sure, in many nations and at many times people had reacted against the pagan systems that surrounded them. Fine moralists and subtle thinkers dreamed of a better world. As Paul noted in Athens, the pagan poets themselves pointed to a larger truth. But the nations as a whole were in the grip of dark, unforgiving systems of thought and practice. And the victory of Jesus on the cross meant that now at last that power was broken. We saw this earlier in our brief study of John’s gospel. Some Greeks had come to Jerusalem for Passover, and they wanted to see Jesus.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  If we are talking about the victory over evil and the launch of new creation, it won’t make much sense unless we are working for those very things in the lives of the poorest of the poor. If we are talking about Jesus winning the victory over the dark powers and thereby starting the long-awaited revolution, it will be much easier for people to believe it if we are working to show what we mean in art and music, in song and story. The great philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein said, “It is love that believes the resurrection,” and hearts can be wooed by glorious or poignant music, art, dance, or drama into believing for a moment that a different world might after all be possible, a world in which resurrection, forgiveness, healing, and hope abound. Gifts that stir the imagination can frequently unblock channels of understanding that had remained stubbornly clogged when addressed by reasoned words. And those who are working for justice and beauty, just like those who are working to bring a fresh new articulation of the good news so that people may believe, must themselves have the same things etched, perhaps nailed, into their own lives. It will be painful. That is part of the point, not that we seek the pain, but that we seek to follow Jesus. Holiness and mission are two sides of the same coin. Both involve bringing the reign of Jesus to bear in places where up to now the powers have had held sway. The powers will not give in without a fight. But, exactly as with Jesus himself and exactly as he told his first followers, the fight itself and the suffering it involves (of whatever sort) are not incidental. The insight at the heart of Jesus’s own vocation was that suffering would not simply be the dark tunnel through which Israel would pass to God’s future. It would somehow be the means by which that future would be achieved. Most Christians today do not see things like this. Once we realize that we are part of the revolutionary movement that began at the cross, it may become clear once again, as it was to the first generation of Jesus’s followers. Cruciform Mission The message of the cross, as I have outlined it in this book, thus challenges the normal ideas of eschatology .

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  And with a newly militant branch of Islam (disowned, of course, by the vast majority of the world’s Muslims) ready to advance its own cause by exploiting the plight of others, we are all aware that things could get worse. Faced with this situation, churches of all kinds in all countries need the gift of discernment to see where idolatry has resulted in slavery and to understand what it would mean to announce, in those places, the forgiveness of sins and the consequent breaking of the enslaving powers. This will be complicated, contested, and controversial. These things always are. But the attempt must be made. Clearly money is a major factor, and the nations that for centuries have profited from their “enlightened” cultural, technological, and economic status must look at themselves in the mirror and ask the kinds of questions that white South Africans had to face in the 1980s. Clearly too the way in which the Enlightenment had defined “religion” so as to separate it from the rest of real life has turned out to be an apparent luxury whose price is only now being revealed. The principalities and powers have been quite happy to have that discreet veil cast over their steady advance, and it is time for them to be unmasked. The victory of the cross needs to be announced over that usurped power, so that the millions whose lives have been squashed out of shape can once again have hope—real hope, not simply the “hope” of arriving in an increasingly unwelcoming northern Europe. How to make that victory known is all the more difficult in view of the fact that so many churches have colluded with the privatization and spiritualization of “salvation” on the model I outlined earlier. But the attempt must be made—not simply to return to the seventeenth-century optimism, which as we saw could easily lead to some form of triumphalism, but to hold together the whole truth of the gospel, the forgiveness of sins through which the dark power is broken, and to find every way possible, through symbol and action as well as through words and reason, by which it may be announced and applied. The task may seem impossible, but that’s what they said about the resurrection. If money is one obvious problem, another is sex. We are all now aware of the way in which vulnerable people have been and are being sexually exploited on a grand scale. What was until recently behind a screen has increasingly come to light. We wring our hands and wonder what we can do, as our children and grandchildren are exposed to graphic pornography, tricked into “sexting,” and encouraged to regard as “normal” various practices that most of my generation had never even heard of.

• From The Prophetic Imagination (1978)

  A Postscript on Practice In the end, of course, “prophetic imagination” is not simply “a good idea.” It is a concrete practice that is undertaken by real believers who share the conviction of grief and hope that escapes the restraints of dominant culture. It is my hope that my exposition of prophetic imagination is intimately connected to concrete practice and that it may, on occasion, evoke, generate, and authorize such concrete practice. Thus at the end of my exposition I take the liberty of identifying some concrete practices of prophetic imagination that are under way in concrete subcommunities of grief and hope that engage in resistance and alternative. Of course I do not suggest at all that this list is generated by my exposition, but only that the examples I cite are typical and representative of what is possible for the church in its enactment of prophetic imagination. Obviously the list I present is in large part happenstance and subjective and concerns the practices known to me. The reader surely knows other such typical practices and is invited to add to the list. The ones I think of include the following. In Atlanta, close to my own experience: Plymouth Harbor. This is a day-care facility housed by my local UCC Church, Central Congregational Church. Led by the relentless and persistent Pam Rapp, it cares on a daily basis for persons suffering from dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and other forms of senior dysfunction. The care is necessarily person-to-person, labor intensive, and extraordinarily demanding of both staff and a host of volunteers. Family Counseling Services Urban Ministries. A network of urban ministries presided over by cunning and knowing Bob Lupton that aims at rehabilitation and restoration of communities that are economically disadvantaged and consequently crime threatened. FCS operates entrepreneurially and taps effectively into the resources of corporate capitalism in the enactment of its dreams. Open Door. A food-and-shelter community of worship and care with Presbyterian connections. This agency, led by the shrill Ed Loring and the determined Murphy Davis, in addition to self-styled “band aids,” maintains a shrill and steady voice of dissent so that the poor remain visible in the city.

• From The Prophetic Imagination (1978)

  Breaking with Triumphalism and Oppression The radical break of Moses and Israel from imperial reality is a two-dimensioned break from both the religion of static triumphalism and the politics of oppression and exploitation. Moses dismantled the religion of static triumphalism by exposing the gods and showing that in fact they had no power and were not gods. Thus, the mythical legitimacy of Pharaoh’s social world is destroyed, for it is shown that such a regime appeals to sanctions that in fact do not exist. The mythic claims of the empire are ended by the disclosure of the alternative religion of the freedom of God . [8] In place of the gods of Egypt, creatures of the imperial consciousness, Moses discloses that Yahweh, the sovereign one who acts in his lordly freedom, is extrapolated from no social reality and is captive to no social perception but acts from his own person toward his own purposes. At the same time, Moses dismantles the politics of oppression and exploitation by countering it with a politics of justice and compassion . The reality emerging out of the Exodus is not just a new religion or a new religious idea or a vision of freedom but the emergence of a new social community in history, a community that has historical body, that had to devise laws, patterns of governance and order, norms of right and wrong, and sanctions of accountability. The participants in the Exodus found themselves, undoubtedly surprisingly to them, involved in the intentional formation of a new social community to match the vision of God’s freedom . That new social reality, which is utterly discontinuous with Egypt, lasted in its alternative way for 250 years. We will not understand the meaning of prophetic imagination unless we see the connection between the religion of static triumphalism and the politics of oppression and exploitation . Karl Marx had discerned the connection when he observed that the criticism of religion is the ultimate criticism and must lead to the criticism of law, economics, and politics. [9] The gods of Egypt are the immovable lords of order. They call for, sanction, and legitimate a society of order, which is precisely what Egypt had. In Egypt, as Frankfort has show, there were no revolutions, no breaks for freedom. There were only the necessary

• From The Prophetic Imagination (1978)

  community consisting of marginal people. The prophetic word of criticism is addressed to the dominant community, but it will not be heard (Isa 6:9-10). The prophetic word of energy is addressed never to the dominant community but only to those who are denied the pseudo-energy and power of the royal consciousness. Second, the promissory, prophetic word concerns a radical turn, a break with the old rationality, and a discontinuity between what has been and what will be. Thus the teaching presumed a contrast between that to which we cling and a future for which we yearn. The ministry of Jesus, like the ministry of Second Isaiah, happens in the space between the clinging and the yearning. If there is only clinging, then the words are only critical. If there is yearning, there is a chance that the words are energizing. The staggering works of Jesus— feeding, healing, casting out, forgiving—happened not to those who held on to the old order but to those who yearned because the old order had failed them or squeezed them out. The Beatitudes are cunningly articulated to sharpen the contrasts. The woes describe the royal consciousness and, in that situation, there is mostly the energy of fear. By contrast, those who have now broken with that consciousness, whose lives are organized against those values, and who know that the royal community cannot keep it promises, are the ones who are opened to another future. That future is an unqualified yes from God. The energy of this blessing word comes in the reality that God has alternative futures, that he is free to bestow them, and that futures are not derived from or determined by the present. Thus this teaching is faithful to the work of Moses, who created an underived community. It reflects the joy of Second Isaiah, who evoked a community not derived from the Babylonian reality. And, like Second Isaiah, Jesus is able to articulate a future that is distinctly different from an unbearable present. But that future is energizing only for those for whom the present has become unbearable. For those people and that community the abrasion takes the form of promise; the judgment takes the form of energy; the condemnation takes the form of hope. Believers in that future given by God are able to sing and to dance, to heal and to forgive. All those actions that the numb cannot take are given to believers in that future.

• From The Prophetic Imagination (1978)

  Jesus’ Birth The birth of Jesus is presented, especially by Luke, as decisive energizing toward a new social reality. The early church obviously struggled with how to begin its tale of Jesus. The beginning must be just right, for there is something new here that can scarcely be articulated, and the articulation must match the reality of the newness. The birth itself is presented by the song of the angels against the rulers of the day. The rulers had decreed a census and all the managing ways that went with it, but a census never led to energy or newness. [2] This new one from God could not and would not be counted. The grim holding action of census was penetrated by the unscheduled and unextrapolated song of angels who sing a new song for a new king. There is no way to begin this new narrative except by a new song in the mouth of angels, authorized from the throne of God. The very idiom of lyric means the penetration of closed royal prose. The beginning is with a song that stands in conflict with the decree . All the old history is by decree, but the new history begins another way. The birth of a new king marks a new beginning in heaven and on earth of a very different kind. So the Lucan version is in keeping with the devices of Second Isaiah, an enthronement formula and a new song for a new king. The birth of the new king, the one Rome did not anticipate and Herod could not stop, begins another history, which carries in it the end of all old royal histories. Characteristically, the birth of this new king marks a jubilee from old debts, an amnesty from old crimes, and a beginning again in a movement of freedom (so Luke 4:18-19). The newly lyrical beginning is received by the only ones who could receive it, the shepherds, who were certainly bearers of society’s marginality. There is no hint here of the lyrics being heard by any of the managers of the census. They just kept counting and assuming that all numbers come in sequence and finally add up. This beginning is not among those who operate the old order; rather, it emerges among the victims of the old order. It comes among a barren old woman (Elizabeth), an innocent but believing young woman (Mary), an old man struck dumb (Zechariah), and society’s rejects (shepherds). It is a place for

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  Nor am I saying that the cross has nothing to do with Jesus “dying for my sins” or that Christian mission is not about explaining this to people so that they may come to believe. Far from it. What I am saying, based on the revolutionary meaning of Jesus’s crucifixion, is that “life after death” is a quite different thing from what most Western Christians have imagined, since the ultimate future is a life after “life after death,” in other words, the life of the resurrection and the ultimate new creation; that “human behavior” from a biblical point of view is quite a different thing from the normal view of codes of either morality or self-discovery, because what matters is not “works” (whether ours or Jesus’s), but vocation , the human calling to worship God and reflect him into his world. And I am therefore saying, in the present chapter, that through the cross Jesus won the Passover victory over the “powers,” that he did this precisely by dying under the weight of the world’s sin, and that Christian mission consists of putting this victory into practice using the same means. All this brings us back once more to the heart and center of all Christian discipleship. The new Passover is the large, overarching reality. Jesus has defeated all the anti-God, anticreation powers. He has stripped them of their borrowed robes and robbed them of their hollow crowns.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  Paul had discovered in towns and cities, in private houses and public streets, in formal and informal settings, that the news of Jesus, crucified, risen, and reigning, was “God’s power, bringing salvation to everyone who believes” (Rom. 1:16). The reign of the crucified Jesus only had to be announced for it to become effective. The powers that had held people captive were powerless to stop them believing, to prevent them from becoming part of God’s new creation. The gospel was—and is—the powerful announcement that the world has a new lord and the summons to give him believing allegiance. The reason the gospel carries this power is that it’s true: on the cross Jesus really did defeat the powers that had held people captive. For the early Christians, the revolution had happened on the first Good Friday. The “rulers and authorities” really had been dealt their death blow. This didn’t mean, “So we can escape this world and go to heaven,” but “Jesus is now Lord of this world, and we must live under his lordship and announce his kingdom.” The revolution had begun. It had to continue. Jesus’s followers were not simply its beneficiaries. They were to be its agents. What might it mean for the church today to live by the same belief? It would mean recognizing, for a start, that the “powers,” though defeated on the cross, are still capable of enslaving millions. When we in the Western world think of forces that enslave millions we tend to think of the ideologies of the twentieth century, not least Communism, which until 1989 had half the world in its grip and still controls the lives of millions. Many in southern Africa think back to the terrible days of apartheid and remember with a shudder how racial segregation and the denial of basic freedoms to much of the nonwhite population were given an apparent Christian justification. Similar reflections continue to be appropriate in parts of the United States, where the victories won by the civil rights movement in the 1960s still sometimes appear more precarious than people had thought. It is worth pointing out that in each case the Christian church had a key role to play in the downfall of these different systems. The Polish protests in the early 1980s, led by devout Catholics, slowly but surely began the process of shaking the Eastern European house of cards.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  Or, as in Isaiah 54–55, following hard on the heels of the kingdom announcement of chapter 52 and the “servant’s” work in chapter 53, it would come to mean “new covenant” and “new creation.” The gospel was the announcement of this new reality. This new reality—hard to perceive except by faith in Jesus’s death-defeating resurrection, as all the early Christians knew well—was designed to come to ultimate fruition in the eventual new creation, the “new heavens and new earth.” I have written about this at length elsewhere (notably in Surprised by Hope), and we do not need to repeat or labor the point. Ephesians 1:10 says it all: God’s plan was to unite all things in the Messiah, things in heaven and on earth. The final scene in Revelation (chaps. 21–22) spells it out: the new heavens and new earth function as the ultimate Temple, the new world in which God will wipe away all tears from all eyes. First Corinthians 15 describes the accomplishment of this final reality under the image of the messianic battle: Jesus, having already conquered sin and death, will reign until these and all other enemies are totally destroyed. Romans 8 describes it as the birth of the new creation from the womb of the old, weaving into that great metaphor a powerful allusion to the events of the Exodus, so that creation itself will have its own “Exodus” at last, being set free from its slavery to corruption and sharing the freedom that comes when God’s children are glorified. That is the ultimate hope. All of this is the “goal” of God’s rescue operation accomplished through Jesus. All of this is in direct fulfillment of the ancient hopes of Israel: it is all “according to the Bible”—though it was quite unexpected. Nobody had read Israel’s scriptures like this before, but the events concerning Jesus left his followers with no choice. What had happened could have no other meaning. And all of this can be summed up in the phrase “forgiveness of sins.” None of it has to do with redeemed souls leaving the world of space, time, and matter for something better. All of it has to do with the strange, unanticipated fulfillment of the hope of Israel. “Forgiveness of sins,” then, is an altogether bigger reality than we have imagined. It is (to use the fashionable language) “cosmic.” When individuals share in it, experiencing for themselves the glorious relief of knowing themselves to be forgiven, they are, whether they realize it or not, learning to sing one of the “inside parts” within the much larger symphonic chorus of new creation. The alto line (if that’s what our part is) matters.

• From The Prophetic Imagination (1978)

  generations, that is taken as distinctive, and that is richly coded in ways that only insiders can know. In short, such a subcommunity is one in which the first-line, elemental realities of human, bodily, historical existence are appreciated, honored, and treasured. It is obvious that such a subcommunity knows itself to be positioned for the long-term in tension with the dominant community that responds to the subcommunity at best as an inconvenience, at worst as an unbearable interruption. From this characterization, three specific comments follow: 1. It is not surprising that the noteworthy “prophetic figures” of the twentieth century have emerged in oppressive situations not completely closed down by usurpatious technology, in circumstances wherein subcommunities could claim for themselves enough space in which to practice resistance and alternative. 2. The immense technological power of the United States makes the formation and maintenance of subcommunities of resistance and alternative in the United States exceedingly difficult. Moreover, for all of our treasured talk of “individual freedom,” the force of homogeneity is immense—partly seductive, partly coercive, partly the irresistible effect of affluence, in any case not hospitable to “difference.” 3. While a Christian congregation in the prosperous United States is not at all parallel to subcommunities of resistance and alternative in more manifestly brutal societies, the church as a subcommunity in the United States is a thinkable mode of ministry. This is not a championing of sectarian withdrawal—a charge often made against Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon—nor a cranky community of endless protest, dissent, and confrontive “social action.” Rather, it is a suggestion about a community of peculiar discourse with practices of memory, hope, and pain that keep healthy human life available in the face of all the “virtual reality” now on offer in dominant culture. Reflection on biblical faith will indicate that the discourse of the biblical text provides ways of speech that make such a community possible. The formation and sustenance of such a subcommunity require a shared willingness to engage in gestures of resistance and acts of deep hope. These gestures and acts in turn require pastoral leadership that proceeds with an intentional ecclesial focus, namely, a subcommunity with an evangelical will for public engagement. In our contemporary world we are able to notice prophets-in-the-face-of- oppression. It is not so easy in our electronic environment of consumerism to imagine prophetic discourse and prophetic action, but such consumerism is nonetheless likely the foremost circumstance of prophetic faith in the United States. As every vibrant subcommunity knows, the defining prerequisite for such a subcommunity is a conviction that it can and will be different because of the purposes of God that will not relent. A deficit in that conviction, to which to we are all prone, will produce despairing conformity, an atmosphere making the prophetic profoundly unlikely.

• From The Prophetic Imagination (1978)

  Jesus’ Resurrection Such a way of discerning the sovereign power of his gracious compassion leads directly to the resurrection of Jesus. The resurrection of Jesus is the ultimate energizing for the new future. The wrenching of Friday had left only the despair of Saturday (Luke 24:21), and the disciples had no reason to expect Sunday after that Friday. The resurrection cannot be explained on the basis of the previously existing reality. The resurrection can only be received and affirmed and celebrated as the new action of God, whose province it is to create new futures for people and to let them be amazed in the midst of despair. So it is my concern to show that the resurrection is faithful to and can only be understood in terms of the characteristically surprising energizing of the promises of the prophets. The resurrection of Jesus is not to be understood in good liberal fashion as a spiritual development in the church. Nor should it be too quickly handled as an oddity in the history of God or an isolated act of God’s power. Rather, it is the ultimate act of prophetic energizing in which a new history is initiated. It is a new history open to all but peculiarly received by the marginal victims of the old order. The fully energized Lord of the church is not some godly figure in the sky but the slain Lamb who stood outside the royal domain and was punished for it. Without detracting from the historical singularity of the resurrection, we can also affirm that it is of a piece with the earlier appearances of an alternative future by the prophetic word. The resurrection of Jesus made possible a future for the disinherited. In the same way, the alternative community of Moses was given a new future by the God who brought freedom for slaves by his powerful word, which both dismantled and created a future and which engaged in radical energizing and radical criticizing. In the same way, the resurrection of Jesus made possible a future for the disinherited, as did the newness announced by Second Isaiah. The nonpeople in the nonhistory of Babylon were given a homecoming like the poor, hungry, and grieving in the history of Jesus. The resurrection is a genuinely historical event in which the dead one rules.

• From The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (2014)

  This vast increase in our knowledge about the basic processes that underlie trauma has also opened up new possibilities to palliate or even reverse the damage. We can now develop methods and experiences that utilize the brain’s own natural neuroplasticity to help survivors feel fully alive in the present and move on with their lives. There are fundamentally three avenues: 1) top down, by talking, (re-) connecting with others, and allowing ourselves to know and understand what is going on with us, while processing the memories of the trauma; 2) by taking medicines that shut down inappropriate alarm reactions, or by utilizing other technologies that change the way the brain organizes information, and 3) bottom up: by allowing the body to have experiences that deeply and viscerally contradict the helplessness, rage, or collapse that result from trauma. Which one of these is best for any particular survivor is an empirical question. Most people I have worked with require a combination. This has been my life’s work. In this effort I have been supported by my colleagues and students at the Trauma Center, which I founded thirty years ago. Together we have treated thousands of traumatized children and adults: victims of child abuse, natural disasters, wars, accidents, and human trafficking; people who have suffered assaults by intimates and strangers. We have a long tradition of discussing all our patients in great depth at weekly treatment team meetings and carefully tracking how well different forms of treatment work for particular individuals. Our principal mission has always been to take care of the children and adults who have come to us for treatment, but from the very beginning we also have dedicated ourselves to conducting research to explore the effects of traumatic stress on different populations and to determine what treatments work for whom. We have been supported by research grants from the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, the Centers for Disease Control, and a number of private foundations to study the efficacy of many different forms of treatment, from medications to talking, yoga, EMDR, theater, and neurofeedback. The challenge is: How can people gain control over the residues of past trauma and return to being masters of their own ship? Talking, understanding, and human connections help, and drugs can dampen hyperactive alarm systems. But we will also see that the imprints from the past can be transformed by having physical experiences that directly contradict the helplessness, rage, and collapse that are part of trauma, and thereby regaining self-mastery. I have no preferred treatment modality, as no single approach fits everybody, but I practice all the forms of treatment that I discuss in this book. Each one of them can produce profound changes, depending on the nature of the particular problem and the makeup of the individual person.