Correction: I miss the used-to-be-frequent editorial suggestions on my former editor/critic; they kept me thinking on my toes. My erstwhile editor passed on to me a correction this morning.
In my post on Day 372 - Words of War, I referred to Ray Croc as the founder of McDonalds. Actually Richard and Maurice McDonald founded McDonalds. Ray Croc bought it in 1954 and turned it into the fast food success it is today.
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Happy Easter!
I struggled through to the end of Barth last night. He is a great example of operant conditioning. You slog through verbose page after verbose page, every once in a while being rewarded with a real gem of a reflection. It was somewhat interesting that I closed the book on the eve of Easter after I had made it back to Gulfport from Chattanooga. Barth reflected on the closing lines of the Apostle's Creed.
I went back and read a little of Miles' book, Christ , that contains a similar line of thinking. It is interesting to read Protestant thinking and then Catholic thinking on the subject. There is a remarkable similarity with a nuance or two I'm embarrassed to say hadn't really fully caught the first time through. The biggest difference is that Miles at best sidesteps that line "resurrection of the body" and Barth dwells on it.
Barth says, in my modernized, inclusive language, "A Christian looks back...at sin and failure. The Christian looks forward at death, dying, the coffin, the grave, the end."
"The person who doesn't take it seriously that we are looking at that end...who is not terrified at it, who has perhaps not enough joy in life and does not know to fear the end, who has not yet understood that this life is a gift of God...does not grasp the beauty of this life, (and) cannot grasp the significance of the resurrection."
Barth says our existence is always under this threat: "You cannot live. you can only believe in Jesus Christ...and not see. You stand before God and would like to enjoy yourself..yet every day experience how your sin is new each day."
"The Lord's Supper ought to be more firmly regarded from the Easter standpoint. It is not ...a mourning meal, but a joyous meal eating of His flesh and drinking of His blood in the midst of our life. We are guests at His table and no longer separate from Him. The Christian hope (after death) is...I am no longer at the point I can die; in Him our body is already in heaven. We already live here and now in anticipation of the eschaton."
Miles makes a similar comment about the Lord's Supper. "Paul's closing comment reminds his congregation that when they perform this ritual of remembrance, they look not just back to the ceremony the Lord conducted that night before he died but also forward to his second coming, when their participation in the resurrection will be realized."
Yet Barth reminds us of the mystery when we say , "I believe in the resurrection of the body."
For Barth, " We are not some butterfly-like soul that flies away at death to a secret place. Resurrection is life's completion."
Miles observes that Christ symbolically transformed himself into the Passover lamb that was slain and eaten on this New Passover. Christ extends the ritual (as the only one with authority to do so) to drinking and otherwise consuming the blood. This is an act forbidden by God of Israel; they are not to eat 'flesh with life (blood) in it.'
Miles describes this entire event, the meal, the Passion and the resurrection as an act of God and that only God could chose to do. Christ transcends the History of Exodus on every level and give us all, not just the Jew, a new identity.
God becomes the Priest's own sacrificial lamb,
God becomes Isaac and father Abraham holding the knife,
God becomes Abel and brother Cain spilling his blood,
God becomes Esau and brother Jacob stealing his own his birthright and blessing.
God becomes all these things in a transforming way that an only be seen as mystery.
Miles says, "This sacrifice captures the prerational hunger for human sacrifice and requires no further bloodshed. Nothing will be lost. Everything will be carried forward. And Yet everything will be transformed."
At the end God turned His entire Being in the life of Israel into opposition of all He had done as El Shaddai. He rescues the vision of Israel's victory at the infinite price of twisting it into His absolute submission as a man. On the cross He speaks the closing word of Psalm 22, "It is done."
The past is left behind. Let us look forward.
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