In his worn jeans and ancient Norse sweater, on one of those days more than others, when he looks like a cross between a ghost (Casper) and one of Peter Pan's boys, friendly and lost, Ted was showing me two of his posts from Advent two years ago.* I'm not sure why, except that he was looking for a few clucks of approval. I gave him three: "Cluck, cluck. Cluck." But what he doesn't get, as he squints at life, always a little out of focus, is that religion doesn't want to be as thoughtful as he thinks it ought to be. At one time maybe, for a long time - from the Council of Nicea until the death of Calvin and even a little after - but even his friend Axel Sundstrøm, bless his heart as they say in Alabama, wants to read mysteries in the evening and watch football on Sunday afternoons. He doesn't really want to talk about "hypostatic union," whatever he pretends (or I will be).
Because I will have to say this for Ted's Advent argument: the preacher has finally to make a choice between the love of Sweet Jesus and the judgment of Cosmo Christ. Or so it looks to me, too.
I am standing before the Judgment Seat; or I am sitting at my pupil's desk with the Final Examination before me, and the question is multiple choice on theories of the atonement - defend your choice. And I am going with Abelard, not the most thoughtful of the theories (or hypotheses, I'd say) but the closest to what I think Jesus, who will lay aside his outer garment and wash his followers feet, who laid aside his equality with God to become human, would come up with.
"The Kingdom of God is like a teacher that had one good idea in his life, and it wasn't seducing one of his students when she was fifteen and he was almost forty. It was about
the love of God. Who have ears, let them hear." 12/23/23
* (Here and the one following.)
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