Tokens of Trust:
An Introduction to Christian
Belief
6. Love, Actually
(I look for the resurrection of the dead)
Sunday, March 1, 2009
10 to 10:50 am, in the Parlor
Presenter: David Monyak
Primary
Reference

Tokens of Trust:
An Introduction
to Christian
Belief, Rowan
Williams,
Westminister John
Knox Press,
Louisville,
London, 2007
Primary
Reference

Tokens of Trust:
An Introduction
to Christian
Belief, Rowan
Williams,
Westminister John
Knox Press,
Louisville,
London, 2007
The Most Revd.
Rowan Williams is the
104th Archbishop of
Canterbury. He was
enthroned at
Canterbury Cathedral
on 27th February 2003
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Born 1950
Studied theology at Cambridge
DPhil at Oxford 1975
Priest 1978
1977 to 1992: taught theology at
Cambridge and Oxford
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1986: Lady Margaret
Professorship of Divinity at the
University of Oxford
1991: Bishop of Monmouth in
Anglican Church of Wales
1999: Archbishop of Wales
Dec 2002: confirmed as the 104th
bishop of the See of Canterbury
Considered by many the best
Protestant theologian in the world
today
Also a noted poet and translator of
Welsh poetry
Tokens of Trust
An Introduction to Christian Belief
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Jan 25. Who Can We Trust? (I believe in God the Father
almighty)
Feb 1: The Risk of Love (maker of heaven and earth)
Feb 8: A Man for All Seasons (and in Jesus Christ his only
Son our Lord)
Feb 15: The Peace Dividend (He suffered and was buried,
and the third day he rose again)
Feb 22: God in Company (And I believe in one catholic and
apostolic Church)
Mar 1: Love, Actually (I look for the
resurrection of the dead)
O God our King, by the resurrection of
your Son Jesus Christ on the first day of
the week, you conquered sin, put death to
flight, and gave us the hope of everlasting
life: Redeem all our days by this victory;
forgive our sins, banish our fears, make us
bold to praise you and to do your will;
and steel us to wait for the consummation
of your kingdom on the last great Day;
through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.
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On Sunday, Book of Common Prayer, p. 835
This Week:
6. Love, Actually
(I look for the resurrection of the
dead)
Citizens of Heaven
Citizens of Heaven
The Church is Where Jesus is Visible
Our citizenship is in heaven.
(Philippians 3:20 NIV)
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The Church is where Jesus is visibly active in
the world:
It shows the face of Jesus to the world;
 Its own internal life embodies the life of Jesus.
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Citizens of Heaven
The Church is Where the Trinity is Visible
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The Church is where the action of the Holy Trinity is
visible – for:
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as God’s adopted children:
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baptized, “immersed” in Jesus' life; having disappeared under the
surface of Christ’s love and reappeared as different person;
invited to eat with Jesus, and pray to the Father with him, boldly
addressing the Father as “Our Father,” as “Abba,”
We stand amidst the three-fold rhythm of love: Father, Son,
Spirit, within God’s life:
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love outpouring, returning, sharing;
a gifting, responding, renewed overflowing of giving
Citizens of Heaven
The Church is Where the Trinity is Visible
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This three-fold rhythm of love: Father, Son, Spirit,
within God’s life:
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Are:
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love outpouring, returning, sharing;
a gifting, responding, renewed overflowing of giving,
the “waves” that surge around us as we try to live as Jesus’
disciples,
the rhythm that sustains the universe.
We should think of life in the church as:
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less like signing up to a society, and
more as swimming in an overwhelming current of divine
loving activity.
Citizens of Heaven
Relationships Among the People of God
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The gift we have been given as God’s adopted
children, in which:
we have been taken up into the heart of Jesus'
prayerful relation to the Father,
 we stand within the three-fold rhythm of love:
Father, Son, Spirit, within God’s life,
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should inform and transform how we work out
our relationships within the Church and with
the rest of creation.
Citizens of Heaven
A Vision of Heaven
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To put it boldly,
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when the Church is truly the Church =
when its life points to:
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that threefold rhythm of love, Father, Son, Spirit =
that interwoven knot of action and love within which Jesus stands =
the threefold life that is God
Then what we see is a glimpse of heaven.
The Church’s “roots” are in heaven; its real identity
and dwelling-place is in heaven.
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Hence, St. Paul tells us Christians have their ‘citizenship’ in
heaven (Philippians 3.20).
Citizens of Heaven
A Vision of Heaven
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Heaven is what is laid open:
when the Church is truly the Church =
 when the Church is most clearly committed to the
work of transforming creation
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The Resurrection of
the Body
Resurrection of the Body
From Church to Resurrection
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That the Church, when it is truly Church, lays
open a vision of heaven, may be why in the
Creeds we move from:
Expressing our belief in the church, to
 Expressing our belief in the resurrection of the
body and life everlasting
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Resurrection of the Body
Resurrection of the Flesh
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I believe in … the holy catholic Church, the
communion of saints, the forgiveness of
sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life
everlasting (Apostles Creed)
“Resurrection of the Body” in the Apostles Creed:
literally “Resurrection of the Flesh!”
Do we actually want this lump of bone and fat and
hair that we know so well to have an eternal future?
Isn't such language rather creepy?
Resurrection of the Body
An Envelope for Our Identity?
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It ironic that in our fantastically materialistic
society, there is actually little respect for the
body.
We prefer to imagine our body as a mere
envelope for our “true” identity based in our
mind and will.
Resurrection of the Body
Our Material Life
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However:
We encounter God in this world as beings with
material bodies,
 God revealed God’s self to us by taking on the
form of a material body, as Jesus,
 God continues to use material things and persons
to communicate who and what he is,
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Why then should we think life with God will
ever simply sidestep our material life?
Resurrection of the Body
Our Material Life
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The Bible
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says little about life with God in heaven,
But rather talks about:
a renewal of creation,
 a new heaven and a earth (2 Peter 3:13, Revelation
21:1)
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Life with God, it seems, is life in a world that
has something in common with the world we
now inhabit.
Resurrection of the Body
Our Material Life
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How then might we do justice to what the
Bible and tradition seem to be telling us, that
we look forward to:
The resurrection of the “flesh”,
 Life with God in a “new heaven and new earth”, a
Holy “City,” a “New Jerusalem”?
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Without falling into
embarrassing clichés,
 creepy language?
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Immortal Diamond
Immortal Diamond
Beings Living in Context & Community
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First principles:
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We are who we are because we have lived and
grown within:
A human context (family, friends, community)
 A non-human context (physical world)
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Our holiness is bound with other people and the
things of this world:
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Our relation with God is made visible (or not) in how
we conduct our relationships with other people and the
things of this world.
Immortal Diamond
Beings Living in Context & Community
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Therefore, if we believe that life with God
does not evaporate after our physical death,
then it must somehow still be life:
in community and context,
 life in a world where all our relationships with
things and persons are fully anchored in the
Trinitarian love of God and fully transparent to
that love.
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What exactly does that mean?
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Literally – God knows.
Immortal Diamond
Beings Living in Context & Community
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But it does mean that:
God does not redeem us by making us stop being
what we are — beings who live in community and
context;
 If God holds on to us through death, he holds on to
every aspect of us — not just to a specially
protected, “immortal” bit of us.
 Whatever life with God is after our physical death,
it is not something more abstract or more isolated
than what we now know.
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Immortal Diamond
Bodily Resurrection
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In his poem “Nature’s Bonfire,” Gerald
Manley Hopkins ends with a description of
bodily resurrection:
In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
I am all at once what Christ is, since he
was what I am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch,
matchwood, immortal diamond,
Is immortal diamond.
Immortal Diamond
Bodily Resurrection
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In our present life, the “immortal diamond” in
us is inseparably bound up with the not very
impressive stuff of human nature (Jack, joke,
poor potsherd, patch, matchwood)
At the resurrection, it all becomes “immortal
diamond”
It is not just the present “immortal diamond”
part of us that survives. We look forward to a
relationship with God after physical death in
the wholeness of our human nature.
Immortal Diamond
Not the Immortality of the “Soul”
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Christians do not really believe in the
“immortality of the soul”
Deathless existence is not reserved for just a
part of us, a hazy spiritual bit, the solid lumpy
bit falling away.
We have a future with God as whole persons,
no less.
On the further side of death (which by
definition we can’t imagine) nothing is lost.
Immortal Diamond
Key To Our Hope
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The key to our belief in a life after death, in the
resurrection, in a new heaven and a new earth,
is our belief in a trustworthy God.
God will not let us go even on the far side of death.
 What God has made his own through the loving
action of Jesus, he will not abandon.
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The Coming Judgment
of Christ
Christ’s Judgment
The Coming Judgment of Our Lives
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The coming judgment of our lives by Jesus is
something we must be aware of day by day.
Death means something is removed that now stands
between us and God.
There is a frightening leveling of all we thought we
had built or achieved (1 Corinthians 3:11-15; 2
Corinthians 5:1-5).
We will put on a new “covering” that is Christ’s life
(1 Corinthians 15:53-54, 2 Corinthians 5:1-15), but
first we must take something off.
Christ’s Judgment
Naked Before Truth
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In some unimaginable dimension,
Where all our usual strategies of hiding from
ourselves are not available,
 Where the veneers we have constructed to hide our
true selves from the world have dissolved,
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We will stand before God
spiritually “stripped” and naked;
 and the truth about what is deepest in us, what we
most want, what we most care about, will be laid
bare before God and our own consciousness.
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Christ’s Judgment
Proper Fear Before God’s Judgment
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To be confronted by God, the stark truth about
ourselves fully revealed, should rightly makes us
apprehensive.
We may be properly disgusted by the extravagant and
hysterical expressions of this moment that have
characterized some ages of Christian history, but we
would be wrong to brush away a sense of proper fear
before God's judgment.
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We need a proper adult awareness of the fact that
nakedness before God will hurt, because truth does hurt.
To the degree to which we don't know ourselves — a
pretty high degree for nearly all of us — we must
think soberly of “the fire” of this moment of truth.
Christ’s Judgment
Proper Fear Before God’s Judgment
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Our hope is that if we have been accustomed to living
with Christ in this life, something has been
“constructed” that allows us to survive the terror of
meeting the truth face to face:
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The truth, to some degree, will already be “in us” (1 John
2:4)
We trust that we are gifted with the clothing of Christ, the
“defense” we need.
In the Eastern Orthodox Liturgy, we pray for “a good
answer before the terrible judgment seat of Christ”.
Purgatory and
Hell
Purgatory and Hell
“Purgatory”
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In our encounter with God at Judgment, so long as we
are the complex and self-deceiving beings we are,
there will be a dimension of pain.
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Can there be any fallen human being who can face the
prospect of confronting God's purity and light without
shrinking?
This is perhaps the original impetus behind the
Catholic teaching about “Purgatory”
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The medieval teaching of it: a state where you worked off
your debts until you become more or less worthy to go to
heaven, deserved the criticism heaped on it by the
Protestant reformers.
Purgatory and Hell
“Purgatory”
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It is not unreasonable however to imagine a
process we go through at Judgment that is:
a continuing journey with God as we become
acclimatized to the fullness of love;
 (new metaphor): something like our lungs
expanding to cope with a new atmosphere.
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Purgatory and Hell
“Purgatory”
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In his poem Love, George Herbert (priest and poet , d. 1633,
whose feast day we celebrated Feb 27) describes the small
drama of this process
“Love [God] bade me welcome; yet my soul drew
back.”
Finally the immensity of God’s welcome wins out:
let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.
In the end we will sit down with God at his table.
Purgatory and Hell
“Hell”
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The idea of “hell” is also something we cannot
simply ignore or write off.
As adults, we know we all have a habitual
unwillingness to face truth.
What if we make choices in our lives that:
make us more and more desensitized to truth?
 make us incapable to opening our clenched fists in
the presence of love?
 make us incapable of telling truth from lies?
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Purgatory and Hell
“Hell”
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Can we reach a state of self-deceit so profound
that we become eternally impervious to love?
We cannot say for sure if anyone ever falls into
such a state,
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but we must know the proper fear that the choices
we make are capable of destroying us.
Purgatory and Hell
“Hell”
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Hell is our decision, not God’s (no one is
predestined to hell).
The most truthful image we can have of hell is
of God eternally knocking on a closed door
that we are struggling to hold shut.
Repentance and
Forgiveness
Repentance and Forgiveness
The Repentant Community
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The most truthful image we can have of hell is
of God eternally knocking on a closed door
that we are struggling to hold shut.
Therefore: we must be aware of all those
things that might bring us to such a state of
terror and deception — and bring them today
before God's judgment and mercy.
Therefore: a Christian community doing its job
is a community where people would be
repenting quite a lot.
Repentance and Forgiveness
Hope
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The miracle is: the repentant community is a
community that can speak profoundly of hope.
We don't have to be paralyzed by our failures.
Repentance and Forgiveness
Forgiveness
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We live in a culture that is “easy going” about
all sorts of behavior and manners, but
strangely, deeply unforgiving of human failure.
Look at the:
media’s treatment of the failings of politicians and
celebrities,
 harsh attitudes to prisoners and ex-prisoners,
 demand for legal redress for any human error or
oversight.
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Repentance and Forgiveness
Forgiveness
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The church is being very counter-cultural when we
proclaim a belief in the “forgiveness of sins.”
Forgiveness is not:
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A form of sentimentality,
An easy compassion that costs nothing,
A leniency or a making light of an outrage.
Only the victim can forgive the person who injured
them.
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A person may be forgiven by their victim, yet it will still be
right for them to serve out a sentence, or in some way have
to deal with the consequences of their action.
Repentance and Forgiveness
Forgiveness
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Forgiveness is the restoration of a relationship:
with the victim of an offense,
 with God, who loves both victim and the offender.
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To believe in the forgiveness of sins is to claim
that:
even the worst of our failures cannot shut a door
for God;
 there is no situation in which God’s presence
cannot make a difference.
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The Truth of God’s
Splendor and Love
Splendor and Love
Acclimatizing to God’s Love
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Our job in the Christian Community is not
merely to get acclimatized to the austerity of
the truth of ourselves through repentance and
forgiveness, but also:
to get acclimatized to the truth of God’s
splendor and love.
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Indeed, getting acclimatized to the truth of God’s
splendor and love gives us the strength for
repentance and forgiveness
Splendor and Love
Acclimatizing to God’s Love
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Eternity above all is a joy in the sheer reality
of God, involving:
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a relationship with God which is centered in the
heart of the continual exchange of life and joy
within the Trinity.
To “acclimatize” ourselves to God’s love
requires adoration, prayer, and contemplation.
Splendor and Love
The Path of Contemplation
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Prayer and contemplation is about getting ourselves
in a position where God can see us; that is:
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Taking off our defenses and disguises,
Removing our masks of self-promotion and self-protection,
Letting go most of what makes us feel safe or good,
Moving into the silence and stillness of light of God’s
presence, the naked me.
This is why the path of contemplation is described as
one of darkness as well as light.
Splendor and Love
The Path of Contemplation
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A life of a contemplative given to the unsparing focus
on eternal joy is, paradoxically, one of the most
utterly draining and demanding lives there could be;
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The monks and nuns and hermits who take on this
calling show us:
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yet it shows what the truth is worth.
something of the very heart of the Church,
put into sharp perspective the fussiness of most of our
plans and projects
Without them the Church would wither and dry up.
Splendor and Love
Idols and False Gods
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Most of us are not called to the work of the
contemplative, but we are all called to the same
journey of letting God be himself for us.
The first and second commandments warn us:
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there shall be no other gods before the true God, and
no images should be worshipped in place of God
We violate these commandments when we:
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make up our own expectations of God to fill up gaps in our
needs and preferences,
don’t strive through prayer to continually make more room
for the reality of a God that is immeasurably greater than
any mind or heart or imagination can take in.