Bearing a Word Within

Last updated on: June 1, 2012 at 3:47 am by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

Bearing a Word Within 2012-06-01T03:47:57-06:00 Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

The methodology for the Duke Summer Institute is “Word Made Flesh,” as they say it here–“that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself” (II Cor 5:17). Because God in Christ shows us that a new reality is possible, we can both lament the tragic divisions that claim to be “just the way things are” and live in hope that another world is possible. But all of this hits the ground in bodies. Unless it is an enfleshened reality, talk of reconciliation rings hollow.

So the talks that have resonated with this crowd–the stories that keep coming up at the lunch table–are about John Perkins realizing after fifty years of community development in the place where he was born that his mother, who died of malnutrition when he was seven months old, died because she gave the last of herself to him. They are about Sarah Jobe, a prison chaplain, learning from an inmate at the prison where she works to pray that her heart would not be hardened. They are about Maggy and Maison Shalom, Mary Nelson and Bethel New Life, New Song Urban Ministries in Sandtown, the Church of the Martyrs in San Salvador. The best teaching this week has pointed toward these icons of the ministry of reconciliation.

Midway along the journey of this week, I realized today that it was the Feast of the Visitation–the day when Christians remember Mary, pregnant with the living Word, going to meet Elizabeth, who was still carrying John. And when the mothers embraced, the text tells us, the children leapt within their wombs. And as I thought of Mary, bearing a Word within her that could leap with joy, I recalled a point that the New Testament scholar Richard Hays made here on Tuesday–that in II Cor 5, when Paul says that God has given us the ministry of reconciliation, verse 18 literally says that God has “placed the word of reconciliation in us.”

Maybe we are, each one of us, pregnant with the possibility that shines forth in the lives of these saints.

Maybe all we need is the embrace of others to feel this word leaping within us. That and the grace to give birth to it in the places where we are.

Features

Previous Post

May 30, 2012

The Gift and Interruption of Reconciliation

Next Post

June 2, 2012 Call to Action: A New Imagination for Justice in America

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Features Front Porch Nurturing Communities Testimonies

Select a Month April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz