| A word in time
Biblical testimony dates specific events,
even if the mode of marking events often occurs by reference to other events and
genealogies—a crucial event occurred in
a specific year of someone’s reign
or at the time of a notable incident.
Dating events is indigenous to biblical testimony. A particular person’s response
to the word of God and subsequent decisions are marked as significant, indicating
the uniqueness of such events in time. An event represents something that
happens—something new emerges or even surprises; a response is invoked, a decision
occurs and responsibility is undertaken for such a decision. Human response is
volitional—a decision is an event. In this, human life surpasses the focus of
natural phenomena and any inevitability perceived as fate within the strictures
of nature. Humans are free to make decisions,
induct new events and invoke new possibilities. Inevitability within the recurrence
of nature is surpassed by freedom for decisions and responsibility. Biblical testimony elevates human freedom
for response and responsibility above the recurrence of natural phenomena, of
which any can become a focus of idolatry when assumed to be a sacred entity. An
event, however marked, affirms a crucial aspect of biblical witness—the uniqueness
of human persons in response to the word as distinctive decisions and responsibilities
within time. v In Within natural phenomena, every person
knows one certainty concerning the future—death. God, who by a word is the source
of life, love and meaning, is the only future certainty other than death. Faith
is a response to and a movement toward the source of all our possibilities, without
which, our lives will finally collapse into nothingness. Job, Ecclesiastes and
many psalms declare this. What is unique to biblical testimony
is that our lives are engaged by the word of God in eventful and personal ways.
We are called in freedom to particular decisions. Decisions are the source of
unique events in the present that are undertaken in responsibility toward a future.
Even remembrance is of decisions as unique events in anticipation of future possibilities.
The freedom for decision, responsibility
and therefore a distinctive future exceeds the recurrence of natural phenomena
and a desire to accord these a sacred status. Without the life-giving word, nature
appears to provide the answer to death with its recurrence of life. Yet marking
the eventful as unique is antithetical to turning natural recurrence into a sacred
phenomenon. Beyond spiritual abstractions that are selected by sleight of hand
only from agreeable aspects of natural recurrence, grace and truth are tangible
as eventful in human decisions, responsibility and anticipation in response to
the word of God that speaks eventfully into human life. The word of God, as it was first heard,
might appear to be captive to another time and therefore dismissed as out of sync
with our time, unless it is modified and updated to be acceptable for our time.
Yet the word of God is always potent in being able to speak anew to our time;
it precedes our time, waiting for us to hear and to respond in our time; the word
waits for ears to hear. The word of God is the future possibility
of God. Even in the past, the word addressed the present from the future. We might
attempt to synchronize its meaning between our time and a previous time as assumedly
belonging to another time, yet the word always goes before us to meet us. It is
we who always date and never more so than when we attempt to update the word of
God. The word gives time because it calls
for and awaits our response. Sprung with possibility, the word can speak to any
particular time. The word meets us in our time, while never being exhausted by
our time. The word is always in time because it is heard in our time and not another
time; it is in time as meeting us at the right time; it arrives in time to be
heard in our need, possibility and challenge. Because the word comes to our time
in time for our time, it gives our time uniquely for the future; it is a word
for all times, even if it is heard in every specific time of our times. While
the word must traverse time through the relay of Christian testimony, it precedes
Christian testimony as the source of this testimony, even as it is given to Christian
proclamation as the means of being heard in the world, calling to people in every
present time. v Religion punctuates natural and cultural phenomena
with ritual rhythms. Religion adds further rhythm—as surreal recurrence—to existing
rhythms of human existence. In celebration of recurrence, the ritual rhythms of
religion integrate aberrations and crises of life into social and natural recurrence.
In the name of a divinity, religion by rhythm reassures, providing security and
predictability. For Ecclesiastes, the recurrence of
phenomena, natural and human, is vanity. The rhythm of recurrence cannot invoke
the unique as eventful and liberating. By contrast to ritual consolidation of
recurrence and assimilation of anomalies, Christian faith is eventful in response
to the freedom of God, uniquely to induct by the word, a new reality, decisions
and possibilities in human life. The advent of Jesus Christ who encounters,
challenges, calls and saves demonstrates the sovereign freedom of God, which the
testimony of Human freedom is eventful because God
creates for human response. Repentance, decisions of faith and expressions of
love are eventful; they exceed the recurrent possibilities of phenomena and cannot
be equated with religious rhythms interwoven with them. As seemingly seamless, time is mostly
unnoticed in its transition from the future through the minute present to the
past, except of course, when it is punctuated by events. Time is then expressed
as “before” and “after”; time is punctuated with significance. Christian proclamation gives testimony
to time punctuated with such new significance that there is a decisive “before”
and “after” in the events of Easter. Humanity is now defined by unique events
that will continue to challenge and change human possibilities. Biblical testimony gives a narrative
of God’s faithfulness through the generations, inculcating by faithful response
as hearers of the word, responsibility and anticipation within time. This same
testimony everywhere hints at a future punctuation of time in which the character
and purpose of God will be known in surprising intimacy and new possibilities
for the wholeness of human life. At the right time, decisively and in
a new way, the events of Easter intensify all biblical time with its eventfulness
in which God is encountered beyond the cycle of natural recurrence within human
existence. The Word became our flesh
in time, including the event that terminates all events in perfect recurrence,
death, to be the unique possibility of life that exceeds death with astonishing
life. In New Testament testimony, God gives
time for humans uniquely in love and supremely so in the events and word of Easter.
In Christian proclamation there is always a “before” and an “after” that informs
our particular response to this unique word in time. |
