Ecumenical Institute
Collegium
November 19, 1971
Gogarten Review of 1418
1 3 |
4 12 |
12 19 |
20 24 |
1. I want to look at the insights he had in the last
five chapters, 14 through 18. In Chapter 14 he lays out man's
situation. His title for that is "The World of Each Individual."
In a way it is a review of his concept of history. History is
really man in crisis in the midst of sheer freedom and that is
our world, that is the world of each individual. That is our situation
we are in crisis, crisis which is beyond our ability to comprehend.
And in the midst of that, we have nothing on our hands but our
freedom.
2. Now, after that, in the last four chapters' he
is talking about Jesus the man. I don't mean the humanness of
Jesus, I mean Jesus as THE man. In Chapter 15 he just says, no
special status. Jesus' only status was his obedience to God, he
was under the same doom as every other human being. Then in Chapter
16 he talks about responsibility for the world, or that Jesus
took upon himself the burden of this world. In my chart I have
14 and 15 together and 16 and 17 together. And here in 17 he is
just saying God alone is that which can free us from this world.
Then in 18 he gets out the man and his glory before God in heaven.
3. Now, by Jesus the Man, Gogarten means something
like this. He is interested in that which is. It is that man is
over against God, man is in struggle with God, man is in encounter
with enigmatic power. Therefore when you see the way it is, what
you see is a man. What you see is human beings over against God.
If you remember in the Summer Being lecture, it says when you
get at the heart of the center of being itself, what you encounter
there is a man. And when you look at the face of the man, you
see that it is Jesus' and then when you look a little closer at
that face, you see that that face is your face. Now, something
in that arena is Gogarten's concern with Jesus, that is, he is
no more concerned with the historical Jesus than anybody else
is. What he is concerned with is an image of what it means to
be a human being itself and the world he puts on that is the word
Jesus.
4. In that light, I want to talk about man's situation,
which is really to talk about Jesus. I want to do it at two points,
the first is the "world of each individual", the second
is the unity with god. Now, the "world of each individual"
is that you and I are in bondage to the world. We are in unreality
and we think this is the real world. We give our trust, we direct
our thoughts, we aim our whole endeavor towards a world that is
unreality. I was thinking this morning that the reason we are
sort of down, is because all of us have put our trust in this
world. And the heart of this is our separation from God. Tillich
would put it that you and I have separated ourselves from God,
therefore from others and self, therefore from the real world.
And we alone give our trust to this world, it's that you and I
have intentionally decided to be in bondage to this world. We
rely on it, we seek for meaning in our family, in status, and
in all of this. I think that I can create my own self. I think
that by my own style I can solve the problems that I have; in
this world. That is the first, we are in bondage to this world.
5. The second is that we do not know we are in bondage
to this world, or we know that it is the one thing that we don't
want to know. Therefore, we create a piety to hide it. We see
the piety that we create as extremely futuric thinking. We get
some set of rules or some understanding that it is nice to be
nice to one another and see ourselves as some forward thinking
human beings being nice to one another. Or we get some high sophistication
of moral perfection.
6. I see people who give the Freedom lecture, who
think that you can decide to be 1ucid, sensitive, exposed, and
disciplined. The think that what life is all about is deciding
to be a lucid person, to be a sensitive person, to be an exposed
person, to be a disciplined person. You will never decide that,
you are trapped in this world. Lucidity, sensitivity, is a sheer
gift to you. The Freedom lecture is that which flows from the
Christ happening. It is a gift that living in the Christ happening
bears, like an apple tree bears fruit. The Christ happening bears
lucidity, sensitivity, exposure, discipline.
7. You and I are subtle at how we hide ourselves
from our own strivings. My particular neurosis is that I am a
manic depressive. Now, one time when I said that somebody blurted
out, "That is a psychosis." I don't know how bad off
I am, but my pattern is that I am up and down in life. Now, the
way I get out of up beats and down beats is I try to accomplish
that which will be so great that it will enable me to overcome
the downbeat and I can live off the glory of that for a while.
I think sometimes I make Patton look a little naive. At least
I would hate to be a colleague of me, because if you assign me
to the left front, I will try to pull the whole thing in and through
that. Lately I haven't been doing that much, but I am on to myself,
I think, knowing that I am not. That is, I have switched maybe
the way in which I am going to conquer the right front.
8. But anyway, we hide from ourselves, I have asked
myself why I am up here this morning. If I had worked real hard,
Mathews was supposed to be here, I wouldn't have had to but I
see I have switched the way in which I am conquering the right
front. But notice that I am still finally not on to myself. Anyway,
we use righteousness in the sense of unrighteousness, and therefore,
have concealed the real world from ourselves. When you have concealed
the real world from yourself Jesus has to talk to you in terms
of your own world. He has to talk in parables.
9. Now, the third point in the "world of each
individual" is that a consciousness of the kingdom of God
is present, but I hide from it. Gogarten says you and I are dependent
upon the preaching of Jesus. Without the consciousness of the
other world; then there is no hope for me. No man would confess,
would come to terms with confessing his hiding in an illusion,
unless there was in his consciousness the fact that if he confessed
something else might happen. Not that it would, but that it might.
10. We are dependent on the preaching of Jesus and
I don't know how we push that to the bottom. I have been thinking
about old Mountain. Where was the preaching of Jesus in Mountain's
memory that enabled him to decide that? I have decided that it
is in Miss Miller, that she, however perverted, gave that man
an image that life could be some other way than the way it had
been. Granted the way she gave him was as perverted a way as the
way he had been in, but she gave him the image that he was tied
to Mesch and that he could make a decision about his life. (We
will allow for rebuttals later).
11. We put it this way, the trinitarian formula is
like a fish out of water without the church, or there is no self-conscious
understanding of the trinitarian formula save you have a body
of people that proclaim it. The consciousness of this makes repentance
possible. Luther put it this way: "Faith is God's initiative
and God's prerogative." That consciousness is in our history,
but we hide from it.
12. Now the fourth is that what I have just said
is all men's situation. All men are in bondage to this world,
all men have refused that and all men have consciousness of the
kingdom of God, and that is true of everyone. Jesus put it this
way: "This is an evil and adulterous generation." And
this means that you alone have to make the decision about saying
No to this world. Seeing this is one of the things that disclosed
the big lie about counselors. You see people who think this is
true about everybody but one of their colleagues so they pick
one out and run to him with a problem they have, thinking he can
help them handle that problem. But all the time the counselor
himself is trying to handle his own life. Everyone is in bondage
to the world. Jesus therefore is not concerned with problems,
but THE problem.
13. Finally, the problem is our hypocrisy, or our
failure to be who we are, and therefore will not let others be
who they are. Jesus put it another way, "All are poor, all
are under the sentence of doom. That is our situation. Gogarten
is pretty clear that unity with God and God alone is our hope.
There is no serving two masters, no serving this world and God.
There is no giving yourself to your family and to God. There is
no giving yourself to your striving after status and to God. To
come to terms with God and God alone always cuts against our piety.
You and I always have some piety that we are hiding in and Gogarten
holds Jesus up here as one whose only concern was his obedience
to God. He gave no other i1lustration except that it was God and
God alone that was our hope.
14. Gogarten talks a little bit about when God acts.
His key word is oppressed. When you are oppressed is when God
acts! When this world has failed you is when God acts. This has
thrown me anew to the "when" section of paragraph 12
of the Tillich paper. There was great criticism about Tillich
and what was called 'neoorthodox theology' when they said,
"God only acts in the downbeats; not in the upbeats of life."
The way that was defended was that encounter with God throws you
into the downbeats because you always experience it as judgment
rather than mercy.
15. Gogarten comes at that in exactly the same way,
but he says "As long as you think that you are going to achieve
life in this world then there is no hope for you. That is, those
"when" sections mean exactly what they say, only when
you are in despair. For our situation is we have latched onto
something in this world that we think will give us enough meaning
to justify our having showed up. To have that taken away from
you just throws you, it only comes when you have failed, when
you are no longer able to help yourself. The Bible says "he
who loses his life gains it. It means you lose your very life,
everything that has ever given meaning to you you have to give
up.
16. Now he says, "When God acts is when you
petition for it, and quotes the Bible, "Seek and you will
find" And when you seek you will always find, but you never,
never seek when you feel that you can still rely on this world.
The only time you do a petitionary prayer is when you have given
up the strivings of the world to accomplish what you set out to
accomplish. You only do this when you are beyond help. All of
Fellini's movies really only have one question in them. That is,
"Is a person ever beyond help?" Beyond help in his category
is when you are so tied to this world that you can never free
yourself from it. But only when you have failed in this world,
only when something happens which has oppressed you beyond your
capabilities to stand it, is when God acts. Gogarten talks about
the encounter with God as a faith decision to depend upon God.
The first thing about this encounter obviously is that it destroys
this world. And it is only THE encounter when it destroys this
world. To use our language, the Christ Happening when something
breaks in which destroys one illusion but in destroying that one
illusion it also destroys all of your illusions. It is only THE
encounter when it forces you to make an all or nothing decision
about this world. My illustration of this in the Christ happening
is somebody says that I play too much basketball. I am securing
myself from the dreadfilledness of life, in and through basketball.
I was smart enough to see I could switch to ping pong, but then
I also saw that the same thing might happen to ping pong which
means at that moment it already had. It is THE encounter when
it destroys this total world, destroys any way in which you might
have been securing yourself from the dreadfilledness of life.
18. Now, in the midst of this encounter, Gogarten
stresses again that it takes place in this world. In fact he puts
it this way, "The distress itself is the help that God brings.
The help that God brings is the oppression of what you have been
holding on to. And Gogarten stresses again that in this encounter
in this oppression, you will have the memory or Jesus' preaching
in you, which thereby gives you the possibility of saying 'yes'
to the oppression. And this means a realization that you are a
condemned man.
19. Now, as Gogarten talks about it the demand after
an encounter is that I obligate myself to God and neighbor. Bonhoeffer
says "that obligation to God and neighbor as they confront
us in Jesus Christ" is what gives us freedom. He is saying
something like this: REALITY equals GOD plus THE WORLD equals
CHRIST. Now, that is to say, reality is not this world, reality
is meeting God in this world. And my decision is whether or not
I am going to live in reality or unreality.
20. The only place you ever meet God is in and through
your neighbor. But in and through your neighbor you don't encounter
your neighbor, you encounter God. hat is our situation. When you
encounter the demand to say "yes" to that situation,
you meet what Bonhoeffer calls the Christ Encounter. You can call
it anything you want but there is only one decision. It is an
all or nothing decision as to whether or not you are going to
be loyal or disloyal to that demand. To obligate myself to God
and neighbor is the demand that is put upon me. I decide whether
this is what reality is all about or not.
21. Now, the second one is, there are no guidelines.
That is the only guideline! Jesus offers no guidance! All of our
studies of Jesus to go back and see what kind of guidance he would
give us. really try to put him in this world when he isn't there.
The only guidance he gives us is you can't put new wine in old
wineskins. The only guidance he gives you is that you have to
make a decision, or that you have to live your freedom. Jesus
is not an example, but THE example! That is, what he saw was only
one thing, that is that man is trapped in this world. Now, one
thing is demanded, to participate in the reality of the encounter
of God and neighbor, and neighbor and God. This means risking
of myself. This means a giving of myself to the death in every
situation. What you do is stick your fist into the reality of
being over against the mystery. And decide to live before it and
then you shake your fist into the face of that mystery and say,
"I am going to change what is here."
22. I'll try to clarify that a little bit o The Patton
movie for me revolves around one line. That is the line where
Patton says, "God will let me have my destiny," Destiny
is a key word for Gogarten. He says "the man who seeks always
finds, the man who petitions finds." The man who has given
up hope in this world and shakes his fist in tile face of the
mystery and decides ~o live there what he gets in return
is to 7ive there. When you petition God for the freedom to live
your destiny, then he a ways sends the Holy Spirit. He always
sends the freedom to live your destiny in Freedom. He a ways answers
your prayer. If your prayer is before an idol of this world in
which you are still trying to get status or seek after some kind
of striving which will enable you to live in this world, then
"no." But when you are free to petition God, then he
sends you the right for you to live your destiny in sheer freedom.
23. That is the reason, a "Goodbye Mr.
Chips," is never what is needed in the church, I suspect.
By "Goodbye Mr. Chips," I mean somebody who just
fulfills his job, who just carries out his job, and carries it
out well. You remember that movie about a school teacher, he did
just a fantastic job. That man, is not petitioning God. The man
who petitions God shakes his fist in the face of God and demands
him to fulfill his destiny. This means you take the suffering
of the world unto yourself. Or you petition, you stand before
God and neighbor. Here Samuel is my image, you know when God called
Samuel, Samuel did not want to live before God and neighbor. First
he ignored his call three times, and then he said, "No I
won't go, just kill me." Well, if you haven't yelled that,
then you haven't seen what fulfilling your destiny means.
24. There seems to be four imperatives for us out
of this. One is just to get images of the kingdom of God out of
Gogarten, "the kingdom of God is like. . ." Jesus, it
seems to me, is doing two things in his preaching. One is demanding
of people that they say "no" to this world and "yes"
to God, and then, secondly, giving them images of what the kingdom
of God is like when you say "yes" to God. The second
imperative is to discover who the poor in spirit and the righteous
for our time are. Who are the people who are attached to this
world and who are the people who are not so attached to this world.
The downtrodden! Who are the downtrodden? The third is corporate
salvation. That is a horrible term but Gogarten is clear that
Jesus is never interested in one person. He is always interested
in the fact that this world was under doom. He was interested
in freeing all men from that doom. What would that mean? Fourth,
what is a new kind of piety? That is to say, that when you stand
in the other world you are standing in some kind of piety. That
is it and how do you get that articulated?
Frank Hilliard