"Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you." And with that he breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of anyone, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven." – John 20:21-23
N.T. Wright, in his book “The Challenge of Jesus,” is trying to understand how we apply this passage to our lives 2,000 years later
He says this:
The human race has been in exile; exiled from the garden, shut out of the house, bombarded with noise instead of music. Our task is to announce, in deed and word, that the exile is over: to enact the symbols which speak of healing and forgiveness, to act boldly in God’s world in the power of the Spirit. As I suggested earlier, the proper way to expound the parables today is to ask: what should we be doing in God’s world that would call forth the puzzled or even angry questions to which parables like these would be the right answer?
At the risk of trespassing in areas I know little or nothing about, let me simply hint at some ways in which this might work out. If you work in information technology, how is your discipline slanted? Is it slanted towards the will to power or the will to love? Does it exhibit the signs of technology for technology’s sake, of information as a means of disadvantaging those who don’t have access to it by those who do? Is it developing in the service of true relationships, true stewardship, and even true worship, or is it feeding and encouraging a society in which everybody creates their own private, narcissistic, enclosed world? Luther’s definition of sin was “homo incurvatus in se:” humans turned in on themselves. Does your discipline foster that, or challenge that? You may not be able to change the way the discipline currently works. You may be able to take some steps in that direction, given time and opportunity, but that isn’t necessarily your vocation. Your task is to find the symbolic ways of doing things differently, planting flags in hostile soil, setting up signposts which say that there is a different way to be human. And when people are puzzled at what you are doing, find ways, fresh ways, of telling the story of the return of the human race from its exile, and use those stories as your explanation.
Or suppose you work in fine art, or music, or architecture. Is your discipline still stuck in the arrogance of modernity? Or, more likely, is it showing all the signs of the postmodern fragmentation, the world which declares that all great stories, all overarching systems, are power-plays? Is your discipline run by people with a strong political agenda, so that (say) unless you’re a committed Marxist they don’t think you can be a serious artist? Your calling may be to find new ways to tell the story of redemption; to create fresh symbols which will speak of a home for the homeless, the end of exile, the re-planting of the garden, the rebuilding of the house. I knew a young artist who became a Christian at Oxford, and struggled with tutors who despised him for it. His answer, to his own surprise, was to start painting abstract icons. They were spectacular and deeply beautiful. He didn’t tell his tutors what they were until they had expressed their surprise and delight at this new turn in his work, drawing forth from him quite fresh creativity which they couldn’t help but admire. Then, when they asked what was going on, he told them the story.
So we could go on. If you are to shape your world in following Christ it isn’t enough to say that being a Christian and being a professional or an academic (to address these worlds particularly for the moment) is about high moral standards, using every opportunity to talk to people about Jesus, praying for or with your students, being fair in your marking and assessment, and honest in your speaking. All that is vital and necessary, but you are called to something much, much more. You are called, prayerfully, to discern where in your discipline the human project is showing signs of exile, and humbly and boldly to act symbolically in ways which declare that the powers have been defeated, that the Kingdom has come in Jesus the Jewish Messiah, that the new way of being human has been unveiled; and to be prepared to tell the story which explains what these symbols are all about. And in all this you are to declare, in symbol and praxis, in story and articulate answers to questions, that Jesus is Lord and Caesar isn’t; that Jesus is Lord and Marx, Freud and Nietzsche aren’t; that Jesus is Lord and neither modernity nor postmodernity are. When Paul spoke of the gospel he wasn’t talking primarily about a system of salvation, but about the announcement, in symbol and word, that Jesus is the true Lord of the world, the true light of the world.
From N.T. Wright, “The Challenge of Jesus” p.143-4
Lots to think about...
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