Dispatch #26
Friday, September 27
Papillion, Nebraska

"Papillion" is rhymed with "million." Never mind its Spanish root and colorful meaning.

But let no one point the finger of superiority. Check out your own cities and towns. Note that St. Louis utters of vowels of "Goethe" Street with the same sounds and rhythm as "Go easy."

We "raise" our Indianian Valparaiso, while the South Americans allow theirs spontaneously to "rise."

And so forth.

+ + +

This morning in Omaha, my hip received a routine, three-week X-ray. Diagnosis: the bone is healing well. Though I still can't put more than 50 pounds weight upon the leg, I can now begin my own therapy, stretching and flexing the muscles that have begun to tighten, the potsherd muscles which spout stars of pain when I bend my knee beyond crutch-angles broadly obtuse. But I will bend it. I will labor at limbering the dear muscles that had powered the bike so smoothly--in order to return to the bike as soon as possible.

+ + +

Tomorrow we drive (ah, me: drive) to Des Moines, Iowa (our second Iowan stop, since spending time in Harlan yesterday). There the Catholic Diocese has universally been reading my novel PAUL for study. I am invited on Sunday to give a dramatic reading and to chat about the novel itself with a large number of my readers. Let me tell you how much I look forward to the gathering, the reading, the Catholics! One of the persistent benefits of writing broadly, allowing the presentation of our Christian faith to be rather more gracious than condemning, is to rejoice in the Sacred family we all are who worship God through Jesus Christ. My brothers and sisters are Evangelicals, Reformed, Roman Catholic, Apostolic, Charismatic ... oh: and Lutheran, yes, and all synods thereof. The one thing necessary to compact such a living covenant among us is the centrality of Jesus Christ, his ministry, his passion and death and resurrection, and his presence even now by means of the Comforter, the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit.

Differences there are among us. But these differences, far from severing us, are cause for celebration. For every church brings histories and teachings and characteristics and perspectives that make a living body of the whole! Where do I get the gumption to say such an outrageous thing? Well, from Paul. From his first epistle to the Corinthians, who were busy separating (see the first chapter of complaint) while Paul begged a celebration union in differences (see the 12th and the 13th chapters).

No, I don't think we ought (nor could we) press for massive mergers (as businesses merge for their own self-preservations). The more we merge, the less are the good differences preserved (as businesses swallow lives and livelihoods in the process, simply because "to exist" has become their primary motive and not "to serve"). Mergers encourage the beige-ing of the Church.

But a celebration of fellowship in differences--that preserves the insights of various communions which have been worked out in hard histories and Biblical interpretations against those histories. Let me repeat that: all Biblical interpretation has the fingerprint not only of the God whose Holy Activities are recorded in Scripture, but also the prints of the interpreters--always, however objective interpreters claim to be. Therefore, the faithful laboring through, in, upon, and by means of the Bible has brought to various Churches the obedient hearts of many peoples, differences of blessed value when those who hold them do not (1) discard them, nor (2) fiercely demand that this interpretation must conquer and overcome every other interpretation.

Honor the differences. Delight in them. Let the interweaving of the differences enrich any single communion's understand. Do not withdraw into that single communion's fierce assertions that it alone is right; nor rise up with legalistic righteousness to impose that single communion's assertions on any and all Christians abroad!

Or else what?

Or else such peoples have begun to worship their own words about God more than they worship the living God. God alone is the changeless center and circumference of the universe. God is. The living God, revealed in Jesus. Theologies are necessary. Theologies developed throughout the tradition and the histories of the Church at large teach and train and turn us to Scriptures illuminated. Theologies appropriately restrain individuals from emotional lunges and plunges as if that single voice could by force announce another God besides God. Theologies are the proper compulsions of those who devote their knowing, their scholarship, their developed apprehensions to God through the ancient records of God's deeds and meanings, the Law and the Gospel.

But theologies are not themselves the Law. Theologies are not themselves the Gospel. And theologies, though faithfully about the Deity, are not themselves the Deity.

There are two ways to translate the Greek words, Theou logos. Though both translations may use exactly the same English words, "Of God, Word(s)," the meanings of that possessive phrase are opposite. Usually "Theology" means Words about God: our words and our terms to define God one to another. But more important than that meaning, prior to the meaning, and primary to all theologies, must be this meaning: "Words of (that is, spoken by) God." The most revealing Word of God (See John 1) is Jesus, the light and the Logos. But Scripture shows the many words God utters, not just in speech through the prophets, but also in deed throughout the Holy History.

Start there: what God hath spoken and continues to speak. And then we will not become those subtle idolaters who worship their own words about God and roll up their sleeves to fight for them, yea, even to break off from friends because of them and the differences, to call schism holy and necessary when in fact it is the tearing apart of the Body of Christ--the Body of Christ, a Spiritual organism which flourishes in wholeness.

Or what will you say to me?

"Is Christ divided?" (Paul: 1 Corinthians 1:13)

Was Luther crucified for you?

Or were you baptized in the name of Moody? Wesley? Knox? St. Peter? In the various names of Baptists generally? Baptists Southern or Missionary? In the name of one's interpretation of the Book of Revelation, or in the name of any chapter, passage, or image therein?

Walt