200mcs: One Down, Two To Go

I haven't retired from blogging, I swear.

I finished my first 200 mile commuting semester (henceforth 200mcs) just under a week ago, and I really enjoyed it. The 200 mile commute thing kind of sucks, but in a weird way, it's been really good. A lot of good thoughts swirled in my head this semester, and a lot of my classes interacted in profound ways so that it was an especially meaningful semester.

I wrote papers on the image of God, the incarnation, resurrection and return of Christ, eschatology, eco-theology, sacraments, the Trinity, gospel communication to indie-hipsters, hospitality and the christological basis for ecological preservation and designed a worship service for the first Sunday of Advent. I read some great books (The Way of Jesus Christ by Jurgen Moltmann, Free of Charge by Miroslav Volf, a book on sacraments by Leonard Vander Zee), a lot of good ones (Jesus the Liberator by Jon Sobrino, a couple books by Robert Webber, Whose Religion is Christianity? by Lamin Sanneh, Eyes Wide Open by William Romanowski, Border Crossings by Rodney Clapp, Mosaic of Christian Beliefs by Roger Olson, Selling Out the Church by Kenneson and Street, White Woman's Christ and Black Woman's Jesus by Jacqueline Grant, Luther, Feminism and the Cross by Thompson along with a collection of African christologies), and the occasional forgettable book (...).

I had some great conversations with old friends and made some new ones. I learned a lot about theology, christology, worship, communication and hospitality, and learned the art of sleeping on a six foot couch. I walked the line between guest and mooch, and when I came home I was able to truly be with my family. I got to see Yo La Tengo, Rosie Thomas and Over the Rhine all thanks to my wife's place of employment, Calvin College. Addison got bigger and smarter and more beatiful every day, and I have come to appreciate Marcie more than ever. It's sufficient to say that I don't deserve her and that's a fact.

I didn't blog much because I kept painting myself into a corner, promising to post about something specific, but never feeling inspired to fulfill those promises. From henceforth no more promises will be made on this blog.

You have my word.

And you have my love.

Living Jesus

So as the semester is approaching on Monday, I have decided to get a bit of a headstart on reading. I know once classes start, it's gonna be a whirlwind, so I'm at least introducing myself to some of my books.

I've started working on a couple books for my Christology class. I was excited for the class to begin with, but after beginning the readings, I'm even more excited. The first book we have been assigned is Living Jesus by Luke Timothy Johnson, and it is right up my alley. The basis premise is that in our quest to learn Jesus, we have, for the last 100 years anyway, begun with the wrong question. Before we get into historical method and source/redaction/form criticism, we need to ask a far more basic question; "Is Jesus alive or dead?"

Johnson argues that if Jesus is alive, as so many of us confess, then we ought not treat him as a historical (dead) figure when trying to learn about him. Rather, we take what we know of who Jesus is through the eyewitness accounts of his disciples and friends, continued over the past 2000 years through the work of the Holy Spirit in his church, also combined with our own experience of Christ in the context of the church, and now we're closer to being able to learn Jesus.

The whole historical Jesus quest always struck me as odd, and Johnson has put some solid feet on that which was only an inkling in my relatively uneducated mind. I'm also beginning to read Jurgen Moltmann's The Way of Jesus Christ, and in his prologue, he explains that he named the book what he did just because Jesus is so dynamic, and cannot be nailed down as "known" in some static sort of way. Jesus is always known in a dynamic relationship, not as a static, distant historical figure. So I'm getting the same sort of approach from two different angles, and I feel theologically energized by it.

Dear God, what have I become? I just used the term "theologically energized." Oh yeah, I became a seminary student again. My fellow nerds and I will retire to the nerdery with our Greek lexicons.