I have started this book (Forgivness: An Alternative Account by Matthew Ichihashi Potts) as part of my Holy Week reading.

In the introduction Potts makes the proposition- “If forgiveness is real, then it’s a problem.”

He goes on to say,
“Forgiveness as it is typically understood definitionally defies our ethical vocabulary and destabilizes our moral foundations… Forgiveness resists rationalization.

To wonder about the problematic possibility of forgiveness at all is to presume some limits to our moral language, some gaps in our moral models… I suggest that any “real” forgivness will and must challenge the assumptions and test the boundaries of our moral instincts themsleves… What forgivness actually reveals when it strains our moral sense is not its own unreality or impossibility but the hidden limitations of our moral reasoning.”

These words from this mere introduction has already been unsettling me in a big way. It’s tabled all sorts of questions in my mind. Like, if love of God and love of other cannot be separated or treated as two seperate ideas, what about God’s forgiveness of us and our forgiveness of others?

At the root of the words scandalous nature is the idea that it is “offered without any condition at all.” Take this away and word becomes meaningless. I do wonder though. In our efforts to systematize the idea of forgiveness in scripture as part of a necessary process of salvation, I wonder if we have inadvertently reduced the word to a mere function of God’s doing while also limiting it to a truncated form (as in, God can only forgive if He is first satisfied by something).

On the same level, I wonder if reducing and truncating the word in such ways necessarily muddles what it means and what it looks like for us to freely forgive as God forgives. How can we forgive others freely if we perceive Gods forgivness, as it is in much of western theology, to be attached to certain prerequisites, be it moral behavior or imputed righteouness?

I have no idea yet where Potts is headed with his treaties, but his initial words about forgiveness, which reframe it in light of our limitations in moral reasoning, might require us to reimagine one of the central facets of the Christain faith- the saving work of Jesus in the death and resurrection- beyond the limiting capacity of our systematics and within the land of the living.

What if, rather than making forgiveness of one’s sins the point of the Gospel, we make the work of Jesus in establishing the kingdom of God the point of the Gospel. What would it look like then to see forgiveness not as the saving act but as the outflow of this kingdom way? What if rather than tying forgiveness to theories of satisfaction we instead see it as something freely given SO THAT we might then experience the liberating work of Jesus in our lives and in this world? What if, rather than tying it to theologies of satisfaction we instead tied it to participationist theology, rightly freeing the work of God in Jesus from the whole grace versus works Protestant hang up altogether?

Just some thoughts.

“To mourn Jesus in at least one sense is to seek some habitable meaning for and from his death in our own world.”

• Matthew Ichihashi Potts (Forgivness: An Alternative Account)

Potts suggests that forgivness and redemption are categorically different, even though we have become conditioned in the modern west to read them as one in the same. It is on this basis that he wants to step in to a discussion of forgiveness by way of this simple definition- a decision to abstain from retaliation. He anchors this definition in a recognition that forgiveness is always applied to a loss that cannot be recovered, thus rendering the langauge of debt repayment, common to western theologies or forgiveness, insufficient.

Potts argues away from the primacy of debt metaphors, especially considering that such metaphors get muddled in translation from the ancient to the modern, and he argues towards the primacy of spacial language and imagery.

“The governing analogy of sin in the Christian West is economic, and its roots do reach to the New Testament. But there are other ways to read aphiemi (forgiveness)…Aphiemi (Greek) and remittere (Latin)… concern not debt but distance in their literal etymologies. Aphiemi means to send away. To remit, at its root, is to establish a distance…

Were we to think of sin not as a debt to God but as distance from God, and were we then to consider the mission of the Son sent away (aphiemi) by the Father to be the crossing of a distance, the opening of a loving space capacious enough to contain sin; if we thought of Christ’s work as the journey into a far country, rather than the payment of an awful price, we might find that the typically nifty logic of atonment- that the cost of sin must be paid in full and that only the God-man can pay it- falls away and is replaced by another, perhaps more lovingly tragic, far less cruelly heroic one. If sin is distance, then the Son’s obedient estrangement from the Father is a journey already implicated in sin, a mission always and already also a remission. If Sin is distance, then God’s love will be signaled by the chasm Christ crosses to meet us rather than the torture he bears to win us.”

To be clear, Potts is not dismissing the language of debt out of hand. He is simply suggesting we view it through the primacy of distance. It is on this basis then that forgiveness is then freed from the trappings of redemption. It is allowed to embrace the tragedy and the mess. It can be something we necessarily act upon apart from reconciliation. And what does this do for our theologies of atonement? How freeing might it be to say that forgiveness is that which sets us in the space where redemption and transformation is not only possible but promised? How freeing might it be to imagine that forgiving a person or a loss or a tragedy can give us space to mourn rather than the expectation that it in itself must be the restoring work?

Further, and this might be the most shocking observation- what might it look like to grieve the death of Christ in the face of circumstances that look less like the promise than the loss? And similarly, what might it look like to actually forgive in the face of that if to forgive means to resist retaliation? Something I’m mulling over.

Reading Journal 2023: Gichigami Hearts: Stories and Histories from Misaabekong
Author: Linda Legarde Grover

In the waning days of summer 2022 my wife and i hopped in the car and took a drive up the Michigan peninsula to spend a few days at the famed Mackinac Island. Michigan wasn’t new to us, but the island was, and whenever I embark on a trip I always try to track down a local bookstore and purchase at least one book by a local author telling a story rooted in the place we are visiting.

In this case I went with the familiar, having come across this book by an indigenous author detailing Duluths history from the perspective of her Ojibwe past. I have always loved visiting Duluth, and this intimate composition, which is part Memoir, part lore, affords it a deeply personal touch.

The book moves easily between the particular locale of a shoe repair shop or a childhood home, for example, to the lands rich spiritual heritage, stretching from the rocks that frame the city to the waters below and framed against the story of the authors ancestors. Anchoring these stories is a portrait of the familiar Point of Rocks. Having driven the highway that breaks into majestic views of this valley and these cliffs many times, I was able to conjure this image as a way of stepping into the greater imagination of Grivers winding and meandering journey.

This book gives us the tools to see both that which is visible and that which lies unseen, recognizing that both shape the reality of this place as part of the cities ethos and Govers shared heritage.

“There is something about the Gospels unlike anything else in the whole Bible. The books of the prophets of the Old Testament, often divided into major and minor prophets, record what the prophets said. We learn very little about their biographies. Our four Gospels are a bit like the vignettes of the patriarchs and Moses and kings and others in the historical books of the Old Testament. Unlike the prophets, our Gospels do not turn their pages into quotations of Jesus. Instead, the Gospels are obsessed, which is the only word for it unless there’s a stronger one I don’t know, with one person from verse 1:1 to the end of the Gospels. In our case, the Gospel of John. If we fail to see this shift in focus—from what the prophet said or even to some short vignettes to lengthy narratives about what Jesus did, with whom he interacted, who decided to follow him, who didn’t like him, how he was arrested and crucified and raised—we fail to read this Gospel well. Every passage of the Gospel of John is about Jesus. Not us. Not you. Not me. Jesus.

Reading John’s Gospel requires something counter-intuitive. What is intuitive works like this: We have a good idea of who or what God is, and we ask, “Does what we already know about God fit Jesus?” The counter-intuitive works like this: We only know who or what God is in knowing who Jesus is, so we now ask the counter-intuitive, “Does God fit what we know about Jesus?” In other words, God is Jesus. The Gospel of John invites us to a fresh reconception of God by showcasing Jesus from 1:1 to 21:25. A Gospel has a mission: to “gospel.” That is, to tell the story of Jesus in a way that compels response. In their essence, then, every paragraph in a Gospel is about Jesus. Who he is, or who the reader understands him to be, shapes how that reader responds to Jesus. In John’s Gospel Jesus is first and foremost the Logos/Word…

in order that God can be revealed for who God truly is. The proper response to this Logos Jesus is faith or believing, and that faith is ongoing abiding in who he is, ongoing obedience to what he calls his followers to do, and ongoing witness to the world about who Jesus is. Those who respond to this Logos Jesus enter into nothing less than eternal life in the here and now as it opens them up to eternal life in the there and then…

Why Logos? Greeks commonly used this term for Reason, for Meaning, for Logic, and for Words Spoken. The Old Testament, however, is John’s world even more than the Greek world, and this term Logos/Word evokes:

1. creation (cf. 1:3–5)
2. the revelation of God’s tent and glory and love at Sinai,
3. the Wisdom of God (Proverbs 1:20–33; 8—9),
4. God speaking and communicating and revealing his will and law (cf. Psalm 119:9, 25, 28, 65, 107, 169),
5. and the prophets declaring the word of God to the people of God (Isaiah 40:11; Psalm 33:6).

John baptizes these Jewish ideas into Greek waters when he uses “Logos,” but his sensibilities are more Jewish than Greek. In this Gospel Jesus is the Logos who reveals the truth, the word of God, to humans (1:1, 3, 14; 5:37–38; 17:14, 17). He is then both God’s revelation and the One who reveals God as the living, speaking Word… “the Logos did not merely descend upon or enter into Jesus, the Logos of God became the human nature Jesus bore.” Which leads him to a profound next line: “The life of Jesus is the history of God himself on earth” (Quast, John, 13). We have become far too comfortable with what John writes in 1:1. Jesus is God in the flesh.”

The purpose of the Gospel of John is explicitly stated at the end of the Gospel (20:30–31)… “these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

• The Gospel of John (Scott McKnight)

Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said to himself, “Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Can Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?” —Genesis 17:17

There is a dialogue set up in our faith. One voice says, “Can you imagine!” The other voice answers, “Yes, but.”

God brings into existence that which does not exist. Did you know that the Bible never uses the word create with a human subject? We may “make” or “form” or “fabricate,” but only God creates, only God works a genuine new possibility, a new thing beyond our expectations and our extrapolations. It belongs to the mystery and holiness of God to call to be that which is not yet. Because this is God’s world, the world is not closed, either by our hopes or by our fears… by God’s powerful grace, the “Yes, but” of our resistance is broken. Newness appears; we can sing songs, unembarrassed, songs about miracles.
– Walter Brueggemann (A Way Other Than Our Own)

But those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. —Isaiah 40:31

“Here is the good news. The good news is that we need not serve the wrong god, trust the wrong life-giver, fear the wrong power. We may read life differently, and the way to do that is to wait: to wait in eager longing for the God of creation and rescue to work a new way in the world; to wait in keen expectation; to wait in active zeal, receiving every hint of newness and acting on it; to be ready to go for the gift of life; to leave off fear, intimidation, resignation, pooped out-ness as the governance works a newness. This poetic utterance about God and God’s work has concrete counterparts in the realities of economics, politics, social relations, social possibilities. The utterance is matched by a reordering of reality, the transfiguration of the empire itself. It is such an intellectual travesty, such an act of chutzpah, such a subversive poetic utterance that dumps a poem in the midst of resignation. The poem works a newness, not because it is good poetry, but because the subject of the poem, the God who lives in and through and with and under such outrageous assertion, is at work overriding despair, inviting hope, responding to our waiting, and starting the world free again, outside the regimes of weariness. We are left to decide about this outrageous assertion, sung against the resignation of the empire…

The key religious question among us is whether there is grounds for an alternative, an alternative rooted not in self-preoccupation or in deadening stability but rooted in a more awesome reality that lives underneath empires, that comes among us as odd as a poem, as inscrutable as power, as dangerous as new life, as fragile as waiting. The poet names the name and imagines new life, like eagles flying, running, walking.”
– Walter Brueggemann (A Way Other Than Our Own)

Film Journal 2023: Brother
Directed by Clement Virgo
Where to watch: now playing at Mcgilvary Cinemas; watch for a streaming or VOD release in the near future

This is the first I’ve seen from Virgo, who directed last year’s Dahlmer. Its the second film however that I’ve seen in the last two years set in Scarborouh (the other film bearing that same name and making my top list of 2021).

Brother is confined to a singular family, following this pair of siblings over the course of 20 years. The constant jumps in the timeline admittedly does get a bit hard to follow,.especially since the same actors occupy a span of 10 years without looking like they aged at all. What makes this a bit more challenging is that so much of the films emotional impact depends on inviting viewers to get lost in the rhythms of this intentional story structure.

What elevates this though is its commitment to each sequence. If the momentum of the story is somewhat muddled at times, it remains easy to get lost in the moments along the way. So when the climax does come and the trajectory is made clear, it definitely hits with a poetic fervor.

The performances are also quite phenomenal, playing two Jamaican-Canadian brothers separated by years but bonded by their circumstances. Left to care for their struggling mother, we watch these two boys, who exist as complete opposites, one big and extroverted and confident and the other small, shy and introverted, come of age in an uncertain world. Both of them in their own way struggle to figure out who they are amidst deeply felt responsibilities, desires, and struggles, which include growing up black in a neighborhood marked by gang violence and police presence. It’s a reminder that what is often assumed to be a distinctly American problem exists here too, if in a slightly differnt way and not quite as visible and definable.

Much of the Directors style reminded me of a more muted (in a good way) Waves. It’s very poetic, using lots of framing devices to draw out interconnected images and ideas. I would be curious to see if on a rewatch some of the visual pieces of the puzzle become even more clear and more alive in terms of the overall narrative arc.

Definitely one to keep on your radar if you are seeking out good canadian projects. Even with the meandering timeline and a too long run time it still finds a way to pack a powerful punch.

Film Journal 2023: Bono & The Edge: A Sort of Homecoming With David Letterman
Directed by Morgan Neville
Where to watch: Disney+

“There is no them. There’s only us.”

For as long as I can remember U2 has existed as a sort of larger than life and largely undefinable enigma. As someone who grew up in those fervently gaurded impassioned evangelical, conservative christian circles, they were those rebellious figures lurking in the shadows who might or might not be safe for impressionable young minds being formed in the “faith”. Emerging into young adulthood and jts post modern reflections, they had become a voice for my generation, a generation dissatisfied with much of what we were seeing in “religion” and institutions and who were seeking a fresh perspective and fresh expression of that faith in ways that made sense to us. This was the band you lined up and camped out for to buy tickets, packed up those vans and traveled miles for, and whom seemingly remained immune to the ebb and flow of an ever changing “cool” and hip pop culture then and now. They were, and remain, a band that could do things on their terms and on their time, disappearing from the fabric of our culture and emerging years later as though they had never left without without blinking and without explanation.

They were, and remain, a band that gave permission to a bunch of struggling people of faith to gather together and worship without feeling ashamed or without need for apology. They didn’t need to articulate the divine precisely or dogmatically, you simply knew it was present.

It seems equally hard to locate and define this present U2 renaasaiance so to speak. Whatever this is- the book Surrender, the reimaging record which functions as a kind of legacy tour through their entire career, this doc (which also functions as an affecifonate love letter to Ireland and David Letterman). Whatever this is- a final magnum opus, a fresh revolution and a sign of more to come- it feels timely, and it feels like a gift. It seems right that these open door projects would be telling more of their story now than I was ever aware of living it in the moments of my own impressionable life. If these songs form the soundtrack of these bandmates stories (and collective story), I know for a fact that it also does for many of us.

Film Journal 2023: John Wick Chapter 4
Directed by Chad Stahelski
Where to watch: now playing in theaters

Where this stands in terms of the larger franchise will be subjective opinion of course, but I do think it’s fair to say that the fourth entry in the series reflects a natural progression in the story. There’s the global setting, and it picks up after the cliff hanger in the third with Wick facing seemingly insurmountable and baffling odds. It also widens the scope of the story while personalizing the stakes.

The real star of course is the set pieces, which continue to push boundaries when it comes to their sheer practicality, ingenuity and commitment to detail. It hits the ground running and never lets up, leaving little doubt that this remains one of the strongest and most relatable action franchises out there right now. It makes dang sure you get your money’s worth when it comes to the big screen spectacle and entertainment of it all.

There’s only so many ways one can reimagine the revenge theme that remains the driving force of this franchise, which is why the world building goes a long ways in giving this legs. This one actually pushes the pause button in that regard, dialing things back to focus on simple one to one relationships. But the narrative fabric of the second and third installments is still there, which means there’s more world to explore. As a character says to John at one point in the film, you can’t possibly kill everyone- it will never end. This is the endless cycle of retribution. Reminds me of the words spoken to Cain in the early chapters of Genesis. And in fact, the Easter story just might have something to say about that too.

And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit. —2 Corinthians 3:18

“Imagine ordinary people arguing about sexuality and money and leadership and how to be faithful. Paul cuts underneath all those disputes to remind these day-to-day Christians that they are not ordinary people, but they have at the core of their existence an implosion of God’s holiness that reshapes and redefines everything. What counts finally is that the incursion of God’s holiness touches our lives and our life together, or it does not matter at all…

Paul wants, first of all, to keep Christians at Corinth connected to Jesus as the decisive point of their lives: “Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. . . . all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord” (2 Cor. 3:4, 18). Paul makes a simple but crucial affirmation that it is exactly in Jesus, only in the Lord, that the full holiness of God has touched down in human life.

The church at Corinth is not called to pious, romantic, goosey religion but simply to practice the memory of Jesus and to let that memory be fully present tense. When that story of Jesus is present tense, we are able to sort out and identify all the empty claims where God’s holiness and God’s power for life do not reside, where God’s power for life is not embodied or enacted.”

• Walter Brueggemann (A Way Other Than Our Own)

Who was Asaph?
A Levite and dependent of Gershon, the Son of Levi
An appointed member in the house of God
A seer or prophet who led a group of skilled poets and singers
The superscription attributed to Psalms 73-83.

I got interested specifically 8n Psalm 73 when I came across scholar Walter Brueggemann making the case for it as the inspiration for Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal (Lost) Son.

A couple interesting notes:
1Surely God is good to Israel,
    to those who are pure in heart.

2 But as for me, my feet had almost slipped;
    I had nearly lost my foothold.
3 For I envied the arrogant
    when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

At the front of this Psalm we see the disconnect between his experience of suffering and the prosperity that he sees in “the wicked”. As is common to passages like these, the he is meant to evoke the story of Israel, aligning  “his” experience with the whole.

Now consider that the prodigal son symbolizes a scattered Israel seeking this prosperity in the far off lands, as it says. “4 They have no struggles; their bodies are healthy and strong 5 They are free from common human burdens; they are not plagued by human ills.”

‘This is what the wicked are like—
    always free of care, they go on amassing wealth.”

This section of the Psalm links the prosperity with their pride, which leads them to say “They say, “How would God know? Does the Most High know anything?” As the Psalmist submits, “Their mouths lay claim to heaven, and their tongues take possession of the earth.”

Now consider the disconnect between the inheritance in the prodigal son and a life pursuing the allures of such prosperity in the world. As the Psalmist says, their mouths lay claim to heaven, and their tongues take possession of the earth… “10 Therefore their people turn to them and drink up waters in abundance.”

This leads the Psalmist to lament.
13 Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure
    and have washed my hands in innocence.
14 All day long I have been afflicted,
    and every morning brings new punishments.

And yet, the Psalmist insists, “15 If I had spoken out like that, I would have betrayed your children. 16 When I tried to understand all this, it troubled me deeply 17 till I entered the sanctuary of God then I understood their final destiny.”

So what is the destiny?
18 Surely you place them on slippery ground;
    you cast them down to ruin.
19 How suddenly are they destroyed,
    completely swept away by terrors!
20 They are like a dream when one awakes;
    when you arise, Lord,
    you will despise them as fantasies.

Who is “they” in this passage. It’s important to remember the appeal in the beginning of the passage- surely God is good to “Israel”- and the ensuing point of tension- Israel is not prospering according to the promise afforded by God while the nations they were called out of and set apart from are. Similarly we find the concern- the personal allure the “he” in this passage is resisting and speaking out again as the voice of Israel- surely God’s promises are true and that faithfulness to God in the face of suffering is not in vain. The sense here and elsewhere in the story of Asaph is two fold- the prosperity of the surrounding nations and the temptation for Israel to give in to its allure.

In this light, this lament is not simply an insistence that God will destroy Israel’s enemies. More so its about showing that one’s trust in the promises of God proves true.  It’s about helping to make sense of continued faithfulness when they do not. Here the Psalmist is drawing out the contrast not between good and wicked people but two different realities and different views of property- one that fades with its fleshly passions and one that gets swept up in the promised redemptive work of God. To attach oneself, or for Israel to attach itself to that which fades is to find itself handed a promise that inevitably is defined by terror, ruin, destruction based on lies (fantasies).

Now, cast this in to the light of the Prodigal (Lost) Son. We find a contrast between the son spending his inheritance in the allure of those far off places and its promise of prosperity, only to find that it all fades. Now hear the following words of the Psalmist and imagine them in the mouth of the older son in the parable:

23 Yet I am always with you;
    you hold me by my right hand.
24 You guide me with your counsel,
    and afterward you will take me into glory.
25 Whom have I in heaven but you?
    And earth has nothing I desire besides you.
26 My flesh and my heart may fail,
    but God is the strength of my heart
    and my portion forever.

Such a claim, especially when attached to the voice of Israel, evokes a vision of promise and hope in that which does not fade- heaven is a synonym for kingdom of God. And this is followed by the following proclamation:

27 Those who are far from you will perish;
    you destroy all who are unfaithful to you.
28 But as for me, it is good to be near God.
    I have made the Sovereign Lord my refuge;
    I will tell of all your deeds.

If we are imagining these words on the lips of the older son in the parable, who is representative of the Jewish religious leaders, the very ones calling for necessary Reform and a renewed call to faithfulness in the face of Rome and cohabitation with the allure of such prosperity, we can perhaps begin to see how Jesus’ story cuts through the tension of Psalm 73 by recasting the Psalmists hopeful lament and proclamation in the light of God’s redemptive work in Him as the fulfillment of God’s promised restoration. In the face of a scattered Israel and the Pharisees attempt to create clear lines between the enemy and the faithful here we find a story of Gods faithful “finding” of a lost Israel dispersed throughout a kingdom ruled by Rome and a corrupted Temple aligned with its promise of prosperity. The promise is not simply an inheritance handed to the faithful ones (the religious leaders), it is an inheritance rooted in the whole of Israel’s story. Thus the prodigals the religious leaders are complaining about (how can Jesus eat with such tax collectors and sinners) are demonstrative of the promised arrival of God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. Careful relders then will note how criticisms of the older son (religious leaders or pharisees) throughout the Gospels are directly connected to their resistance of how God’s promise gets fulfilled, with the reclamation of the story of Israel in the person and work of Jesus setting the stage for the movement of the kingdom into all the earth. As Jesus says consistently in the Gospels, the very promise which motivates these religious leaders to faithfulness is the thing they are resisting, just as the older son does. Psalm 73 can help demonstrate why this resistance surfaces, giving us context and motivation for it, and perhaps growing empathy where we are likely prone to the very same things in our own place and time.