divine dream:
God calls on us to be [God’s] partners to work for a new kind of society where people count; where people matter more than things, more than possessions; where human life is not just respected but positively revered; where people will be secure and not suffer from the fear of hunger, from ignorance, from disease; where there will be more gentleness, more caring, more sharing, more compassion, more laughter; where there is peace and not war. . . .2
Having labored under the weight of racial apartheid, neither Tutu nor Dozier nor Thurman was under any illusion that the kingdom had come, that the creation had indeed become some idyllic “friendly world of friendly folk.” Their discussion of the dream of God hinges on their belief in a God who yearns for the transformation of a broken yet redeemable creation. “The world is not as God would have it be,” Dozier admits. “The kingdoms of this world are not yet the kingdom of God, but they can become it. They are not yet the realm where Gods sovereignty is acknowledged and lived out, but they can become it.”3
Why do we do this? Because
we’re Christians. Christ ministered to all, and that’s the model for me. He was healing and touching all people, eating with tax collectors and lepers. Our call is to be with all, too, not just where we feel comfortable.
STEPHEN CHENEY-RICE,
ALL SAINTS-PASADENA
In Jesus the Christ, we see the lengths to which the God of transformation would go in order to bring the dream to life. In the Gospel of Luke, the first act of Jesus’ public ministry is to enter the synagogue and offer this prophetic pronouncement from the scroll of Isaiah:
The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because God has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. God has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. (Luke 4:18–19)
Having dropped his bombshell, he rolls up the scroll, hands it back to the attendant, and takes his seat. Meanwhile, everyone is staring at him, at once aghast and in awe. He knows what they are wondering: Is this guy serious? His response is curt: “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” Yes, he tells them, the Messiah has come. The old order is passing away, and I have come to usher in a new age. Things are about to change.
And change they do. Jesus’ whole ministry—the whole account of God’s human life among us—is that of one who honors his tradition, but will not be bound by it if the dream of God demands something else. So he speaks to the Samaritan woman at the well, even though Jews and Samaritans were not to relate to each other, and especially not a Jewish man and a Samaritan woman (John 4:1–26). When he sees the man with the withered hand sitting in the synagogue on the Sabbath, he knows the rules: do not touch him, do not heal him, do not perform any unnecessary work on this day ordained by God for rest. He also knows he is being watched by the religious authorities who are waiting to pounce on him for the slightest infraction. Knowing all that, as Mark tells us,
Jesus said to the man who had the withered hand, “Come and stand here.” The man got up and stood there. Then Jesus said to them, “I ask you, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to destroy it?” After looking around at all of them, he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He did so, and his hand was restored. (Luke 6:8–10)
Jesus knew, and we certainly know, there would be consequences for his actions. He also knew he had come to do his Abba God’s will, to usher in the just reign of God. And he knew, as we struggle to acknowledge, that there is no way to have the dream without the transformation. The point is not to slog away in maintenance mode or to sit on the sidelines, pining for what was. The God of transformation invites us to “be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating” (Isaiah 65:18). God yearns for us to be part of this new creation and to rejoice in its unfolding.
The God of Relationship
That invitation reveals another face of God. The Holy and Immortal One could choose to act without us, could choose to be the watchmaker who sets creation in motion and then walks away. But the very nature of God is to be in relationship, first within the Godhead, then with all of creation, and even with each of us, making us the very children and partners of God.
According to orthodox theology, the Trinitarian God is a God in perichoresis, or an eternal, continual dance, with Godself. The Creator is in union with the Redeemer who is in union with the Sustainer who is in union with the Creator—at all times and in all places. That relational quality propels God into creation, where God yearns for relationship with us all and draws us beyond our barriers and into relationship with each other.
In Scripture we see this God going forth, claiming Abraham and his descendants and establishing a covenant relationship with them.4 That promise sustains the Israelites during their forty-year sojourn in the wilderness, and the Deuteronomist reminds them of the relationship when despair threatens. “It is the Lord who goes before you. God will be with you; God will not fail you or forsake you. Do not be afraid or be dismayed” (Deuteronomy 31:8). However dire the circumstances, however stacked the deck may be against them, they can always cling to the faithful promise of the One who speaks to them and has claimed them as beloved children.
Through the incarnation, God takes that intimate relationship another radical step forward. This time, God comes not only to dwell by our side but to share everything about our condition, surrendering the privilege of heavenly consort to take up a dwelling place within humanity. Some of the most beautiful poetry in the Bible is reserved to describe this wondrous moment, when “the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only who came from the Creator, full of grace and truth” ( John 1:14). Upon joining us, Jesus extends himself to humanity, yearning to know and be known, to have us join him in the divine union he has shared with his Abba God from the beginning of time:
Abide in me as I abide in you. ... As my Abba has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Abba’s commandments and abide in that love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. (John 15:4, 9–11)
Listen closely and you will detect echoes of perichoresis, the eternal, interweaving dance between the three persons of the Trinity. The Son abides in us and we in die Son, who also abides in his Abba and thus allows us to abide with his Abba as well. The dance of embrace, mutual embrace, never ends. Through Christ, the relational God has grasped us, and we are inextricably bound up in the joy of the divine life.
Nearly two thousand years later, healer, teacher, social critic, and mystic Henri Nouwen summed up the mystery, power and call of the incarnation in these words:
Jesus, in whom the fullness of God dwells, has become our home. By making his home in us, he allows us to make our home in him. By entering into the intimacy of our innermost sell he offers us the opportunity to enter into his own intimacy with God. By choosing us as his preferred dwelling place he invites us to choose him as our preferred dwelling place. That is the mystery of the incarnation.5
This is our God: a God who chose us as a preferred dwelling place and waits longingly for us to choose to dwell within God and align our lives with God’s own will. This is our God: a God who yearns for relationship with us, risks everything for relationship with us, and finally dies to be in relationship with us. If we ever wondered or doubted God’s yearning for relationship with us, the incarnation proves God’s desire with humbling clarity.
Grace is too good to believe. The world wants
