The Prophet as Agent of God's Time

[A version of this was delivered as part of Barclay College's "Spiritual Emphasis Week"]

In the last post I discussed one way that time and eternity function in theology and in lives of faith in a direct experience of the indwelling Christ. These two posts address how a realizing eschatology changes the possibilities for spiritual transformation in the present, how God’s eternal promises are invading our lives at every moment, an apocalypse of the heart. Christ lives in us in His fullness. He dwells in our hearts in his completion, not as parceled out and obscured but as God’s revelation to the world. Christ resides in us as the crucified one, the resurrected one, and the glorified one. Christ is not only crucified, Christ is not only resurrected, Christ is not only glorified by the Father. The salvific and eschatological promises of the past and the future are directed incarnationally into every time and every moment.

Crucified, resurrected and glorified.

And the paradox of paradoxes is that Christ is all three eternally and dwells in us as this eternal presence. And according to Second Peter, we are “partakers” of this nature made incarnate in us (2 Peter 1:4).

What I want to say in this post is that the saints, the ministers, the faithful prophets of God, are those who see time for what it is. They are those who see the reality of time and are commissioned by God to proclaim the meaning of time and to embody the fullness of time. These are prophets. Prophets are those who can see God’s will and can call our brothers and sisters to a more living understanding of our place in God’s world, of our relationship to the fulfillment of God’s presence.

John Woolman (1720-1772) and the Apocalypse of the Heart

[A version of this message was given during Barclay College's Spiritual Emphasis Week]

In this post and the next one I want to mine theological resources from the Quaker tradition and interpret them for our day and age, for the spiritual power and hope God has called us to embody. I want to think about time, and the ways in which the future time of God’s fulfillment is already a present reality. Our faith traditions can be a teacher, an encourager, and a partner in our spiritual walk. My tradition, the Friends, have been that for me and have taught me ways for faithful living I have found meaningful. We look to the cloud of witnesses that have preceded us to relativize and deprioritize our self-obsessions and the the idols of our own day. We look to the past for perspective, to be educated in a different way of thinking, and to be shown the varieties of God’s mercy.

And for me, no one since the time of the bible has knocked me out of my self-absorption like the eighteenth century Quaker, John Woolman.