The Omnipotent Vulnerability of God

“Christ helps us,” Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote from his prison cell, “ not by virtue of his omnipotence, but by virtue of his weakness and suffering … Only the suffering God can help.”
Letters and Papers from Prison. pp. 360-61
Trans. R.H. Fuller – Macmillan New York 1972

When it comes to loving mankind, God does not need to be pushed into the full consequences of living out His love. It is in living out the fullness of His love that God is being who God is. Such love, in its willingness to suffer the full consequences of that love, is judged by fallen human reason to make God too weak and too vulnerable. Such love would seem to deny His omnipotence.
Yet it is in such weakness and vulnerability that God’s demonstrates the true omnipotence of His love in that He freely empties Himself and suffers for the sake of those He loves. Such love does not consider, and never regrets, the price it willing pays for being so vulnerable. Such love sees only the need for such weakness and vulnerability and the blessed benefit of it. It is through such vulnerability that the Son of God willing comes to meet mankind and save him. Such vulnerability for the sake of another is the perfection of love.
Inasmuch as we have been united with Christ in baptism, Christ is with us in all circumstances and conditions of life. In all these conditions, the love of Christ sustains and upholds us so that we can in faith, dare to love and live with the risks of being so vulnerable that others might be touched by the love of Christ – through us.

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth!
Serve the Lord with gladness!
Come into his presence with singing!
Know that the Lord, he is God!
It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise!
Give thanks to him; bless his name!
For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.
Psalm 100:1-5 (ESV)

Though the heart is prevented - it is not yet healed

“The remission of sins has not been instituted in order that we may have permission to sin or that we may sin; it has been instituted in order that we may recognize sin and know that we are in sin, that we may fight against sin. A physician reveals an illness, not because he takes delight in the illness, but rather that the person who is sick may sigh and ask to be delivered from the illness. Indeed, the patient gets hope of health from his faith in the physician who gives him a promise. Thus in Baptism we, too, are translated from darkness into light and into the place where there is remission of sins.” Martin Luther - LW 30 - Catholic Epistles p. 245 CPH
Countless works are both self-prescribed and professionally prescribed, by which a person might be delievered from this particular sin illness or that. Many are successful in preventing this illness from manifesting itself in their lives, but not one of them is healed. As Luther says:
“Although such castigation's have their use, yet sins are not purged away in this manner. Although the heart is prevented from bursting forth, yet it is not healed. Sins are not forgiven because of application to works; they are forgiven when I call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ because I believe that He is the expiation for our sins. This is the truth. But the devil does not let us remain on this road. He immediately brings up our works. Therefore let no one cleave to his own works. It is our nature to say: "I have sinned with a deed. Therefore I shall make expiation with a deed." The devil, who strengthens our error, is present. One must attack this sin with the promise that sins are remitted for His name's sake, as Ps. 25:11 ‘For your name's sake, O Lord, pardon my guilt, for it is great.’” Martin Luther - LW 30 - Catholic Epistles p. 245 CPH

A PRAYER FOR THE DAY

Blessed Father in heaven, by Your Word alone, light came forth in the midst of darkness at creation.
Then You spoke again and a greater light entered our sin darkened world in the Person of Your Only-begotten Son.
Oh, how I, and those I love and serve, need this greater light to shine within all our hearts this day.
As it is a day which You have made, make also Your Spirit to shine in me and all those who lay upon my heart.
Prepare my heart and mind for the callings You have given me this day, that Your will may be honored above all and in all.
Give me joy in all that I may do, for in each thing I do, I do as Your chosen means of being and bringing good to bear in the lives of those around me.
Be King over my thoughts and desires so that they are nothing more or less than Your thoughts and desires.
Where I have been apathetic, slow, and inattentive to Your will for me, I pray that You would forgive me
and increase my dedication and diligence to You and Your will alone.
In all that my eyes may see, enable me to see only the holy things.
Where I see those things holy that need to be done, make me holy for the doing of them.
Where I see those things holy that have been done, make my lips holy for the praising of them.
Where I see things holy that are too great for me, make my prayers holy for petitioning of them.
Be with each member of my parish this day, and protect them from the devil and his host.
Cleanse their thoughts and desires of all things sinful and wicked.
Let Your Word, heard recently, or heard long ago, be upon their hearts; and by Your Spirit, increase their faith through that Word.
For those caught in the struggle with temptation, make clear to them and guide them to the way of escape that You provide.
For those who succumb daily to the same recurring temptations, work repentance in their hearts and grant them an increase of Your Spirit and grace that they may overcome such temptations and live by a more faithful walk in You.
For those suffering in any form, ease their pain of heart, mind, and body.
For those alone and in despair, let Your companionship with them from the day of their Baptism, fill their hearts and comfort them that they may have the joy of Your attending angels.
Be with all servants of Your Word, and allow them to be only what You’ve called them to be: servants of Your Word.
Wherever Your Word is heard this day, let the hearing thereof, work faith, hope, and confidence in the hearts of all who hear it.
These things I ask do not exhaust the list of all that is needed, nor can they ever exhaust Your ability to answer.
For the sake of Christ, I ask, I pray, and I praise You. Amen.
Day 1 - Prayer of the Day
31 DAYS OF DEVOTIONAL PRAYER - 2008
by Rev. Mark W. Love

Jesus is the One in Whom God Does God to us.

Jesus is the One in whom God does God to us, the true human in whom God does God to us.
The point is that we can move forward here only if we realize that in and through the human, suffering, dying, and resurrected Jesus we come up against God.
God does himself to us in Jesus.
The PROCLAMATION is the concrete event in which that occurs for us…
It is in and through the humanity, the suffering and the dying of Christ, that we come up against what his divinity means.
He does not come to protect us from death, he comes to do it to us.
He brings death home to us.
He does old beings to death.
The suffering and dying Jesus is therefore the one in whom we meet our end, the eschatological end of our existence in bondage to sin and death.
He is the end of the old being who vainly constructs death-denying projects, who thinks that abstractions such as divinity and immortality can save.
He puts an end to our story negatively and positively.
He is the end (finis) of the old, and the goal (telos) of the new.
The old is put to death so that the new can be resurrected in faith and hope to look to the last day in confidence.
In the proclamation language of act, the divinity of Jesus consists in the fact that precisely through his suffering, death, and resurrection, HE DOES GOD TO US.
As John's Gospel has it, in the instance where Jesus gets into trouble for breaking the old order by healing on the Sabbath, the Son does what he sees the Father doing. Their unity is a unity of doing. "Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever he does, that the Son does likewise" (John 5:19).
He was, of course, killed for that, killed by the likes of us who did not want the old to end because we thought we could bring it to a better end ourselves.
But even in his dying, he does only what "he sees the Father doing" to the end.
As the one who actually dies, unprotected, rejected, forsaken, even by God, Jesus is "the end of us" as beings who thought divinity was a protection.
The crucifixion of Jesus is the end of us.
We cannot see through it.
There is nothing "godlike" here for old beings to recognize.
It is simply the end.
God is through with us as old beings.
There can be no survivors, no spectators.
The only way forward is through faith in the resurrection.
Thus Jesus is the repetition of God to us, because in the first place he is the absolute end of the old, the chaos of darkness, bondage, and sin.
He is the end of all the old being's hopes, dreams, and fantasies.
He shatters our godlike pretensions, even the possibility of finding them reinforced in his divinity.
And Jesus finally exposes why it is we have such difficulty surrendering the language of being and its surrogates.
Like the law, it is our last hope as old beings, our final defense as gods, against having to die.
Like Peter's "confession," it is our last line of defense against God.
If we could align Jesus on our side as the warranty for our divinity, then we would not have to say with Paul those shocking words, "For [Christ's] sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse (skubala), in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, based on law, but that which is through faith in Christ.... that I may know him and the power of his resurrection (Phil. 3: 8-10).
Theology Is For Proclamation – G.O. Forde
The Preached God - Jesus: The Man in Whom God Does God – pp. 100-103

GOD WILL LOVE HIS CREATION

“God forbid that He should abandon to everlasting destruction
the labor of His own hands,
the care of His own thoughts,
the receptacle of His own Spirit,
the queen of His creation,
the inheritor of His freedom,
the priestess of His religion,
the champion of His testimony,
the sister of His Christ! ...
Now as He requires from us love to our neighbor,
after love of Himself,
so He will do what He has commanded.
He will love the flesh [mankind] which is His neighbor.
He will love it, though it is infirm,
since His ‘strength is made perfect in weakness.’
He will love it, though it is disordered,
since ‘those who are whole do not need a physician, but those who are sick.’
He will love it, though it is dishonorable,
since ‘we bestow more abundant honor on the less honorable members.’
He will love it, though it is ruined,
since He says, ‘I am come to save that which was lost.’
He will love it, though it is sinful,
since He says, ‘I desire the salvation of the sinner.’
He will love it, though it is condemned,
for He says ‘I shall wound and also heal.’
-Tertullian”
Tuesday – Easter 3
TREASURY OF DAILY PRAYER – 2008 - CPH


A PRAYER –
Bless all your people, the flocks of your fold.
Send down into our hearts the peace of heaven,
and grant us also the peace of this life.
Give life to the souls of all of us,
and let no deadly sin prevail against us, or any of your people.
Deliver all who are in trouble,
for you are our God,
who sets the captives free;
who gives hope to the hopeless,
and help to the helpless;
who lifts up the fallen;
and who is the haven of the shipwrecked.
Give your pity, pardon, and refreshment
to every Christian soul,
whether in affliction or error.
Preserve us, in our pilgrimage through this life,
from hurt and danger,
and grant that we may end our lives as Christians,
well-pleasing to you, and free from sin,
and that we may have our portion and lot
with all your saints;
for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. Amen.
Liturgy of St. Mark, 2nd-5th centuries
Prayers Across The Centuries – 1993 Harold Shaw Publishers