Five Minute Friday :: History

Clockwise from upper left:

• Beach House in Truro, Cape Cod, Massachusetts
• All Saints Church, University City, San Diego, California
• Downtown Los Angeles, California
• Boston, Massachusetts skyline across the Charles River
• Five Minute Friday :: History Linkup

We can't escape those written, spoken, and/or illustrated chronicles of events in particular times and places that shape us in both hidden and apparent ways. Most of us know some of our own original and extended family history, the story of our town or city, our province or state—and country, of course. For many that includes history of the place our family migrated from a few years or a few centuries ago. Our awareness of a few millennia of world history may not be as acute as our knowledge of more local and recent events, yet it surrounds us in our habits, preferences, longings, and perspectives.

Then there's the history of the whole people of God. Earlier this month on my scripture blog I wrote a little about salvation history:

Heilsgeschichte [Heil=salvation; Geschichte=history] brings together fairly objective, empirical facts with the lived experiences of the people, often with a sense of saga or myth; Heilsgeschichte has a far greater degree of density than the evidence, cause, and effect history we study in school.

In addition to our incorporation in local and world history, baptism embeds us in the history of planet earth – of all creation – in the history of the whole people of God. Water is the womb of this planet's creation and the womb of our first birth as humans. Baptized into Jesus Christ's death and resurrection, we experience our first death, our second birth – our re-creation – as we identify with earth's history.

Very late Saturday afternoon, Saturday evening, or extremely early Sunday morning the Vigil of Easter revisits the meta-narratives of creation and of deliverance from death to life in the Exodus and Passion/Easter stories. Maybe you've heard of the Passover Seder referred to as "eating history?"

The book of Revelation foretells the reconciliation of all things, of the lion lying down with the lamb, of people from east and west, from north and south, gathered around the welcome table of the Messianic Feast. The garden of resurrection has grown into a city, where the river of life and the tree of life provide for all creation. Some theologians refer to that as the end of history! What do you think?

Our God is God of history. We are God's people. We are people of history. We are people of Easter hope.

Sunday's coming!
# # #