A Divine Conversation

A quote from "Proclamation and Theology" by William Willimon concerning the dialogue we have with God:

"John says that the risen Christ stood among them and said, "Peace." He spoke to them.

Why would the risen Christ appear first to these fearful ordinary men and women, his disciples, who had demonstrated so conclusively their failure to follow him and be his courageous disciples? Why would the risen Christ not appear to some powerful, influential, public figure like Pilate or Augustus?

He came to the ones who had fled the conversation once the going got tough. He came to the very ones who had so disappointed and forsaken him, those whom he had so patiently taught and yet who had so patently misunderstood his every word. He came to them and said, in effect, "Let's talk. As I was saying . . ."

And thus the church was born, and thus we were all made witnesses or resurrection and preachers of the good news.

And the conversation was resumed. Time and again in our history with the God of the church and Israel, when we have betrayed the love of God with our infidelity, when we have misunderstood, when we have fled into the darkness or stopped up our ears and hardened our hearts, this God has returned to us and has resumed the conversation.

In that divine-human dialogue, in that conversation, this God has proved to be remarkably resourceful and imaginative, full of stratagems and devices - the Incarnation, Word Made Flesh, beging the most imaginative of all. There is a relentlessness about the speech of God, an effusive loquaciounsess, a dogged determination not to rest, not to fall silent, not to cease striving until every single one of us is part of the conversation.

Therein is our hope. Here is a a divine-human dialogue that is initiated and , at every turn in the road sustained, by a living, resourceful, long-winded God, thank God."

Isn't that good news?