I read this tonight in The Comedy of Redemption by Ralph C. Wood:
The scandalous Christian affirmation is that the ultimate miracle has, in face, occurred. What Christian faith confesses is that God, in the Jews and Jesus, has perpetuated the most outrageous of tricks, a joke to end all jokes, a surprise beyond all surprises. He has upset our tragicomic equilibrium. He has thrown over our own calculus of good and evil, which metes our rewards to the righteous and punishments to the wicked. h refuses to become the cosmic projection of our own values. The redeeming God will not tolerate the all-too-human extension of our binary consciousness into ultimate terms. In Israel and Christ he acts unilaterally to deliver the human race from its dialectical enslavement. “By grace are you saved” is the comic declaration that–whether we like it or not, whether we even accept it or not–God has reclaimed us as his own. We have been repossessed as the property of the God who wants us gladly to give back our lives to him in faith and to the world in service. We have been made citizens, in sum, of a singular Kingdom which admits of no duplicity.
Faith, in this reading, is the supremely comic act. It takes joy in the fact that God enjoys his people. It freely owns the fact that we are owned. The believer is permitted no frowning disdain on the world’s passing parade. The central command and privilege of the faithful life is to dwell in gladness and trust rather than fear and distrust. (bold added) pg. 32.
I just wanted to share that.
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