On the trip to Vienna I went walkabout with one of the friends we were visiting. Came across the statue of Mozart and this arrangement of flowers. There aren't many comparisons I would dare make between myself and Karl Barth and Hans Kung - but a love for the music of Mozart, and a sense of the theological inspiration it provides is one that seems safely modest.
While posting this I'm listening to the Ave Verum Corpus which is one of the most beautiful and spiritually consoling pieces of music I know. The incarnation, the atonement and the humility of God are deeply embedded in this serene, composed and gentle hymn of divine self relinquishment.
Years ago the veteran theologian T C Oden wrote a three volume systematic theology based on what he called the ecumenical consensus. It remains a repository of ecumenical theology, both constructive and incorporating a wide range of voices from the diverse streams of the Christian theological tradition. This Christology is a major work of ecumenical and eirenic theology, an account of the person of Jesus Christ that seeks to be faithful to the ecumenical consensus but also considers and interacts with contemporary Christological thought. At the heart of hearts of pastoral ministry and Christian faith is the beauty and mystery of the incarnation, the intersection of eternity with history, the impossible reality of the divine becoming human, the majesty of love expressed in the self-surrender of God. This week is the anniversary of my ordination to pastoral ministry - the book I've bought to commemorate that milestone is Edward Oakes' new volume, Infinity Dwindled to Infancy. A Catholic and Evangelical Christology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011). Oakes is one of the best interpreters of Hans Urs Von Balthasar and has written a major study of Von Balthasar's Christology.
It is that mystery and beauty and majesty and that impossible reality that is sung in Ave Verum Corpus. The combination of such musical truth telling and heart searching on the one hand, and an ecumenical essay in Christology that takes with utter seriousness the truth of God Incarnate on the other, is for me a reminder of the central core of faith - the mystery of Jesus Christ, revealing the self-giving love of God for a creation gone far wrong, but entered in the power of a love that suffers and absorbs that wrongness, reconciles the alienated, restores and renews so that once again life is lived in the fullness of God. To be a follower of Jesus Christ, a lover of such a God as Jesus reveals, an agent of the Kingdom of God responsive to the Holy Spirit - whatever else ordination means, it means surrender to truths of such magnitude that wonder, gratitude and love for God and all God has made are only the beginnings of an adequate yes to the divine call.
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