The Cross is His Throne

   The church wisely has us read the Passion from John on Good Friday because St. John most clearly understands Jesus’ passion as his enthronement. He is lifted up there, to draw all people to himself, for he is indeed the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He truly has rule over all the peoples of the earth, for all time. This is effectuated on Good Friday.

   John points it out to us in many details. There is no agony. There is not total abandonment. He even chooses his own time to die: when it is finished or completed.

   The one detail that speaks to me most poignantly about his kingship is his concrete provision for his followers. Earlier he had said to Pilate, Everyone that is of the truth heareth my voice. And thus, even there, nailed and hanging in the torture of drawn-out capital punishment, he took care of his mother and his friends. He made new family, right there, right at the foot of the cross: Woman, behold thy son! And to the disciple: Beyond thy mother! Matthew and Mark emphasize his dying as isolation and abandonment, but the truth is not only that. He creates family; he creates the church; even as he is dying, he inaugurates the new human body of the city of God.

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   Out & About: Meanwhile, our life goes on. The next Good Books & Good Talk seminar will be on so-called Low Sunday, April 27—but what’s “low” when we can think about a magnificent cat cemetery in California in the mid-20th-century? And how can we be in anything but high spirits when enjoying the novel The Loved One by the great satirist Evelyn Waugh? We meet from 5 to 6:30 p.m. at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Dallas, and anyone who reads the book is welcome to the discussion. (Others are welcome to listen.) To find the seminar: Park in the garage in the new apartments (lower level parking is reserved for the cathedral) and when you leave the garage and face the cathedral, to your right is Garrett Hall. The entrance is new, glass-enclosed, and someone will be there. (You can also buzz the cathedral receptionist via the pad at the door; we will hear the buzz.)

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   On the Web: A Christian ethicist has written a careful, subtle analysis of AI in the Spring issue of The New Atlantis: “Will AI Be Alive?” The essay aims, first, to help us see clearly what is happening with AI. “Artificial General Intelligence” is coming very quickly—but general intelligence is different from human intelligence. However, “we should expect AI programs to look decreasingly like chatbots and increasingly like agents: having agency, the ability to directly affect the real world.” Thus, part two is to judge what we are dealing with: “It will seem to be alive.” This will be a time of moral danger for us. If alive, third, “we must steward, not subjugate nor worship it.” There will be moral dangers in how we treat AI; I am struck by the thought that, if we create something that seems alive, we should not think we can make it do whatever we want, nor should we feel worthless and worship it: “stewardship,” for AI as for the rest of creation. But is that possible? https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/will-ai-be-alive.

Posted by The Rev. Canon Dr. Victor Lee Austin with

The Wrong Way

The right way is from death to life. That is the direction taken by Christ our Passover: he moves from death to life. It is also the direction of creation. When God creates us, he brings us into existence, he moves us from non-being into being.

   Now, it is paradoxical to say that we could “be” in non-being, because “non-being” is precisely and by definition a state in which there is no being. The sentence, “I didn’t exist before I was conceived,” means only that in the universe prior to that happy moment when I was conceived there was no person who had the name “Victor Lee Austin, born on such-a-date in Oklahoma City to such-and-such parents.” That is to say, the pronoun in the sentence “I didn’t exist” does not mean there was an “I” that at that time did not exist. If I didn’t exist, then there was no “I.”

   Similarly, since death is a movement into non-being, there is no “I” in death, no “me” to which I could point and say: “There I am, in non-being.”

   No, the right direction is to move into life, not out of it. Nonetheless, every day, each of us is moving the other way. Our bodies, by being used, move towards being used up. We might get stronger, we might learn a new skill, but the trajectory is that weakness also comes upon us, as does forgetfulness and many other things that characterize the movement from life to death. We are alive, but we won’t be alive forever.

   So I think we can say: human life moves the wrong way. Still, there is no alternative route for us to choose; there is no magic that can turn around “the aging process.” We can lessen or even eliminate some diseases, we can perhaps make our cellular decomposition slower than normal. But we cannot stop the aging process, and it is probably a good thing that we can’t, given our general egoism and everything else that goes into sin. Nonetheless, even though it is inevitable, our pathway through life to death is not the “right” direction, not the direction ultimately taken by Jesus. 

   Jesus went through life to death. But he then went from death to life.

   That reversal, the greatest reversal in human history, is something that awaits each of us. By going through our deaths, we come to meet Someone who went through death to life. We can say: by virtue of Jesus’ death and resurrection, God has taken death into himself. It has been transformed into something that is not merely non-being but a stage or moment or passage that, since it is part of Jesus’ life, is also to be a part of our life.

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   This has practical implications. We should not fear death, and neither should we precipitate it by euthanasia or suicide. Death remains hard for us—as of course it was hard for Jesus—but it is also the exciting threshold of meeting, face to face, the One who went through death to resurrection life. Death is something like a door to a world in which things move in the right direction: to life.

   In our prayers, especially during Holy Week, we can “walk” with Jesus as he faces his own death, with its heavy psychological agony as well as the physical torture. In the end, he accepts what comes with confident hope, that what he is going through, alone and abandoned, no one else will ever have to go through alone and abandoned. This is our hope: that when death comes to us, we can take Jesus’ hand and be led by him from death to life.

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   Out & About: On Palm Sunday, April 13, I am to preach at St. Augustine’s Oak Cliff, Dallas, at the 10:15 a.m. service. On Good Friday, April 18, I am to preach at Good Shepherd Cedar Hill, Dallas, at the 6 p.m. service.

   The Good Books & Good Talk seminar next meets on Sunday, April 27, at 5 p.m. at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Dallas, to discuss The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh. This short novel from the great English satirist is set in mid-20th-century California and centers on a cat cemetery. What’s not to like?

 

Posted by The Rev. Canon Dr. Victor Lee Austin with

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The Rev. Canon Victor Lee Austin. Ph.D., is the Theologian-in-Residence for the diocese and is the author of several books including, "Friendship: The Heart of Being Human" and "A Post-Covid Catechesis.: 

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