I'm loving Anthony Bartlett's Virtually Christian - How Christ Changes Human Meaning and makes Creation New. His book makes a bold claim that it 'reconfigures the traditional framework of theology. Gone are the heavenly other world and its metaphysical God. In their place is revealed a God deeply implicated in the human story and laboring [sic] with us for a transformed world'. Bartlett affirms that in a rapidly-moving world of signs it is possible to see God alive and at work. My talk today, The Dead Man Walking in a World of Motion, owes a good deal to Bartlett's inspiring theologising: the Emmaus Road story, ever an inspiration, helped me to get the thesis over very well:
The film Dead Man Walking projects into a motion-picture world signs of compassion, love, forgiveness which are only visible, only possible, because of that moment in history when the original Dead Man Walking became the Dead Man Raised, a moment marked by the sign of the empty cross and remembered at the meal table in Emmaus in the sign of the broken bread.
From the fixed point of Calvary Christ projects into our world of motion the empty cross - sign of the dead man raised; from the fixed point of Emmaus Christ projects into our world of motion the broken bread - sign of the dead man walking with the People of The Way. At the end of that day in Emmaus Christ disappeared from the company of Cleopas and his friend to begin to make himself known to others who are seeking him in the universe of signs which make up our rapidly-moving world. The resurrected Christ moves unhindered towards us through space and time, in absolute love and forgiveness. In our world of motion the resurrected Christ continues to generate signs of his absolute transformation. If you look for them you will find them everywhere.
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