Previously I shared this collection of quotes from Tupper as well.  The quotes below were part of my reading in preparation for the sermon I preached on Sept. 28th, the text and audio from which can be found two posts before this one.  In particular, I’m always encouraged when a preacher or theologian takes the time to underscore either 1) the hope that comes from God’s solidarity with suffering through Jesus or 2) the mystery of the incarnation itself. In this case, Tupper talks about both.  Most evangelical preaching either ignores these doctrines or takes them for granted, respectively.  This is simply unacceptable, but especially so at a time when Christianity is making less and less sense, and offering less and less good news, to more and more people in North American society. Here is Tupper:

The vision of the salvation of God grasped Jesus with unprecedented boldness and stunning clarity rooted in his sense of the Holy in the midst of the tragic suffering of his people: On the one side, he encountered the incredible, immeasurable history of the suffering of humanity through illness and natural disaster, violence and injustice, military occupation and brutal subjugation, dehumanizing exploitation and excruciating oppression. On the other side, Jesus had from his dawning consciousness a distinctive personal relationship to God, the Abba presence he had lived and breathed all his life, the Holy One in the history of Israel who stands against evil and promises to overcome all the murderous forces of evil (p. 78).

The revelation of God in Jesus Christ does not undercut but intensifies the mystery of God. The incarnation constitutes a mystery beyond “human understanding,” because the Infinite, the numinous, can choose to become a finite human person: That the Infinite can become a finite, frail, human creature radically transcends but comprehends the human category of “person,” definitive of the human being. Thus the mystery of the kenosis of God in creation and Incarnation demonstrates that the Holy is at least “personal” — a crucial analogy neither comprehensive nor exhaustive (from a footnote on p. 79 about Rudolf Otto’s Idea of the Holy).

Death through violence is the companion of oppression (p. 125).