Radical Theology Advent

Christmas Eve (Christ candle)

Introductory rights

In reframing the liturgical season, we have for the last four weeks performed rituals to decenter us. In so doing, we have transformed the season into a time of waiting and preparing ourselves to a renewed commitment to the practice of subjectivity. We took a step back from ourselves and considered how our religious beliefs function in our lives. Let us remember that the natural world around us comes to life through death. Let us begin to allow life to break us. Like Mary’s body faced entropy to create life, so to, do we face death to enter in. Only with the emergent Holy Spirit can we find the courage to face this abyss.
 
 
Opening prayer

Oh, Master of The Real, grant that we may never seek, so much to be consoled as to be alienated. To be surrounded by a void than the totalizing force of some solid understanding. It is in the living out of this alienation that we come into the death we are all already living. Make us a channel of this alienation. Unfurl our hearts and open our minds so that we may hear the good news, anew. The good news that God is dead. Let us prepare ourselves for the enigmatic and contradictory birth that divided God into this Holy Trinity. The birth that broke the ideology of the monotheistic God. A God that could only be viewed as an almighty being. For through Christ, you went from one, to not one. A split and divided God. This is the message of the birth of Christ; that we are to hold God as otherwise than being. We cannot overcome this alienation. It exists in everything. One can only embrace this contradiction. And in so doing we bring our broken and contrite spirit to enter in, to this Holy Trinity.  

Thanks be to the contradiction of the Holy Trinity
 
 
Christ Candle

O split and divided God, whose birth tore through the ideological veil of Mary and Joseph. The flame we light tonight will represent our desire to intimately know this same spiritual death. The ideology we have, comes with power over us. To understand how the death of our big other brings us new life, we write our beliefs on a piece of paper. Instead of lighting a candle, we set flame to the corner of the paper. Let us sit and watch the words of our perceived understanding burn. And as the flame goes out, let us sit and slowly allow ourselves to plunge into the darkness of our contradiction. A place where there is no belief. A place where we are divided and alienated from our ideology. For in this place, we enter the event horizon where we enter the abyss.  

Thanks be to this alienation

 
Let us pause here, in this dark place. Perhaps a little longer. And longer still. Instead of thinking of what you think you know, stay with the anxiety of what you do not know. Move from this external desire toward your own internal contradiction. The place within you where you acknowledge you don’t really know. Instead of going with the tendency to make a whole of these two things, move into the contradiction. Negate what you think you know with what you don’t know. This, the negation of negation can bring forth something new. Advent, through the lens of death of God theology, can offer us another way to see ourselves and the world around us. To become aware of the contradictions inherent in everything.

Thanks be to the negation of negation
 
 
The collect.
O split and divided God, this flame that has gone out represents our desire to tarry with contradiction; to truly dwell in a place of alienation. Help us, during this season to remember the true meaning of readying ourselves to participate in the negation of negation. Give us the courage to move into this decentering and grant us the estrangement this practice brings.
 
 
Benediction

Contradictions and unknowing exist all throughout the universe. Let us consider that even the absolute might realize its own incompleteness. Let us engage with a religion where God through Christ comes to know that God is riven with unknowing. That not only do we commune with others who lack, but with a God who might lack as well. And that when we serve the god of our beliefs, we serve and love what we think we know of the God in The Real. In truth, we don’t know, and perhaps neither does God. Let us all take a step back and sit in this alienating thought. Let us experience the unknown of Das Ding and be transformed by its sting.