The Dangerous Memory of Jesus

I love this phrase 'the dangerous memory of Jesus'. I think it is originally attributed to Catholic theologian Johann Baptist Metz. I have since come across it in a book by the missiologist Michael Frost but particularly in the book 'What Would Jesus Deconstruct' by John Caputo.

I love the idea. For me it is a reminder that the one who is the 'head' of the church is no vague cosmic Christ shaped by our own making but one who has the nature of Jesus of Nazareth as spoken about in the gospels and it is this living one who both gives the church example of what it is about and constantly calls it into questions as to its own claims, nature, and character as that which claims to follow him.

Following this line of though Jesus is the dangerous deconstructive 'inner voice' or 'Truth' of Christianity as Caputo puts it:

In a deconstruction, things are made to tremble by their own inner impulse, by a force that will give them no rest, that keeps forcing itself to the surface, forcing itself out, making the thing restless. Deconstruction is organized around the idea that things contain a kind of uncontainable truth, that they contain what they cannot contain. Nobody has to come along and ‘deconstruct’ things. Things are auto-deconstructed by the tendencies of their own inner truth. In a deconstruction, the ‘other’ is the one who tells the truth on the ‘same’; the other is the truth of the same, the truth that has been repressed and suppressed, omitted and marginalised, or sometimes just plain murdered, like Jesus himself, which is why Johannes Baptist Metz speaks of the ‘dangerous memory’ of the suffering of Jesus and why I describe deconstruction as a hermeneutics of the kingdom of God.

The ‘danger’ Metz describes is the deconstructive force. As soon as the ‘other’ tells the truth, as soon as the truth is out, then the beliefs or the practices, the texts, or institutions, that have been entrusted with the truth begin to tremble! Then they have to reconfigure, reorganise, regroup, reassemble in order to come to the grips with their inner tendencies – or repress them all the more mightily.

The above was influential in my own thinking during discussions which were taking place in the Baptist Union of Scotland  in late 2010 regarding what a future 'strap line' should be to promote future Union strategy when I argued for something confessional, such as  'Under the Rule of Christ'.

Sometimes people ask about that particular title 'Under the Rule of Christ' which now heads up various pieces of Baptist Union of Scotland literature. I cannot speak for others as to why it was finally adopted  but some of my own thinking was expressed in a previous blog and submitted to the National Stratey Group of the Baptist Union of Scotland. For any who care it is available here:

  Download Baptist identity, strap lines, and Jesus

All of this said - I still love the term...