Sunday, October 19, 2014: Isaiah 45:1-7; Matthew 22:15-22
It often feels like a rhetorical game, this question of what belongs to God.
In my final year of seminary, Marilynne Robinson came to campus. Officially she was there to visit and speak at the undergraduate college, but she indulged an invitation to an informal seminary gathering as well. Packed into our unsightly refectory, we sat riveted as she spoke about good preaching, the Bible, writing, and Calvinism.
On this last point Robinson openly relished the unspoken challenge posed by a group of Calvin-averse Episcopalians. I don’t remember what specific question a student raised about predestination or total divine providence. Whatever it was, it was obliterated by Robinson’s response: imagine you are faced with grieving parents whose young child has died in a seemingly random and tragic accident. Which is more comforting, to assert that all of this is somehow in God’s hands or to indicate that their child had slipped through some sort of ontological crack?
Robinson’s piercing gaze scanned the silent room, daring us to defend a theology that would leave God occasionally out of control. No one spoke. Checkmate, Calvin.
