XII. THAT OTHER WORLD IS THIS ONE--RUDOLF BULTMANN

 

XII. THAT OTHER WORLD IS THIS ONE—RUDOLF BULTMANN

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RUNNING BACK AGAIN, MORE THAN WORDPLAY,

MAGIC ON FABRIC, EFFIE, LUKE 9:36, JOHN 3: 16

                for Rex DeLoney, again

On the wall in the living room

beneath the butterscotch chair

where I sit, Rosie Lee Tompkins,

African-American quilter,

from a painting, looks down

at me, every morning, like this,

her luminous eyes, woke open

and framed by her kerchief,

tied in a knot at back, looking

at me, as I’ve said, and speaking too,

saying, God gave me these colors

to see. Saying, The pool

is giving birth to itself all the time.

It is February, African-American

history month. This painting,

by a friend, Rex DeLoney,

colorist, commissioned by me

for my wife, who is also a quilter.

Rex, a friend, also gave me his painting

of Coltrane’s A Love Supreme

when I left the classroom. Mss. Tompkins,

born in 1936, began with pillow cases.

She is famous now. Her imaginative

portrayals of God and freedom,

quote scripture. Her mother’s here,

also quilting, and the cross to the left

of her face (Magic Johnson’s on it),

which she had to cross through

enabling her to do her magnificence.

Extremely shy, known as Effie,

she called herself in fabric

Rosie Lee Tompkins. If you listen

while looking at these quilted squares

embedded in paint, you will hear

the horn of Ornette Coleman.

You will know the word, Palindrome.

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ON RUDOLF BULTMANN’S SERMON, 17 JUNE 1945

            2 Corinthians 4: 6-11

        “For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’, who has shown in our hearts

            to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

                    ‘But we have this treasure in earthen vessels.”

                                        Rudolf Bultmann

“The spiritual strength of Paul springs from the fact that he lives in two worlds; not only in the visible world of change and decay, of tears and death, that world in which we are, ‘afflicted in every way’ and ‘perplexed’, but also in the invisible world in which there is no fear and no despair.”

                                        Rudolf Bultmann

“What she said next sounded barbed...’I don’t know how you can sleep at night.’ Obama replied, ‘You know what? I don’t really sleep at night. It’s not just that I worry about these kids from El Salvador. I also worry about kids in Sudan, in Yemen, and in other parts of the world. And here’s my problem. We live in a world with nation states. I have borders.’”

                                        Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here, Jonathan Blitzer

Last night on the news, They can move you

if they have a bed—and they’re building centers

with 40,000 beds. Call this country as you call me.

Can I turn myself inside out? Transcending

anxiety on my own? It’s June, 1945--

my mother is seven months pregnant with me.

Born 9 August 1945—that day.

Invisible realities. 80 years later, having lived

this life, consuming as no one in the history of mankind

has ever consumed. No one. Not like this.

Physicians desperate, I recommend

putting medicine in the water for all.

What you say at Marburg: Right cannot

be maintained without power.

The world demanding practicality.

This world. Where our church--

ours—hijacks Bonhoeffer.

How does anyone sleep at night, not,

What have we become, but who we are.

How you address June, 1945.

And still you call on the poets.

I say, Thank you, again. Galway wrote

that short poem seeming to channel you:

“Whatever happens. Whatever

what is is is what

I want. Only that. But that.”

This world and the beyond,

coming back to you, understanding.

Understanding ourselves, 2025.

Sterling Brown in the 1930s, again,

you were delivering sermons at Marburg

against the strong men, writing to his people,

like you, the two of you, worlds apart,

They taught you religion they disgraced.

To have been in that pew, Professor Bultmann.

To hear you now is to have heard you then.

Empathy won’t take me that far.

Cancel myself, Rilke? Rilke, tan poco,

won’t get me there. You call

for the first question, How,

while in the midst of it all--

Church, Black Church, children

crossed and border-separated.

Crucified children. On the cross with the criminals.

First congregation revisited.

Here among the sacrificed. Say their name.

And still, you call on the poets

from the pew where the poets have fled.

And here, in America, mass deportations.

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You wrote

that sermon,

finishing

with the psalm,

Psalm 115:

Not to us, Lord, not to us--

La gloria, Señor, no es para nosotros,

No es para nosotros--

giving us then Paul Fleming’s poem,

Be content and know your part.

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“...our hopes to the world of unseen realities. It is just in so doing that we shall win true inner freedom for the urgent tasks of the present, courage to accomplish the work which in the distress of our days is laid upon us. For then no disillusionment can paralyse our strength; then we have become unassailable. Patience…”

                    23 June 1946, Rudolf Bultmann, This World and Beyond, Lamentations 3: 22-41

And that sermon sandwiched between two others. One on Guadalupe’s Day, December 12, 1943, on the Beatitudes, asking, “Do we belong to the circle of those to whom these promises apply?” And you single out, the one in particular addressed to your people: Blessed are they who mourn for they shall be comforted. We feel what we cannot see in your words. Strange. Offensive, Bewildered. Frightened, astonished, piercing all humanity to its depths, renunciation. With an attitude of waiting. Suppressed, distorted. Thrust forward by achievement or pose. And then this: “...or whether our waiting for the future is so radical that we renounce all dreams and yet are cheerful in our waiting...true joy is promised to those who wait upon God.”

Jump to the third sermon, following the 17 June 1945 sermon using Paul’s text from II Corinthians, Let light shine out of darkness. Here, the twenty-first of twenty-two sermons in This World and the Beyond, the sermon this study will close with, you turn to Lamentations 3: 22-41. The date is 23 June 1946. “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end.”

You ask in a series of questions: Do we feel the pain and suffering of our people? You say, “...perhaps in our case, the situation is one of irremediable ruin.” And you let the poet in Lamentations have full rein. My eyes flow without ceasing...El Señor es todo lo que tengo...The Lord is my portion.

Again and again we listen from the African-American songbook. Stony the road we trod. How we hear you, Professor Bultmann, citing poems, citing scripture, here, this:

As God shall guide, so will I walk,

resigning all self-will.

And again, Moses only permitted to see God’s back:

As God shall guide, so will I walk,

Though hard and stony be the way

Black church. People of color. La Raza. Difficult truths. Cheap grace again. How far from solidarity, America. Your sermons, Rudolf Bultmann. Your reading of Lamentations. Your reading the poems. Ending this sermon with the toughest love in the toughest time:

What has a living man the right to complain of?

It is his sin that each man should lament.

This one, a long, tough sermon. “Yes and no. The way to God leads not to hell but through hell, or, in Christian terms, through the cross. It leads us not to hopelessness but to a hope which transcends all human hope; and we must silence all human hope, if that divine hope is to dawn for use...For man as he is...This hell we must traverse.”

Jim Bodeen

10-12 February 2025

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