Reflections on Mortal Goods by Ephraim Radner, Part Three

The third chapter of Ephraim Radner’s Mortal Goods is one that really sings to me.  After getting the lay of the land as a place and time for “evil days,” Radner dives right into what it means to try and live amidst those days.  He asks:

Where shall we escape the evil that turns each day into a test? How do we locate in time the way that the Good Life, however much entwined with “today” and thus with today’s evils, also engage something beyond such contemporary burdens? Another way of putting the question is, “Are we heading somewhere?”

I do think it is a step, not quite a leap, to go from being somewhere to heading somewhere on Radner’s part, as he is particularly concerned with the here-and-now.  But (he is aware that) the Biblical Story is full of movement: Abraham and Canaan, Moses and the Promised Land, a faithful family on the way to Jerusalem for a feast.  So even in a stationary life, there is a pull of some kind of movement.  Radner points to the Christian tradition’s image of “sojourning” as a way of understanding this movement, a way that is “both direction and posture, both of which are determined by a director and a form.”

There are Old Testament and New Testament threads for sojourning, what Radner points to in Psalm 119 as being “a stranger on the earth.”  And with the image of the stranger comes the image of the pilgrim, which also has root in the broader Christian tradition.  A great line from Radner about being a pilgrim:

To be a pilgrim is a life itself, not the end of a life.

Which is a great distinction and a good note.  Because the destination matters, and the destination is something like a step beyond the life itself.  And while Radner restrains himself from being to afterlife-centric (he is, after all, focusing on mortal goods), he does want his readers to see that the pilgrim/stranger life is intrinsic to the Christian life.  He goes on to say:

The fact that sojourning is the posture of a mortal human being simply means that the human creature is constantly being thrust back into a world of things, of created gifts and limitations, of swimming within them, of finding them ever anew and losing them ever anew, such that “newness” is both real and not capable of being tamed or manipulated— as much a source of fear, therefore, as of promise or hope.

In some sense, the image of the pilgrim/stranger is one doing his or her best to live well in the “now but not yet” of God’s kingdom.  Living in the tension of what is right in front of you and what is in the best part of your heart (should?) throw you back on that which does not change.  But Radner is also wise to note another dimension that exists for the Christian in this life:

The Christians Peter calls “strangers” (1 Peter 2:11) are not “on their way to Zion”; the are Zion in this place.  What they are close to is Jesus, whose own life is manifested in suffering, resurrection, vindication, and glory, the Word made flesh.

Lewis would call the church, the gathering of Christians in this life, an “outpost,” I think.  Lots of Christians would name it as such.  It’s meant to be a kind of precursor to the end of a pilgrim life, not everything eternal, but something closer in that direction or way of being.

All of this does make you wonder how comfortable we have become in the “now” that no longer really points to the “not yet.”  It leaves you wondering how well we see ourselves and our current predicament (or if the predicament even matters).  That good and healthy tension should always be there, should not come as a surprise to us.  It doesn’t mean that it dictates real hope and joy; it’s the knowledge of real joy and hope that makes the tension possible.