Waggling on the Tee

Reading again today. This time David Ford's introduction to Theology. As I read I was reminded of a Dick Lucas' sermon, where he spent 20 minutes introducing the talk (or 'waggling on the tee'), read the passage from The Good News version and sat down. It seemed to encapsulate where I am at the moment with Theology. It's all preparatory, a kind of joining the dots exercise, waiting for the real moment where you see the picture, the words as they really are which reveal the Word as he really is. Or to put it differently it's all a precursor to relationship, or as I rather pompously wrote in my notes, 'Theology is like the bush that does not burn; it is a framework for the fire, but the question is this, "Will you take off your shoes?"'. There's a second strand to Ford's analysis, which suggests that Theologians are naturally oriented in one of two directions, towards mankind or towards God, and struggle to do both. Somehow though we must do both, and at full throttle. Moses takes off his shoes before God, so that he can throw down his staff before Pharaoh. It is almost as if we can only see others really clearly if we see God first. Or to use Buber's odd notation, it is not so much a move from I-it to I-Thou, as from I-Thou to I-Thou-thou. So I'd better get on with it.