BLOG 1/3/17. WEALTH AND POWER ARE NOT CHRISTIAN VIRTUES
At the beginning of this bizarre new year of 2017, and with the ascent of a whole new cadre of national leadership (aristocracy?) so focused on wealth and power, … it is going to be difficult for us to remember that God’s Kingdom/New Creation is an “up-side down Kingdom” where rich is poor, and where power is in weakness. This, if you will remember, was the prophet Isaiah’s description of the coming Messiah (cf. Matthew 12:18 ff.). It will be difficult for those of us in the Christian community to remember, equally, that the true witness of the Christian community is not in famous clergy, or in impressive religious sanctuaries, … but, rather, in the quiet presence of Christ’s followers living out his Kingdom/New Creation lifestyle, showing the love of God, and “having their feet shod with the readiness of the gospel of peace” in their daily relationships 24/7.
The apostle also reminds us that: “not many of ‘the brightest and the best’ among you … not many influential, not many from high society families, … God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these ‘nobodies’ to expose the hollow pretensions of the ‘somebodies’” (I Corinthians 12:28 ff. The Message).
The media, and social networks of our day, tend to be dominated by extravagant, power-seeking, publicity-seeking personalities in politics, entertainment, sports, business, and other public arenas, … but meanwhile, quietly, often out of the limelight have always been those quiet practitioners of Christian discipleship who incarnate the life of Christ by the Spirit living in them in the excellence of their lives, in the fruits of the Spirit exhibited in lives of sensitivity to the needs of their neighbors, in self-denying love, and in the display of what God’s New Humanity in Christ is all about. This takes place, first, in the family, but then in the work-a-day world, what with all of its imperfections, difficult (and frequently destructive) personalities, irresponsible individuals, and inconvenient interruptions.
So, weak is strong, poor is rich, and God works in his New Humanity in places that nobody would think to look. One has only to look at Jesus. The political and religious power-brokers of his day found this peasant prophet a threat and so sought to destroy him, but in their act of seeking to destroy him, they ultimately destroyed themselves. Now we look back at over two millennia of his people, who like leaven, have been those identifying with the poor, those peacemakers, those given to mercy, those who have mourned with those who mourn, and those willing to suffer for what is right. God’s divine nature has lived in them in warp and woof of society. His gospel of the Kingdom has been (and is) permeating all the people groups of the world.
For my part, I do find our national scene distressing, but I also find in myself a renewed resolve to be the salt and light of God’s New Creation in the vicissitudes of each day of my ordinary life, and praying for those influences that quietly enhance God’s irresistible in-breaking Kingdom. God has always dealt, in God’s own way, with the arrogance of wealth and power. Yes, “This is my Father’s world, and let me ne’er forget, that though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the Ruler yet.”
“Hallowed be Thy Name on earth …”
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