BLOG 8/7/16. GOD’S NEW HUMANITY PEOPLE AND THEIR INESCAPABLE POLITICAL CONTEXT

BLOG 8/7/16. GOD’S NEW HUMANITY PEOPLE AND THEIR INESCAPABLE POLITICAL CONTEXT.

Hey, friends: there is no way we can escape this season of the presidential and congressional campaigns. So, what’ new? Centuries before Jesus arrived on the stage of history, God’s erring nation of Hebrews had been taken captive by the Babylonian Empire, and God’s word to his people through the prophets was that they were not to seek escape but to settle down and to seek the welfare of the people, the city, among whom they lived. They were to be a witness to their God in the very real polis which was their setting. Then Jesus came into a political setting where there was a religious polis, the Jewish establishment. Then there was the political polis, the huge dominant Roman Empire. Then there was the more subtle, but ever present reality of those who were only focused on taking advantage of, and of making the most economically of the reality, and whose primary loyalty belonged to neither. Got it? Religious principalities and powers, political principalities and powers, and economic principalities and powers. Everyone had to deal with these very real political realities every day. It was a collusion of these powers that ultimately executed Jesus as a threat to their power by using accusations and lies about him.

Ah! but right here we need to stop and see that this was precisely the polis that Jesus came to invade and into which he inaugurated a whole new reality, namely, the Kingdom of God, or God’s New Creation. He came to create all things new, to bring the powers of the Age to Come into this age, to make real his dominion of Light in the midst of this dominion of darkness. He gave his people a whole new vocation. They were to be salt and light in the midst of this confusing, often destructive, and conflicted reality. They were called by their own teachers: aliens and exiles, and even so were to be those who were to overcome their inescapable circumstances by “the blood o the Lamb, the word of their testimony, even if it costs them their lives”. They were to be a radically different kind of political entity. They were to be the glory of God amidst the very real and seemingly intractable realities of the ‘empire.’

Biblical scholar, Gregory Boyd, helps us by defining ‘the glory of God’ as: the radiant display of the divine nature. Ah, yes. We are the children of God and we are to be the radiant display of His divine nature in a radically new kind of polis, i.e., one that dwells within the realities of this present age, but motivated by a radically new lifestyle, and a radically new kind of community whose purpose is to transform it by being authentic sons and daughters of God, by displaying his divine nature in our quest for peace and justice and order—by living each day in non-glamorous settings becoming the power of God by quietly and authentically demonstrating the fruits of the Holy Spirit in all of our relationships. Our political calling is to radiantly display the nature of the God who calls us. God’s New Humanity can never be primarily captive to any empire, any political party, any economic principality or power … and yet acknowledging that in the midst of these we have a calling to be a transformation presence … so that men and women and see our good works (our Kingdom behavior) and know that God has to be in it

Within a couple of centuries that persecuted Christian minority that was birthed in Palestine became such a powerful redemptive force within the harsh political realities of the empire that it transformed it. In the two millennia since Jesus, God’s new humanity people have always faced the very same kind of dilemma as we: dwelling in a broken and fallen world with very imperfect human leadership, but always as a transformational incarnation of God’s New Humanity. So it is a critical part of our stewardship here and now to fulfill our role as sons and daughters of light in the midst this polis in which we live, and to be voices of peace and order and justice at this moment, and in our day. It’s a gospel calling, would you believe?

http://wipfandstock.com/what-on-earth-is-the-church-13883.html

About rthenderson

Sixty years a pastor-teacher within the Presbyterian Church. Author of several books, the latest of which are a trilogy on missional ecclesiology: ENCHANTED COMMUNITY: JOURNEY INTO THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH, then, REFOUNDING THE CHURCH FROM THE UNDERSIDE, then THE CHURCH AND THE RELENTLESS DARKNESS. Previous to this trilogy was A DOOR OF HOPE: SPIRITUAL CONFLICT IN PASTORAL MINISTRY, and SUBVERSIVE JESUS, RADICAL FAITH. I am a native of West Palm Beach, Florida, a graduate of Davidson College, then of Columbia and Westminster Theological Seminaries.
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