BLOG: 11/05/12. GOD’S KINGDOM PEOPLE VIS-A-VIS THE EMPIRE

BLOG. 11.05.12. GOD’S KINGDOM PEOPLE VIS-À-VIS THE EMPIRE.

Tomorrow is Election Day, and though most are totally fatigued with the whole thing, it is a necessary time for God’s kingdom people to reflect on the purpose of their presence in this scene—not to mention how radical and subversive our presence is to be (which hasn’t dawned on all too many unthinking church folk).

Peter says that God’s people are an alien presence, or sojourners, in the midst of this fallen world. In his case it would have been the Roman Empire (I Peter 2:11 in loc.).

Daniel and his friends were literal exiles, but even when Daniel achieved a place at the very highest ranks of the vast Babylonian empire, he always knew who he was, and that Babylon was not his home country, though it was the place of his incarnation. There he determined that his ministry was to be such that it was only explainable by God. He learned to discern the national idols. (Thank you, Mark Labberton, for this in sight.)

The second century Letter to Diognetus, with some wonderment from a Roman official on the outside looking in, describes Christians as follows: “For Christians are not differentiated from other people by country, language, or customs you see, they do not live in cities of their own, or speak strange dialects. … They live in their own native lands, but as aliens; as citizens they share all things. Every foreign country is to them as their native country, and every native land as a foreign country. … They are passing their days on earth, but as citizens of heaven. They obey the appointed laws and go beyond the laws in their own lives. … To put it simply—the soul is to the body as Christians are to the world. The soul is spread through all parts of the body and Christians through all the cities of the world; Christians are in the world but not of the world.” (You can read this whole remarkable and much quoted letter from a Roman official evaluating the Christian phenomenon in the empire by Googling it.)

All that said: on this Election Day Christians can never identify themselves as primarily citizens of this nation. We are those whose primary citizenship is in heaven, and we are colonies of heaven who always live in missionary confrontation with our context, and within the dominant social order of our residence. To identify ourselves primarily as citizens of this American “empire” is to compromise our calling as God’s kingdom people. Whenever the church makes peace with the empire, the empire wins and the church is diminished.

Our Christian calling is not “comfort-zone” stuff.

The danger is to a split-vision worldview, a worldview: “that divides faith from life, church from culture, theology from economics, prayer from politics and worship from everyday work will always render Christian faith irrelevant to broad sociocultural forces. And that is exactly what the empire wants—a robust, piously engaging private faith that will never transgress the public square” (from Colossians Remixed, by Walsh and Keesmaat. P. 95. Highly recommended).

Yes, kingdom integrity within this empire always engages us in our confrontational role as salt and light, and we are always going to be different—weird. Accept it. Then go vote for what comes closest to our radical kingdom ethics. Peace!

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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