On Easter Sunday we celebrated Jesus’ Resurrection as both a vindication of his victory over death and as inaugurating the Kingdom which he spent his ministry announcing. The Church is that Kingdom.
So, the next, and logical question is this: How do we then live? What is this people to look like? We seem very clear that the church should be markedly different in form and action than the world out of which it is supposedly called, We aren’t so clear about the details. At least, that is my perception of from the proverbial pews: We have succeeded in convincing people of the first thing, but given no real direction to follow. Call it a failure of imagining.
I know that I am supposed to be living differently, but all of my time is still spent providing shelter for myself and filling that shelter with stuff. We speak of “God’s economy” but give me the details.
Why are the leaders of the church hazy about the details? A couple of thoughts:
1. We don’t know what the Kingdom could look like any more than anybody. Not only have we not cast a vision (sic) - we’ve never had the vision.
2. We think it is too radical to call people to leave behind their stuff: we are used to asking people to leave sin behind - but asking about their financial / lifestyle is too hard.
3. We still think that Christianity is mostly an affair of the heart: to call for specific action might be legalism.
4. We are afraid of offending people
5. We are too enamored with our comfortable lifestyle to call people to give up their own: We also have bought into the American Dream
Are there other’s that I have missed? How might we call people toward being a people of the Resurrection?
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April 11th, 2007 at 5:28 pm
Well said!
April 11th, 2007 at 9:13 pm
I have two comments. The first might seem like I am being picky (and I could very well be), but I am hesitant to say that the church is the Kingdom, primarily because the Kingdom seems to start long before the church and exist (possibly one things) after the Parousia. I have always felt more comfortable saying that the church is part of “the people of God” (thus part of the Kingdom) and is the “body of Christ” (and again, part of the Kingdom). Also, it seems that the Kingdom is a heavenly idea that is here and not quite here (”on earth as it is in heaven”), and to say the church is that Kingdom seems to equate it as the entirety of the Kingdom, which then eclipses both the heavenly aspect as the idea that it is also future. On the surface it seems like semantics, but I think it is important to not equate the church as the Kingdom, without the dialectical pairing.
My second thought, good job. Yeah, I think you hit on a lot of good topics. I would also add race and gender, along with the affluent American lifestyle (greed, racism, and genderism? go hand in hand), is important to hit on and something the American church shies away from (and that would be me channeling Union). Oh yeah, and the church’s acceptance of violence visited upon others (as opposed to solidarity) and torture.
And along the systemic vein, I think the points you’ve brought up, while good, seem too personal. I really like what Walter Rauschenbusch has done in A Theology for the Social Gospel - namely he gives structural sins a name, The Kingdom of Evil. I think this puts well the idea of sin on both the personal and structural level, displaying the opposition between the Kingdom of Evil and Kingdom of God/Heaven. I think you start to hit on this when you mention the American Dream. But I think the points can be expanded to have both personal and systemic failures of the church.
Anyways, I think this is a pretty good starting point and a lucid post. yay.