Good News (Updated)

Another quote for you from Shane Claiborne's Jesus For President.

This one resonates loudly, as I constantly seek the balance (ordinarily a term I despise) in protesting the actions of uncaring governments, and understanding that we are the solution.

Our president is not organizing another political party, nope... not even running with Nader on the Green ticket. Jesus is forming a new kind of people, a different kind of party, whose peculiar politics are embodied in who we are. The church is a people called out of the world to embody a social alternative that the world cannot know on its own terms. We are not simply asking the government to be what God has commissioned the church to be. After all, even the best governments can't legislate love. We can build hundreds of units of affordable housing (a good idea, by the way) and people still might not have homes. We can provide universal health care and keep folks breathing longer (another nice move), but people can be breathing and still not be truly alive. We can create laws to enforce good behavior, but no law has ever changed a human heart or reconciled a broken relationship. The church is not simply suggesting political alternatives. The church is embodying one.

The idea that the church is to be the body of Christ is not just something to read about in theology books and leave for the scholars to pontificate about. We are literally to be the body of Jesus in the world. Christians are to be little Christs--people who put flesh on Jesus  in the world today. You are the only only Jesus some people will ever see. The promise of the church is this: none of us alone are Christ (that's blasphemy), but all of us together are Christ to the world (that's ecclesiology). (p.228, emphases mine)

UPDATE:

It's easy to have political views--that's what politicians do. But it's much harder to embody a political alternative--that's what saints do. (p. 235)

Comments

[Dilys]

what do you do when you only see pictures of the church failing to embody that alternative? i know there are pockets of christians who are looking forward and helping to usher in the kingdom of God. but on any given sunday, when i'm sitting in my pew, i hear theology that is relevant for my personal spiritual state, but disconnected to how i live and work in the world. i'm quite tired of trying to connect the dots on my own. i want to work out these issues in, with a community. is that possible?

[Mike]

I absolutely think it is possible, Dilys. The problem--at last part of the problem--is that it takes imagination, courage, and faith, and I think it requires giving up more than most of us are willing to risk.

[Tim]

This guy has really been reading John Howard Yoder, hasn't he?