We Are Not The Ones
We are all negotiating how to navigate the turbulence of our time, which, by most sober accounts, is marked by accelerating change—if not outright decline, disenfranchisement, regression, and loss. In my reading, both a symptom and a cause of this acceleration is the growing suspicion that we are on our own—or, as I recently heard quoted in a sermon, "we are the ones we've been waiting for."It makes a certain kind of sense. Human beings are driving much of this change and creating the conditions that contribute to decline and decay. Why shouldn't we—the only apparent agents of history—also be the ones to manipulate and direct change toward progress? Why shouldn't we capitalize on the possibilities latent within the present in order to actualize a better future? Why shouldn't we be responsible for our own fate, even our own salvation?
And who am I to suggest otherwise?
But I am captivated by an alternative thought: that the gospel of Jesus Christ is not the good news that we can save ourselves if only we strive with different motives and values than the people around us. Nor is the gospel primarily an ethical summons to build a better world. Rather, the gospel is the holy announcement, proclaimed in word and embodied in concrete expression, that the reign of God—the kingdom, kindom, realm, dominion, commonwealth, or whatever language one prefers—is coming.
Not that we are becoming God's world through sufficient effort or enlightened commitment, but that God's world is coming to us. Not that history is progressing toward a future we must engineer, but that the olam habba is drawing near.
The gospel is a promise of eschaton, not telos; of coming, not becoming; of rescue, not striving.
Indeed, the gospel is the good news that we are free from striving. Even as the weeds of injustice and destruction grow around us, the seed of the crucified Christ has already been planted. Even where there appears to be little or no potential, the Spirit who filled the lungs of the crucified now fills the world and is making all things new. Even now. Until the last enemy is defeated. Until God is all in all. Until Christ is Lord of a reconciled heaven and earth.
To me, this—and not a gospel of striving—is good news. To me, this is liberation.
If the generative kernel of agency in our imagination for the world is our own action rather than the action of God, then we are slaves: slaves to the law, servants of expediency, compelled to struggle endlessly against flesh and blood, against the tidal wave of injustice cresting over our heads.
But if what saves us is a liberating God—a divine agent who raises dead bodies and not merely bodies capable of pulling themselves up—then we are utterly free.
Free to struggle not against flesh and blood but against the principalities and powers that hold us captive. Free even to love those who oppose us, trusting that while we may not be able to change everyone, we can love everyone. Free to work for justice without believing that justice depends upon us. For God is doing the decisive work—work we cannot do and yet into which we are graciously invited.
We are not the ones we've been waiting for. We are dead in our transgressions. Jesus is the one we've been waiting for.
And who am I to suggest otherwise?
But I am captivated by an alternative thought: that the gospel of Jesus Christ is not the good news that we can save ourselves if only we strive with different motives and values than the people around us. Nor is the gospel primarily an ethical summons to build a better world. Rather, the gospel is the holy announcement, proclaimed in word and embodied in concrete expression, that the reign of God—the kingdom, kindom, realm, dominion, commonwealth, or whatever language one prefers—is coming.
Not that we are becoming God's world through sufficient effort or enlightened commitment, but that God's world is coming to us. Not that history is progressing toward a future we must engineer, but that the olam habba is drawing near.
The gospel is a promise of eschaton, not telos; of coming, not becoming; of rescue, not striving.
Indeed, the gospel is the good news that we are free from striving. Even as the weeds of injustice and destruction grow around us, the seed of the crucified Christ has already been planted. Even where there appears to be little or no potential, the Spirit who filled the lungs of the crucified now fills the world and is making all things new. Even now. Until the last enemy is defeated. Until God is all in all. Until Christ is Lord of a reconciled heaven and earth.
To me, this—and not a gospel of striving—is good news. To me, this is liberation.
If the generative kernel of agency in our imagination for the world is our own action rather than the action of God, then we are slaves: slaves to the law, servants of expediency, compelled to struggle endlessly against flesh and blood, against the tidal wave of injustice cresting over our heads.
But if what saves us is a liberating God—a divine agent who raises dead bodies and not merely bodies capable of pulling themselves up—then we are utterly free.
Free to struggle not against flesh and blood but against the principalities and powers that hold us captive. Free even to love those who oppose us, trusting that while we may not be able to change everyone, we can love everyone. Free to work for justice without believing that justice depends upon us. For God is doing the decisive work—work we cannot do and yet into which we are graciously invited.
We are not the ones we've been waiting for. We are dead in our transgressions. Jesus is the one we've been waiting for.
Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.
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| Christ and the Apostles Georges Rouault French 1937–38 |