So how should Christians live in society? Here are pieces of Stanley Hauerwas' response
Very carefully; but, I would also say, joyfully. That's the most important thing a Christian can do.... Every social order is going to give Christians peculiar challenges. Christians belong to a worldwide church that has great and varied resources; they're not trapped in any one country. Their home is part of a movable feast.
This notion of our home as a "movable feast" is powerful and practical for me. It became even more so when I was talking with a person who finds great encouragement from the weekly celebration of worship and the Lord's Supper. As we were talking about the interest in many people who are "caught up" in being "caught up" and taken to heaven, he said that the way he enters a conversation with people who want to go to heaven is to say he's been there and he would be willing to take them with him. He also would go so far to say he has seen and been a participant in the end times of the glory of Christ. He said he would invite them to worship. The Lord's Supper offered to all who come brings us into the the completion of all things. The singing of hymns...people gathered together - without the distinctions within our world holding a place for us...the emphasis on the the gathering of saints from every time and place...the reading of scripture that ties us to the past - points to the end of time - and brings substance to this day, is for him...the beginning of the end...the fullness of time within time. The service of worship or the mass or liturgy of Holy Communion or the gathering for the Lord's Supper in worship. etc., is an event that has no one homeland and cannot be claimed or owned by any one people. It is a movable feast that claims us and shapes us no matter what political power appears to be in control.
Connection: So how do we live within this day? As though we are people invited to the feast of victory of our Lord God. How do we take the graciousness of that invitation and make it a part of the way we approach the people of our day? How would you live with the people around you at work knowing that they too are guests at the feast...just as you are?
Lord of all time, you shelter your people within your loving embrace like a hen protecting her chicks at times of terror and trouble. For us you bring life through death...for us you bring hope for tomorrow when today appears grim and at an end. Be for us the joy that fills this day with new life for all. Amen.
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