This week's devotions are written by Vicar Steve Bond.
More from Marva Dawn's Powers, Weakness, and the Tabernacling of God…
If our Christianity were true [to the God revealed in Christ], it would itself actually be subversive of every other kind of power, including mammon, political power, religious phenomena, morality, and culture….Because we are members of Christ's Body, we must let his Word describe our world rather than vice versa. To let ideologies control our theological work is to be subverted by powers other than God.
Even though it can come off as separatist or naively other-worldly, I like the language of Christianity as subversive. It reminds me in my most comfortable, satisfied moments that the Jesus whom I claim to follow lived and acted in ways that questioned every other system and redefined every category around - he lived as though the outcast were let in, the self-admitting sinners were the true believers, and the losers were the winners. He lived as though he was not a subject of the Roman Empire or under Herod's rule, as if he believed those old orders didn't have ultimate claims on him, as if the Kingdom of God really had come near. Jesus lived in an incredible, subversive freedom that redrew lines and redefined creation as first and foremost belonging to God, and his most subversive act of all was to die freely on a Roman cross.
As the community of followers of Jesus - or better yet, as those Jesus has claimed to belong to him - we have been given that same subversive freedom: to see the world with a new clarity, a new definition, even a re-definition. And suddenly, old lines - between red and blue states, between deserving and undeserving, between ally and enemy-are radically redrawn. Suddenly, old categories no longer stick to us. Suddenly, in the midst of squabbling empires clamoring to tell us who to be, we can live as if the Reign of God really has come near.
Connection: How would I act if I were completely free from all claims of who I should be and what I should care about-from the morning news, from campaign ads, from cultural voices - except for the claim of Christ in baptism that I belong to God? How would God's claim redefine who I am and free me to live?
Lord, you are a God who speaks. Speak again to us - in the midst of countless voices shouting at us-so that we can clearly hear your promise above the din. Tell us again who we are and to whom we belong.
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