Thursday 11 February 2010

Here is a follow up on yesterday' piece from Battle - it is in Tutu's words.

God loves those who do not love, not because they were good but because he is that kind of God - just as light cannot help seeking to dispel darkness....And so when God had formed the Israelite slaves into a people, his peculiar people, his holy nation, his royal priesthood, God demanded that they reflect his character. By holy as God was holy - remarkably a holiness that had little to do with natural purity as if a static attribute, but it was dynamic having to do with how they ordered their socio-political, economic life and ultimately tested by how they treated the widow, the orphan and the alien (Leviticus 19).

A community that reflects God's character is the beloved community - as M.L.King would put it. It is a community that comes into the world and sets up operations that serve the world. In so doing, the world turns around and takes a look at what is new and different...and the world is amazed. So amazed will the world be that it will begin to follow this community of amazing grace and love where justice and mercy and loving kindness become the routine - the ordinary - the necessary. When the beloved community (be that Israel or the Church) loses its character, it will look and act like the rest of the world. This does not mean that the beloved community must separate itself from others - as though they are the right ones with lives that are pure and holy as opposed to others. Rather, the beloved community becomes the beloved community as it gives itself away to the world for the sake of the world. This kind of witness present us with the awe of God's living Reign. I have never been in a state of awe when the Church has been an institution of rules and patterns that some say must be forever and ever because they somehow are more natural than other ways of life. I am in awe each time I see walls come down, people befriending enemies, arms embracing the outcasts and outcasts knowing that that are home.

Connection: What does the character of God's Reign bring to your day and when you long to see that character where do you go to witness its glory?

Let your Reign come down upon us and make us wet with the waters of new life that comes in our baptism. As we are brought into your beloved community, strengthen us and guide us along the path of our Lord, Jesus. In that way...there is life we have yet to see fully. Amen.