A Commonwealth of Care

We come into life not by self circumstance and act but by circumstance and act of others. We are not born to be dependent, yet we are born dependent. I was born dependent. The person next to me was born dependent, as was the person far from me. On whom do I depend? On whom do they depend? On each of us. On all of us. Hence, we are born to care, to care for each of us, for all of us. We come into life not facing self but facing another, needing another, to care for one another. From beginning to end, we are born to live in a commonwealth of care. And so we should.

The Kingdom Chronicles

Apparently the Vice President-elect on January 20, 2017, purposely will take the oath of office with his hand on a Bible open to 2 Chronicles 7:14. Yet this text cannot, if read properly in its original meaning, be applicable to the context of Christians in the United States, much less to the general population in this country. The United States is not, has never been, and never will become the land of God's people as Israel was the land of God's people at the time these words were written. The United States as a nation-state is not, never has been, and never will become the locus or vehicle of God's redemption of the earth and its people. Following Jesus, the church throughout the world (without identification with and reduction to any one people group or nation) is the locus and vehicle of God's redemption, for all the earth, for all people, with no most-favored nation status. We ill-construe and ill-serve the kingdom of God, our true citizenship, when we misrepresent Jesus and his cruciform re-creation of our world through such poor exegesis and application of God's Word.

To What Community Do We Belong?

To what community do we fundamentally belong? For followers of Jesus, the Church is that community. Our identity and allegiance root in and stem from our being in the Church. Certainly other communities to which we belong – nation, race, clan, gender, language, party, occupation, affinity, and more – shape and even "claim" us to greater or lesser degrees. Yet we must understand and pursue our essential belonging, our paramount and therefore focal identity and allegiance, in and through the community of the Church. We must subordinate, and in some ways and instances even refuse, claims from those other communities on our identity and allegiance, on our very life. To the extent we seek and experience the true commonweal of this world and of our individual life in it – trust and hope and love, and truth and beauty and goodness – we must do so fundamentally within and from the community, the society, which is the Church, which is ultimately the kingdom of God.

Reluctant Leadership

At every level of social organization, we need leaders who do not want to be in positions of leadership.

Some Thoughts on Romans 1:1-15

About twenty five years before Paul wrote this letter, Jesus was crucified outside of Jerusalem by Roman authorities with the consent of Jewish leaders. In the intervening period a Christian community arose in Rome. The time was now the middle 50s A.D., with a young Nero in his first years as emperor of the Roman empire.

When Paul wrote, he had never visited Rome. He certainly had not founded the church in Rome. Why then did Paul write? He, like other Christians around the Mediterranean, had heard of the faithfulness of Christians in Rome. He wrote to express his care for them and desire to see them. He also wrote to explain in some detail God’s good news in Jesus, the relationship of the Jewish people and Gentiles to God and to each other, and the ethical implications of being a follower of Jesus. Worthy of deep and prayerful study, this letter engages both our hearts and our minds.

This opening section of the letter consists of Paul’s introduction. It includes a greeting, commendation of the believers in Rome, Paul’s credentials as an apostle, and reasons for his writing. It also includes certain fundamental assertions about Jesus and our relationship to Jesus.

We should take special note of these assertions. From familiarity with church history and our life in the church, we may miss how striking they are, especially in original context. At the outset of this letter Paul reminded the Christians in Rome who really is the ruler of the world – of empires, nations, and people. Jesus is the Son of God and the Lord – not the emperor. Believers belong to Jesus – not to the Roman empire.

Questions of allegiance and identity are basic to life. They are certainly basic to Christian life. As Bob Dylan sang, “You’re gonna have to serve somebody.” At the outset of this letter, Paul makes clear that we serve Jesus. Our allegiance is to Jesus; our identity (our belonging) is formed in Jesus. Yes, we live in nations and societies of the world. Yes, they assert their claim on us. Yet, as we have been baptized into Jesus’ death and reborn in his resurrection, our hearts, our minds, our very lives belong to him first and last. May we let Jesus, not the world around us, shape our allegiance and identity deeply, fully, visibly.

Prosperity, Security, Shalom, and the Kingdom

In the Friday, July 25, 2008, Washington Post, I read an opinion piece by Michael Gerson on a recent biography of William Wilberforce by William Hague. In the final paragraph of his article, Gerson remarked that "Hague's life of Wilberforce should be read by every student of politics, to understand why mere prosperity and mere security will never be sufficient goals of evangelical political involvement."

While I concur about Wilberforce's example and look forward to reading this new biography, may I suggest that prosperity and security should never be proper goals for evangelical political involvement, at least not as they are often conceived by many evangelicals. It is very difficult for me, reading the New Testament, to imagine them to be goals that Jesus taught and sought for himself, or for his disciples and his church. Unless, I would argue, such prosperity and security are understood as the stuff of true shalom, the kingdom of God on earth, which is envisioned as ultimately encompassing all people and all peoples. Would then that we, Jesus’ followers, incarnated and pursued kingdom prosperity and security for all, not just for some, without inequity and injustice, without fear and conflict, both within societies and between societies. Yet I suspect that the prosperity and security pursued by evangelical political involvement, at least in the United States, are basically the bourgeois desires of relatively privileged segments of society and the regrettable conflation of Christianity with American nationalism. If I am correct, then they are not proper goals of Christian political involvement, for they fail the measure of that true prosperity and security which mark the blessings of God's shalom, God's kingdom, for all people across all divisions of privilege, affiliation, alienation, and enmity.

A Note on the Kingdom of God and the State

We must never mistake relative congeniality between the claims of the kingdom of God and the manifestations of a particular state or society for essential congeniality between them. In principle, the claims of the kingdom must always be distinguished from and valued above the manifestations of any state or society. In certain instances this principled distinction and valuation may be characterized by less tension and by relative congeniality. Here the danger is to be lulled by this comparative peace into the seductive identification of essential congeniality. Allegiance to and identity in the kingdom are compromised or lost, wittingly or not, in a "sacralizing" nationalism or acculturation. In other instances this principled distinction and valuation may be fraught with tension and risk, even to the point of actual loss and death. Here the dangers are at least two. One is to succumb to fear - to mute, hide, and perhaps even repudiate kingdom claims on our identity and life - in order to save our self, our family, and our fellow kingdom residents. The other is to refuse the illicit allegiance of a particular state only to go, not to the kingdom, but to some other set of claims on identity and life, such as ethnicity, gender, or alien philosophy or ideology. Amid all of this we do well to remember and obey the New Testament admonitions to seek first the kingdom of God, to lose our self for the sake of Jesus, and to live as citizens of heaven, from whence comes our savior, our lord.

The Kingdom and Politics

“We, by contrast, are citizens of heaven, and from heaven we expect our deliverer to come, the Lord Jesus Christ.” (St. Paul, Philippians 3:20.)


In an epigraph to his poem “Politics,” William Butler Yeats quotes the writer Thomas Mann: “In our time the destiny of man presents its mean­ings in politi­cal terms.” This statement proclaims the great significance of poli­tics in our age. In a presidential election year Americans are particularly con­front­ed with the import of politics for personal and national life.

American Christians are also confronted with this significant reality. Within the context of politics, American Christians must seek responses and involvements which are characterized by obedience to our Lord and his Kingdom. We cannot abandon our existence in and concern for the world about us. Hence, we must care about the political realm, for in that realm we inescapably live. At the same time we cannot ignore our ultimate allegiance to Christ as Lord, for we are indeed citizens of heaven, of the Kingdom of God. Therefore in various ways, as American Christians, we must seek involve­ment in the politi­cal events of this society in an intentionally Christian manner.

However, a strong word of admonition must be spoken here.

The strategy and program of the Kingdom, if we may speak thus, cannot and must not be reduced to and identified with the strategy and program of any political party or ideology.

It is a disturbing fact that many American Christians do just that. Some consider a genuine Christian perspective in politics to be identical with nationalistic conservatism, whereas others consider a Christian perspective to be identical with every new advocacy of liberalism. Either identification suffers a tragic reduction and capitulation of the Christian vision of the Kingdom of God to a merely political vision.

In contrast, a faithful and consistent Christian involvement in the world and its politics will confound non-Christian political observers and participants, because sometimes Chris­tians will urge “conservative” positions and sometimes, “liberal” positions. This will be so, not because the Kingdom is chaotic, but because the Kingdom cannot be cut and pasted to the form and content of any political party or ideology. The “political” commitment of Christians must be to the Kingdom of God above all else, and this Kingdom is both the judgment and the transformation of the political realities and ideologies of all earthly kingdoms.