The thing that is most striking to me about the early followers of Jesus is that they have the audacity to believe the world – their world – can be different. For the people of first-century Palestine, spiritual life is dominated by leaders of an antiquated and corrupted religious institution. Slavery is endemic; the plight of the vast majority. Fundamental divisions between Jews – the “people of God” – and Gentiles – everyone else – are irreconcilable, even “divinely ordained.” Prejudice and intolerance are harsh realities. Affliction is a sign and consequence of impurity. People are grist for the mills of empire building. Oppression in all its forms – economic, military, political – is inevitable, inescapable.
Change itself would seem impossible. There are powerful forces at work that have made things as they are, as they have been; forces and agents who benefit from the status quo and vigorously, even violently, resist change.
Yet right in the middle of it all, a movement begins among common people who simply live differently. They are called “The Way,” following One who shows them a way, and a truth, that leads to life – real life – in unity with God, now and forever. This One says that the last will be first; that any who would lead must be the servants of all. They live not by a rule of law, but of love. They reject the tyranny of power and fear and embrace different values and priorities. They are filled not with the spirit of the age, but the Spirit of God. They live into a vision not of earthly empire, but of the Kingdom of God – on earth as in heaven – where all people have worth and dignity, where none are excluded, where all are equal and resources are gifts to be shared. They speak truth to power and call the wrong-headed to repentance, undeterred by consequence. They counter violence with peaceful resistance. They understand themselves to be vitally connected to each other, to all people, to all creation, as though all are parts of one living body. They believe where one suffers, all suffer. In a world of domination, oppression and enslavement, they are free.
They believe God calls them to witness to the brokenness of the world by being the change they long to see, the change that must come. In the midst of the world, they live in God’s Kingdom. It is not ideology, or religious doctrine, or social theory. It is active, kinetic, incarnational. It is living as Christ for the sake of the world.
In their time – as in ours – all creation groaned, as in labor, awaiting the change they could bring … all creation waited in eager longing for the revealing of the children of God. (Romans 8:19-22)
