The Battle Won

The following are some excerpts from "Following Jesus" by N. T. Wright. I wanted to include these quotations because they shape my thinking about my responsibility as a Christian to be salt and light in society (which includes political issues).

I highly encourage you to buy this book. It is a short 114 page book of reflections on Christian discipleship taken from scripture and applied to our modern historical context. The quotes below come from N. T. Wright's reflections on Colossians.

Paul wrote from prison a stunning short letter, in which the victory of Christ over the powers becomes and central and vital theme. But what are these 'powers'?... force, power, climate, entities bigger than the sum total of the human beings involved... All things were made in Christ, through Christ, and for Christ. All things - including the 'powers'! The world is not ultimately divided into bits that are irreducibly good and bits that are irreducibly bad. Everything - the invisible things as well as the visible - was made by the creator, through the agency of his eternal Son...

What happens to people who stand up to the powers? It looks fine for a while; and then the tanks roll in. Anyone looking at the crucified Jesus would draw the conclusion that that's what had happened. The powers killed him: that's what they do to people who challenge them. The powers nailed up above his head the charge of which he was guilty: he was a rebel... And he goes on his way, the way of the cross, the way which totally subverts all the earthly powers.

I would like to thank Nick Read Brown for helping me to understand that the way to prepare myself mentally for living out faith in light of the very powerful 'powers' of this earth is not to ignore them, but to defy them, subvert them. My intentions were on the right path, but Nick helped me to see that a battle plan for subversion and defiance is guaranteed more success than ignoring the strength of the 'powers'.

And so the third point that Paul makes about the powers, astonishingly, is that they have been reconciled to Christ. Having been defeated, they are not annihilated. God is in Christ making a new world; now, however, brought into new order under the authority of Christ. God intends the powers to serve him, and to serve and sustain his human creatures.

I wanted to reference "Christ & Culture" by H. Richard Niebuhr here. There are "types" of Christian ethics as defined by this book; 'Christ above culture' is one of those types. I recommend this book to anyone up for a challenge that stretches theological understanding and knowledge of the English language. Secondly, I want to point out N. T. Wright's subtle reference to the concept of a 'New World Order' that has been coined by 'powers' of this earth for their own motives.

Paul's vision of the Christian life is thus of a life lived between D-Day and VE-Day. We are called to thanksgiving, where we stand at last in the truly human relationship to the creator and the world; and we are called to thanksliving, where we behave as the free subjects of the true king, and owe the powers nothing at all.

How can we celebrate and put into practice this victory today? How can we follow this Jesus into the genuine victory? It is surprisingly simple. Every time you kneel down to pray, especially when you pray the prayer of the kingdom (which we call the Lord's Prayer), you are saying that Jesus is Lord and that the 'powers' aren't... And every time we celebrate the Eucharist, we celebrate the victory of Jesus Christ in a way which , by the power of its symbolic action, resonates out, into the city, into the country, into the world, into our homes, into our marriages, into our bank accounts... And if we grasped that vision and lived by it, we would be able at last to address some of the problems in the Church and the world that loom so large and seem so intractable. The battle has been won; let's get on and implement it.