I’m working on a sermon for Sunday. A couple of things have been swirling around my brain for a while.
The first is Shane Claiborne’s ‘Jesus for President’ stuff where he talks about the revolutionary kingdom. The subversion of the Gospel of the Caesars and Mark’s mocking of Caesar in the way he depicts the Crucifixion as a coronation.
The video I posted of Rob Bell sharing his thoughts on the Good News echo these thoughts.
So that’s where Sunday’s sermon is going. The kingdom of God is a subversive revolution.
I remember the fuss about this picture of Jesus depicted as Che Guevara, the revolutionary who was a key player in the Cuban revolution. People were genuinely outraged. I hope it was because they wouldn’t associate Jesus with violent revolution but I have more than a sneaking suspicion that people just don’t see Jesus in the revolutionary role.
So, what do you think? was Jesus ‘meek and mild’? Or is there more to this Gospel than that? Is the Gospel political? Is it a call to subversive living?
If you recall all the trouble I used to be in over the anti-nuclear issue then you’ll know the extent to which the gospel affected me politically. Before I had any faith I had no political awareness of my own – let alone the drive to do something about it.
Well, if we are citizens of the Kingdom of God, and to not be conformed to the image of this world, oh and then live in the light of the sermon on the mount (cheesemakers and all) then we can’t be anything other than revolutionary.
I can’t remember who it was that originally coined the phrase/shared the idea that God is putting everything back the right-way-up.
Creation groans, crying out for the children of God (that’ll be those in Christ then) to be revealed, and I don’t think that’s about the end of the age. I think they are calling for a revolution that will reveal Jesus through lives that point to Him and Him alone.
/rant
Oh yeah, but they will know we are Jesus’ people by our love (not our clubs & spears)