Take a System Break
THE WORD world in the Gospels doesn’t mean creation. It implies the systems that human beings come up with to administer their societies. So, it really means, The System or else it sometimes refers to the people who are caught up in it. The System is almost always going to be in diametric opposition to the Way, the Truth and the Life, by its very nature, that it is conceived in the first place as a means of control and stabilization. The conscious follower of Christ, born (again) of the Spirit, is like the wind, not controlled nor stable. (S)he is in the world but not of the world. Hiraeth for the kingdom of heaven is the emotional mist in the psyche of the follower of Christ.
So, who are we, if we say we are Christ’s body, and what is our purpose?
If we just take a break from our programmed, religion-doctrined ideas about God, it is not too difficult to realise that much of our language about God Almighty, Lord, King etc is misleading. I am not saying it is wrong to make intercession to the Lord God Almighty, we know when we do that there is a transference of meaning in the power of those words. But what I am saying is let’s do it consciously. Let’s notice, when we pray or read, the vulnerability which God chooses to reveal in the New Testament. Jesus takes no System titles for himself and he does not seem to envisage his followers taking over the world. If we take away our indoctrined lenses, we can see in the Gospels that the most Jesus seemed to hope for is that his disciples might become a little flock (Luke 12:32), or like a little salt, leaven or yeast (Matthew 13). Jesus imbues the patience and humility to trust a slow leavening process.
We are programmed to worry that our churches are not full of people waving their arms in Christ-praising ecstasy. But that was never the plan! Christ’s hope was and is that there’d be just enough people who, like Abram in our Hebrew Bible reading today, Paul in the New Testament, or like the psalmist, are prepared to walk out of the safety of systemic country or kindred, lift up their eyes to the hills and go faith to be the leaven in the dough and so save the entire world from blind delusion and self-destruction.
Tonnau Duw ('God's waves') Fr Tim Ardouin 