NO LONGER do I have to separate myself from the victims of society, whether they are in prisons or mental institutions, or the economically poor, unable to buy time, health, space, leisure, education for their children, or a host of other things. I know myself to be victimized, because I am the victim of these powers. I can be at home with other victims.
And I need no longer to be bound by the hurt of ancient wounds in my own life because the penetrating light of Christ can pierce the darkness—the deepest darkness. And no longer need I fear the aging process. It has no destructive power over me. My diminishing powers and your diminishing powers in certain areas are the preparation for a new depth of communion with God, for which I was destined. Death, which believes that I am its victim, will be as thwarted with me as it was with my Lord Jesus Christ, who slipped out from under its control.
The ultimate call on the life of the Christian is to build a faith community. That’s the revolutionary act. And to let its own interior life be changed and nurtured and increasingly freed from the principalities, institutions, from antichrist against which the human being in his own and her own power is totally and absolutely impotent. It’s the power of Jesus Christ, which is the power to save.
This is an excerpt of an article that originally appeared in the April 1977 issue of Sojourners. Read the full article here.
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