The gospel calls us to repentance and invites us to the new community of those who seek to bear witness to the new order of the
The biblical word for repentance is metanoia, which literally means “turning the mind around,” “to change your form.” It means a transformation of one’s life that is more basic, far deeper, and more far reaching, than our common understanding of the word repentance. Why is this call to metanoia so strong and demanding? Because the coming of Jesus Christ heralds a new age, the inbreaking of a new order. “… the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death, a light has dawned. From that lime Jesus began to preach, saying, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’” Or in contemporary language, “Change your way of thinking, for the New Order of the Spirit is impinging upon you.” Matthew 4:16, 17
Clearly, a new order is upon us and for this reason we are called to change our ways of thinking and living, to turn to Jesus for a whole new way of life. John Howard Yoder describes the meaning of the gospel for our times:
The priority agenda for Jesus, and for many of us, is not mortality or anxiety, but unrighteousness, injustice. The need is not for consolation or acceptance but for a new order in which [people] may live together in love. In His time, therefore, as in ours, the question of revolution, the judgment of God upon the present order and imminent promise of another one, is the language in which the gospel must speak.
Flowing from the call to repentance is the invitation to join the new community, the voluntary society, the new peoplehood and social reality of those who have experienced metanoia and together share and bear witness to the life which Jesus brings. It is the nature of this new community especially in its relationship to the old order that we now turn our attention.
The New Testament affirms a basic tension between the priorities of the
Because we cannot determine the shape of our discipleship alone, a community of faith becomes imperative. A community of faith becomes the center of both resistance and celebration: resistance to the old order and celebration of the new. This is the kind of faith community the New Testament calls the church. It can take different forms, but to be the church there must be community present among the believers. Christian community must be active, first of all, in creating new awareness of the meaning of our faith and the nature of the world in which we live and seek to bear witness. Since what we do flows from what we think we are, a primary problem for Christians today is that they simply do not realize who they are as the people of God. They don’t understand the meaning and implications of their Christian calling and how that relates to responsible participation in the life of the world. Christian community can sharpen that awareness. Secondly, community must facilitate the creation of new styles of life that both free people to live in alternative ways and bear witness to the kingdom. Thirdly, community must begin to evoke creative responses to the world that arise from new awareness. These creative responses must bear witness to the faith within the community as they seek to confront the powers and mythologies of our society that seek to stamp us with their image as they destroy people’s lives. To create new awareness, to create new styles of life, to evoke meaningful responses it is absolutely essential that a community be characterized by serious study of the Bible, serious study of the economic, political, social, and cultural realities of our time (so that we like Karl Barth can do our theology with our Bible in one hand and our newspaper in the other) and a real dependence upon prayer and the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
The church then is called to relate to the world as a new community of transformed people. Sister Kelleher of Network writes:
When the church becomes a power of the world, uses the same methods, or loses her focal point in favor of social moralism or economic success, then there is corruption. However, when the church remembers the pitfalls of her own history, stands firmly on the grounds of revelation, and speaks with compassion, she fulfills her role as prophet and gives witness to the faith and love within her.
What is this new community to be to the world? There are four stances or relationships to the world that seem to me to be at the core of what the new community is to be.
ALTERNATIVE. It is crucial that we not just speak of alternatives but rather begin to live and to be these alternatives. Most important, we are to be a sign, a sign of Christ’s presence in the world, not an ecclesiastical reflection of the twisted values of technocratic society. So first of all, and at the basis of everything we do, we must be a kingdom-conscious body of people who by their very presence and existence call into question the values, assumptions, and very structure of their world and free people to live in alternative ways. We must understand our identity as Christians—those who have been freed from service of self, of nations, of ideologies, of movements, freed to form a new social reality that is a visible witness to the new order and freed to serve others.
SERVANT. We must be not conquerors, but a self-giving, sacrificial body whose leader was crucified on a cross and asks his followers to follow him. Giving a cup of cold water in his name means many things, from feeding hungry people to exposing and confronting abusive power structures that cause hunger. Because institutions are so determinative of people’s lives we must learn to relate to them and how to confront and act against them when they become oppressive. As we see in Matthew 25, it is in how we serve our needy neighbor that our love for God himself will be expressed and tested. We need to discover what serving human need practically means in relation to the gulf between rich and poor nations, and the affluent and oppressed classes at home, in relation to social and political action, to work, and vocation.
MINISTERS OF RECONCILIATION. The gospel is the good news of the inbreaking of a new order and the message of reconciliation and new life. This promise of reconciliation to one’s God and one’s neighbor is at the heart of the gospel. Thus as ministers of reconciliation we must be where the alienation, the tension, the antagonisms are most intense. It is in explosive and violent situations, in revolutionary ferment, where Christian presence is needed most and sometimes can provide the only ray of hope and healing in otherwise destructive circumstances. Richard Shaull writes: “Any hope for a significant Christian contribution to the revolutionary struggles going on around the world will depend ... on the emergence of new forms of Christian community on the front lines of revolution.”
PROPHET. We must maintain the independence and the free perspective necessary to be obedient in prophetic witness. If we are too dependent on our society, its values, securities, and institutions, we will be unable to raise the prophetic voice so desperately needed in our times. The new community must witness to the fact that Christ has triumphed over the principalities and powers (Col. 2:15). The rebellious powers have been defeated by Christ and their final end is assured. The gospel liberates people from their slavery and tells us that we need no longer be determined by them. While they retain limited legitimate functions, they have lost their ultimate authority. The church’s responsibility is to defy and resist the powers when they overstep their proper limited purposes, when they make absolute claim for themselves, when they command action contrary to the values of the kingdom which has the ultimate authority for our lives. The prophetic ministry to which we are called gives us a revolutionary mission in politics. Jacques Ellul describes the mission:
… the prophet is not one who confines him [or her]self to foretelling with more or less precision an event more or less distant; [s/]he is one who already ‘lives’ it, and already makes it actual and present in his [or her] own environment. In consequence of the claims which God is always making on the world, the Christian finds him [or her]self, by that very fact, involved in a state of permanent revolution. Even when the institutions, the laws, the reforms which [s/]he has advocated have been achieved, even if society be reorganized according to his suggestions, [s/]he still has to be in opposition, [s/]he still must exact more, for the claim of God is as infinite as [God's] forgiveness. Thus the Christian is called to question unceasingly all that [humanity] calls progress, discovery, facts, established results, reality, etc. [S/]He can never be satisfied with all this human labor, and in consequence [s/]he is always claiming that it should be transcended, or replaced by something else.
In his [or her] judgment [s/]he is guided by the Holy Spirit—[s/]he is making an essentially revolutionary act. If the Christian is not being revolutionary, then in some way or another [s/]he has been unfaithful to his [or her] calling in the world.
Our prophetic mission must be spiritually discerning and deeply sensitive to the forces of history and the work of the Spirit. We need to do more than to respond to events and crises after they reach the front page of the New York Times. Rather we should seek to give signals, warnings to the dangerous consequences of present historical patterns and choices. We need to stop letting the world set our agenda for us and begin to understand the agenda of the kingdom and seek to flesh it out.
The new community, then, is alternative, servant, minister of reconciliation, and prophet. In all these we are guided by the Holy Spirit and energized by the love of Christ that has transformed our lives. Jesus Christ is the leader of the new community. In John 17 he prays to his father [and mother] for the new community.
But now I am coming to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them thy word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I do not pray that thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; thy word is truth. As thou didst send me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be consecrated in truth. I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. John 17:13-21
May the world believe because of our witness.
Jim Wallis is editor in chief of Sojourners magazine.
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