A thought after hearing the sermon today. That politics dominates the human imagination even among people not particularly political, so that even though people hold ideas that describe power in many different ways, when something of enormous magnitude happens imaginations often leap to politics as a sort of secret pinnacle of the transformative.
Consider the resurrection and ascension. Christ is bodily raised. And though Christ has given many explicit and implicit signs that his kingdom is not of this world, and though the disciples have been under Christ's instruction through all of it, they still extrapolate the resurrection out to it's implications for the Romans and Israel's governance. We are not given indications that the disciples are particularly interested in politics. Only one of them is described as having any political identity. Yet the resurrection is such an amazing event it is as if its ends must primarily manifest themselves in human governance. "Are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel?" the disciples ask at the beginning of Acts. Christ brushes off the question. Instead he points to the coming of the Holy Spirit and commissions them as witnesses. Israel does not get another mention. Then he ascends. The Ascension, for one final and definitive time, separates out the Kingdom of God from the human State. Shifting in systems of human governance will happen, but this won't merit a mention at Christ's farewell. The coming of the Kingdom, as Christ prepares the disciples for it, is an event outside the parameters of the State.
This is worth considering after watching elections for the past few weeks. I've been following the British elections and I'm watching the US gear up for midterm elections too, with primaries this month. For me, fascinating stuff. It's not as if politics doesn't matter or as if health or hurt aren't advanced through the state. But it is true - like the disciples wondering if the resurrection's purpose wasn't going to be a coup - that we are terrible at assigning things their true significance. In default, we order things pretty much as the world orders itself, with governance at the top. The disciples might not have described themselves as overrating the importance of politics. They were all following an itinerant preacher around for a living, after all. But assumptions of the apparent natural order of things operated in them just as strongly. Will you restore the kingdom to Israel?, they ask. We are prone to these same assumptions about the primariness of the state, even when we are not particularly interested in politics. On the day to day level maybe we're right in this assumption. But ultimately the answer is no. The Ascension brushes aside the state as the key to big picture understanding. In the natural order of that world, no coup or election drives the action. Instead, Christ points toward the Holy Spirit. To invest your energies in the world, in whatever arena, with true significance, look there.
Future sermon series?
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