#3 Live the alternative – We are meant to be God’s future now. Live as if that future is here. Incarnate it. – Bishop Peter Storey January 30, 2025 Dear siblings in Christ, Christians live in the great paradoxical in-between. We have given our hearts to the story that says God’s Commonwealth has come, fully and for all, in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. We believe that in becoming human, God made being human a holy and wonderful thing. But we also look around us and see so many places where that wholeness and wellbeing is woefully incomplete. We see places where that Commonwealth is not yet. Places where we know we are not at home and wonder how on earth we can sing the Lord’s song in a strange land (Psalm 137:2). But singing that song is one of the reasons we exist. As people who have tasted the goodness and love of God, who have caught a glimpse of what a redeemed and recreated world looks like, we name and celebrate where wholeness is manifest. Because of our faith, we also have something to speak to in the broken places. It’s a powerful temptation to believe our own words without acting on them. Bishop Storey’s third precept for living an authentic life under Apartheid directs us to do that very thing. Not only do we have a responsibility to name the alternative, but also to live it. What is it like for us when we act as though God’s dream for the world was really here, right now? Bishop Storey’s congregation was an integrated one, with both black and white members. Of course, under Apartheid, black citizens didn’t have a vote in any election. If God’s dream for the world was realized, the congregation reasoned, everyone would have the same rights. So they set out to find a creative and practical way to live that future in their present day. They paired each black member with a white one. Then the black member of the pair shared who and what they would vote for, if they had that right, with their white partner. When the white member went to vote, they voted exactly as their black partner would if they could. They incarnated a world where black people had the vote. Just think of all the opportunities we have every day to do something similar! Trying to find God’s way and act it out is the moment in which we live. It’s an ongoing engagement, a process of always acknowledging the realities around us on the one hand, and the dream of God for humankind and all creation on the other. Live the alternative. We are meant to be God’s future now. Live as if that future is here. Incarnate it. With you on the path, |
Jenny+ |
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