Kerry Koller gave this talk in February, 1998, to the South Bend branch. He used the phrase âJoin the revolutionâ as a rallying cry and boldly proclaimed that we, the People of Praise, are the solution to the worldâs problems. For more on Christianity as a revolutionary activity, see Kerryâs âCoordinator as Revolutionary Leaderâ series found here: https:// peopleofpraise.org/file-library/264/.
Transcript
This document is a direct transcript of an audio recording, and may contain transcription errors and other minor edits for the sake of clarity.
KERRY: This is a big room! Golly. Iâll try to keep making eye contact with everybody here if I can [some laugh], soâI hope nobody gets stuck behind me. This is a lengthy talk, so you wonât offend me if you stand up or walk around. But, itâs a fairly lengthy talk.
Iâd like to start by having us consider our own lives in Christ. My guess would be that many of us, and certainly probably most of our brother and sister Christians, understand our lifeâour lives in Christ to be primarily a matter of internal, individual piety, and our place on the scale of virtue and vice. Those are the kinds of things probably many of us think about when we think about our life in Christ. And certainly, I think, itâs the common coin for most Christians.
We instinctively think this way, and I think part of the reason has to doâand what I want to suggest here is, because we live in a culture which is hyper-individualistic. We tend to think of almost everything in terms of unique individuals and aggregates, or groups, of individuals, collections of individuals. We understand the individual as a unique, radically free, autonomous agent, moving around on [sic] the world. And we understand society as a collection of those kinds of agents.
And so as Christiansâitâs not surprising in that culture, in that environmentâas Christians, we conceive of the individual living face to face with God, making his or her own decisions in the depths of his or her own heart, his or her own consciousness. And if weâre Catholics, we probably view these individuals as transforming their character through virtuous activity and the work of grace. And if weâre Protestants, we probably understand individuals as being fundamentally depraved, but saved only because they are cloaked by Christ. In either case, Catholic or Protestant, we tend to think of thisâthe center of gravity of all of thisâbeing the individual person.
Now, as much of this notion pervades our consciousness, our relationships, and, I think, all that we think and do, it is in the history of the human race a rather new way of understanding human life. Weâve grown up with it, and certainly the younger people here have never known anything else. But it really isâmost people in the history of the human race have lived in a totally different understanding of human life than the one we instinctively latch onto, and the one we think is universal, and probably the one we think has been the norm from the time of Adam and Eve on forward.
The focus on the individual came about largely because of modernity. And I donât use âmodernityâ here in a pejorative sense or a negative sense. Itâs just âmodern times.â The Industrial Revolution took people from a society which was agrarian, which was based in family, which was based in the village, which was based in people living in their families or clans, to the industrial site where they worked. They left their homes, they went to the cities, they went where the factories were. They lived in apartments. Itâs a huge social shift. And people got disconnected from their communities, from their families, from their clans, from their villages, from the life that basically the human race had known for thousands of years.
Democracy, the dawn of modern democracy, is another feature here, or another cause. That is to say, where individuals are free to decide how he or she wishes to govern their lives. Thatâs a feature of modern democratic life. And itâs not neg- ânecessarily a negative feature; I donât meanâitâs just a feature, and it carves out individuals as the bearers of that freedom.
Political theory, modern political theory, addresses the state, society, as the aggregate of individuals, each individual being radically free. Think of our Supreme Court decisions, which enshrine the freedom of the individual as against all kinds of other social forces that are possible to think about.
Psychology, modern psychology, thinks about the conditions of personal happiness being my internal states, your internal states, located in us as individuals. And it inquires about those states.
Modern business practices that look at the marketplace as a bunch of individuals with a certain kind of demographic features, which haveâand they have a certain kind ofâa certain amount of disposable income; they have certain kinds of interests. But basically itâs built on aggregates, groups of individuals.
Now the point I want to make here is: this hyper-individualism that pervades our society and our mentality is a big problem for us. Itâs not just a given, as I mentioned. Itâs not just, as we tend to think, the only way or the natural way of thinking about human life. As I said, in fact, most human beings lived with a different notion, and most human beings lived embedded in some sort of community: either the family, the clan, the village. And they understood themselves as being intrinsically linked to that larger community.
Those of you who have seen Avalon, the movie AvalonâI suspect a lot of people have; and if you havenât, I recommend it to you highlyâit shows and it portrays in a very clear way, and in a way thatâs accessible to all of us because itâs about American life, how the transition from the turn of the century, from a community-based life, a family-based life of these immigrants, to a life of isolated individualism, where the family is finally dissipated out into little groups of individuals who basically sit in front of the TV as individuals. . . They donât even have dinner together anymore. But itâs a nice parable of this shift.
If youâve read Habits of the Heart, the book by Robert Bellah, from which we take theâwhatshisnameâs storyâBrian Millerâs story in the Fellowship [Fellowship of the Holy Spirit seminar] talks. . . . Thatâs a storyâitâs a work that studies individualism in modern American life. And, in fact, a lot of what you see if you go into an art galleryâa modern art galleryâor you read modern fiction; or you listen to modern music, which may sound dissonant; and some of the art may seem ugly to you and horrific; and some of the stories, like Kafkaâs Metamorphosis, in which the guy wakes up as a cockroach one morning, may not seemâyou may say, âWell, thatâs just another instance of this corrupt modern mentality.â But a lot of that is a reflection on the difficulties and the problems that are created when you shift from a community-based society to a society where the individual is isolated.
Now, I want to suggest [that] itâs a problem for us and we need to get beyond it. And if we donât get beyond it in our own mentality, we wonât correctly, I think, understand what God is trying to do in the world, and what heâs called us to do. Hereâs an example of how it controls our thinking, I think. Thisâand I think we hear this sort of thing all the time in sermons; we read it in devotional books; we hear it in Christian music. It, again, just permeates the air.
This is from a theologianâan important theologian at the turn of the century, von Harnack. And he says this. And he had an enormous amount of influence. He says,
Anyone who wants to know what the kingdom of God and the coming of this kingdom mean in Jesusâ preaching must read and meditate on the parables. There he will learn what the kingdom is all about. The kingdom of God comes by coming to individuals, making entrance into their souls and being grasped by them. The kingdom of God is indeed Godâs rule, but it is the rule of a holy God in individual hearts. It is God himself in his power. Everything externally dramatic, all public historical meaning vanishes here. All external hope for the future fades also. Take any parable you wish, the sower, the pearl, the treasure in the field. In each case, the Word of God, God himself, is the kingdom. It is not a matter of angels and devils, nor of principalities and powers, but of God and the soul, of the soul and its God.
âAccording to Harnack. . . .âânow, thatâs a quotation from him [Harnack]. The author here [Gerhard Lohfink, in Jesus and Community: The Social Dimension of Christian Faith, Fortress Press, 1984] saysâgoes on. It [Lohfinkâs book] says,
According to Harnack, the reign of God does not come to a community. It comes to an individual. âThe individual is to hear the good news of mercy and adoption, and to decide if he wishes to stand on the side of God and eternity or on the side of the world and time. Now for the first time everything external and everything merely future is cast off. It is the individual who is redeemed, not the people nor the state.â Just as the reign of God occurs only in the individual, not in a community, so too, it affects only the internal, not externals, only the inner man, the soul. âThe gospel lies above questions of earthly developments; it is not concerned with things but with human souls.â
Now that all should have a fairly familiar ring to it. It certainly did to me when I read it the first time. It is certainly the subtext of the message Iâve been hearing for years.
So, the basic picture, if you look at it this way, is something like this. The individual subject exists in freedom. Heâs confronted by the gospel in some way or other, some event. Heâs free to respond, to say yes or no. Now there are other forces working on him. thereâs the flesh. . . . [The audio cuts out here.]
Okay; I want to suggest another project, another way of addressing this whole area. And I want to suggest we start here: with the question âWhat is God up to?â What he is up to is what Saint Paul says he was up to from the beginning, namely, âuniting all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earthâ (thatâs Ephesians 1:9). In creation, Godâs plan was that mankind would live in unity with him and would govern the universe on his behalf. Although man rebelled against God and his intentions, God never changed his plan. Since the Fall, his work has been to get everything back on track. And that means flooding the entire creation with his presence, and to have his wise rule extended through the whole universe by mankind. This is what the story of human history is about: bringing all things in[to] union with Christ; establishing Christâs presence on the earth, in the lives of men and women everywhere; and extending Godâs wise rule.
This is really a quite different story from the one we just reviewed, namely, the one where the project is to develop personal piety and moral righteousness in our lives. Harnack is just wrong. Godâs project does not have its home just in the heart, just in interiority, just in the soul, just in our feelings. The focus is not on the radical lone individual and his inner states. The focus is on mankind; itâs on human society; itâs on life together.
The covenant with Abraham promised that God would raise up Abrahamâs descendants as a people. He would raise up Israel, and it was Israel, as the forerunner of the new humanity, that Jesus came to gather. God was gathering his people in Jesus. Gerhard Lohfink, the Scripture scholar, says this. He says, âThe sole meaning of the entire activity of Jesusââthe one meaning of everything that Jesus was doingââis the gathering of Godâs eschatological people.â Thatâs what Jesus was up to. Thatâs the sole meaning of that whole story in the New Testament, is the gathering of Godâs people around Jesus. Jesus didnât have to come and found a community. God had already formed one. Jesus came to that group, and his work was to form it around himself.
Godâs work is the work of creating a new society, a new way in which humans relate to and live with each other. They live a common life together. In Christianity the individual is always embedded in a community. He or she cannot be extricated from it. You canât pull any of us out of this community. If you do it, you change our nature. For example, you can take the heart out of the body, right? If you want to take a look at it, you can do it. Of course, you kill the person if youâre going to do that. And the heart itself dies, because itâs not being nurtured by the other organs. So itâs possible to think of taking the individual out of community and thinking of them not embedded in it, but once you do that, youâre no longer dealing with the human person you were dealing with earlier, whoâs nurtured and who lives in that community, who takes their life from that community and who gives life back to the community.
This story of Christianity as Iâm telling it here is a very âthis-worldlyâ story. Itâs not about souls. Itâs not vaporized into our internal feelings. Itâs about this world, the real world we can see, the real world that we can touch. And itâs carried out in the world, and itâs accomplished in this world. This world is both the locus, the setting, of this activity, and itâs also the object of this activity. This is what history is about, and this is the historic task to which we and all Christians are called.
Our lives, everything we do, are bound up with advancing or retarding this mission of Godâs. And what is at stake here is nothing more and nothing less than the future of mankind, the future of the universe, the future of Godâs creation. This is not a story about my individual states. This is a story about God working through all of his creation, through all of human history. This is a story of change; itâs a story of movement through history. Itâs not a static situation made up of individuals interacting with one another. Itâs a dynamic, forward-moving process. And each of our lives are embedded in that process. We are historical creatures, and it is an inescapable fact that we participate in the forces which are driving history.
Now, looked at from the point of view of Godâs work in history, okay, if you take the position of looking at all thatâs going on around us from the point of view of Godâs work in history, there are other forces in the world which are at work: the flesh, the world, and the devil. These are the enemies of God in history. They have in mind a different kind of future, a different kind of life for mankind, a different kind of world than that planned by God. And the end result of their program, of the program of the world, the flesh, and the devil, is a disaster for humanity. Itâs a train wreck for humanity, for Godâs creation.
Again, often when we consider the world, the flesh, and the devil, we do so through the lens of individualism and we think only about our own individual moral state. So if weâre talking about the world, the flesh, and the devil, we often, again, relocate ourselves in this individualistic stance. We see them as forces which, like the world, impinge upon us from the outside, or, like the flesh, as problems in our own inner constitution. And while thatâs partially true, it gets exaggerated in the hyper-individualistic culture within which we live.
The world and the flesh are also names for ways of organizing and living human life together. They have to do with how humans live and what ultimately structures their desires, their choices, and their actions. Living according to the flesh has to do with how groups of people can live, as well as how an individual can live. And so, too, living worldly lives. You and I can surely think of cultures which are worldly. One might think ofâand this is a bit of a caricature, but just to use it in its emblematic senseâWall Street. Okay? I mean, the center of commerce in the United States; itâs the most powerful nation on the earth. Where the issue is to create wealth and to make money. When thatâs that highest ide- âthat society is largely a worldly society. And, of course, a Christian in that society has a hard time. But thatâs a worldly culture. There is such a thing. Itâs not just in the individual.
Or, think of the flesh. Think of Hollywood. Think of the fashion industry. Think of Gianni Versace. These are whole cultures; these are whole ways of life. And so the world and the flesh, andâwhich is ultimately rooted in Satanâhas a program for the world, just like God has a program. These are forces which are at work not just at the level of the individual, but at work on trying to undo Godâs plan by organizing humanity according to a different agenda than the agenda God has in mind, and an agenda which is a disaster for humans.
Since the disobedience of Adam and Eve, our first parents, the world has been in enemy hands. Satan had his way, and sin and death did enter the world. The entire universe was thrown off course. Even the material elements, the chemistry of the world which was to benefit mankind, was corrupted in the Fall; and so we get cancer and pneumonia, kidney failures. The physical world became our enemy. We had to make our livingâwe could make it only by toil. And as we learned ecologically in the last century, as we work to do that, we put the planet itself at risk. Weâve become alienated from the creation itself because of the Fall.
And our relationships with one another, as we all know and struggle with, areâor at least as humanity, theyâre controlled largely by pride and power and violence. And thatâs the condition of the world today. That wasâthatâs what has happened because of the Fall, and thatâs the situation weâre in today.
Now, we liveâthose of us in this room live pretty sheltered lives, and we can tend to think that everything is working pretty much okay in the world. Most of us have pretty nice homes. We eat well, we have decent jobs, we have good families. Most of us take relaxing vacations; we travel. Some of our children are grown and we might have grandchildren, and on the whole they seem to be doing well too. They seem to live pretty comfortable lives. The economy is good; the future looks secure. We live in a land of peace and of freedom. Life is good.
And we can begin, because of that, to think that everything is pretty much all right with the world. Well, in the first place, itâs not for sure that everythingâs even right in America, let alone right in the world. Consider the violence; the poverty; abortionâ30 million dead since Roe v. Wade, 30 million. Think of euthanasia on the horizon. Think of the materialism and consumerism that surrounds us.
I found a very nice essay in The New York Times Sunday Magazine. Actually, itâs an interesting issue of the magazine because itâs all about religion. Itâs got a picture from Brownsville, and itâs got a picture of Frank MacNutt, who a lot of you will remember, and his healing ministry. But it has a very nice essay called âGod or the BMW,â by a guy named John Cheever [sic: Benjamin Cheever], who, I thinkâitâs a wonderful essay, I think, âcause heâs got his finger right on the issue. Let me just read you two paragraphs, because I think he just brings it out.1
He had aâthis guy has a friend, Susan, who he asks this question of. Cheeverâs a professor, and I think this is one of his students. And he asks her, âWhat would make you more happy, Christ or a BMW?â
âLetâs see,â sheâthis is a quote. âLetâs see, BMW versus Christ,â Susan responded. âBMW enhances perceived worth, and thatâs all that counts in our culture. So give up on Christ, and buy the car. Passionate materialism is my own ruling ethic, and I must disagree with you on its failure to produce contentment. It does, and it lasts as long as any other contentment.â
The author goes on to say, âThe greatest talents in the world were once employed to glorify God. Now theyâre employed to glorify Scott towels and Volvos and Apple computers. Who can fail to believe that Scott towels exist? And itâs such a democratic faith, this new one. Sinners are accepted right along with the pure of heart. We donât have to wait for heaven. Itâs right here, and for everyone. Unless, of course, youâre poor.â
The comforts, the rewardsâthe material rewardsâof American life tend to anesthetize us to whatâs really happening even in our own country, even to ourselves: whatâs happening to us. Let alone whatâs happening in the rest of the world. Itâs a kind of bewitchment that can overcome us.
Just for a dose of reality, letâs consider a few other things going on in the world today. Iâm gonna read some news stories.
This isâconsider Algeria: [the] situation in Algeria where thereâs been a civil war since 1955, which has been brutal. The Algerianâthe Islamic fundamentalists there looked like they were gonna win the election, and the Algerian government called off the election rather than lose to them. And thereâs been a slaughter of people in Algeria since then. Iâm just reading a couple of things from this news story from the [New York] Times.2
âAfter the massacre . . . ââthis is how the story starts. And itâs a place, a village in Algeria.
After the massacre, one thing in the house was left recognizable, one thing. It was a charred book extolling the beauty of Scandinavia. Everything elseâthe beds, couches, cooking utensils, chairs, and the three cars in the garageâhad been incinerated. Someone wiped bloodstains and soot off the tiles with gasoline but it did not really help. It only added a new stench clinging to the walls.
âTwenty four people died here,â said (. . . so and soâI canât pronounce the name), glancing inside his neighborsâ ruined four-storey house. It was burned by a roving band of about 100 killers believed by residents to be Islamic militants, when they descended on this town of 8000 shortly before midnight on September 22nd.
âI saw them from over the balcony of my house,â Mr. Sheikh said. âThey were crouching, walking single-file. They carried swords, hunting rifles, Kalishnikovs, firebombs, iron bars. They would drag people out and slit their throats.â
In five hours of mayhem, the intruders killed 95 people by official tally, or more than 300 according to the villagers, whose accounts were supported by the fresh graves just outside the town about 15 miles south of Algiers. The methods included shooting, stabbing, and decapitation.
. . . Amnesty International, trying to gauge the devastation in the absence of reliable statisticsâ
âthinks that since 19- âexcuse me. Since 1992, âabout 80,000 people have been killed in these massacres.â
This is a story of an Alger- â young Algerian woman. Her name is Hariah Zada.
[She] was well on her way to becoming a national judo champion at age 22 when, she said, she got a letter ordering her to stop practicing the sport, wear a veil, and stay home. She ignored it.
A week later, on July 21st, 1994, five men burst into her familyâs apartment in the Babzawar neighborhood of Algiers. With her mother and three other siblings made to watch, her 16-year-old brother, Morad, his mouth wrapped with masking tape, was held to the ground, and one of the men slit his throat.
âI saw him trembling like a sheep,â she said, staring at a glass of mint tea left untouched during a two-hour conversation. She recounted how 10 months later, on May 18, 1995, the killers returned and shot her 57-year-old mother to death. A year later, they killed her second brother.
Thatâs whatâs really happening in the real world now. Think of Bosnia. Think of the atrocities there. Think of the atrocities committed by Christians there. Think of Middle East terrorism: innocent people being blown up in market squares, people being blown up on buses. Think of the terrorists wanting to come to America. They wanted to bring down the World Trade Center. Think of them destroying airplanes and killing innocent people. There are people now in this world planning to do that, putting together bombs and planning to kill innocent people.
Hereâs another story from the Times. This is about the trafficking of women in the sex industry in Europe and Asia. But whatâs new about this storyâthatâs not a new storyâwhatâs new about this story is that itâs become a huge business in the new Russia. âThe international baz-â âthis is the story.3 It says,
The international bazaar for women is hardly new, of course. Asians have been its basic commodity for decades. But economic hopelessness in the Slavic world has opened what experts call the most lucrative market of all to criminal gangs that have flourished since the fall of Communism: white women with little to sustain them but their dreams being sold into sexual bondage. The International Organization for Migration estimates that 500,000 women are traffickedâhave been trafficked in Western Europe this year alone in the sex trade. Five hundred thousand women in Western Europe.
The story goes on; itâs a full-page story, and itâs really devastating.
Another story. More Christians have been killed in this century, itâs estimated by reliable people whoâand this is a published figure. . . . More Christians have been put to death for their faith in this century than all the Christians from the time of Christ up to 1900. Now, itâs really astonishing. Itâs astonishing that we live in that time, and donât know it.
This is aâPaul Marshall, author of Their Blood Cries Out and a senior fellow at the Institute of Christian Studies in Toronto, estimates that 700,000 Christians have died in the eight years since Muslim fundamentalists seized power in the Sudan. Seven hundred thousand in Sudan, one country, in eight years. More die from hunger than from bullets, he says, but adds that armed government militiamen often surround villages on horseback, kill the men, and kidnap the children to forcibly convert them to Islam. Even in countries that are strong U.S. allies, Christians often face brutalization. Human rights groups have accused the government of Saudi Arabia of beheading Christians. In Egypt, Coptic Christians are not allowed to build or repair churches without the permission of President Hosni Mubarak. Not that Muslim countries are the only ones charged with Christian persecution. According to Human Rights Watch, the leading U.S. human rights group, Communist officials in China have been shutting down Protestant and Catholic churches that refuse to affiliate with the government and arresting ministers and priests.
Now, thereâs one response you can think of to all that. One response is the kind of response I had when I was a young man; [it] wasâI could really see going off and joining the CIA or something and going into Algeria, and just being part of something, you know, to keep people from getting slaughtered. You think, âThereâs something I could do. I could do something.â But we knowâwe all knowâthat that doesnât solve the problem. Bombing Iraq is not going to solve the problem. I mean, it may be the right tactical thing to do at this time, but itâs not going to end the war. Itâs not going to end destruction. Itâs not going to end violence. Itâs not going to end persecution.
This womanâitâs interestingâthis woman who wasâwho saw her brother killed: they have a photograph here with a 9mm pistol that she now. . . . Hereâs her response:
Today, Ms. Zada wears bright red lipstick and short skirts. Her expression is defiant and she carries a gun tucked into her skirt. When she is asked about the future, she said she was considering taking a scholarship to pursue judo training in France and marrying a policeman she met during the investigations into the killings.
That is to say, sheâll just shootâsheâll just kill the next guy that comes and wants to kill her. And thatâs one response. Itâs not going to solve any problems, but itâs an understandable response.
So, the worldâwhat I want to suggest is, the world is in really bad shape, and itâs been in very bad shape for a very long time. And if itâs going to get better, itâs going to take a long, long time until this planet even gets as good as the life we have in America, with the peace and freedom we have here. But the corruption of life and the corruption of the human spirit is nothing to look forward to.
No matter how good the world gets, itâs not going to get rid of sin and death. Remember what Jesus says in the parable of the weeds and the tares when he says the guy goes out and sees that the weeds have been planted there among the wheat. He says, âThis is the work of an enemy.â This is the work of the enemy. This is the work of our enemy, the enemy of mankind.
Now there are two responses you could take to the kind of things that Iâve been saying and to the picture Iâve just drawn. You can say, âGolly, thatâs really too bad. That really is awful. But it finally doesnât really count. Weâre all going to die. Weâre all going to go to either heaven or hell. Thatâs the real issue. And sure, we ought to make life better for others when and where we can, and we ought to be generous in that.â
Or you could say, âIt really, really does count. It counts so much that this is why God sent his Son to die on the cross. God so loved the world that he wanted to change all of this for every man and every woman in historyâfor everyone, for good, forever. This enemy needs to be defeated, so that men and women can live without tears, without pain, and finally, in the promise of God, without death. In union with God in a new creation.â
Consider what God is accomplishing. Consider what heâs achieving. Heâs building a new heaven and a new earth. Heâs building a new city for mankind. In Isaiah itâs explained in social terms: rejoicing and happiness in Jerusalem and in its peoples; an end to weeping and crying; the promise of a long life. [In Isaiah 65,] Isaiah says, âNo longer shall there be in it . . .ââin this cityâ â . . . an infant who lives but a few days. He dies a mere youth who reaches but a hundred years.â In this new city, exploitation is overcome. Isaiah says, âThey shall live in the houses they build and eat the fruit of the vineyards they plant,â meaning they wonât be dominated by foreigners. âThey shall not build houses for others to live in, or plant for others to eatâ: they wonât get ripped off. They shall enjoy long life and enjoy the produce of their own land. âThey shall not toil in vain.â There will be peace: the wolf will lay down with the lion [sic: the lamb].
âWe await . . . â Peter says, in the secondâhis second epistle [2 Peter 3:13]: â We await a new heaven and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.â In the book of Revelation, we see that death itselfâthe last enemy, as St. Paul says; he calls it the last enemy [in 1 Corinthians 15:26]. . . . In the book of Revelation, death itself is overcome. And this is accomplished in the resurrection of the dead, in the resurrection of Christ.
So Godâs creation is in enemy hands, and Christ is leading a revolution. Thatâs what God has been up to since the Fall: a revolution. In the midst of this alien reign, heâs setting up and empowering instances of a new reign, his reign, his kingdom, where human life is whole, where people love one another, where God dwells with his people.
And that instance of the new reign, that instance of the kingdom, is us, I want to propose: the People of Praise. Weâre exactlyâthatâs exactly what we are: an instance of that new kingdom. We are a part of the fundamental revolutionary plan of God to install in the earth instances of his people; of the new creation; of the new city; of a place, finally, where people can live with God and live together in peace and love and harmony, and where death and pain and suffering are finally overcome.
Remember what Lohfink said: âThe sole meaning of the entire activity of Jesus was the establishment of (just such) a people.â Weâre that people. And that means that we need to look like, we need to act like, we need to think like his people. And w- âthere needs to be a contrast between us and the rest of the society. People ought to be able to look at us and say, âWow, that is really different. That is really attractive. That is a wonderful way to live.â There is something here in this life. It ought to be a counterculture, a place that people can really notice the difference, that this is a real instance of Godâs kingdom.
The revolution that God is up to consists of two things. It consists of living the new life together, living Christâs life together every day; and secondly, extending Godâs wise rule everywhere we can, in the community and in the world. And this is not an idle dream; itâs not just a wish. This is Godâs work. It will happen. All of his promises are true. Join the revolution! Amen. Alleluia! [Applause.]
Thatâs not the end of the talk. I just got excited there. [Applause ends. Laughter.]
So, what is it to live the revolution? Simply to live the life of the kingdom. Live Christ in all that you do. Be Christ. Think Christ. Let Christ permeate all that you are and all that you do. Living the life of Christ is not individualistic. It is not the lone Christian imitating Christ. It is not the lone Christian doing the things of Christ. Christ is a social reality. That is why Christianity is Christian community. Itâs the way it was from the very beginning, from that first day of Pentecost.
That is why the Christian community is said in Scripture to be the body of Christ. This is the body of Christ on the earth. And that is why love is the key: because at the center of all this is human relationships. This is social, because Godâs plan is social. Heâs forming a new humanity, a new way of being human. As we said, Godâs plan is to unite all things in Christ. The way he does this is by livingâby us living Christ together, by us being the body of Christ. Itâs a life lived together. From the beginning, God was forming a people. And thatâs what he continues to do today.
Being Christ and living Christ is not just something we should do in the religious moments of our day: morning prayer, church on Sunday, community meetings. Together and as individuals, we need to be Christ, to live as Christ, all day, every day. Our life in Christ needs to be one seamless tapestry: everything we do, and in all of our relationships.
So, the People of Praise is not a safe haven. Itâs not a safe haven from the troubles of the world. Itâs not a safe haven for individuals who just want to work on their individual piety and their excelling in virtue. Itâs not just a rest stop on the pilgrimage of life. The People of Praise is the center of Godâsâa center of Godâs revolution, a revolution which is changing the face of the earth. Itâs hard to believeâand this is, I think, in one sense the center of the talk. Itâs hard to believe, but the central truth of Christianity is that the answer to those terrible stories in Algeria, in the Sudan, the corruption in America, the terrible history of this humanity that weâre a part of, the answer to abortion, the answer to sickness, the answer to death itself is the life and growth of Christian community!
Itâs remarkable. I mean, if you want to make a contribution to changing the world, if you want to love the world like God did, and you want to give your life like Jesus did, for the good of the world, for the good of all your brothers and sisters, for Godâs plan, what should you do? March off and join the CIA? Get a nice 9 mm gun? Should you go to Washington and become, you know, the next Secretary of State or something? No! I mean, God may lead you to do that. But the fundamental thing is: live the life of the Christian community. Live the life of the People of Praise, totally and fully. And thatâs changing that situation where the kid gets his throat slit in front of his parents. That changes the white slavery in Europe. That changes the world. Itâs really odd. Itâs really paradoxical. But thatâs whatâs happen- âthatâs what God is doing.
[Long pause.]
So, what I want to urge us to do is to live the life of this community thoroughly, intently. I want to urge us to let it consume our life, just as the revolution consumed the life of the Communist revolutionaries. Itâs finally a matter of love. Do you want your own individualistic comfort, or will you die to yourself so that the Christian community, this instance of the kingdom of God, can flourish on the earth, so that we can be Christ, wherever we are on the earth?
This is a revolution, and a revolution is a state of war. Jesus said, âI bring a sword.â He said, âI bring a fire. I bring judgment.â The revolutionary has to be totally dedicated. St. Paul says to Timothy [in 2 Timothy 2:4], âDonât get involvedâas a good soldier, donât get involved in civilian pursuits.â Donât get distracted. Donât let the enemy anesthetize you about whatâs really going on. Donât let him bewitch you. Stay totally committed.
And we need also not to give our hearts to other agendas. Again, the revolutionary model is a good one here. ThisâI mean, you can think of being tempted by the world and flesh, and you can think in terms of personal sin. That takes us back to the individualistic model, and I donât want to deal with that here. I want to look at it a different way. Think of beingâwhen the world or the fleshâwhen you give way to them, think not so much about individual sin. Think about being disloyal to Christ. Think of giving your heart to another agenda, not to Christâs agenda.
This is like theâa Communist might say to a young Communist agent, âI thought you were part of the revolution, but I see youâre calling your stockbroker every day, and youâre driving a big Lexus, and youâre wearing a Rolex watch. It doesnât look to me like your heartâs in this. It doesnât look to me like youâre really on board. You talk a good talk, but in fact, I see all kinds of ways youâre living another agenda. Anotherâa whole other agenda with a whole other scheme.â
And I thinkâactually, if you read St. Paulâs epistles, thatâs much the way he talks to people heâs talking to. He says, âAre you a follower of Christ or not? Donât behave like that. Youâre behaving like someone whoâs given his heart to the world. Youâre behaving like someone whoâs given their heart to the flesh. Donât do that. Stay loyal to Christ.â
Itâs something like, you know, âGee, I thought you were Italian. Why are you eating sushi all the time?â [Some laugh.] I mean, itâs âHow do you identify yourself? What are you?â And it seems to me thatâs a way for us to look at our life in Christ, if weâre going to be loyal to Christ and not let these other agendas have any part in our lives, not to live according to some other reign other than the reign of God.
This is something I think we need to really watch, the ways in which these other agendas creep into our lives. And Iâm gonna use one little example, and itâs . . . examples youâve heard from me in the past but Iâm gonna repeat it, because I think itâs easy to get, and real enough that we all can get the point.
Think of the music you listen to; think of the conversations you get into; think of the movies you watch, the TV you watch; think of the way in which ads and the media capture your heart and fire your imagination. These are not instances of Christ. These are instances of the enemy working on us. And in fact, the forces there are enemies of Christ. They have a different agenda for you and for me, and a different agenda for the human race.
The example I want to use comes from movies, and it has to do with the background story that you find in a lot of contemporary movies. And what I have in mind here is the way in which sexual immorality gets presented in a lot of contemporary movies as simply okay. Itâs not even explained; itâs not even called attention to. Itâs just there. Itâs like the weather. Itâs like, anybody knows this is the â80s. Câmon. This is just life. Four movies come to my mind. I donât see manyâyou probably can give me a lot better ones. Actually I hope you canât. [Some laugh.] But four come to my mind: Top Gun, Roxanne, Sleepless in Seattle, and My Best Friendâs Wedding. In those, promiscuous sex and immoral sexual activity are simply built into the story line. And you could miss it if you werenât concerned about such things.
And thereâs a teaching there. Itâs teaching us an approach to an important part of our life, a part of our life which God has quite a bit to say about, and which has a lot to do with living the life of Christ, and with the transformation of the earth and the transformation of humankind. And this wholeâit just desensitizes us to it, and we just kinda march happily along, the electrodes plugged into our head, the message coming in. Itâs the work of an enemy. Itâs the work of enemies of Christ, people who hate Christ and all that he stands for.
Movies like this, and all the ways in which the agenda of the world and the agenda of the flesh get fed to us, is the work of Christâs enemies. As disciples of Christ, bearing Christ within us and trying to form life in Christ together, we should hate the work of Christâs enemies. We should give them no place in our life. Their work is meant precisely to undo what Christ is doing. They are, in fact, mockers of Christ.
Recall the scene at Calvary. It saysâthis is Matthew [27:38â44].
Two robbers were crucified with him, one on the right and one on the left. And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, âYou who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself. If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.â So also the chief priests with the scribes and elders mocked him, saying, âHe saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the king of Israel; let him come down now from the cross and we will believe him. He trusts in God; let God deliver him now if he desires him, for he said, âI am the Son of God.âââ And the robbers who were crucified with him also reviled him in the same way.
These folks are mockers of Christ. They can have a devastating impact on us. Theyâre powerful, they have attractive tools at their disposal, and they are in the ascendancy. They control the larger culture. Like the folks in the courtyard of the high priestâs house on Good Friday morning, they come and ask us, Are we followers of Christ? And like Peter, we could disavow Jesus. And we could disavow our brothers and sisters. âNo, I donât know them. Iâm not one of the People of Praise. No, Iâm cool, Iâm hip. Iâm not like those guys.â
Recall that scene, too, in Matthew [26:69â75].
Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard, and a maid came up to him and said, âYou also were with Jesus, the Galilean.â But he denied it before them all, saying, âI do not know what you mean.â And when he went out to the porch, another maid saw him, and she said to the bystanders, âThis man was with Jesus of Nazareth.â And again he denied it with an oath: âI do not know the man!â After a little while the bystanders came up and said to Peter, âCertainly you are also one of them, for your accent betrays you.â (Right there: âone of them.â The guys who follow Jesus, âone of them.â He doesnât want to be identified with the other disciples.) And he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, âI do not know the man.â And immediately the cock crowed, and Peter remembered the saying of Jesus, âBefore the cock crows, you will deny me three times.â And he went out and wept bitterly.
So what should we do? We should repent. âRepent,â metanoia, means âturning around.â I want to suggest thatâand I have beforeâone way of looking at repentance here is not so much just looking at our own individual sins, at this wrongdoing and that. But, rather, think about it as a matter of where you have placed your final loyalties. Jesus has asked you to live his life totally, through and through. Heâs asked you to live the life of the kingdom. Heâs asked you to live the life of the People of Praise. Heâs asked you to live the new life to which heâs calling all of humanity. But in many ways, you havenât. In many ways, I havenât.
What we have done is lived according to some other agenda in various parts of our life. Weâve given those parts of our life over, even momentarily, to other agendas: the world, the flesh, the agenda of Satan. Thatâs what we want to repent of today. Thatâs what we want to be sorry for. Thatâs what we want to tell the Lord weâre going to turn around and turn away from.
Weâre gonna have a chance in a minute to pray together, to rededicate ourselves to what God has called us to in the community, and to Godâs plan as weâve understood it today. And a chance to repent of those ways in which weâve let an alien agendaâweâve given ourselves to an alien agenda, and we have not been totally consumed with the gift that God has given us and the call that God has given us.
Jesus says, âI thought you were going to live entirely under my reign. I thought you were going to give me your entire life in the People of Praise. But you flirt with the world and with the flesh. You let them make inroads in your heart, in your affections, in your relationships. You want your own way. You want more comfort. You hold back from your brothers and sisters. You hold back from me. You let yourself get isolated in the community. Repent.â
Jesus says, âI thought you gave your life to me in the People of Praise, but here you are lusting after material goods. Here you are, planning some other future than the one to which I called you.â âRepent,â Jesus says.
What Iâd like us to do is to take some time now to turn to the Lord together, to rededicate ourselves to all that God has called us to in the People of Praise, and to repent. Each of us knows the various waysâI hope weâve been able to call forth enough here that it triggers those things in our minds and in our memories, those, you know, prob- âthose ways in which weâve givenâwe havenât lived the life of the People of Praise and the ways in which weâve given our life over to other agendas.
Iâm gonna haveâIâm gonna ask for everybody to stand and pray in a minute. But, also, if anyone would like to in a special way rededicate themselves to the Lord or be prayed with for that, or rededicate themselves to the People of Praise, or in a special way to repent, weâre gonna clear some space here, and you can come forward for prayer. Thereâll be a prayer team. This will not be the same prayer as âmore of the Lord,â that weâve been experiencing.
What weâre gonna ask you to doâand weâre gonna ask the people here in the first few rows just to move back and to move your chairs out of the wayâwhat weâre gonna ask you to do if you do come forward is to kneel down, and the prayer team will work its way to you. And when they pray with you, if youâll stand up. Thatâs a little indication to them that youâve been prayed with.
So, letâs do that now. Letâs stand together andâwhile weâre praying, if anybody wants to come forward for prayer, letâs do that. Letâs come before the Lord now and rededicate ourselves to our life in the People of Praise. Letâs tell the Lord that we want to give him everything, and letâs repent of being involved in âcivilian pursuits.â Letâs repent of giving parts of our heart and part of our lives over to the agendas of his enemies, of those who crucified and mocked him. Letâs ask him to teach us to understand in a deeper way that they really are his enemies, they really are our enemies. Letâs turn to the Lord.
[Other indistinct voices in prayer as Kerry begins:] Lord, we praise and glorify your name. Lord, we glorify you. . . .
[Recording ends here.]
Endnotes
1. Cheever, Benjamin. âThe Big Question; God Or BMW.â New York Times, December 7, 1997. Return to text
2. Ibrahim, Youssef M. âAs Algerian Civil War Drags On, Atrocities Grow.â New York Times, December 28, 1997. Return to text
3. Specter, Michael. âCONTRABAND WOMENâA special report. Traffickers’ New Cargo: Naive Slavic Women.â New York Times, January 11, 1998. Return to text
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