Beggars for grace

There has been a lot of news coverage of “tea parties” and town hall meetings and the recent protest march in Washington, D.C. There is obviously a lot of disagreement over the part government should play in health care and the economy as well as other issues.

I do not think that the issues being debated in an open, democratic society should ever be held up as tests of Christian authenticity. On health care as on other issues, persons of genuine Christian faith will be found on all sides.

It is a grievous error to hold that any political party can bring in the Kingdom. (Actually, I’d say that both major parties of our country are very far from the Kingdom in almost every particular.) The Scriptures, after all, are not very approving of the idea of government no matter what form.

Instead, the calling of God is for people to live so wholly under his grace and so devotedly to his purposes that we form communities of divine love in which conflicts are resolved amicably among people who are concerned first with each other rather than themselves.

It may be that this vision can work only with groups as small as churches and can’t be adapted to whole nations, much less all the nations. In fact, the Bible seems to recognize this difficulty by saying in Revelation that the fullness of the kingdom won’t be realized until Christ returns and puts all things under his feet.

Yet that doesn’t mean that the Kingdom can’t be attained at all in the meantime. I visited Israel two years ago as one of a group of ten Methodist ministers sponsored by Christians for Fair Witness on the Middle East. Another pastor, “Dave,” and I were pretty clearly not on the same page when it came to assessing the present-day issues of Israel and the Palestinians. Near the end of the trip our group visited Gallicantu Church in Jerusalem. There are good reasons to believe that the church is built over the dungeon where Jesus was held overnight before being sent to Pilate.

Seeing the remains of the dungeon was very sobering. More than any other site, it made real to me the suffering Jesus endured for my salvation. Suddenly I could not stay in that place. I quickly went outside, hardly watching where I was walking.
When I stopped I discovered Dave was standing right next to me. There were tears in his eyes also. It was a moment of spiritual communion. The personal disputes we had had faded to insignificance before the enormity of the love of Jesus.

No matter the issues that might divide us, either in our church life or national, let Christians remember that Jesus is much greater. Beggars for grace, that’s all we are, beggars for grace.