God has created a world that becomes healthy, free and full of life when its nations honour and care for the most vulnerable. Nations that fail to build cultures of compassion and care are doomed to destroy themselves.
God has created a world that becomes healthy, free and full of life when its nations honour and care for the most vulnerable. Nations that fail to build cultures of compassion and care are doomed to destroy themselves.
When Jesus exposes our aversion to having others recognised as our equals, he calls us to repent and celebrate God’s generosity to all. The marriage equality debate exposes another frontier of his challenge to us.
In the violence and suffering that surround the Christmas story, we find the revelation of a God who does not inflict violence and suffering, but suffers violence to bring love and peace.
To name Christ as King is to identify ourselves as dissenters to the claims of any other authority and to critique all power-mongering.
We have been adopted as the children of a king who does not withhold his love until we comply, who does not ask us to sing for our supper, who does not use us or abuse us, but longs to bind up our wounds.
God is with us to comfort and revive us in the face of horror, but also to challenge us to turn things around.
In Christ, God acts for the salvation of all, and in Christ, we are called to pray for all (even politicians!).
To name Christ as King is to identify ourselves as dissenters to the claims of any other authority.
In the encounter with Jesus, our self-delusion and our scapegoating are painfully exposed, but with the possibility of forgiveness and freedom.
Any political wisdom which has lost touch with the values revealed to us in the character of God is on the road to disaster. It is not wisdom at all; it is just the mouthings of wealth and power.
There is no such thing as a ritual-free space, and performed well or performed badly, rituals change things, change people’s lives.
When we call Jesus King, we may not know what we’re saying.
Will we live out allegiance to the state, the economy, the mass media, consumerism, status-driven values and wealth, or to God, to the new community, to upside-down kingdom values and to a radical alternative which is the source of hope and transformation?
In a world where both monarchy and presidential democracy have lost touch with the needs of the people, Christ shows a Kingship that is expressed in solidarity with our suffering and raises us to royal dignity.
There is an illuminating contrast between the response of the pagan magi and the response of the biblical scholars, and between the kingship of Jesus and the kingship of Herod.